Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 25 – Forty years
ago today, Moscow sent its military forces into Afghanistan to support the
pro-Soviet regime there. That intervention lasted for ten years until Mikhail
Gorbachev withdrew the troops. Many believe the war helped bring about the end
of the USSR, but some argue it helped keep it survive as long as it did.
One of them is Sergey Skripal, a Stavropol
writer who served in Afghanistan in 1980 and who wrote a popular book about his
experiences, Kontinent. He argues that the intervention was fully
justified and helped the Soviet Union continue to exist at a time when it was
threatened by many things (apost.media/news/armiya/afganets-esli-by-ne-vveli-voyska-sssr-ne-stalo-by-gorazdo-ranshe/).
Moreover, he says, had Moscow not
sent in troops in 1979, the Soviet Union would have ceased to exist even before
1991. Had Gorbachev not pulled them in 1989, Skripal argues, “the USSR would
have lasted longer.”
On the one hand, of course, these
are the arguments of a veteran of that conflict, a man who obviously has a
great deal invested in that conflict and is angry at the many who argue either
that the war or the end of it contributed more to the demise of the USSR than
did any other factor.
But on the other, Skripal’s position
reflects a far larger problem among many Russians, a tendency on their part to
believe that a single action or a single individual could and in this case did
lead to its disintegration and demise. Those who believe that implicitly if not
explicitly believe their country lacks the links that hold other countries
together regardless of events.
And that belief in a single cause
helps to explain why they are prepared to support the most authoritarian
rulers, confident that only by doing so can their country and nation survive.
Vladimir Putin has been exploiting this sense for the past two decades – even
though appears unaware that it reflects a profound national weakness rather
than a real national strength.
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