Acknowledgments

I have too many debts to pay. I needed to exist in this world first in order to write this book. For this, I am eternally grateful to my parents, Rosemond Aidoo and Kwasi Osei-Opare, for giving me life. More than bringing me into this world, they have lived in three different countries and across two different continents to ensure that their children had the best possible opportunities to achieve our hearts’ desires and “make it” in this lifetime. I am grateful for my grandmother, Florence Ofori, whose dedication and commitment to education ensured that I always had a leg up in society even before my birth into this world. Their unwavering commitment to ensure that my siblings and I received “the best” possible “education,” no matter the financial, emotional, or physical strain placed on them, paved the way for me to write this book in the United States. None of us could have imagined just where our lives would have taken us since my birth in the mountainous and lush Eastern Region of Ghana under the military rule of Flight Lt. John Jerry Rawlings. I’d also like to thank my aunties Florence and Jane for helping raise us in South Africa – during its apartheid and post-apartheid years. I pray to see you both again soon.

I am extremely thankful and blessed for the educational institutions and teachers that I have encountered across three countries from my first years in daycare at the Tetteh Quarshie daycare center at Mampong, Ghana, to my graduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles. In between, I attended Paddington in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa; St. Patrick’s College in Kokstad, South Africa; Hatfield Christian School in Pretoria, South Africa; Burnet Street Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey; St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey; and Stanford University in California. I am truly indebted to the teachers and coaches that have mentored, supported, taught, encouraged (tough and otherwise), and cared for me, particularly Andrew Apter, the late Mrs. Berry, Andrea Carolyn, the late Margaret (Peggy) Cinberg, Robert Crews, Mr. Delaney, James (Jim) Duffy, Aidan Forth, the late J. Arch Getty, Malvina Griffin-Mutts, Sean Hanretta, Debbie Holloway, Peter Holsberg, Abbas Kadhim, Robin D. G. Kelley, Vinay Lal, Ghislaine Lydon, Stephan F. Miescher, Kathryn Miller, Marc Onion, Michael Scanlan, Bryan Schwartz, Mark Webster, and William (Bill) Worger. If it were not for each institution that I walked through, each teacher, mentor, or coach that I encountered and who spent long (and uncompensated) hours, days, and years to foster my love of learning, I would not have received the education and worldview necessary to write this book. I know that this brief acknowledgment is insufficient, but I am consistently thankful for all you have done for me. You are all constantly in my mind and heart.

In their own way, Nwando Achebe, Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, Jonathan Brunstedt, Vivien Chang, Calvin Ryan Cheung-Miaw, Samuel Fury Childs Daly, David C. Engerman, John D. French, Aglaya Glebova, Amir Idris, Abosede George, Nicole Gilhuis, David Glovsky, Thavolia Glymph, Bright Gyamfi, Lena Hill, Michael D. Hill, Emma Hunter, Alessandro Iandolo, Abdoulie Jabang, Mohamed Kamara, Hilah Kohen, Alexa Kurmanova, Nataliia Laas, Elisabeth Leake, Adriane D. Lentz-Smith, Su Lin Lewis, Thom Loyd, Hilary Lynd, Gregory Mann, Maxim Matusevich, Adam Mestyan, Yuko Miki, Bianca Murillo, Naveena Naqvi, Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Michael O’Sullivan, Kevin M. F. Platt, Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, Sunnie Rucker-Chang, Elizabeth Schmidt, Nelly Shams, Shobana Shankar, Karin Shapiro, Asif Siddiqi, Hasan Siddiqui, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Kimberly St. Julian Varnon, Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ, Marjan Wardaki, O. Arne Westad, Adam Woodhouse, and Tony Yeboah have told me that this story, at least components of it, had value and was worth telling. At various stages, I have found great encouragement in writing this project from their stamps of approval.

What started as an undergraduate honor’s thesis – directed by Robert Crews (chair), Sean Hanretta, and Carol L. McKibben – morphed into a doctoral dissertation – supervised by Andrew Apter (chair), Robin D. G. Kelley, Stephan F. Miescher, and William (Bill) H. Worger – and is now a book. Their fingerprints can be found all over the manuscript. I am deeply grateful to each of them for believing in this project and me from its infancy to now. I hope that I can be half the mentor to others as you all have been to me.

