Episode Transcript

• The Role of Africa in Russia’s Geopolitics

  The transcript has been lightly edited for style and clarity

  Izabella Tabarovsky: Hello and welcome. I'm Izabella Tabarovsky, and you're listening to The Russia File. Russia’s intensive involvement with the African continent goes back decades. Africa played a crucial role in Soviet geopolitics during the Cold War. Back then, Moscow viewed Africa as its natural sphere of influence and a staging ground for active measures and proxy wars aiming to undermine American interests. When the USSR fell apart, an intermission followed. But today, Russia is unquestionably back. What draws Russia to Africa? Which specific countries attract it and why? What purposes do relationships with various African states serve for Russia—and what makes Russia attractive to the African states that choose to partner with it? What is the role of the Russian private military companies Wagner and Africa Corps in these relationships? And what is Africa’s role in Russia’s global propaganda and disinformation effort? I discuss these and other questions with Maxim Matusevich, professor of history at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and chair of the university’s History Department. Maxim, welcome to the program.

  Maxim Matusevich: Thank you. 

  IT: I want to start by asking you to tell us about the significance of Africa for Russia. Why are we even talking about this?

  MM: Well, I think we're talking about it now in 2024 because Russia is staging the comeback, or what a number of Western media have described as Russia's return to Africa. And the big question, of course, why are they returning? Why were they absent for so long? And what's the history behind it? And to answer this question, we really have to go back to the Soviet times and realize that Africa, after the late 1950s, until really the arrival of perestroika, for almost 30 years, played a very important role in Soviet geopolitics and also in the history of the Cold War. Africa, really, for the Soviets, became an arena where they tried to attain new friends after the arrival of the era of postcolonialism and where they also tried to convince these newly independent African states to pursue, to follow Russian-style modernization, which essentially was based on the model of Marxism-Leninism. So Africa would eventually emerge as one of the central battlegrounds and a very important stage in the history of the Cold War, the place of competition between the superpowers.

  And what's interesting here is that after the end of the Cold War—even before the Cold War ended, during perestroika, towards the end of the Cold War—this interest in Africa began to wane. Both, I would say, in Moscow and in Washington, DC. The relationship revolved between the Cold War antagonists, and the relationship between the superpowers became more important for both of them than their respective relationships with their African clients. 

  So what we see towards the end of the Cold War is this waning interest in Africa. And this was palpable in Moscow. We see, for example, during glasnost, new books coming out of the Soviet Union, articles which were much more critical about the Soviet past than anything that could have been published before. One of the points of criticism of the Soviet Union was exactly that it had overextended itself, that it had provided [too much] aid to, let's say, African nations or to Third World nations, as they were called at the time, which ostensibly deprived the Soviet Union and Soviet citizenry of good economic outcomes within the country. So there is this growing animosity towards the Third World, and this continues into the post-Soviet era. In the 1990s, again, there is very little involvement on the part of post-Soviet Russia on the continent. A lot of embassies and consulates in Africa were closed down. Those famous scholarships that had been provided to African students in the thousands during Soviet times evaporated in many cases. And there is this very light footprint of Russia in Africa. And I will say the same for the United States of America. Africa becomes peripheral to their interests. They're fixated on each other. The West doesn't really care about Africa. And this lasts throughout the 1980s. 

  However, as Russia is emerging in the early 21st century from this period of post-Soviet funk—the skyrocketing oil prices, the rise of Russian nationalism, Putin comes to power in 2000 and gradually but steadily reasserts Russia as a major power—we see that the relationship with Africa becomes an indicator of the relationship between Russia and the West. That is, the worse the relationship is between Russia and the West and what [Russia] calls its Western partners, the more involved they become on the continent. And this becomes particularly clear after 2007—Putin's famous speech in Munich, where he blamed the West for all the sins of geopolitics, and especially after the Georgia war of 2008, when Russia's behavior is widely criticized in the West.

  So there is this rapprochement that's happening between Russia and Africa, just as the relationship between the West, especially the United States and Russia, deteriorates. And as we all know, into the next decade, this process would even accelerate. The first invasion of Ukraine, the rise of more and more belligerence on the part of the Putin regime, and eventually the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine really emphasized once again on the one hand, the collapse of the relationship with the West, and on the other, this very concerted effort to find alternative friends, to find new friendships, new alliances. And that's why Africa. 

  IT: So Africa offers, as you say, new friendships, new alliances. What else does it offer to Russia? 

