p Momentous changes have taken place on the African continent since the founding of the UN in 1945. At the First Session of the UN General Assembly out of its 50 members only Egypt, Ethiopia and Liberia (not counting the Union of South Africa) represented Africa. Today this international organisation embraces more than 150 countries of whom 50 are African states.

p Not so long ago, in the cold war period, the UN was largely subject to the diktat of the imperialist powers, and the majority they commanded followed a course in the interest of the aggressive grouping. At the time virtually no African problems were discussed in the UN. In the first 68-page annual report of the UN Secretary-General, there were only two sentences about Africa.

p But with the growth of the international prestige of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and the unprecedented upsurge of the national liberation movement, the nature of UN activity began to change. A substantial role in this was also played by the increase in the UN membership as more and more newly free countries joined it. As a result of sharp political debates on many issues, the UN began to adopt decisions which were in line with the spirit of the times, the efforts to strengthen world security and promote disarmament and with the struggle for the final abolition of colonialism. The UN began to pay considerable attention to African problems. Forty-two per cent of the report of the Secretary-General presented at the Sixteenth UN General Assembly Session, was devoted to African problems, 20 per cent of the resolutions passed at the Session directly concerned African questions, and another 12 per cent were related to them.  [59•9 

p As the proportion of African membership in the UN increased, the continent’s countries became more and more involved in discussing and solving international problems. 60 At the same time cooperation between the African countries and the Soviet Union in UN is strengthening from assembly to assembly, mainly due to the Soviet Union’s consistent and undeviating stand in the struggle for Africa’s vital interests.

p Soviet and African representatives in the UN began to broaden their contacts most intensively after 1960. That year the 15th UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples which had a profound impact on the situation in Africa. Assessing the Soviet Union’s role in raising this question, the Moroccan UN representative said at the time that colonialism was a perpetual threat to international peace and security and that that anachronism had to be eliminated without delay. He also thanked the Soviet Union for raising this issue and demanding the adoption of a solemn declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples. The Soviet initiative, he emphasised, was an historical landmark in the development of the human society.

p Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser wrote as follows about the Soviet Union’s influence on events in Asia and Africa: "The national revolutionary movement of the peoples of Asia and Africa against imperialism and backwardness, which has become a typical feature of our epoch especially in the momentous post-war period, in many respects owes its victories to the existence and might of the Soviet Union which has become an effective factor bridling imperialism and creating an exceptionally favourable opportunity for the national revolution to play a most extensive role in the struggle for independence and progress.”  [60•10 

p The growing prestige of the African countries in the UN had a favourable effect on the entire activity of that organisation, heightened its role in resolving basic international problems and was one of the reasons that encouraged it to raise questions of vital importance for the whole of humanity whose discussion was simply out of the question in the past. For example, after an acute political struggle the 25th Jubilee Session of the UN General Assembly adopted the Programme of Action for Complete Realisation of 61 the Declaration on Decolonialisation that was drafted by Afro-Asian countries with the active support of the USSR and other socialist countries. The Programme included points designed to achieve the complete abolition of colonialism, including recognition of the right of the colonial peoples to fight for liberation with all the means at their disposal. The Programme proclaimed that the further preservation of colonialism in any form was a crime against humanity and a violation of the UN Charter, the Declaration on Decolonialisation and principles of international law. The resolution containing the Programme of Action received 89 votes in favour (including the USSR), five against (the UK, the USA, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), and sixteen countries which followed America’s and Britain’s cue abstained, among them Lesotho and Malawi (on some issues the latter states and occasionally Swaziland, did not act in a bloc with the other African countries on all matters evidently owing to their economic dependence on South Africa).

p In general the Programme of Action was anti-colonial and anti-imperialist and sufficiently defines the UN’s role and tasks in promoting decolonialisation. It stimulated the anti-colonial struggle in the UN and contributed to the fall of the Portuguese colonial empire.

p At the same Session the overwhelming majority of African states were behind the Soviet .Union on such items on the agenda as "The Situation in the Middle East”, " Withdrawal of United States and All Other Foreign Forces Occupying South Korea under the Flag of the United Nations" and "Question of the Reservation Exclusively for Peaceful Purposes of the Sea Bed and the Ocean Floor, and the Subsoil Thereof, Underlying the High Seas Beyond the Limits of Present National Jurisdiction, and the Use of Their Resources in the Interests of Mankind”.

p International detente and peaceful cooperation of states on the basis of improved and radically restructured relations in conformity with the principles of peaceful coexistence were in centre of attention at the 28th through 32nd UN General Assembly sessions. The main political result of these sessions was that they endorsed all the key initiatives of the Soviet Union. The overwhelming majority of African countries formed a united front with the USSR and other socialist countries.

The community of interests of the Soviet Union and African countries was bound to make itself felt on the voting in the UN on basic international issues. At the 15th UN General Assembly Session in 1960, 75.2 per cent of the African votes coincided with the votes of the Soviet representatives (19 per cent with the USA, 22.1 per cent with the UK, and 20.2 per cent with France). At the next sessions this percentage continued to rise: 80 per cent at the 28th and 81.6 per cent at the 31st. Since the foreign policy of any country always reflects its social system, then, taking into account the social and political differentiation of the African countries, their attitudes far from always coincide on all questions. And, of course, their point of view does not always coincide with the Soviet Union’s line in the UN. But on the main issues—real decolonialisation, equality and sovereignty—the Soviet Union and African countries have attained a generally high and stable level of cooperation in the UN and other international organisations.