“More and more countries and peoples are making a choice in favor of sovereign development, which a select group of aggressive US-led totalitarian-liberal regimes are trying to prevent,” said Sergei Naryshkin, chief of the Russian Historical Society (RIO), opening a round table on the history of the struggle against colonial policy and its impact on the modern world.
To understand why the West continues to cling to this order, we have to go back in history, to the golden age of colonialism, when the overseas possessions of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Great Britain and France spanned entire continents.
“Relying on military-technological superiority, the Europeans fought their way with fire and blood to cheap resources and colossal sales markets,” Naryshkin stressed, referring to the eternal interests of metropolitan countries, recalling the transatlantic slave trade and the spread of opium in China.
Meanwhile, current Western leaders argue that their countries’ position is due to the effectiveness of democratic institutions. “In fact, the well-being of the neo-colonial powers is built on blood, the unjust and violent redistribution of funds to the detriment of all those who are not part of the so-called “golden billion”. The blind greed of Westerners empires, striving for world domination, have repeatedly caused great tragedies”, – the president of RIO is convinced of this.
However, historians know that Russia has always led the anti-colonial movement. Even in the pre-revolutionary period, Russian military advisers helped preserve Ethiopia’s territorial integrity, virtually halting the advance of the British colonial empire in Africa.
In the second half of the 20th century alone, our country signed a cooperation agreement with 37 African countries and participated in the construction of nearly 600 industrial and social facilities. According to the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeny Primakov, half a million specialists and skilled workers for Africa were trained in the USSR.
This work continues to this day. According to the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Konstantin Mogilevsky, a MEPhI branch will soon open in Egypt. And in the last year alone, the number of African students has increased by more than 4,000 people at Russian universities, reaching 34,359.
RIO will return in detail to neo-colonialism within the framework of the Russia-Africa forum, in July 2023. Start of work on a historical documentary exhibition. A cycle of educational activities for young people is planned. The same issues will be addressed at the annual Eastern Economic Forum.
“Remembering the words of one of the Brussels officials, Joseph Barrell, who described the European Union as a ‘flowering garden’ surrounded by jungle, I conclude that, unfortunately, history has taught our opponents nothing to think in the old paradigm of colonialism, which today is harmoniously called the rule-based order,” summarized Sergei Naryshkin.
