the soviet & ethiopia

8/12/2019 The Soviet & Ethiopia

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The Soviet Union and Ethiopia: A Case of Traditional BehaviorAuthor(s): Sergius YakobsonSource: The Review of Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul., 1963), pp. 329-342Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalfof Review of PoliticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405736

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The Soviet Union and Ethiopia: A Case ofTraditional Behavior

Sergius Yakobson

HE contemporary modus operandi of the Soviets in Ethiopiaseems in many ways to be a refined and ideologically re-furbished version of that of pre-Revolutionary days.

Russia's interest in Ethiopia is centuries old. An offer to joinforces with Ethiopia and the Protestant West in the struggle againstthe Mohammedan Turks reached Moscow before the time of Peterthe Great. Hiob Ludolf's pioneer work, Historia Aethiopica, wastranslated into Russian in the seventeenth century, and, nearly150 years ago, the teaching of the Amharic language became apart of the Khar'kov University curriculum.

It is true that Russia's diplomatic mission in Addis Ababa wasestablished on a permanent footing only in 1902. But long before

that date Russia gave close attention to Ethiopian affairs. In thenineteenth century relations between the two countries developedalong manifold lines, political, military, religious, cultural, andtechnical. Various political and social forces of the old regimewere at work to orient Ethiopia toward Russia. To the farsightedRussians of pre-Soviet days, a peaceful penetration of Ethiopiameant not only a means of influencing and controlling the fate ofthe country, but a promising avenue by which to enter the interiorof Africa, to exert influence on Egypt and the whole Nile area, toget a foothold on the Red Sea, and, last but not least, to keep acheck on the British. Thus, the Russians saw Ethiopia as a mostsuitable postern gate into the African continent.

But the political leadership of pre-Revolutionary Russia at-tempted not to show its hand. It sought to avoid open involve-ment in colonizing plans for East Africa, as well as entanglementin Ethiopia's resistance against the pressures and encroachmentsof her neighbors and of the colonial powers. Advice, however, wasfreely given, and large consignments of arms, rifles, rounds ofammunition and cannons, were sent clandestinely to Ethiopia, alongwith musical instruments to equip a military band. Old Russia'said was gratefully received by Ethiopian rulers; only the gift of a

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

gramophone aroused Negus Menelik's indignation. He said hewas no child who wanted musical boxes. l

Oflasting importance

infostering

Ethiopian goodwill towardTsarist Russia were the Russian Red Cross Society's dispatch of afirst aid unit to Ethiopia during the first Italo-Ethiopian war andthe medical aid rendered by the hospital later established by Rus-sian doctors in Addis Ababa. Memories of this type of assistancecontinue to linger in Ethiopia.

The pages that Russia and Ethiopia shared in history's annalswere skillfully glorified in a contemporary setting by Emperor Haile

Selassie during his mid-1959 visit to the Soviet Union:

Ethiopia may be proud of the fact that one of its citizensfought on the side of Peter the Great and of the fact that, thanksto this, it became bound up with your greatest poet, AlexanderPushkin. Our country remembers with eternal gratitude thespeedy help in the form of arms, which the people of this countrygave to us at the time of our decisive struggle with imperialismin the last years of the last century. But this aid was expressed

in the furnishing not only of arms but also of medical aid whichwas so greatly needed, particularly at the time of the battle atAdowa. The furnishing of this aid demonstrated in the decisivehours of our history that the people of this great country overthe course of many years have always stood on guard for thecause of freedom and the independence of nations.

