The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (Modern War Studies Series) »

The War in Afghanistan (1979-1989) has been called "the Soviet Union's Vietnam War," a conflict that pitted Soviet regulars against a relentless, elusive, and ultimately unbeatable Afghan guerrilla force (the mujahideen). The hit-and-run bloodletting across the war's decade tallied more than 25,000 dead Soviet soldiers plus a great many more casualties and further demoralized a USSR on the verge of disintegration.

In The Soviet-Afghan War the Russian general staff takes a close critical look at the Soviet military's disappointing performance in that war in an effort to better understand what happened and why and what lessons should be taken from it. Lester Grau and Michael Gress's expert English translation of the general staff's study offers the very first publication in any language of this important and illuminating work.

Surprisingly, this was a study the general staff never intended to write, initially viewing the war in Afghanistan as a dismal aberration in Russian military history. The history of the 1990s has, of course, completely demolished that belief, as evidenced by the Russian Army's subsequent engagements with guerrilla forces in Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, and elsewhere. As a result, Russian officers decided to take a much closer look at the Red Army's experiences in the Afghan War.

Their study presents the Russian view of how the war started, how it progressed, and how it ended; shows how a modern mechanized army organized and conducted a counter-guerrilla war; chronicles the major battles and operations; and provides valuable insights into Soviet tactics, strategy, doctrine, and organization across a wide array of military branches. The editors' incisive preface and commentary help contextualize the Russian view and alert the reader to blind spots in the general staff's thinking about the war.

This one-of-a-kind document provides a powerful case study on how yet another modern mechanized army imprudently relied upon the false promise of technology to defeat a determined guerrilla foe. The Red Army had fought their war to a military draw but that was not enough to stave off political defeat at home.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Publishers Weekly

This is the third volume in a trilogy on the operational aspects of the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1988. The first two dealt respectively with Soviet and mujahideen tactics. This one is the perspective of the Russian General Staff. It follows the Soviet tradition of recording the events and experiences of previous wars not from a historical perspective, but in a "lessons learned" context, to help improve future performance. The work lacks the shaping, ideologically based overview of its predecessors. It is, rather, a compilation of information from a broad spectrum of sources synthesized by a group of authors who mostly have been through the fighting, and the book is destined for think tank and military academic libraries. Its text, admirably translated and edited, will be nearly impossible for lay people to stay with, but it tells a story of poor intelligence compounded by inappropriate force structures, inadequate operational doctrine and no strategy to speak of. Soviet forces did not understand their opposition, especially the mujahideen's ability and willingness to sustain the fighting far beyond rational-actor parameters. Repeated failures of conventional, large-scale war techniques led the Soviets to adopt smaller, more flexible formations and nonlinear tactics with increasing success, but mujahideen-operated Stinger ground-to-air missiles provided by the U.S. helped drag out a conflict the Soviet military could not win decisively in a time frame acceptable to Soviet political authorities. In the end, Afghanistan contributed significantly, perhaps decisively, to the collective loss of confidence that brought the U.S.S.R. to self-destruction. (Feb. 5) Forecast: The hardcover is priced out of the trade market, but if the paperback makes it onto the shelves, expect some unsuspecting browsers looking for layperson's narrative to pick this one up. Otherwise, only collections concerned with the nitty-gritty history of operations planning and execution will find what they're looking for here. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.