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

Abstract

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:

• USSR
• Afghanistan
• late socialism
• Soviet Army
• war
• violence

Notes

1. Tamarov (1992, 4).

2. For the concept of physical violence used, see the introduction to this special section. See also Sofsky (2003) and Baberowski (2008). For a reflection of violence in irregular wars which also applies to the Afghan case, cf. Kalyvas (2006). For analyses of century partisan warfare, see Laqueur (1998) and Gerlach (2010, 177–234). A similar approach focusing on actors and violence in the Vietnam War is used by Greiner (2010) and Tishkov (2004) to explain the first Chechen War.

3. On the concept of Gewaltraum, see Baberowski (2012), see also Sofsky (2003) and Schnell (2012).

4. This interpretation is not intended to criminalize or decriminalize the Soviet soldiers, although there can be no doubt that war crimes were common. Rather, it seeks to understand how their behavior made sense in the given circumstances, to explain the specificity of the Afghan experience and its place in the history of violence under Communist rule, and the reaction of Soviet society to the war. For the concept Referenzrahmenanalyse, cf. Neitzel and Welzer (2012, 16–46). The authors developed this concept to understand the narratives of Wehrmacht soldiers.

5. For a statistical overview of the Soviet engagement, see Krivosheev (1993).

6. Hyman (1992). For histories of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, see Marchuk (1993); Reuveny and Prakash (1996); Giustozzi (2000); Feifer (2009); Braithwaite (2011); and Kalinovsky (2011). For early accounts of its impact on Soviet society, see Sapper (1994) and Galeotti (1995). For an analysis of the Soviet legacy, cf. Rais (2008).

7. For a website dedicated to the veterans and the memory of the war, cf., for example, www.afgan.ru.

8. Shuravi was the Afghan term for “Soviet.” It also became a Russian slang term.

9. For an account of the fighting at the palace, see Feifer (2009, 55–84). For the account of an individual Soviet soldier, see Yuri T. in Heinämaa, Leppänen, and Yurchenko (1994, 2–3).

10. Where available, I quote from the English translation. All translations from Russian are mine. The Romanization of Russian terms follows the LoC system. Russian names and terms from English translations that follow a different system are left unaltered. My main sources are Alexiev (1988); Buser and Broadhead (1992); Alexandrov and Grigoriev (2001); Alexievich (1992); Pashkevich (1991); Bocharov (1990); Dynin (1990); Ezhova (1989); Verstakov (1991); Heinämaa, Leppänen, and Yurchenko (1994); Tamarov (1992); and Boiarkin (1999). For a journalistic perspective, see Ovchinnikova and Simonov (1989). For less critical accounts by former Soviet officers, see, for example, Pikov (1991); Gareev (1996, 1999); Tsygannik (1999); Rudenko (2004); and Orlov (2014). Many of the findings about the nature of the Afghan War were also shared by contemporary American think tanks and intelligence, cf., for example, Alexiev (1988), prepared for the US Army and based on NGO reports about human rights violations and on the testimony of Soviet defectors.

11. The article follows the larger trend toward the secondary use of interview material.

12. The distortion of memory through movies and pop-culture has been noted by other researchers as well. See, for example, Welzer's et al. on the influence of movies on the memory of World War II veterans and their families. The problems discussed here also apply to the case of the Afghanistan War. See Welzer, Moller, and Tschuggnall (2002).

13. Artillery captain in Alexievich (1992, 79).

14. Cf. my interpretation of perestroika as an attempt to impose civil values on Soviet society and the party-state: Behrends (2012, 401–423).

15. Cf, also the contribution by Philipp Casula in this special section.

16. The unpreparedness of soldiers was also noted by Soviet officers: cf. Pashkevich (1991, 60–61).

17. For the combat diary of a platoon of Soviet soldiers from 1980 to 1985, cf. Ovchinnikova and Simonov (1989, 8–14).

18. Nikolai K., in: Heinämaa, Leppänen, and Yurchenko (1994, 51).

19. For the Afghan experience of guerilla warfare, see Jalali and Grau (2001). The somewhat technical accounts given by mujaheddin commanders confirm the Soviet sources about the nature of conflict and combat. They frequently refer to killing the enemy and capturing material. For an overview of typical combat missions carried out in Afghanistan, see Tamarov (1992, 20–21).

20. For a military assessment of Soviet operations, see Grau (1998).

21. For similar breaches of international law and mass violence during counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War, see Greiner (2010). For experiences of violence in German counterinsurgency warfare, see, for example, Hartmann (2009) and Shephard (2012).

22. On strong personal ties within the Wehrmacht, see Neitzel and Welzer (2012, 299–355); for the US Army in Afghanistan, see Junger (2010), who as a journalist followed an American platoon to its remote outpost in the Afghan mountains and points to the strong ties among soldiers, which helped them to prevail and make sense of their mission under difficult circumstances. For a personal account of battlefield loyalty in Vietnam, see Marlantes (2011, 134–175).

23. Reese (2000, 145–157). On dedovshchina, see also the contribution by Alena Maklak in this special section.

24. For a concept of atrocities in modern warfare, see Horne and Kramer (2001).

25. See also the account of “operation revenge” in Alexandrov and Grigoriev (2001, 11–15). Revenge is also cited as a main motivation to kill in Vietnam by Marlantes (2011, 98–104).

26. Neitzel and Welzer (2012) come to similar conclusions in their study of Wehrmacht soldiers.

27. For a statistical overview of court-martialed Soviet soldiers, see Galeotti (1995, 72).

28. In November 1989, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies declared an amnesty for all crimes committed by Soviet troops in Afghanistan (Odom 1998, 250).

29. Vadim G. in Heinämaa, Leppänen, and Yurchenko (1994, 96).

30. For his account of the war, see Sotskov (2007).

31. For an official Russian assessment, see Russian General Staff (2002, 312–313), which not only concentrates on military tactics, but also briefly acknowledges atrocities and terror by the Soviet armed forces.

32. Cf. also the contributions by Alena Maklak and Robert Lučić in this special section.

33. For negative assessments of the Afghanistan War by ordinary Russians of the Baby Boomer generation, see Raleigh (2006).

34. For Chechnya, see also Shchekochikhin (2003) and Panfilov and Simonov (1995).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this publication was supported by the Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (WGL), Germany.