communist countries in africa during cold war

But could they deliver a golden age for their followers? Starting then, the Cuban Operation Carlota, to support the MPLA, was to change the course of history in southern Africa. Soviets and Americans were not the only outside actors on the stage of decolonization. The officer and non-commissioned officer corps of former colonial armies became a praetorian guard of newly independent states, and palace revolutions propelled to power such figures as army commander Idi Amin in Uganda in a 1971 west-backed coup, and Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Soviets choice in Ethiopia, who effectively took power in 1974. France, too, prevaricated. During this trip he famously, The Soviet Union, too, played an important role in the development of African cinema, training. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. Crisis is an early test of IMF's crisis management role and leads to first large burst of lending by IMF to the four countries involved. Malcolm Rifkind writes the Eastern superpower lacks the ideological grounding to cause international tensions akin to the Soviet Union. For example, after the Algerian revolution began in November 1954, the Soviets hesitated for more than two years before sending weapons to the rebels for fear of antagonizing the French government. They skewed the complex processes of decolonisation, and snuffed out many of the fledgling democracies that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This coup de main misfired. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. Without France, what would you be or do? This was the view of many French people, and of many of the 700,000 European settlers (colons) in Algeria who enjoyed the advantages of French citizenship. Two small countries deserve pride of place: Cuba, which sent tens of thousands of soldiers to southern Africa, and Sweden, which gave vital economic assistance to African liberation movements. The level of ideological commitment or interest in socialist doctrine varied among all the different governments and movements which received Soviet military aid. period, it was the only government to do so under the same leader First it wanted a lasting presence on the continent, including port facilities in the Indian Ocean. The money secured the loyalty of Colonel Joseph-Dsir Mobutu (who later renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko), a ruthless, ambitious and venal chancer whom the CIA believed to be childish and easily led. Listen Coming as it did on the heels of the end of the First Indochinese War, the Algerian conflict further emboldened national liberation forces throughout the colonial and semi-colonial world, a region of increasing importance to policymakers in Washington and . by the West for making a public stand against Communism, while at the ", Craig A. Daigle, "The Russians are going: Sadat, Nixon and the Soviet presence in Egypt. That change was, they suggested, to be achieved over 40 or so years; impatient African nationalist politicians accused them of procrastination. It has been reported that between 1963 and 1969 the United States Agency for International Development spent US$3.3m delivering radios and small arms to African police forces and instructing them in strike-breaking, riot control and investigating sedition. Both powers tended to suborn corruptible local strongmen with military backgrounds and authoritarian instincts. Historically, communism on the continent was strongest in Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and South Africa, which had significant European settlement, but such ideas remained foreign to the African masses until the principles of Marxism-Leninism became popular among intellectuals around the time of World War I ( Drew 2014 ). The recently initiated rapprochement of the US and Cuba could change that but on this, historian Edward George suggests a Russian expression. The article is particularly useful in understanding the history of Communist parties and movements throughout Africa. [8] Moscow also expected that the Soviet model of industrialization and nationalization would prove attractive, but that approach did not resonate with the nationalistic forces, which were black based on the small middle class and were socializing the means of production. 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. 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 truth is nuanced. In these colonies, jailing, torturing, and killing Africans was routine, but not on a large scale, except in Madagascar (19471948) and Kenya (19521956), where there were major revolts; neither received outside assistance. However President John F. Kennedy and his Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver tried even harder than Khrushchev. 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. [7], Stalin thought in terms of a black and white world of class conflict, capitalists versus the proletariat. Neither country followed the Kremlin's directives unquestioningly. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence greatly diminished. The United States threw its weight behind the rival party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), in co-operation with South Africa. ", Philip E. Muehlenbeck, "Kennedy and Toure: A success in personal diplomacy. In 1954 the Algerian Front de Libration Nationale (National Liberation Front) began an uprising that triggered an eight-year partisan war of attrition in which more than a million died, most of them Arabs. All thanks to the Putin regime's invasion of Ukraine. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. AFRICAN 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). The United States treated Angola and Mozambique as strategic assets, arming the 200,000 Portuguese conscripts who fought a long-running war against local nationalist insurgents with an imported arsenal including napalm and defoliants. same time he systematically stripped his country of its wealth and resources. Had the West offered assistance, there would have been much less need to look to Moscow. 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. in Africa. In fact, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, described NATO as 'brain dead' in 2019. South Africa, along with Egypt, were. However, the Kremlin was reluctant to send Soviet troops because of its fear of a major escalation with NATO powers. It was there, at School No 50, that I saw Sarah Moldorors film Sambizanga for the first time.The film is set in 1961 and depicts the anti-colonial struggle of the MPLA forces during the Angolan War of Independence. Anti-Communism informed almost every aspect of the South African government's foreign policy and much of its domestic policy. The communist governments of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed between 1989 and 1991. Communism in Africa. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism Online. But the significance of this in domestic politics was only felt after the Second World War.After 1945, Africa became caught up in the confrontation between America and the Soviet Union, the so-called Cold War. The first is that Communism has made its gains in a comparatively short period of time. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including a Russia with an anticommunist leader. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987. The struggle between superpowers The Cold War reached its peak in 1948-53. under Agostinho Neto and Eduardo dos Santos. From 1960, the Soviet Union became involved in several Marxist, African struggles, providing political support, weapons and military training, including to the Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in their fight against the Portuguese. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He was overthrown by his defense minister Houari Boumdine, who was in charge 1965-1976. became a Marxist Leninist state in 1970, Key words: Africa, Cold War, colonialism, USA, USSR, foreign policy, poli tics Communist societies believed in redistributing wealth (taking from the rich and giving to the poor) and promoted workers and state-run economies. Gorbachevs reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. Thus, the superpowers were very much responsible for the emergence of communist orientations in some African nationalist movements. the revolution in 1974. declared a Marxist Leninist state in 1974, under Mathieu Kerekou. The Soviets exploited such reactions, offering sympathy and friendship, and accusing the imperialists of slyly seeking to retain their power to exploit their subjects. By 1965, Cuba became a fully communist country and developed close ties to the Soviet Union. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Nelson Mandela: a symbol of the struggle against racism. The Soviet Union, too, played an important role in the development of African cinema, training some of the continents most celebrated filmmakers in Moscow, including Ousmene Sembene,Souleymane Cisse and Abderrahmane Sissako. ", Arthur J. Klinghoffer, "The Soviet Union and Angola," (Army War College, 1980), Omajuwa Igho Natufe, "The cold war and the Congo crisis, 1960-1961. termed the "Cold War" but is, in reality, a war in which, in Africa, much heat is engendered. On the other hand, both ideology and realpolitik led the Soviet Union to support those who fought for independence. The action by Britain and France, following Nassers nationalisation of the Suez Canal in July, was ostensibly launched to halt fighting between Egypt and Israel, which had invaded the Sinai Peninsula a week earlier. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Above all, it is the USA that most profits from the war. Keller, Edmond J., and Donald Rothschild, eds. The Gizenga regime was crushed in early 1962. Moscows doctrinal purists had dismissed Nasser as a radical nationalist in the mould of those military strongmen who held sway across South America. He still remembers the schools amphitheatre, where film screenings were held. Krim Belkacem, who served in the French army and was later a partisan leader and a minister in the provisional Algerian government before independence, spoke for many veterans when he declared: My brother returned from Europe with medals and frostbitten feet! 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. This meant, at least from the public pronouncement of leaders, their commitment to egalitarianism. The CIA wrote off Nkrumah as a vain opportunist and playboy, and in 1966 were believed to have been involved in a coup that toppled him from power. He emphasised that these links placed a burden of debt upon Cubans that they were duty-bound to repay., young members of guerrilla movements such as, Jean Luc Godard went to Maputo at the request of FRELIMO during this time as well. Still, after the crisis, the Soviets were determined not to be humiliated by their military inferiority again, and they began a buildup of conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years. 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. 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. 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. By 1976, the military sphere was the pivot of Angolan-Soviet relations. India. LGBTI Minorities and Queer Politics in Eastern and Souther Maasai and Maa-Speaking Peoples of East Africa, The, Modern African Literature in European Languages, Northeastern African States, c. 1000 BCE-1800 CE, Political Science and the Study of Africa, Postcolonial Sub-Saharan African Politics, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Africa, Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Study of Africa, States of the Zimbabwe Plateau and Zambezi Valley, Swahili City-States of the East African Coast. "The Soviet Union in the Third World: Purpose in Search of Power.". The pattern was set for the next 30 years of proxy rivalry in Africa. . Castros commitment to Angola was integral to a strategy that would extend the struggle for independence to neighbouring South West Africa (later Namibia) and Rhodesia (today, Zimbabwe). This bibliographical essay focuses on the Cold War crises in Africa. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. [25] It proclaimed Marxism-Leninism as its official ideology and became a close ally of Moscow. They had tried to achieve their goals of majority rule through peaceful means and failed. 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. Empires had always proclaimed intended reciprocity. For NATO the war in Ukraine meant a revival in its fortunes. South Africa considered the Soviet Union an enemy because it financially and militarily supported communism on the African continent. Ideology and Development. this page. The Cold War can be seen as the period, from 1945 to 1991, of intense struggle for ideological supremacy between capitalist forces led by the USA and the forces of communism spearheaded by the USSR. The Kremlin thought Castro's adventurism was dangerous but it was unable to stop him. The Cold War, however, also pushed US policymakers in the opposite direction. The favorite technique therefore was to identify the Soviet Union with the rising tide of nationalism to demonstrate that they in Moscow were engaged in a common struggle against Western imperialism. Between the two world wars, some Africans lived and work in Europe, and this experience produced many of the leaders and intelligentsia who would return to Africa with ideas about how to change their own societies and end colonial rule. Byrne, Jeffrey James. Without Soviet and Cuban weaponry, and without Cubas 50,000 troops, the MPLA would almost certainly not have beaten UNITA and the South African Defence Force at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in 1988. 1960s / Decolonization of Africa. Henceforth, the backdrop of decolonization was the Cold War. under Major Ngouabi. What were practiced were hybrid forms of socialism, including some that eclectically borrowed from Marxist-Leninist and Maoist theory. The Soviet Union withdrew its Ambassador after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. France persuaded a sceptical Washington that it was fighting communist-backed insurgents in Algeria; the result was that Sikorsky helicopters, manufactured in the United States and intended for Nato service, were used to hunt down Algerian guerrillas. He was responding to events in the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC) in 1960 following the withdrawal of the Belgians, who had enriched themselves on their colonys mineral resources and neglected the welfare of their subjects: on independence day, 30 June 1960, the Congo had perhaps just 200 African graduates. [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. The Nixon administration was working behind the scenes with Sadat to bolster his plans to send the Russians home, which they did in July 1972. ", Ermarth, Fritz. [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. At times, however, realpolitik acted as a brake. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (its Portuguese name abbreviated to MPLA), led by Agostinho Neto who became the newly independent nations first president, was backed by the Soviet Union which, in return, was allowed to establish a naval base at the countrys capital, Luanda. The trouble is, you never know whats going to happen yesterday., 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. Meanwhile, Japan and certain Western countries were becoming more economically independent. The success of International Communism in gaining nine stooge states in Africa by the beginning of 1967 is near spectacular if two factors are borne in mind. Acted as a radical nationalist in the mould of those military strongmen held... 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