Gennadyevich Shubin.  _The Hot 'Cold War': The USSR in Southern Africa_

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Vladimir Gennadyevich Shubin.  _The Hot 'Cold War': The USSR in Southern
Africa_.  Pluto Press, 2008.  320 pp.  Plates, notes, glossary, index.
ISBN-13: 978-0745324722.

URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/essays/PDF/Gleijeses-Shubin.pdf

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Reviewed by Piero Gleijeses, The Johns Hopkins University, SAIS.
Published on 12 June 2009

Vladimir Shubin argues in _The Hot 'Cold War'_ that Moscow played a very
constructive role in southern Africa.  Shubin, a former Soviet official
who worked for two decades on Africa – first in the Soviet Afro-Asian
Solidarity Committee and then in the International Department of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union – takes the reader through thirty
years of Soviet policy in southern Africa, from the early 1960s to the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  He proceeds geographically,
exploring Soviet policy toward Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia,
and South Africa.

The history of the Cold War in southern Africa has not yet been written.
It is a kaleidoscope in which the perennial clash between the United
States and the Soviet Union is superimposed on the bitter conflict among
the local actors – apartheid South Africa, black governments, and
liberation movements.  In 1975, the most improbable of protagonists, the
Cuba of Fidel Castro, burst onto the stage with tens of thousands of
soldiers.  A few good secondary accounts illuminate some moments of this
saga, but much is still _terra incognita_.  Those who have written about
Soviet policy in southern Africa have relied on their imagination or
documents from the U.S. and British archives.  Vladimir Shubin is the
first to use Soviet documents.  His access was limited, however, and was
particularly sparse for the years after 1975.  He is upfront about this.
"I am afraid that this narrative has to be uneven, perhaps even patchy,"
he explains.  "It depends to a great extent on the availability (or
rather non-availability) of archive material, success (or failure) in my
search for witness-participants, preservation of my personal notes and
the state of my memory." (p. 4) No one could fault him for failing to
gather more Soviet documents.  Shubin is a trailblazer, and he enriches
our knowledge.

But he is a trailblazer on a mission.  He writes, "If initially many
politicians and authors tried to portray Cubans as 'Soviet proxies,' a
new tendency appeared after the 'collapse' of the Soviet Union:
downplaying the role of the Soviets and emphasizing the differences
between Havana and Moscow. It is now the right time to set the record
straight." (p. 73)

In his attempt to "set the record straight" Shubin unwittingly exposes
how perilous it is to rely on the archives of only one country when
writing international history.  Shubin has looked only at the partially
open Soviet archives, and he has interviewed (with few exceptions) only
Russian participants.  Thus his book reflects the weaknesses and
inaccuracies of his limited array of Soviet sources.  _The Hot 'Cold
War'_ serves as a reminder of the obligation of scholars to check their
evidence and to be sensitive to the weaknesses of their sources.  This
is particularly important when the historian, in an attempt to explore
the shadowy corners of history in the developing world, moves beyond
open western archives – where the rules are clear and documents (however
redacted) are available to _bona fide_ researchers – into the neverland
of closed or semiclosed archives.  The burden of transparency and
carefulness falls particularly heavily on those, such as Shubin, whose
conclusions challenge accepted truths.

I agree with Shubin's thesis that the Soviet Union, not the West, was
"on the side of the angels" in southern Africa.  I disagree, however,
with the way he proceeds to this conclusion: in order to enhance the
Soviet role he understates the importance of Cuban policy in Africa.
This distorts the facts.  Frequently, Shubin's distortions are subtle –
a stray comment here, an oversight there, stressing one source and
neglecting another – and I suspect that they will be invisible to most
readers who are not be steeped in the intricacies of Soviet and Cuban
policies in southern Africa.  I also suspect that many readers, who
would otherwise dismiss Shubin's praise of the Soviet Union, may be
drawn to his Moscow vs. Havana approach because Castro's Cuba still
stands, bloodied but unbending, and its record in southern Africa –
where it took the lead and the Kremlin followed – is hard to believe.
It turns established wisdom about the relationship between the
superpowers and their weak allies on its head.

