Notes on the Impact of the Disintegration ofthe USSR on the Third World

Abstract

For me it is important that the major changes in the world are analyzed from an
African point of view, and more pointedly from the point of view of African
liberation. This will be the focus of my discussion since the essential issues of
self-determination and independence in the third world are as important today
as they were in 1917 at the time of the Bolshevik revolution.
This discussion will attempt to understand some of the implications of the
disintegration of the Soviet Union for the Third World from both the point of
view of the importance of revolutionary tnmsformations, their potentialities and
their limits; and from the point of view of the historical meaning for the peoples
of the world in the period of the so-called new world order.
In brief, we have to understand the Bolshevik revolution and its impact on
the world system, the forms of social organization which were called socialist,
the phase of the national liberation movements in the period after World War II,
and the new phase in the world where there is the threat of the recolonization
of the Third World who fought for national independence. It will also be
important to grasp the possible implications of the disintegration of the Soviet
Union for the peopks of the advanced capitalist countries at a time when the
ruling elements cannot use the bogey of anti-communism to place large
resources into the military industrial complex.