USSR - Penetration of Africa

USSR - Penetration of Africa

Soviet attempts to influence African states suffered two notable setbacks in the 1960s. In the Congo (now Zaďre) Soviet-supported Premier Patrice Lumumba was killed in an uprising in 1961, and in Ghana in 1966 Kwame Nkrumah and his government were overthrown and Soviet technicians were expelled. In the 1970s, however, with the aid of Cuban troops, the USSR placed friends in power in Angola and assisted Ethiopia in driving back Somalians. It supported the antigovernment Patriotic Front in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and similar groups in South Africa. These and other developments alarmed the West as a new form of Soviet imperialism and a new approach to increasing Soviet power in the Middle East.

Soviet relations with Egypt were close in the 1950s and 1960s. The USSR supported Egypt when it nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, helped it build the Aswan High Dam, and backed it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War: in 1971 the two countries signed a 15-year treaty of friendship. The following year, however, Egypt ordered all Soviet military advisers out of the country. Soviet criticism of the peacemaking visit by the Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977 further alienated Egypt. In December 1977 Sadat ordered the Soviet Union to close its consulates and cease all cultural activities. Soviet advisers were also ordered to leave Sudan and Somalia.