The military training camp: co-constructed spaces—experiences of PAIGC guerrillas in Soviet training camps, 1961–1974

Natalia Telepneva Natalia Telepneva is Lecturer in International History at the University of Strathclyde. She is a historian of Soviet foreign policy with a particular interest in Warsaw Pact interactions with African elites. Her first monograph, Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975 (2022) , explores Soviet support for anti-colonial movements in Portuguese colonies. She has also published on the history of Soviet and Czechoslovak secret intelligence. The late 1950s was a period of dramatic change in Africa, with thirteen countries scheduled to achieve independence in 1960 alone. In Portuguese colonies — Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde — a struggle against white power emerged in the 1960s, as it became clear that Portugal’s prime minister António de Oliveira Salazar was not prepared to surrender control. In Guinea-Bissau, the Portuguese Army fought against a guerrilla movement, the Party for Independence of [...]