Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 291.

Episode 291, the Soviet Afghan War. Last time, we interviewed Professor Valerius Sobel, author of Haunted Empire, Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny.

Today, though, we're going to cover a more controversial topic, the Soviet Afghan War, a conflict

that many believed helped accelerate the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

This will not be an episode that goes into detail about the actions within the war, like

the battles fought. It will be more about the reasons for the conflict, the decisions,

rational and irrational, as to why it started, and the overall view of the war.

It will also reflect the tragedy of war where everyone suffers to varying degrees.

Many historians have pointed the finger at this conflict as the main reason why the

USSR collapsed in 1991. My research indicates that it is a much more complex issue than you might expect.

While it was undoubtedly a drain on the Soviet economy, which, as I mentioned many times in the past, was in pretty terrible shape.

It was a drain on the people of the USSR with the loss of numerous lives. But there's something more critical that led to the collapse.

What took the country down was the perception of weakness that this war portrayed.

The Soviet Union was on the border of Afghanistan. Three of its members, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan were all northern neighbors. The Red Army didn't have to travel halfway

around the world to invade the country like the US had to in 2001. When the Soviet-Afghan War began in 1979, the world viewed them as a global power, second

only to the United States, and to some, even superior.

When they withdrew almost ten years later, it was considered a sign of extreme weakness, something

that would give many of the Eastern Bloc countries hope that they could finally throw off the Soviet yoke.

Afghanistan has historically been an almost impossible nation or territory to defeat militarily, as we've seen in our lifetimes.

It's been called, quote unquote, the graveyard of empires.

Although that might be a bit of an exaggeration. We can go way

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