11.06 Jim Patterson: Black Soviet Icon�s Lonely American Sojourn

WASHINGTON, June 11 (By Carl Schreck for RIA Novosti) � For decades Jim Patterson was arguably the most famous black man in the Soviet Union, a debonair homegrown poet whose childhood role in an iconic film cemented his celebrity and who later roamed the vast country reading his work to adoring audiences.

These days Patterson, whose African-American father emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932, is convalescing in a threadbare subsidized apartment in downtown Washington, where he has led a reclusive life plagued by illness and depression since his Russian mother died more than a decade ago.

�I never wanted to leave forever,� Patterson, who arrived in America with his mother in the mid-1990s amid the economic turmoil in Russia following the Soviet collapse, told RIA Novosti in recent interviews. �I came here because it is my father�s homeland. It was not meant to be one of those cases where a person leaves for good.�

Patterson, frail from the effects of a blood infection that left him hospitalized for more than a year, remains largely bed-ridden though his legs are strong enough to withstand a few cautious steps. He is under the care of a Cameroonian nurse who administers his medicine and prepares his meals, including his beloved bliny, or traditional Russian pancakes, which he eats with an occasional dollop of sour cream despite doctors� orders.

�I always say that I can�t get better without sour cream,� said Patterson, who speaks halting English and who spoke his native Russian in the interviews.