“Culture Clash in the Socialist Paradise: Soviet Patronage and African Students’ Urbanity in the Soviet Union, 1960^–₅1965_59ya”, Sean Guillory2014-03-11 (history)⁠:

The encounters between Soviet citizens and African students studying in the Soviet Union in the 1960s inevitably generated problems of acclimation, social and political conflict, and racial strife.

The article illuminates the ways the cultural clash affirmed Russians’ and Africans’ sense of cultural superiority. The African presence in Russia confirmed Soviet altruism in rearing Africans into cultured and scientifically endowed people. Similarly, African encounters with Soviet daily life reaffirmed their identity as culturally superior to Russians by emphasizing aspects of the individual that directly conflicted with Soviet notions of collectivism.

The conflict over culturedness had direct ramifications on the Cold War as it strengthened Africans’ pragmatic stance toward Soviet patronage and their reluctance to embrace Soviet ideology and values.

…The number of African countries with students in Russia rapidly increased from 10 in 1958 to 46 in 1968. The 1959–60 school year had a mere 72 students from sub-Saharan Africa, increasing to 500 in 1961, and then to 4,000 by the end of the decade. Of the 17,400 foreign students in the Soviet Union in 1970, 20% originated from Africa.⁹

Soviet officials articulated their policy toward the Third World in paternalist language that essentialized all African nations to an identical stage of backwardness. As Nikita Khrushchev reiterated in a speech to the Council of Ministers in November 1960: “[Lenin] saw the historical mission of our country to help the hundreds of millions of people of downtrodden countries …to liquidate economic and cultural backwardness.” The Soviet’s own historical trajectory furnished the template. Having to quickly industrialize in the thirties, the Soviet Union, Khrushchev emphasized, “was familiar and understood” the needs of postcolonial states. Therefore, Khrushchev insisted that the Soviet leadership designed the People’s Friendship University “only for one thing: to help other countries to prepare highly qualified personnel.” After all, the Soviet people, he said, were “like brothers” to foreigners and endeavored to help them “learn better.”¹⁰ The idea that Soviet citizens were “like brothers” to Africans was a staple of Soviet ideology propaganda, which often portrayed whites as “class enemies and oppressors” or simply “bourgeois” and regarded dark-skinned people, and Africans in particular, as “our foreigners.”¹¹

To entice youth from developing countries, the Soviet government offered free transportation from their home countries, education, healthcare, and a monthly stipend. The stipend was 4× higher than those of Soviet students and included a onetime lump-sum of 300–400 rubles for winter clothing and other supplies.¹² Prospective students applied for scholarships through Soviet embassies or Soviet-friendly organizations. Students from countries without student exchange agreements could apply directly to a Soviet university… Soviet administrators followed national quotas to balance out national representation and prioritized students with worker and peasant backgrounds. In the first years, the “overwhelming majority” came from the poor, working class, and lower bureaucratic layers of African society. Of the incoming students for the 1961–62 year, for example, 25% had not completed secondary education and over half were from “poverty stricken families.”¹⁵ But ultimately class played little role in admissions, as most applicants were rejected simply for lack of space. UND pro-Rector P. D. Erzin reported that by the middle of 1960 the university had received 16,200 applications, or 30 for each available place.¹⁶ The class nature of foreign students began to change later in the decade, however, as wealthier Africans started applying. This influx of “landowning and merchant classes” prompted B. S. Nikoforov, the head of Moscow State University’s international office, to complain that many students had been “corrupted by bourgeois morals.” These included individualism, concern with personal esthetics and consumerism, and affinity toward Western liberalism. Moreover, many had first studied in Western Europe and the United States and still maintained contact with their embassies. Nikoforov considered them possible “enemy agents” and “class aliens” in black skin.¹⁷

…Shortly after their arrival, students took a mandatory exam assessing their general educational level. Consistent with their paternalism and class-based affirmative action, Soviet officials purposely relegated placement exams to “simple questions”, expecting students to have little preparatory education. At a UND council meeting in 1960, V. S. Bondarenko, the dean of the preparatory department, reported that foreign students’ knowledge level on average was equivalent to the Soviet 7^th grade, particularly in math. One student, Bondarenko noted, exclaimed “Praise Allah!” after discovering his major did not require math courses. Many students only possessed religious education and knew a bit of their country’s history but had little knowledge of math, physics, or geography.²²

Unaware of Soviet affirmative action, students expressed offense and considered the exams patronizing. Anti-Taylor was “appalled” when he was only asked to locate his native Ghana on a map, name the colonial power that formally dominated it, and solve “2 simple algebra problems.”²³ William Appleton, an engineering student from Liberia, recalled with dismay: “During my 2 days’ wait I have been screwing myself up for a stiff exam, especially since I had no [secondary school] certificate. And then one man asks me a few elementary questions any child could answer!”²⁴

Antagonism to communist indoctrination was another widespread complaint, especially among students hostile to Marxist ideology. Courses in Marxist ideology, political economy, or dialectical materialism were not required. Still, students expected Soviet higher education to be devoid of all Marxist ideology. However, much to the consternation of unsympathetic students, Marxist ideology inevitably bled into many courses. William Appleton too complained that his compulsory history course “was nothing less than the indoctrination in Marxist ideology. So in order to get your training as a doctor, an engineer or a scientist …you have to submit to indoctrination in their political attitudes.”²⁵ Indeed, a Komsomol report on foreign students noted, “students from capitalist countries” were open to classes on domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet state but “refuse to take courses on the history of the KPSS, philosophy and political economy.”²⁶