While we're on the subject of proxies with the new international rolls, here's an omake on the formation of African proxies. This omake is called "Made in Soviet Union: The training of African national liberation movement forces in the Soviet Union" and I hope you will enjoy it.
The creation of paramilitary training facilities in the Soviet Union can be traced back to the Great Patriotic War, when the Soviet regime trained and armed a number of paramilitaries to fight facism. Among the units formed in this way were two Polish armies, a Czechoslovak army corps, two Romanian divisions, Yugoslav infantry and armored brigades, and dozens of other units and subdivisions.
With decolonization and the emergence of potential new allies on the African continent, these installations were given a new lease of life. In fact, from the middle of the 20th century, the USSR began granting large-scale military and military-technical aid to the newly independent states on the African continent, with Angola, Somalia and later Ethiopia being the main beneficiaries. Other African countries such as Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Guinea, Mozambique and Mali were also among the recipients of this aid, which included weapons and technical equipment as well as military training.
In 1947, 21 military academies and institutes, 27 military schools, 30 officer training courses and officer training colleges, plus 4 higher education establishments for the navy's fleet, were responsible for preparing foreign military personnel. The various training courses were aimed at states that were already independent as well as those still under colonial yoke, socialist-oriented states as well as those, such as Senegal, whose societal choices were openly liberal. This all-out support for colonial forces was in line with the Mikoyan orientation of Soviet diplomacy, which consisted in backing all forces opposed to the European colonial powers, regardless of the degree of orthodoxy they displayed towards Soviet Marxism, both in their doctrines of struggle and in their political projects.
Thus, when movements for national independence emerged in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union sided with the leaders of movements which, while committed to anti-colonial struggles, sought to promote the construction of a "classless society without individual property".
Following the change in the Soviet Union's diplomatic orientation to an offensive diplomacy of support for communist movements with the aim of bringing African communist movements to power, and the proclamation of the creation of the EAF in 1964, the Soviet Union strengthened its presence on the African continent, and endeavored to establish diversified relations - diplomatic, commercial, social and cultural - with each of the African countries that proclaimed their independence. What's more, compared to the Kosyginian orientation between 1957 and 1964, which could be described as a "fait accompli orientation" (consisting of providing multifaceted aid after the Communist regime had come to power on its own), this approach is more proactive and voluntarist in bringing about brotherly regimes in Africa.
This was reflected in a strengthening of the training capacities of liberation forces. New higher education establishments are being set up, including the Military Infantry School in Odessa, the Military Air School and the Center for Aeronautical Technical Personnel of the Military Air Forces in Frounze, the Perevalnoe Teaching Center-165 in Crimea, centers for the preparation and advanced training of artillery operators for air defense and crews of small boats and vessels of the military naval fleet,etc.
The study centers where foreign students, including Africans, received their military training were scattered throughout the country, and were located mainly on the periphery: in Siberia, the Far East, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
To illustrate the contribution of these training centers to the training of revolutionary forces on the African continent, we'll take a closer look at the Perevalnoe Teaching Center-165. Established in the Crimea in 1965, in accordance with the "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples" adopted by the un General Assembly in 1960, Teaching Center-165 Perevalnoe, located near the town of the same name, 21 kilometers from the Simferopol-Alouchta road, was the first to welcome fighters from national liberation movements and African parties: the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands, paigc, the South-West African People's Organization swapo (Namibia), the Union of African People of Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Mozambique Liberation Front, frelimo and the African National Congress (ANC).
In response to the large influx of students, in 1970 Perevalnoe was transformed into the Simferopol Unified Military School, with the aim of training not just partisans for revolutionary paramilitary groups, but also cadres for future national armies, or at least those with a good understanding of modern warfare.
However, before training the Center's students militarily and politically, the Soviets first had to resolve the language issue. African students often had little understanding of the languages of their metropolis, if they didn't simply speak the dialect of their respective tribes. Not to mention speaking or writing Russian, the language of their teachers. To this end, preparatory courses to study Russian and the fundamentals of military preparation were set up, along with a sufficiently dense corps of translators and teaching materials translated into foreign languages. In addition, preparatory faculties for foreign servicemen were set up in January 1948, where chairs of Russian as a foreign language were created and special military preparation was carried out at the same time as foreign servicemen studied Russian.
In the curriculum for liberation fighters, time was set aside for political preparation, in keeping with the idea of awakening in students a spirit of equality and justice, and the certainty of the righteousness of the cause they were serving. The aim was to familiarize Africans with the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the history of world revolutionary movements.
Training operations were organized in the mountains, in the forest, at sea or on rivers. Students learned how to make and use explosives, seize arms depots, organize diversions at power stations and military sites, storm buildings and blow up railroads, raid police stations, kidnap sentries, fire pistols, automatic weapons, machine guns and grenades. At the same time, they were actively studying the tactics and military regulations of colonial armies.
Over the years, thousands of students from Ethiopia, Guinea-Conakry, Madagascar, Mali, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo, Benin and Sao Tomé-et-Principe have been trained here. The best among them subsequently served up to the rank of general in their country's armies, as was the case for the EAF, for example. In 1975, no fewer than 15,000 "specialists with a broad profile" graduated from the Perevalnoe center.
Generally speaking, in the 1960s-1970s, the USSR developed a powerful system of training centers, establishments and academies, where foreign military personnel could receive a wide range of professional training (from guerrilla warfare to political-ideological and socio-psychological training). In this way, the USSR was able to offer a wide range of services to its military personnel.
Excepts from "Training ground: History and development of paramilitary training in the Soviet Union during the wars of decolonization" (1999) by the historian specialized in Cold War counter-insurgency conflicts Richard Fleicher