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Photograph: RFE/RL Roane told Golden’s granddaughter, Russian journalist and television personality Yelena Khanga, that he signed up to leave the US because the Soviet foreign trade agency hiring the workers “was offering better pay for a month than a lot of people would make in a year in the Depression.”

“Secondly, I was young and I wanted to see the world. I thought this might be the only chance I’d ever get,” he told Khanga for her 1992 book about growing up as a black Russian-American.

He told Khanga that the only incident he could recall was when two white Americans hurled racial slurs at him in a Moscow barbershop.

Speaking to Khanga, Yosif’s father portrayed his return as bittersweet.

According to Khanga’s book, the town’s name nearly prevented Roane and his family from returning to the US at all.