Communism is a particular form of socialism. Omissions? However, the Kremlin was reluctant to send Soviet troops because of its fear of a major escalation with NATO powers. This month, as part of its Red Africa research project, Calvert 22 , a London-based, Russian-financed foundation, presents Things Fall Part, a nostalgic exhibition of various artworks drawing on the legacy of the friendships between Africa, the Soviet Union and related countries during the Cold War. The signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty followed in 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. Soon after, Mixinge became one of the tens of thousands of Africans to travel to Cuba for schooling. Munslow, Barry, ed. It is easy to romanticise the historic friendships that the USSR, Cuba and Yugoslavia offered African liberation movements and governments, as Calvert 22s Red Africa season seems to, especially with so much information about the era still locked in archives. Fear of Communism. (2009) 7#5 pp 1259-1268. He was just 11 when he and his sister left Angola. This is an excellent treatment of the origins and development of communism or socialism on the African continent. Under the leadership of Ahmed Skou Tour, the former French colony of Guinea in West Africa proclaimed its independence in 1958 and immediately sought foreign aid. Throughout the ferocious Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s, Moscow provided military, technical and material assistance to the FLN, and trained hundreds of its military leaders in the USSR. Some students were shocked by conditions in Moscow, which was summed up by one African visitor as having no cars, no cafes, no good clothes or good food. War in Vietnam (1945-46) September 13, 1945. In truth, though, it marked a turning point the end of direct actions by western powers in Africa, replaced by conflicts that spread across the continent as the west and the Soviet Union tussled for influence in newly or soon-to-be independent African nations: a proxy Cold War described as a second scramble for Africa. According to Marxist theory, in its most advanced form, communism involves state control by the working class. Furthermore, the British and French publics were increasingly grumbling that maintaining their African colonies was too costly: repression was expensive. same time he systematically stripped his country of its wealth and resources. AFRICAN [16], Facing enormous turmoil in the newly independent Republic of the Congo (Lopoldville), Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic leader of the Mouvement National Congolais, reacted by calling for assistance from the Soviet Union. Infuriated by Soviet support for the Ethiopians, Somalia annulled its treaty with the Soviet Union and expelled all Soviet advisors in the country. Somalia appeared to be on the brink of victory after gaining control of 90% of the area. In the mid-1950s, two developments signaled the arrival of the Cold War in North Africa: the Algerian War of independence against France began in November 1954; and Egypt adopted an independent foreign policy, challenging British influence in the Middle East, helping the Algerian rebels, and buying weapons from the Soviet bloc. The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the uneasy alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other started to fall apart. The United States had won on points. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987. Within a week, the country dissolved into anarchy after the army mutinied. Under pressure from independence movements . It is argued that populist thinkers Nyerere, Cabral, and Fanon shared a common passion for a brand of socialism that was democratic and rooted in precolonial traditions as well as in Marxist-Leninist theory. It became an integral part of the Soviet cultural offensive in nonaligned countries. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He went into exile, followed by 1,000 of his Soviet advisors. (1985). The pattern was set for the next 30 years of proxy rivalry in Africa. termed the "Cold War" but is, in reality, a war in which, in Africa, much heat is engendered. From 1960, the Soviet Union became involved in several Marxist, African struggles, providing political support, weapons and military training, including to the People's Movement for the Liberation. The level of ideological commitment or interest in socialist doctrine varied among all the different governments and movements which received Soviet military aid. During the Cold War During the 1950s Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, for example, MI5 investigated possible Soviet involvement but, when questioned, bewildered tribesmen asked: What does a Russian look like? and Can Russians speak Swahili? Clearly, the KGB was making little headway in east Africa. Its activists joined the militant National Liberation Front (FLN). By 1965, Cuba became a fully communist country and developed close ties to the Soviet Union. The USA have a story of backup Coup d'tat in the countries of Latin America, support for anti-communist dictatorships such as Indonesia or Phillipines and millitary invasions as in Vietnam. Among them was the future president, Hosni Mubarak, who went for training in a military pilot school in Kant Air Base, Kyrgyzstan. The point was not lost on Soviet propagandists. French Indochina. Drew provides an excellent account of the development of both the Algerian and South African Communist parties over time. During this trip he famously, The Soviet Union, too, played an important role in the development of African cinema, training. Our Own Special Brand of Socialism: Algeria and the Contest of Modernities in the 1960s., Desai, Ram. This coup de main misfired. Anti-Communism informed almost every aspect of the South African government's foreign policy and much of its domestic policy. From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. Both superpowers had been wooing Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser first the US, which offered then withdrew financial support for the construction of an Aswan dam, then the Soviet Union, which sold Egypt large quantities of arms. Nato also armed two colonial powers, France and Portugal, in their struggles against nationalist insurgents in Algeria, Angola and Mozambique. