USSR Keywords: and South Africa, ANC, SWAPO, ZAPU, Soviet military experts

V. G. SHUBIN

Doctor of Historical Sciences

In recent years, serious efforts have been made to write a history of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, in particular by the South African Democracy Training Organization (SADET) and the Archive of Anti-Colonial Resistance and Liberation Struggle in Namibia, as well as through a Southern African Development Community (SADC) project under the patronage of Hashim Mbita, former Executive Secretary of the Liberation Committee OAE.

However, one topic often remains either overlooked or distorted, namely, the involvement of the Soviet military in supporting liberation movements and independent States in Southern Africa.

Attempts to cover this topic were generally unsuccessful, partly due to the lack of available documents. Indeed, for many years, information about Soviet aid to freedom fighters, even of a purely humanitarian nature, was hidden from the public eye both in the USSR and abroad. Only in 1970, almost a decade after such aid began, in an interview with the newspaper Pravda, the head of the Soviet delegation to the International Conference of Solidarity with the Peoples of the Portuguese Colonies, V. G. Solodovnikov, then director of the Institute of Africa of the USSR Academy of Sciences, said for the first time that Moscow supplies the liberation movements with weapons, means of transport and communications and other goods necessary for a successful struggle, and that military and civilian specialists from these movements are being trained in the U.S.S.R. ¹.

There is another reason why there are no decent works on this topic: while most archival materials in Russia are still closed from researchers, even the "pieces" of information that are available are not used properly. In addition, in these circumstances, it is necessary to involve sources of so-called "oral history" as widely as possible, that is, interviews, as well as recordings of participants and witnesses of events.

* * *

The mechanism for providing assistance to liberation movements was as follows: they sent applications to the Central Committee of the CPSU or initially, before establishing direct links with the ruling party, to the Soviet Committee for Solidarity of Asian and African Countries (SCSSAA). Archival documents confirm that the initiators of the establishment of bilateral relations, including in the military field, were these organizations themselves, and assistance to them was not imposed by Moscow.

In any case, the Central Committee made a decision with instructions to the Ministry of Defense and other state bodies to consider the issue and submit specific proposals in a short time, usually within a month, which, after approval by the Central Committee (usually its Politburo), were issued in the form of an order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

ANC: MOSCOW - ODESSA

The question of military cooperation between the USSR and the liberation movements in South Africa was first raised when two prominent figures of the South African Congress Union and the South African Communist Party (UACP), Moses Kotane and Yusuf Dadu, arrived in Moscow in late 1961. that "under the reign of terror of the fascist government... a peaceful path for achieving the goals of revolutionary movements is currently excluded. The party [which worked closely with the African National Congress - ANC] decided to proceed from the need to prepare for armed struggle."

Their position was supported by the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for International Affairs B. N. Ponomarev, and then by the Central Committee Secretariat. Regarding their specific request for training of military instructors, M. Kotane and Yu. Dadu was informed that Moscow was able to provide assistance using "opportunities in some friendly countries, for example, Guinea or Ghana." ²

However, it turned out that this is not easy to organize. The question of the presence of Soviet military specialists in ANC camps has been repeatedly raised in the works of South African and Western researchers. For example, Philip Nel, who headed the Center for Soviet Studies at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, claimed that" teachers "from the USSR arrived at the newly established ANC camps in Tanzania and Zambia in 1964.3 ^The source of such" sensitive " information is quite reliable-a book by Kurt Campbell, then a fellow at Harvard University, and now - Assistant Secretary of State ⁴. But Campbell also cites a secondary source-a book by the American scientist Kenneth Grundy.

But if you look further, it turns out that Grandi wrote only about Chinese and Cuban

The article was prepared with the support of the Russian State Scientific Foundation. The project 09 - 01 - 00496 a / R.

He also added that Russian instructors were "also present" in the early 1960s5, without specifying the year, place, or name of the organization with which they collaborated.

In fact, Soviet instructors in ANC camps did not appear until 15 years later, in 1979. Moreover, this was not in Tanzania or Zambia, but in Angola. They were sent there at the request of the ANC leadership, conveyed by Oliver Tambo during a regular visit to Moscow at the head of his organization's delegation.

