Mujahedeen forces ousted him and set up their own provisional government. These groups no longer had a single unifying cause (the removal of Soviet forces) to keep them together, and a civil war ensued. This lasted until 1996, at which time the Taliban were able to wrest control of most of the country.
As a result of the United States-led “coalition of the willing” attacks in 2001-2002, Russia ironically became a more active player in the region. Following the al-Qaeda attacks in the United States, Afghanistan quickly came under attack for its support of that terrorist organization and its unwillingness to hand over top al-Qaeda officials. By the beginning of 2002, supportive of the U.S. effort, Afghanistan has been more active in assisting what it sees as the defense of its southern borders.
For more than two decades, Afghanistan has remained a security problem for the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Therefore, Russia will undoubtedly continue to place importance on remaining politically involved in future developments in that country, although given its somber experience in the 1980s, it is doubtful that Russia will develop a military or security presence in the country any time soon.
The Afghans are likewise mistrustful of Russian influences in the country. Even in the early twenty-first century, Afghanistan continued to feel the effects of the Soviet campaign in the country. As expected, U.S. troops toppled the Taliban regime and were in the process of establishing a more representative regime in Kabul. Russia, for its part, had seen 1.5 million Afghans killed in the ten-year war, most of whom were civilians. In addition, millions more citizens became refugees in Iran and Pakistan. Finally, hundreds of thousands of landmines remained in place to cause injuries and death on a near-daily basis. On a broader level, the economic and social disruption caused by the war, and the subsequent civil war and Taliban rule, had resulted in a country completely in ruins.
Perhaps most telling for contemporary Russia is the fact that Afghanistan symbolizes defeat on several levels. It was a failed effort to export socialism to a neighboring state; it was a failure of the Soviet army to defeat an insurgency; it was a failure of confidence by the population in the political leadership; and it was a failure for the economy, as the war created a drain on an already-troubled economy. See also: BREZHNEV, LEONID, ILICH; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dupree, Louis. (1980). Afghanistan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goodson, Larry P. (2001). Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban. Seattle: The University of Washington Press. Grau, Lester, ed. (2003). The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, 2nd edition. New York: Frank Cass Publishers. Kaplan, Robert D. (2001). Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. New York: Vintage Books. Khan, Riaz. (1991). Untying the Afghan Knot: Negotiating Soviet Withdrawal. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rashid, Ahmed. (2000). Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Roy, Olivier. (1986). Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. London: Cambridge University Press. Rubin, Barnett. (1995). The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. (1982). Afghanistan of the Afghans. London: Octagon Press. Tapper, Richard. (1991). The Conflict of Tribe and State in Afghanistan. London: Croom Helm.
ROGER KANGAS
(b. 1932), leading Soviet economist and organizer of economic research.
Academician Abel Gezevich Aganbegyan began his professional career as a labor economist and was
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an active member of the group of mathematical economists that emerged in the USSR in the 1960s. He was the Director of the Institute of Economics and the Organization of Industrial Production in Novosibirsk (1966-1985) and the creator and first editor of the lively journal EKO for many years the best economics journal in the USSR. In 1985 he returned to Moscow and was an important economic adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev. Aganbegyan seems to have played a major role in promoting the ill-fated acceleration (uskorenie) program of 1985-1986. Intended to speed up the national economic rate of growth, the policy mainly resulted in destabilizing the economy by sharply increasing investment in projects without any short-run returns. Aganbegyan was also involved in the preparation of the economic reform announced by Gorbachev in June 1987. This reform did not achieve its objectives but did contribute to the financial crisis and economic destabilization of 1989-1991. In 1990, Gorbachev requested that he produce a compromise economic program out of the rival Five-Hundred-Day Plan of Stanislav Shatalin and Grigory Yavlinsky on the one hand, and the government program of Leonid Abalkin and Nikolai Ryzhkov on the other. During pere-stroika Aganbegyan became rector of the Academy of the National Economy. He established a consulting firm and founded a bank, of which he served as CEO for five years, then honorary president. A property development deal he made with an Italian firm was a failure, leaving behind a half-finished building. See also: FIVE-HUNDRED- DAY PLAN; PERESTROIKA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aganbegyan, Abel. (1989). Inside Perestroika. New York: Harper amp; Row. Aslund, Anders. (1991). Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform, 2nd ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
into five subsections, the two most important being the agitation subsection, which directed propaganda campaigns and supervised local press, and the political education subsection, which developed curriculum for Party schools. The three remaining subsections were concerned with publishing Central Committee works, addressing problems with the distribution of propaganda in literature, and coordinating work among the parties of the national minorities. Agitprop, whose activities reached their fullest height during the Stalinist era, was one of the most important Central Committee sections by 1946. The role of Agitprop during the Brezhnev years and beyond included overseeing publishing, television, radio, and sports, directing agitation and propaganda work, guiding political education within the Party, and conducting cultural work with trade unions.
Agitprop techniques, based on the political education of the immediate postrevolutionary period, were basically solidified in the 1920s. Early Agitprop in the cities included parades, spectacles, monumental sculpture, posters, kiosks, films, and agit-stations, located at major railroad stations, which had libraries of propaganda material, lecture halls, and theaters. These varied activities continued throughout the Soviet period. Agitation and propaganda were taken to the countryside during the civil war by agit-trains and agit-ships, a unique Bolshevik method for the political education of rural citizens and front-line troops. These modern conveyances functioned like moving posters with exterior decorations of heroic figures and folk art motifs accompanied by simple slogans. The trains and ships brought revolutionary leaflets, agitators, newsreels, and agitki (short propaganda films), among other items. Agit-trains were reinstituted during World War II to convey propaganda to forces at the front. After the civil war, and throughout the Soviet period, propaganda continued to be exported to the countryside via radio, traveling exhibitions, posters, literature, and film. Agitprop, like other Central Committee departments, had become relatively stable in its organization by 1948, and remained so until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
AGITPROP
Agitprop, the agitation (speech) and propaganda (print, film, and visual art) section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was established in August of 1920, under the direction of R. Katanian to coordinate the propaganda work of all Soviet institutions. Agitprop was originally divided See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; HIGHER PARTY SCHOOLS
Kenez, Peter. (1986). The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Stites, Richard. (1995). Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900. New York:
