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p Until the middle of the 20th century almost all Africa was a colonial domain of the imperialist powers. In order to keep its colonies out of reach of the influence of socialist ideas, imperialism erected barriers to prevent contacts between African countries and the Soviet Union. Yet the decades preceding the disintegration of the colonial system are not to be excluded from the history of Soviet-African contacts. They were a period when the first steps were taken to build the foundations of friendship and cooperation between the Soviet Union and the fighting peoples of Africa.

p Rapprochement between the USSR and the African countries is rooted in the international significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It opened the road to social and national liberation before the whole of humanity, and weakened the positions of imperialism, both in the home countries and in the colonial periphery. This led to the crisis of the colonial system, which developed as a part of the general crisis of capitalism, and created favourable conditions for an upsurge of the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. By defeating the whiteguards and foreign interventionists, Soviet Russia showed all the oppressed peoples that it was possible not only to fight against imperialism, but to defeat it as well.

p The way Soviet rule solved the national question powerfully stimulated the liberation struggle of the African peoples. The Marxist-Leninist principles of equality and sovereignty of peoples and their right to self-determination up to secession and the establishment of independent states were legislatively secured in the Declaration of Rights of the 24 Peoples of Russia  [24•1  adopted in November 1917. They were implemented in the national policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government and formed the basis for the voluntary alliance of the peoples of tsarist Russia, whom the revolution had liberated, into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

p The rapid political, economic, social and cultural development of the numerous nations and nationalities in the Soviet Union, which had been oppressed by tsarism, laid bare the political insolvency and the reactionary nature of the notorious imperialist doctrine about the inferiority of the colonial peoples and their inability to build their own life and develop modern political institutes, economy and culture. The experience of the multinational Soviet Union convinced African countries that the aims of their liberation struggle were quite realistic.

p Even people who could not even be suspected of attempting to overestimate the significance of the way the national question was being solved in the USSR had to admit this. For instance, the prominent French diplomat Jean Herbette, a representative of a country which had colonies in Africa, said back in 1925 that the Soviet Government was the first to put the solution of the national question on a foundation that was satisfactory for all nationalities and that this fact in turn made the Soviet Government extremely popular among all the oppressed nationalities.  [24•2 

p Another circumstance which greatly stimulated SovietAfrican relations was that in the person of the Soviet Union a great power appeared on the international scene, a power whose government proclaimed its solidarity with the world anti-imperialist liberation struggle. This was a drastic turn in world politics and in the entire system of international relations.

p Prior to 1917 the peoples of African and other colonies were alone in their struggle against the world capitalist system. In spite of all the contradictions within this system and the vicious struggle between the imperialist states for the division and repartitioning of the world, they were 25 united in their desire to consolidate colonialism and imperialist exploitation.

p The October Revolution created a totally different situation. For the first time in history a great state came out against imperialism and colonialism in general and not merely against an individual power or a group of powers. For the first time the demand to liberate the colonial and dependent peoples was proclaimed a principle of state policy.

p This was done by Soviet Russia in Lenin’s famous Decree on Peace approved at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets on 26 October, 1917. Calling upon all countries involved in the world war to immediately begin talks on a just and democratic peace without annexations and contributions, the Soviet Government defined annexation in the following words: "In accordance with the sense of justice of democrats in general, and of the working classes in particular, the government conceives the annexation or seizure of foreign lands to mean every incorporation of a small or weak nation into a large or powerful state without the precisely, clearly and voluntarily expressed consent and wish of that nation, irrespective of the time when such forcible incorporation took place, irrespective also of the degree of development or backwardness of the nation forcibly annexed to the given state, or forcibly retained within its borders, and irrespective, finally, of whether this nation is in Europe or in distant, overseas countries.”  [25•3 

p This meant that Soviet Russia came out for the liberation of all enslaved countries. The further existence of colonial regimes, according to the Decree on Peace, was proclaimed "annexation, i.e. seizure and violence”.

p The Decree on Peace contained another point which stated that the reluctance of any nation to submit to foreign rule could be expressed by various means, beginning with demands in the press and mass meetings and ending with uprisings. Thus, the Decree underscored that a national liberation movement in any form, including armed struggle, was both legitimate and just.

p The Soviet Government resolutely upheld these principles at the peace talks with the Central Powers  [25•4  which began at 26 Brest-Litovsk in December 1917. In keeping with the Decree on Peace and the programme of peace talks which Lenin had drafted in furtherance of this document,  [26•5  the Soviet delegation issued a declaration saying that the principle of the self-determination of nations should be extended to the colonies.  [26•6  The Soviet government made a similar demand in an appeal to the Allies of 17 (30) December 1917.  [26•7 

