In a speech in August 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev condemned the actions of the so-called imperialist powers in Africa. “They are the ones who organized the bloody repression of the Congo patriots, they are the ones who killed the national hero Patrice Lumumba,” he says.
Under his leadership, the USSR launched numerous cooperation projects with the continent. Massive arms sales and military training, sending aid workers, developing infrastructure projects, grants – the initiatives are diverse and numerous. Thousands of students will thus enter Soviet universities.
“In Immersion with Soviet Students”
While for some of them the experience between violence and racism is hard, this is not the case for the Congolese engineer Louis-Patrice Ngagnon, who was sent to Kiev in the 1970s. He has a very good education. It was really a win-win cooperation in that we left here in the most favorable conditions, because everything was within our reach,” he recalls over the RFI microphone. “There was no separation. We got into immersion with Soviet students, we did all our studies together,” emphasizes Louis-Patrice Ngagnon.
The Congolese engineer believes this experience has allowed his generation to educate the next in the country. But if they bring certain skills, all these students will not become a communist vanguard as Moscow had hoped. Most of the newly independent countries will also take part in the competition between the two blocs, as recalled by Tatiana Smirnova, an anthropologist at the FrancoPaix Center of the University of Quebec in Montreal.
Complex relations with the USSR
“It should be emphasized that the relations between the countries of the continent and the USSR were very complex, beyond the image of this confrontation between two blocs, between two big brothers who want to help poor, oppressed countries,” emphasizes the researcher. In her opinion, the countries of the continent were not satisfied with staying “on the periphery”, on the contrary, they were active themselves. “The frontrunners more or less played the card of these opposing blocks, depending on what opportunities were available at the time,” explains Tatiana Smirnova, referring to the example of Nigeria, “a country that was playing very well between these two blocks at the time.” .
From the 1980s, the USSR collapsed. Interest in the continent is waning. The new Russia will be largely absent until its return in recent years with a discourse that reuses the Soviet narrative.
“Russia is breaking free from Western imperialism; “This story undoubtedly builds on the Soviet past,” emphasizes Tatiana Smirnova, who clarifies, however, “that we cannot say that the current relations are built on the network of former graduates” of Soviet universities. A story that resonates today with a section of African public opinion frustrated by the failure of the unfinished democratic processes launched at the end of the Cold War.