Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Early Ethio-Japanese Contacts & the Yellow Peril
- 2 Ethiopia's Japanizers
- 3 Japanese Views on Ethiopia
- 4 Promise of Commercial Exchange 1923–1931
- 5 Japan's Penetration of Ethiopia Grows
- 6 The Soviet Union, Italy, China, Japan & Ethiopia
- 7 The Flowering of Ethio–Japanese Relations 1934
- 8 The Sugimura Affair July 1935
- 9 Daba Birrou's Mission to Japan
- 10 The End of Stresa, the Italo–Ethiopian War, & Japan
- Conclusion
- Appendix: The Ethiopian & Meiji Constitutions
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Soviet Union, Italy, China, Japan & Ethiopia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Early Ethio-Japanese Contacts & the Yellow Peril
- 2 Ethiopia's Japanizers
- 3 Japanese Views on Ethiopia
- 4 Promise of Commercial Exchange 1923–1931
- 5 Japan's Penetration of Ethiopia Grows
- 6 The Soviet Union, Italy, China, Japan & Ethiopia
- 7 The Flowering of Ethio–Japanese Relations 1934
- 8 The Sugimura Affair July 1935
- 9 Daba Birrou's Mission to Japan
- 10 The End of Stresa, the Italo–Ethiopian War, & Japan
- Conclusion
- Appendix: The Ethiopian & Meiji Constitutions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Russian & Soviet ties with Ethiopia
Soviet Russia closely followed Japan's political, economic, and military advances, especially those in Manchuria that threatened Siberia, and they connected those threats with Japan's successes in Ethiopia. Moscow's worries dramatically affected Japan's relations with Ethiopia and Italy.
TSARISM & BOLSHEVISM IN ETHIOPIA
State interests, communist ideology, and legacies of earlier Italo-Russian confrontation in Northeast Africa before World War I impacted Soviet policy between the two world wars. Russia's imperial efforts in the region had fallen within the boundary of European power politics, and the Soviets suckled the milk of Tsarist experience. For both the Tsar and Commissars, state interests predominated. Yet, the universalistic and messianic pretensions of both Tsarist Slavophilism and Soviet Communism predisposed Russians to take an active interest in distant territories and justified expanding their influence into Africa. Opportunism, vigorous opposition to British colonial power, recognition of the disruptive potential of indigenous nationalism, and exploitation of black discontent all flowed in post-revolutionary Russian policies. Ideology legitimized realpolitik and reassured Russia's leaders that by pursuing state interests they also were marching in step with history's inevitable tune.
In the half-century before World War I, many Russian adventurers – scoundrels and saints – explored Ethiopia and some formed close relationships with the country's rulers. Steeled by this tradition, some White Russian émigrés immigrated to Addis Ababa after their defeat at Bolshevik hands between 1917 and 1922.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Alliance of the Colored PeoplesEthiopia and Japan before World War II, pp. 62 - 77Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011