Cold War Liberation

Natalia Telepneva

Description

Cold War Liberation examines the African revolutionaries who led armed struggles in three Portuguese colonies—Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau—and their liaisons in Moscow, Prague, East Berlin, and Sofia. By reconstructing a multidimensional story that focuses on both the impact of the Soviet Union on the end of the Portuguese Empire in Africa and the effect of the anticolonial struggles on the Soviet Union, Natalia Telepneva bridges the gap between the narratives of individual anticolonial movements and those of superpower rivalry in sub-Saharan Africa during the Cold War.

Drawing on newly available archival sources from Russia and Eastern Europe and interviews with key participants, Telepneva emphasizes the agency of African liberation leaders who enlisted the superpower into their movements via their relationships with middle-ranking members of the Soviet bureaucracy. These administrators had considerable scope to shape policies in the Portuguese colonies which in turn increased the Soviet commitment to decolonization in the wider region. An innovative reinterpretation of the relationships forged between African revolutionaries and the countries of the Warsaw Pact, Cold War Liberation is a bold addition to debates about policy-making in the Global South during the Cold War.
We are proud to offer this book in our usual print and ebook formats, plus as an open-access edition available through the Sustainable History Monograph Project.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Partido Africano para la Independencia de Guinea y Cabo Verde
• Frente de Liberación de Mozambique
• Movimiento Popular de Liberación de Angola
• Nikita Jrushchov
• António Agostinho Neto
• Leonid Brézhnev
• Portuguese-speaking African countries
• Angolan Civil War
• Eduardo Mondlane
• African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde
• FRELIMO
• MPLA
• South
• Leonid Brezhnev
• Nikita Khrushchev
• Guinea-Bissau
• Mozambique
• History
• Africa
• Front de libération du Mozambique
• Parti africain pour l'indépendance de la Guinée et du Cap-Vert
• Mouvement populaire de libération de l'Angola
• Agostinho Neto
• Amílcar Cabral
• Samora Machel
• Léonid Brejnev
• Angola

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 04 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469665870
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

COLD WAR LIBERATION
THE NEW COLD WAR HISTORY
Odd Arne Westad, editor
_______________
This series focuses on new interpretations of the Cold War era made possible by the opening of Soviet, East European, Chinese, and other archives. Books in the series based on multilingual and multiarchival research incorporate interdisciplinary insights and new conceptual frameworks that place historical scholarship in a broad, international context.
A complete list of books published in The New Cold War History is available at www.uncpress.org .
Cold War Liberation
The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975

Natalia Telepneva
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
CHAPEL HILL
© 2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Telepneva, Natalia, author.
Title: Cold War liberation : the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Portuguese empire in Africa, 1961–1975 / Natalia Telepneva.
Other titles: New Cold War history.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2021] | Series: The new Cold War history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021052598 | ISBN 9781469665856 (cloth) | ISBN 9781469665863 (paperback) | ISBN 9781469665870 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Revolutionaries—Angola. | Revolutionaries—Mozambique. | Revolutionaries—Guinea-Bissau. | Soviet Union—Relations—Angola. | Angola—Relations—Soviet Union. | Soviet Union—Relations—Mozambique. | Mozambique—Relations—Soviet Union. | Soviet Union—Relations—Guinea-Bissau. | Guinea-Bissau—Relations—Soviet Union. | Angola—History—Revolution, 1961–1975. | Mozambique—History—1891–1975. | Guinea-Bissau—History—Revolution, 1963–1974. | Portugal—Colonies—Africa.
Classification: LCC DT 1402 . T 45 2021 | DDC 967.3/03—dc23/eng/20220107
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052598
Cover illustration: Viktor Kobelev, “At Luanda Airport. Electrician Juan Garcio.” Used by permission of Sputnik News.
To the loving memory of my grandfather,
Moisei Slutskii (1920–2005)
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations in the Text
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Mediators of Liberation: Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, and the Cold War in Africa
CHAPTER TWO
Revolutionaries: The Portuguese Empire and the Rise of African Nationalism
CHAPTER THREE
Cataclysm: The Angolan Uprising and Its Aftermath, 1961
CHAPTER FOUR
Diplomacy of Liberation: Exile Politics, International Alliances, and Maoism in Africa, 1961–1964
CHAPTER FIVE
From the Barrel of a Gun: Weapons, Training, and Strategy of Guerrilla Warfare, 1964–1970
CHAPTER SIX
Disappointments: The Portuguese Offensives and Détente, 1970–1974
CHAPTER SEVEN
Triumph to Tragedy: Revolution in Portugal and the Angolan Civil War, 1974–1975
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