However, your great country furnished aid not only duringtimes of danger; its magnanimity extended also to periods ofpeace and progress. Thus, our Menelik II Hospital, set up at the

beginningof the

present century was,before the First World

War,staffed by Russian doctors. Therefore we note with a feeling ofgreat satisfaction that this great humane tradition is being carriedon even now in the great work which Soviet doctors and nursesare now carrying on in the hospital named for Dejadzmatch Blachain our capital.2

Three further points may be added to the Emperor's accountof the record of pre-Revolutionary Russian-Ethiopian relations:

1. The technical aid received by Ethiopia from Russia to theextent that the technical progress of the times permitted, for in-stance, in gold mining operations and geological surveys in theWollega Province;

1 Leo Silberman, Why the Haud was ceded, Cahiers d'ltudes Africaines,II (1961), 51f.

2 Pravda, July 1, 1959, p. 2.

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THE SOVIET UNION AND ETHIOPIA

2. The training of Ethiopian youth in Russian educationalestablishments. Tecle Hawariat who pleaded the cause of Ethiopiabefore the

Leagueof Nations, for instance, had studied in Russia;

3. The striking contribution of the Russian Orthodox Churchto the promotion of Russian aspirations in Ethiopia.

Here, the Church went beyond regular proselytizing effortsand trespassed on political ground. In promoting the idea of aunion between the Russian Orthodox Church and the EthiopianOrthodox Church, which was part of the Coptic Church, it openlyadvocated a political course of action: establishment of Russian

spiritual leadership in the affairs of the Abyssinian Church wasevidently to lead to political ascendancy as well.

The Emperor's account, meant for Soviet consumption, wasincomplete in another respect: the glossing over of a more recenthistorical event--the material support given to Italy by SovietRussia during the Italo-Ethiopian conflict (1935-36).

Not until thirty years after the downfall of the Russian mon-archy were the Soviets in a position to take over where TsaristRussia left off in Ethiopia.

First Ethiopia served as a sanctuary for some of the WhiteRussian emigres who, incidentally, became staunch admirers ofthe Negus, and not merely because he was their savior and pro-tector. For more than four months, for example, the Grand DukeAlexander Mikhailovich was a guest of the Negus. Each nighthe dined with him, and the more the Negus talked about themistakes committed

by my relatives,the Grand Duke related in

his memoirs, the clearer it dawned on me that we should haveput an Abyssinian at the head of our Imperial Council. . . . Heliked to hear my stories of the reign of my relatives because theyhelped him to decide what he should not do. 3

During the Italo-Ethiopian conflict, Moscow chose to show itscontempt not only for the observance of moral standards in theconduct of foreign affairs, but even for its own theory of just and

unjust wars. While denouncing Fascist Italy vociferously beforethe international forum in Geneva for its unprovoked and preda-tory attempt to subdue the people of Ethiopia, Soviet Russia atthe same time pumped vast supplies of raw materials into Musso-lini's war machine - oil from Batumi, coal from Feodosiya and

3 Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia, Always a Grand Duke (Garden City,N.Y., 1935), pp. 170, 174.

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Nikolayev, and wheat from Sevastopol at prices higher than thoseprevailing on the world market.

It was World War II that heralded the return to the more orless traditional pattern of Russo-Ethiopian relations. In the springof 1943, exactly two years after Ethiopia's iberation by the British,the Soviet Union and Ethiopia exchanged notes concerning theestablishment of diplomatic relations. This policy decision wasindicative of the Soviets' intent to regain their predecessors'influence. To secure a foothold in East Africa the Soviet lega-tion was provided with a sizable staff.

But only within the last few years has Moscow made a large-scale effort, a series of consecutive moves to overcome Ethiopiananimosity toward the Soviet system, to detach Ethiopia from theWest and, if at all possible, to win ultimately its exclusive friend-ship. This intensive Soviet drive was symbolized in June, 1956,by the elevation of the respective Soviet and Ethiopian diplomaticmissions to embassies and, three years later, by the state visit ofthe King of Kings to the homeland of socialism.

Until the middle of the 1950's, the Emperor was a staunchsupporter of the West. He dispatched detachments of the imperialbodyguard to the fighting front in Korea. They fought valiantly

not a single Ethiopian soldier is known to have been takenprisoner by the Communists. Ethiopia's voting record n the UnitedNations reportedly was similar to that of the other nations of thefree world.

Then a new series of developmentsbegan.

