Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89

Rodric Braithwaite. Afgantsy: Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xv, 417 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Annexes 1-4. Bibliography. Index. $29.95, cloth.With the NATO-led war in Afghanistan having entered its eleventh year, the Soviet Union's military intervention and occupation of the country is a renewed subject of interest among Western scholars. past few years have seen a steadily increasing number of works on the topic, among them Jonathon Steele's myth-busting semi-memoir, Ghosts of Afghanistan (Counterpoint, 2011), and Artemy Kalinovsky's excellent A Long Goodbye (Harvard University Press, 2011), which offered a re-evaluation of the Soviet withdrawal. Sir Rodric Braithwaite's Afgantsy: Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 arrived just months later, and stands as the most valuable of these three monographs. Covering a plethora of causes and consequences in immaculate detail, Braithwaite has given us a new standard in studies of the Soviet-Afghan War.Long regarded as a conniving chess move by the Soviets in the Great Game-one which added insult to injury for President Jimmy Carter, with its sacrilegious timing over the Christmas holidays-Western analysts were quick to dig into Cold War formulas in historicizing the event. Be it through the application of the Brezhnev Doctrine or visions of the Soviet Union's aiming for a warm-water port, ideological bents and speculation impeded early studies.Braithwaite, however, rebukes Cold War-era generalizations en masse. He dissects in meticulous detail the events preceding the conflict: with an escalating civil war in Afghanistan and shifting political allegiances in South Asia, the Politburo desired a buffer country on its border. Yet the gerontocracy maintained a largely hands-off foreign policy. That General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev learned of the Saur Revolution of 28 April 1978 via foreign press reports is among the first of many indicators that reveals the Soviet Union's detachment from affairs (pp. 41^12). Forced to begrudgingly accept an unfamiliar Communist regime on its border, the Politburo fell into a staggered decision-making process on how best handle the conflict. It was an unenviable challenge. With the cast of facile Afghan communist leaders bogged down with infighting, Soviet leaders rejected a request by Prime Minister Nur Muhammad Taraki to deploy troops following the Herat uprising of 15 March 1979. Nine months later, on 28 December, the 40th Soviet Army crossed the border in a military intervention that had become all but inevitable. Braithwaite states plainly and convincingly that The idea that it was no more than an irresponsible move taken in secret by a small clique of gerontocrats [...] does not stand up (p. 81).Among the most refreshing features of Braithwaite's account is his willingness to afford due credit to the Soviet Army. …

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