African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach (review)

Reviewed by: African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach Katherine Pence African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975. By Sara Pugach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 256. Paper $29.95. ISBN 9780472055562. In the Cold War battle for affinities of peoples around the globe, socialist states, such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), decried ongoing racism and imperialism of the capitalist West and declared themselves as bastions of anti-racism and of solidarity with decolonizing nations in the Global South. One concrete way that East Germany and other Soviet-bloc states practiced this solidarity was by offering African students scholarships to study in university and vocational training programs, so they could return to build up their home countries through technical expertise. Sara Pugach's excellent new book shows that studying in East Germany was much more complicated for African exchange students than the official anti-racist party dogma purported. Using interviews and extensive research in German, British, Kenyan, and Ghanaian archives, Pugach finds that legacies of prewar racism continued into the GDR, creating deep ambivalence toward non-whites there. The book also helpfully analyzes humanitarianism and development aid by focusing not on state-level or European actors but on the perspectives of average students whose scholarships were [End Page 513] one aspect of aid and cultural diplomacy. As such, Pugach's work takes its place among the best new works that analyze the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization. The book is rich in its approach since it straddles both a transnational framework of flows across borders and a micro-history of everyday interactions between East Germans and African students. Pugach has importantly sought out sources giving voice to individual students, and she includes archival photos of the students throughout. Pugach examines African students' experiences from their selection as scholarship recipients through their complex travel routes to East Germany to their life while studying. Chapter One focuses on the first set of eleven students who came from Nigeria in 1951. Other chapters profile subsequent groups from socialist-aligned countries, such as Ghana or Mali, and non-aligned nations, such as Kenya. Pugach maintains the specificity of these diverse contexts, showing how ethnic divisions and changing politics in the home countries affected the students abroad. Chapter Two traces how students traveled through circuitous and difficult routes to East Germany, often through transit hubs such as Cairo. Chapter Three focuses on Ghana to exemplify how African countries selected students for study abroad. The GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs often worked with local trade missions or government agencies, such as the Ghanaian Scholarships Secretariat, to identify prospective students. Socialist-leaning leaders, such as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, and parties, such as Kenya's ZIKA, also helped facilitate scholarships. Exchange agreements were tenuous, and student trajectories were tied to the regimes in power, however. No Ghanaians studied in the GDR from Nkrumah's ousting in 1966 until the GDR gained global recognition in 1973, for example. While state officials wanted students to conform to national agendas, Pugach astutely demonstrates how students asserted individual and collective agency to be "architects of their own fates" (26) despite being laden with heavy expectations and constraints. The GDR hoped visiting students would commit to socialism, and some African students did, but most simply hoped to further their careers. Others espoused versions of socialism the GDR shunned, such as Nkrumaism. The Communist Party and its youth organization set up student groups, such as nation-specific university groups called Nationale Hochschulgruppen (NHG), to encourage proper socialist education and to generate celebrations of African nations' cultures and independence. However, students used NHGs as sites of debate, dissent, and protest against their home countries or the GDR. For example, Guineans protested President Sekou Touré's suppression of striking teachers in 1962, and Malian students demanded the right to visas to visit the West in 1970. Student groups also split over political and ethnic differences back home, as when some Nigerians in the GDR created a separate Biafran club. With Cold War competition at the forefront of policy decisions, the GDR suppressed student protesters and labeled them as "thugs" to keep them from jeopardizing relations...