ABSTRACT

Remembering war is not only personal but also societal in nature, and it generates multiple and often conflicting viewpoints. The Russian interpretation of the Soviet–Afghan war has so far gone through three distinct phases in a fairly short time. The first phase was orchestrated by the Soviet state, which officially portrayed the war as a noble cause in which Soviet soldiers defended a vulnerable developing socialist state from capitalist aggression. The second phase began in 1986 under Mikhail Gorbachev's period of glasnost, when people could challenge the official rhetoric, and reached its fullness in the 1990s during the Boris Yeltsin era. The third and phase began in 2001 with the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States (US), followed by the US invasion of Afghanistan. Nearly four decades after the introduction of troops into Afghanistan, the Afghan war and veterans thereof are seen in a far more favorable light than they were in the period of the mid-1980s through 2001.