Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:04:08.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Some call us heroes, others call us killers.” Experiencing violent spaces: Soviet soldiers in the Afghan War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jan Claas Behrends
Jan Claas Behrends*
Affiliation:
Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany Department of History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Using memories of and interviews with Soviet soldiers, the article discusses their experience of combat and physical violence during the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979–1989). With Afghan statehood rapidly dissolving and little interest on the side of the Soviet military to enforce international law, Afghanistan quickly turned into a space where violence became the most important social resource. The soldiers and other Soviet personnel had to adapt to these conditions, which differed immensely from the late socialist society in the USSR. The article traces their immersion into the violent space and discusses their behavior while in Afghanistan. It points to the brutality of counterinsurgency combat and to the atrocities committed by both sides. In addition, it sheds light on the experience of serving in the Soviet Army during the last decade of the USSR. Many of the dysfunctions of the late socialist society were also prevalent – even amplified – while serving in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. These problems were often exacerbated during the war and impeded the abilities of the Soviet Army. Upon their return from Afghanistan, many veterans found it difficult to return to civilian life in the USSR. Their immersion into the violent space was more rapid and formative than their return to socialist “normality.”

Keywords

USSRAfghanistanlate socialismSoviet Armywarviolence
Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 5: Special Section: War, violence, and the military during late socialism and transition , September 2015 , pp. 719 - 734
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexandrov, Sergei, and Grigoriev, Vladimir, eds. 2001. Afghanistan's Unknown War: Memoirs of the Russian Writers-War Veterans of Special Forces, Army and Air Forces [sic!] on Soviet-Afghan War and the Afghan Terrorism . Toronto: Megapolis.Google Scholar
Alexiev, Alexander. 1988. Inside the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Santa Monica: Rand.Google Scholar
Alexievich, Svetlana, ed. 1992. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. Translated by Julia and Robin Whitby. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Baberowski, Jörg. 2003. Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus [Red Terror: The History of Stalinism]. München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.Google Scholar
Baberowski, Jörg. 2008. “Gewalt verstehen” [Understanding Violence]. Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 5: 5–17.Google Scholar
Baberowski, Jörg. 2012. “Einleitung. Ermöglichungsräume exzessiver Gewalt” [Introduction. Spaces of Excessive Violence]. In Gewalträume: Soziale Ordnungen im Ausnahmezustand [Gewalträume: Social Orders in a State of Exception], edited by idem, and Metzler, Gabriele, 7–27. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.Google Scholar
Behrends, Jan C. 2012. “Oktroyierte Zivilisierung: Genese und Grenzen des sowjetischen Gewaltverzichts 1989” [Imposing Civility: The Origins and Limits of Soviet Non-violence in 1989]. In 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt [1989 and the Role of Violence], edited by Sabrow, Martin, 401–423. Göttingen: Wallstein.Google Scholar
Bocharov, Gennadii N. 1987. Byl i videl: Afganistan, 1986 god [I came and I saw: Afghanistan in the Year 1986]. Moskva: Izd-vo polit. lit-ry.Google Scholar
Bocharov, Gennadii N. 1990. Russian Roulette: Afghanistan through Russian Eyes. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Boiarkin, Sergei D. 1999. Soldaty afganskoi voiny [The Soldiers of the Afghan War]. Novosibirsk: Asteya.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, Rodric. 2011. Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buser, Mark, and Broadhead, Gail A., eds. 1992. Afghanistan Weighs Heavy on My Heart: The Reminiscences and Diaries of Soviet Soldiers Who Fought in Afghanistan. New Delhi: Lancer International.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Colton, Timothy, ed. 1990. Soldiers and the Soviet State. Civil-Military Relations from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Danilova, Natalija. 2005. “Kontinuität und Wandel: Die Denkmäler des Afghanistankrieges” [Continuity and Change: Memorials of the Afghan War]. Osteuropa 55 (4–6): 367–386.Google Scholar
Dynin, Ivan M. 1990. Posle Afganistana: “afgantsy” v pismakh, dokumentakh, svidelstvakh ochevidtsev [After Afghanistan: “Afgantsy“ in Letters, Documents, and Eyewitness Accounts]. Moskva: Profizdat.Google Scholar
Ezhova, G. V., ed. 1989. Afganistan v nashei sudbe [Afghanistan in Our Fate]. Moskva: Novosti.Google Scholar
Feifer, Gregory. 2009. The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Galeotti, Mark. 1995. Afghanistan: The Soviet Union's Last War. London: Frank Cass Publishers.Google Scholar