I am well aware that in criticizing Shubin I run the risk of being
accused of bias, of being on a mission myself.  I have spent fifteen
years doing research in the closed Cuban archives and I know that even
objective scholars can fall under the spell of their documents,
particularly if they dig in closed archives.  There is only one
antidote: to diversify and compare.  Compare, for example, the evidence
that emerges from the Cuban, the U.S. and the South African archives;
then enrich the mixture with other relevant archives that offer a
different perspective – those of Zambia, the former German Democratic
Republic, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, and the Italian Communist
Party. (The Angolan archives remain hermetically closed.)  Only the
combination of sources from the West, the Communist world, and Africa
will allow us to reach a better understanding of the Cold War in
southern Africa.

I will focus on Shubin's discussion of Soviet policy in Angola, because
it occupies almost half the book and because it is here that his
greatest contributions and grossest distortions occur.  The section
begins well:  Shubin's analysis of the struggle against Portuguese
colonial rule (1961-74) is excellent.  He uses several good documents
from the Russian archives, some revealing interviews with Soviet
protagonists, and his own notes of conversations with leaders of the
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the liberation
movement Moscow supported.  He discusses with a sure hand the
vicissitudes of Moscow's relations with the MPLA and the tensions
between the Kremlin and the MPLA president, Agostinho Neto.  I disagree
with some of Shubin's assessments, but these are matters of
interpretation not fact.

Following the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, civil war
broke out among Angola's three guerrilla movements.  In October 1975
South Africa, encouraged by the United States, invaded Angola to crush
the MPLA, which was on the verge of defeating its two rivals.  As the
South Africans raced toward Luanda, MPLA resistance crumbled.
Pretoria's army would have seized the capital had Castro not decided to
send troops in response to the MPLA's desperate appeals.  As Shubin
points out, "the archive documents and oral sources prove that Havana's
decision was its own." (p. 52) Indeed, Castro did not consult or even
inform Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev before making his
decision because he knew that Brezhnev was loath to do anything that
could derail détente with the United States.  The Cuban troops halted
the South African invasion, and in late March 1976 the South Africans
withdrew into Namibia.  The MPLA established the People's Republic of
Angola, and Neto became the country's president.

Shubin's discussion of Soviet policy toward Angola in 1975-76 is good,
but less rich than for the earlier period, for a simple reason: he has
fewer sources.  Until 1975 Soviet relations with the MPLA were handled
at a relatively low level because assistance to a liberation movement
did not involve high state policy.  Shubin, a mid-level official, had
access to the relevant documents.  But in 1975, Angola was elevated to a
major cold war crisis, which meant that decision-making was bumped up to
a much higher level.  Shubin had no access to the very senior officials
who made the decisions, and the documents remain classified.  His
account of these crucial months relies instead on interviews with
lower-level Soviet protagonists on the ground and on some of the reports
they wrote.  It adds depth and texture to the story.  While many
questions are still unanswered, this is the most authoritative account
of Soviet policy in Angola in those two critical years.

What is troubling is Shubin's discussion of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Let me first outline the facts, as I understand them, in broad strokes.
After independence, Angola became Moscow's key ally in southern Africa.
For the next fifteen years (from 1976 to 1991) the Soviets supplied
virtually all Angola's arms.  A Soviet military mission of over 1,000
men helped train the Angolan army in the use of the Soviet weapons,
repair the equipment, and assist in strategic planning.  The Soviet
mission coexisted with a much larger Cuban military mission – more than
30,000 soldiers whose main role was to protect Angola from a South
African invasion.  Bowing to the South Africans' air superiority in
southern Angola, the Cubans pulled their troops some 150 miles north of
the Namibian border, creating a defensive line that barred access to the
heart of Angola.  Through the 1980s, the South Africans launched
bruising invasions of Angola south of the Cuban defensive line, but they
never breached the line.  My research in the South African archives
reveals how necessary the Cuban military presence was: Pretoria's goal
was to topple the MPLA government and replace it with the rebel leader
Jonas Savimbi who had pledged that once in power he would expel from
Angola the South African liberation fighters (ANC) and the guerrillas of
the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) who were fighting
for Namibia's independence from South Africa. That is, regime change in
Angola would not only make the ANC's struggle more difficult, it would
also help stabilize South African rule over Namibia.

