 Czar Peter the Great was advised by his friend Lefort to bring in Africans to Russia for hard labor.Alexander Pushkin's great grandfather was the African princeling Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who became Peter's protégé, was educated as a military engineer in France, and eventually became general-en-chef, responsible for the building of sea forts and canals in Russia.During the 1930s fifteen Black American families moved to the Soviet Union as agricultural experts.