Africa Notes: What Does the Case of Mozambique Tell Us About Soviet Ambivalence Toward Africa? - August 1985

Developments in southern Africa since early 1984 have raised a range of new questions about Soviet policy and Soviet relevance in this region of the continent. In the military sphere, Soviet assistance has enabled neither Mozambique nor Angola to quell or even substantially diminish domestic guerrilla challenges that have blocked economic growth. There have also been growing doubts about the effectiveness in practical terms of orthodox state-centered Marxist-Leninist models of development-especially in agriculture, the most important socioeconomic sector of African states.