This issue begins with an article by Natalia Telepneva discussing Soviet-bloc efforts to restore Kwame Nkrumah to the Ghanaian presidency after he was ousted in a coup d’état in February 1966. Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana after it became independent, had started out as a popular leader but had gradually provoked popular and elite opposition because of his attempts to impose Soviet-style “African socialism” in Ghana and to embrace Moscow's line on international affairs rather than maintain an independent stance. After the coup, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia urged Nkrumah's supporters in Ghana to stage a counter-coup, but the effort fell through for want of popular backing. Nkrumah had to spend the rest of his life outside Ghana. From this experience, Soviet officials drew the lesson that they would have to forge closer ties with African armies and security forces and would have to find more suitable ways of...

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