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.