Unsung Heroes: The Soviet Military and the Liberation of Southern Africa

Abstract

The history of military co-operation between the USSR and the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa has still to be written. The same applies to co-operation with Moscow in the post-independence period. So far the attempts to do so have been unsuccessful, not only due to the lack of accessible documents, but also due to an uncritical attitude to the available materials. This paper attempts to present a ‘factual version of history’. It addresses in particular the issues of training the African combatants in the USSR, and the activities of the Soviet teams attached to the ANC, SWAPO and ZAPU as well as to the armed forces of the independent African countries. While most of the Russian archives are still ‘sealed off’, the author has used oral history sources and memoirs as an invaluable means of painting a picture of the Soviet involvement from the early 1960s to 1991.

Notes

 [1] Pravda, 7 July 1970.

 [2] Russian State Archive of Modern History (hereafter – RSAMH), Collection 4, inventory 18, file 1017, 61–3. Decisions taken by the instruction of the Secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee without recording in the minutes, N 478, 28 November 1961.

 [3] Russian State Archive of Modern History (hereafter – RSAMH), Collection 4, inventory 18, file 1017, 61–3. Decisions taken by the instruction of the Secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee without recording in the minutes, N 478, 28 November 1961Ibid.

 [4] Nel, Soviet Embassy in Pretoria?, 43.

 [5] Campbell, Soviet Policy Towards South Africa, 41.

 [6] Grundy, Guerilla Struggle in Africa, 51.

 [7] Segodnya, Moscow, no. 5, 1993.

 [8] Bell with Ntebeza, Unfinished Business, 119.

 [9] Star, Johannesburg, 11 September 1991.

[10] Echo, 21 February 1990.

[11] Echo, 21 February 1990Ibid.

[12] Discussion with V. Shemyatenkov, Moscow, 6 January 1997. Shemyatenkov, later ambassador and now a prominent academic, was responsible for contacts with the SACP and ANC in the CPSU International Department in 1961–66.

[13] Discussion with Mosima Sexwale, Moscow, 16 October 2005.

[14] Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg, 21 May 1982.

[15] Africa Confidential, London, 10 December 1986.

[16] Press briefing for accredited foreign correspondents on the history, aims, activities and the level of threat posed by the ANC. By Maj. Gen. F. M. A. Steenkamp, SA Police. In The Auditorium, HF Verwoerd Building, Cape Town, 9.00, 8 February 1984, 30.

[17] Siphiwe Nyanda to Vladimir Shubin, 10 December 2002.

[18] Segodnya, no. 3, 1993.

[19] This operation is described in Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous and Jenkin, Talking to Vula; for the Soviet involvement see Shubin, ANC: A View from Moscow, 332–8, 360, 381.

[20] Siphiwe Nyanda to Vladimir Shubin, 10 December 2002.

[21] Rossiya (SSSR) v voinah vtoroi poloviny XX veka , 436.

[22] “Memoirs of Petr Nikitovich Evsyukov.” Some Russian military historians claim that the USSR ‘assisted the MPLA armed formations’ from 1958 (Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie (Independent Military Review), Moscow, in Russian, no. 24, 1998), however they did not substantiate their claim; in any case in 1958 such ‘formations’ simply did not exist.

[23] “Memoirs of Petr Nikitovich Evsyukov.”

[24] Memoirs of Petr Nikitovich EvsyukovIbid.

[25] Memoirs of Petr Nikitovich EvsyukovIbid.

[26] Memoirs of Petr Nikitovich EvsyukovIbid. On this mission see also Kirpichenko, Razvedka: litsa i lichnosti.

[27] Author's notes at the meeting with the MPLA delegation headed by H. Carreira, Moscow, 30 December 1974.

[28] Discussion with Roberto Leal Ramos Monteiro ‘Ngongo’, Kifangondo (or Quifangondo), Angola, 30 November 2004.

[29] Kornienko, Holodnaya voina, 166.

[30] Kornienko, Holodnaya voina, 166Ibid.

[31] Discussion with Vladillen Vasev, Moscow, 15 January 2001.

[32] It is not clear what ‘by and large’ means here, the Politburo would either approve (with amendments sometimes) or reject a proposal.

[33] It is not clear what ‘by and large’ means here, the Politburo would either approve (with amendments sometimes) or reject a proposalIbid.

[34] It is not clear what ‘by and large’ means here, the Politburo would either approve (with amendments sometimes) or reject a proposalIbid., 167.

[35] Author's notes at the meeting with S. Nujoma (the end of October or very beginning of November 1975).

[36] A detailed story of this mission was described in Tokarev, “Komandirovka v Angolu,” 36–41.

[37] Presentation by H. E. Roberto Leal Ramos Monteiro ‘Ngongo’, Angola's Ambassador to the Russian Federation at the conference “40 years of the Armed Struggle of the Angolan People for National Independence and Soviet-Angolan Military Co-operation,” Moscow, 29 March 2001, 4–5 (in Russian).

[38] Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnyh voinah , 104.

[39] Ellis and Sechaba, Comrades against Apartheid, 183.

[40] Discussion with K. Kurochkin, Moscow, 10 February and 25 September 2001.

[41] Bridgland, The War for Africa, 62.

[42] Bridgland, The War for AfricaIbid., 17.

[43] Kurochkin, Osnovnye napravlenia i resultaty, 2.

[44] Presentation by H. E. Roberto Leal Ramos Monteiro ‘Ngongo’, 5.

[45] Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnyh voinah, 104.

[46] Adamishin, Beloye solntse Angoly, 196–7.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vladimir Shubin

Vladimir Shubin is Deputy Director of the Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Professor of History and Politics at the Russian State University of Humanities. Before joining the academia he served in the Soviet Armed Forces from 1962 to 1969, and from the late 1960s was involved in political and practical support of the liberation movements in Southern Africa, in particular as Secretary of the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee and head of the Africa Section in the CPSU International Department.