  MM: Well, I think for the Kremlin, symbolism is important. And we see that this resurgence of Russian nationalism and this resurgence of great power aspirations on the part of the Kremlin is usually paralleled by a nostalgia for the Soviet past. And when they look at the Soviet past and when they look at Soviet foreign policy, they try to identify the points of strength. And according to the Kremlin, the relationship with Africa actually was one of those points of strength. Why? Because during the Cold War, while Americans and Western Europeans were kind of ambivalent about this whole postcolonial project, the Soviets very unambiguously supported it. They supported it not necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts, but because in part it was connected to their ideology. Because the end of Western colonialism, the end of imperialism, was wedded to this Marxist-Leninist way of thinking. But at the same time, there was probably a genuine commitment to, for example, the fight against apartheid. And again, from the point of view of the Kremlin's current leaders, this was a point of strength. 

  And again, I think they actually are right in this assessment. The Americans were very ambivalent about the ANC—the African National Congress—and the struggle against apartheid. Why? Because South Africa under apartheid was anti-communist, it was anti-Soviet, so Americans were in a bind: On the one hand, [in the era of] the civil rights movement, the United States didn't necessarily like what was happening in South Africa under the apartheid regime, but their commitment to anti-communism and to the struggle against the Soviet Union within the context of the Cold War triumphed, it trumped all other considerations.

  So as a result, the Soviet Union really was instrumental to those liberation struggles in South Africa, in Southern African places like Angola, Mozambique, and elsewhere. So when they look at the past, they find points of strength. And now they try to convert those points of strength, that nostalgia, into something very tangible. And that tangible thing is the diplomatic support, especially in the context of the sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of the invasion and the war of aggression against Ukraine and the loss of the so-called Western partners.

  And this translates into, for example, the need to accumulate goodwill in the international bodies—for example, in the United Nations. And I think it did work out for them. For example, if you look at the votes and the tallies of the votes within the United Nations in the aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and you look [at how] member states vote, we find something very interesting. About half of the African nations refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. It's not that they supported it, even though there are some exceptions. For example, Eritrea, which votes solidly with Russia, but it's a neo-totalitarian, highly militarized state in northeast Africa, so Eritrea votes with Russia. But others either abstained or didn't come to the vote, which was exactly what the Russians were hoping for.

  It's not all African nations. A number of African states identified the invasion of Ukraine as a neo-imperialist endeavor and condemned it as such, for example, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya. But other countries, especially those that have those fond memories of the Soviet past, preferred to sit it out on the fence or just not participate in the vote. So the diplomatic support…

  IT: So is it explained maybe a little bit better, why is it that so many countries—and I think it's not only Africa, it's broader, it's the broader Global South—why did they decline to take the side of Ukraine? Because it seems like such an obvious—you just mentioned it—such an obvious neo-imperialist move on Russia's part. Is it just purely nostalgia, that's all it is?

  MM: It's not just nostalgia, but the Russian outreach to the so-called Global South in the past couple of decades has been very intense. And again, it has been very instrumental, it has been very utilitarian from the point of view of Moscow. They do appeal to nostalgia. They do appeal to this common struggle that ostensibly they had waged in the past during the Cold War against Western imperialism. But we're also seeing in the West, including on campuses of Western universities in the last couple of decades, a resurgence of very intense critique of Western colonialism and we find this in many disciplines, in interdisciplinary [studies]. Most recently demonstrations against the war in Gaza also featured that particular aspect of this resurgent disdain for the colonial past.

  So the Russians really have been taking advantage of those trends in Western cultural spaces, in Western academic spaces, and those ideas circulate. Someone said that what happens on the American campus doesn't stay on the American campus; it moves beyond the American campus. I'm not saying that those military leaders who came to power in the Sahel, for example, in the last two or three years, those captains and colonels, that they necessarily had been reading Edward Said or postcolonial theory. But those ideas do find currency; the grievances—some of them quite justified—about the legacy of imperialism, the new reexamination, revisionist examination, of the colonial past. And the Russians are really tapping into this trend. 

  So when they talk about Western imperialism—and they talk a lot about it—and they reference their own contributions during the Soviet times to the struggle—ostensible struggle—against imperialism, those ideas resonate, they do get traction. They get traction on campuses in the West, but they also get traction in the public sphere in different African nations. So the Russians position themselves as an anti-colonial force. I know it sounds almost absurd when we look at what the Kremlin is doing in Ukraine and the war of imperialist aggression and the neocolonial war they are waging against Ukraine. But that's not how it's sold to the Global South. The war is sold as part of this massive struggle against the legacy of Western imperialism. 

