Afgantsy

31 President Putin in a 2002 interview for Brook Lapping’s BBC television series Iran and the West, first broadcast in February 2009.

32 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 2009, p. 998. Private information.

33 Pir Said Ahmad Gailani, interview, London, 22 July 2008.

34 The last stand of the 12th zastava is described at http://wolfschanze.livejournal.com/tag/%D0%93%D0%A0%D0%9F %D0%92%D0%A2 and http://kua1102.1ivejournal.com/38687.html. The links were kindly given to me by Oksana Antonenko.

14: A Land Fit for Heroes

1 V. Ogryzko, Pesni afganskogo pokhoda (Moscow, 2000), pp. 146, 20, and 151.

2 W. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, Conn., 1998), p. 259.

3 R. Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River (New Haven, Conn., 2002), p. 138.

4 G. Murrell, Russia’s Transition to Democracy (Brighton, 1997), p. 61; Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River, p. 146.

5 V. Varennikov, Nepovtorimoe, 7 vols. (Moscow, 2001), Vol. 5, p. 230.

6 The following account is taken from ibid., pp. 192 et seq.

7 Alexander Lyakhovski, interview, Gelendzhik, 19 September 2007.

8 Ogryzko, Pesni afganskogo pokhoda, p. 161.

9 Igor Morozov, interview, Moscow, 11 March 2010.

10 David Lloyd George, speech at Wolverhampton on 23 November 1918, reported in The Times, 25 November 1918.

11 D. Gai and V. Snegirev, Vtorzhenie (Moscow, 1991), p. 253.

12 M. Galeotti, Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Last War (London, 1995), p. 74.

13 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 21 December 1989, quoted in N. Danilova, Rasplata za dolg: Politika i kollektivnye deistvia veteranov voiny v Afganistane (unpublished), Chapter 2.

14 Danilova, Rasplata za dolg, Chapter 2.

15 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 22 July 1990, quoted ibid.

16 Galeotti, Afghanistan, p. 76.

17 V. Znakov, ‘Psikhologicheskie prichiny neponimania afgantsev’, quoted in Danilova, Rasplata za dolg, Chapter 2.

18 Galeotti, Afghanistan, pp. 123–5.

19 A. Kotenov, Neokonchennaya voina (http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/unfini shed_war/index.shtml); (http://kotenev.chat.ru/).

20 Gazeta.Ru, 12 June 2007 (http://gzt.ru/incident/2006/11/12/220000.html).

21 N. Danilova, ‘Veterans’ Policy in Russia: a Puzzle of Creation, Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, No. 6/7, 2007; ‘The Social and Political Role of War Veterans’ (http://www.pipss.org/document873.html).

22 Federal Law No. 5- 3 of 12 January 1995.

23 OOOIVA website (http://www.rfpi.ru/oooiva/index.php).

24 Information from Dr Rod Thornton, Nottingham University. He served as a sergeant in Bosnia and said that the death of children was the hardest of all things to take.

25 Web interview with Dr Matthew Friedman, Executive Director of the US Veteran Administration’s National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (http://www.pbs.org/w gbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/interviews/friedman.html).

26 Web interview with Colonel Thomas Burke, Director of Mental Health Policy for the US Department of Defense (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh /pages/frontline/shows/heart/interviews/burke.html).

27 ‘As a Brigade Returns Safe, Some Meet New Enemies’, New York Times, 14 July 2010.

28 A. Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home after World War II (New Haven, Conn., 2009), pp. 87, 109, 164, and 209.

29 Text at http://www.gr- oborona.ru/pub/rock/group.html.

30 Galeotti, Afghanistan, p. 152.

31 Alexander Gergel, email to author, 2 July 2009.

32 Special edition of Voronezhskaya Gazeta, 11 February 2009.

33 Yu. Zvyagintsev, ‘Afganski Izlom’, Vestnik ATN, August 1999.

34 S. Aleksievich, Zinky Boys (New York, 1992), pp. 185–94.

35 Moscow City website (http://mos.ru/wps/portal/! ut/p/c0/).

36 ‘Afganski Sindrom dla SShA’, InfoRus, 14 February 2008 (http://www.inforos.ru/?Id20566).

37 Alexander Yeshanu, email, 9 September 2009, posted on Artofwar.ru/.

Epilogue: The Reckoning

1 N. Shilo, ‘Afganistan: 30 let spustya’ (http://www.mgimo.ru/afghan/132585.phtml); article by Anatoli Kostyrya (http://www.afghanistan.ru/doc/16256.html).

2 Oleg Bogomolov, interview, Moscow, 7 October 2004.

3 G. Krivosheev, Rossia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: Poteri vooruzhennykh sil (Moscow, 2001), pp. 536–9.

4 A. Arnold, The Fateful Pebble (Novato, CA, 1993), pp. 188 et seq.

5 A. Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul (London, 2008), p. 150.

6 A. Kalinovsky, ‘A Long Goodbye: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1980–1992’, PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2009.

7 The documentary evidence is inevitably thin or non-existent. The lower figure was suggested to me by Dr Antonio Giustozzi. General Lyakhovski quotes a figure of 2.5 million, but gives no source; the figure is improbably