Text taken from the V Kontakte page of Ivan Shevtsov
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
Every Russian historical account I have read of the weeks prior to the Soviet intervention was that the Soviets themselves were advised against it.
[ColonelCassad] Here one historian (not the worst) said that since the population of Afghanistan reacted coolly to Marxist ideas, the introduction of troops was a mistake - they say, the Kremlin sages overestimated the possibility of a revolution in Afghanistan.
The following can be objected to this. By the 70s, the USSR had quite a lot of experience working with feudal-tribal remnants. They were fought quite successfully within the country, in addition to the Central Asian and Caucasian experience, there was the Mongolian experience, the experience of China and Vietnam, the USSR worked a lot in Africa in conditions of generally unbridled tribalism and did not consider all this a serious obstacle under a number of conditions:
- maintaining political power in the hands pro-Soviet party;
- repression of active feudal leaders;
- purchase or agreements with tribal leaders and religious organizations;
- active industrialization;
- land redistribution in favor of the bulk of the peasantry (at the expense of repressed feudal lords and merchants);
- Soviet military and economic assistance.
All these conditions were present in Afghanistan. In addition, it should be noted that building socialism in Afghanistan was the maximum program, and having Afghanistan in the form of a bourgeois republic, LOYAL to the USSR and not taking aggressive actions and not entering into blocs with opponents of the USSR was ENOUGH. The USSR lived side by side with feudal Afghanistan for 50 years and maintained good relations, and could have continued to live and live.
But in the 70s, unhealthy movements provoked by the Americans first of all, by Pakistan, in which the United States invested as an “anti-India”, secondly, and a little by China, which tried to put spokes in the wheels of the USSR in foreign policy, left the USSR no choice - it became clear that without the dictatorship of the pro-Marxist party, Afghanistan would not be peaceful and loyal to the USSR. This was clear not only to the Kremlin sages, but to everyone in general.
Therefore, the decision to take the revolutionary path was supported. It did not become the cause of civil war in Afghanistan: Afghanistan is, in principle, a very loose feudal-tribalistic formation of three ethnic groups and many religious movements of Islam, and any weakening of internal power there causes massacres - local leaders and imams begin to tear down neighbors, claims from each other My friend has plenty there, just like everywhere else in such a situation. In these conditions, the DPA played the role of a supra-tribal, supra-ethnic and supra-religious force that could unite Afghanistan, and therefore gathered around itself not the worst Afghan cadres who were ready to actively carry out industrialization and land reform in order to pull Afghanistan out of the civilizational impasse. These cadres, for the most part, were not Marxists, they were simply mainly secular intelligentsia with convictions at the level of populism.
The communists had worked a lot and successfully in such conditions before, and the Afghan conditions were not something special for them. And even the involvement of the young revolutionary regime in the civil war was not something special - the Bolsheviks not only formed a red enclave in Turkestan in the period 1918-1920, but also successfully defended and expanded it. relying on the urban proletariat. That was what was special about Afghanistan. that, unlike the conditions of the 20s of the 20th century, the Islamists were supported and supplied to the fullest. If Enver Pasha received from 5 to 10 thousand rifles for his adventure, and, in fact, that was all, then the Afghan Mujahideen created a whole bridgehead in Pakistan and pumped them up with personnel and weapons, including ammunition systems, MANPADS, recoilless rifles, connection and other joys. Thugs and mercenaries were collected from all over the Arab world. This was very important for prolonging the conflict.
The Soviet government defeated more or less large Basmachi formations in Central Asia in just over a year, and then dealt only with formations of up to 500 sabers at a peak, and very weak in combat qualities (the history of the fight against Basmachi is replete with episodes when Soviet troops managed to repel raids gangs are 5-10 times larger than the units opposing them, and the pursuit of a 300-saber gang by one squadron was quite normal). In the conditions of Afghanistan, this did not work - the hydra's heads grew back much faster, and the support or non-support of the Mujahideen by the local population did not have a very significant effect on the situation. The Najibullah regime itself could not cope with this - crowds of well-trained, motivated and armed thugs climbed across the border with Pakistan, and Najibullah had few quality personnel, the army was weak, and the state apparatus inherited nepotism and corruption, common to the political culture of Afghanistan. and he had to spend them on land reforms, industrialization, infrastructure, on changing agriculture to the right crops (not opium poppies), on education and social measures.
