Until we have won our liberty: South Africa after Apartheid

Abstract

attempts to transform its non-capitalist theory of development into a reality via everything from trade policy and investment to attempted agricultural mechanisation to the sharing of Soviet expertise, among other initiatives. What drives these chapters, though, is a powerful comparative framework that not only takes seriously the intricacies of each of the three West African states’ individual histories and political and economic ambitions, but at the same time also centres the states’ various actors as key players in a broader dialogue about the structure and nature of non-capitalist development. As Iandolo clearly lays out for an audience that might not be overly familiar with these cases and their pasts, each country—due to their respective colonial histories and the ambitions of their political leaders (Kwame Nkrumah, Sékou Touré, and Modibo Kieta), along with a cascading array of internal and external political and economic pressures—read their relationships to the Soviet Union in distinct, yet congruous ways. In all, Alessandro Iandolo offers a rich and engaging analysis of the Soviet-West African relationship during the 1950s and 1960s. Iandolo’s lucid writing style adds a level of accessibility that promises to be an easily teachable book in courses on topics including world history, Soviet history, African history, and the Cold War. Moreover, like much of the recent work on the Cold War in Africa, including that of Mazov and Osei-Opare, Arrested development pushes students of this period to develop increasingly more sophisticated narratives detailing the theories, objectives, and perspectives of the wide variety of actors involved in the Cold War, particularly those of groups that do not easily fit into the standard East-West binary.