After itsparticipa-tion in the Bandung Conference of 1955, Ethiopia came out strong-

ly in support of the Pan-African movement at the two Conferencesof Independent African States held in 1958 at Accra and two yearslater at Addis Ababa. Simultaneously, t began to play an activerole in the consultations, decisions, and actions of the uncommittednations, for example, at the gathering of the heads of neutral statesin Belgrade shortly after the Soviet renewal of nuclear testing and

at the latest disarmament conference at Geneva. In fact, at thetime of his visit to the Soviet capital in 1959, Haile Selassie wasawarded the honorary degree of doctor of law by Moscow Uni-versity explicitly for high achievements n the cause of strengthen-ing peace and strengthening of the Bandung principles of peacefulcoexistence of states with different social and economic orders. 4

4Pravda, July 1, 1959, p. 2.

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All this does not necessarily add up to a change of heart onthe part of the Emperor but rather to a modification of the modeof

politicalbehavior. At

heart,Haile Selassie remains a convinced

anti-Communist.One can only guess about the reasons for the metamorphosis

of the former stalwart of collective security into a backer of themade-in-Moscow concept of peaceful coexistence. A variety offactors has probably contributed to the Emperor's decision toseek a new approach in the safeguarding of the independence andthe further advancement of his country. On the whole, he verylikely reached his decision within a framework of uncertainty anduneasiness about the way the world's history was moving. In hispredicament he could readily accept the necessity of trimming hissails to the wind of change sweeping not only Africa but otherparts of the world as well.

The cold war seemed to drag on without markedly changingthe balance of power in favor of the free world. On the con-

trary,the

political, military,and economic

postureof the Soviet

Union seemed to have been enhanced by the latest developments.It was, perhaps, too early to assess the effect the de-Stalinizationprocess initiated in Russia by Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech of1956 would have on the might of the Communist camp. But thelaunching of Sputnik in September, 1957, was eloquent proof ofSoviet technological progress, and the impressive rate of the annualgrowth of Soviet economy admittedly outstripped that of other

more advanced industrial societies. The Emperor must, of course,have been aware of the dangers implicit in the new Soviet rublediplomacy, but could he afford to ignore the material and tech-nical aid liberally distributed by Moscow and readily accepted byother Afro-Asian nations? The continuous deterioration of Ethi-opian-British relations, the economic recession in Ethiopia, as wellas in the United States, and the huge funds and technical resourcesrequired for the financing and realization of the five-year planadopted in 1957 by the Ethiopians for the development of theireconomy must have carried particular weight in shaping his de-cision.

There were additional political considerations. Relations withEgypt's Nasser, whose Pan-Arab ambitions the Emperor dreaded,left much to be desired. Fears of the creation of a greater So-malia, encouraged allegedly by Great Britain and Egypt and of

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Moslem encirclement haunted Haile Selassie. A roadblock hadto be established to prevent the Somalis from seeking support inthe Communist

camp.The sensitivity of a small nation's leader

and his anxiety lest a small nation lose its identity in a struggle ofthe great powers must have particularly prompted Haile Selassieto adopt a neutral position. In his Moscow speech, already cited,he had pointedly commented on the nonparticipation of smallnations in the negotiations concerning the settlement of the Berlinquestion, and again during the short sojourn in Belgrade on hishomeward journey he specifically warned the great powers not to

repeat the mistakes of the Berlin Congress of 1878 and of the con-ference at Yalta. Finally, the collapse of the colonial system inAfrica confronted Ethiopia with a challenge: to seek a positionas a major component of a revamped African continent and tobecome at long last spokesman for the new and independentAfrica. An official 1960 publication of the Ethiopian Ministry ofInformation provides the following explanation for past omissions:

Ethiopia's role in the struggle of African freedom had been limited,but the limitation had been due not to lack of enthusiasm but ratherto the limitations imposed on a nation that had much of her ownproblems to solve, and the fast-moving wheel of time to raceagainst. 5

Were one to choose the single event that presumably was de-cisive in persuading the Emperor to reappraise his formal align-ments and conduct of foreign affairs, the obvious selection wouldbe the

poorshowing of the Western

powersin the Suez crisis

which, in the end, resulted in their moral and political defeat andin Soviet penetration of Egypt in force. The latter situation wasdangerous for Ethiopia, traditionally a favorite target of Egyptianintrigues and attempts to stir up trouble.

