Acquaintance of Soviet People with the Countries of East Africa in the Late 1950s – Early 1960s

Abstract

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet reading public could get extensive and diverse information from printed sources (books and magazines) about the young independent states of East Africa — Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar (later Tanzania). The authors of the texts were a wide variety of people — from amateurs who saw Africa with their own eyes on the most unusual occasions to young scholars specializing on Africa, from occasional journalists to those who began to specialize on this part of the world and even went to live and work there. And the information itself was of a diverse nature — from fleeting observations to systematic presentations of the path to independence, the chronicle of the establishment of diplomatic relations with the USSR, even pages of history, including pre-colonial times. It is especially valuable that the Soviet reader could see photos taken on the ground and get acquainted with the voices of the Africans themselves. The importance of all this for the beginning of the formation of mass images of our compatriots about East African countries and their inhabitants can hardly be overestimated.