The conflict in Afghanistan looms large in the collective consciousness of Americans. What has the United States achieved, and how will it withdraw without sacrificing those gains? The Soviet Union confronted these sa... more abstractThe conflict in Afghanistan looms large in the collective consciousness of Americans. What has the United States achieved, and how will it withdraw without sacrificing those gains? The Soviet Union confronted these same questions in the 1980s, and Artemy Kalinovsky's history of the USSR's nine-year struggle to extricate itself from Afghanistan and bring its troops home provides a sobering perspective on exit options in the region. What makes Kalinovsky's intense account both timely and important is its focus not on motives for initiating the conflict but on the factors that prevented the Soviet leadership from ending a demoralizing war. Why did the USSR linger for so long, given that key elites recognized the blunder of the mission shortly after the initial deployment? Newly available archival material, supplemented by interviews with major actors, allows Kalinovsky to reconstruct the fierce debates among Soviet diplomats, KGB officials, the Red Army, and top Politburo figures. The fear that withdrawal would diminish the USSR's status as leader of the Third World is palpable in these disagreements, as are the competing interests of Afghan factions and the Soviet Union's superpower rival in the West. This book challenges many widely held views about the actual costs of the conflict to the Soviet leadership, and its findings illuminate the Cold War context of a military engagement that went very wrong, for much too long.

More Info: Harvard University Press (2011)

Orientalism as a concept was first applied to Western colonial views of the East. Subsequently, different types of orientalism were discovered but the premise was that these took their lead from Western-style oriental... more abstractOrientalism as a concept was first applied to Western colonial views of the East. Subsequently, different types of orientalism were discovered but the premise was that these took their lead from Western-style orientalism, applying it in different circumstances. This book, on the other hand, argues that the diffusion of interpretations and techniques in orientalism was not uni-directional, and that the different orientologies – Western, Soviet and oriental orientologies – were interlocked, in such a way that a change in any one of them affected the others; that the different orientologies did not develop in isolation from each other; and that, importantly, those being orientalised were active, not passive, players in shaping how the views of themselves were developed.

Religion, Cold War and Culture, Cold War, Central Asia, Archaeology of Central Asia, and 1 more

Routledge Handbook of the Cold War Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, eds. This new Handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of current scholarship on the Cold War, with essays from many leading scholars. ... more abstractRoutledge Handbook of the Cold War Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, eds. This new Handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of current scholarship on the Cold War, with essays from many leading scholars. The field of Cold War history has consistently been one of the most vibrant in the field of international studies. Recent scholarship has added to our understanding of familiar Cold War events, such as the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and superpower détente, and shed new light on the importance of ideology, race, modernization, and transnational movements. The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War draws on the wealth of new Cold War scholarship, bringing together essays on a diverse range of topics such as geopolitics, military power and technology and strategy. The chapters also address the importance of non-state actors, such as scientists, human rights activists and the Catholic Church, and examine the importance of development, foreign aid and overseas assistance.

History, Cold War and Culture, Cultural Cold War, Cold War, History of International Relations, and 2 more

This volume is an historical survey of advisory and mentoring missions from the 1940s onwards, starting from the Soviet missions to the Kuomintang and ending with the mission to Iraq. It focuses on Afghanistan during ... more abstractThis volume is an historical survey of advisory and mentoring missions from the 1940s onwards, starting from the Soviet missions to the Kuomintang and ending with the mission to Iraq. It focuses on Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and after 2001, but also deals with virtually every single advisory mission from the 1940s onwards, whether involving ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries or Western ones. The sections on Afghanistan are based on new research, while the sections covering other cases of advisory/mentoring missions are based on the existing literature. The authors highlight how large-scale missions have been particularly problematic, causing friction with the hosts and sometimes even undermining their legitimacy. Small missions staffed by more carefully selected cadres appear instead to have produced better results. Overall, the political context may well have been a more important factor in determining success or failure rather than aspects such as cultural misunderstandings.

Military History, Development Studies, Cold War, Afghanistan, and Modernization

This volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually... more abstractThis volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually assigned to the era. The essays provide a multifaceted prism that reveals a dynamic society with a political and intellectual class that remained committed to the ideological foundations of the state, recognized the challenges that the system faced, and embarked on a creative search for solutions. The chapters focus on developments in politics, society, and culture, as well as the state’s attempts to lead and initiate change, which are mostly glossed over in the stagnation narrative. The volume challenges the assumption that the period as a whole was characterized by rampant cynicism and a decline of faith in the socialist creed and instead points to the persistence of popular engagement with the socialist ideology and the power it continued to wield within the Soviet Union.