Gareev, Makhmut A. 1996. Moia posledniaia voina: Afganistan bez sovetskikh voisk [My Last War: Afghanistan without Soviet Troops]. Moskva: INSAN.Google Scholar
Gareev, Makhmut A. 1999. Afganskaia strada. (s sovetskimi voiskami i bez nikh) [Afghan Harvest. With or without Soviet Soldiers]. Moskva: INSAN.Google Scholar
Gerlach, Christian. 2010. Extremely Violent Societies. Mass-Violence in the Twentieth Century World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giustozzi, Antonio. 2000. War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978–1992. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Goodson, Larry P. 2001. Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Gordin, Iakov A., and Grigor'ev, V. A., eds. 2003. My byli na etikh voinakh: Svidetel'stva uchastnikov sobytii 1989–1990 godov [We Fought in those Wars: Eyewitness Accounts of Participants in the Events 1989–1990]. Sankt-Peterburg: Zvezda.Google Scholar
Grau, Lester W. 1998. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan. Cass Series on the Soviet (Russian) Study of War. London: Frank Cass Publishers.Google Scholar
Greiner, Bernd. 2010. War without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Christian. 2009. Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941–42 [The Wehrmacht in the Eastern War: Front and Military Hinterland]. Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte 75. München: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Heinämaa, Anna, Leppänen, Maija, and Yurchenko, Yuri, eds. 1994. The Soldiers’ Story: Soviet Veterans Remember the Afghan War. Research Series 90. Berkeley: International and Area Studies, University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Horne, John, and Kramer, Alan. 2001. German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hyman, Anthony. 1992. Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964–91. Basingstoke: Macmillan Academic and Professional.Google Scholar
Jalali, Ali A., and Grau, Lester W. 2001. Afghan Guerilla Warfare: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet Afghan War. Oxford: Compendium.Google Scholar
Junger, Sebastian. 2010. War. New York: Twelve.Google Scholar
Kalinovsky, Artemy M. 2011. A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kindler, Robert. 2014. Stalins Nomaden. Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan [Stalin's Nomads. Domination and Hunger in Kazakhstan]. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.Google Scholar
Kluban', A. M. 1988. Shuravi – znachit sovetskii! Dokumentalnyi rasskaz o vospitannikakh komsomola Ukrainy, s chestiiu vypolnivshikh internatsionalnyi dolg v Demokraticheskoi Respublike Afganistan [Shuravi – Means Soviet! Documentary Accounts of Volunteers of the Ukrainian Komsomol Who Honorably Fulfilled the Internationalist Mission in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] Kiev: TSK LKSMU “Molod.”'Google Scholar
Krivosheev, Georgii F. 1993. Grif sekretnosti sniat'. Poteri Vooruzhenykh Sil SSSR v voinakh, boevykh deistviakh i voennykh konfliktakh. Statisticheskoe issledovanie [The losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in War, Combat and Armed Conflicts. A Statistical inquiry]. Moskva: Voennoe izdatelstvo.Google Scholar
Langenohl, Andreas. 2002. “Patrioten, Verräter, genetisches Gedächtnis: Der Große Vaterländische Krieg in der politischen Deutungskultur Russlands” [Patriots, Traitors, Genetic Memory: The Great Patriotic War in Russian Political Interpretive Culture]. In Sprünge, Brüche, Brücken: Debatten zur politischen Kultur in Russland [Leaps, Ruptures, Bridges: Debates on Russian Political Culture], edited by Ritter, Marina and Wattendorf, Barbara, 119–140. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.Google Scholar
Laqueur, Walter. 1998. Guerilla Warfare. A Historical and Critical Study. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Liakhovsky, Alexander Antonovich. 1979. “Inside the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the Seizure of Kabul.” Cold War International History Project Working paper # 51. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/WP51_Web_Final.pdf.Google Scholar
Lüdtke, Alf. 2006. “War as Work. Aspects of Soldiering in Twentieth Century Wars.” In No Man's Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichtswissenschaft 24, edited by Lüdtke, Alf and Weisbrod, Bernd, 127–152. Göttingen: Wallstein.Google Scholar
Marchuk, Nikolai I. 1993. “Neob” ‘iavlennaia” voina v Afganistane: Ofitsialnaia versiia i uroki pravdy [The Undeclared War in Afghanistan: The Official Version and Lessons of Truth] Moskva: Luch.Google Scholar
Marlantes, Karl. 2011. What It Is Like to Go to War. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.Google Scholar
Marten, Kimberly Z. 2012. Warlords: Strong-arm Brokers in Weak States. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mawdsley, Evan. 1987. The Russian Civil War. Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Narskii, Igor V. 2001. Zhizn’ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917–1922 gg. [Life during the Catastrophe: Popular Uprisings in the Ural Region 1917–1922]. Moskva: ROSSPÉN.Google Scholar