  And indeed, if you look at what Ukrainians wanted and what they aspire to—to become part of the European Union, maybe at some point to join NATO, to be closer with the West, to position themselves as a Western liberal democracy—I'm not sure from the point of view of many actors in the Global South, [that] this is a selling point, because essentially Ukrainians identify themselves with the West, and the Russians thus identify themselves with the Global South. Of course, it's a stretch to imagine Russia as part of the Global South: we all know about the Russian weather. But nevertheless, they do position themselves, at least teleologically, as part of the Global South. And that's why I think this image of Russia as this fighter against colonialism resonates. 

  IT: Of course, for those of us who are familiar with Russian history, it's completely absurd to think of Russia as a non-colonial power, but for some reason it flies. So we'll get to all of it. We'll unpack a lot of these things a little bit more. But I want to ask you: what is the significance of Russia for Africa? You talked about the kind of non-Western attitude—perhaps it's more the identity side—but what does Russia bring to Africa today? 

  MM: Russia cannot offer much, but it can offer some important things. They sell a lot of weapons to African nations, primarily to Algeria and Egypt, but also beyond. More than 40% of all arms sales on the continent last year, in 2023, came from Russia. Which represents, I think, a 10% drop compared to 2022, but that's probably because of the war in Ukraine, which demands a lot of Russian resources.

  So they sell a lot of weapons, but that's probably not the most important thing. They sell ideas—not necessarily ideologies, but ideas. And one of the ideas that finds a lot of traction in Africa is the idea of sovereignty. So they critique liberal democracy by claiming [it] to be neo-imperialist. And when they come to African actors, when they come to the African partners, their big selling point—and by the way, the same thing applies to China, only the Chinese have much more to offer in terms of trade and investments [that] the Russians can't—but when they come to those actors, especially to people who either recently came to power—the military leaders, especially in the states [that are] post-coup d'état or the old presidents who do not want to leave—basically their message is very simple: It’s your sovereign matter; we're here to work with you. We're not going to tell you what to do. We're not going to demand political transparency. We're not going to demand elections. We're not going to demand human rights. It's none of our business. It's your country, it's your government. And we're seeing that a lot of African leaders, especially those who really do not have the intention to leave power, they like this message, and they contrast it with the demands imposed on them by Western powers. For example, we can talk about what's happening in the Sahel region and how the French have been squeezed out, but everywhere it's the same story. 

  IT: And tell us, Maxime, what is the Sahel region? Can you tell our listeners what it is? 

  MM: Yes, the Sahel region is this broad, geopolitically very important region stretching just south of the Sahara and the southern part of the Sahara Desert, all the way from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean to Sudan. Strategically very important. It has a lot of mineral resources, including strategic minerals. It also is home to some of the poorest nations on earth. 

  And some of those nations in the last three or four years have been going through a string of military coups. And almost everywhere we see the same thing happening: We have a new military government coming to power; they are establishing their rule; they are consolidating it; they clearly have no intention of leaving, even though they may promise elections in the “near future” (near future, quotation marks). But they have no intention of leaving. And then they appeal to Russia or the Russians reach out to them. Why? Because they need weapons, for example. They need economic aid. 

  The West is very hesitant to provide that to regimes that come to power as a result of a military coup. In the United States, we have the Leahy Law, [named] after Patrick Leahy, the senator of Vermont, which expressly prohibits the provision of military aid and technological know-how to countries with military regimes. The Russians, again, insist on sovereignty. They say: “we don't care, it's your country. We're going to work with you. We can provide mercenaries, we can provide weapons. If you're fighting wars against insurgents, for example, or separatists, we’ll help you out,” and this is very appealing. So that's one idea, the idea of sovereignty. 

  Then there is this idea of multipolarity, which is also emphasized both by President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov during [the latter’s] now multiple trips to the continent. He always talks about multipolarity. And multipolarity is a very powerful idea because, again, it appeals to historical grievances. It basically claims that the world as it has existed after the Second World War is the product of the will of imperialist powers, the Washington consensus; everything is decided by the United States of America, and it's not fair. Grievances resonate. And again, it's not all baseless. The legacy of colonialism is real, and the bad memories that many of these nations have of the colonial past—there are a lot of really bad memories; they are real. So this appeals to multipolarity. The creation of BRICS, for example, is one expression of this aspiration to create multiple poles of influence and power in the world. Those ideas resonate. So that's the second big idea that finds traction in Africa. 