A Soviet officer who became widely known in the ANC as "Comrade Ivan", Captain first rank Vyacheslav Fyodorovich Shiryaev led this group, which arrived in Angola in 1979. After him, the senior members of the group were "Comrade George" (the late Colonel German Pimenov), " Comrade Michael "(Colonel Mikhail Ivanovich Konovalenko) and "Comrade Viktor "(Colonel Viktor Fyodorovich Belush).

The number of Soviet specialists attached to the ANC gradually grew, and soon the group included instructors in "military combat work" (i.e., creating an armed underground), engineering tactics, hand-to-hand combat, communications, doctors, translators, etc. In total, more than 200 specialists and translators worked together with the ANC and its Umkonto ve Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) military wing in Angola between 1979 ^{and 1991.6}

Soviet specialists in Angola performed what was then called "international duty" in an unhealthy climate, under constant threat from armed detachments of the so-called "National Union for the Complete Liberation of Angola" (UNITA), which was an ally of racist Pretoria. Initially, they came to Angola without their families, and only later was this allowed. Undoubtedly, the direct involvement of Soviet officers in the training of ANC personnel helped raise the level of its combat units and groups, especially the organizers of the armed underground.

As for the military training of ANC personnel in the Soviet Union, it began much earlier, back in 1963. But even here, the information is often distorted. Terry Bell in Unfinished Business. South Africa-Apartheid and Truth", written with Dumisa Ntebeza, states:"...It was also reported [by whom, when and where?that there were agreements between the US and the USSR. They limited any military assistance provided to the ANC to preparing for conventional military operations, including artillery and tanks - little good for the conditions of the time."⁷. These authors claimed that the USSR allegedly kept the ANC and the UACP "in reserve as surrogates in the global superpower game." ⁸

The reality, however, is the opposite of this speculation. Instead of training only for ordinary military operations, courses for ANC fighters and commanders included training for guerrilla warfare from the very beginning. In June 1963, two groups of Umkonto fighters, about 40 in total, were sent to the Soviet Union. Among them was a young graduate of Fort Hare University, Martin Tembesile (Chris) Hani, the future commissioner and head of Umkonto ,and later General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, who was killed in 1993 by a Polish immigrant hireling. Khani spent almost a year "on the outskirts of Moscow", studying at a specialized military educational institution that was known among the liberation movements as the "Northern Training Center". For many years, this center was headed by "General Fyodor", the late Major General Fyodor Ivanovich Fedorenko, who during the Great Patriotic War was a partisan commander in the Crimea, and in August 1974, at the invitation of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), led a group of Soviet military visited the liberated areas in Mozambique.

Many years later, in 1991, Hani said in an interview: "How can the working class forget the Soviet Union? I came to Moscow when I was 21 years old for military training. I was accepted there, and I was treated wonderfully."⁹. Hani returned to the USSR for further training in the early 70s, and this course helped him during his underground work in South Africa and then in Lesotho. Later, he recalled: "In the Soviet Union, we took a course on the basics of forming an underground movement and partisan detachments. The Soviets put a lot of emphasis on creating underground structures, which in the beginning consisted of a very small number of people. " ¹⁰

Archibald Sibeko, who was known in Umkonto as Zola Zembe, speaks highly of the specialized training he and his comrades received in the Soviet Union: "We studied politics, we were taught military strategy and tactics, topography, the use of weapons and explosives in guerrilla warfare, first aid in the field - everything that is necessary to survive in a guerrilla war." ¹¹

As for the training of large groups of ANC commanders and fighters, it was organized at the end of 1963 in Odessa, at the local military school. The first group of fighters was led by Joe Modi, who later became the Minister of Defense in democratic South Africa.

The Soviet political leadership paid serious attention to the training of ANC personnel in Odessa. In June 1964, a group headed by P. I. Manchkha, then head of the Africa Sector in the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, went there. While the Mancha group expressed satisfaction with the good discipline and high morale of the ANC cadres, the need for a dedicated training center to train large-scale military personnel for the ANC and other liberation movements became clear.

CENTER IN PEREVALNOYE

And such a center was created in the Crimea, in Perevalnoye, not far from Simferopol. It used the experience of Crimean partisans during the Great Patriotic War, who operated in the mountains, in the forest - in other words, in an area that was not so different from the South of Africa.

