Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961-1975

Cold War Liberation traces the story of Soviet support for African revolutionaries who led armed struggles in three Portuguese colonies—Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. While conventional wisdom says that Moscow had lost interest in Africa by mid-1960s, Telepneva argues that the Soviets redirected their attention to forging close links with the military and security services of their African clients. Telepneva also details how Soviet middle-ranking bureaucrats often shaped policy in Africa, including during the early stages of the Angolan Civil War, 1974-1975.

Natalia Telepneva is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She is the author of "Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961-1975". She has also published on Soviet and Czechoslovak intelligence for the International History Review and the Journal of Cold War Studies and has co-edited the “Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World" (2018). Natalia is a graduate of Columbia University and the London School of Economics (2015) and was the recipient of the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2017-2020.

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