Shubin has very few sources on this important period.  Fully half of his
brief discussion of the late 1970s is devoted to the coup attempt
against President Neto in May 1977 led by Nito Alves. Westerners as well
as Africans, scholars as well as bureaucrats cite this coup attempt – in
which the Cubans openly supported Neto and the Soviets quietly backed
Alves – as a glaring example of the divergence of Soviet and Cuban
policy in Angola.  "The Cubans and the Russians haven't been always
united in Angola," U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young told a Senate
subcommittee in 1978. "When there was a recent coup attempt against
Neto, it was pretty clear from African sources that the Russians were
behind that coup.  Yet the Cubans sided with Neto."  Five years later,
the _Times_ (of London) reported that in Luanda "it is said _sotto
voce_" that Alves had acted "with Russian support."1

Shubin, however, disagrees.  "I believe that the rumours of Soviet
involvement in 'Alves coup' were deliberately spread by Western circles,
as well as some forces within Angola, which questioned its 'too close'
links with Moscow." (p. 70) He provides no evidence for this assertion.
This is a case in which probing beyond Russian sources would have been
edifying.  While there is no smoking gun, the documents in the open
Yugoslav archives as well as in the closed Cuban archives, together with
the testimonies of key Angolan officials, all point to Soviet complicity
with the plotters.  A few days after the failed coup, Neto told the
Yugoslav ambassador "that Cuba behaved well, unlike the Soviet Union."2

It is in discussing the 1980s that Shubin's zero-sum-game, his Moscow
vs. Havana approach, emerges with full force.  At first sight, his
treatment of the decade seems simply idiosyncratic.  He says very little
about Castro's decision in November 1987 – made without consulting
Moscow – to send reinforcements to Angola to push the South Africans out
of the country once and for all, and he barely mentions the ensuing
negotiations that led, finally, to Namibian independence.  Shubin
brushes over these momentous events in just a few pages, without
addressing any major issue, such as the clash between Moscow and Havana
or the Soviet role in the Angolans' foolhardy offensive against Savimbi
in July 1987.  His analysis and even understanding of these important
events is straightjacketed by his failure to consult the South African
and U.S. archives.

Shubin focuses instead on 1982-1985, the period when General Konstantin
Kurochkin headed the Soviet military mission in Angola.  The reason is
simple: "Kurochkin kindly proposed that I consult three notebooks,
containing minutes or summaries of almost all the meetings he had in the
three years of his service in Africa.  They are especially valuable
because they were written straight away, without any further
'improvements,' which unfortunately occur frequently in memoirs and
'oral histories.'" (p. 78)

Konstantin Kurochkin was a formidable personality who exerted a very
strong influence over Soviet military strategy in Angola.  "No other
head of the Soviet Military Mission was as influential as Konstantin,
not before him and not after him," General Roberto Ramos Monteiro
(Ngongo), who was the deputy chief of staff of the Angolan army, told
me.  "Konstantin!  Even after he had left Angola, even when he was back
in the Soviet Union, we could feel his presence.  He really wanted to
impose his views; he didn't like to listen.  He thought that since he
was giving us the weapons, we had to do what he said."3

Every single one of the six Cuban and ten Angolan Generals I have asked
about Konstantin paid homage to his achievements.  He was the most
effective advocate with Moscow for more and better weapons for the
Angolan army, and for more scholarships for Angolan officers to study
and train in the Soviet Union.  But he could not adapt to the needs of
guerrilla warfare.  General António dos Santos França, who was the
Angolan chief of staff in the 1980s, reflected the general consensus
when he told me: "Konstantin was the Head of the Soviet Military Mission
who most helped us to get weapons, send people for military training in
the USSR, and open centers of military instruction here.  But as a
military adviser he had an academic approach.  His frame of reference
was the Second World War.  He created many problems for us.  And he
wanted to impose his views."4

