Literally before our eyes, the world has changed beyond recognition. A hundred years ago, a person with black skin was perceived more or less organically except in the United States or Brazil; in Europe, his appearance on the street became a small sensation. Now Africans have not just flooded European cities - they have changed the very appearance of these cities. And how do they feel in Europe and other parts of the world? How has the worldview of Africans changed in their countries?

These issues are usually considered in the historical aspect in the collection of articles " Pax Africana. The Continent and the Diaspora in Search of Themselves " (editor-in-chief A. B. Davidson), published by the HSE Publishing House (2009, 440 pages).

I was most interested (due to the proximity of the topic to my personal memories) in the article by S. V. Mazov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, under the long title "To educate" people with progressive views, sincere friends of the Soviet Union". State policy on Africans studying in the USSR, the first half of the 1960s". It mainly deals with the situation that developed in the city created on the personal initiative of N. S. Khrushchev in 1960. People's Friendship University named after P. Lumumba (UDN) (however, in other universities too). Muscovites, who then lived in the neighborhood of the UDN and often met outwardly friendly black young people, had no idea what ideological battles were unfolding within the walls of the university.

Many African students were satisfied with the quality of education and living conditions in Moscow, but some complained about the excessive ideologization of lectures and seminars. S. V. Mazov quotes in abundance the documents of the KGB and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which show how difficult it was to solve the problem of indoctrination of African students. "Not all students from Africa during their years of study in the USSR became "people with progressive views" and "sincere friends of the Soviet Union", - the author of the article claims, - many left our country ...anti-communists, with the conviction that racism exists in the first socialist country."

An important topic is the article by Doctors of Historical Sciences A. B. Davidson and I. I. Filatova "Historical layers of Afrocentrism" - a current in world science that claims that the origins of world culture originate on the African continent. This trend was born and developed in the United States, but has its supporters in many other countries. The authors show that anti-Westernism, which is the core of Afrocentrism , is not such an original phenomenon. In particular, Slavophiles and Russian soil scientists came up with similar ideas a century and a half before the American professor Molefi Keta Asante, the main ideologist of Afrocentrism.

One of the largest articles in the collection - 73 pages-is entitled "What color is the "South African miracle"? The National democratic Revolution and national relations in South Africa at the end of the XX - beginning of the XXI century". The "miracle" is an opportunity for a peaceful transition of power to a democratically elected government and the peaceful transformation of South African society, which is legally divided along racial lines, into a single nation. A miracle has not yet occurred, according to the authors of the article A. B. Davidson and I. P. Filatova.

Several articles deal with the relationship of different ethnic groups in individual African countries. These are the work of Doctor of Historical Sciences G. V. Tsypkin "The racial problem in Ethiopia" and the article of Doctor of Historical Sciences I. V. Krivushin "The Rwandan Genocide: causes, character, significance". The first one is mainly historical in nature; a significant part of it is devoted to the racial oppression of the Ethiopian people by the Italian invaders in the late 1930s. The second one tells about the events of our days, first of all about the genocide of April-June 1994, which claimed about 800 thousand lives. The Rwandan genocide, as the author of the article has shown, was a catalyst for many local social conflicts, which also took an ethnic form.

One of the most fascinating articles to read in the collection is " Meeting Cultures in Tropical Africa in the Colonial Era (towards a problem statement)". Its author, Doctor of Historical Sciences S. Balezin, based on numerous, including rare materials, discovered by him in the archives of France, Germany, Namibia and Tanzania, recreates many episodes of contacts between Europeans and Africans, mainly in the XIX century. The life of Africans during the colonial era was not easy, but it should be recognized that missionaries from Europe laid the foundations for teaching Africans European knowledge in their native languages. In a number of countries, however, already in the XX century, secular educational institutions appeared, providing secondary and even the rudiments of higher education. It is also interesting that there was a certain "interchange" of knowledge - European doctors studied and applied some African medicines.

The problem of relations between Africans and Europeans is also discussed in a short article by L. V. Ivanova, PhD in History, entitled "The Somali Diaspora in Great Britain".

I would not consider the book "Pax Africana" to be a purely scientific publication, as the publisher positions it. The excellent literary language makes this work into a category of popular science literature, which, against the background of the dominance of detective stories and the so-called "mysticism", is now so much needed by the thinking and educated Russian reader.

Permanent link to this publication: