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America and Russia: The Rules of the Game: Into the Breach New Soviet Alliances in the Third World

By Donald Zagoria
Spring 1979
Article Summary and Author Biography

Since 1975, seven pro-Soviet communist parties have seized power or territory in Africa and Asia with armed force. In the spring of 1975, after a North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam, North Vietnam's Communist Party took control of the South and its puppet Pathet Lao seized power in a demoralized Laos. After a short civil war in Angola in 1975-76, following the departure of the Portuguese, Agostinho Neto's Marxist-Leninist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) defeated two other Angolan parties contending for power. In February 1977, in a "red terror" directed against other military leaders who had previously shared power with him after the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and his group of communist officers seized power in Ethiopia. In April 1978, Nur Mohammad Taraki's People's Party launched a successful armed coup in Afghanistan against the military government led by President Mohammad Daoud. In June 1978, in South Yemen, the communist group in a ruling coalition of leftists carried out a successful armed coup against President Salim Robaye Ali, the leader of the non-communist leftists, and his army supporters. Finally, in January 1979, after a North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Hanoi replaced the pro-Chinese communist government of Pol Pot with a pro-Soviet regime.

Donald S. Zagoria is a professor of government at Hunter College and the City University Graduate Center. He is also a research fellow at the Research Institute on International Change at Columbia University, and author of Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-1961 among other works.

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Since 1975, seven pro-Soviet communist parties have seized power or territory in Africa and Asia with armed force. In the spring of 1975, after a North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam, North Vietnam's Communist Party took control of the South and its puppet Pathet Lao seized power in a demoralized Laos. After a short civil war in Angola in 1975-76, following the departure of the Portuguese, Agostinho Neto's Marxist-Leninist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) defeated two other Angolan parties contending for power. In February 1977, in a "red terror" directed against other military leaders who had previously shared power with him after the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and his group of communist officers seized power in Ethiopia. In April 1978, Nur Mohammad Taraki's People's Party launched a successful armed coup in Afghanistan against the military government led by President Mohammad Daoud. In June 1978, in South Yemen, the communist group in a ruling coalition of leftists carried out a successful armed coup against President Salim Robaye Ali, the leader of the non-communist leftists, and his army supporters. Finally, in January 1979, after a North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Hanoi replaced the pro-Chinese communist government of Pol Pot with a pro-Soviet regime.1

Although the events leading up to communist victories in each of these cases was complex, involved a variety of indigenous forces, and certainly cannot be attributed only to Soviet manipulation, the Russians were active players in each instance. They were not innocent bystanders.

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