afgantsy

History

Soldiers returning from Afghanistan in the 1980s built monuments to the war dead and set up military-patriotic clubs, laying the basis of the afgantsy movement. On 13 March 1989 the All-Union congress of USSR veterans in Moscow founded a nationwide veterans' union headed by Aleksandr Kotenev, and this became the central organization of the afgantsy movement. After the USSR dissolved on 26 December 1991, historicizing the Afghan war became a task for each of the 15 independent countries, and the single organizational network broke up.

After glasnost authorized public debate on the war, the only uniform perception of the afgantsy that emerged was that the Politburo had deployed them wrongly; after the dissolution of the USSR that verdict became redundant for many. Veterans' organizing continued after the collapse. About 16,000 Afghan War veterans live in Kazakhstan and Belarus's union of Afghan veterans has more than 12,000 members, but the single Soviet-era network no longer exists.

Distinctions

The term must be separated from the official designation and from other names. Officialdom spoke only of 'warrior-internationalists' serving their 'international duty', while afgantsy is the colloquial label. Shuravi, the Afghan-side designation of Soviet civilian and military specialists, was neutral from 1956, acquired negative connotations around the turn of the 1970s–1980s after the entry of Soviet troops, and was later adopted self-referentially by veterans, who said 'we are shuravi'; it is not a synonym of afgantsy.

In medical and psychological usage 'афганский синдром' (Afghan Syndrome), alongside 'вьетнамский синдром', names war-related post-traumatic stress. A Russian psychiatrist describes it as a condition affecting any combatant, with symptoms including chronic fatigue, heightened anxiety, headaches, memory loss, insomnia and difficulty integrating into civilian life. The underlying event is also named differently by the sides: in Russia and the former Soviet Union it is usually the Afghan war (Афганская война), in Afghanistan the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and internationally it has been recorded as an 'invasion' by the Muslim world and Western Bloc and a 'legal intervention' by the Eastern Bloc.

Examples

The return experience was shaped by material conditions. Many returning soldiers and officers needed social help and state support but, instead of benefits and pensions, heard 'Мы вас туда не посылали' ('We didn't send you there'), which pushed them to organize; those who became invalids needed prosthetics and medicines. In the 1980s 'Я вас в Афганистан не посылал!' ('I didn't send you to Afghanistan!') entered some people's vocabulary as a symbol of social rejection of returning soldiers, while military men answered that they would walk back to 'their' Afghanistan.

Medical-psychological assistance began in the USSR in 1987 at Moscow State University, and the first Psychological Service of the Union of Veterans of Afghanistan was created on 13 March 1989. Veterans interviewed by NPR describe both pride and trauma: Sergei Opalev, among the last to withdraw, frames the pullout as organized and the military effort as a success, while Rustam Khodzhayev, conscripted in December 1979, still has nightmares and his wife worries he has 'Afghanskii syndrome'.

Relations

The founding congress of the Russian Union of Veterans of Afghanistan (РСВА) met in Moscow on 17–20 November 1990, adopted its development program, charter and symbols, and elected Lyapin as first chairman; after the dissolution of the USSR the СВА was registered as an international association in 1992. Today the РСВА reports about 500,000 members, 76 regional branches and hundreds of military-patriotic and sports clubs, is a member of the World Veterans Federation (WVF), and was renamed in 2022 to include 'special military operations'.

The war ran from 25 December 1979 to 15 February 1989, when the last Soviet column crossed into the Uzbek SSR. Some 620,000 Soviet personnel served; 14,453 died (counts run as high as 26,000), 53,753 were wounded and 415,932 hospitalized with disease. NPR gives more than 15,000 Soviet dead, 60,000 wounded and at least a million Afghans killed.

Commemorative culture persisted as well. In 2010 the Kremlin designated 15 February, the date of the Soviet pullout, a state memorial day, 'A Day of Remembrance of the Russians Who Fulfilled Their Service Duty Beyond the Limits of the Fatherland', and Russian films such as The 9th Company helped rehabilitate veterans' image. Belarus (24,600 veterans of combat in other states as of 1 January 2017) and Uzbekistan (65,000 natives of the Uzbek SSR took part, over 1,500 killed, 500 missing) mark the same date, and Ukraine established it in 2004 by presidential decree as a day honoring combatants on the territory of other states.

Veterans' organizations were also entangled in controversy and crime. The Russian Fund of Invalids of War in Afghanistan, founded in 1991 with state support and trade privileges, became a corruption center, and an explosion at the Kotlyarovskoye cemetery on 10 November 1996 killed 14 people including its leaders and wounded 30, striking the prestige of the whole veterans' movement. The article on the РСВА also records criticism, such as a district veterans' chairman in Nizhnekamsk who combined his post with criminal activity.

Assessment

Rodric Braithwaite's book Afgantsy takes its title from the Russian nickname for Afghan war veterans and is characterized as a sober and balanced account of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Veterans' standing changed drastically: Princeton's Serguei Oushakine assesses that they went from venerated status to being completely despised, and NPR reports that 'for the bigger part of this new century, [Soviet] Afghan vets were sort of outcasts.'