Konstantin was a product of Soviet military thinking.  As the CIA noted
in a 1988 analysis, "The Soviets have trained and equipped their allies'
forces according to the Soviet model to meet a conventional, not an
insurgent threat. ... Soviet advisers have consistently advocated large
combined-arms sweep operations – reminiscent of battle plans for Europe
instead of small-unit tactics recommended by Western theory."5

It is on this point that Shubin makes his stand.  The strategy that the
Soviet military mission advocated in Angola was well adapted to
guerrilla warfare, he argues.  Armed with Konstantin's notebooks, Shubin
sets out to explore the complicated triangular relationship between the
Cubans, Soviets, and Angolans.  While the Angolans come in for their
share of criticism, it is the Cubans who bear the brunt of Shubin's – or
rather, Konstantin's – wrath: they did not want to fight, they changed
their views suddenly, they were inconsistent.  The notebooks are
Shubin's only source.  At many points they must have been cryptic, and
Shubin stumbles. His account becomes haphazard and disjointed.  It would
have been much improved had he consulted the South African military
archives, which are open, well organized, and run by a competent and
friendly staff.  South African military advisers and intelligence
officers participated in – on the opposing side, of course – many of the
operations Konstantin describes, and their reports would have added
depth to Shubin's discussion.

More importantly, because of his failure to consult other sources,
Shubin is unable to assess the accuracy of Konstantin's version.  He is
apparently unaware that Konstantin distorts many facts and makes up
others.  For example, in February 1984, Konstantin met Fidel Castro in
Havana.  Shubin writes that Konstantin believed that "the Cubans were
not eager to fight.  They were in Angola but they were avoiding
participation in combat, and it was necessary to compel them to be more
active in the interest of the cause ... Fidel explained the reason for
such an attitude to him: 'In your country the losses may be
unnoticeable, but in our small country the human losses become known and
have a great effect, therefore we are really trying to avoid losses in
Angola." [p. 97]

After reading Shubin I reread the Cuban minutes of the February
conversation; they include not one word about Cuban willingness – or
unwillingness – to fight in Angola.  This was Konstantin's only
conversation with Castro during his trip to Havana.  But more to the
point – because I know that accounts of conversations can vary – Shubin
should have put Konstantin's criticism of the Cubans in context.  It is
not that the Cubans did not want to fight but that they opposed
Konstantin's strategy.

Shubin himself points to this, and drops it.  Quoting from the
notebooks, he writes that at a September 1984 meeting with Angolan
President José Eduardo dos Santos and Head of the Cuban Military Mission
General Polo Cintra Frías, Konstantin argued that the war in southeast
Angola "had acquired 'a classical character.' ... Polo's position was
quite the opposite, 'the war in Angola is not classical.  It has a
guerrilla character.'" (p. 102) This encapsulates the constant
tug-of-war between the Cuban and the Soviet military missions in Angola.
The Cubans favored small-unit tactics while Konstantin favored large
sweeps, many brigades acting together in a major operation.

The most vigorous clash between the two military missions was over the
proposed offensive against Savimbi's "capital" in the far southeast of
Angola – a large bush camp with a few concrete structures.  The
offensive became Konstantin's _idée fixe_.  The Cubans strongly opposed
it.  Even if successful, they argued, it would bring no important
results: Savimbi's guerrillas would melt away, leaving the Angolan
troops stranded in a sparsely populated region that lacked economic
importance.  Worse, the operation was bound to fail: it was foolhardy to
launch a conventional operation so close to the Namibian border, where
South Africa controlled the air.  In 1984 President dos Santos rejected
Konstantin's plan. "Thus 'Polo' won this time," Shubin writes. (p. 102)
The following year, however, Konstantin won, and the operation finally
took place, over the Cubans' bitter opposition and without their
participation.  Shubin notes that the offensive was a devastating
failure for the Angolans – the South Africans intervened and the
Angolans suffered "a massive loss of arms and equipment" (p. 104) – but
he fails to reflect on what the failure said about Konstantin's
strategy; he fails to reflect on why the Cubans were reluctant to follow
his lead.  He fails to connect the dots.

Let me be clear: Konstantin's notebooks are an important source.  They
introduce the voice an important protagonist, and they challenge every
serious researcher to address the issues they raise.  But the only way
to address these issues is to compare the notebooks with other sources.