p Naturally, the Soviet Government harboured no illusions that the imperialists would voluntarily surrender their possessions. It issued a revolutionary appeal directly to the peoples living in colonial or semi-colonial oppression. The historic appeal To All the Working Moslems of Russia and the East of 20 November (3 December) 1917 was addressed to the oppressed peoples of Asia and Africa regardless of their race, nationality or religion, to all "whose heads and property, whose freedom and motherland were bought and sold in the course of centuries by the greedy predators of Europe”. The whole world heard the naming words of the appeal: "Then overthrow these predators and enslavers of your countries.... Cast out these age-old invaders of your lands. Do not let them plunder your smouldering ruins any longer. You must be the masters of your country. You must build your life according to your own image and liking. You have this right, for your future is in your own hands.”  [26•8 

p The appeal from Soviet Russia was heard on all continents. The liberation struggle gained momentum in African countries, too. From 1919 to 1921 the biggest rebellions took place in Egypt since its occupation by the British in 1882. Quite often the Egyptian fellahs called the revolutionary organs which they established in the course of revolutionary events in 1919 by the Russian name “Soviets”.

p So powerful was the onslaught of the revolutionary masses of the Egyptian people that British imperialism was forced to make concessions: it abolished the protectorate that was established over Egypt in 1914, and in February 1922 proclaimed Egypt’s nominal independence, but in fact retained its control over the country.

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p In 1921 the rebel Riff tribes set up an independent state in Morocco. A correspondent of the French newspaper L’Oeuvre who managed to cross the frontline interviewed one of the closest associates of the Riff leader Mohammed ben Abd el Krim and quoted him as saying that Russia had freed itself of the oppressors and that they were doing the same.  [27•9  For five years the Riff Republic fought heroically against the superior forces of the Spanish and French colonialists and set an inspiring example to other colonial peoples.

p The Russian words “Soviet” and “Bolshevik” were widely used by forward-thinking workers in South Africa. The strikes of Transvaal miners—first African (in 1920) and then white (in 1922) which developed into an armed uprising— were among the most powerful revolutionary upheavals on the continent in that period.

p The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921. Its Manifesto underscored the historic significance of the October Revolution. This first victory, said the South African Communists, predetermined political developments throughout the world. It is clear to everyone that all will have to follow Russia’s example.  [27•10  A Communist Party was also founded in Egypt in the early 1920s, and sections of the French Communist Party were opened in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Madagascar (in the 1930s and 1940s sections of the French Communist Party in Maghreb became independent Communist parties).

p In the eyes of the African peoples the very existence of the Soviet state was an earnest of their liberation and they endeavoured to help it in its struggle against imperialism. During the years of foreign intervention against Soviet Russia progressive Africans took part in the movement of the working people of the world in support of Soviet Russia. They demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from its territory, and helped it materially during the famine of 1921-1922. Africans were also among the revolutionary sailors and soldiers who started a rebellion in the French Fleet in the Black Sea in the spring of 1919.

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p Delegates from fighting Africa attending Comintern congresses and other forums of the international working-class and national liberation movement invariably expressed feelings of fraternal friendship towards the Soviet people. One of the first forums of this kind was the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920. Among its foreign delegates were those representing Egypt. In its resolution the Congress emphasised the role "of the Russian working-class revolution which awakened the working people of the colonies and dependent territories to struggle for liberation".  [28•11  The voice of the struggling African peoples resounded loudly at the World Congress of the Friendsof the Soviet Union which met in Moscow in November 1927. The leader of the Sierra Leone Railwaymen’s Union Ernest Richardson, who was elected to the Congress presidium, said that the October Revolution was particularly near and dear to them, the black slaves of capital. He also noted that the October Revolution for the first time in history proclaimed the establishment of a united front of the world proletariat of all races and colour of skin.  [28•12 

p The international Anti-Imperialist League  [28•13  that functioned in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, and whose membership also included organisations of the communist, working-class and the national liberation movement of the African countries (Egypt, the French colonies, Union of South Africa, etc.) proclaimed its solidarity with the USSR. The Manifesto adopted at the League’s inaugural congress in Brussels in 1927 noted that the Russian revolution had given a powerful stimulus to the world national liberation movement. "The world historic example of the establishment on the ruins of the system of oppression of a State of Labour which rests on a free alliance of peoples and tribes,” the Manifesto stated, "like a torch illuminates the road of the liberation struggle waged by oppressed and enslaved peoples.”  [28•14 

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p In 1928 Soviet trade unions began to participate in the League’s activities and played an important role in strengthening the international anti-colonial front. The Second Congress of the Anti-Imperialist League which took place in Frankfort on the Main in 1929 noted that the accession to the League of the workers’ organisations of the country of proletarian dictatorship was a fact of primary importance.

A major role in broadening the Soviet Union’s links with the peoples of Africa was played by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers which existed in the same period. The Committee repeatedly emphasised the significance for the oppressed colonial masses of the October Revolution, the solution of the national question and the building of socialism in the USSR. This was also mentioned at the First International Conference of Negro Workers convened by the Committee in July 1930 in Hamburg. The Conference urged the peoples of Arica and all Negro workers in the countries of the Western hemisphere to give every support to the worker-and-peasant republic in staving off the threat of a new crusade by the imperialist powers.