The author has obtained recently declassified Russian archival materials revealing the secret role of Soviet experts in preparing some constituent documents of the Union of African States, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah sought to establish.

At  his  request,  at  the  end  of  1963  Major  General  Viktor  Kulikov  assisted  in  elaborating  recommendations  for  organizing collective defense for the OAU member countries, and Professor Vladimir Aboltin designed a plan for their economic integration.

Aboltin proposed to establish a Pan-African Customs Union that would abolish customs duties and Central African Bank issuing common currency, to industrialize Africa “on the basis of economic union”, to implement infrastructural projects, to domesticate Sahara gradually. He believed that all these would «contribute to the separation of 18 African associated states from the European Common Market», to «the liberation of the remaining African colonies”, «weaken the overall position of imperialism, which employs new forms of colonialism in Africa». Professor Aboltin sent to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) a comprehensive memo  «On  Pan-Africanism»,  which  he  defined  as  «an  ideology  that  was  fundamentally  racist  and  incompatible  with  Marxism- Leninism», an utopia divorced from reality. He advised the Soviet leadership not to treat pan-Africanists as reliable allies, even if they declared a socialist path of development, including Nkrumah whose conception of Nkrumaism was «a mixture of all sorts of things».

Given his position, the Soviet leaders reacted with restraint to the request of the Ghanaian Foreign Minister Kojo Botsio in May

1965 to allocate 300 million pounds to his country for «the struggle to achieve inter-African unity based on socialist principles».