Essay: Did the way Soviet leaders dealt with the War prevent a profound negative impact of that war on Soviet lives?

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began in December 1979, when the first troops crossed the Afghan border. Almost 9 years onwards from this event and during the first ‘perestroika’, in 1988, Gorbachev, as the leader of Politburo began the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Between the warring years, many Soviet troops were profoundly affected by the War, with around 15,000 soldiers killed, and many others wounded. In this paper, my research will attempt to gauge who the common Soviet Soldier was, their relationship between ideology and state, then examining the changing subjects of ethnic relations, perhaps revealing something about an altered Soviet Soldier subject. Another area of examination will propose the same questions, but towards the prominent drug abuse during the war. Furthermore, this paper will propose whether the way Soviet leaders dealt with the War perhaps prevented a profound negative impact of that war on Soviet lives? Or were those involved seen as altered subjects and to what extent did they never return the same?
Before going into the studies of subject groups, it will be necessary to provide a brief historical background about the War, whilst explaining why Soviet Soldiers were employed. On December 12, 1979, the Soviet Politburo met and voted to intervene in the struggle for power in Afghanistan. This decision came after a coup d’état and the murder of the CC PDPA General Secretary and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of Afghanistan N.M. Taraki, committed by H. Amin in September, of which exacerbated the situation in Afghanistan to one of crisis proportions. Concurring with Karen Brutents and Aleksandrov-Agentov in the late fall of 1979, those who were against the intervention were pressurised to abandon their position.
The man in contention, H. Amin had established a regime of personal dictatorship, essentially reducing the CC PDPA and the Revolutionary Council to the insignificant status. H. Amin would only employ individuals ‘who he had personal or even family relations with, to occupy the top leadership positions within party and the state’ . Following on from this, Afghanistan expressed unprecedented levels of repression and physical annihilation, of which were for the most part directed toward ‘active participants in the April revolution, persons openly sympathetic to the U.S.S.R., those defending the Leninist norms of intra-party life’ . Here, H. Amin further sought to fabricate rumors that would intend to discourage supporters of the Soviet Union, creating shadow on the activities of Soviet personnel in Afghanistan, who had been restricted in their efforts to maintain contact with Afghan representatives.
The slowly escalating situation looked to threaten the gains of the April revolution and the interests of maintaining Soviet national security, meaning that the decision to render additional military assistance to Afghanistan was one that seemed simple. Stemming from Soviet patriotism, many groups of the Afghan population were also employed in correspondence to the deployment of Soviet forces . Within Afghanistan, in strict accordance with the provisions of the Soviet-Afghan treaty of 1978, forces opposing H. Amin organized a operation that resulted in the overthrow of H. Amin’s regime. This coup d’état received widespread support from the working masses, the intelligentsia, significant sections of the Afghan army, and the state apparatus, all of which welcomed the formation of a new administration of the DRA and the PDPA. The newly established agenda vowed to support the national-democratic, anti-feudalistic, anti-imperialistic revolution, ultimately protecting Afghan independence and sovereignty.
Following such discussions a ten-year war followed, that not only proved costly for Afghanistan, but also affected the USSR in a number of ways, including diplomatic isolation, thousands of casualties, and huge amounts of resources were spent . However, one aspect of the war that intrigued analysts was the way that the war would affect Soviet Subjects, perhaps altering the dynamics of previous relations. Ethnic relations within the Soviet Union will be explored, especially regarding Central Asian Uzbeks and Tajiks who often shared linguistic, cultural, religious and even familial ties with the Afghan Uzbeks and Tajiks south of the Amu Darya. These ethnic relations further hold prominence in determining the deviation of Soviet-Subjects as some scholars, such as Alexandre Bennigsen, alleged that the intervention lead these Soviet Tajiks and Uzbeks to rise up against the Soviet state .
