Jamal Awil

← A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962

Soviet coolness chilled Algerian trust in communism for decades [causal]

The coolness of the U.S.S.R. towards the Algerian revolution had several motives. In the first place they were committed to support the French Communist Party and its sister in Algeria, the P.C.A., both of whom had ambivalent attitudes in that they in turn were committed to support the petit pied noir workers, as well as the largely anti-Algerian workers of metropolitan France. Secondly, the advent of de Gaulle and his threats to break up the Atlantic Alliance persuaded the Kremlin that its longer-term interests lay better in doing nothing that might seriously upset de Gaulle. Thirdly, in its espousal of the new Khrushchev doctrine of "peaceful coexistence", the Kremlin was compelled to pay lip-service to condemning violent revolution as "infantile disorders"; and, fourthly, it was increasingly clear that the F.L.N. was throughout a nationalist and not a Marxist liberation movement, and showed few signs of becoming one. In turn, the coolness of the Soviets was to freeze any inclination the F.L.N. might otherwise have nurtured for Soviet Communism, leaving it with a mistrust and an aversion that would linger significantly into the post-war Algerian world.

QUESTION: How did the F.L.N.'s early Soviet mistrust shape Algeria's later foreign-policy alignments, such as ties with China or the non-aligned movement?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1245