Abstract
In: Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2019. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, pp. 189–208.
Taking up the call to move “beyond Eurocentrism” when analyzing the multiple trajectories and fragmented geographies of Marxist theoretical propositions, this essay explores the efforts by Soviet scholars from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s to comprehend the dramatic transformations in Africa in the wake of decolonization. Although incipient efforts under Comintern auspices in the 1920s and 1930s had been stymied by the Stalinist purges, Soviet African studies flourished from the mid-1950s on, when Marxism-Leninism was globalized as a political project in the context of Cold War competition. Soviet analysts’ professionalization and deepening expertise were also attributable to their encounters with African colleagues. These interactions spurred Soviet scholars to adapt Marxist-Leninist frameworks to the diverse dynamics in African societies. The article casts doubt on a diffusionist understanding of how ideas about socialism were ›transferred‹ from the Soviet Union to Africa. The Soviet Union was not an unchallenged ›exporter‹ of such models, nor were the ideas static. Rather, through the transregional interaction between African and Soviet actors, two postcolonial conditions became intertwined. Empirical evidence from Russian archives reveals frequent confusion, destabilization, and perceived marginalization of the Soviet position. Africa was, in this regard, not a repository for Soviet ideas about socialist transformations, but a space providing unforeseen challenges for Soviet theoreticians and enriching Soviet knowledge production about Africa.
Über die Autorin
Steffi Marung, Dr. phil, geb. 1978 in Halle/Saale. 1997 bis 2004 Studium der Politikwissenschaft und Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft in Halle, Berlin und Prag, Promotion 2011 an der Universität Leipzig. 2006 bis 2010 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin des Leibniz-Instituts für die Geschichte und Kultur des Östlichen Europa. 2011 bis 2015 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Centre for Area Studies der Universität Leipzig mit einem Buchprojekt zu einer transregionalen Geschichte der sowjetischen Afrikanistik im Kalten Krieg. Seit 2007 Lehre am Global and European Studies Institut der Universität Leipzig. Seit 2014 Principal Investigator im internationalen Projekt “Socialism Goes Global«. Seit 2016 wissenschaftliche Koordinatorin am Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 1199 »Verräumlichungsprozesse unter Globalisierungsbedingungen« der Universität Leipzig. Veröffentlichungen u. a.: Mithg.: Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Bloc and the Postcolonial World, Bloomington i. E.; Area Studies in East and West, Leipzig 2019; Autorin: “Transregionality in the history of area studies”, in: Matthias Middell (Hg.): Handbook of Transregional Studies, London 2019, S. 23–28; »Area Studies, Regionalwissenschaften, Aires culturelles: The respatialization of area studies from a bird’s-eye view”, in: Matthias Middell (Hg.): Handbook of Transregional Studies, London 2019, S. 46–57; “The October Revolution and Soviet-African encounters: The challenges of entangled internationalisms”, in: Contemporanea (2018), H. 2, S. 268–277; “A ›Leninian Moment‹? Soviet Africanists and the Interpretation of the October Revolution, 1950s–1970s”, in: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik 33 (2017), H. 3, S. 21–48; Die wandernde Grenze. Die EU, Polen und der globale Wandel politischer Räume, 1990–2010, Göttingen 2013.