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The Red Army's Unwinnable War: How Afghanistan Broke the Soviet Myth
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan wasn't just a military defeat — it shattered the foundational myth that the Red Army was unstoppable. This episode traces how ten years in the mountains cracked the empire from within.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Ten years. That's how long the Soviet Union fought in Afghanistan.
The invasion began in December nineteen seventy-nine. The Politburo authorized it in a session where several key members were absent or ill.
The initial Soviet force numbered around eighty thousand troops. By the mid-nineteen eighties that number had grown considerably, but it never reached a level that could actually pacify the country.
The Soviet government never told its own people the truth about Afghanistan. Casualties were underreported.
Step back from the numbers for a moment, because the most consequential damage wasn't measured in rubles or body counts. It was measured in perception.
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March nineteen eighty-five. He was younger than his predecessors, more energetic, genuinely aware that the system needed change.
Afghanistan didn't cause the Soviet collapse by itself. That's worth being clear about.
The phrase "graveyard of empires" is often applied to Afghanistan with a kind of hindsight neatness that can flatten what actually happened. The British, the Soviets, and later others didn't fail in Afghanistan because of some mystical quality of the terrain or the people.
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