Sorry 
That was not meant to be a cite at all. Just wondering why USSR would name a University after PL and teach about him.
I had no idea such a university existed before my cousin got a scholarship to go there.
According to Wikipedia:
The Soviet government founded the university on 5 February 1960. Its stated objective during the height of the Cold War was to help developing nations. Many students from developed countries also attended the university. On 22 February 1961, the university was named Patrice Lumumba University after the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, who had been killed in a coup that January.
So the university was created specifically for students from developing nations, and other foreigners.
The name was given very shortly after Lumumba was killed, when events in the Congo were in the news and in people’s minds.
The fact is that Lumumba did ask for Soviet help, and the Soviets did give that help. The Soviets didn’t care what his ideology was, they saw it as an opportunity to get a foothold in the region. That was when the West got serious, installed their own tinpot dictator, and had Lumumba killed.
So just as it suited the US and its allies to call him a communist, so it also suited the USSR to call him a communist and a martyr fighting western imperialism.
The poor guy simply got caught in the middle of an intense Cold War power struggle, complicated by an attempt by powerful corporations to exploit the natural resources of the country – when all he wanted was a decent, peaceful, independent, neutral country based on ‘African values’.
Mauritius is a tiny tourist island, it’s a poor comparison.
Botswana is better, and yes, possibly the DRC could have ended up like that if they’d leveraged their mineral wealth the way Botswana has. Of course, living in Botswana is still no picnic for some groups…
The Cold War.
Everything ultimately points to it.
Even though there was no actual war, it really flipped the world around.
Thank you so much for the info on Lumumba.
I should read his book ‘Congo My Country’ one more time.
Belgium was one of the very worst examples of colonial exploitation. Other nations thought it gave colonialism a bad name.
Belgium came rather late to carving out a colonial empire. They exploited the population so cruelly that it became a international scandal when news leaked out about their methods of harvesting wild rubber.
The story is told in the book King Leopolds Ghost.
It inspired Joseph Conrad to write ‘Heart of Darkness’
Decolonisation was also done very badly. The Belgian Congo had Gold, Diamonds, Copper and Uranium - huge mineral wealth and many countries sought to get a share of it by backing one faction or another during the Cold War. There are still intrigues regarding secret Uranium mines and countries anxious to obtain a supply.
Congo is quite and extreme example of how bad colonisation and decolonisation could be during a particular period.
There have been colonial empires since antiquity. Every country has its own story. Why some countries that were colonies went on to create colonies themselves…it gets complicated.
The biggest immediate problem in 1961-2 wasn’t the Cold War (though that influenced everything) but rather Belgian corporate interests wanting to keep their sweet deal and sponsoring the secession to get it. Katanga had a lot of foreign mercenaries and they didn’t come cheap. The UN intervention was not a Russia vs the West issue.