Soviet History, Cold War, and Brezhnev era Soviet history

Most of the recent scholarship on the end of the Cold War has focused on Europe or bilateral US-Soviet relations. By contrast, relatively little has been written on the end of the Cold War in the Third World: in Asia,... more abstractMost of the recent scholarship on the end of the Cold War has focused on Europe or bilateral US-Soviet relations. By contrast, relatively little has been written on the end of the Cold War in the Third World: in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. How did the great transformation of the world in the late 1980s affect regional conflicts and client relationships? Who "won" and who "lost" in the Third World and why do so many Cold War-era problems remain unresolved? This book, featuring contributions by prominent historians and promising younger scholars, and bringing to light, for the first time, evidence from newly declassified archives in Russia, the United States, Eastern Europe, as well as from private collections, recent memoirs and interviews with key participants, goes further than anything published so far in systematically explaining, both from the perspectives of the superpowers and the Third World countries, what the end of bipolarity meant not only for the underdeveloped periphery so long enmeshed in ideological, socio-political and military conflicts sponsored by Washington, Moscow or Beijing, but also for the broader patterns of international relations.

More Info: Co-edited with Sergey Radchenko, U-Nottingham

This article explores the role of local economists on questions of economic development in Soviet Central Asia, including the local population’s role in the industrial economy, education, and migration. The periphera... more abstractThis article explores the role of local economists on questions of economic development in Soviet Central Asia, including the local population’s role in the industrial economy, education, and migration. The peripheral position of these social scientists and the universal nature of the Soviet project (including Moscow’s role as a development donor in the “foreign East”) meant that planners and scholars like Rahimov were at a unique locus point, making them local and global at the same time. The scholars in question were not only similar in their trajectories to colleagues from the “Third World,” – they sometimes actively engaged in debates about development and changed their views based on what they heard from colleagues in developing countries such as India. Their evolving conception of the economy is important for understanding the fate of the larger Soviet project in the periphery and its significance to the global history of development. Such an approach may not settle the question over the USSR’s colonial nature, but it will highlight the extent to which attempts to overcome the colonial past shaped Soviet politics and the relationship between center and periphery. It will also suggest some productive ways to think comparatively about Soviet Central Asia, by considering debates over its development within the context of (mostly) contemporaneous debates about development for the post-colonial world.

Development Studies, Soviet History, Central Asia, Cold War history, and Decolonization

This article considers the Soviet campaign to transform the Tajik countryside by mechanizing agricultural production and bringing the welfare state to the villages in light of broader 20th century rural development ef... more abstractThis article considers the Soviet campaign to transform the Tajik countryside by mechanizing agricultural production and bringing the welfare state to the villages in light of broader 20th century rural development efforts. It begins by examining the attempt to mechanize agriculture and electrify the Tajik countryside through the eyes of the officials charged with implementing these technologies. Problems with how these technologies were introduced meant that while cotton output expanded, it required increasing amount of labor. Turning to the problem of resettlement, the article emphasizes that resettlement was shaped by competition for labor between districts and farm managers. Increasingly, in the Brezhnev era, it also came to be seen as an easier way to fulfill the modernizing imperative and the commitments of the welfare state. Under pressure to ensure access to schools and medical services, officials found it more convenient to move villages from mountain areas to valleys where such services could be more easily provided. At the same time, the demand for agricultural labor stimulated a kind of “involution” in the countryside, where managers had to find ways to keep labor on the farm. To do so, they could offer cash rewards, building materials, and access to private land and fertilizer.

Development Studies, Soviet History, Central Asian Studies, Central Asia (History), Rural Development, and 1 more

The present paper examines the intersection between the Cold War and American studies of Islam and Muslim societies within the USSR. It focuses in particular on the figure of Paul Henze, an intelligence official and o... more abstractThe present paper examines the intersection between the Cold War and American studies of Islam and Muslim societies within the USSR. It focuses in particular on the figure of Paul Henze, an intelligence official and occasional scholar who played an important role in bringing the views of hard line “Cold Warrior” Orientalists, including Alexander Bennigsen, into the policy mainstream. Drawing in part on recently declassified materials from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the papers of Paul Henze located at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, I argue that the crisis of US Cold War policy in the late 1970s allowed views on Soviet Muslims that had previously been marginal in US foreign policy (and even academic) circles to find resonance. The idea that disaffection among Soviet Muslims could be instrumentalized as a Cold War weapon began to be taken seriously in at least some policy circles. This idea was not hatched within the CIA or the State Department, however. On the contrary, it came from outside the policy community and only (partially) overcame the resistance of the US foreign policy establishment because of a unique set of circumstances provided by the failure of existing Cold War paradigms and the persistence of Henze and his allies.

Intelligence, Cold War, Central Asia, and US Foreign Policy

Development Studies, Soviet History, Cold War, and Central Asia

Publication Date: Sep 2013

Publication Name: Ab Imperio

Although it is generally accepted that the Soviet Union did not play a significant role in the events leading to the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, little has been written about how the Soviets perceived the ... more abstractAlthough it is generally accepted that the Soviet Union did not play a significant role in the events leading to the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, little has been written about how the Soviets perceived the Iranian leader and the movement he inspired. This article argues that Soviet leaders generally saw Mosaddeq as weak and ill-disposed towards the Soviet Union. The Soviet failure to secure an oil concession in Iran in 1946 and general conservatism about anti-colonial movements during the late Stalin period conditioned their assessment of Mosaddeq's premiership. After Soviet policy towards the Third World changed in the mid-1950s, Mosaddeq's movement was reinterpreted as a genuine “struggle of national liberation.”