The war had a devastating effect upon the landscape of Afghanistan, clearly affecting the millions who reside there, yet the greatest impact of the Afghan War can be seen on the people who were there – soldiers who had to serve in Afghanistan and fulfill their ‘international duty’ . Arguably, the war they were engaged in had no ‘real’ necessity, and with fifteen thousand of them killed, many others had been injured, some having become invalids, many blamed the government who had sent them to that war, and to the people who were not in the war. The average Soviet Soldier was a young eighteen year old, who had been registered as they had only just fulfilled their high school education. These individuals would merely receive 8-10 weeks of training before being sent to their deployed units. Often seen within formal channels within the Soviet Union, these newly established soldiers would regularly be subjected to ‘subordination of officers’ and ‘the informal of dedovshina’ of which translates as discrimination by the older soldiers. Of course, as with subjectivity, all soldiers would have experienced the war in very different ways, and the impact of fighting, experience of killing, dedovshina, alien military institution, and an alien barren land certainly changed the characters and lives of the soldiers before they returned home. ‘We were in an alien land. And why were we there? To this day, for some, it doesn’t matter.’
There was a wide range of differing opinions amongst soldiers, both towards the particular war and the state that sent them there. Most of those who were deployed blindly supported the Communist regime, and simply had no choice about it . Individuals varied both in terms of religion and ideology, yet religion proved to be a decisive issue upon state-ideology relations. A large part of the Soviet Soldiers stemmed from Soviet-Muslim backgrounds, of which struggled with ‘fighting their own kind’ . Many of the Soviet Muslims questioned the unnecessary need for war, feeling as if the Communist party was waging war against Islam, creating strong feelings among the Muslim population of Central Asian Soviet Republics. Furthermore, some parts of the Soviet army became disillusioned towards the war, coupled by the fact that the Soviet army was really in very low in morale, because they were unable to control the people and were treated only as invaders everywhere they went. Soviet leaders, however, were not alarmed by the potential effect of the war on Soviet Muslims, as they saw no deliberate policy of keeping them out of the war, and that the war did not play a major role in the Soviet collapse. The 10 March 1980 memorandum clearly stated that due to such dissident voices, Soviet military presence would be required for a long time: “the successful resolution of internal problems and the strengthening of the new order in Afghanistan will take significant effort and time, during the course of which Soviet troops will continue to be the key stabilizing factor” . In fact, the USSR’ 40th Army was increasingly wary of these conflicting viewpoints and the responsibilities of a national army in Afghanistan were made clear in the April memorandum:
Our troops in Afghanistan will have to continue fulfilling the task of defending the revolutionary order of the DRA, defending the borders of the country, providing securities in key centres as well as transportation links. . . . Only with the stabilization of the internal situation in Afghanistan, as well as the improvement of conditions around it, would it be possible, at the request of the DRA leader- ship, to consider the question of a gradual withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DRA.
According to Aleksandrov-Agentov, Brezhnev was distraught over what seemed to be developing into a drawn-out conflict with major international consequences, and he even chided Andropov and Ustinov for convincing him to support the decision to invade. Nevertheless, available records of CPSU Politburo meetings show him supporting the Afghanistan commission and their proposals in the early months of 1980 .
Due to the grounds to which the Afghanistan War was fought upon, a large group of individuals experienced an ‘ethnic split’ within the Soviet army, of which represented a mode of deviance from the Soviet self. The ethnic split constitutes from a departure from the public and a foray into the private and the intimate, as individuals would develop ideas that differed to those of Soviet principles, to then act in ways which reveal a changing soviet subject. The ethnic split within the army took a foothold when non-Russian soldiers, particularly those of Islamic/Asian descent began to display uncertainty towards the fighting of Afghan counterparts, where many individuals began to develop ideas that clearly internalized the Soviet view that the war in Afghanistan was a result of aggression from the United States, Pakistan, and their allies. Upon this sentiment, one soldier who served in Afghanistan between 1981 and 1983 with a division guarding the Khayraton-Kabul highway stated that, “They [the resistance fighters] were burning villages, mosques, blowing up schools, killing children, old people, and activists, including teachers. But our boys were bravely standing in defence of the achievements of the April Revolution and of our homeland.” Hereby, as Soviet-Muslims identified with Afghans, they denounced Soviet prescriptions through feigned warfare, as Soviet-Muslim soldiers often heralded a responsibility to help Muslim’s within Afghanistan achieve something similar to what they enjoyed in the Soviet Union.