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!: Reagans Berlin Speech, https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War, The National WWII Museum New Orleans - Cold Conflict, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum - The Cold War, Cold War - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Cold War - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), China rips new US House committee on countering Beijing, Russia's sports exile persists 1 year after invading Ukraine, Norway official who spied for the Soviets has died in Moscow, 'It just rang': In crises, US-China hotline goes unanswered, helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954). The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev, who changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. The Cold War had two sides, the United States, and the Soviet Union, both of these countries took measures, including giving money, fighting proxy wars, building a wall, or building missiles to fight for their ideals. From 1955, the Soviet Union poured modern warplanes and weaponry into Egypt, which Nasser deployed in clashes with Israel. Spread of Communism Birth of the USA American Constitution American Independence War Causes of the American Revolution Democratic Republican Party General Thomas Gage biography Intolerable Acts Loyalists Powers of the President Quebec Act Seven Years' War Stamp Act Tea Party Cold War Battle of Dien Bien Phu Brezhnev Doctrine Brezhnev Era Castro had learned from Guatemala, and was able to thwart a coup attempt in 1961. The first such confrontation occurred in the former . 1960s / Decolonization of Africa. By 1980, then, South Africa ruled by what Castro called a Fascist-Racist regime stood alone against the forces of African nationalism. As the Second World War's uneasy alliances unravelled, a new world emerged: of east vs west and of global conflicts as the superpowers vied for influence. A product of the Cold War, the Southeast Asia War (1961-1973) began with communist attempts to overthrow non-communist governments in the region. The United States was sympathetic, in principle, to the gradual progression of colonized people toward independence. The Soviet Union agreed to fund its new ally and hoped that Ethiopia and Somalia could form a communist federation. In 1948 President Vincent Auriol reminded Algerians that their country was never a state; you were rescued from slavery as well as tribes fighting each other. The Cuban mission was represented as a noble and selfless act of internationalist solidarity with a sister state whose hard-won liberty was under threat from reactionary and, above all, racist forces, says Christabelle Peters, the author of Cuban Identity and the Angolan Experience and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick. Their main aim was not socialist revolution, but to be free of military aggression from South Africa and see independence with majority rule throughout the continent. ", Sergei Mazov, "Soviet Aid to the Gizenga Government in the Former Belgian Congo (196061) as Reflected in Russian Archives. The onset of the Algerian War of Independence in November 1954 was an important development in the international history of the Cold War. In 1977 the Soviets attempted to unseat Neto, whom they now distrusted. Gorbachevs reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. The one-party states that replaced colonial administrations were handed the apparatus of domestic coercion. The USSR used its fleet of Antonov An-12 and Antonov An-22 air transports, as well as cargo vessels, to ship a billion dollars in fighter-bombers, tanks, artillery, and ammunition in a very short time. Moreover and this was a growing source of anxiety for Washington Britain and France no longer enjoyed their former prestige in Africa, and their efforts to cling on there imperilled American interests. [13], Algeria supported the Polisario Front, a left-wing movement supported by Moscow that battled for 10 years for control of Western Sahara from Morocco. It did not matter to the superpowers whether or not these dictators had any ideological commitment to communism or capitalist democracy, though many paid lip service to one of these ideologies when convenient. Thus, the superpowers were very much responsible for the emergence of communist orientations in some African nationalist movements. Fear of Communism haunted the white minority government of South Africa from the 1950's to the collapse of single party rule in Eastern Europe in 1989. The recently initiated rapprochement of the US and Cuba could change that but on this, historian Edward George suggests a Russian expression. [5] In the early 1960s the KGB and the GRU began focusing more intelligence operations on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, these alliances were made primarily because they offered material support to the movement or dominant party in a regime, rather than being based on a clear and consistent acceptance of the guiding ideology of either the Western or Communist partner. Following a coup in 1965, he stayed in power until 1997 and amassed a personal fortune estimated at several billion US dollars by siphoning off the nations wealth. SUPPORT FROM WEST In the early 1960s the KGB cultivated Kwame Nkrumah, charismatic first prime minister then president of independent Ghana, only to discover (by breaking Ghanaian wireless codes) that he and his cronies were squirrelling away Soviet subsidies. Most incidents came during the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union battled for influence across the continent. The Cold War reached its peak in 194853. I was aware of participating in a historic moment for the country. United States intervention in Angola was heavily shaped by several factors. driving the others to use guerilla tactics to resist communist rule. Nationalist movements more closely aligned with the major Communist regimes, the USSR and China, did not begin to surface until the 1970s, particularly in Lusophone Africa (Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau) and Ethiopia, where liberation revolutionary movements developed. This period also coincided with the time of the Cold War . South Africa, along with Egypt, were the first two countries on the continent to give rise to Communist parties - both in the 1920's. There, everyone was equal! Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces soldiers, however did not engage in combat, and after the overthrow of Castro's friend Ben Bella, Cuba cut back its involvement. Welcomed by President John F Kennedy in 1963, Mobutu was Americas man. Suddenly there were new . Listen [14], In a complex civil war with outside interventions, Soviet military aid went to the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA). Liberation movements across southern Africa were sustained by the Soviet Union and Cuba, which sent large contingents of troops to support independence fighters. Mr. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was hostile to Tour, so the African nation quickly turned to the Soviet Unionmaking it the Kremlin's first success story in Africa. former adversaries of the MPLA mainly the USA and China have become the most important trading partners, as Christabelle Peters points out. There are also political reasons that parts of this history have been airbrushed from mainstream retellings of the Cold War not just in the West but also in Russia, which sought to downplay Cubas role compared to that of the USSR, and even Angola, where former adversaries of the MPLA mainly the USA and China have become the most important trading partners, as Christabelle Peters points out. These states followed the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, in opposition to the capitalist Western . The way forward for Africa in the aftermath of the Cold War - the decades-long struggle for supremacy between communist Soviet Union and capitalist US - was uncertain. L. Roberts Sheldon, "Morocco says it's 'at war' with Soviet Union", "The Chinese and Soviets had a bigger role in supporting apartheid than we previously knew", "Danish Ship Caught Carrying Soviet-Made Weapons", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=AfricaSoviet_Union_relations&oldid=1136226322. Cold War conflicts played havoc with African politics. FEAR OF COMMUNISM In sub-Saharan Africa the colonial powers faced no major challenges until the late 1950s. However President John F. Kennedy and his Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver tried even harder than Khrushchev. The West was willing to turn a blind eye to institutionalised racism and minority rule government, if that meant keeping commercial and mining investments safe from nationalisation. In September 1981, the last relations were severed by the Egyptian government accusing Soviet leadership of trying to undermine Sadat's leadership in retaliation to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. At times, however, realpolitik acted as a brake. Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. NATO has renewed itself and re-united If African movements and parties after independence allied themselves with the United States, China, or the Soviet Union, they were labeled as either capitalist or communist (Young 1982, Idahosa 2004, Rosberg and Callaghy 1979, Friedland and Rosberg 1964). This bibliographical essay focuses on the Cold War crises in Africa. Meanwhile, Japan and certain Western countries were becoming more economically independent. There was alarm in Washington, where CIA director Allen Dulles suspected that Lumumba was a Castro or worse, and the CIA moved in, supplied with dollars and a hitman instructed to assassinate Lumumba with poisoned toothpaste. In February 1989, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze visited Egypt. [28], President John F. Kennedy eagerly sought to establish good relations with newly independent African nations in the wake of Krushchev's 1961 speech that proclaimed the USSR's intention to intervene in anticolonial struggles around the world. The conflict showed that both superpowers were wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other for fear of mutual atomic annihilation. But Fidel Castro knew that the US, reeling from its messy withdrawal from Vietnam, would not be drawn openly into another foreign war. Once these movements assumed power, they were termed Afro-Marxist regimes (Ottaway and Ottaway 1986, Keller and Rothchild 1987, Munslow 1986). They were popular and well liked.. By 1963 Guinea had shifted away from Moscow into a closer friendship with Washington. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. The Cold War had solidified by 194748, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe. The conflicts in both countries ended in 1974 with Portugal throwing in the towel. In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev rejected the idea of a revolutionary takeover of the South African government, and advocated a negotiated settlement. ", Larry C. Napper, "The Arab Autumn of 1984: A Case Study of Soviet Middle East Diplomacy. By 1969 President Julius Nyerere, a self-declared African socialist, had accepted equipment worth over US$640,000 from the US for his police force, all of whom were members of the ruling Tanganyika African National Union Party. [23], Soviet foreign policy in Somalia and Ethiopia was based on the Horn of Africa's strategic location for international trade and shipping as well as its military importance. In the 1980s the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia plunged into greater turmoil and the Soviet system itself was collapsing by 1990. Cold War Alliances. North and South Vietnam In September 1945, the Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed Vietnam's independence from France, beginning a war that pitted Ho's communist -led Viet Minh. ", Ermarth, Fritz. The Cold War had solidified by 1947-48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe. From dark days to moments of hope, David Reynolds traces the Cold War from 1961 to 1991. communism was very attractive to people in a region where mineral and Under American and British pressure, Rhodesia consented to black majority rule in 1979. ", Alvin Z. Rubinstein, "Lumumba University-Assessment.". This was prudent: at this stage there was no knowing who would win the Cold War. 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