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AFRICA AND THE COMMUNIST WORLD by Zbigniew- Ed. Brzezinski

AFRICA AND THE COMMUNIST WORLD

By

Pub Date: Oct. 31st, 1963
Publisher: Stanford Univ. Press

A dark continental ferment of embryonic states uncommitted in the two-ring international circus, Africa presents a challenge for competitive ideologies, but is gradually proving herself a recalcitrant member of either camp, ""Socialist"" or Western. The factual analysis of recent Communistic wooing policies reveals the long-term Soviet strategy as a soft-sell campaign for subjective political commitment of the sub-Saharan African elite. To this purpose the Soviets have paid a theorist's tribute to Africa's unique transitional situation by alloying hard-core Marxism--a ""centrist"" way of convincing new leaders of Russia's relevance for their emergent national puzzles. The methods (aids, education, etc.) are echoed by the other Communist suitors evaluated here (Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, China). But Red China's extreme revolutionism and the African rage for total independence have raised a curtain of dimmed Soviet success that only time and chaos can alter. In this academic symposium, a little dry and repetitious, enough facts and data are given to provide invaluable argumentative support for the politically engaged.