Испытание советского интернационализма: иностранные студенты в СССР в начале 1960-х годов

Abstract

For leftist movements internationalism, as a principle of Marxism-Leninism, has always been of great importance. The paper discusses Soviet internationalism in relation to foreign students in the USSR in the early 1960s. The author emphasizes some characteristics of the first stages of ideological struggle between Soviet and Chinese communists in connection with the international youth movement and dwells on three demonstrations of foreign students in the Soviet Union. The first one took place on August 5, 1962 in Red Square and was arranged by a militant leftist Japanese student organization Zengakuren against Soviet nuclear tests. After returning home, their leader Nemoto filed a lawsuit against the Soviet police. However, this campaign failed to provoke anti-Soviet hysteria, but revealed lack of unity between the movements. On December 18, 1963, a demonstration of African students took place in Red Square following the death of Assare-Addo, a medical student from Ghana. This incident is considered against the background of conflicts with African students and a diplomatic crisis in the end of 1961, caused by student demonstrations in Guinea, which were supported by Guinean students in the Soviet Union. During the third demonstration on March 17, 1964, about 50 Moroccan students broke into the Moroccan embassy in Moscow and organized a sit-in to protest the death sentences against 11 people in Morocco who had allegedly planned to assassin King Hassan II. Thus, the correlation between socialist statehood and the principle of internationalism showed a certain pattern: when there is a state, internationalism is put to a serious test. The first protests of foreign students in the USSR clearly prove this point.