2023.4

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that in the context of the expansion and strengthening of Russia’s ties with Africa, it is extremely important to analyze the experience of Soviet-African relations, to identify its achievements and miscalculations. The political crisis in Kenya in the second half of the 1960s played an important role in the deterioration of Soviet-Kenyan relations. Тhe essence of the crisis was that in the first half of 1965 the struggle between the right and left wings in the Kenyan government and in the leadership of the ruling KANU party escalated. The leader of the left wing, Oginga Odinga, was ousted from the leadership of the country. He created an opposition party, the Kenya People’s Union, which under his leadership led an active struggle to change the course of the government. In 1969 Oginga was arrested and his party was banned. In parallel in 1967–1968 a fierce factional struggle within the ruling party of Kenya developed and reached its peak by mid-1969, when the leader of the right wing of KANU Tom Mboya was assassinated. The political crisis in Kenya has found its rather detailed reflection on the pages of the newspaper Pravda. At first, the newspaper tried to create a positive image of the opposition among the Soviet reader, to show the progressive nature of its demands, and after the defeat of the opposition, its tone became more neutral in the interests of preserving relations with Kenya. However, not all aspects of the crisis were covered in Pravda.

Studying colonial ideology, it is important to understand how, when and why Europeans accepted the idea that remote territories can and should be conquered, and the local population needs protection, guardianship and civilizing influence of the West. The mission of the white man, according to their unanimous conviction, was to establish and maintain civilization, just peace and order in the entire ecumene. The general desire for colonial acquisitions was closely connected with the changing economic views of most European countries. Thus, an ideology was formed that allowed the population of the Euro-Christian world to justify the crimes of colonialism. On the far outskirts of the Euro–Christian world, a state appeared that was the first to be freed from colonial dependence — the United States. The Americans abandoned the idea of a “civilizing mission” and replaced it with “democracy”. Initially, the United States did not combine exploitation with democratic principles. After the Second World War, the United States has no competitors left in the capitalist world. They abandoned the “Monroe doctrine” and put the entire non-capitalist world under their financial and economic control, and a significant part of it under political, military and ideological control. However, for such an extensive foreign policy agenda, another ideological motivation was needed. In its most generalized form, it can be described as the doctrine of “American world leadership”. It formulates the main super–task — the establishment and preservation of American hegemony in the world. Gradually, the term “liberal democracy” was introduced into practice. Regardless of the implementation of the standards of “liberal democracy”, the United States supports those regimes whose foreign and domestic political course meets American interests.

The article is devoted to the BRICS Academic Forum, held on May 13–17, 2023 in Cape Town, the parliamentary capital of South Africa, which this year chairs the group of countries uniting Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The distinctive feature of the forum was that the first time after three years of pandemic restrictions, it was held not online, but “live”. It is noted that although South Africa joined this group last, two years after its creation, and by many indicators it is “not equal” to its other members, it adequately represents the African continent in it. This was reflected in the main theme of her presidency — “BRICS and Africa: partnership for mutual accelerated growth, sustainable development and inclusive multilateralism”, The article describes in detail the topics of the plenary meetings and sessions of the forum, the participation in them of a delegation of Russian academics, headed by the Chairman of the Board of the National Committee on BRICS Research V.A. Nikonov. At the end of the forum, a meeting of the BRICS Think Tanks Council was held, at which the report for the upcoming summit of the leaders of the five countries, to be held on August 22–24, 2023 in Johannesburg with the participation of the heads of 67 countries and international organizations, including 55 members of the African Union, was discussed and approved. Preparations for it are taking place actively, but for its successful implementation it is necessary to solve the problem that arose in connection with the provocation of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for the President of the Russian Federation.

Recently Soviet studies of African history, as well as Soviet journalistic writing on Africa draw a significant attention of non–Russian historians. The image of Africa which was created by Soviet Africanists seems an obvious and easy subject to those who use post-colonial methodology. Soviet historiography of African history is usually characterised out of historical and comparative context, which prevents an analysis of its multi–layered and complex nature, as well as its historical transformation, its real achievements and its no less real limitations. The article investigates the major tendencies and trends in Soviet historiography of African history in the context of major developments in world African studies. It analyses their trajectories and assesses them from the point of view of their contribution to the academic understanding of African history. It also defines the main stages of the development of Soviet historiography of African history from the late 1920s until the late 1980s and gives a short overview of its main schools, each with its different topics, approaches and sources. The importance of this study derives from the fact that until now no comparative–problematic analysis of the Soviet historiography of African history has been done. A particular stress was made on its historical context, which helps to prevent a distortion of its image.