The center in Perevalnoye was also used for practical training of those who were trained in Moscow. Moshima ("Tokyo") Sehwale, an Umkonto fighter, political prisoner and now a minister in the South African government, who was trained in Moscow in 1975-1976, recalls as " a colonel (he later became a general) Fyodor " showed them the trenches from the war in Crimea when he arrived there to inspect the ANC ¹² group.

According to the Russian press, 1,501 ANC activists received military training in ^the USSR between 1963 and 1991.13 However, in reality, their number was significantly higher and exceeded 2,000. Training of ANC personnel in the USSR lasted almost three decades and was conducted in several directions. Perhaps the most important was training in the course of so-called military combat work. It is appropriate to say that in the summer of 1985, a small group of Umkonto commanders was trained in Moscow, of which five later became ministers of South Africa. One of them, Sipiwe Nyanda, later General and commander of the South African National Defence Force (now Minister of Communications), wrote in a letter to the author::

"In the USSR, we lived in an apartment on Gorky Street in Moscow, where classes were held. For practical exercises, we traveled outside of Moscow. We studied military combat work as part of an abbreviated course for brigade commanders. The course included, among others, the following subjects: communications, clandestine work (surveillance; secret correspondence, secret meetings, photography), military work (ambushes, assaults, use of artillery, small arms). All of this was useful. " ¹⁴

Another example. In 1994, the first group of six Umkonto we Sizwe commanders was assigned to the new armed forces of Democratic South Africa at the general level. All of them received military training in the USSR, with the exception of one who worked with Soviet instructors in Angola.

Moscow tried to assist the ANC in sending trained fighters home to South Africa. Such attempts were made both through Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but without success. Then, in the early 1970s, our country, despite initially strong hesitation, still agreed to help the ANC in the implementation of the so - called Operation "Jay" - an attempt to land a group of fighters from a ship on the coast of the Bantustan Transkei in South Africa.

Our country not only provided a significant amount of money - 75 thousand pounds for the purchase of ^the ship15, but also prepared an advanced party in Moscow, and then the main group of alleged participants in the operation in Baku, on the basis of the Red Banner Caspian Flotilla. However, the operation ended in failure after several years of preparation. Initially, the reason for this was cowardice shown by the crew invited on the recommendation of one of the Western Communist parties, and then, when a replacement arrived from another country, technical problems arose, and the ship was forced to return to port ¹⁶.

Perhaps most significant in terms of cooperation between the USSR and the ANC was the assistance in carrying out "Operation Woola" to create a network of armed underground forces inside South Africa. This operation lasted for several years, starting in 1987. General Sipiwe Nyanda, mentioned above, spoke about the importance of our assistance: "My trip to Moscow in 1988 was the last stage of preparation for my return to South Africa. It gave me the opportunity to change my appearance and gain more confidence... With operational information

From a point of view, the Moscow stage was probably the most important for my legend. Without exception, everyone who was not informed believed that I was still studying in the Soviet Union. So the enemy never expected me to be on their doorstep. " ¹⁷

The degree of mutual trust between Moscow and the ANC is shown by the fact that when the leader of the underground network, future Transport Minister Mac Maharaj, was able to "get out" of South Africa to meet with ANC President Oliver Tambo and UACP General Secretary Joe Slovo in July 1989, the safest place for such a meeting was Moscow, a mansion in Serebryany Bor.

These facts directly refute the arguments of some Western and even South African authors that at the summit meeting of Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik in October 1986, the zones of influence were allegedly "redistributed" and Moscow " pledged to withdraw its troops or refrain from attempts to overthrow the existing order [in South Africa], leaving the field for the United States." and their allies"¹⁸. They even claimed that in Reykjavik, South Africa "was included in the category of countries where the USSR would later renounce aggression." ¹⁹ However, in fact, and this is confirmed by the long-published transcripts of the negotiations between Gorbachev and Reagan, South Africa was not even mentioned in their conversations.²⁰

It remains to add that Moscow's military cooperation with the ANC continued until the events of 1991. Only after the actual change of power in our country in the autumn of that year, ANC activists who studied in the USSR were forced to leave it without completing their studies. Moreover, when the future Minister of Defense of the Democratic Republic of South Africa, Joe Modi, and the then chief of staff of Umkonto wanted to discuss the issue of continuing their studies, they were not accepted in Moscow.