In the old days Pravda had referred to Haile Selassie not asthe Lion of Judah but as the jackal of American imperialism. 6The changed atmosphere by the summer of 1959 is revealed in

that the Emperor's journey to the Soviet Union was designed tobecome a landmark in the latest phase of Russo-Ethiopian rela-tions. The Soviet leaders knew how to please and impress HaileSelassie. In a Leningrad exhibition opened for the occasion at

5 Second Conference of Independent African States, Addis Ababa (June 14to 26, 1960), p. 3.

6 Selassie to Moscow, The New Republic, April 13, 1959, p. 6.

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the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, the Ethiopian Biblewas placed next to the photographs of the gifts to be given to theSoviet

hospitalin

Ethiopiaestablished in 1946. The

Emperorwas honored not only by the award of an academic degree butalso of the Suvorov military order, one of the two highest Sovietmilitary decorations. For his private use he was presented withan IL-14 twin-engine plane, as a token of Soviet technical prowess.And a two-week tour of the country, which included inspectionof industrial sites and irrigation projects, provided specific proofof the economic and technical might and progress of the Soviet

Union and of its ability to help the industrial and agriculturaldevelopment of Ethiopia.The effort was not lost upon the Emperor. Later, he extolled

the industry and diligence of the people. 7 and praised SovietRussia as the world's greatest power, though he did not forgetin his eulogy to give due credit to Peter the Great as well. Thejourney also elicited his admiration for certain state-socialist de-velopment methods which he described as 'very useful'. In return,the Emperor and his party . . . were hailed as the representativesnot only of Ethiopia, but of the whole African liberation move-ment, and Haile Selassie did not mind accepting this identifi-cation. 8

The high point of the Emperor's visit was the granting toEthiopia of a long-term credit of $100,000,000 at a low rate ofinterest, which was to enable the Soviet Union to render economicand technical aid in the form of survey work, the

supplyof

equipment and materials, and other forms of economic assistance. 9This was next to the largest credit ever granted by the Soviet Unionto an African nation and was obtained by the Emperor, accordingto his own words, without asking. 1' The goal of the Soviet actionwas, among other things, to open the gates of Africa to a largenumber of Soviet technicians and to strengthen Ethiopia's stateownership in industrial undertakings at the expense of private

enterprise and investment.7Paul Underwood, Selassie fears big-nation pact, New York Times,August 28, 1959.

8 Paul Wohl, Ethiopian support wooed by Moscow, Christian ScienceMonitor, July 23, 1959.

9Soviet Economic Relations with Middle East and African Countries,Supplement to Mizan Newsletter, No. 2, February 1962, p. 8.

'0Jeanne Contini, The Winds of Change and the Lion of Judah, TheReporter, May 25, 1961, p. 32.

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The exchange of letters regarding the credit arrangements wasbacked up by the signing of a special Soviet-Ethiopian rade agree-ment on July 11, 1959. Concluded for a period of three yearsthe agreement was to remain automatically in force thereafterunless explicitly terminated by either of the parties. Each partyreceived most favored nation treatment. The Soviet Union wasto export to Ethiopia machinery and equipment, tractors andagricultural machinery, ight and heavy motor vehicles, bicycles andmotorcycles, road building machinery, rolled metal products, oiland oil products, cameras and film, medical supplies, household

goods, chemicals, textiles, window glass, canned fish products, etc.In return Ethiopia was to export coffee, raw hides, oil seeds, sheepand goat skins, and other traditional produce. Payment was toto be made in freely convertible currency. ll

Little is known about the upshot of the private talks whichtook place in Moscow between Khrushchev and his illustrious guest.Paul Wohl, a veteran observer of the Soviet scene, shrewdly as-sumed that relations with Egypt were the crucial point in thesepourparlers.

