Arrested Development

<p><b>Winner of the Marshall Shulman Book Prize of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University</p><p>Winner of the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies</p><p>In </b><b><i>Arrested Development</i></b><b>, Alessandro Iandolo examines the USSR's role in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as an aid donor, trade partner, and political model for newly independent Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.</b></p><p>With a strong economy in the 1950s, the USSR expanded its global outreach, supporting economic development in post-colonial Africa and Asia. Many nations saw the Soviet model as a path to political and economic independence. Drawing on extensive Russian and West African archival research, Iandolo explores Soviet ideas, sponsored projects, and their lasting impact.</p><p>Soviet specialists worked alongside West African colleagues to design ambitious development plans, build infrastructure, establish collective farms, survey mineral resources, and manage banking and trade. These collaborations - and the tensions they created - shed light on how Soviet and West African visions of development intersected. <i>Arrested Development </i>positions the USSR as a key player in twentieth-century economic history, reshaping global approaches to modernization.</p>