  And then—and that, I think, is maybe an overlooked moment here—Russians, especially in the last few years, have been emphasizing traditional values whenever they deal with the Global South. And again, there is some irony here because essentially what they're doing, they're providing critique of liberal democracies. And if you look at the Soviet past, at the Cold War, the Soviets did the same. The Soviet Union critiqued liberal democracy, but the critique came from the left. It was a Marxist-Leninist critique. Now it's a completely different story. They're basically accusing liberal democracies of destroying local cultures, of imposing their liberal ideas, gay rights, trans rights, feminism—all these awful (from the point of view of the Kremlin) Western distortions on individual actors [sic]. And if you look at people who are in power now in Africa, quite a lot of them are older men, many of them are either religious or [come from] very conservative societies. And those ideas, again, resonate. 

  I’ll give you an example of what's happening in Burkina Faso, a country in the Sahel region, which saw several coups in the last couple of years. The new leader of the nation is Captain [Ibrahim] Traoré, a 36-year-old military man, who came to power a couple of years ago and has been solidifying his rule there. He's been drawing closer and closer to Russia. He's invited Russian special forces, the remnants of Wagner, into the country because Burkina Faso is facing insurgency from the Islamists and the Tuareg rebels in the north. So what are his next moves after he had consolidated power? First of all, just a couple of months ago, he extended his rule for another five years with the expressed approval of the Kremlin. He also went to Saint Petersburg for the Russia-Africa Summit, where, apparently, he got a stamp of approval from Putin on whatever he's doing. So that's one undertaking—extending his personal rule for five years. And now they are considering introducing anti-gay legislature, which again, sounds bizarre. But when you look at the kind of blueprint of what the Kremlin has been doing inside of Russia and what kind of values they are exporting to the Global South (and to the world, not just the Global South), Russia is quite popular among the extreme right in the West for the very same reasons: emphasis on religion, emphasis on traditional gender roles, anti-gay rhetoric, all this stuff. So now this new military regime in Burkina Faso is planning to introduce anti-gay legislation. Essentially, they're following the Russian blueprint. So again, here is another example.

  IT: This is really interesting because I think you may have mentioned it, but it's worth emphasizing it, that Russia has less of a presence in democracies than in authoritarian states where there is military rule, correct? 

  MM: That's absolutely the case. And that may be another reason why the Russians have supported so forcefully all these new military regimes emerging, especially across the Sahel region. In every single coup they supported—in Burkina Faso, in Mali, in Guinea to a lesser extent (but they still did), in Niger most recently. Apparently, they're being very active in Chad now, which historically has been fairly pro-Western, but apparently they're making inroads there as well. And they were very close with the former military leader, the president of Sudan, [Omar Hassan] al-Bashir, who was deposed a few years ago. Now the Russians are involved, apparently, in the civil war on the side of the rebels. But again, we can see the same tendency: they're supporting the military, they're supporting the forces that are aiming to establish military dictatorships. And yeah, you're exactly right. In the countries which do have vibrant civil societies, which do have democratic institutions—places like Nigeria, for example, Ghana, Kenya—it's much more difficult for them. Or even South Africa. Even in South Africa, there is this whole history of joint anti-apartheid struggle, but South Africa does have a very dysfunctional but nevertheless real democracy. And in those places where you do have civil society, where you have active youth organizations, for example, where young people are politically engaged, it's much more difficult for the Russians to get through. So, yes, there is definitely that kind of…. And I think they're very much aware of it. 

  When we look at the countries, if we want to find a place that would be attractive to Russia now, we have to look for a few features of that particular society. You would need to have a military regime or you would have a military which is ready to step in. You would need to have a very weak civil society that is not functioning in a very coherent fashion. And you would probably also need to find some minerals, because that's another aspect of this outreach to Africa that we haven't mentioned yet, that this is also a moneymaking enterprise for the Russians, because if you look at what Wagner (the private military company, now disbanded and absorbed by the Russian state and the Ministry of Defense) was doing, they were providing mercenary services to the Moscow-friendly regimes. That is, they were essentially the tool of the Russian state. But at the same time, how they were paid for the services they provided: they were given access to mineral resources, to the extraction of gold, for example in Sudan; the extraction of gold and diamonds in Central African Republic; gold in Burkina Faso now, apparently, and other strategic minerals; and the same in Mali.

  So in some ways, in a recent report published in Great Britain that I read, I really like the term [that was] used: elite capture. What the Russians are doing in Africa—or probably globally in the Global South—they reach out to the elites. They don't contract with civil society. They don't contract, for example, with local journalists or with the local independent cultural associations. They deal with people in power, usually people with guns in power. It's elite capture. They set up business deals. It's a very lucrative enterprise. Gold mining in the Central African Republic, according to recent data, probably gave Russia more than $100 million revenue per annum. (Data for last year.)

