The Afghanistan Wars - William Maley

Rather, in the context of strong preexisting norms of social soli- darity, it simply led to an intensification of resistance to ...

Afghanistan’ (Hershberg, 1996–97: 137). Aleksei Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, bluntly asserted that ‘Amin and T ...

subsequently murdered (Westad, 1994: 61–2). Taraki’s associates Watanjar, Gulabzoi, Sarwari, and Sher Jan Mazdooryar took refuge ...

November 1979. The Iranian revolution had not simply humiliated the Carter Administration; it had corrupted the whole security a ...

when a regiment of the Soviet 105th Airborne Division, based in Ferghana in the Turkestan Military District, was unexpectedly in ...

March negotiations with Kosygin, Taraki had requested ‘a large radio station, which would allow us to broadcast propaganda throu ...

and prompted figures such as Ponomarev’s right-hand man for the Third World, R. A. Ul’ianovskii, to assert that there was ‘no co ...

2 Soviet Strategy, Tactics, and Dilemmas Having opted to inject its armed forces into a somewhat unpromising theatre of operatio ...

which helped seize the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg during the 1917 October Revolution, but for practical purposes their or ...

could help to legitimate particular steps which the leadership took using the military as tool. However, powerful and respected ...

all modern militaries are hierarchical in structure, the Soviet military was particularly so. Where this surfaced most painfully ...

nected problems: ‘the language problem and the patriotism prob- lem’ (Rakowska-Harmstone, 1990: 79). There is anecdotal evi- den ...

making process which is capable of generating meaningful ends and objectives. However, the precise dimensions of such a process ...

troops, and was labelled the ‘40th Army’. Official sources referred to it as a ‘limited contingent’ (ogranichennyi kontingent). ...

building up and strengthening the combat readiness of the Afghan armed forces’. The report continued: ‘Only when the situation i ...

work of rules exists to ensure the obedience of those conscripted for military service. In a fluid situation such as that in Afg ...

survived because local populations feared Soviet military power, and once the threat of its use eroded to the point that it was ...

neatly put it, were geared to ‘a theater war against a modern enemy who would obligingly occupy defensive positions stretching a ...

came to be known as the ‘bronegruppaconcept’, it proved feasible ‘to use the firepower of the personnel carriers in an independe ...

ance forced Soviet aircraft to take evasive actions which to a degree compromised their military effectiveness. Spetsnaz forces ...