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Paper short abstract:

The image of Africa in the USSR was a product of considered politics and propaganda. The coverage of it included anti-racist struggle and solidarity, sometimes was used as a tool in Cold War. The paper reviews the Soviet cinema, especially 1960s -1980s, devoted to the African anti-colonial struggle

Paper long abstract:

The Soviet propaganda had created the positive image of Africa and black people were "socially close and full of merits". This image contrasted with the image of an «alien foreigner», always “white, rich and fat” bourgeois. The public manifestation of race intolerance was inadmissible. Yet over the years the Soviet propaganda put the pressure upon society so intensively that rare manifestations of racism in private life were a paradoxical form of local dissidence – a sort of reaction to official internationalism.

Race intolerance and inequality were the permanent themes of Soviet propaganda, literature, cinema, photography, cartoons and posters. It was widely covered by soviet mass media, along with universal questions of oppressions, exploitation and wealth inequality. From the 1960 - the Year of Africa - the Soviet mass media, documentary and features films focused on African independence and anti-colonial struggle.

Later in the 1970s - 1980s we see how the Soviet propaganda responded to the changing world. The images of Africans (countries as a whole and individuals) were divided on whose good, supported by the Soviet Union, and bad, collaborating with “American imperialists”.

The paper investigates Soviet cinema, especially 1960 - early 1980th, devoted to the African anti-colonial struggle. Some of them were forgotten (possibly undeservedly), other become classic (from children cartoon «Vacation of Bonifacea» to Soviet spy miniseries «TASS id Authorised to Declare…»). We look through complex way of presentation, interpretation and perception of Africa and Africans, anti-colonial struggle, internationalism and solidarity, as well as ideological and racial prejudices (Blackface etc.).