The Impact of the Afghan War on soviet soldiers
Дисциплина: Иностранные языкиТип работы: Реферат
Тема: The Impact of the Afghan War on soviet soldiers
The impact of the Afghan War on soviet soldiers.
Defense of the Socialist Motherland is the sacred duty of every citizen of the USSR.
Article 62, Soviet 1977 Constitution
Soviet invasion in Afghanistan started in December 1979, when the first military troops crossed the Afghan border.
Only at the time of ‘perestroyka’, in the year 1988, Gorbachov, the leader of Politburo - start the process of withdrawing military troops from the territory of Afghanistan. Between
1979 and 1988, about 15,000 soldiers were killed, and many others were wounded. Gorbachov wanted to stop that war. He stopped it as a historical fact. But did he stop that war inside
the hearts of thousands of veterans who came back to their homes? Did he prevent the negative impact of that war on soldiers’ lives? The answer is simple - no. My essay will give
evidence in support of this opinion.
The Afghan War changed many people’s lives in the USSR. Still, in present-day Russia, the consequences of that war are appeared. The greatest impact of the Afghan War can be
seen on the people who were there - soldiers who had to serve in Afghanistan and fulfill their ‘international duty’. The war for which there was no need, had destroyed many soldiers’
lives. Fifteen thousand of them had been killed, and many others had been injured, some having become invalids, unneeded to the government who had sent them to that war, and to the
people who were not in the war. Every single young man who went to Afghanistan continued his life differently from the people who had never been there. The effect was due not merely
to a war, but to the whole system of the ex-USSR. In my essay I will try to describe both of these effects on soldiers’ lives.
The new life for the eighteen year old boys began when they graduated from high school. Some of them became recruits during the spring draft, others during the fall draft.
Recruits bound for Afghanistan would receive 8-10 weeks’ training before being sent to their units.
From that moment they became subject to the subordination of officers through the formal channels of authority, and the informal of dedovshina (discrimination by the older
soldiers). Newcomers were kept in line, while being beaten. This continued until the new soldiers agreed to acquiesce.
That was just the beginning of soldiers’ lives, being sent to the war they all experienced in very different ways. The impact of fighting and the experience of killing,
dedovshina, an alien military institution, and an alien land changed the characters and lives of the soldiers before they returned home. ‘We were in an alien land. And why were we
there? To this day, for some, it doesn’t matter.’
War in Afghanistan was not exclusively a male war. Many of the women who volunteered
to served in Afghanistan were nurses, others filled a variety of support or nurture roles (as cooks, for example). The rest were involved in paperwork or
communication. For these in Afghanistan women the main problem became men. They attracted soldiers in Afghanistan not only as sex objects but also as mother figures.
Often women were raped by soldiers who had been sent to Afghanistan instead of going to prison. Thus in the Soviet patriarchal society the belief that women who served in
Afghanistan were whores or prostitutes took root. Here, a woman who had served in Afghanistan describes her feelings:
‘You fulfilled your international duty in a bed’... My mother proudly announced to her friends: ‘My daughter was in
Afghanistan.’ My naive mother! I want to write to her: ‘Mother, be quiet or you’ll hear people say your daughter is a prostitute.’
After coming home, soldiers organized the form of a community that they had been accustomed to in Afghanistan, with
their own customs and jargon. Coming back to normal life was enormously difficult for them, because of the reasons that I will explain in next paragraph. Thus, from the beginning they
separated themselves from the surrounding society. Man...