Tensions seemingly reached breaking point for Soviet-Muslims involved in the Afghanistan war, where these boiled over into accentuated ethnic unrest leading to Soviet-Muslim subjects to seemingly rebel. In the early 1980s, the reliability of Central Asian soldiers was often questioned, leading to significant sectors being removed from active combat duties in Afghanistan. When they served combat duties, Generals perceived them as being soft on Afghan civilians, and thought that this went against Soviet ideology for being in Afghanistan in the first place and could no longer trust them. This certainly weakened the Soviets case for military dominance in Afghanistan, and for example, on September 12, 1985, following the execution of an Afghan civilian, there was an ethnic mutiny in the Dasht-I Abdan base near the city of Kunduz in the northern part of Afghanistan. The Central Asian troops fired at the Russians and ‘some 450 people from both sides . . . [and] 500 military vehicles were entirely destroyed.’
Moreover, because the Soviet army was not a volunteer army, this meant that a considerable amount of its soldiers were draftees. This was another area where Soviet-Muslims would disregard ‘nominal soviet ideology’, and many engaged in draft dodging, of which was a serious crime in the Soviet Union. The Soviet-Muslims distanced themselves by employing a strategy of ‘war-inspired anti-militarism, where draft resistance became common across the non- Russian Republics’ . For example, Soviet Muslim Usmankhodzhaev, the Uzbekt party chief, told reporters in 1987 that hundreds of Komsomol members in Uzbekistan had been prosecuted for draft dodging. In December 1987, Petkel, the local KGB Chief, labelled the ‘Tajik radical Muslims as agents of the enemy from Afghanistan and identified them as the main cause of draft avoidance’ . Other incidents of anti-militarism were reported in mass deviation away from Soviet ideology, disregarding any the internationalist duty to fight. In Lithuania, many seemingly refused the autumn 1989 call-up in Georgia, the 1989 call-up resulted in mass protests; and in Latvia, groups regularly staged protests outside army bases, carrying posters with slogans such as ‘USSR armed forces are occupation forces’, and ‘Occupiers out of Latvia’ .
To summarize, the Afghanistan war changed the Soviet leaders’ perceptions about the effectiveness of employing troops to suppress non-Russian secessionist movements. As ethnic strife accelerated within the army, resentment of Asian nationalities towards their own were being used to suppress their ethnic kin in Afghanistan. As a result, Soviet leaders no longer considered their army to be reliable for suppressing secessionist movements. Afghanistan reveals itself as a ‘state of micro-societies’, of which help explain why deviation from the Soviet prescribed ideologies existed in such numbers, but also explains that Soviet-Muslims identification with any of these ethnicities was more common than expected, as a plethora of ethnicities existed, all presenting viable opposing values. This demographic also allowed for stronger political and ideological bases to dominate the body politic of Afghanistan, ‘ensuring its sustained vulnerability to outside interference’ .
The mood of Soviet-Muslims was encapsulated in the following statement, suggesting “Everything changed for me after Afghanistan…it’s not that I hated the Soviet Union. [The system] was just repulsive. And starting from 1985, and after, when I worked at the polytechnic, where I was deputy director, and after when I worked in radio and television, my views were different from the way the views of people here were developing.”
In brief, my findings thus far confirm that an ethnic split caused Soviet-Muslims to deviate away from the prescribed Soviet self, as they played very important roles in the Soviet effort in Afghanistan. Most of these individuals were educated and promising young students acting as translators and sent to Afghanistan, where they formed a crucial link between Soviet advisors and military officers and the Afghan soldiers, officials, and communities they worked with. Often as seen above, these individuals would collide with individuals of their own cultures, interpreting not just language but attitudes and subtleties of relations within the Afghan military, government and society. The Soviet effort therefore was made infinitely more difficult.