"MOSCOW" AND "RED SQUARE" IN NAMIBIA

In Namibia, Moscow's military cooperation with the South-West African People's Organization (SWAPO) and its military wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), developed in a similar way. Most of the PLAN's top commanders, including the current Secretary of Defense, Charles Namolo (whose battle nickname was Ho Chi Minh), were trained in the USSR. By the way, three sons of Sam Nujoma, the first President of the Republic of Namibia, received military training in our country (one of them, Utoni, became Minister of Foreign Affairs in March 2010). In addition, beginning in 1977, a group of Soviet military specialists worked at the PLAN's training centers and headquarters in Lubango, southern Angola.

Sam Nujoma first raised the issue of sending them there in August 1976 at a meeting with the head of the "Ten", i.e. the 10th Main Directorate of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, Colonel-General of Aviation Georgy Petrovich Skorikov. Skorikov's reaction was both positive and cautious: "This is a big political issue. Angola should have enough time to strengthen itself. Personally, I would refrain from sending them, but you should discuss this in the Central Committee. " ²¹

From these words, it is clear that the Soviet military feared the reaction of South Africa to the possible appearance of our specialists in the ranks of the United States, especially not so far from the Namibian border. Nevertheless, a positive decision of the Central Committee took place, and soon the first group, consisting of 16 advisers and specialists, headed by " Comrade Yuri "(Colonel Yuri Zaputryaev), began training Namibians in Lubango, in southern Angola. Two years later, he was replaced by "Colonel Nikolai" (Nikolai Vasilyevich Kurushkin, later Major General), who, after several years of service in Angola, became for many years a legendary figure among the fighters and commanders of the PLAN.

The prestige of the Soviet Union among SWAPO fighters was very high. This is evidenced at least by the name of the PLAN's combat units: "Moscow", "Red Square", "Leningrad". The importance of Soviet support was also recognized by opponents of Namibian independence. For example, Chester Crocker, the US Undersecretary of State for African Affairs and the "father" of so-called "constructive cooperation" with South Africa, at a hearing in the US Senate on behalf of the administration, not only "categorically condemned all terrorist acts and other acts of violence" used by SWAPO and the ANC "in order to bring change to Namibia and South Africa." South Africa", but also reported that SWAPO received "90% of all military aid and about 60% of total support aid from communist sources" ²².

"IF IAN SMITH HAD SEEN..."

Another organization in Southern Africa that cooperated with Moscow in the military field was the Zimbabwe People's African Union (ZAPU), which joined the Patriotic Front together with the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1976. Cadres of ZAPU and its military wing, the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), began arriving to study in the USSR as early as mid-1964. ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo recalled his first conversation in the Top Ten in May 1976: "As soon as the decision was made to support [the Soviet leadership], I was transferred to the Soviet Union. the military committee, and I had to justify my request in detail. If I said we had 500 men and we wanted 500 Kalashnikovs, they would say, "No, 500 men means so many machine guns, so many heavy machine guns, so many mortars and anti-tank missiles," and in the end I only got about 300 Kalashnikovs... It was only after I learned how armies were run that I was able to deal on an equal footing with the Soviet military."²³

The author has repeatedly attended Nkomo's conversations with the Soviet military, and it can hardly be said that he could conduct them "on an equal footing", although, undoubtedly, he had to gain some knowledge in the military field. I remember how we organized the software-

Map of military operations in southern Angola.

a member of the Nkomo, who was a guest of the SKSSAA at the head of the ZAPU delegation in March 1978 in the Crimea, where ZIPRA fighters were trained in Perevalnoye. He was pleasantly surprised when he witnessed a radio communication session between Zimbabweans trained there and another group undergoing military training in Moscow. He and the members of his delegation were even more impressed by the exercises: ZIPRA soldiers with machine guns or grenade launchers in their hands ran and even crawled across a snow-covered field. Someone then joked: "If Ian Smith saw this, he would immediately capitulate."

