DEBATING THE ANC'S EXTERNAL LINKS DURING THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID

Africa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
HUGH MACMILLAN
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South African ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Ruling Party

Several recent publications have explored the African National Congress's (ANC's) external links during South Africa's apartheid years. The following four texts offer an insight into the very different personal and methodological approaches that have so far shaped attempts to understand this aspect of the ANC's struggle. The section starts with a review of Stephen Ellis's recent book External Mission: the ANC in exile, 1960–1990 by Hugh Macmillan, who argues that Ellis overemphasizes the relationship between the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In a response to this review, Stephen Ellis justifies his approach by pointing to the importance of interpretation for the production of history, but also by referring to the different networks and resources, both in South Africa and beyond, on which he and Macmillan were able to draw. A review of Hugh Macmillan's new book The Lusaka Years: the ANC in exile in Zambia, 1963 to 1994 by Arianna Lissoni follows. Lissoni agrees with the author that the debate about the ANC in exile must be understood in the context of contemporary disaffection with South Africa's ruling party. Emphasizing the specificity of the Zambian experience, she welcomes Macmillan's focus on the multiplicity of experiences in exile as potentially opening new avenues for further study and reflection on the ANC. Finally, Mariya Kurbak's consideration of Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson's The Hidden Thread: Russia and South Africa in the Soviet era explains that the authors' close understanding of Russian–South African relations enables them to illuminate the previously hidden importance of the Soviet Union in the history of South Africa and the ANC.

Russia and South Africa: Historical Memory. Part 1

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-32
Author(s):  
Ndlovu Sifiso Mxolisi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

In order to prove that the relationship between South Africa and Russia began well before the democratic dispensation in South Africa, the author is of the belief that the present Russian state inherited the mantle of the former Soviet Union state and therefore the two place names are used interchangeably. The timeline for this article begins from the 1960s to the present, particularly the era after the formation of post-1994 democratic South Africa. The themes to be analysed relate to the writing of a brief ‘diplomatic’ history of South Africa and the Soviet Union and will focus on progressive internationalism, diplomacy, foreign policy, communism and anti-communism in South Africa.

Out of Empire into Socialist Modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Steffi Marung
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

A Turning Point in the History of Bessarabia: Winter 1917–1918

1987 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-214
Author(s):  
Michael Bruchis
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ruling Party

Soviet scholars basing themselves on the assertion in the Program of the CPSU that “peaceful coexistence of states with different social regimes does not means a diminution of the ideological struggle,” severely criticize those Western authors who in their works throw light upon the shadowy aspects of theory and practice of the ruling party in the USSR. Utterances of Western scholars which express doubt about the veracity of data contained in documents of the CPSU and the accuracy of theses and positions based on these data are rejected as totally unfounded inventions. Scholars of countries with the same social regime as in the Soviet Union are subject to no less severe attacks if they contest in their works, directly or indirectly, the theses and positions worked out by Soviet authors. While the Western scholars concerned are termed bourgeois falsifiers, the unfavored scholars (and political leaders of the socialist countries) are categorised as revisionists, a no less pejorative term in Soviet parlance: thus, for example, “the powers of international imperialism,… leaning on services of revisionists of various strains”; or “to expose contemporary bourgeois and other falsifiers of history.”

Loes Nas on Kate Delaney and Andrzej Antoszek

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South African ◽  
Republic Of Georgia ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
African Experience ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Economic Imperialism ◽  
The U.S

This essay is a response to the essay “Americanization and Anti-Americanism in Poland: A Case Study, 1945-2006.” The author argues that Poland, Georgia, and South Africa tend to echo each other, even though they are arguably very different countries. It stresses that Poland and the Republic of Georgia, for example, were both subjected to Soviet influence and that this had consequences over the years in their views of the U.S. Nas is quite interested in Delaney and Antoszek’s argument that Poland is the least anti-American country in Europe, and suggests that it might be better to examine those attitudes as attitudes expressed above ground or underground. The essay also contemplates the possibility that Poland had more freedom than Georgia because it was never a formal part of the Soviet Union. And it contemplates the South African experience which highlights U.S. economic imperialism, even though Chinese influence now also needs to be examined.

