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New From the CWIHP Book Series: A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956-1964

A new book published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press reveals West Africa as a significant site of Cold War conflict in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

CWIHP is pleased to announce the publication of the latest addition to the CWIHP Book Series: A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956-1964 writen by former CWIHP Fellow, Sergey Mazov.

A Distant Front in the Cold War reveals West Africa as a significant site of Cold War conflict in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although the region avoided the extreme tensions of the standoff in Eastern Europe or in the Cuban missile crisis, it nevertheless offers a vivid example of political, economic, and propagandistic rivalry between the US and the USSR. Mazov presents evidence from previously inaccessible documents in Russian and U.S. archives, as well as an international sampling of recent scholarly works.

Sergey Mazov is a professor and chief research fellow at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow.

Comments on this book:
"This book addresses a subject on which almost nothing is available on the Russian side, and so it covers a very important 'blank spot of history'."
—Svetlana Savranskaya, George Washington University

"For the first time, this book uncovers flaws in Soviet policy toward Africa, inherent weaknesses relating to the lack of resources and imagination, bureaucratic impediments and ignorance, which led eventually to failure to compete with the United States for the 'hearts and minds' of Africans."
—Ilya Gaiduk, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences

Read more about the Cold War International History Project Book Series

Order this book from Stanford University Press

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