Publication Date: Mar 10, 2014

Publication Name: Iranian Studies

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: Oct 2013

Publication Name: Regional Dimensions of Security: Other Side of Afghanistan (Aglaya Snetkov and Stephen Aris, eds.)

More Info: in Nigel Ashton and Bryan Gibson, eds. The Iran Iraq War: New International Perspectives

Publication Date: Nov 2012

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-1989), like most counter-insurgencies, consisted not only of military operations but also of a massive nation-building project. Moscow sent thousands of advisers to build u... more abstractThe Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-1989), like most counter-insurgencies, consisted not only of military operations but also of a massive nation-building project. Moscow sent thousands of advisers to build up the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), organize and improve government institutions, and help carry out pacification measures in the country-side. Historians have largely neglected this aspect of the war. This paper will show how Soviet advisers carried out this aspect of Moscow’s counter-insurgency. Although their efforts were well-intentioned, they were undermined by institutional rivalries, poor understanding of local conditions, and lack of coordination.

History, Cold War, Afghanistan, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency(COIN), Cold War International Relations, and 1 more

More Info: Cold War International History Project Working Paper #60

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan sparked acute Cold War tensions. The war soon became an undesirable distraction and burden for Soviet leaders, who did not expect to spend most of the 1980s propping up a client regi... more abstractThe Soviet invasion of Afghanistan sparked acute Cold War tensions. The war soon became an undesirable distraction and burden for Soviet leaders, who did not expect to spend most of the 1980s propping up a client regime in Kabul. Drawing on archival sources and interviews, this article traces Soviet decision-making from the intervention in late 1979 to the final withdrawal in early 1989. The article shows that the supporters of the Soviet intervention believed that Soviet military and economic aid efforts were making progress and should not be aborted early. They warned that a premature withdrawal would undermine Soviet prestige in the Third World. Before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and to some extent afterward, the supporters of intervention were usually able to silence or sideline their critics through deft political maneuvering.

More Info: Journal of Cold War History, 11 (4) 2009

While much has been written about the origins of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, little is known about the Soviet effort to disengage. This article sheds new light on the diplomatic efforts under Mikhail Gorba... more abstractWhile much has been written about the origins of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, little is known about the Soviet effort to disengage. This article sheds new light on the diplomatic efforts under Mikhail Gorbachev to engage the US and secure an 'honourable' withdrawal for Soviet troops. Drawing on declassified Russian and US documents, it also explores the internal Soviet debates as well as Moscow's relationship with its client in Kabul on the eve of withdrawal.

Soviet History and Soviet Union (History)

Development Studies, Cold War history, and US Foreign Policy

A Review of Serhii Ploky's The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books, 2014. ISBN-13 978–0465056965. $32.00.

Soviet History, Cold War, and Cold War International Relations

Cold War history

Publisher: eprints.lse.ac.uk

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011

Publication Name: Journal of contemporary history

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & …

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010

Publication Name: Iranian Studies

Publisher: jch.sagepub.com

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011

Publication Name: Journal of Contemporary History

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & …

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011

Publication Name: Cold War History

Reviews Vladimir Snegirev's Virus A and V. Khristoforov Afganistan: Praviaschaia partia i armia, 1978-1989 (Moscow: Granitsa, 2009)

Afghanistan and Cold War history

Publication Date: Apr 8, 2014

Publication Name: Cold War History

Reviews Vladimir Snegirev's Virus A and V. Khristoforov Afganistan: Praviaschaia partia i armia, 1978-1989 (Moscow: Granitsa, 2009)

Afghanistan and Cold War history

Publication Date: Apr 8, 2014

Publication Name: Cold War History

More Info: Originally published in the Vol. 4 no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2009) issue

More Info: from IDEAS Today, December 2009

Twenty years ago, the Soviets cut their losses and withdrew from Afghanistan. If it wants to avoid that outcome, the United States should learn its history.

More Info: From the LSE IDEAS Special report on Obama's first year...

Barack Obama has been compared to many past U.S. presidents. But an intriguing parallel has been overlooked -- that between Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev.

More Info: Published by Foreign Affairs (online) on 19 January 2011

International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Cold War, and Afghanistan

The conference proposes to bring together leading scholars of economic history and the political history of the Cold War to examine the ways in which international politics and economic theory influenced each other du... more abstractThe conference proposes to bring together leading scholars of economic history and the political history of the Cold War to examine the ways in which international politics and economic theory influenced each other during the second half of the twentieth century.

Development Studies, International History, and Cold War