Moscow apparently expects to use its newly gained position inEthiopia as a means of pressure against President Nasser shouldthe latter turn against the USSR. By building up Emperor HaileSelassie as the champion of the African liberation movement, theSoviets also have cast a shadow on President Nasser's claim toleadership in Africa.12

On October 12, 1959, three months after the end of the Em-peror's conversations in the Soviet capital, the former head of theAfrican Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, A. V. Budakov,was appointed ambassador to Ethiopia, which, according to Sovietplans, was to become a show place of Soviet coexistence policy inAfrica.

Today, it is an ungrateful task to speculate even on the imme-diate political future of the world, particularly since a rejuvenationof leadership in a number of countries is bound to create a newpolitical climate before long: Konrad Adenauer is an advancedoctogenarian, Chiang Kai-shek and General Charles de Gaulleare in the seventies, and Harold Macmillan and the two major

11 Soviet Economic Relations with Middle East and African Countries, p. 8.12 Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1959.

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Communist figures, Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung are approachingthreescore and ten. In Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, who is 70, con-tinues to

keepa firm

gripon the whole life of his

country,and as

long as he remains at the helm of state, Moscow has little chance,even if it so desired, to change the order of his empire. No Com-munist Party exists there; there is no powerful Communist-con-trolled union movement, and no youth and women's front organiza-tions. But when nature takes its course and a new, less experiencednational leader takes over in Ethiopia, the rather antiquated polit-ical and social order of the country may have severe difficulty in

warding off reform pressures bound to develop from within andfrom without.For the time being in their effort to penetrate the country

politically and to establish their influence on a broader basis, theSoviets use three of the more traditional media, medical aid, edu-cation, and the church.

In a country of 22 million people where the total number ofnative and foreign physicians may still be counted in the hundreds,a hospital is as significant in selling Russia to the Ethiopians asit was half a century ago. Medically and politically trained, thepersonnel of the Soviet Red Cross Hospital in Ethiopia attendto body and soul of the local population. According to a recentSoviet source, about 600,000 Ethiopians have received treatmentfrom the Russians between 1947 and 1957.13 Additional medicalaid, also meant to influence public opinion, was rendered throughthe Soviet Red Cross's and Red Crescent

Society's shipmentsof

medicine for the Ethiopian flood victims. A new Soviet tradeagency, Medexport, handles the transfer of pharmaceutical goodsto Ethiopia.

The Soviet cultural offensive in Ethiopia has so far proceeded,without striking innovations, along the lines charted by theSoviets for other foreign countries, mixing, here as elsewhere, cul-tural objectives with politics. A standard agreement on cultural

cooperation was signed by the Soviets in Addis Ababa on January13, 1961, providing for exchange of scientists, teachers, students,cultural and sports delegations, theatrical companies, and tourists.Specifically, under the terms of this arrangement, the Soviet Unionwas to delegate scholars to lecture at the University College atAddis Ababa and to study Amharic there, while Ethiopia was to

13Afrika Segodnia (Moscow, 1962), p. 308.

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send students to Russia for the study of agriculture and educationand to be trained as radio announcers in Amharic. No Sovietcultural

exchangeis

complete,however, without the

participationof the Bolshoi Ballet, a part of which came to Ethiopia in January,1962. The Emperor himself attended the performance and didnot fail to present gold medals to the group.

Where 95 per cent of the population is illiterate, audio-visualmedia are particularly appropriate for attracting wide attentionand for an unobtrusive dissemination of propaganda. Soviet films,dealing with such conspicuous opics as the Emperor's visit to the

Soviet Union, the Soviet people's war effort, and developments nthe Congo, have been shown in the capital and the more remoteprovinces of Ethiopia. A photographic exhibition organized bythe Soviet authorities in Addis Ababa seems, according to anaccount by a Soviet witness, to have appealed particularly o theelite, students, eachers, priests, government workers, and journalists,some of whom had already been studying Russian.14 What, how-ever, can more favorably impress a foreign audience than theworld of children's dreams, gay, color-rich, and free of the drabreality all around? In November, 1961, a display of Soviet chil-dren's paintings and books was opened to the public in the Ethi-opian capital.

