A. M. VASILIEV Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Urnov's article stands out from the extensive literature on the Afghan events. First, by its honesty and calm objectivity. Secondly, knowledge of the case "from the inside". Third, the outlook of a person who was at a fairly high level in the then nomenclature hierarchy. And yet, no matter what is written about that time, there are gaps in the details and in general in our knowledge. Therefore, it may not be superfluous to write a postscript, which I decided to do. Let this look from a small high-rise, and not from a large hill, which in those years was Andrey Yuryevich. On the day of the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, I was on duty in the editorial office of Pravda together with Yuri Vasilyevich Glukhov. My colleague spent about three years in the Soviet embassy in Afghanistan, and I, working as a correspondent for Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, visited this country every year. We didn't think we were very smart, but we both knew how the Afghan adventure would end. Any orientalist historian knew that three British incursions into Afghanistan ended in their defeat. In the "Geographical Reference Book" as early as 1925, one could read: "Afghanistan is a mountainous country with which Soviet Turkestan borders in the south ... British imperialists have broken their teeth repeatedly trying to enslave the freedom-loving Afghan people." The gigantic Russian Empire spent more than 50 years conquering the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus inhabited by Muslim ethnic groups in the 19th century and sacrificed tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives of its uniformed peasants and part of its noble elite. And this was at a time when information communication between different parts of the Muslim world was almost nonexistent. The Soviet Union defeated after a decade page 44 The Basmachi movement began in Central Asia only when they lost their rear bases in Afghanistan. We were sure that o ... Читать далее