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>