  IT: I want to ask you about [President Dmitry] Medvedev's visit to Africa in 2009. It seems to have been an important visit. It was really high profile. He brought with him a big delegation of oligarchs and businessmen. Was that a significant high mark of some kind or was it just one of many? 

  MM: I think it was a very important visit. And I would even compare [and] contrast [it] with the visit by President Obama, which happened at about the same time. They came to the continent within the same time frame. And these two visits were very different. Obama's visit was very high on symbolism and highfalutin rhetoric. Obama obviously was very popular in Africa. But in terms of substance, there was very little. It was a symbolic trip to the continent by an American president, the first Black president whose father was from Kenya. So in symbolic terms it was very important. Obama and [his wife] Michelle went to Gorea, to the slave pens. Symbolically, it was very powerful.

  But in terms of substance, it didn't produce much. And compare and contrast that with Medvedev's trip. Medvedev brought with him hundreds of businesspeople to the continent. They were signing contracts (many of them, I suspect, arms contracts). They were inking agreements. They were doing something very concrete, something very businesslike. They were establishing elite-to-elite contacts. And we can see the result of that. Obama's trip is largely forgotten. It's really failed to produce much of substance, while that Russian trip by Medvedev, who was a placeholder president at the time, as we know now, nevertheless did produce some very substantive results. And a lot of what we're seeing now, I think, can be traced back to that first symbolic visit by a Russian president to Africa, which was very important.

  IT: When we talk about Russia and Africa, a lot of people, the first thing they think about is Wagner. What is happening today with Wagner, now that [Yevgeny] Prigozhin is obviously no longer with us? Who is performing their function, if anybody is? 

  MM: Yes, as they say in Russian, “свято место пусто не бывает”: a sacred space is never empty. Wagner, Prigozhin, of course, is not with us anymore, [since,] as you mentioned, [he] died mysteriously in a plane crash. We can be left guessing as to why and how that happened. But even before his death, even before his death, the Kremlin had started to break up Wagner. Probably this imminent destruction of the enterprise was one of the reasons why Prigozhin decided to march on Moscow, which really was a very bizarre idea, in retrospect, but so bizarre that it almost came to fruition, right? So they began to break it up because Wagner had gotten too big for its britches. It became too influential and too independent. They also developed a very powerful corporate identity, that is, the members of Wagner—and we're talking about thousands of fighters, battle-hardened fighters—[who] increasingly felt loyalty to Prigozhin or to the corporation and not necessarily to the Russian state. And if we know how Putin functions, if we know anything about Putin, it’s that this is something he would never accept. So [the Kremlin] began to break [Wagner] up even before they marched on Moscow. And after that march, [the Kremlin] broke [Wager] up. But it has not disappeared. It's been absorbed by the Ministry of Defense, by the intelligence agencies. There are a number of so-called private military companies, which essentially are just covers for volunteer mercenary forces employed now by the Ministry of Defense. In terms of Africa, it's called Africa Corps, which again, [for] anyone who knows the history of World War II, it's a very strange reference, but we've seen stranger ironies. 

  IT: Explain what's strange about it. 

  MM: Well, Africa Corps was the name of the Nazi army in North Africa during the Second World War, led by Marshal Rommel, the Desert Fox. So the fact that they're reviving references to Nazi exploits in North Africa, it's very ironic considering [that] they are fighting fascists, according to them, in Ukraine. But there are other ironies here. Some of them, I suspect, are sort of postmodern and intentional, to irritate people like us, people who do have historical memory and historical sensibilities.

  So Africa Corps stepped in, and very soon after Prigozhin’s death, the Russian deputy minister of defense, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, went straight to Libya, because Wagner had been very active in Libya on the side of General Haftar, to calm down the fears of their African partners, [to say] that “nothing's changed, Wagner is no more, but we're still here.” They went to the Central African Republic, where Wagner was also very much prominently present, to allay the fears of those partners. And the same for the nations, the new military regimes, in Sahel. So yes, Wagner is no more but Russian special forces, Russian mercenaries, are there. It's just a different name. But there is some evidence now that the Kremlin is treading very carefully to preserve at least some aspects of that corporate identity, because it did prove to be useful. It did prove to provide a kind of unifying spirit for the fighters involved in this enterprise. So we even know that some of them are still allowed to wear those Wagner chevrons on their uniforms. So there are some minor concessions to the corporate identity. But other than that, there is no pretense that this is an independent contractor anymore. It clearly is an extension of the Russian state, and it functions under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense. 

