Arrested Development

The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968

By: Alessandro Iandolo

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Paperback | 15 December 2025

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277 Pages

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15.1 x 22.9 x 2.1

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Winner of the Marshall Shulman Book Prize of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University Winner of the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies In Arrested Development, Alessandro Iandolo examines the USSR's role in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as an aid donor, trade partner, and political model for newly independent Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. With a strong economy in the 1950s, the USSR expanded its global outreach, supporting economic development in post-colonial Africa and Asia. Many nations saw the Soviet model as a path to political and economic independence. Drawing on extensive Russian and West African archival research, Iandolo explores Soviet ideas, sponsored projects, and their lasting impact. Soviet specialists worked alongside West African colleagues to design ambitious development plans, build infrastructure, establish collective farms, survey mineral resources, and manage banking and trade. These collaborations-and the tensions they created-shed light on how Soviet and West African visions of development intersected. Arrested Development positions the USSR as a key player in twentieth-century economic history, reshaping global approaches to modernization.

Industry Reviews

Succinctly written and thoroughly researched, Arrested Development convincingly argues that the Soviet Union had no intention of replicating its model of a fully centrally planned economy in West Africa. (Journal of Contemporary History Book Reviews) Iandolo persuasively demonstrates that the Soviet Union forsook revolutionary Marxism in favor of an approach that shared much with the import-substitution path of development taken by other countries of the Global South during the twentieth century. (H-Net) In intermarrying economic cooperation and political exchanges as the basis for understanding the Cold War, Iandolo's book sets a new stage for future scholars to build on. (H-Net)

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