African Soldiers in the USSR: Oral Histories of ZAPU Intelligence Cadres’ Soviet Training, 1964–1979
Journal: Journal of Southern African Studies
Year: 2017

A growing literature has shed new light on interactions between the Soviet Union and Africa, notably through studies of the large numbers of African students who arrived in Moscow from 1960. Scholars have, however, largely ignored the many thousands of African military trainees who arrived in the same period. Here we begin to explore soldiers’ experiences through a focus on intelligence cadres of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). We ask how their Soviet sojourns shaped their lives and