Customer Reviews

Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

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"The Bear Went Over the Mountain" is a compilation of after action reports on tactical operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s, from the Soviet perspective. The descriptions of the action and Soviet after action observations are translated from Frunze Academy (Soviet War College) documents, and accompanied by commentary from the single most knowledgable American on the Soviet army, a man who spoke with leaders from both Russian and Afghan forces from some of these engagements.

No research of the Soviet-Afghan war is complete without careful consideration of the material here. As important as the documentation of the events of the war are the insights into the Soviet perceptions of the operations and the war, and the lessons that they drew from their experience.

This isn't really a book to sit down and read cover to cover, but rather to take a battle at a time and reflect on it before moving on to the next.

Brilliant work from a great man!

E. M. Van Court

The book provides a series of first-person accounts of the tactics used by Russian forces from 1980 to 1988. I found the school solution interesting as well as the accounts of how the Russian troops responded to the Afghan insurgents. Having served with the first Combined Action Companies (CAP) in Vietnam and as an advisor with the Vietnamese Marines as well as more recently in Iraq, South Sudan and Afghanistan, I found the accounts provided interesting lessons learned that focused on the tactical training of junior leaders and the preparation of troops to fight counterinsurgency warfare. It seems that we quickly forget COIN lessons and have to relearn them again and again. As with our current situation in Afghanistan, although we have been here for almost 9 years, we do not have 9 years of experience - we have one year of experience 9 times. I suggest "The Other Side of the Mountain", a collection of Afghan tactics employed against the Russians.

o/~ The bear went over the mountain...The bear went over the mountain o/~
o/~ To see what he could see...To see what he could see...o/~

And this book is an analysis of what the Bear saw, experienced, and learned while on the other side of the Mountain.

If you've ever read more than one book about combat operations, planning, or war in general I'm confident that you've heard the expression "Armatures talk tactics and professionals talk logistics", which is true in the big picture of things. If you don't have the ability, the foresight, or the proper planning to get your bullets, butter, bombs, and personnel to the right place at the right time, you are never going to win a war of any sort, no matter how well trained or tactically proficient your soldiers are.

That said, unless your overarching strategy is one of unlimited men and material, your military's tactics are going to play a key role in how you achieve your victory, something that is often lost sight of in the modern era of combat operations. Emphasis is placed too much on the logistical and operational side of things, without enough focus being placed upon the ground.

The Soviet's recognized this, perhaps a little too late for it to really do them again good, but at least they learned from their mistakes in Afghanistan and this book is a product of that learning. It is a glimpse into the tactical side of Soviet operations, what worked, what didn't, and the importance of communicating those lessons to the frontline leaders.

Reading The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (10th Anniversary Edition), it is easy to draw parallels and between the Soviet experience and the more recent experience of the American and British forces who are operating in the same areas. Its a little disturbing, in some cases, to see just how the American and British forces, had to relearn the same tactical lessons the Soviet's did, and I can say that as a member of the United States Army Reserves, I wish that this book was required reading for all frontline leaders prior to deploying to any modern battlefield.

This is a must have for any soldier going to Afghanistan. It is written in military fashion with each chapter outlining a particular tactic used during the Soviet-Afgan War. The tactics outlined in this book are still being used today in Afghanistan. For each patrol just pick a chapter and there is a chance that the tactic outlined will be used against you. Again a must have for anyone interested in the Afghan War.

This is an interesting collection of frank and objective vignettes by Soviet Army officers relating to their experiences in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention of 1979-1989. These vignettes, accompanied by analysis by the Frunze Military Academy Directing Staff (the vignettes were initially commissioned by the Frunze Military Academy from the student body) focus on the challenges of adapting from a focus on large-scale operations against a conventional near-peer opponent to small-unit operations against a guerrilla force. Written by staff college students and instructors (i.e. Captains to Colonels) for an audience of peers, the accounts are clear, straightforward and accompanied by reasonably helpful maps and graphics (albeit in the old Soviet army format).

Grouped into chapters focused on various tactical actions (for example, ambushes, area and route security operations, air assaults and so on), the vignettes focus on Soviet manoeuvre operations and tactics from platoon to battalion level and are surprisingly objective if a little dispassionate. The reader will find out what decisions a company commander or battalion XO (for example) made and what he would recommend doing differently next time, but you won't find out how he or his men felt, or how he coped with the immediate and pressing dilemmas associated with close combat. While there are some interesting insights into Soviet experiences and interpretations of insurgent tactics, there is next to nothing on the wider aspects of COIN (for example, interacting with indigenous forces or attending a village shura) - this book is strictly from a force-on-force perspective. Perhaps more surprisingly, there is very little in the way of recommendations for force preparation, training or fostering the qualities required of soldiers or junior leaders - the vignettes are all about individual tactical actions and the preparatory work immediately beforehand (although from a higher perspective, The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost discusses Red Army training in some detail).

Recommended as in interesting read for anybody with an interest in military operations in Afghanistan or the Soviet Army, although if like me you are reading it for pressing professional reasons you will also need to take a look at Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters, which uses vignettes by ex-Mujhaideen commanders to similar effect.

This book has some amazing statistics in the prelude and the individual accounts from russian officers covering the lessons learned in Afghanistan make this book a must read for anyone interested in the history of Afghanistan and especially all soldiers headed over there!

This is, by far, the most thorough treatment in english on the Soviet-Afghan war. The Soviet attempts at a heavy-handed approach to counter-insurgency only backfires in the end. A lesson few seem to understand. This brilliant work describes how the Afghan guerrilla tactics evolved with each new Soviet attempt to thwart them. The brutality on both sides is beyond comprehension and reminds us how evil is war.

The importance of this book isn't so much what it says as what it doesn't say: The Soviets lost in Afghanistan because they did not understand guerrilla warfare (aka "Modern", "Asymmetric, "4th generation", and "Small" warfare) and tried to defeat an insurgency using conventional tactics. In particular, there is no acknowledgment by the Soviet generals of the importance of the political aspect of insurgency warfare. This book should be read in conjunction with "The Other Side of the Mountain," also by Lester Grau, which is the Mujaheddin view of the Soviet-Afghan war (which also gives a very nice description on how to deploy improvised explosive devices). Zbigniew Brzezinski told Jimmy Carter in 1979 "Let's give the Soviets their own Vietnam" when we began arming the Afghan Mujaheddin. The Soviets swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker and lost. The Mujaheddin knew what they were doing; however, just as Mao knew what he was doing in China in the 1930s, as Ho Chi Minh knew what he was doing in Vietnam when he defeated the French and then America in Vietnam; and as Osama Bin Laden knew what he was doing when he lured America America into Afghanistan and Iraq. I think the lesson of these two books is that while it is important to analyze which tactics worked and which didn't, it is even more important to analyze what strategy worked in similar past wars and what didn't. A weak but determined force that is willing to take a lot of pain and casualties and fight many years to achieve its political objective can often defeat a militarily superior force if the weak force in addition obtains and maintains the support of the local population. Mao, Ho and others already proved this. Now the Taliban are proving it again in Afghanistan and Hamas and Hezbollah are trying to do likewise in Israel-Palestine.