Cold War sponsorships: Chinua Achebe and the dialectics of collaboration

Abstract

Since its publication, Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People has been overshadowed by its seemingly prophetic announcement of military intervention in Nigerian politics. In this article I suggest that the novel participates in a circuit of mid-century novels critiquing prevalent cold war rhetoric. It explores the problematic project of an African nation state riven by political alliances sponsored by dominant cold war powers. Within this context of sponsorship competitions, Achebe explores the possibility of a plebeian politics outside the vying east–west cold war constellation.

Keywords:

• Cold War
• African alliances
• Chinua Achebe
• vernacular aesthetics
• cultural translation

Funding

This work was supported by the Dean's Start Up Research Fund at the The University of Western Ontario.

Notes

1. See Matusevitch (2003) for an appraisal of the changing constellations of Nigerian–Soviet relations. Ogunbadejo (1988) and Tijani (2009) offer views of the development of anti-communist sentiment between 1945 and 1960. For an overview of the war’s regional effects in Africa, see Schmidt (2013).

2. Founded in 1963, as the Socialist Workers’ and Farmers’ Party, the party was banned in 1966 along with all other political parties. Upon its revival as the Socialist Working People’s Party in 1978, the Federal Electoral Commission denied it registration for the 1979 elections. It was banned again in 1983. See Hobday (1986) for a history of socialist parties in Nigeria. For overviews of socialist politics and the Cold War situation in Nigeria, see Matusevitch (2003, 68–73).

3. According to Derek Maus (2011), subversive Cold War satires sought to dispel cold war ideological constructions of reality. See Ball (2003) for an appraisal of postcolonial satire. On cold war satire, see Maus (2001).

4. Achebe exploits a common feature of the ideological competition between the USSR and the USA that Sergey Mazov (2010) describes as the struggle to educate African elites. In the 1960s, the offer of study scholarships in the USSR was a subject of concern for Nigerian authorities who feared communist infiltration.