Apollon Davidson, Irina Filatova
Soviet African Studies in the 1920s–1950s
Three decades – from the late 1920s to the late 1950s – saw two periods of sharp growth
of Soviet African studies. The first – from the late 1920 when African studies first
emerged in the USSR till mid-1930s. The second – in the second half of the 1950s.
Both times this was not the result of any growth of economic or business ties with Africa.
Both times the growth of African studies was instigated from the “top”, coming as a
result of the state policy. And both times Soviet specialists had to study Africa without
seeing it, for they were denied a chance of travelling there.
During the first of these two periods none of Soviet Africanist scholars travelled to
Africa. During the second one such trips did happen, but they were rare and short. The
first Soviet Africanist to see the continent was I.I.Potekhin who visited Ghana – as late as
in 1957.
Another feature of Soviet African studies at that time was that almost everybody who
studied Africa during the first of these periods in this or that way suffered during Stalin’s
terror. Perhaps because of that the memory of this period was wiped out of the history of
Soviet African studies. The names of academics who worked at that time were either not
mentioned or not associated with the 1930s, and their article and books of that time were
not quoted.
The purpose of this paper is to answer several questions in this connection:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Why did these two upsurges in Soviet African studies occur.
What goals were put for Africanist specialists in each of them
How the work was organised.
What their achievements were (if any).
What the explanation is for the tragedies of the first period.
* * *
What sources did the authors of this paper use?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Books, articles and other printed matter published at that time.
Documents from state archives and private collections
Meetings and conversations with Africanists who worked then.
Apollon Davidson’s personal experience – he began to study problem of South
Africa as a student from the late 1940s.
* * *
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The first period.
Soviet African studies in the late 1920s began to grow after the Sixth Congress of the
Communist International (1928) resolved that it needed to get more actively involved in
Africa. In 1929 a circle for the study of Africa was formed within Comintern’s structures.
At its very first meeting a programme of the study of Africa was announced. It centred on
the study of the continent’s socio-economic problems, but mentioned historical traditions
and tendencies of historical development as well.
In the early 1930s a Department of Africa was created at one of Comintern’s universities,
the Communist University of Eastern Toilers. There was also an African Department, or
the African Laboratory (“Kabinet”) in the Academic Research Association for National
and Colonial Problems, another institution within the Comintern. Its main task was
collecting materials on Africa.
The activities of both these centres were vibrant and diverse. Not only did they study
Africa’s socio–economic problems and history but languages too. Not only Moscow
academics were involved in these studies, but Leningrad linguists too. Émigrés from
African countries and Africans who came to study at Comintern’s universities (Lenin
School and KUTV) also participated.
First Africans came to Comintern’s universities in mid–1920s. From the late 1920s till
1937 students from several countries of South, East and West Africa studied there.
Among them was Jomo Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president after this country
proclaimed its independence. Moses Kotane and John Marks also studied there. Both
became leaders of the South African Communist Party. Both later, in the 1970s, died in
Moscow and are buried there.
The Comintern did both ideological and propaganda work. One of its important
achievements was the publication of the Negro Worker journal. It was specifically
designed to be distributed in Africa and among the African Americans.
Obviously, all this activity was permeated with the Comintern ideology. But some of the
approaches were completely new, and African problems attracted several highly educated
and interesting people. This combination led to certain academic innovation and
achievements. To name but two, Soviet Africanists were pioneers in the study of the
latest tendencies in the socio–economic structures of African societies, and of the new
African political organisations.
Leningrad Africanists did not belong to any Comintern structures. Their field was social
anthropology (ethnography) and African languages. It is worth while mentioning their
dictionaries of African languages and some translations of African folklore, most notably,
of Zulu folk tales directly from the Zulu language, not from English. Moscow and
Leningrad academics organised two Africanist conferences together, in 1934 and 1935.
None of Soviet Africanists had a chance to visit Africa. But for the subject of their study
their sources were not too bad: in addition to Western literature they had access to
African newspapers, journals and documents of political parties. Perhaps, more
importantly, they were in everyday contact with Africans who came to the Comintern to
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work and study. This gave them an understanding of a changing political scenery on the
African continent. In some cases they knew more of political activities on the continent
than their Western colleagues.
This period ended in tragedy. Several Africanists perished in Stalin’s purges. The first
head of African Department N.M. Nasonov. The initiator of the study of African
languages in Moscow G. K. Danilov. Author of the most interesting books on East and
South Africa G.E. Gerngross. Members of the Communist Party of South Africa Lazar
Bach and the Richter brothers, Maurice and Paul – émigrés from Russia to South Africa
who had the bad luck to be back in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, in different
capacities connected to the Comintern. Several Africanists went through arrest and
imprisonment: K. Luknitskii, specialist in Ethiopia; F.S. Gaivoronskii, author of works on
South Africa; E. Sik, author of the first programme of the study of Africa in the USSR;
several other members of staff of Comintern bodies who studied Africa. A.Z.
