13 (http://www.afghanistanjusticeproject.org/).
8 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana.
9 Dmitri Ryurikov, interview, Moscow, 23 July 2009.
10 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana (Moscow, 2009), p. 108.
11 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, pp. 81 and 16.
12 Kryuchkov, Lichnoe delo, Vol. 1, p. 192.
13 See notes on Puzanov’s report taken by Odd Arne Westad from the original at the Center for the Storage of Contemporary Documentation (TsKhSD), fond (f.) 5, opis (op.) 75, delo (d.) 1179, listy (11.) 2–17. Westad’s notes are published by the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm/topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2.document&ide ntifier=5034DB6A-96B6–175C-91262B384BCC068C&sort=Collection&item=Soviet%20Invasion%200f %20Afghanistan).
14 G. Dorronosoro, Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present (New York, 2005), p. 96.
15 N. Ivanov, Operatsiu Shtorm nachat ranshe (Moscow, 1993), Chapter 14 (http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/ivanov_nf/ind ex.html); Valeri and Galina Ivanov, interview, Moscow, 14 March 2010.
16 There are conflicting accounts of the rising in R. Sikorski, Dust of the Saints: A Journey to Herat in Time of War (New York, 1990); A. Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination 1964–81 (London, 1982); A. Giustozzi, Genesis of a ‘Prince’: The Rise of Ismail Khan in Western Afghanistan, 1979–1992 (Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics, September 2006); Dorronosoro, Revolution Unending, quotes Olivier Roy, Afghanistan, Islam et modernite politique (Paris, 1985), p. 146, as giving a wide margin for the total number of casualties, between 5,000 and 25,000 victims; A. Lyakhovski and S. Davitaya, Igra v Afganistan (Moscow, 2009), p. 135, give a low estimate for the number of Soviet victims. Other low estimates are in G. Zaitsev, Alpha—My Destiny (St Petersburg, 2005), p. 118; V. Zaplatin, ‘Do shturma dvortsa Amina’, Zavtra, No. 51 (316), 21 December 1999 (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/99/3 16/61.htm); Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 78; and V. Ablazov, Afganistan chetvertaya voina (Kiev, 2002), p. 53. Even some Russians accepted the higher figure. D. Cordovez and S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan (Oxford, 1995), p. 36, quote a high estimate given by a senior Soviet official in 1989. The Russian Ambassador, Zamir Kabulov, told me in Kabul on 7 September 2008 that he accepted the figure of 100.
17 The official transcripts of these Politburo meetings, and of the telephone conversations with the Afghan leadership, were published informally in the early 1990s, when the archives were briefly open. Most appear in Lyakhovski’s Tragedia i doblest Afgana. English translations are on the website of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project, ‘Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan’ (http://www.wilsoncenter.org).
18 A full text is in Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 1995, and comes from TsKhSD, f. 89, per. 25, dok. 1, ss. 28–34; a shorter version is in Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2004, pp. 119–22; a translation is on the website of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project (http://www.wilsoncenter.org).
19 Woodrow Wilson Center Cold War Archive: transcript of CPSU CC Politburo Session on Afghanistan, 22 March 1979, TsKhSD, f. 89, per. 25, dok. 2.
20 Ali Sultan Keshtmand, interview, London, 25 May 2009.
21 A. Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination 1964–81 (London, 1982), pp. 126, 149, and 152.
22 D. MacEachin, ‘Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan’, Center for the Study of Intelligence (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and- monographs/); Dorronosoro, Revolution Unending, pp. 103–4.
23 For a list of these requests, see O. Sarin and L. Dvoretsky, The Afghan Syndrome: The Soviet Union’s Vietnam (Novato, CA, 1993), pp. 79–84; and Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 1995, passim.
24 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 90.
25 Zaitsev, Alpha—My Destiny, pp. 114–15.
26 I. Tukharinov, Sekretny komandarm (http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/secret_c om/index.shtml).
27 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 69.
28 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2004, pp. 131 and 133. Pavlovski’s final report is on p. 192.
29 Zaitsev, Alpha—My Destiny, pp. 126–7.
30 Ablazov, Afganistan chetvertaya voina, p. 163; Sarin and Dvoretsky, The Afghan Syndrome, pp. 79–84.
31 MacEachin, ‘Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan’.
3: The Decision to Intervene
1 Much remains obscure about these events. The following account draws heavily on two sources: V. Mitrokhin, The KGB in Afghanistan, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, February 2002, and M. Slinkin, Afghanistan, Trevozhnye Leto i Osen 1979 g, Kultura narodov Prichenomorya, No. 4, 1998, pp. 138–52 (http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/Articles/ KultNar/avtory/slinkin/knp/index.htm). Mitrokhin was an archivist in the KGB who kept extensive notes on the documents he handled, which he brought to the West when he defected after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He rarely gives document references or even dates, and his account needs to be approached with caution. I have added material from A. Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana (Moscow, 1995) (http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/pros e_af/afgan_tragedy_and_glory/index.shtml), passim. But the details are still buried in the archives of the KGB and in Kabul.
2 A. Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana (Moscow, 2004), p. 153.
3 A. Maiorov, Pravda ob afganskoi voine (Moscow, 1996), p. 74.
4 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2004; A. Borovik, The Hidden War (New York, 1990), p. 247.
5 Memorandum by Richard Holbrooke in Washington National Records Center, RG 330, McNamara Vietnam Files: FRC 77–0075, Vietnam—1966. The text was kindly given to me by Sherard Cowper-Coles.
6 That at least is the opinion of Mitrokhin and Lyakhovski. I have not come across any confirmation from the Afghan side that it was so perceived by Taraki.
7 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2004, p. 155.
8 M. Slinkin, NDPA u vlasti (Simferopol, 1999), p. 128.
9 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2004, p. 160.
10 Mitrokhin, The KGB in Afghanistan, p. 52. This passage seems to be a
