About the event
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.
There is no need to register for this event - all are welcome! For more information, please contact Johanna Conterio.
About Alessandro Iandolo
Alessandro Iandolo is lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London.
His research explores the Soviet Union’s interaction and exchanges with countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America during the Cold War. Alessandro’s first book, entitled Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968, has been published by Cornell University Press in 2022.