Angola and the Legacy of Stalinism

Abstract

In this essay I will investigate how the legacy of Stalinism still affects Angola today, arguing that it negative- ly impacts the current possibility of an actual national Marxist-Leninist movement taking root in Angola.
I furthermore argue that the four main institutions through which the party in control of the Angolan gov- ernment holds power—that is, the institutions of presidential patronage, the elite government bureaucracy, denial of the legitimate rights of ethnicities, and severe restrictions on the press and political freedoms— were inherited from Stalinism, and it is these four institutions that also serve to demobilize and demoralize workers. Stalinism has not only led to the collapse of the national workers’ movement there, however; it has also paved the way for an incredibly corrupt, bureaucratic, and authoritarian form of crony capitalism that deprives the great majority of Angolan people their most basic social and economic rights. This in and of itself makes it even more difficult for the workers’ movement to be revived and for a truly Marxist-Le- ninist revolution to take place. It can be said, then, that overall the legacy of Stalinism has deprived Angola the opportunity to become actually independent and free.