ABSTRACT
The chapter examines an unlikely wartime alliance between the historically pro-Western Nigerian federalists and the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union, an alliance which belied the stated Soviet ambitions of advancing the cause of socialism in postcolonial Africa. The chapter argues that the Soviet choice appears puzzling only if we assume that Moscow’s decision-making was primarily informed by ideology and geared towards promoting its own political model in the third world. However, the Nigerian Civil War proved this assumption to be somewhat misleading. By the late-1960s, Soviet moves in Africa had evolved into a complex game of pragmatic compromises. Forgotten were the early days of African independence when the Soviet Union’s African policy under Nikita Khrushchev was guided by idealist hopes for the continent’s socialist development. In the strategically important and resource-rich Nigeria the Soviets colluded with the side most likely to win. Moscow abandoned ideology for the sake of pragmatism and in doing so made the destruction of Biafra inevitable.