In addition, the book has been significantly improved by comments and criticisms from a wide range of individuals. I am grateful for being invited to attend, workshop, and discuss parts of my work at several undergraduate and graduate seminars. These included Bianca Murillo’s at California State University, Domingues Hills, Rhiannon Dowling’s at Lehman College, Robyn d’Avignon’s at New York University, Nicole Gilhuis’ at Pepperdine University, Kevin M. F. Platt’s at the University of Pennsylvania, and Samuel Anderson’s at Pomona College, where I had the unique pleasure of having my youngest brother partake in the class. Students at these institutions asked me critical questions and offered engaging insights, forcing me to clarify and rethink my project anew. I am also grateful to my students at Fordham University, particularly those in my “Africa, Race, and the Global Cold War,” “Colonial Ghana,” and “Global, Intellectual, and International History” courses, for permitting me to bounce ideas and readings off them. I would like to thank Lindsey Sullivan, a stellar former undergraduate student of mine at Fordham, for doing some archival research for me at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

I also had the extreme benefit and privilege of sharing my work widely and receiving comments, criticisms, and suggestions from the attendees at the Modern History Seminar Series at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton; the African History Workshop and Global Studies Colloquium and African History Workshop at UCSB; the Global & International History Workshop and the Macmillan Center Council on African Studies at Yale; the Africa and the Soviet Union: Technology, Ideology, and Culture Workshop and the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at NYU; the Walter Rodney Seminar at Boston University; California State University, Domingues Hills; the Transformative Seminar Series at the University of Vienna, Austria; the Activism and Black Life Series at Washington & Lee University; the Center for African Studies Series at the University of Florida; the African Studies Center at the UCLA; the Fordham Africanist Group; the Department of African and African American Studies faculty seminar at Fordham University; the Greater New York Area African History Workshop; the Development Dreams from the Socialist South workshop at the University of Bristol, England; the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin; the New Directions in African Studies conference at Texas A&M University; the Winter Institute on Race, Culture, and Transnationalism at the Stony Brook University and New York City–St. Petersburg Institute joint program; the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University; the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; and the numerous African Studies Association, American Historical Association, and Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conferences I attended. Socialist De-Colony has been made much richer analytically and conceptually from these discussions.

I am equally grateful to all the archivists and librarians I encountered in Ghana, Russia, England, and the United States. Without you all, I would never have had access to any of the documents that underpin this book. Socialist De-Colony is not possible without your tireless work. I am especially thankful to Awula Naa Dodua Milicent and Kojo Botwe.

The last six years have been extremely challenging and rewarding on so many levels. While dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath and two big cross-country moves, my two wonderful children entered this world. In addition, I was fortunate to be part of a daily writing group with Rhiannon Dowling and Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky. While I was the least reliable component or the weakest link of the three, they gave me the impetus to continue writing, even in small bits. I am also grateful to Rafael Zapata for financing my inclusion in the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity’s faculty success program. The program encouraged me to write daily and had a built-in support system. Although we have never met in person or seen each other’s faces on Zoom, Pedro Bassie, Yehenew Kifle, and I spoke regularly on the phone, offering each other advice on a range of issues and ensuring that we were meeting our writing commitments. I’d like to recognize them for continuously pushing and encouraging me.

I was extremely blessed to have received two writing fellowships, which I could take in consecutive years, relieving me of teaching responsibilities, to write the book. The first was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship for Assistant Professors at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in 2022–2023 and the second was the National Endowment for the Humanities/Ford Foundation Fellowship at the Schomburg in 2023–2024. Alongside this support, I would like to acknowledge the Fulbright Hays-Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Fordham’s Faculty Research Grant, Rice University’s generous research package, UCLA’s International Institute Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship, and the Silas Palmer Fellowship from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Library for their financial support. Without the generous financial backing from all of these entities, my ability to undertake and write such a broad geographical project would have been impossible.

I spent two exceptional, extremely productive, and intellectually stimulating academic years at the IAS and the Schomburg. Most of the manuscript was completed at the IAS in 2022–2023. At the IAS, I am particularly thankful for the community and intellectual and professional sounding boards that Lorenzo Alunni, Hillary Angelo, Alyssa Battistoni, Emily Baum, Christopher Bonura, Ilaria Bultrighini, Esther Liberman Cuenca, Nicola Di Cosmo, Julia Dehm, Kian Goh, Saygun Gökariksel, Jeff Gould, Heba Gowayed, Simcha Gross, Evan Haefeli, Bruce Hall, Maira Hayat, Natasha Iskander, Adil Hasan Khan, Verena Krebs, Derek Krueger, Jennifer Lee, Ari Daniel Levine, Minhua Ling, Nayanika Mathur, Catalina Muñoz, David Nirenberg, Nicholas Occhiuto, K-Sue Park, Susan Dabney Pennybacker, Christopher Ratté, Ali Raza, Judith Surkis, Liora Tamir, Anicia C. Timberlake, Francesca Trivellato, and Mantha Zarmakoupi provided me and my family. I workshopped Chapter 3 at the IAS. I want to especially recognize Alyssa Battistoni, Emily Baum, Saygun Gökariksel, Jeff Gould, Bruce Hall, Adil Hasan Khan, Verena Krebs, K-Sue Park, Susan Dabney Pennybacker, Ali Raza, and Judith Surkis for their insightful comments and suggestions during that session.

Moreover, I am eternally indebted to Brent Edwards for being generous, understanding, and flexible, permitting me to commute once a month to New York City from Houston to be a part of the Schomburg family while tending to a newborn, a young child, and a recovering wife. Being a fellow at the Schomburg provided me with another year to add new archival materials, reflect, write, and flip the order of the manuscript around. Alongside Brent, I’d like to thank Lena Burgos-Lafuente, Amelia Herbert, Briona Jones, Stephanie Markowski, Evan Turiano, Benjamin Twagira, Zohra Saed, and Taylor Prescott for their comments on Chapter 5. These past two years have been extremely generative, and I have learned a lot from colleagues at two very different intellectual spaces. Their intellectual insights have certainly made my manuscript a much richer product than it otherwise would have been. I am indebted to Dean Kathleen Canning for permitting the aforementioned arrangement.

Both Ali Raza and Brandon Schecter read a full draft of an earlier version of this manuscript. Their feedback was invaluable. Indeed, some of the best ideas from this project come from them. Alongside them, my manuscript received a thorough working over from Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Maxim Matusevich, Bianca Murillo, Asif Siddiqi, Heather Streets-Salter, and O. Arne Westad during a book manuscript workshop session. Their input substantially improved the quality of the product and provided further conceptual avenues for exploration. I am truly grateful for everyone’s time and expertise. In addition, Zoe Griffith provided comments on an earlier version of Chapter 1, Vivian Chenxue Lu provided feedback on the Introduction, Chapter 4, and the project’s overall theoretical framework. And Brett Savage copyedited an earlier version of Chapter 2. I am thankful for their feedback and in perfecting my thinking and writing.

I have published some of the ideas and contents of this book elsewhere, as “Ghana and Nkrumah Revisited: Lenin, State Capitalism, and Black Marxist Orbits,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History; “‘If You Trouble a Hungry Snake, You Will Force It to Bite You’: Rethinking Postcolonial African Archival Pessimism, Worker Discontent, and Petition Writing in Ghana, 1957–66,” in The Journal of African History; and “Uneasy Comrades: Postcolonial Statecraft, Race, and Citizenship, Ghana-Soviet Relations, 1957–1966,” in the Journal of West African History. I am indebted to the publishers for granting me permission to reprint these ideas in my book manuscript. I want to thank the team at Cambridge University press for shepherding this book. I am especially thankful to Rosa Martin, Lucy Rhymer, Janaki Srinivasan, and to the series editors, Erez Manela and Heather Streets-Salter, who supported this project from the outset. I am also thankful to Mamta Jha for indexing the book.

In the fall of 2019, I began my professional academic career in a supportive and nurturing environment at Fordham University. Figures like Westenley Alcenat, Mattie Armstrong-Price, Eva Badowska, O. Hugo Benavides, Scott G. Bruce, Mark Chapman, Elizabeth Comuzzi, Christopher Dietrich, Isaie Dougnon, Audra Furey-Croke, David Hamlin, Z. George Hong, Stephanie Huezo, Amir Idris, Julie Kleinman, Laurie Lambert, Tyesha Maddox, Christopher Maginn, Casey McNeill, Yuko Mikki, Wolfgang Mueller, Kevin Munnelly, David Myers, Mark Naison, Nelsey Rivera, Asif Siddiqi, and Rafael Zapata were supportive colleagues and friends. In their different ways, they let me bounce ideas off them, helped me and my family adjust to a new life in the Northeast and to a tenure track job in trying circumstances. I am incredibly fortunate that they gambled on me.

I am also thankful to my new academic family at Rice University for taking a chance on me and helping my family and I transition to a new life in Houston, Texas – a place I had never been. I am especially thankful to Lisa Balabanlilar, Tani Barlow, Sherwin K. Bryant, Alex Byrd, Luis Campos, Kathleen Canning, Nate Citino, Laura Correa Ochoa, Daniel Domingues da Silva, Amaryllis Estrella, Jeffrey Fleischer, Gabriela Garcia, Beza Getachew, Gökçe Günel, Huatse Gyal, Randall Hall, Maya Sofer Irish, Moramay López-Alonso, Victoria Massie, Alida Metcalf, W. Caleb McDaniels, Jessica McWhorter, Philip Mogen, Marcie Newton, Kelsey P. Norman, Lida Oukaderova, Elizabeth (Liz) Petrick, Aysha Pollnitz, Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu, James (Jim) Sidbury, Canecia Smith, William (Bill) Suárez-Potts, Abed Takriti, Erika Thompson, Kerry Ward, Lora Wildenthal, Fay Yarbrough, and Olivia K. Young.

I am grateful for my uncle, Kwadwo Dua Opare, who called me “Prof.” before anyone, including myself, believed it was possible. You spoke it into existence. I must admit, it was a surreal moment to see your name in one of my archival documents. If only I knew what kind of book I was going to write or the information that I needed then, I certainly would have interviewed you. Aunty Frema Osei-Opare, like Uncle, you have always been supportive of my thirst for knowledge. You have set up meetings with honorary figures – at times, perhaps, much to your regret! – and provided me with access to documents when I thought I had reached dead ends. I am incredibly grateful. Thank you both for your hospitality each time that I have returned to Ghana. I would also like to write a special thank you to my cousin, Nana Osei Ofori, who has been with me since my birth. You are my older brother in many ways. You have made my stays and trips to Ghana all the more enjoyable and alongside our grandmother, coming to see you each year has made Ghana feel like home and a destination.

I probably have the best brothers anyone can wish for in this lifetime in Kofi Osei-Opare and Junior (Kofi) Osei-Opare. I am constantly amazed by your kindness and generosity, your hard work and tenacity, your commitment and dedication, your willingness to babysit your niece and nephew at times, and your abiding love for each other and me. I am more than blessed to be related to you all. I am enamored by your support and love. Thank you for all that you have done.

Over the course of writing this book, the two loves of my life, Aiyun Adua Lu-Opare and Osei Aili Lu-Opare, were born. I am so happy and blessed to be your father. You probably won’t remember much, if any of this period, but I am thankful that you let me leave on occasions to carry out my fellowships in New York City. I am also thankful to my in-laws Shemin Ge and Ning Lu and my parents for making numerous trips to Houston to help watch Aiyun and Osei when I have been away. Your support has made parenting and adult life much easier.

To my partner, Vivian, you have been both an intellectual interlocutor and made my life much better. We have uprooted our lives in so many ways over the last decade or so. Being able to be with you and the little ones and write this book has been a tough but a joyous pleasure. I apologize to you all for the time writing this book has taken me away from the three of you.

As one can see, it truly did take a village – a huge global village – to write this project. I have tried to incorporate all of the ideas and insights others have given me. In the cases where I have remained stubborn, all the mistakes lie with me. Ultimately, this book is dedicated to Vivian, Aiyun, Osei, Rosemond Aidoo, Kwasi Osei-Opare, Kofi A. Osei-Opare, Kofi D. Osei-Opare, my family, and all those who sacrificed, risking it all, before I was born and during my lifetime to ensure that I could have the opportunity to write this book. I owe you all more than words can muster, thank you.