Search

The history of military co-operation between the USSR and the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa has still to be written. The same applies to co-operation with Moscow in the post-independence period. So far the attempts to do so have been unsuccessful, not only due to the lack of accessible documents, but also due to an uncritical attitude to the available materials. This paper attempts to present a 'factual version of history'. It addresses in particular the issues of training the African combatants in the USSR, and the activities of the Soviet teams attached to the ANC, SWAPO and ZAPU as well as to the armed forces of the independent African countries. While most of the Russian archives are still 'sealed off', the author has used oral history sources and memoirs as an invaluable means of painting a picture of the Soviet involvement from the early 1960s to 1991. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]