Prof. Vladimir Shubin has just published his book, From Cairo to Cape, a must-read for anyone interested in the Soviet Union’s support for liberation struggles around the world during the Cold War.
Shubin was an insider, an operator in the system: he worked closely with the who’s who of African and Asian independence movements and top-level Soviet decision-makers. This book builds on his earlier publications, notably ANC: A View from Moscow (1999) and The Hot ‘Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa (2008).
In the book, the 87-year-old Shubin recounts his career from a Soviet officer to an international diplomat across Africa and West Asia until the USSR’s fall.
Part One covers his military service from 1961 to 1968, including support for Abdel Nasser’s Egypt during the North Yemen civil war and his role in the 1967 Six-Day War. After a medical mishap, he shifted to international solidarity work, which changed his life.
Part Two, starting in 1969, highlights his work with Southern African liberation movements, guerrilla warfare, and independence efforts in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Zimbabwe.
Part Three covers the 1980s and 1990s, during which he earned a PhD and was reassigned as a Soviet Communist Party Africa section officer. It also discusses African independence movements reaching Namibia and South Africa, the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika – whom Shubin sharply criticises – and the collapse of the USSR.
The aftermath negatively impacted Shubin’s career, prompting him to move to South Africa to teach at the University of the Western Cape.
A pilot wrote the book. It offers glimpses of 33 years from a bird’s-eye view, riding on a plane from Cairo to Southern Africa, opposite the direction of Cecil Rhodes’s unfulfilled imperial dream. When you read it, you feel airborne, gazing down at landscapes and objects as they approach and then vanish behind you.
Shubin takes you on a journey: you are in Cairo, and suddenly you find yourself in the presence of Kwame Nkrumah in Conakry, plotting how to reinstate him as president after he was toppled in a coup in 1966 in Ghana. Then, it’s across the Red Sea to Yemen. Kabul appears, where the Soviets were heavily involved.
Somewhere, Shubin is in Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Ethiopia, attempting to mend relations with Somalia. You also see him hosting Yasser Arafat or Amilcar Cabral to give lectures in Moscow. When he is in Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Maputo, Luanda or Johannesburg, he is meeting leaders such as Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Joshua Nkomo, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Sam Nujoma and Joaquim Chissano.
More entertaining is the use of humour as a literary device by the author to keep the reader captivated within the text.
He spices this with Shubin-style anecdotes about vodka and the wild things we do under its intoxicating influence. The book features its author as a protagonist, similar to any memoir, but it is also rich in research material from primary and secondary sources, blended with the author’s personal recollections.
A common theme throughout the book is how Shubin was self-aware of the importance of constant self-improvement in knowledge to better understand his assignment, stakeholders, and the achievement of his tasks. We see him continually reading and conducting research.
From Cairo to Cape provides insight into how seriously the Soviet leadership regarded their support for anti-colonial movements, which involved not only military aid, financial assistance, or hosting meetings but also softer areas such as education, medical services, and holiday vacations.
From Cairo to Cape, the latest book by renowned internationalist and former Soviet diplomat Prof. Vladimir Shubin.Picture: UNISA
International solidarity was vital to the Soviet foreign policy system. In contrast, South Africa’s African Renaissance Fund has faced a barrage of criticism, accused of being a waste of taxpayers’ money.
This perspective confuses self-interest with national interest and views the latter in transactional terms. According to this logic, you should only contribute to a family member’s funeral expenses if you stand to benefit from the deceased’s estate.
In the Soviet Union, the internationalist project assigned strategic importance to translators and interpreters, who played roles as vital as scribes did in Ancient Egyptian society. Shubin joined the army and became involved in the Soviet’s international efforts because of his language skills.
This linguistic talent granted him influence and access within the Soviet system and among the top leadership of liberation fighters worldwide. Compared to today’s South Africa – and even within our region, where two neighbours speak Portuguese – we lack awareness in our Foreign Service about the significance of language in realising our country’s vision as a regional player.
The book offers a lesson in how a country with global or regional ambitions should conduct its foreign policy to succeed. The Soviet Union did not rely solely on formally designated diplomats, notably ambassadors.
Alongside this formal diplomatic capacity, it had the Shubins – solidarity operators who were constantly on the ground and knew everybody. They had an office, but they were not tied to a desk or a mission station. They were constantly on the move.
Shubin inadvertently challenges established Pan-African historiography that places Kwame Nkrumah at the centre and views Ghana’s independence as the catalyst for Africa’s wave of independence.
In From Cairo to Cape, we see Nasser differently and gain a better understanding of the intellectual injustice that has led to his marginalisation in Pan-African thought.
When we examine history, we often seek order, linear connections, and qualitative progression. However, From Cairo to Cape presents a different view of the period from the 1960s to the 1990s – one of complexity, diversity, and imperfection.
Despite the flaws of the Soviet Union, would the liberation struggle in Southern Africa have achieved independence without Soviet support? The OAU Liberation Committee was also imperfect – as were the liberation movements themselves – both individually and collectively, including their relationships with each other.
Even the leaders – whom Shubin portrays in their dual dimensions – are remarkable individuals with courage and an aura of greatness, but also, as ordinary humans, fallible just like all of us.
History follows the rules of nature. And nature operates like a recovering alcoholic sitting at his desk, trying to draw a straight line with his trembling hand. Nature’s finest designs are fractal in form.
When it comes to drawing a straight line, the best it can do is the contours on the edges of our continents. Imperfection lies at the heart of historical change, much like a crystalline structure is fundamental to the shape of minerals. The historical process is not like an egg that, once broken, cannot regain its shape.
The Soviet Union existed; then it collapsed. It later recovered as Russia. In the book, we encounter Kyiv and Odesa as beautiful places to visit. Today, they are sites engulfed in war and bombings.
When we tell a story, we often present it as a complete, integrated whole, but in reality, it is internally unstable like an active volcano. One of the achievements of the book is its ability to hold together such a complex history, rich in diversity, and present it as an intelligible whole.
To make sense of chaos, you need wisdom; to endure the unpredictability, patience; and to survive the 33 years Shubin lived through during this period, resilience. The point is that even if things aren’t going well, like in South Africa today, it doesn’t mean the end of history.
Through relentless and subjective wrestling with the forces of history, we can influence events to work in our favour. It would be naive to believe that for South Africa to prevail and overcome its challenges, we should look for solutions in perfection, uniformity and a future we can predict.
* Maloka is a Professor at the Wits School of Governance
* The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.