Upon further research, it appears aside from some isolated cases, the soldiers, advisors, and translators who came back to the Soviet Union did not continue with their altered subjectivity, exerted within Afghanistan, as little did subscribe away from Soviet-norms to turn against the system or to join any of the opposition movements. As other scholars have pointed out, Soviet Uzbeks and Tajiks did not automatically identify with their co-ethnics in Afghanistan . Many returned joining the Komsomol (communist youth organization) or the party itself, suggesting a persistent faith in the system. Tajik participation in the war was constantly celebrated in the republican press and propaganda (and still is to this day). Almost 400,000 Tajiks served in the war, and many of the conscripts were grandchildren of soldiers whose efforts were constantly valorised officially and recognized in the communities. This perhaps suggest that any form of deviation from Soviet prescriptions and or the soviet subject did not continue after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, as there was an effort to link the “Soldiers-Internationalists” and their predecessors.
However, it is worth noting that not all Soviet-Muslims left their deviated ideals in Afghanistan, as not all of the returning soldiers reversed back to a pro-Soviet perspective. Many of those who were members of the secular intelligentsia, working as translators, were most dissatisfied with the Soviet intervention and completely disregarded all Soviet practise and purpose. Many criticised the war, of which ‘grew into a broader critique of the soviet system and called for a rebirth of Tajik culture and political autonomy’ . In some cases, Soviet-Muslim subjects would create ‘echo-chambers’ between themselves, where critique of the Soviet military turned these translators and advisers into oppositionists, and difficult relations with superior officers (usually Slavs) and assumed distrust played a part. This is reflected with Mahmetali Khait, a translator who worked with Soviet military intelligence. As he witnessed what in his words, “was a massacre of the males of a village, and the unwillingness of superior officer to hear and act on his complaints”, he began to lose his Soviet ideals and started turning against the war effort. He later became a leading organizer in the ‘Rastokhez’ movement, which agitated for a revival of Tajik culture and for democratic reforms.
What this reveals to the reader of this paper is that ultimately, ‘there was a false doctrine in the beginning, recruiting Muslims from all over the USSR—but the mentality of Soviet Muslims and Afghans was totally different’ . The Soviet Union did try to use Central Asians to its strategic advantage in Afghanistan. Their effectiveness and loyalty may have been questionable as the subjects began to oppose the general armed forces. However, cases in which there was collusion between the Central Asians and the Afghans far outweigh the number of Central Asians who committed themselves to the Soviet cause, and did not question it, despite their ethnic and religious affiliation with Afghans.
Another key area of which caused individuals to deviate and distance themselves from Soviet ideology occurred with the prominent drug abuse during the Afghanistan war. Regardless of ethnicity, dissidence built up within Soviet military ranks for a variety of reasons. Many Soviet subjects ideals and beliefs became conflicted as drug abuse during the war reached almost epidemic scales. Official studies indicated that more than ‘ 50 percent of Soviet conscripts in Afghanistan used drugs, where drug addiction had also been reported in more senior Soviet elite groups’ . Drug abuse reached the scale where troops bartered weapons, ammunition, gasoline and other supplies for drugs. This caused chaos within Soviet regiments as often missing items would have been traded for drugs, of which were not noted, leading to shortages in supplies and/or inefficient organisation on the battlefield. The Soviet individual represented their sheer disillusionment with the Afghanistan war, representing a widespread condemnation of the Soviet invasion. Drug use got to the point where pilots of which used heroin ‘led to an increase in helicopter crashes, and similarly a Soviet tank crew were killed when their vehicle was driven off the road into the Kabul Gorge’ .