In July 1977, at the request of J. R. R. Tolkien. NKOMO the first group of 12 Soviet officers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Grigoryevich Lenin, was sent to the ZAPU camp, located near the city of Luena in eastern Angola. Members of the ZAPU arrived in groups of up to 2,000 people from Angola and Mozambique. The duration of training was two months. In just one year, Soviet officers and Cubans who had worked there before trained more than 10,000 fighters and commanders.²⁴

It must be said that the conditions of our officers ' stay in this camp, as well as often in others in Angola, were extremely difficult. For example, they lived, like the Cubans, in brick buildings, but without any amenities, sometimes even the window frames were removed from them, not to mention the glass ²⁵.

The camp lacked anti-aircraft protection, and this led to a tragedy: on February 26, 1979, the Rhodesian Air Force launched a raid that killed almost 200 ZAPU fighters and injured many hundreds. Several Cuban comrades were also killed, and our Ensign Grigory Ivanovich Skakun, who was seriously wounded and died a few days later.²⁶

No less important was the work of a small group of officers led by Colonel Lev Dorofeyevich Kononov, who arrived in Lusaka on July ¹³, 1978,27 as an adviser to the political and military leadership of ZAPU on planning and organizing combat operations in Zimbabwe. V. G. Solodovnikov, the USSR Ambassador to Zambia from 1976 to 1981, recalled that Although" publicly " assigned to the Zambian Ministry of Defense, the group did not work there, but as advisers to the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Revolutionary Army [Zimbabwe], Joshua Nkomo.²⁸

The participation of Soviet officers in the training of ZIPRA personnel, whether in the Soviet Union, Angola, or Zambia, had a significant positive impact. This was also recognized by the opponents of the liberation movement. A British diplomat who attended a seminar on the history of the political settlement of the Rhodesian crisis in London in 2005 said:: "During the Lancaster House conference, I was sent to Salisbury (the capital of Rhodesia, now Harare). I remember a Rhodesian general telling me that some of his troops had just had a nasty shock. They were used to the fact that after the transfer and disembarkation from helicopters, the partisans disappeared. However, a week before his meeting with this general, when the Rhodesians got out of the helicopter to engage "a group of ZIPRA forces, which had been prepared by the Russians shortly before... the devils didn't run away. They stopped and fought." So it may have affected things in Rhodesia."²⁹.

It certainly was. In addition, it should not be forgotten that by that time ZIPRA had advanced equipment, including tanks and artillery, at its disposal in Zambia, and although most of it was never used, its very presence on the border with Rhodesia and the threat of a powerful ZIPRA offensive also undoubtedly affected the readiness of the racist movement. the regime and its satellites should negotiate.

In Mozambique, the armed struggle began in 1964, and in the same year FRELIMO began to receive weapons and equipment from the Soviet Union. Even earlier, members of this organization began to arrive in the USSR for military training. The author himself first rendered-

In Tropical Africa in January 1967, as part of an AN-10 crew from OKABON, a Separate Red Banner Special Aviation Brigade, the task of which was to transport a group of FRELIMO fighters to the Crimea from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) for training.

As noted by one of the leaders of the armed struggle, FRELIMO veteran Sergio Vieira, at its final stage, a special role was played by new weapons received from the USSR (see: Vieira S. FRELIMO after half a century-report at the conference " 50 years of the year of Africa. Destinies of National Liberation Movements: A View from Africa, Russia and Western Europe", Moscow, March 30-31, 2010).

Even earlier, in 1961, armed struggle began in Angola, and in 1963-in Guinea-Bissau. The national liberation organizations in these three countries - FRELIMO, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the African Independence Party of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC) - had a common enemy, the Portuguese colonial regime, and therefore coordination of aid to them was particularly important.

In this context, we should consider the trip of a group of Soviet officials to a number of independent African countries in early 1967, which was headed by P. I. Mancha. It included representatives of the International Department of the Central Committee, the Foreign Ministry and the KGB, or rather, its First Department-political intelligence. It is noteworthy that the group was mostly "political" and did not include representatives of the Ministry of Defense.³⁰ But since the mid-60s, due to the expansion of the armed struggle in the then Portuguese colonies, the beginning of hostilities in Namibia and Zimbabwe, the USSR military department began to play an increasingly important role in this. A special unit was created in the Soviet General Staff, which for many years was headed by General I. F. Plakhin, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. He visited the liberated areas of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau in the early 1970s, and Angola in early 1976, while the South African intervention was still ongoing.

