The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan - Hardcover

Feifer, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061143189 ISBN 13: 9780061143182

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2009

Synopsis

“Fascinating….A highly readable history of the conflict.” —New York Times Book Review

In The Great Gamble, a groundbreaking account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer vividly depicts the war that contributed greatly to the demise of the USSR, and that offers striking lessons for the 21st century, as well. Told from the perspective of the Russians who fought it, The Great Gamble offers valuable insight into the history of Afghanistan’s troubled government and the rise of the Mujahideen and Al-Qaeda. In the words of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Feifer has done truly extraordinary research… For all its heft, [The Great Gamble] is an effortless read—an unusual and gratifying combination.”

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Feifer is the former Moscow correspondent for National Public Radio. He was educated at Harvard University and lives in Prague with his wife, Elizabeth, and son, Sebastian.

From the Back Cover

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. During the last years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent some of its most elite troops to unfamiliar lands in Central Asia to fight a vaguely defined enemy, which eventually defeated their superior numbers with unconventional tactics. Although the Soviet leadership initially saw the invasion as a victory, many Russian soldiers came to view the war as a demoralizing and devastating defeat, the consequences of which had a substantial impact on the Soviet Union and its collapse.

Feifer's extensive research includes eye-opening interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. Parallels between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are impossible to ignore—both conflicts were waged amid vague ideological rhetoric about freedom. Both were roundly condemned by the outside world for trying to impose their favored forms of government on countries with very different ways of life. And both seem destined to end on uncertain terms.

A groundbreaking account seen through the eyes of the men who fought it, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.

Reviews

Feifer’s account of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion and 10-year occupation of Afghanistan from 1979–89 builds on considerable original research and on Russian-language histories not available in English. Emphasizing the experiences of Soviet personnel sent to Afghanistan, Feifer portrays their war within the context of political and military decisions that led to their fighting in Afghanistan. The actual decision by Soviet leaders to invade was, as far as Feifer can discover, a muddle. It came after the Communist government in Kabul, unable to quash violent resistance to its program, split apart in bloody factional fighting. But by staging a coup to install their stooge Babrak Karmal in power, the Soviets took the war into their own hands and escalated it accordingly. Their major offensives, acording to Feifer, never delivered a strategic victory, though they tended to prevail in individual battles depicted in the stories of several Soviet officers and soldiers. Tracing the arc of the Soviets’ military disillusionment in Afghanistan, Feifer, who is an NPR reporter in Moscow, provides essential historical background to the present war in Afghanistan. --Gilbert Taylor

Feifer�s history of the Soviet misadventure in Afghanistan, in the nineteen-eighties, comes just in time for a proposed expansion of the seven-year-old American effort there. It ought to be instructive, because the Soviet experience (�an increasingly senseless conflict�) closely mirrors our own�a lightly contested invasion later thwarted by a homegrown resistance and the �Afghan tradition of shifting allegiances.� Feifer assiduously chronicles Soviet errors; some, like the indiscriminate use of explosives when searching villages and the shelling of wedding parties mistaken for bands of the enemy, have close analogues in the current war. Yet, strangely, having pointed out all the parallels, Feifer persists in thinking of the American venture as a �historic opportunity� undermined by the second front, in Iraq, rather than as intrinsically hopeless.
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Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061143189
• ISBN 13: 9780061143182
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336