José Eduardo dos Santos — politician; petroleum engineer with roots in the USSR
José Eduardo dos Santos was born in Luanda, then in Portuguese Angola, on 28 August 1942. He had no Russian ancestry; his connection to the Soviet Union lies in the years he spent there as a student, and in the family he started there.
Politically active while still at school, he joined the MPLA, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (in 1958 according to Wikipedia, in 1961 according to other accounts), and in 1961, after the movement took up arms against Portuguese rule, he left for neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville. The MPLA sent him to the Soviet Union for higher education. At the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute in Baku, then the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR, he studied petroleum engineering and radar communications, completing his degrees by 1969. In Baku he met and married Tatiana Sergeyevna Kukanova, a Russian geography student and chess player; their daughter Isabel was born there on 20 April 1973. The marriage later ended; Tatiana moved to London, where Isabel spent part of her youth and went to university.
After returning to the liberation struggle he rose in the MPLA. When Angola became independent in November 1975, he became the first foreign minister in the government of President Agostinho Neto, and later first vice-premier and, from December 1978, minister of planning. Official announcements continued to give his title as Engineer, from his Baku training. On Neto's death in September 1979 the MPLA chose dos Santos to succeed him, and he took office as President of Angola on 21 September 1979.
He held the presidency for thirty-eight years, through the civil war that lasted until 2002 and the peace that followed, making him one of the longest-serving heads of state in the world. He did not stand in the 2017 election and handed over on 26 September 2017 to João Lourenço, who like him had studied in the Soviet Union, remaining president of the MPLA until September 2018.
He spent his last years mainly in Barcelona, where he died on 8 July 2022, aged seventy-nine. He was buried with a state funeral in Luanda on 28 August 2022, the day he would have turned eighty.
"Left Angola for Congo-Brazzaville in 1961; sent by the MPLA to the Soviet Union, where he studied in Baku until 1969; returned to the liberation struggle; spent his last years in Barcelona and died there in 2022."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Luanda (born); studied in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (USSR), until 1969
No Russian ancestry. Sent by the MPLA to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, he studied at the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute in Baku, taking degrees in petroleum engineering and radar communications by 1969, and there married the Russian Tatiana Kukanova; their daughter Isabel was born in Baku.
No Russian ancestry. First wife: Tatiana Sergeyevna Kukanova, Russian-born, whom he met in Baku; their daughter Isabel was born there in 1973.
Luanda (born); studied in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (USSR), until 1969. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.