Russia and South Africa: Historical Memory. Part 2

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya ◽  
Daria Turianitsa ◽  
Vasily Sidorov ◽  
Vladimir Shubin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
State Archive ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian State ◽  
National Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Federation

This part of a joint article contains a survey of the sources regarding the history of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the national liberation movement in South Africa in the Russian central archives. The main ones are the Russian State Archive of Modern History, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Russian State Archive of the Economy and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.

Moscow and Pretoria: a New Course?

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-346
Author(s):  
L. H. Gann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South African ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Face ◽  
At Home

The Soviet Union and South Africa – on the face of it, no two powers on earth look on each other with greater hostility. For many years, no diplomatic relations have existed between them. South African propagandists never tire of denouncing the Godless Soviet tyranny, and the ‘total onslaught’ waged against their country by communists at home and abroad. As the official Soviet interpretation would have it, South Africa is governed by a racist clique, and menaces all its neighbours.

scholarly journals ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE A. BLOK’S POETRY IN THE SYMPHONIC SCORE OF B. TISHCHENKO'S BALLET THE TWELVE

ASJ. ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (55) ◽  
pp. 04-08
Author(s):  
Y. Serov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stage Performance ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines the relationship between music and poetry in the ballet The Twelve by the outstanding Russian symphonist of the second half of the XX century Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939–2010). The performance by the famous choreographer L. Yakobson, staged at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad in 1964, became one of the first avant-garde ballets in the Soviet Union. The study focuses on the different approaches of the composer and choreographer to the stage performance of A. Blok's poetry, which led to serious creative disagreements and even conflicts during the preparation of the premiere. Tishchenko in his reading relied on Blok's verse, its rhythm, size and complex, sometimes unexpected semantics. The speech beginning in The Twelve is quite tangible, the composer often follows Blok's lines literally. They now and then emerge in the flow of music, controlling it not only in the figurative-semantic and plot plans, but also in the rhythmic-intonation. The article concludes that Tishchenko's work has led to an impressive artistic result: the ballet score is written in a fresh, original and modern language. Tishchenko's music became the basis of the first avant-garde Soviet ballet performance and, in this context, firmly entered the history of Russian art

scholarly journals From Dreams to Disillusionment: A Socio-Cultural History of the American Space Program

Ad Americam ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Rafał Kuś ◽  
Patrick Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Space Program ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Insight Into

This article offers an insight into the history of the U.S. space program, including its cultural and political aspects. Starting from the vision of space as a new field of peaceful and exciting exploration, predominant in the first half of the 20th century, moving through the period of the intensive and eventually fruitful Cold War competition between the two belligerent ideological blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union, and ending with the present-day cooling of the space enthusiasm, it focuses on the main actors and eventsof the century-long struggle for reaching the stars. The article is based in part on primary journalistic sources in order to capture the social atmosphere of the times it focuses on. It points out to the mid-1960s as the time when the noble aspirations and optimism of the early cosmic endeavors started to succumb to the pressure of reality, which caused the overwhelming stagnation of space initiatives, effectively ending the Golden Age of extraterrestrial exploration. This argument is backed by an analysis of historical developments leading to and following the American conquest of the Moon.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Wendy Z. Goldman ◽  
Donald Filtzer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State And Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Production ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

On June 22, 1941, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa with the mightiest military force ever concentrated in a single theater of war. They occupied large swathes of Soviet territory; surrounded Leningrad in the longest siege in modern history; and reached the outskirts of Moscow. Soviet leaders adopted a policy of total war in which every resource, including labor, was mobilized for war production. The civilian toll was great. The Soviet Union lost more people, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of its population, than any other combatant nation: an estimated 26 million to 27 million people. Almost every Soviet family was affected in some terrible way. This book is the first archivally based history of the home front to explore the relationship of state and society from invasion to liberation. Focusing on the cities and industrial towns, it shows how ordinary citizens, mobilized for “total war,” became central to the Allied victory.

scholarly journals From fragmentation to fragile unity: Organizational fault-lines in South African business

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoli Nattrass
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This article explores the nature and history of organized business in South Africa. It describes the major racial, sectoral and other fault-lines which fracture the business community, and indicates that many of these are the legacy of apartheid. It points out that the relationship between business and the state was ambiguous, varied between the economic sectors, and changed radically over time. The latter sections of the article discuss the role of business in South Africa's transition (and the collective action problems which were experienced), and charts the developments which lead up to the creation of the mega federation Business South Africa (BSA). It is argued that BSA represents an important, yet fragile, step towards unity.

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