Socialist advisers and the dilemmas of the ‘socialist world system’: Sino-Soviet exchange as a model for failure in Guinea-Conakry, 1950–64

ABSTRACT The dilemmas and tensions of the Sino-Soviet relationship in the 1950s were reproduced in Guinea-Conakry in the 1960s in the era of Decolonization. Socialist advisers brought their ‘Agreements on Scientific and Technical Collaboration’ as well as their socialist assumptions and activities to both China in the 1950s and Guinea-Conakry after 1958. By examining the socialist advisers’ activities, this article reveals that in both cases the advisers were inordinately interested in raw materials and consumer products in a way reminiscent of the colonial heritage. In both China and Guinea-Conakry, advisers were often domineering, generally privileged and sometimes even chauvinist. Instead of taking responsibility for the weaknesses of the socialist system, in both China and West Africa the advisers blamed their southern partners for the deteriorating relationship, and associated them with planning failures, inefficiency, incompetence, ‘demagoguery’ and authoritarian tendencies.