Death, drinking, and drugs became part of the veterans’ lives forever. ‘Drugs were essential to the survival of the soldiers. Drugs helped them to carry 40 kilos of ammunition up and down the mountains, to overcome depression after their friends’ deaths, to prevail over the fear of death. Drugs and alcohol became the usual procedure of self-medication when other options were denied’ . Drugs became an avenue of decent, and individuals found through continued use they were able to separate their Soviet-self away from their individual self, often leading to the abuse of drugs in creating a generation of drug and alcohol addicts. According to the official reports of the Russian Department of Health Services, 40 millions medically certified alcoholics in 1985 were registered. Consumption of alcohol had increased 20,4% from its consumption in 1950-79 . If these were official reports then it is possible that they were only a part of truth, and another part is proves unpredictable. One veteran suggested that ‘there wasn’t a single person among us who did not try drugs in Afghanistan. You needed relaxation there, or you went out of your mind’ .
The extenuated drug abuse altered these Soviet-Subjects everyday life, and the soldiers who had entered Afghanistan as ‘fresh faced, exemplar soviet subjects’ had organized the form of a community that they had been accustomed to in Afghanistan, with their own customs. Returning back to normal, Soviet life was almost a task too difficult for them. Thus, from the beginning they separated themselves from the surrounding society. Many veterans became members of Mafia groups, and as returning soldiers differed from each other, it was the same for every veteran: they could not live normal lives in society, as they would have without having experienced the war. In the words of a veteran who had served in Afghanistan: ‘You never really come home.’
Through escapism that drug use provided, individuals could forget about how media blamed them – not the government – for taking part in the war and partly for losing it. Thus, after coming back, soldiers started to look with new eyes upon the society that had sent them to their death. While they had been in Afghanistan, the public and media had expressed contempt for the soldiers; after they returned, this sentiment only increased. Disrespect to the people and to the governmental system became common among soldiers who were experiencing discrimination after having fulfilled their duty. This situation galvanized potential men, unhappy with their political system into striking. During the putsch of 1991, many veterans supported Mayor Sobchak, who supported the putsch against the new democratic government in Leningrad.
To conclude, the Afghanistan war had devastating impacts upon both Afghani’s and Soviet Soldiers. As seen with the cases above, two distinct groups, of which often co-existed presented an ‘alternative outlook’ surrounding Soviet selfhood. Those who took part in the ethnic split did so because of personal, religious and cultural reasons, abandoning Soviet prescriptions and ideologies on the battlefield. However, the changing of Soviet selfhood in accordance the ethnic split did not seem to permeate through all spheres of influence, with many of those involved reverting back to traditional soviet ideals and values. What the ethnic split suggests, however, is that fact that those who openly disagreed with the Soviet means for war, deviated effectively during the warring period.
On the other hand, the widespread drug abuse also offered Soviet subjects to distance them from Soviet subjectivity. Drugs allowed for Soldiers to escape from the toils of war and the grapples of a repressive ideology. The term ‘lost generation’ can be applied towards these particular veterans of the Afghan War. As war had created a generation of alcoholics and drug addicts, this led for many young people to isolate themselves from Soviet ideology, creating large disparity and some invalids were unable to work and to earn money on their own. Many of the hundreds and thousands of soldiers affected by drug abuse in Afghanistan became addicted, carrying their addiction home with them, and these isolated subjects were often left ‘absent of reintegration and addiction treatment programs, many former soldiers did not abandon their drug habits and induced others to drug use, spreading the problem to remote communities where law enforcement could not even recognize drug abuse, let alone combat drug trafficking’. Furthermore, Discrimination by the public opinion and media, and the unwillingness of the government to help victims of the war even increased the number of criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts among the veterans of the Afghan war. In all, both areas acted as a distancing subjects away from those prescribed by the Soviet regime, however, as seen with this research, ethnic splits and drug abuse were only minor setbacks within the much failed invasion of Afghanistan, coupled with the repeated failures in this war, of which changed the Soviet leadership’s perception of the efficacy of using force to keep non-Soviet nationalities within the Union (perception effects), devastated the morale and legitimacy of the army (military effects), disrupted domestic cohesion (legitimacy effects), and accelerated glasnost (glasnost effects).