This article accompanies Constantin Katsakioris’s Contemporary European History article The Socialist Countries, North Africa and the Middle East in the Cold War: The Educational Connection.

Part of the special issue Eastern European–Middle Eastern Relations: Continuities and Changes from the Time of Empires to the Cold War

Graduates of the African Oil and Gas Institute in Algiers (Boumerdès), which was established in 1964–5 as a gift of the Soviet Union to post-colonial Algeria, served at the national energy enterprise contributing to the nationalisation and development of the Algerian oil and gas industry in the 1970s. Egyptian engineers received training at the El-Tabbin Metallurgical Institute, which was also created by the Soviet Union in 1971. They became managers and higher lever technical staff at the Helwan Steel Complex, one of the most successful ventures in the history of Soviet–Egyptian economic cooperation, and in a number of other industrial plants established with the assistance of Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania. Students from North Africa and the Middle East who attended universities in the socialist countries rose to prominence as scholars and writers. Among those who attended prestigious schools of cinema, like the Gerasimov Institute in Moscow, the Prague Film and Television School or the Lozd Film School in Poland, many became distinguished filmmakers winning international awards and leaving their imprint on national cinemas.

My article in Contemporary European History provides a comprehensive picture of Soviet and East European aid to and cooperation with North Africa and the Middle East in the field of education with an emphasis on the higher level. It shows the importance of education and argues that it was instrumental in the political economy of the relations between these two regions. While Middle Eastern countries sought to benefit from foreign aid to train their elite and enhance development, the Eastern Bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) considered international education as a major means for fostering both economic and political ties with the developing world and sought to coordinate the educational policies of member states. Apart from the states, several other actors were involved in these relations including communist parties, cultural societies, youth and trade unions. National and religious minorities, like the Kurds or the Lebanese Druze and Armenians, also benefited from the Soviet and East European scholarships. Altogether, regardless of national or political background, the primary beneficiaries were the thousands of students who otherwise would never have been able to pursue university studies.

Along with showing the centrality of education in the relations between the socialist countries and the Middle East during the Cold War, this article brings to the fore a number of forgotten connections and suggests avenues for further research.

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Main image credit: Students at the Medical Institute of Donetsk with Veterans of the Second World War at International Workers’ Day, 1 May 1977, Central State Archives of Ukraine, collection 4621, inventory 13, file 3843, page 87. Image provided by author.