Arrested Development examines the USSR’s involvement in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as aid donor, trade partner, and political inspiration for the first post-independence governments in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Buoyed by solid economic performance in the 1950s, the USSR opened itself up to the world and launched a series of programs aimed at supporting the search for economic development in newly independent countries in Africa and Asia. These countries, emerging from decades of colonial domination, looked at the USSR as an example to strengthen political and economic independence. Based on extensive research in Russian and West African archives, Arrested Development explores the ideas that guided Soviet engagement in West Africa, investigates the projects that the USSR sponsored “on the ground,” and analyzes their implementation and legacy. The exchanges and clashes born out of the encounter between Soviet and West African ideas, ambitions, and hopes about development reveal the USSR as a central actor in the history of economic development in the twentieth century.
This event will be hosted in person and virtually on Zoom. Register for the Zoom meeting here. Non-NYU affiliates must RSVP for in-person campus access.
Alessandro Iandolo is lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet History at University College London. His first book, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968 (Cornell University Press, 2022), won the W. Bruce Lincoln and the Marshall D. Shulman prizes from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