The first part of this article is dedicated to the problem of correlation between the categories of modality and subjectivity. The notion of modality is one of the most debatable in linguistics. The scholars tend to define the field of modality by listing the varieties of the modality meanings and group them around several conceptual centers. This article provides a comparative overview of existing classifications of the types of modality, as well as gives a working definition of modality that suits the aims of the current research. The modal meanings express an assessment of the status of the situation in relation to the real world, a subjective assessment of the content of the statement by the speaker, as well as its communicative intention. Based on the ideas proposed by E. Paducheva, we consider that subjective-modal meanings are located on the intersection of two semantic fields — modality and egocentricity/subjectivity, which allows us to interpret modality as an egocentric category. The second part of this work justifies the relevance of studying subjective-modal meanings in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. The analysis of real language examples illustrates such problems as: compatibility of different types of modality in one statement, attributing the possibility and necessity to the sphere of subjective modality, as well as the question of expressing modality in Egyptian Arabic by grammatical means.

The paper presents an overview of ultrasound and laryngoscopic studies which have gained ground in the last two decades and made a significant contribution to the understanding and description of the articulatory base of phonological features characteristic of African languages. Ultrasound studies shed light on the peculiarities of click production and provided a comprehensive picture of the posterior constriction location during their articulation. The posterior constriction was shown to occur in various parts of the post-velar region depending on the type of click, which gave grounds to replace the notion of velaric airstream mechanism with the notion of lingual airstream mechanism. The studies also revealed the important role of the tongue root retraction as part of the rarefaction gesture, which is a key step in the production of clicks. Ultrasound studies shed light on the role of the tongue root and tongue body height in the production of the advanced tongue root contrast. The tongue root movement was shown to be an independent gesture, the difference in tongue body height during the production of the vowels of different harmonic sets being non-significant or inconsistent across vowel types and speakers. Laryngoscopic studies have made a significant contribution to the understanding of the articulatory base of the advanced tongue root feature and the production of different phonation types. The laryngoscopic studies gave primacy in production of the contrast to aryepiglotto-epiglottal constriction while all the other mechanisms postulated before — tongue root position, the volume of the pharyngeal cavity and larynx height — are considered as parts of a synergistic system of laryngeal articulations. Laryngoscopic studies also shed light on the production of different phonation types including the so-called faucalised voice which has not been reported as a contrastive feature outside of Africa.

This article is devoted to the problem of differential object marking in the modern Amharic language. Differential object marking is a common phenomenon in many languages, when the choice of morphosyntactic design of an object is determined by the meaning of one or more features of the object noun phrase. One of the parameters of differential marking is the contrast between dependent and head marking. “In relation to sentence-level actants, dependent marking is the expression of the syntactic function or semantic role of the actant (object) using the case indicator with a noun phrase, and head marking is the expression of the syntactic function or semantic role of the actant using morphologically non-autonomous indicators of person, gender and number”, in the case of Amharic, there are object pronominal suffixes as part of predicate.

Non-verbal predication is one of the current trends in modern linguistics. The topic of non-verbal predication has recently received widespread development in functional linguistics, as has the typology of copulative constructions. Non-verbal predication means a non-standard method of formatting a predicate expressed by nominal parts of speech. With the clear predominance of finite verbal predicates in the Bantu languages, a special method of non-verbal predication is recorded. The essence of such predication in the Bantu languages is to mark the name with a certain indicator — copula. Sentences with a copula or with some grammatical element similar in function to the copula usually express the same range of meanings. Basically, these are sentences of two types: existential and equative or identifying. The article focuses on the ways of marking non-verbal predicates in the southeastern Bantu languages (Zulu, Shona, Sotho) and eastern Bantu languages (Swahili, Dabida, Kikuyu).