As for Angola, a detailed account of Moscow's relations with the MPLA was published by the author in No. 8 of this journal in 2005 ("Moscow - Luanda: Zigzags of History"). Perhaps it is worth adding one fact to it - I wrote then that " history still needs to return the name of the deputy commander of the air transport regiment from Ivanovo, who was able to transfer rocket launchers on AN AN-22 plane to Port Noir." Fortunately, this name appeared on the website dedicated to the history of the 81st regiment of Military Transport Aviation-Lieutenant Colonel Boris Petrovich Zhukov, one of our "unsung heroes" ³¹.

Among the Soviet servicemen who visited Angola, one name stands out-Lieutenant General, and then Colonel General Konstantin Yakovlevich Kurochkin. Propagandists and even scientists in the West have created many legends around this name. However, they do not call him Konstantin Kurochkin, but "Konstantin Shaganovitch" ³². However, they never refer to any sources, but there is no doubt that this false information was provided to them by South African or Western intelligence services.

In fact, in Angola, there was indeed a chief military adviser with a similar surname - Shakhnovich, but his name was Vasily Vasilyevich, and he returned to the Union in 1980. And since 1982, Konstantin Kurochkin has been appointed to the post of Chief Military Adviser. He spent three years in Angola, but his impact on Angolan events continued much later.

According to the famous British journalist Fred Bridgland, who called the whole part of his book, consisting of several chapters, "The Offensive of General Shaganovitch", he was "a well-known expert on chemical warfare", and this statement was supposed to confirm that the Angolan brigade that opposed the South African troops allegedly had chemical weapons.³³ In fact, the situation was the opposite - it was South African troops who used chemical weapons in Angola. However, do not

It may come as no surprise that Bridgland and his friends underestimated the number of Soviet troops in Angola. He's writing: "Intelligence sources estimated that Shaganovitch had about 950 Soviets in command and training posts in Angola," ³⁴ while General Kurochkin, in his own words, estimated "a Soviet advisory apparatus of about 2,000 men." ³⁵

CUBA AND OUR ADVISORS

It is worth, perhaps, to dwell on one aspect of the activities of the Soviet military in Angola. Initially, in the West, both politicians and journalists tended to write about Cubans in Angola as Soviet proxies. However, in recent years, some of them have begun to emphasize the differences in approaches between the Cuban and Soviet ones. In his speech at the 30th anniversary of the Cuban military mission in Angola, Fidel Castro emphasized that "great respect and strong feelings of solidarity and mutual understanding have always prevailed between the Cuban and Soviet militaries." ³⁶ But then he continued: "We trained tens of thousands of Angolan soldiers and acted as advisers to train the Angolan military operations. The Soviets advised the military high command and provided sufficient arms supplies to the Angolan armed Forces" (MPLA)³⁷.

The last words are absolutely correct. According to archival data, from 1976 to February 1989, these shipments amounted to 3.7 billion rubles. ³⁸ rubles, and full-fledged Soviet rubles at that. The success of the Cuban and Angolan forces in 1988 would not have been possible, in particular, without the creation of a reliable air defense system using rocket launchers and modern aircraft superior to South African ones. However, it would be wrong to limit the role of the Soviets only to their advice to the "high military command" and the supply of weapons. They also trained thousands of Angolan soldiers and commanders and also acted as advisors "to train the military operations of Angolan troops". For example, during the battles of Cuito Cuanavale, as a rule, five or six of our advisers and specialists were in the brigades of the Angolan troops on a permanent basis or on secondment from military districts.

In another speech, criticizing the actions of the Soviet military, Castro said:: "Expert Advisors... They were thought to be fighting the battle of Berlin under Marshal Zhukov, with thousands of tanks and 40,000 guns. They did not understand and could not understand the problems of the "third world", the situation in which the struggle was being waged, and the type of war that needed to be waged in this situation. " ³⁹

It's hard to agree with that. On the contrary, our officers (at least many of them) could and did understand the "problems of the third world" well, since they themselves, often directly, participated in dozens of conflicts there, including the war in Afghanistan. For example, when the Soviet ambassador introduced General Kurochkin to the Angolan Defense Minister, he specifically mentioned that he had arrived in Angola "almost directly from Afghanistan." Moreover, in the mid-1980s, it was decided that at least 30% of our officers were sent to Angola with experience in the war in Afghanistan.