Zusmanovich who came to head the Department of Africa after Nasonov was sacked for
political reasons. Ditto his successor I.I. Potekhin.
Africanists were not subjected to any special treatment. The reason for their misfortune
did not lie in them or in the sphere of their academic interests, but rather in the fate of the
Comintern. Officially it was dissolved in 1943, but in reality – in mid–late 1930s. The
peak of repressions in the Comintern – 1937 – coincided with the worst year of Stalin’s
terror.
Why did the Comintern become one of the main objects of Stalin’s purges?
Stalin did not take any part in its creation; it was not his brainchild. The first head of the
Comintern was Zinoviev, who was succeeded by Bukharin. Both were denounced as
“enemies of the people” and executed.
Stalin generally did not trust foreigners. Nor those Soviets who were in this or that way in
contact with foreigners. And with all its deficiencies the Comintern was in a way a Centre
of excellence: some foreign and Russian communists who participated in its work were
well educated and independent minded (within the framework of Marxist–Leninist
theory) people. This was exactly the type of people whom Stalin loathed.
All this defined Stalin’s attitude to the Comintern, everybody working there and all
spheres of its activity.
After the war the Comintern and everything connected with it became unmentionable.
Even those who survived the purges – Zusmanovich, Potekhin and several Leningrad
linguists – did not like to speak about it. Decades later Zusmanovich and Potekhin shared
some of their memories with Apollon Davidson, but they too knew or remembered little.
The full picture of the activities of the Comintern began to emerge only after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, when the archives of the Comintern were opened to researchers. The
history of Soviet African studies in that period had to be completely re-written. It turned
out, for example, that Comintern’s agents travelled to South Africa from the late 1920s.
Their task was to find out the possibilities for organising revolutionary struggle and
propaganda and to inspect the work of the communist and other revolutionary
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organisations. Some of their reports went directly to Stalin. Their fate was also tragic: in
the late 1930s almost all of them were executed.
* * *
From 1937 when the African Department of the Comintern was closed till 1956 Africa
did not occupy any significant or even meaningful place in Soviet geopolitics. During the
Second World War and the first post–war years the Soviet state had other problems on
their hands.
However, in the late 1940s Leningrad State University did open an African Studies
Department, and the Institute of Ethnography (it had branches both in Moscow and St.
Petersburg) had several Africanists on its staff. But all in all these were just a few people.
The first group of undergraduates specialising in African studies was admitted to
Leningrad University in 1950.
* * *
However, from 1956 on a new upsurge of interest in Africa began among Soviet policy
makers. This was caused by the collapse of colonial empires and the emergence of new
independent states. Of course, the “cold war” had a lot to do with this interest: both
opposing systems aimed at getting as many allies in Africa as possible.
The turnaround in Soviet geopolitics – strengthening of attention to Asia and Africa –
was announced at the XXth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956.
Mass media, many non–governmental and cultural organisations quickly developed an
interest in Africa. African Departments were created at the Foreign Ministry and soon
after it at the Central Committee.
The demand for information on Africa simply exploded. Everybody wanted to know
what was going on there, everybody wanted the analysis of events and the deeper study
of their causes.
In the academic sphere this led to the creation in 1956 of a big Department of Africa at
the Institute of Oriental Studies. In 1959 CPSU’s Politburo took the decision to open
Africa Institute. In 1960 Patrice Lumumba Friendship University was created in Moscow
with a specific task of educating students from Asian, African and Latin American
countries. The same year the first group of students specialising in African studies was
admitted to Moscow State University.
The amount of political and the academic publications on Africa grew manifold.
Of course, there were very few academics of the older generation who were still there
were able to take part in all these activities. So, everything had to be started practically
from scratch. But by the late 1950s the development of Soviet African studies was well
under way. They were subordinated to ideological and political aims of the Soviet state,
and was consequently highly ideological. However, the level of professionalism
gradually grew, and the range of topics studied gradually widened to include culture, precolonial social structures, etc. Alongside with politically fashionable topics and
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conclusions valid studies of real problems began to emerge. Even then Soviet Africanists
discussed the need of creating a resource basis for their research – the study and
publication of documents.
Even then the few works of Soviet Africanists, that became known in the West, made a
valuable contribution to the study of Africa – as Western academics themselves admitted.
This is certainly more true now than ever before.
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