Moscow and Zimbabwe’s Liberation

Abstract

This article is one of a pair of unusual contributions to this special issue offered by Dumiso Dabengwa and Vladimir Shubin. They are unusual in that they offer personal views and interpretations, shaped by the authors’ own involvement in the southern African struggles of liberation. Dabengwa and Shubin were key participants in ZAPU and in Soviet support, respectively, and they at times interacted directly with one another. Based on presentations originally made to the Journal of Southern African Studies’ Conference titled ‘Southern Africa Beyond the West’, held in Livingstone, Zambia in August 2015, their accounts explore the relationship between the USSR and ZAPU in particular, reflect on personal encounters and careers, and also range much more widely. Accounts such as these provide an important resource for developing new insights into the transnational histories of liberation movements. — The Editors.

Notes

¹ See V. Shubin, The Hot ‘Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa (London and Scottsville, Pluto Press and UKZN Press, 2008), Part 3, Zimbabwe, pp. 151–94.

² F.G. Llort, ‘Book Note – The Hot “Cold War”: The USSR in Southern Africa’, available at http://mltoday.com/article/1607-book-note-the-hot-qcold-warq-the-ussr-in-southern-africa/29, retrieved 17 September 2016.

³ D. Visser, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies, 37, 2 (2009), p. 139.

⁴ This name was dropped in 1994; even Prince Kropotkin, a revolutionary, became persona non grata for ‘democratic’ rulers of the city of Moscow.

⁵ State Archive of the Russian Federation (hereafter SARF), collection 9540 gs, inventory 2s, file 48, l.3.

⁶ Vladislav Zubok, ‘Spy vs. Spy: The KGB vs. the CIA, 1960–1962’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 4 (1994), pp. 28–9.

⁷ E. Sibanda, The Zimbabwe African People’s Union 1961–1967: A Political History of Insurgency in Southern Rhodesia (Asmara, Africa World Press, 2005), p. 145.

⁸ Discussion with E. Ndlovu, Moscow, 4 August 1972.

⁹ I admired Cabral and his realistic approach to the situation in Africa. I recall how, at our last meeting in Moscow in December 1972, soon after he received PhD Honoris Causa from the Russian Academy of Sciences, he said ‘when you go to Africa you should take off your Marxist jacket and put on a khaki shirt’.

¹⁰ Discussion with N. Shamuyarira, Moscow, 28 December 1982.

¹¹ Discussion with T.G. Silundika, Cairo, 11 January 1972.

¹² Discussion with H. Chitepo, Oslo, 14 April 1973.

¹³ Discussion with J. Chissano, Luanda, 7 December 2011.

¹⁴ Ten years later he defended a PhD degree on the history of the Zimbabwe liberation movement.

¹⁵ Cited in S. Chan, Kaunda and Southern Africa (London, British Academic Press, 1992), p. 72.

¹⁶ Rho. Document 1, Meeting in Pretoria, 4 November 1974, between Zambian, Rhodesian and South African representatives, Conference on Southern Africa in the Cold War, post-1974, 30–31 January 2009, MSA Campus, Ruimsig, Johannesburg.

¹⁷ Many years later, I read that in 1974 ZAPU began to use rubber boats to cross Lake Kariba; J. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia (New Hampshire, Croom Helm, 1985), p. 124.

¹⁸ SARF, collection 9540gs, inventory 2s, file 36, l. 104.

¹⁹ W. Madsen The Manufacturing of a President: The CIA’s Insertion of Barak J. Obama, Jr into the White House (2012), p. 7, available at https://realagenda.wordpress.com/tag/obama-cia-connections/, retrieved 17 September 2016.

²⁰ Speech by Joshua Nkomo, co-president of the Patriotic Front (translated into English from a Russian translation in the author’s archive), p. 2.

²¹ This department, created in 1951, was for four decades responsible for Moscow’s military assistance to foreign countries. In 1992, it was transformed (or renamed) into the Main Department of the International Military Co-operation of the Russian Ministry of Defence.

²² T.G. Silundika to V. Shubin, 19 September 1977. Author’s archive.

²³ He requested the training of 200 activists, including 20 pilots, apart from 20 persons for ‘party security’. Russian State Archive of Modern History, collection 89, inventory 27, file 34, l.7 and 1.8.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ P. Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom. Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2013), pp. 86–7.

²⁶ A. Burenko to V. Shubin, 13 December 2006. Captain (later Major-General and Professor) Anatoly Burenko was a member of that group.

²⁷ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 9 November 2015 and 14 November 2015.

²⁸ V. Lebedev to V Shubin, 9 November 2015.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 14 November 2015.

³¹ A. Burenko to V. Shubin, 13 December 2006.

³² V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 9 November 2015.

³³ A. Burenko to V. Shubin, 13 December 2006.

³⁴ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 9 November 2015.

³⁵ Ambassador Solodovnikov’s handwritten note on the paper ‘Udary rodeziiskih voisk po ob’ektam ZIPRA v Zambii’ (‘Attacks of Rhodesian troops against ZIPRA installations in Zambia’), drafted by Colonel Kononov. Professor Solodovnikov, former director of the Institute for African Studies in Moscow, was very successful as the Soviet Ambassador to Zambia from 1976 to 1981. According to Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, p. 87, the total number of fatalities was 207.

³⁶ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 7 January 2016.

³⁷ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 9 January 2016.

³⁸ V. Lebedev to V. Shubin, 14 January 2016.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Discussion with V. Solodovnikov, Moscow, 17 January 2003; V. Solodovnikov, ‘The Cold War in the Southern Africa: 1976–81’, IAS Newsletter, 4 (1998), p. 2.

⁴¹ J. Nkomo, The Story of My Life (London, Methuen, 1984), p. 175.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ N. Bhebe, ‘Aspects of the Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe’, paper presented in Moscow at a conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence, p. 44 (author’s archive).

⁴⁴ According to official data, in four decades 599 Zimbabweans received Master’s degrees and 17 PhD degrees in the USSR. They studied at the Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University and at other institutions scattered all over the Soviet Union. All were on Soviet scholarships to study a range of disciplines, mostly recommended by ZAPU, though the Lumumba University initially used to accept students on a personal basis as well. Most were in their early 20s, though some were much older. They were supposed to have reached ‘A’ level, but in practice some were accepted with ‘O’ levels. During their first year, Africans mostly studied Russian together with some other subjects in a bridging course.

⁴⁵ He is now a retired colonel and Minister of Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators and Former Political Detainees.

⁴⁶ The street is named in honour of the December 1905 uprising in Moscow.

⁴⁷ ‘Solodovnikov, V. ‘K istorii ustanovleniya diplomaticheskih otnoshenii mezhdu SSSR i Zimbabwe’ (‘On the History of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the USSR and Zimbabwe’), Afrika v vospominaniyah veteranov diplomaticheskoi sluzhby, Мoscow, XXI (2000), pp. 134–74.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 173. Officially by that time the parties were named PF-ZAPU and ZANU-PF.