Email this article The socialist choice of east African countries: Moscow’s expectations and reality
- Authors: Balezin A.S.1,2
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Affiliations:
- Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences
- State Academic University for the Humanities
- Issue: No 2 (2024)
- Pages: 86-100
- Section: 20th century
- URL: https://journals.rcsi.science/0130-3864/article/view/255804
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.31857/S0130386424010073
- ID: 255804
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Abstract
The author examines the ideas of African socialism in East Africa – in Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania – and the attitude towards them in the USSR in the 1960s. The original publications of the program documents of the East African countries, including in the Swahili language, are analyzed. When analyzing the reaction of the USSR to these documents, archival sources are used, including recently opened to researchers, as well as recent publications of former senior officials of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet Committee of Solidarity with Asian and African Countries, who were directly involved in decision-making on the African policy of the USSR. The closest to Marxist socialism was the course in Zanzibar, but it was corrected by the unification with Tanganyika in 1964, and then the removal from the political arena and even the murder of the leaders of the revolution. In Kenya, Moscow’s hopes for the left-wing opposition of Oginga Odinga collapsed with its defeat. Nyerere’s “Ujamaa” was too pro-Chinese for Moscow. Obote’s “Common man’s Charter” in Uganda had no clear class characteristics. It was only in the 1970s that official Moscow began to really assess the abilities of African countries in implementing socialist ideas.
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About the authors
A. S. Balezin
Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences; State Academic University for the Humanities
Author for correspondence.
Email: alex.balezin@yandex.ru
Scopus Author ID: 57219595656
ResearcherId: H-6886-2016
доктор исторических наук, главный научный сотрудник, профессор исторического факультета
Russian Federation, Moscow; MoscowReferences
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