Contact information

[Klawa Thresher]

Dear Colleagues,

Could someone please give me the e-mail address for (or any other way to contact) Olga Velikanova at the University of North Texas?

Thank you in advance,
Klawa Thresher

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Elena Gapova
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 2:30 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Soviet war in Afghanistan in Russian popular culture

You might want to use some video clips of Soviet TV reports from Afghanistan, in particular, вывод советских войск из Афганистана. See, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sJ33kyhQk&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLD632707F000D9215

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76YWhXZIikg

 Soviet troops largely had the same agenda in Afghanistan that American troops have now: fighting the fundamentalists and trying to modernize the country (building schools, starting training programs and industrial enterprises; at that time there were students from Afghanistan in most Soviet technological universities). At the same time, Soviet society felt that the war was wrong, and when the govenment began withdrawing the troops, there was bitterenes because of the lives lost, but also a certain "pride" that the troops were being withdrawn under civic pressure and in an orderly manner etc. An important symbolic gesture was general Gromov, the Soviet commander in Afghanistan, being the last one to leav the Afghan territorye, i.e. to cross the bridge on the Soviet-Afghen border, leaving "no one behind" (although there was belief that some soldiers might still be there as war prisoners).

Some contemporary documentaries:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB1fN2-Rdu8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bp6AdOkRzE&feature=related

In fact, there is a lot of visual material on youtube, if you type Афганистан and советcкий.

Elena Gapova
2012/6/11 Robert A. Rothstein <rar at slavic.umass.edu<mailto:rar at slavic.umass.edu>>
    One other song, as sung by Natal'ia Mokrousova: "Zdravstvui, Mama" (text at http://a-pesni.org/army/zdrmama-afg.php, song at http://www.audiopoisk.com/track/no/mp3/natal_a-mokrousova---zdravstvui-mama/). A soldier writes to his mother to reassure her that he's OK (Знаешь, мама, здесь не страшно, просто здесь Афганистан), but she gets the letter after he's been killed.
    (There's one misprint in the text: Лишь вчера осенним ветром дунуло окно should be ... дунуло в окно.)
Bob Rothstein



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