Soviet war in Afghanistan in Russian popular culture

[Elena Gapova]

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"pride" that the troops were being withdrawn under civic pressure and in an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>

>      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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