As a result of these twin military challenges, the Soviets formulated new concepts for waging war in non-linear fashion, suited to operating on battlefields dominated by more lethal high-precision weapons. This new non-linear battlefield required the abandonment of traditional operational and tactical formations, a redefinition of traditional echelonment concepts, and a wholesale reorganization of formations and units to emphasize combat flexibility and, hence, survivability. During the early and mid 1980s, the Soviet military altered its concept of the theater strategic offensive, developed new concepts for shallower echelonment at all levels, developed the concept of the air echelon, experimented with new force structures such as the corps, brigade, and combined arms battalion, tested new, more flexible, logistical support concepts (for material support), and adopted such innovative tactical techniques as the use of the bronegruppa [armored group]. Afghanistan not only provided a test bed for many of these lower-level concepts, but it also demanded the employment of imaginative new techniques in its own right. Hence, the brigade, the material support battalion, and the bronegruppa emerged on the Afghan field of battle, reconnaissance-diversionary [SPETSNAZ] units sharpened their skills, and air assault techniques were widely employed.
Third, the inability of the Soviet military to win the war decisively condemned it to suffer a slow bloodletting, in a process that exposed the very weaknesses of the military as well as the Soviet political structure and society itself. The employment of a draft army with full periodic rotation of troops back to the Soviet Union permitted the travails and frustrations of war and the self-doubts of the common soldier to be shared by the Soviet population as a whole. The problems so apparent in the wartime army soon became a microcosm for the latent problems afflicting Soviet society in general. The messages of doubt were military, political, ethnic, and social. In the end they were corrosive and destructive. As evidence, one needs only review the recently released casualty figures to underscore the pervasiveness of the problem. Soviet dead and missing in Afghanistan amounted to almost 15,000 troops, a modest percent of the 642,000 Soviets who served during the ten-year war. And the dead tell no tales at home. Far more telling were the 469,685 casualties, fully 73 percent of the overall force, who ultimately returned home to the Soviet Union. Even more appalling were the numbers of troops who fell victim to disease (415,932), of which 115,308 suffered from infectious hepatitis and 31,080 from typhoid fever. Beyond the sheer magnitude of these numbers is what these figures say about Soviet military hygiene and the conditions surrounding troop life. These numbers are unheard of in modern armies and modern medicine and their social impact among the returnees and the Soviet population, in general, had to be immense.
This volume puts a human face on the Soviet Afghan experience and begins to add flesh and blood to our previously skeletal appreciation of the war. In time-honored fashion, this volume also continues the Soviet General Staff’s penchant for conducting detailed analysis of combat based on concrete combat experiences during the course of war. All the warts and blemishes are present, as they must be if an army is to change. The book provides a revealing portrait of war in general, tactics in particular, and, coincidentally, the soldiers’ human condition. It also reveals that Western intelligence’s picture of how the Soviets operated tactically lagged about 10 years behind reality. It captures the pain and frustration suffered by the Soviet military and, most important, provides acute insights into why and how these military experiences ultimately ignited political and social turmoil in the Soviet Union.
This is the first of the Soviet Afghan revelations. Let us hope that it will not be the last.
David M. Glantz
Colonel, US Army (Retired)
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Colonel Glantz is the West’s leading expert on the Soviet Army in World War II and a leading figure in current Russian/American military cooperation initiatives. He is the author of When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War, Soviet Military Operational Art in Pursuit of Deep Battle, Soviet Military Intelligence in War, The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union: A History, The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver: Spearhead of the Offensive, The History of Soviet Airborne Forces, From the Don to the Dniepr: Soviet Offensive Operations December 1942–August 1943, and The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front: 22 June–August 1941. He is series editor of The Soviet Study of War series and editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. His last military position was the director of the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Preface
The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union structured, equipped and trained their forces for nuclear and high-intensity war on the great northern European plain and the plains of northern China. However, their political leadership thrust them into the middle of the Afghanistan civil war to reconstitute and to support a nominally Marxist-Leninist government. The terrain, the climate and the enemy were entirely different from what they had prepared for. In this locale, their equipment functioned less than optimally, their force structure was clearly inappropriate and their tactics were obviously wrong. The citizens of the Soviet Union did not understand why their sons were being conscripted for battle in a strange land and failed to see how their sacrifices contributed to the security of the fatherland. Those with connections sought to avoid the draft. Unlike their fathers who fought the Nazi invaders, the returning soldiers were not welcomed as heroes or treated with respect. They were shunned and often scorned by their fellow citizens. A gap opened between the Armed Forces and the citizenry and many veterans found they could not fit back into the lifestyle of the complacent and self-centered citizenry. The effects of the Afghanistan war reverberate throughout Russia today.
The Communists took power in Afghanistan on 27 April 1978 with a bloody military coup. President Nur M. Taraki, the new president, announced sweeping programs of land distribution, changed status for women and the destruction of the old Afghanistan social structure. The new government enjoyed little popular support. The wobbly new government was almost immediately met by armed resistance fighters who contested this new order. The combat readiness of the Army of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan plummeted as bloody government purges swept the officer ranks. In March 1979, the city of Herat revolted. Most of the Afghan 17th Infantry Division mutinied and joined the rebellion. Forces loyal to Taraki advanced and occupied the city while the Afghan Air Force bombed the city and the 17th Division. Thousands of people reportedly died in the fighting, including some Soviet citizens.