Irina Filatova: SA’s future? Moscow fantasy. Centralised. Not Nationalised.

Irina Filatova is a Russian professor who moved to South Africa in 1992 when she joined the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In this fascinating interview with Alec Hogg, the two explore the communist movement in South Africa and how it ties in with the Soviet Union.

Filatova says the ideological influence of the Communist Party on the ANC leadership cannot be disputed and is evident if one goes through the ANC documents. And it’s no coincidence Filatova is married to Rhodes scholar, Oxford don, author, journalist and political scientist RW Johnson.

On Biznews we have spoken extensively about his book, How long will South Africa survive? which has topped the country’s best-selling non-fiction list for well over a year. The dinner discussions must be entertaining.

Especially as Filatova is herself an accomplished author – her book The Hidden Thread which explores relationships between SA and Soviet Russia, won the Recht Malan Prize for Best Non-Fiction book of 2014 at the Media 24 Literary Awards. – Stuart Lowman

Professor Irina Filatova is from a Russian background, living in South Africa now but if we go back right to the beginning to where you started, were you born in Russia?

Yes. I was born in 1947 in Murmansk, if that says anything to anybody. That’s where the British convoys brought assistance and all sorts of other things during the Second World War, and that’s how it is known to the English-speaking people. Otherwise, I spent my childhood in Ariel, a small town to the south of Moscow and the rest of my life in Moscow.

As an academic, and as an academic very interested in African affairs, what drew you to Africa?

That’s actually, a very easy question. I started becoming interested in politics during my latter school years. A lot of interesting things were going on and it was all alive, I would say. Then it started to go down and it started to freeze. There were fewer topics that it was possible to discuss.

It was more difficult but I found a very interesting outlet in something, which was called ‘The House of Friendship’ because you couldn’t just meet foreigners anywhere.

You could only meet them in the prescribed places, such as ‘House of Friendship’ and there was an African seminar, which were the South African students who studied in Moscow, at that time, not only in Moscow, they came specifically for these meetings.

They got together for a seminar and they discussed absolutely everything in the world. They were absolutely free to discuss everything and what was going on in Africa, Russia and, if they didn’t like how their meetings were reported then they protested.

Of course, their protests were never published but still it was very interesting. It was again, you could participate, so I started going to that seminar. I got there by chance, absolutely and then I started going there.

I became their secretary and then I decided I would go to Moscow State University and study Africa. That’s how easy it was.

Read also: Bloomberg View: Why world still hates Russia despite $500m propaganda spend

It was an interesting time as well, in Africa, Soviet or Russian relations.

Yes. Look, it is difficult to imagine now but at that time it seemed that Africa was the future and when I was a school girl, and once a geography teacher told us that by the time you finish school, and by the time, (in a few years time) the whole of Africa will be free. It was difficult to imagine that and then there was so much hope, so much expectations connected with what was going on in Africa.

Was there a sense of déjà vu for you, when you go back to South Africa in 1994, given what you had been through?

I actually came here in 1992. I started to teach at the University of Durban Westville in 1992, and there was a lot of the feeling of déjà vu.

Not only in terms of a comparison with other African countries but also, in some senses, it was the expectation of the revolution. It was the revolution coming and so on, and so forth, so it was a comparison with some events in Russian history as well.

Going back to your time in Moscow, as an academic at the State University, did you have a chance to meet any of the ANC leadership, who were in exile then?

That started much later. There was a chance to meet Africans again and South Africans in particular at the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee Meeting but just any academic would not be invited there and it would not be easy to meet the South Africans because these organizations were not really, interested in academics.

You do your thing and we do our thing, so the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee – it was very closely connected with the Central Committee of the Party. It called itself a NGO but it was practically not a NGO. It was practically a state organization.

Although, people contributed to its work, they did believe in the future for Africa and Asia, and they did contribute.

Trade Unions gave them the money and so on, so when the Party, and such organizations as Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee started to get interested in academics, which was in the second half of the 1980’s.

Suddenly, in the Gorbachev era, and with the developments in South Africa, suddenly academic opinions started to matter and that is when we were asked and attracted to work and to come and meet people, and so on.

Read also: ANC turns anti-West, declares US stance on China, Russia a Cold War

How well were the ANC in exile, perhaps in propaganda, if you want to put it that way? It appears today that there is still a lot of the residue of the time that many of them spent in the Soviet Union – calling each other comrade, as an example. Applying Soviet-type policies: was it a learning process or was it just absorbed by being there?