  IT: I want us to talk a little bit about something you've referred to as this postmodern alliance of the far right and the far left that's apparent in the rhetoric that Russia deploys with regards to Africa. It's a really bizarre thing when you think about it, because on the one hand they seem to be deploying the far-left language of anti-imperialism and anti-racism and anti-colonialism. And on the other hand, we know that Russia has a very conservative right-wing culture today. So how does it work together? I think I've seen in one of your presentations, a picture of [Alexander] Dugin shaking hands with an African left-wing hero. How do we process this?

  MM: Well, this is not just the African story. I think this is this sort of postmodern realignment that we're seeing—the horseshoe theory, where the extreme left and the extreme right overlap. We see the same thing happening here in the United States on certain issues, including foreign policy. If we look at who is most adamantly opposed to US support for Ukraine, for example, that's the extreme left and the extreme right, the isolationists, the anti-imperialists, who are finding common cause. Who is the most critical of Western involvement outside of Western nations? Again, right-wing isolationists and left-wing anti-imperialists. And the Russians are very much attuned to this. If we look at what they're doing in Europe, for example, and which political forces they're sponsoring, quite often it's the extreme left and the extreme right. So it's, again, the same idea that the foe is Western liberal democracy, so any political forces that can undermine Western liberal democracy, undermine its potency, undermine its appeal, should be supported. 

  They're basically projecting the same model onto the Global South and onto Africa. And there, of course, it finds a lot of traction for the reasons [that] were mentioned before: because of the history of colonialism, because Western colonialism and Western racism were real. These were not inventions of Soviet propaganda. And the propaganda, of course, took ample advantage of that opportunity. But they didn't have to make up stuff. They made up a lot of stuff, but they didn't have to, because racism was real, colonialism was real, imperialism was real. This is all part of Western history. So they're appealing to those forces, and the result is very strange. I'll give you an example of one organization that was formed in Russia a few years ago. It's called by the abbreviation of AFRIC. It's ostensibly an election-monitoring undertaking, which was apparently co-sponsored by Prigozhin. Prigozhin was somehow involved, because Prigozhin, of course, had his Africa portfolio. But there were also some other individuals involved in the founding of this organization, who are very interesting and very telling of who these people are—for example, Konstantin Malofeyev. He is a Russian billionaire oligarch who is known for many things, but also for having founded this TV channel, Tsargrad, which is a right-wing, ultraconservative Russian Orthodox religious channel, which promotes traditional values, which is very anti-American and anti-Western in its messaging. So he's one of the founders of this organization, AFRIC. Another person is Dugin, so-called “Putin's philosopher”; I don’t know whether or not it's true, but he's certainly someone who is kind of a proto-fascist wing of Russian nationalist politics. 

  But at the same time, they attracted people from the extreme left, not necessarily in Russia but in the West. One individual is Kémi Séba. Kémi Séba is a French journalist. His parents came from Benin, but he is French and a radical anti-imperialist. Also, strangely, a radical antisemite, because those things, unfortunately, overlap these days quite often. And I'm not just calling him names: he actually was put on trial in France and convicted for antisemitism and spent a short stint in jail for antisemitism. He's very anti-Western, he's very anti-American, he’s anti-imperialist. He's also one of the founding members of this organization, and he's a close friend and associate of Alexander Dugin. So, again, we can see this collaboration between this extreme anti-imperialist left of the left wing of Western politics, and at the same time we see people on the extreme nationalist right, many of them connected to the Orthodox Church in Russia, finding common cause. And these are the people who are doing Russian outreach to Africa. So it's really very interesting: people who are on the record as misogynists, homophobes, racists, antisemites, finding common anti-imperialist cause, which I think is very, very interesting.

  IT: It's really almost hard to hear, because you and I know just how racist Soviet and Russian culture was. And we know that certainly in the last 20 years of the Cold War, all of these slogans of anti-racism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism were used in a completely cynical fashion. 