Lectures, extolling the economic progress and beauty of theSoviet Union, the virtues of economic, technical, and culturalcooperation between the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and other Africancountries, and the merits of Soviet youth organizations and educa-tion were offered by Soviet speakers within the framework of the1961 Festival of Soviet-African Friendship, celebrated in AddisAbaba. Another platform for indoctrination was the World YouthForum in Moscow to which the president of the student councilof the Addis Ababa University College, the only higher educa-tional establishment n the country, was invited.

As to the education of Ethiopians in the Soviet Union, two

government officials of the Ethiopian Ministry of Information wereawarded five-year Soviet government scholarships, to begin in1961, for the study of cinematography nd related subjects. OtherEthiopian students, also on Soviet government grants, devotedthemselves to the pursuit of veterinary medicine and engineering.

14 A. Abramov, Efiopiia-strana, ne vstavshaia na koleni (Moscow, 1961),pp. 106f.

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For the training of Ethiopian youth at home, the Soviet gov-ernment undertook to build a special technical school for 1,000boys and girls as a gift to the government of Ethiopia.

Cultural exchange programs, as a rule, are not a one-way street.In the fall of 1961, after having visited Red China, an Ethiopiantheater company came to the Soviet Union to demonstrate itsartistic achievements. Finally, a show of Ethiopian objets d'artin Moscow was made a part of the political-cultural approchement.

As under the Tsars, the Church again plays a significant rolein Russo-Ethiopian ooperation. After the seizure of power by the

Bolsheviks in 1917, the old ties between the Russian and theEthiopian churches ceased to exist, for the Communist govern-ment's violent persecution of the Orthodox Church made it impos-sible for the Church to serve as a bridge between the two countries.

Only when the Great Patriotic War made the Soviet govern-ment realize the potential value of the support it could derive fromthe Church, domestically as well as internationally, did the situa-tion change. The reopening of the Ecclesiastic Mission of the Mos-

cow Patriarchate n Jerusalem n 1948 led, ten years later, to theresumption of formal contacts between the churches in Russiaand in Ethiopia. In January, 1959, with the blessing of the RussianPatriarchate and of the Soviet government, the Head of the Jeru-salem Mission and an inspector of the Leningrad TheologicalSeminary came to Ethiopia for three weeks. They were warmlyreceived by the Emperor and the populace. An exultant studentof theology even hailed them as a delegation not simply of theMoscow church, but as though from Christ himself. 15 Six monthslater, the Emperor during his stay in Moscow paid a personal visitto the Patriarch Alexis who decorated him with the religious orderof Vladimir the Holy, first class. And finally, in the same summerof 1959, the Metropolitan of Harrar as a representative of thefirst Patriarch of Ethiopia returned the visit of the Russian Churchdignitaries. The elevation of the Ethiopian Church to the rankof a Patriarchate and its

emancipation rom the Coptic Patriarchatein June, 1959, seems to have further stimulated the interest thetwo churches have taken in each other.

As the chains fastened by the Communist leadership on theChurch in the Soviet Union have never been removed, Moscow

15 M. Dobrynin, U brat'ev - khristian Efiopii, Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patri-arkhii, April, 1959, p. 74.

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knew how to collect its due, even for the little freedom it grantedthe Church in the conduct of its foreign relations. An article inthe

May, 1961,issue of the official

organof the Moscow Patriarch-

ate summarized the new relationship between the churches ofRussia and Ethiopia in the following revealing words:

Of course, it is understood that mutual knowledge on a closerand more detailed level between the Church of Ethiopia andOrthodoxy is extremely useful for both sides. On the one hand,it should aid in testing and strengthening the consciousness of theunity of the Church, and, on the other, make its contribution to

the movement of peace supporters and to the cause of the strugglefor the national liberation of the peoples of Africa.16

The Russian Church's offers to aid the Ethiopian Church inits opposition to the Vatican, to the preachers of the Koran, andto the Protestant groups, the avant-garde of American imperial-ism, served Moscow's grand strategy. Church officials of bothcountries were sophisticated enough to understand the political

climate in which they were operating. The Russian Church repre-sentative did not fail to take note of the close ties existing inEthiopia between the Church and state. On the other hand, theassistant director of the Ecclesiastical College of Addis Ababaupon his return from the Soviet Union in 1961 stressed the im-portant role played by the Russian Orthodox Church in thestruggle for peace.

