Assessments by modern English-speaking historians of the policy of the Comintern in Africa

Abstract

The article analyzes the modern English-language historiography of the policy of the Communist International towards the African region. The choice of English-speaking countries is due to the fact that a significant number of studies devoted both directly to the activities of the Comintern in relation to Africa and the activities of its African sections are published in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. The relevance of this topic is caused both by the opening of new funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), which, among other things, affect the activities of African communist parties, and the opportunity that arose in connection with this to rethink some issues, including those related to the policy of these communist parties: what was the influence of the Comintern on their tactics; what was the nature of this influence; what role in the policy of the Comintern was occupied by the national and colonial questions and what are the results of their implementation. It is stated that the traditionalist approach to the analysis of the activities of the Comintern and its national sections, which took shape before and during the Cold War, is still significantly represented in English-language historiography. However, the final approval of the new approach (“revisionist”) contributed to a certain revision of existing trends: the article contains assessments of both negative and positive influence of the Comintern on individual communist parties, on the political situation in a country or region.