  MM: Yes, absolutely. But we also have to…historically, those things evolved. I did quite a bit of research on the 1920s–1930s. I looked, for example, at the history of Black American travelers going to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, in search of this racial utopia and a place free of Jim Crow. And it's interesting, it's quite clear that at least in the beginning, a lot of people found what they were looking for. We have multiple accounts by famous and not so well-known African American intellectuals and radicals, artists, writers, people like Paul Robeson, of course, or Langston Hughes, [Claude] McKay, and the lesser-known figures as well. And they all seem to be telling the same story: “We came to Soviet Russia in the 1920s–early 1930s, and we found society that was free of racism.” And I think there is something to it. It seems to me that the early ideological fervor after the October Revolution was genuine. Claude McKay, the great bard of the Harlem Renaissance who eventually disavowed his affection for the Soviet Union—in the 1920s, he was one of the first Black Americans, prominent Black Americans, who went to the Soviet Union, in 1922. And he left fascinating accounts. Yes, officially at the Comintern Congress, at the factory meetings, everyone celebrated him because he was Black, and there was solidarity with the downtrodden. But he said that he found, even among the so-called former intelligentsia that he also met—the artists, the writers—he also found the rejection of Western racism. 

  But I think you made a very good point that towards the end—let's say the 1970s–‘80s, the decline of the Soviet Union, the waning years of the Soviet Union—we're beginning to see that a lot of the stuff is very cynical. People are instrumentalizing anti-racism for career purposes. People want to go get a post in Africa so they could buy blue jeans and bring them back to Moscow, things like that. So there is a lot of cynicism. But earlier on, I think some of the stuff was genuine.

  IT: Well, and I think, yes, the 1920s is still a time when there is a genuine internationalist spirit—the first decade of building socialism, you see it even in the case of antisemitism, where, if you're not a Zionist or not a religious Jew, then all the doors are open to you essentially, and then all of that begins to contract. So I think that in that first decade, it was probably quite different from the way it became later. 

  MM: Absolutely. And it began to change even before the Second World War. For me, 1935 actually is a kind of a milestone. It's the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. And that's when the Soviets began to drop some of their earlier internationalist rhetoric. It became known at the time that behind the scenes they were actually supplying Mussolini with gasoline and with other resources. They were trading, they needed money for industrialization for the state. So the Soviet Union was becoming less of an internationalist mecca, an internationalist utopia, and more of a nation-state in many ways. And then, of course, in 1939, they signed the pact with Hitler, which disappointed a lot of their former supporters, including African American supporters in the United States. 

  But what happens during the Second World War is this emergence of the cult of Russia. Russian nationalism is really resurgent during the Second World War. We see that Stalin taps into the canon of the heroic Russian past. The new awards are being introduced: the Order of Kutuzov, the Order of Suvorov. All the czar's generals, marshals, they are now becoming heroic figures: Ivan the Great, Ivan the Terrible is a heroic figure, Peter the Great. And then we know what happens after the war with the rise of antisemitism. 

  And also what's interesting in terms of attitudes towards Africa and Blackness in general: until after Stalin's death, the Soviets are very suspicious of Black nationalism. They're not supportive of people like [Francis] Kwame Nkrumah, for example, or Jomo Kenyatta. They see them as stooges, so to speak, of Western colonialism. It's only after Stalin's death, it's only really after Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress in 1956, that things begin to change. In 1957 Ghana becomes independent, and that's a watershed event, when Khrushchev, who is now very enthusiastic about this rising tide of anti-colonialism, begins to embrace these new African nations. But prior to that, there is a lot of suspicion which, by the way, translated into the purges against those Russian Soviet scholars who studied Africa. The African studies field was decimated during the purges, in part, because of this—of the suspicion of bourgeois nationalism that they connected to Black nationalism. 

  IT: Well, and what happens under Khrushchev is that they become (my sense; I want to hear what you think about it) much more omnivorous ideologically. They are no longer such sticklers for specific ideological points, in part because they want to work with the rising Third World[SD1] , and they understand that if they require strict commitment to Marxism-Leninism, they will have nobody to work with, because actually Marxism-Leninism is not that popular in Africa and the rest of the Global South. So I think that, perhaps, that's one of the things that happens under Khrushchev. What do you think? 

  MM: Well, they do become more flexible—anyone compared to Stalin would be more flexible, definitely. But I think they also got burned, because initially in 1960 some 14 African nations declare independence. The United Nations proclaims the year 1960 the Year of Africa, and that translated into this euphoria in the Kremlin because Khrushchev (who was a very excitable character in many ways), he really did, it seems, have expectations of the Global South, as we call it now—these new independent postcolonial nations—at least looking with interest at the Soviet model. [The Soviets] got burned fairly quickly, first in places like Guinea, for example, which initially under [Ahmed] Sékou Touré was very Soviet-friendly, but very quickly it became clear that when the Soviets push too hard, they push back. 

