Політика СРСР в Афганістані (1980–1989 рр.)

Abstract

(en) The attempts to revise and clarify the prevailing approaches of defining the policy of the USSR in Afghanistan in 1979–1989 in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography have been made in the article. It has been grounded the incorrectness of using the concepts of “introduction of troops” and “military presence” in accordance to the Afghan policy of the USSR. It has been proved that in December 1979 there was a military intervention of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which had resulted in the violent replacement of the Afghan leadership and the beginning of the military occupation of the country. The forced socialist modernization of Afghanistan became the content of the Soviet policy. Unlike the rest of the Third World countries, where the USSR implemented such a policy within the framework of a policy of “socialist orientation”, in Afghanistan it was carried out by the presence of a 100 thousand Soviet military contingent. Soviet troops not only took upon themselves the main burden of military operations against the Afghan opposition in the civil war but they were also the only guarantor of keeping in power the unpopular among Afghans regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Afghan leadership was completely dependent on the USSR in interior and foreign policy. The main instrument of the socialist modernization of Afghanistan was the apparatus of military and civilian advisers, whose number in the mid-1980s reached almost 10 thousand persons. They assumed managerial functions in the center and in the regions, supervised the activities of the Afghan army, special services and law enforcement forces, determined all directions of interior and foreign policy. Through their efforts, the Soviet experience of party and state building, system of propaganda and ideology was transferred to Afghanistan. The same was the socio-economic policy, the consequence of which was the imposition of a planned economy on Afghanistan with the prevalence of the public sector. The DRA’s dependence on economic and financial assistance from the USSR increased during these years. Reorganized education system was an important mechanism for the socialist transformation of Afghanistan and the education of pro-Soviet youth. It focused on ideological education in the ideals of the “April revolution” and Marxist-Leninist doctrine. As a result, the military occupation of the country and the dictate of Soviet advisers determined the dependence and subordination of the Afghan political and state leadership. This strengthened the anti-government and anti-Soviet sentiments of Afghans, which was fully taken advantage of by the Afghan opposition and the countries that supported it.