Accordingly, the leadership of the USSR made a decision - to send in troops, carry out industrialization under the “umbrella” of Soviet troops, build infrastructure and train Afghan personnel. In 10 years, this task was completely solved, despite the fact that the war there did not stop, and the USSR could only count as a plus the maintenance of virtually uninterrupted transportation between all major cities. The Mujahideen did not occupy a single major city, nor were they able to cut the roads between major cities.
By the time of the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the PDPA already had enough local personnel to maintain the current state of affairs indefinitely, which in conditions when time was not working for the Mujahideen (industrialization and secular education removed more and more Afghans from under their influence every year ), practically guaranteed victory, albeit not a quick one and paid for with a lot of blood and tension. But only on one condition, that the USSR would continue to build infrastructure and enterprises in Afghanistan, as well as arm and supply the army and police, help with advisers, scientific, cultural, and engineering personnel.
The PDPA held on for 2 years, and not bad. Gorbachev's betrayal cut aid to zero, which demoralized the army and the state apparatus, and everything became very sad.
The Afghans themselves now remember Najibullah's reign as a "golden age", because neither Islamists of various stripes, nor American mongrels could save even a tenth of what the USSR managed to set up in Afghanistan, let alone repeat. As a result, Afghanistan is even more wild and wretched than it was in 1973. If not for the Soviet troops, such a fate would have befallen the Afghans already in 1980.
The introduction of troops is also considered a mistake because the war was not popular in the USSR. But this is a false impression. In 1980-86. Applications to the Internationalists were written en masse, internationalist soldiers enjoyed public respect, even during the height of perestroika, a significant number of volunteers were selected there. Dempropaganda whipped up hysteria regarding losses, and the more the CPSU allowed democracies, the greater the hysteria. Therefore, it turned out that the history of the war in Afghanistan was written by anti-communists, and their history turned out to be of appropriate quality - with a persistent smell of crap. Yes, no one is happy to receive a funeral, but. for example, in Russia, even at the moment, almost 1.5 million heroin addicts are registered. Not least because Najibullah lost. Socialist Afghanistan reliably blocked drug trafficking, fought the drug mafia, and saved millions of people around the world. I wonder how many Zelenograd intellectuals, who wore posters demanding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 1989, observed their children’s heroin withdrawal in the 1990s? 15,000 funerals in 10 years and a million heroin addicts annually - a good price?
And in principle, the communists never promised that the revolutionary process would always be peaceful and bloodless. The bourgeoisie will not give up without a fight. and no matter how many peaceful options we offer to the bourgeoisie (and communists always have a peaceful version of revolution - when the bourgeoisie peacefully renounces property and profits and works honestly), war will still be imposed on us one way or another. Therefore, there are and cannot be any fundamental errors in the very fact of participation in hostilities, if this resolves the issue. In Afghanistan, the presence of Soviet troops solved the problems of socialist construction. Therefore it was both necessary and correct. Regardless of what the Afghan peasant from the village thought.
(c) Ivan Shevtsov
The Afghans spent the next 35 years wonderfully after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.Well, what about the Najbillah regime, if not for Gorbachev’s betrayal. could well repeat the story of Assad, who was overthrown and overthrown, but was never overthrown. But for this, of course, he had to help him.
And without help, it collapsed, like many other states dependent on the USSR, which were also betrayed by Gorbachev and Shevardnadze. In this regard, their crimes are not limited to the USSR. Before a significant number of countries and people, their guilt is no less.