Resumed within the framework of an old pattern, the relations

between Moscow and Addis Ababa seem to have moved on aneven keel after 1959. Neither side, however, appeared to beparticularly tempted to enlarge the base of existing relations orto force the tempo of development. Potential mutual advantagesmust have been carefully weighed against other considerations andespecially suspicions of ulterior motives.

Those who expected spectacular results from the giganticSoviet offer of a $100,000,000 umbrella credit must, by now, bedisappointed. Neither Khrushchev nor the President of the SovietUnion has visited Ethiopia, in spite of the promises publicly givento the Emperor during his sojourn in Moscow. By June, 1962,only a fraction of the 1959 credit had actually been used byEthiopia-two million dollars in convertible currency for the

16 Liviu Stan, Novyi patriarkhat - tserkov' Efiopii, Zhurnal MoskovskoiPatriarkhii, May, 1961, p. 72.

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Emperor's land reform program. In addition, with much delay,a contract signed in 1961 provided for Soviet construction of a12-million-dollar oil refinery at the Port of Assab, the first to bebuilt in Ethiopia. The refinery output is calculated to be 500,000tons a year, enough to insure the supply of high-grade gasolineand fuel oils for Ethiopia. Only in January, 1962, did the Emperorlay the foundation stone of the technical school in Bahar Daroffered by the Soviets two years earlier.

Some government experts are inclined to interpret the failureto implement with dispatch [Soviet] bloc-supported projects asbeing probably due in large part to increasing Ethiopian warinessthat bloc aid might promote Communist subversion. No one candoubt the validity of this assumption, although it has to be recog-nized that the Ethiopian situation is not unique, but rather atypical one. By the end of 1961, the heavy Soviet propagandabarrage notwithstanding, the Soviet Union had extended to thewhole of Africa only one-tenth of the loans which the Communist

leadershipclaimed to have

granted.And in the case of

Ethiopia,there seems to have been a specially weighty reason for this stateof affairs: the desire of the Emperor under all circumstances toavoid dependence upon or identification with any of the groupsopposing each other in today's divided world. The Ethiopians'

dexterity in balancing opposing influences was mentioned in theNew Republic of April 13, 1959. An article by Jeanne Contini inThe Reporter of May 25, 1961, went a step farther in the same

direction in emphasizing the Emperor's efforts to reduce interferenceof foreign powers in Ethiopian domestic affairs by dividing upthe control of even individual projects. A rather entangled patternof foreign aid thus evolves:

The Ethiopian air force is being trained by the United States,Sweden, and Great Britain. The army has been trained andequipped by the United States, while Norway is training the navy.West Germany is participating with the United States in the BlueNile power dam project; Italy built the Koka Dam; Yugoslavia isworking on the Scebeli; the major burden for essential highwayconstruction is being borne by the United States, but contracts forroads have also been awarded to Israel and Italy. Technical train-ing centers have been or are being built by the United States,Sweden, and the Soviet Union. There is a Russian-staffed hospitalin the capital, and Czechoslovakia has recently contributed a $20-million credit for the purchase of hospital equipment.

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Perhaps the most important element in the present record ofSoviet failure to dislodge the West in Ethiopia is the fact thatHaile Selassie's

patternof behavior in

handlingthe Soviet

anglingfor total partnership is as personal as it is national in character.In the words of an astute student of Ethiopian developments:

Ethiopia is no country which wants to be hurried even in themost advantageous economic circumstances. Caution, diffidence,secrecy are national characteristics. 17

17 Leo Silberman, Ethiopia: power of moderation, Middle East Journal,Spring 1960, p. 144.

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