  But then in 1965–66, there was this string of coup d'états across especially Francophone Africa—places where the Soviets had failed to establish their presence, in places like Mali, Algeria, and especially Ghana, where Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966. And I think this string of losses—because these were all the leaders who were very close to Moscow, the Soviets had pinned a lot of hope on them for future social development of their nations—they were all kicked out of power. And it seems this is the moment of disillusionment, where the Soviets stopped expecting this kind of socialist fulfillment from their partners in Africa. They still talk about socialist orientation or future socialist development, but it's all in the future now. So I think the moment of growing cynicism originates in the mid-1960s, when people like [Ahmed] Ben Bella, for example, or the leader of Mali, or Kwame Nkrumah lose power—all Soviet friends. From that point on, it's much more pragmatic.

  One of the primary examples of this pragmatism actually comes in 1967, when during the war in Biafra, which is the Nigerian civil war against the separatists in the east (the Igbo separatist state of Biafra),[…]the Soviets all of a sudden come in, in support of the federal side. And that surprised a lot of people. Why? Because if you look at the composition of political forces in Nigeria at the time, the federalist side was actually supported by the so-called northern feudal elites. There was nothing remotely Marxist or socialist about these people, while in the east, many of the Igbos actually were leftists. So we see that during the war in Biafra, the Soviets are actually supporting the side in the conflict which ideologically is not aligned with them at all. It was a very pragmatic decision, so another example of growing cynicism, which was checked, I think, in the middle of the 1970s with the rise of Angola under MPLA as a Marxist-Leninist state and Mozambique orienting itself towards the Soviet Union, then Ethiopia proclaiming itself in 1977 Marxist-Leninist. So there was again this period of hope. But I think this kind of genuine enthusiasm never came back. It all was very pragmatic and very cynical. 

  IT: Yeah. I want to ask you, going back into the present moment: one of the topics that often comes up when you talk about Russia's involvement in the Global South is the question of propaganda and disinformation. What do we know about that, with regard to Africa?

  MM: Well, we know that the Russians have made an extensive effort, including establishing so-called troll farms, in places like Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe. Why are they doing this? A couple of reasons. One is linguistic, because if they want to project their message not just to the Global South, but also to the West, they need people who speak the languages and who can type and write in those languages. That's why they reach out and try to get some traction in places like Nigeria, Ghana, or in Francophone Africa. So that's one of the reasons. And the second goal, of course, is to galvanize local public opinion against the West and in favor of multipolarity, which, again, brings direct dividends to the Kremlin. Also, it's much more difficult to track and keep tabs on those operations outside of the traditional West or even outside of Russia. Everyone in the West knew what people were doing in Olgino; the troll farms in Saint Petersburg were well-known, it really became a household term in the West, and they were sanctioned. But if you are establishing those short-term operations in places like Accra, for example (as they did in Ghana or in Zimbabwe), where is it's very difficult to monitor those operations, that's an additional advantage. So it's a combination of factors. But Africa, I expect, will continue to play a very important role in this attempt to create notional and informational havoc not just in Africa, but also in the West. 

  IT: Just to wrap up, is there something you can say for policymakers in Washington? What should we do in the US to counter all of these trends and Russia's growing influence in Africa? What would be the best approach? 

  MM: Well, the US, it seems to me, the West, has to do a number of things. First of all, I don't think they should give up on their values. The fact that the Russians are appealing to these conservative, traditional values, including in Uganda, for example, where they introduce draconian anti-gay legislation, doesn't mean that the West has to swallow this. It's good to insist on your values. But you also have to demonstrate how those values are actually beneficial to society. How having women enter the workforce, for example, helps those societies economically, how opening up opportunities for people regardless of their identity, minority populations within those societies, how it makes those societies more coherent. 

  And another thing: to really invest in civil societies. Cultural outreach. It doesn't have to be ideological; it doesn't have to be political, really. But to support the young people, for example. In many of those places, the elites constitute a very small percentage of the population. A tiny percentage of the population controls the economic pie. So what the Russians are doing, essentially: they are ossifying those situations, they're making them permanent, and that doesn't benefit people on the ground. It doesn't benefit the young generation. [The West should be] providing scholarships, providing educational opportunities. They really have to make the West attractive, especially to the younger generation of Africans. And have open and honest conversations about the history of colonialism, about history in general, and how it shapes our perceptions today. So: more investment, not necessarily economic investment, but more investment in civil societies, in those individual African states, and more outreach to the younger generation, in my opinion. 

  IT: Maxim, thank you so much for joining us. 

  MM: Thank you so much. 

  IT: From the Kennan Institute, this is Izabella Tabarovsky. Thank you for listening and we look forward to having you with us on the next episode of The Russia File.