This does not mean, of course, that no mistakes were made. It is possible that some of the officers who arrived from the "ordinary" troops were more familiar with the tactics of regular troops ' combat than with anti-partisan, or rather anti - bandit actions. It is also possible that when our representatives advised the Angolan high command to conduct an operation in the south-east of the country in 1987 in the direction of the "capital" of UNITA, Jamba, they underestimated the potential scale of possible intervention by South African troops. But it was this massive intervention by Pretoria that, so to speak, changed the "rules of the game" and "allowed" the Cubans to cross the Namib-Lubango-Menongo line, which they occupied about 200 km north of the border with Namibia, for the first time in many years, to move south and thereby create a threat of encirclement by South African troops. in the south-west of Angola and, moreover, the direct entry of Cuban forces into the territory of Namibia, which so frightened Pretoria and its patrons in the West. As for heavy weapons, in the beginning of 1988. The Cuban command itself concentrated 1,000 tanks, 1,600 artillery and anti-aircraft guns, and 1,000 armored vehicles in southern Angola, ⁴⁰ while the advance of Cuban and Angolan SWAPO units and detachments to the Namibian border was precisely a regular force operation.

* * *

In his book " The History of the USSR. From Lenin to Khrushchev " the outstanding French writer Louis Aragon claimed that in 1920, during the Soviet-Polish war, J. V. Stalin complained in a letter to V. I. Lenin that the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was negating the successes achieved by the Red Army. Unfortunately, I could not find the text of such a letter to confirm his words, but the history of our relations with Angola in the very last period of the Soviet Union's existence makes me recall that episode.

Although serious progress has been made in the fight against UNITA with the participation of our advisers, and South African troops have already been withdrawn from both Angola and Namibia, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has clearly made mistakes with regard to Angola. Since the collective leadership in the country, despite the slogans of democratization, had practically ceased to exist by this time, he acted increasingly out of control, and on the advice of his American friends met in December 1990, shortly before his shameful resignation, with the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi.

V. N. Kazimirov, at that time the USSR Ambassador to Angola, and then the last head of the Africa Department at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, wrote: "In Moscow, after Shevardnadze's meeting with Savimbi in New York, there was almost some hesitation : who should we focus on in Angola? Our embassy defended the orientation to dos Santos, contrary to the fashion of the time and in defiance of the diverse "democrats". Shevardnadze's assistants and even our press began to describe Savimbi, noting his intelligence, sense of humor, etc. This reminded me of how the Americans had praised him, pointing out that he quoted Rousseau in French, Mao Zedong in Chinese, and so on. But after all, the champions of democracy could not help but know that not only the Savimbi cult flourishes in UNITA, but also witchcraft, corporal punishment, and other "democratic" pearls of the Middle Ages.

The end of Jonas Savimbi is now generally known, but there is no overseas repentance to the Angolan people, who endured a quarter of a century of devastating war thanks to the fanaticism of the UNITA leader, for whom the United States and some other governments have been so proud for so long. " ⁴²

* * *

In conclusion, it should be noted that although our military cooperation with both Angola and other Southern African countries suffered significantly in the early 1990s, during the Yeltsin-Kozyrev diplomacy, it has already developed in this millennium, and the experience gained by the Soviet military during the national liberation war Of course, the authority that they have earned helps Russia today.

¹ True. 7.7.1970.

² Russian Archive of Modern History (hereinafter - RGANI), f. 4, op. 18, d. 1017, pp. 61-63.

^{Nel P.} 3 Soviet Embassy in Pretoria? The Changing Soviet Approach to South Africa. Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1990, p. 43.

^{Campbell K.} 4 Soviet Policy Towards South Africa. Macmillan, Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1986, p. 4.

^{Grundy K.} 5 Guerilla Struggle in Africa. New York: Grossman, 1971, p. 51.

⁶ Today. 1993, N 5.

^{Bell T.} 7 with Ntebeza D.B. Unfinished Business. South Africa, Apartheid and Truth. London and New York: Verso, 2003, p. 119.