I don’t think that it was absorbed just by being there. I would like to give you two separate answers. The first one is that the absorption of Soviet doctrine and Soviet attitudes and Soviet understanding of the world.

It was not necessarily connected to coming to the USSR because it was the Party propaganda and the ANC propaganda throughout the existence of the armed struggle, more than any – through any other time but certainly from the 1960’s and on and on.

There was a very close connection between the Communist Party and, of course, the Soviet Communist Party. The ideological influence of the Communist Party on the ANC leadership was, well it could not be disputed. You can see it now but you can also follow it through the documents of the ANC.

There was this influence and there was this general understanding of the world, in terms of progressives and reactionaries, imperialists and socialists, and a bright future was with the socialists and the socialist countries.

They were the ones that were helping the ANC to wage the struggle against apartheid, so obviously, they were the good guys and you had to listen to what they had to say.

Of course the Soviet example, in which the way it was presented to all African countries, and to South African leadership, was that look what achievements we have made and what we have achieved, through our policies of centralization planning and so on.

That was seen by many African leaders, and South African leaders amongst them. It was seen as the example of something to follow. Of course, by the time they came to power, they accumulated a lot of experience.

They thought no, we are not going to repeat the mistakes that other people did. They did not start nationalizing, all at once and so on. The problem was that there was nothing else that they could do in terms of they could not start thinking differently.

They had to arrive, in any case, to the second stage of the revolution because everything else was as if it was a preparation for that. The degree to which the leadership, at least the people who I met was convinced that the Soviet example was the way to follow.

It could be seen during the seminars. There were two seminars, organized by the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee. The ANC leadership, not the top leadership but some very prominent people, Pallo Jordan for example, who was the head of the South African delegation, and the Soviet academics and when we started to discuss the ethnicity and the nationality problem.

We started asking the South Africans ‘what are you going to do about protecting the rights of the minorities’ and ‘what are you going to do about trying to keep the ethnic question under control’ because it’s going to be difficult.

Their answer was that there is no such a question. You are not familiar with our literature. I can actually give you the exact quote because I have the material of these seminars, but the idea was that as soon as apartheid goes, everything will be absolutely fine and there will be no animosity, no ethical questions, no need to protect and defend the rights of the minorities.

Pretty, idealistic from their perspective.

Very idealistic, first of all but secondly, it was the same idea as the Soviet idea. That all the nationality ethnicity questions are created by imperialism, by the bourgeoisie and by exploitation, and there is no other problem, so as soon as all this goes.

There was also the idea that as soon as apartheid goes capitalism will also go. It will collapse because they are tied up together and absolutely, inseparably.

Read also: Russia & SA build 40-tonne dump-truck – relations continue to grow

That’s very simplistic but from your own perspective, working in the State University, also being exposed to this way of thinking. Did post 1989, Perestroika/Gorbachev come as a shock to you or was it inevitable?

Well, you say that I was exposed. Yes, but when you are exposed too much to one side of the propaganda you start thinking differently, at least that often happens. My generation of students was very much, not all of them but the ANC official line ideas, the ANC official line theories, perceptions and so on, were very deeply set there. People thought differently.

For example, some thought no, we have to return to Leninism but by some time, through going through Czechoslovakia in 1968, and going through the slowing of the economy.

Seeing how it is not working and so on, you just could not fail to come to the conclusion that whatever you try to create, out of complete control, (nationalization), with everything.

Well, after all it was Lenin who said, “Monopoly leads to stagnation.” That is exactly what was happening, and it was quite obvious to many of us that it would not work.

To see the ANC people coming there and believing that it would work was not a shock, but when Gorbachev’s reforms started, you watched it, and you just thought it couldn’t succeed.

He can’t go on with it, and he will be stopped but then he was going on and then you can’t believe what you are reading and you can’t believe that this is possible. That was the reaction. There was no shock but it was absolute amazement.

Given all the evidence that the Soviet Union didn’t work, why is the experiment being repeated here in South Africa?

It hasn’t been repeated yet, to such a degree. I think that amongst the ANC leadership there are many who still understand that you cannot repeat what was going on in the Soviet Union. Many people still do not understand. They think that the Soviet Union collapsed and the Soviet economy collapsed by chance.