Neitzel, Sönke, and Welzer, Harald. 2012. Soldaten. On Fighting, Killing and Dying. The Secret World War II Transcripts of German POWs. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Northrop, Douglas T. 2004. Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Odom, William E. 1998. The Collapse of the Soviet Military. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Orlov, Aleksey. 2014. Afganskii dnevnik pekhotnogo leitenanta. “Okopnaia pravda voiny” [The Afghan Diary of a Lieutnant. “The Truth of the Trenches about the War”] Moskva: Iauza.Google Scholar
Oushakine, Sergei A. 2009. The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ovchinnikova, Liudmila, and Simonov, V. P. 1989. Afganistan bolit v moei dushe [Afghanistan Troubles My Soul]. Moskva: Pravda.Google Scholar
Panfilov, Oleg, and Simonov, Aleksei, eds. 1995. Zhurnalisty na Chechenskoi voine: Fakty, dokumenty, svidetel'stva [Journalists in the Chechen War: Facts, Documents, Eyewitness Accounts]. Moskva: Prava cheloveka.Google Scholar
Pashkevich, Mikhail M. 1991. Afganistan: Voina glazami kombata [Afghanistan: The War as Seen through the Eyes of a Battalion Commander]. Moskva: Voennoe izdatel'stvo.Google Scholar
Pikov, N. I. 1991. Voina v Afganistane [The War in Afghanistan]. Moskva: Voennoe izdatel'stvo.Google Scholar
Ponomarev, Ivan A. 1988. Vo imia vysokoi tseli: Rasskazyvaiut voiny, s chest'iu vypolnivshie svoi internatsional'nyi dolg na zemle Afganistana [In the Name of the Greater Good: Accounts of Those Who Honorably Fulfilled the International Mission on Afghan Soil]. Leningrad: Lenizdat.Google Scholar
Rais, Rasul B. 2008. Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity, and State in Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Raleigh, Donald J., ed. 2006. Russia's Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Reese, Roger R. 2000. The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Reuveny, Rafael, and Prakash, Aseem. 1996. The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union. Bloomington: Indiana Center for Global Business, Graduate School of Business, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Rudenko, V. G., ed. 2004. Ty v pamiati i serdtse moem, Afganistan: Afganskii dnevnik 2 [You Remain in my Memory and in my Heart, Afghanistan: Afghan Diary 2]. Voronezh: Kalita-R.Google Scholar
General Staff, Russian. 2002. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost. Translated and Grau., edited by Lester W. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Sapper, Manfred. 1994. Die Auswirkungen des Afghanistan-Krieges auf die Sowjetgesellschaft: Eine Studie zum Legitimitätsverlust des Militärischen in der Perestrojka [The Consequences of the War in Afghanistan for Soviet Society: A Study on the Military's Loss of Legitimacy during Perestroika]. Studien zu Konflikt und Kooperation im Osten 2. Münster: Lit.Google Scholar
Scherrer, Jutta. 2004. “Sowjetunion/Russland: Siegesmythos versus Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung” [Soviet Union/Russia: Victory Myth Versus Coming to Terms With the Past]. In Mythen der Nationen, edited by Flacke, Monika, 619–657. Mainz: Von Zabern.Google Scholar
Schnell, Felix. 2012. Räume des Schreckens. Gewalträume und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905–1933 [Spaces of Terror. Violent Spaces and Collective Militancy in Ukraine, 1905–1933]. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.Google Scholar
Shchekochikhin, Iurii. 2003. Zabytaia Chechnia: Stranitsy iz voennykh bloknotov [Forgotten Chechnya: Pages from War Notebooks]. Moskva: Olimp.Google Scholar
Shephard, Ben. 2012. Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sidky, M. H. 2007. “War, Changing Patterns of Warfare, State Collapse, and Transnational Violence in Afghanistan: 1978–2001.” Modern Asian Studies 41 (4): 849–888.Google Scholar
Sofsky, Wolfgang. 2003. Violence. Terrorism, Genocide, War. London: Granta.Google Scholar
Sotskov, Mikhail M. 2007. Dol'g i sovest. Zakrytie stranitsy Afganskoi voiny [Obligation and Conscience: Hidden Aspects of the Afghan War]. Sankt-Peterburg: Professional.Google Scholar
Sussex, Mathew, ed. 2012. Conflict in the Former USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tamarov, Vladislav, ed. 1992. Afghanistan: Soviet Vietnam. San Francisco, CA: Mercury House.Google Scholar
Tishkov, Valery. 2004. Chechnya. Life in a War-Torn Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tsygannik, N. E., ed. 1999. Internatsional'naia missiia: Vospominaniia sovetnikov MVD SSSR ob afganskikh sobytiiakh, 1978–1992 gg [Internationalist Mission: Memories of Advisors to the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs on the Events in Afghanistan, 1978–1992]. Moskva: s.n.Google Scholar
Tumarkin, Nina. 1994. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Verstakov, Viktor G. 1991. Afganskii Dnevnik [Afghan Diary]. Moskva: Voennoe Izdatelstvo.Google Scholar
Welzer, Harald, Moller, Sabine, and Tschuggnall, Karoline, eds. 2002. “Opa war kein Nazi” Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis [“Grandpa was not a Nazi”. Nationalsocialism and the Holocaust in Private Memory]. Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer.Google Scholar
Yousaf, Mohammad, and Adkin, Mark. 1992. The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story. London: L. Cooper.Google Scholar
Yurchak, Alexei. 2006. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar