The fall of the USSR: the African “perestroika”?

Old communist propaganda paintings, depicting Lenin and former president José Eduardo dos Santos, in Angola, in November 2010. © Corbis via Getty Images - Eric Lafforgue / Art in All of Us

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

9 mins

Thirty years ago, in December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved itself with the resignation of its last president Mikhail Gorbachev.

The shock wave of the disappearance of the communist superpower has been felt as far as Africa.

Back to the consequences of this upheaval for the African continent.

Advertising

Read more

When, on November 9, 1989, the

collapsed, the eyes of the whole world were on Europe. However, the fall of the Wall as well as the dramatic events which followed one another in Eastern Europe leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union proclaimed on December 26, 1991, will resonate on all continents. Africa, which was a privileged field of the Cold War that the American and Soviet superpowers have engaged in since the end of

, will be no exception to the rule.

"

", the expression attributed to the French Minister for Cooperation Jacques Pelletier in office at the time, sounds like a prophecy today.

Indeed, observers point out, the shock wave of the disappearance of the former Eastern bloc has ended up radically transforming African politics and geopolitics, opening up opportunities for the continent to take control of its own future.

When the Soviet Union was omnipresent in Africa

Between 1950 and 1989, Africa was instrumentalized to advance the strategic issues of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow. According to historians, this conflict had frozen development in Africa, locking the latter in the logic of antagonistic ideological camps. The ideological distribution of the continent had been facilitated by the emergence at the end of World War II of anti-colonial movements.

Moscow understood very early on the strategic advantage that it could derive from the rise of this anti-colonial resentment to give meaning to its anti-imperialist struggle, especially in Africa. In July 1920, at the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, the Communist International, evoking the question of

, Lenin explained how "

 ". Forty years later, in 1960, it was at the initiative of the Soviet Union that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonized Countries and Peoples, despite opposition from the former colonial powers and the United States.

Its policy of supporting anti-Western movements led the Kremlin to support Colonel Nasser's Egypt in the 1950s as well as the Algerian FLN at the UN in its struggle for independence.

He also supported the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and the People's Union. African Zimbabwe (ZAPU).

The 1970s marked a turning point in Soviet relations with African countries.

They see the USSR intervening militarily through Cuban regiments sent in particular to Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia and Namibia where, the national liberation movement, the Swapo fought the troops occupying Africa then led by the majority white.

At the end of the Cold War era, the Soviet Union was ubiquitous in Africa, with 40,000 advisers in more than 40 countries. In these countries, for the most part freshly freed from the colonial yoke, Moscow supported at arm's length the Marxist-Leninist movements, which it had sometimes helped to seize power.

Soviet cooperation was not just military.

Moscow was also financing the construction of infrastructure such as the Aswan dam in Egypt, the Capanda hydroelectric dam in Angola, power stations in Congo and Nigeria.

At the same time, between 1949 and 1991, some 60,000 young Africans were trained in Soviet universities and technical colleges, with Moscow strategists believing that these investments in training would win the battle of hearts and minds, and perpetuate their ideological influence. on the continent.

Soviet bankruptcy

Ideology will soon give way to realpolitik.

Indeed, after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between Moscow and the African continent will no longer be what they were during the Cold War.

The Soviet Constitution, which made support for national liberation and struggles for social progress throughout the world one of the main purposes of the USSR's foreign policy, was now obsolete.

The closure of several Russian embassies and consulates on the African continent are among the first measures announced by the Russian Federation, heir to the defunct USSR.

Its president Boris Yeltsin stopped all foreign aid.

He went so far as to demand from the former African allies the repayment of their unpaid debts, estimated at some 25 billion dollars.

The situation created by the Soviet bankruptcy arouses the concern of African capitals which had become accustomed during the years of the Cold War to play East against West and

in order to attract international attention and to obtain economic and financial aid.

They now fear "

", writes Winrich Kuhne (1), researcher at the German Institute for research in politics and national security.

Military disengagement

The Kremlin's withdrawal from Africa has its roots in the broad reform plan, perestroika, launched by Gorbachev when he came to power in the mid-1980s. Its priorities were peace and disarmament.

The peace negotiations initiated with Ronald Reagan in 1986, in Reykjavik, led to a consensus between the Americans and the Soviets on the need to put an end to regional conflicts.

This consensus is based on the awareness that far from modifying the ideological and military balance between East and West, the pursuit of regional conflicts only aggravated the antagonisms maintained by local actors.

►

While in 1988, Soviet troops began to withdraw from Afghanistan, American-Soviet cooperation intensified to resolve the burning conflicts in Africa, especially in Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola and Ethiopia. where the Soviet Union and its Cuban ally had engaged militarily to support communist and anti-Western movements.

At the end of December 1988, the agreement between Angola, South Africa and Cuba was signed at the UN headquarters in New York, providing for the gradual withdrawal of the Cuban expeditionary force from Angola. At the same time, the independence of Namibia was negotiated under the double patronage of the United States and the USSR. By contrast, in Ethiopia, perhaps the most important African ally of the Soviet Union since the late 1970s, the resolution of the conflict between the ruling Marxist-Leninist regime and the Tigrayan and Eritrean rebellions, turns out to be a more difficult task. Moscow is putting pressure on the Ethiopian strongman,

so that he stops the war, before cutting off his food. Dropped by his Soviet guardian, the dictator was ousted from power in June 1991, six months before the disappearance of the USSR itself.

The most spectacular consequence of the Soviet military disengagement from the African theater of operations was undoubtedly the launch of official negotiations between the white minority in power in South Africa and the black opposition to prepare for the exit from the apartheid regime and the transition. towards democracy.

Three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, South African President Frederik de Klerk took the international community by surprise by inviting

African National Congress (ANC)

to the negotiating table after this party had been singled out for decades as the puppet of Moscow.

The rest is history.

►

The African "perestroika"

South Africa was the last country on the continent to emancipate itself. "

", liked to repeat Salim Ahmed Salih, the former secretary general of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), predecessor of the African Union (AU).

Indeed, from the beginning of the 1990s, the first post-Cold War decade, a wind of freedom blew over several countries of the continent. Workers and students took to the streets to force their leaders to open up their political systems, both in countries allied to the Eastern bloc (Benin, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar) and in countries supported by Western powers. (Burundi, Gabon, Mauritania, Togo, Zaire). "

confirms the professor of international relations, the Franco-Senegalese Alioune Fall (2).

"

More generally, the collapse of the communist bloc has led to a radical change in the African geopolitical environment.

For the South African political scientist John J. Stremlau, this change is illustrated by the emergence of pan-African organizations.

“

writes the political scientist

 "(2)

These new political and geopolitical orientations no doubt explain why some observers have qualified the end of the cold war as “

” for Africa.

(1) “

”, by Winrich Kühne, in

, 22, 2, 1991

(2) Alioune Fall is associate professor of public law, at the University of Bordeaux (France)

(3) “How the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago resonated across Africa”, by John J. Stremlau, in

, November 8, 2019

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Geopolitics

• Russia

• Story

• Africa

• our selection

• Fall of the USSR, 30 years later