That it was not necessarily something that should or would have happened, if only Yeltsin and Gorbachev are traitors. Yeltsin is a traitor and a criminal, and so on and that’s their perception. If there were no Gorbachev – maybe everything would have been hunky dory.

That is one thing but there is also another thing. Look at what is going on now both China and Russia are centralizing their power. What I mean by that is not that they necessarily have everything nationalized but that the control is being centralized in different ways in Russia and in China, but the example is – this is working.

These economies are working, while the Western economies are barely developing and there is such a joy on the part of some Trade Union leaders here that it’s such a joy to watch the American economy is doing badly, or the British economy is doing badly, or whatever – Euro is doing badly.

That is the proof that the other side is right.

Read also: Strategic chess: Should Zuma be friends with Putin?

We’re still seeing, at least in a philosophical basis, a lot of the hangover of the time that the ANC was influenced by what happened in the Soviet Union. What would it take to change that way of thinking? You were saying earlier that in Russia you could see that things were not going well but it needed unbelievable leadership perhaps, to change that. What about here, given that experience that you’ve had – how are you reading what could be ahead of us here?

I don’t know what is going to be ahead but I can tell you one thing. That populism, unfortunately, is spreading here. It is not diminishing. You see populism in exactly the same vein, perhaps even worse than what the ANC leadership has foreseen, and is doing now because if you look at the young people, who are following Malema, as an example, and who are following his way of looking at a contemporary world.

Their understanding and knowledge of economy, of history, of what is doable and what is not doable, and what their actions would lead to – that is quite frightening, I would say. That is absolutely amazing how little they understand what their actions would produce. The ANC leadership needs a lot of courage, and so far, I haven’t seen it, in terms of telling their people the truth.

I don’t know but some of them may understand that they have to but they just don’t do it, and some just don’t understand what the truth is. They still think that if you just nationalize this and that, and control this and that, that the trick will finally work.

So it’s the fantasy that they had all those years ago, in Moscow?

In Moscow or in Lusaka or anywhere else – look if you read the ANC materials produced at the time of their exile, there all built on the notion that we are coming to some sort of a brighter future, which will not be a capitalist future. There is no other option, basically.

How do you as a Russian or as someone who grew up in Russia – how are you seeing the way that that country is going right now, with political murders, with apparent bribery and corruption, endemic with Mr Putin, doing very strange things, as far as everybody else in the world seems to believe anyway.

Look, it has not been going right for quite a long time. As you mentioned murders, you mentioned [inaudible 0:19:34.6] independent journalists, and of the opposition politicians – it has not been going right for a very, very long time.

I think that the line was crossed after the occupation of Crimea and after what has happened in Eastern Ukraine, so now it is very difficult to turn back, not only because of the political elite but also because nationalism and chauvinism have gone out of control completely.

It is very difficult for me to speak with many of my friends because overnight they have turned into Russian Nationalists. Without again understanding where it leads to and where it leads the country, and what its future is going to be, if it follows the same line.

Where does it lead to Irina?

Where does it lead to – I think, it leads to an incredibly conservative future. There is no economic reform. Political thinking is very conformist and almost mystical. Somehow, Russia will be all right, despite the reality. The Russian Orthodox Church plays a huge, enormous role in contemporary Russian perceptions and in the Russian world today.

I don’t think that Russia can cope with such thinking and such ideology in the modern world because you really need to think about developing your economy quickly. You need to get education and there is just no money. The money is going into the army now.

Look, I work at one of Moscow’s universities it’s a very good university, which is called National Research University Higher School of Economics. What I see is that there is less and less money although the university is well endowed but there is just people and people are getting squeezed everywhere.

You see the closing shops. You see the people losing jobs. There is no money.

But the opposition that we hear of, from outside, the chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov was in South Africa a couple of years ago, and he’d got beaten up. He showed us pictures of how that happened. Pussy Riot is world famous for what they did as well. On the other hand political leaders getting shot in public places – is there any resistance or the friends that you discussed that have become nationalists, is that more?

That is the problem with the opposition. The opposition has always been divided and even when they had a small chance to establish themselves, they could never, never agree. Perhaps it is understandable because some of the opposition was more nationalistic.

Some of the opposition was more liberal, and so on. It’s very difficult to agree in these circumstances, but even those small parties, which had similar ideas, could never agree and get something more plausible.

