An analysis of the content of three publications, Pravda, Izvestiya and Novoe Vremya, from 1985-1992 shows how news coverage of Africa was increasingly marginalised as Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ reforms took hold. The stance adopted towards Africa changed from communist paternalism to outright negativity as the continent was used by politicians and journalists as a metaphor for poverty and backwardness. The result was rising racism against Africans living in Russia.
N. Yermoshkin , Spiritual Colonialism ( Prague , 1984).
2.
European Race Bulletin (No. 49, October 2004), p. 20.
3.
‘Pioneers’ were the Soviet equivalent of boy scouts and girl guides.
4.
B. Asoyan, ‘Afrika uzh tak daleko’, Literanturnaya Gazeta (No. 14, 7 November 1987).
5.
A. B. Davidson , D. Olderogge and S. Solodonikov , The USSR and Africa (1966), pp. 46-70.
6.
Charles Quist-Adade , In the Shadows of the Kremlin and the White House: Africa’s media image from communism to post-communism ( Lanham, MD, University Press of America , 2001).
7.
G. Fokeev, ‘Afrika v chem. Nah natsional’nyi interes?’, Asiya i Afrika cegodnya (No. 5, 1991), p. 34.
8.
Davidson, Olderogge and Solodonikov, op. cit., p. 14.
9.
Some of the ex-Soviet publications removed this slogan after the demise of communism.
10.
See Osnovi Marksistsko-Leninskoi Filosofi (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1985).
11.
Y. Popov , ‘New political thinking in the Third World’, Asiya i Afrika Cegodnya (No. 4, 1990), p. 36.
12.
During his six years in office, Gorbachev mentioned Africa no more than three times in his public speeches and even these were references made in the context of a general discussion about the Third World.
13.
N. Travkin, Literator (1 December 1990), p. 1.
14.
Pravda (29 December 1987), p. 5.
15.
Popov, op. cit.
16.
The Russian pronunciation of ‘negro’ is ‘niegr’, which sounds somewhere between ‘negro’ and ‘nigger’.
17.
A. A. Gromyko, Aktualnie Problemi Otnoshenii s Strannami Afriki (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1985).
18.
Pravda (12 October 1991), p. 5.
19.
B. C. Cohen , The Press and Foreign Policy ( London, Princeton University Press , 1963).
20.
Asoyan, op. cit.
21.
L. Zevin and V. Telerman, ‘Razvivayushie Stranni v Nashei Ekonomicheskoi Strategii’, Svobodnaya Mysl (No. 18, 1991), pp. 85-93.
22.
Ibid.
23.
By the beginning of 1992, there were under 8,000 African students, less than 10 per cent of the entire foreign student population, in various parts of the former Soviet Union. It is estimated that, in 1993, this number was more than halved as Third World scholarships were cut.
24.
B. Asoyan, ‘Sgushennoi krasok’ Komsomoslkaya Pravda (No. 4, 7 August 1989), p. 3.
25.
Asoyan, ‘Afrika uzh tak daleko’, op. cit.
26.
M. S. Gorbachev, Perestroika i Novoe Myshlenie dlya Nashei Straniy i Vsego Mira (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1988).