ILLUSTRATIONS
Agostinho Neto, Amílcar Cabral, José Araújo, Mário de Andrade and Marcelino dos Santos, 1965
Mário Pinto de Andrade and W. E. B. Du Bois in Tashkent, 1958
Portuguese colonial troops in Northern Angola, 1961
PAIGC combatants during military training in the Soviet Union, undated
Agostinho Neto and Hoji Ya Henda in Moscow, undated
Eduardo Mondlane in Moscow, 1966
Samora Machel at Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow, 1971
Soviet officials with Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, 1971
Rally in the memory of Amílcar Cabral in Moscow, 1974
Signatories of the Alvor Agreement in Portugal, 1975
FAPLA soldiers atop a Soviet armored car in Angola, 1975

MAPS
4.1. Africa in 1965
5.1. Guinea-Bissau
6.1. Mozambique
7.1. Fighting in Angola, 1975
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have accumulated many debts whilst finishing this book, intellectual and otherwise. I am grateful to Arne Westad, who has been a consistent champion of this project, giving the much-needed encouragement and important feedback over the years. He has pushed me to see the bigger picture and his own work has provided a source of inspiration. This book started as a project, which focused primarily on the Cold War and high politics, but it has evolved in other directions, partly under the influence of the very talented people I have collaborated with over the past years. In particular, I would like to thank David Anderson for encouraging me to think about African politics and Kristin Roth-Ey for inspiring me to conduct oral history interviews. Vladimir Shubin has been extremely helpful, providing important contacts, advice and support over the years. He has been an insightful critic, urging me to question assumptions as well as filling the gaps on some of the key protagonists in this story. The generous British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship grant provided the crucial basis for conducting research for this book.
My collaboration with Daniela Richterova in putting together the “Secret Struggle for the Third World” workshop at the University of Warwick in September 2018 allowed me to think broader about the role of secret intelligence in the Cold War. I have learnt a great deal about East-Central Europe whilst working on the edited volume “Warsaw Intervention in the Third World” with Philip Muehlenbeck, as well as through discussions with colleagues on the “Socialism Goes Global” project. Jan Koura and Mikuláš Pešta helped me understand the role of Czechoslovakia in this story and organized a useful workshop at Charles University, Prague. In Portugal, I have greatly benefited from participating in the “Amilcar Cabral project” and from discussions and support from Julião Soares Sousa, José Neves, Aurora Almada e Santos, and Catarina Laranjeiro. Rui Lopes has been a wonderful critic and a great friend, whose enthusiasm for this work was uplifting in what was a long journey.
I am deeply indebted to Vladislav Zubok, Artemy Kalinovsky, Jeremy Friedman, Alexander Hill, Eric Burton, Mustafah Dhada, Nathaniel Powell, and Allen Isaacman, who read and gave useful feedback on earlier drafts and chapters from the book. My cousin Andrei Frolov gave extremely useful advice on certain military aspects of this story, spending long hours looking at old photos and explaining to me the technical specifications of Soviet weaponry. I also want to thank George Roberts, James Brennan, Radoslav Yordanov, Alessandro Iandolo, William Minter, Yusuf Adam, Nick Rutter, Irina Filatova, Elizabeth Banks, Corina Mavrodin, Hans-Georg and Ilona Schleicher, Helder Fonseca, Sergei Radchenko, and Iva Cabral for sharing tips on sources and expertise. I am grateful for the book’s anonymous reviewers who forced me to sharpen the arguments, and to the team of the University of North Carolina Press, especially Debbie Gershenowitz and Andrew Winters, and to Ihsan Taylor of Longleaf Services, in seeing the project through.
While the book has benefited from excellent scholarships and published sources, I relied on extensive archival research and conducted oral history interviews in many corners of the globe to complete the story. I am grateful to the archivists, especially at the Russian State Archive for Contemporary History and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and the Security Services Archive in Prague who offered good advice and helped in processing requests for sources. In Maputo, I want to thank Clinarete Munguambe and Carlos Jorge Siliya at Centro de Pesquisa da História da Luta de Libertação Nacional for helping me getting around and introducing me to ex-combatants. In Cape Verde, Tatiana Neves at the Fundação Amílcar Cabral provided contact details, while Saidu Banguru and Dominika Swolkien gave crucial logistical assistance and made me feel welcome during my trip to Praia and Mindelo. My research trip to Guinea-Bissau would have been a very different experience without the enthusiastic support from Sana Baldé and information on ex-guerrillas received from Quentino Napoleon dos Reis at Museu Militar da Luta de Libertação Nacional and João Paulo Pinto Có and Papis Sadjo Turé at Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas. Joana Sousa and Liam Carney translated oral histories from Kriol to English and Kim Friedlander helped improve the readability of the manuscript.
A very special thanks goes to the men and women who agreed to be interviewed for this book. Due to the nature of this project, I could not spend any significant length of time in the countries I visited. They thus had to take a chance on me, a person who waltzed in without muc