Recently, with the upsurge of nationalism and the new upsurge of Putin’s popularity, after the Crimea, because there were demonstrations against him, virtually on the eve of his return to power but that has all pattered out because the nationalist wave has just swept it away. There is some opposition. People still write what they think, although a little more carefully.

There is one magazine and a couple of radio programs where you can just say more that is normally accepted for example, than the State’s TV.

A tiny percentage of the Russian population is acquainted with that. The majority watches the TV, the official TV, and is acquainted only with the official views and they agree with those views. This is the majority now.

What about the relationship between South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma and Vladimir Putin – when you see pictures of the G20, the two of them are almost isolated from many of the others but they seem to be very close friends.

Well, I don’t know whether they are friends or not, I really don’t. I can’t read Putin’s mind.

Is it a good thing for South Africa to be that closely aligned?

Look, if Russia could provide something for the South African economy I don’t see any problem with their friendship or their meetings, or something like that. Whatever Russia can do, in terms of developing and helping to develop the South African economy that would be a good idea, I think that…

Do they have money, if they’re running out of money out over there?

Well, that is my question. What is going to happen? If we take the nuclear deal, for example, I’m not sure how it is going to work or who is going to pay.

It’s enormous money – who is going to pay for it? What also worries me about this deal, slightly, is okay the Russians come here and teach the South Africans all the appropriate technology but the Russians, themselves, have the experience of the accidents in nuclear power stations.

What happens here? What if there is another human error or something like that? That is a big problem because labor discipline in this country, perhaps just as in Russia, is not very high.

Anyway, there are other problems. In both countries, corruption is rampant and when we speak about business connections, between Russia and South Africa that question always is on my mind. How clean is the deal? How clean is what is being proposed?

I don’t know. I can’t say but what I do know is that patronage, the system of patronage is the core of the Russian economy. It’s the core of Russian politics. It’s what the Russian State consists of, at the moment and the South Africans… Well, we all know what is going on with corruption here, and the patronage system here, so that is what worries me about the relations between the two countries.

If there is a good deal – go ahead. You see, there is for example Media 24, which is very busy in Russia. South Africa supplies a lot of fruit and wine to Russia, and there are several others – the Mondi Paper. When I go to Russia, there is lots of Mondi Paper everywhere on sale. There are good deals, nothing against it. That’s very good.

Your relationship with South Africa started many years ago but why the decision to come and live here?

Well, I got a job in the year of 1992, first of all, I was invited to the South African Institute of International Affairs as their Bradlow Fellow, and I spent several months with them, rather interesting and happily because it was an interesting time indeed and it was interesting to watch South Africa at that time. Then I was interviewed for a position at the University of Durban Westville.

I did not take it seriously, I must say because I had very few English language publications by then and I was not known here but they interviewed me for the position of head of history, at UDW. Then I got it, to my amazement.

I think partially because I was Russian and they expected me to be a communist and what not. I worked there for ten years, and it was quite a hectic time. University of Durban Westville has never been an easy place to work. It was not a quiet campus.

The curriculum has that changed – has that been influenced in the same way, perhaps as the history of the ANC?

I wouldn’t say so. The curriculum started changing at South African universities in the 1980’s, and it changed through the 1990’s, in the sense that more and more African and South African history was added. We were still told that we had not Africanized. It was quite amazing that when the Vice Chancellor, at that time, [Ramashala? 0:30:44.5].

She invited every department or maybe some departments to speak to her. I do remember her telling us, sometime in the 1990’s, “Look, you do have to Africanize. You do have to transform your curriculum in such a way that, I don’t mind the Great Trek.”

We said we don’t teach the Great Trek. We look at our curriculum. “No.” She would repeat three times that she’s not against the Great Trek but you have to Africanize it. That’s at the time when the curriculum was two/thirds about Africa and South Africa.

In that sense, yes, it was Africanized drastically but I don’t think there was any ideological pressure on what we were teaching and we just taught what we wanted to.

To close off with, your husband, Bill Johnson, is a liberal here in South Africa – do you share, well first of all, how did you meet and how did you decide to get together?

Well, we met at a braai in Durban, at a friend’s braai by chance, and somehow it developed very gradually, to the stage where we are here, in Cape Town.

Do you think similarly about ideology?

About many things – about very, many things I would say. It does not mean that we don’t argue. 

* For more in-depth business news, visit biznews.com or simply sign up for the daily newsletter.