Abstract
Russian strategic interest in the Horn of Africa has much deeper roots than that of the United States, which is entirely a post-World War II development. Until then, as Chapter 2 has demonstrated, American interest was exclusively commercial, humanitarian and scientific. Russian curiosity about Ethiopia was aroused as early as the seventeenth century by the appeal of an exotic, distant land inhabited by Orthodox Christians who might help the tsars further their imperial interests. Tsar Alexis (1645–76) toyed with the idea of an alliance with the Ethiopians “to arouse a new enemy against Turkey.” Nothing came of this aspiration. Peter the Great’s desire to develop links with Ethiopia, inspired in part by his general of Ethiopian origin, Hannibal, bought as a slave in Constantinople, also failed to materialize.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Sergius Yakobson, “Russia and Africa,” Slavonic and East European Review, August 1939
Richard Pankhurst, “Pushkin’s African Ancestry: A Question of Roots,” History Today, September 1980
Anatoly Gromyko, “Sovetsko-Efiopskie Svyazi,” Narody Azii i Afriki, 1980/1, takes the beginnings of “Soviet-Ethiopian” relations back to tenuous Armenian and Georgian contacts with the Kingdom of Axum in the fifth and sixth centuries AD and claims early contacts even with Tajiks
Sven Rubenson, King of Kings Tewodros of Ethiopia, HSIU Press/OUP, Addis Ababa/Nairobi, 1966, pp. 60ff
Edward T. Wilson, Russia and Black Africa before World War II, Holmes & Meier, New York/London, 1974, p. 17
G. Kreitner, Abissinia, Sotsekgiz, Moscow/Leningrad, 1932, p. 24.
Accounts of the expedition can be found in Czeslaw Jesman, The Russians in Ethiopia, an Essay in Futility, Chatto & Windus, London, 1958, pp. 9–28, and
Carlo Zaghi, I Russi in Etiopia, Guida, Naples, 1972, Vol. I, pp. 55–104
F. Volgin, V Strane Chornykh Khrist’yan, St. Petersburg, 1895, pp. 54–83.
V. Fedorov, Abissinia — Istoriko-Geografichesky Ocherk, St. Petersburg, 1889.
A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, OUP, London, 1935, pp. 143–47
David Mathew, Ethiopia — the Study of a Polity, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1947, pp. 224–34
Harold Marcus, The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844–1913, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975, pp. 135–173
The most recent account shares this shortcoming but is otherwise comprehensive: David L. Lewis, The Race to Fashoda, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, 1987.
G. L. Steer, Caesar in Abyssinia, London, 1936, pp. 321–23.
Several scholarly works deal with the Italo-Ethiopian crisis. Those concentrating on diplomacy include George W. Baer, The Coming of the Italo-Ethiopian War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1967; and
the same author, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia and the League of Nations, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, CA, 1976; and
Brice Harris, Jr., The United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1964
It still appeals, surprisingly, to as penetrating an analyst of totalitarianism as Paul Johnson; see his Modern Times, Harper & Row, New York, 1983, p. 320.
See Lowell R. Tillett, “The Soviet Role in League Sanctions against Italy, 1935–36,” American Slavic and East European Review, 1956, pp. 11–16.
Milene Charles, The Soviet Union and Africa, University Press of America, Washington, DC, 1980, p. 36.
I summarized the Ogaden-Bale guerrilla war in Rebels and Separatists in Ethiopia, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1985, pp. 26–33, drawing extensively on an excellent unpublished dissertation: Gebru Tareke, Rural Protest in Ethiopia, a Study of Three Rebellions, Syracuse University, 1977.
Haggai Erlich, The Struggle over Eritrea, 1962–1978, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA, 1983.
John Markakis, National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 104–45, provides a vivid account of the Eritrean movements through the early 1970s.
To date only one book dealing with Ethiopian university student politics and agitation has appeared: Randi Ronning Balsvik, Haile Sellassie’s Students: the Intellectual and Social Background to Revolution, 1952–1977, MSUP, East Lansing, MI, 1985. In spite of its title, the book does not go beyond 1974. Its limitations and shortcomings are well summarized in a review by Haggai Erlich in Northeast African Studies, 9/3, 1987.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1991 Paul B. Henze
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Henze, P.B. (1991). Russians in the Horn. In: The Horn of Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21456-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21456-3_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-21458-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21456-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)