Arrested Development examines the USSR's involvement in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as aid donor, trade partner, and political inspiration for the first post-independence governments in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.
Buoyed by solid economic performance in the 1950s, the USSR opened itself up to the world and launched a series of programs aimed at supporting the search for economic development in newly independent countries in Africa and Asia. These countries, emerging from decades of colonial domination, looked at the USSR as an example to strengthen political and economic independence. Based on extensive research in Russian and West African archives, Alessandro Iandolo explores the ideas that guided Soviet engagement in West Africa, investigates the projects that the USSR sponsored ""on the ground,"" and analyzes their implementation and legacy.
The Soviet specialists who worked in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali collaborated with West African colleagues in drawing ambitious development plans, supervised the construction of new transport infrastructure, organized collective farms and fishing cooperatives, conducted geological surveys and mineral prospecting, set up banking systems, managed international trade, and staffed repairs workshops and ministerial bureaucracies alike. The exchanges and clashes born out of the encounter between Soviet and West African ideas, ambitions, and hopes about development reveal the USSR as a central actor in the history of economic development in the twentieth century.
By:
Alessandro Iandolo
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 27mm
Weight: 907g
ISBN: 9781501764431
ISBN 10: 1501764438
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 15 August 2022
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 1. A Farewell to Arms: De-Stalinization, the Soviet Economy, and the Global Cold War 2. Brave New World: The Soviet Union and the Making of the Third World 3. First Contact 4. The Heart of the Matter 5. Things Fall Apart 6. The End of the Affair Conclusion
Alessandro Iandolo is Lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet History at University College London.
Reviews for Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968
Succinctly written and thoroughly researched, Arrested Development convincingly argues that the Soviet Union had no intention of replicating its model of a fully centrally planned economy in West Africa. * Journal of Contemporary History Book Reviews *
- Winner of Marshall Shulman Book Prize 2023 (United States)
- Winner of W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize 2023 (United States)
