Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945–1968 by Philip Muehlenbeck (review)

Phillip Muehlenbeck's book deals with Czechoslovakia's involvement in Africa during the nearly quarter of a century from the end of World War II to the Prague Spring in 1968. Muehlenbeck seeks to explain why Czechoslovakia invested an inordinate amount of resources to strengthen its political, economic, and cultural relations with Africa. Drawing on extensive research in Czech, British, U.S., and South African archives as well as secondary literature in English and Czech, Muehlenbeck argues that Czechoslovakia was looking to increase export revenue, serve the interests of its patron (the Soviet Union), and gain international prestige. The book offers a riveting story of how Czechoslovak engagement with the continent started with great hopes and ended in mutual disappointment.

Many African governments believed the Soviet bloc, untainted with the sin of colonialism, would prove to be a more generous partner than the West in supplying the knowhow and technology they needed to accelerate their industrial development. Czechoslovakia, which had an export-oriented economy, believed Africa would become a big customer of Czechoslovak machinery. In addition, Czechoslovakia had another export product in mind; namely, weapons. Czechoslovakia was uniquely endowed to supply the arms that African countries demanded to build their newly established armies. Czechoslovakia's military-industrial base was greatly expanded during World War II thanks to Nazi investment. Without export markets, all that capacity would have sat idle. In the beginning, Czechoslovakia was willing to trade with radical and conservative African regimes alike. However, from the mid-1950s Prague focused its efforts on ideological allies in Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Congo-Brazzaville. Czechoslovakia not only sold these countries weaponss but also offered them loans to fund those transactions. Both the Czechoslovaks and the Africans assumed that fast growth in Africa would create the revenue needed to pay down the debt incurred.

However, as it turned out, African countries did not have sound development plans. Aid money received from developed countries was misallocated. The large industrial projects in which African states invested turned out to be losing ventures. As a result, African governments could not pay down the loans they took from Czechoslovakia. Economic slowdown brought about political instability, and African allies of the Communist bloc fell from power in Ghana, Algeria, and Congo. This in itself would be a major reason for a rethink in Prague over the African adventure. However, exactly at the time when African countries were experiencing economic difficulties, so was Czechoslovakia. Like the rest of the Communist bloc, Czechoslovakia by the early 1960s was experiencing an economic slowdown. As in Africa, economic hardship brought about political upheaval. Antonín Novotný, the man who led Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, was elbowed out. The new leader, Alexander Dubček, introduced political and economic reforms, ushering in a period of increased freedom, known as the 1968 Prague Spring. It all ended in a Soviet invasion and increased repression. Czechoslovakia, burdened by its own internal problems, no longer had the will to promote African development. A thoroughgoing purge of the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry deprived it of some of its most able diplomats. As a result, Czechoslovakia stopped being the Communist bloc's spearhead in Africa. That role was taken over by East Germany.

The book underscores how the economic fates of Eastern Europe and the developing world were intertwined. For centuries, Eastern Europe itself was the backward area of Europe. It started to pursue rapid industrialization from the late-nineteenth century. As Muehlenbeck documents, Czechoslovakia had begun its economic campaign in Africa during the 1920s, three decades before the Cold War started and the same period in which Czechoslovakia embarked on an industrialization drive. Therefore, it had a leg up over African countries that started industrializing in earnest in the 1950s. The methods used by East European countries—tariff walls, subsidizing industry by taxing agriculture, and central planning—were able to spur fast growth for a few decades, but the model eventually proved faulty. No wonder that the Communist world and the developing world experienced...