⁸ Ibid., p. 274.

⁹ Star. Johannesburg, 11.9.1991.

¹⁰ Echo. 21.2.1990.

¹¹ Freedom in our Lifetime by Archie Sibeko (Zola Zembe) with Joyce Leeson - http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/congress/sactu/zzl.htm

¹² Interview with M. Sekhvale. Moscow, 16.10.2005

¹³ Today. 1993, N 3.

¹⁴ S. Nyanda's letter to the author, 10.12.2002

¹⁵ Letter from the leadership of the UACP to the Central Committee of the CPSU dated 6.9.1970. Quoted by: Maloka E. The South African Communist Party in Exile. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2001, p. 29.

¹⁶ Dawn, Souvenir Issue [1986], p. 33 - 34.

¹⁷ S. Nyanda's letter to the author, 10.12.2002

^{Ellis S.} 18 and Sechaba T. Comrades against apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile. Bloomington: Indiana University Press and Indianapolis: James Currey, 1992, p. 182.

¹⁹ Ibidem.

²⁰ Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya [World Economy and International Relations], 1993, No. 4, pp. 79-86; No. 5, pp. 81-90; No. 7, pp. 88-104; No. 8, pp. 68-78.

²¹ The author attended this interview on 10 August 1976.

²² The Role of the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany in Fomenting Terrorism in Southern Africa. Addendum. US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1982, Vol. 2, p. 7 - 8.

^{Nkomo J.} 23 The Story of My Life. London, Methuen, 1984, p. 174 - 175.

^{Burenko A.} 24 Difficult, but extremely important period of life. - see: Memoirs of direct participants and eyewitnesses of the civil war in Angola, Moscow, Memories, 2009, pp. 80-81.

²⁵ Ibid., p. 84.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ V. G. Solodovnikov's notes on the document "Strikes of Rhodesian troops on ZIPRA facilities in Zambia". The author is deeply grateful to Vasily Grigoryevich for the opportunity to get acquainted with it.

^{Solodovnikov V. G.} 28 The Cold War in Southern Africa, 1976-1981. Bulletin of the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1998, No. 4, p. 2.

²⁹ Witness Seminar. Britain and Rhodesian Question: The Road to Settlement 1979 - 1980. London, 2005, p. 77.

^{Evsyukov P. N.} 30 Unpublished memoirs, p. 24; Kirpichenko V. Intelligence: faces and Personalities, Moscow, Gaia Publ., 1998, pp. 205-206.

³¹ http://vta81vtap.narod.ru/history.htm

³² See, for example: Ellis S. and Sechaba T. Op. cit.; Bridgland F. The War for Africa, Twelve Months that Transformed a Continent. Ashanti Publishing House, Gibraltar, 1990.

^{Bridgland F.} 33 The War for Africa.., p. 62.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 53.

³⁵ Main directions and results of activity of the Soviet military apparatus in the NRA in 1982-1985. Speech of Colonel-General K. Y. Kurochkin at the conference "40 years of the armed struggle of the Angolan people for National Independence and Soviet-Angolan military cooperation", Moscow, March 29, 2001, p. 2.

³⁶ Speech by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic of Cuba, at the Ceremony Commemorating the 30^th Anniversary of the Cuban Military Mission in Angola and the 49^th Anniversary of the Landing of the 'Granma'. Revolutionary Armed Forces Day, 2 December, 2005.

³⁷ Ibidem.

³⁸ RANI, f. 89, op. 10, d. 20, p. 2. In addition, in 1989-1990, it was planned to supply another 600 million tons of weapons to Angola. rubles (in the same place).

^{Castro F.} 39 Speech in Mandela Park, Kingston, Jamaica, July 30, 1998 // Granma, Havana, 7 August, 1998.

^{Castro F.} 40 Vincicaciyn de Cuba (Cubars Vindication). Havana: Editora Politica Publishers, 1989, p. 404.

⁴¹ Izvestia. 13.12.1990. A journalist from this newspaper even compared Savimbi's "program" favorably to Gorbachev's Perestroika.

⁴² Kazimirov V. My MGIMO - www.kazimirov.ru.

Permanent link to this publication: