The Hidden Thread: Russia & South Africa in the Soviet Era - Irina Filatova & Apollon Davidson

The Hidden Thread is a journey of revelation about the relationship between Soviet Russia and South Africa, hidden for most of its length. The story is told with insight and depth by Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson, who have had a decades long association researching and writing on Russian and South African politics and history. This insightful work follows the often surprising twists and turns of the history of South Africas relationship with Russia and its people which started in the eighteenth century and is still very much alive today.

The story evolves from the Russian volunteers who fought alongside the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War to South Africans who participated in the Russian revolution and civil war; from the Russian Jewish immigration to South Africa to the close involvement of the South African communists in the Communist International; from the Soviet consulates in South Africa and the activities of South Africas Friends of the Soviet Union Society during the Second World War to the vicissitudes of the Cold War and the hot war in Angola; from the SACP and ANCs relations with the USSR to the volte-face of perestroika and South Africas transition and to todays business, political, cultural and sometimes criminal connections between Russians and South Africans.

Paperback, 568 pages

Published March 2013