The phenomenon of the “new” novel in Swahili, which arose at the turn of the last and current centuries, can be considered as one of the highest achievements of modern Swahili literature. Among the writers who created and develop the “new” novel, we should first of all name the Tanzanian authors Euphrase Kezilahabi and Said Ahmed Mohamed and the Kenyans Kyallo Wadi Wamitila and Tom Olali. Their works reveal a number of similar features, one of which is the depiction of the current state of Africa and the whole world and the vision of their future. The idea of this future as a catastrophe can be traced at different levels of the text, including the level of its “topography”, consisting of three main elements — the human world, the other world (as a rule, the underground world with obvious features of hell), and the world of the future. All these worlds closely interact with each other, thereby expressing the authors’ idea — humanity is persistently building (or has already built) hell on earth, which is destined for an exclusively apocalyptic future. The authors see a possible way out of the situation in the joint efforts of those who are not indifferent to the fate of future generations, under the slogan of “unity in equality”. These joint efforts should be made in various areas — primarily in the dissemination of education, knowledge and creativity, creation instead of consumption, mutual support instead of the “laws of the wolf pack.” In this case, humanity can even again count on the support of higher powers — and the scenario of a possible future may not be so gloomy.

The “Pivot to Africa” officially proclaimed by the decision-making bodies of the Russian Federation is gradually being filled with specific content. Along with the propaganda discourse, the official and academic approach to the realities of African countries — potential partners is being updated, and the Russian Federation’s capabilities for developing dialogue with Africa are being clarified, taking into account the current state of international relations. The article, based on numerous publications in 2023, reveals the mutual influence of academic, propaganda and official discourse in the process of building a new policy of the Russian Federation towards African partners.

The article examines the potential of the Russian language and cooperation in education as a source of Russian “soft power” in Nigeria. Today, Africa is becoming an increasingly relevant regional area of foreign policy of the Russian Federation. The spread of Russian “soft power” in Nigeria, one of the key states in sub-Saharan Africa, will promote national interests throughout the continent. Cooperation in education has proved to be a more influential source of soft power, while a number of difficulties accompanies the popularization of the Russian language in Nigeria. Russia’s lack of a strategy to form elites in Nigeria slows down the possibility of intensifying cooperation with this African state.

The paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies of North African countries. The pandemic is shown to have had a significant impact on the economies of the countries in the region. Despite the decisive measures taken by the governments of the North African countries to limit social contacts in order to slow down the spread of the virus, the consequences of the pandemic have significantly slowed down economic and social projects and worsened the internal situation. The leading country in the region, Egypt, faced a high rate of spread of the coronavirus due to its densely populated population, but was best prepared for the financial and economic turbulence caused by the consequences of COVID-19. Morocco’s economy coped relatively painlessly with the COVID restrictions and showed good recovery growth rates. Algeria’s economy experienced slow economic growth on the eve of, during and after the pandemic. The worst impact of the pandemic was felt by the Tunisian economy, which was in deep stagnation at the start of the pandemic. The stimulus measures had a short-term effect and did not have a decisive impact on the Tunisian economy, which continues to show low rates of economic development. The graphs presented by the authors on the dynamics of total GDP and GDP at purchasing power parity clearly support the above conclusions.

The Bayero University Dictionary, published in 2006, is the first Hausa explanatory dictionary, compiled by a team of authors from the Center for the Study of National Languages of Nigeria, Bayero University in Kano. Unfortunately, the dictionary does not indicate the number of words, but the sheer volume of the dictionary — 502 pages — suggests that the dictionary provides interpretations of a large number of words, including those that are not recorded in earlier Hausa-English dictionaries. The dictionary explains new semantic neologisms that have emerged in the Hausa language over the past 30 years. The second dictionary was created by Ayuba T. Abubakar, who worked on its compilation for more than 25 years and during the work consulted Hausa language scholars both in Nigeria and abroad. Unfortunately, this dictionary does not indicate the number of dictionary entries. It is interesting that the author provided each dictionary entry not only with an explanation of its meaning, but also with a large number of examples. For better understanding, excerpts from songs are also given, since some words are used only in songs. Particularly interesting and useful not only to linguists, but also to ethnographers and historians is the explanation of the various appellatives that the Hausa give to children along with names taken from the Koran. Most of these appellatives are not noted in other dictionaries. Both of these dictionaries are an important source of knowledge on the vocabulary of the Hausa language both for philologists involved in the study of Chadic languages and Hausa in particular, and for students of this language.