I do not fault Shubin for his failure to pry classified documents from
the Russian archives or to claw his way into the closed Cuban archives –
I know only too well how excruciatingly difficult this is.  But lack of
documents should have spurred him to talk with as many of the Angolan
military leaders as possible.  Had he done so, he would have realized
how contested is Konstantin's account.  For _The Hot 'Cold War,'_
however, Shubin interviewed only one Angolan general, Ngongo, who was
the Army's deputy chief of staff in the 1980s.  Ngongo is an excellent
source.  On the two occasions I interviewed him he was forthcoming and
straightforward, speaking freely about the mistakes of the Angolan High
Command, his own mistakes, and Soviet and Cuban military policies in
Angola.  Shubin interviewed Ngongo five times, but the results are
puzzling: Shubin does not use these interviews to shed any light on
Konstantin's role in Angola, on the differences between Cuban and Soviet
strategy, or any other of the controversial issues raised by
Konstantin's notebooks.

_The Hot "Cold War"_ is a useful, irritating, and deeply flawed book.
Its central message is correct: the Soviet role in southern Africa was
constructive.  For over thirty years, Moscow lent crucial assistance to
the liberation movements that fought against white rule in southern
Africa.  Some western countries – notably those of Scandinavia – gave
these movements generous economic assistance and recognized the
legitimacy of their struggle, but they drew the line at military aid,
refusing to give weapons to those who fought, by their own reckoning,
for freedom.  Armed struggle was a key element in the collapse of white
rule in southern Africa, and armed struggle would not have been possible
without the weapons provided by the Soviet Union.

The Soviets' role was decisive in Angola, despite Konstantin's imperious
manner and the wrongheaded strategy he urged on the Angolans.  There is
no need to belittle Cuba's role to arrive at this conclusion.  In fact,
an accurate history would examine the Soviet-Cuban relationship in
southern Africa in all its complexity – its tensions and its harmonies.
It is true, for example, that the Soviets staunchly opposed the
offensive that the Cubans launched in 1988 that succeeded in forcing
South Africa to withdraw from Angola and free Namibia.  But it is also
true that the offensive would not have been possible without the Soviet
Union.  "The two great achievements of the USSR in Angola," argues
Angolan Admiral Andres Mendes de Carvalho, "were to give the weapons to
our army and aid to Cuba.  The Cubans could not have remained in Angola
without the Soviet aid."6  As Angolan President dos Santos told Fidel
Castro in December 1988, "The Soviet Union helped Angola and helped Cuba
to help Angola."7  This is a complex and fascinating story.
Unfortunately, however, _The Hot "Cold War,"_ relying on only Soviet
sources, strips it of nuance, depth, and accuracy.

Piero Gleijeses is a professor of U.S. foreign policy at the Johns
Hopkins University, SAIS.  His most recent book is _Conflicting
Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976_ (University of
North Carolina Press: rev. ed., 2003) and he is currently writing a book
on U.S. and Cuban policy in southern Africa in the Carter and Reagan
years.

Notes

1 Andrew Young, May 12, 1978, in US Senate, Committee on Foreign
Relations, Subcommittee on African Affairs, _U.S. Policy toward Africa_,
p.  32; _Times_ (London), Sept. 7, 1983, p. 6.

2 Department of Foreign-Political Affairs, "Predsednik Neto Razgovarao s
Nasim Ambasadorom. June 2, 1977," Belgrade, June 17, 1977,  p. 2,
Museum of Yugoslav History, Archive of Josip Broz Tito, Belgrade.

3 Interview with General Roberto Ramos Monteiro, Luanda, Nov. 20, 2007

4 Interview with General António dos Santos França, Luanda, Nov. 26,
2007.

5 CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, "Supporting Allies Under Insurgent
Challenge: The Soviet Experience in Africa," Feb. 1988, pp. v-vi, 1.
FOIA.

6 Interview with Andres Mendes de Carvalho, Luanda, Nov. 29, 2007.

7 MemCon (Fidel Castro, dos Santos), Havana, Dec. 17, 1988, p. 12,
Centro de Información de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias.
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