Course info

On the map of 20^th century globalization neither Soviet nor African actors seem to have taken a central position. Even less do their interactions and encounters appear as crucial in this regard. In the Western triumphalism after the end of the Cold War the legacies of these connections have long been ignored, resulting e.g. in the puzzlement of Western observers about Russian-African relations today. However, such narratives are increasingly empirically revised, providing rich material to investigate the parallel and entangled trajectories of seemingly distant parts of the world, allegedly marginal in the unfolding of “globalization”.

Since the beginning of the 20^th century, societies and political elites both in the Soviet Union and African countries were confronted with the dramatic transformation of the world of empires, with profound challenges of decolonization and post-colonial state building, and with ambitions of large-scale modernization. Although rooted in different historical trajectories, they shared experiences of imperialism and colonialism, of economic marginalization, of violence and war, of inter- and transnational circulations. Under the conditions of the Cold War, these experiences were translated into new agendas, as part of ideological competition as well as of efforts to rethink the global order beyond empires, and beyond capitalism. African and Soviet actors observed, learnt from, and competed with each other in dealing with the challenges of the global condition.

Against this background, the seminar will introduce into the 20^th century history of Soviet-African encounters. Themes will be presented partly in a comparative way to discuss the specific challenges and conditions actors had to deal with, and partly in a transnational and transregional way to understand, how solutions to these challenges were also found (and lost) in encounters and circulations. The seminar will include themes such as empire and decolonization, development, race, economic and military cooperation, liberation movements, and socialisms. Different groups of actors such as students and scholars, development experts, advisors and engineers, political activists and decision makers, soldiers and militants active in these encounters and projects will be presented. Youth festivals, international organizations, joint development projects, international congresses, and universities will be introduced as arenas of encounter. Disentangling not only the containers of “decolonization” or “socialism”, but also of “Africa” and the “Soviet Union”, the seminar will look at differentiations within Soviet as well as African spaces, where e.g. Nigeria or Senegal, Ghana or Mali, Ethiopia or South(ern) Africa, Egypt or Algeria offer rich material for in-depth studies. Biographical approaches as well as the work with historical sources will form the methodological basis for the work in the course, in addition to getting acquainted with a flourishing state of the art.

As introductory reading highly recommended:

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003.