Customer Reviews

The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan

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The "The Hidden War" is a remarkably powerful work about the physical and mental scars that war can leave. What it is not is a detailed history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That's not to say that one can't find lessons for our current situation, but they aren't the ones you might expect. There aren't any clues as to how to fight the Afghans in this book, and the Soviet Army bears essentially no resemblance to our current force structure. They were fighting a war of aggression, were ill led and were provided with almost negligent training.

However, "The Hidden War" provides tremendous insight into the Afghan mindset: why they fight (or don't), why their country lies and ruins, and why they have such conflicted feelings towards the West. More than anything this book teaches us what we shouldn't do: We shouldn't try to hold large areas of territory, we shouldn't alienate the average Afghan with our superiority, we shouldn't disrespect their culture, however alien it may be to us.

If you're looking for a parallel to this work, I personally found myself time and time again thinking of Michael Herr's "Dispatches". In the same way that he captured the nightmare maelstrom of drugs, violence and disillusionment that was the Vietnam War, so too does Borovik paint a picture of a hopelessly misguided Soviet effort. He leaves no doubt as to the futility of fighting a conflict with no strategy (let alone tactics), no goals, and no support at home.

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This is a great book. I just bought it a couple of days ago and have been reading it constantly. It is trilling, and tells the story of the Soviet/Afghani soldiers during the Russo-Afghan war. I suggest this book to anyone who wants to read a real good book on this subject. I also suggest reading 'Afghanistan: Soviet Vietnam'. These two books are the best about this mainly unknown subject to the Western world.

I purchased this book a few years ago and read it at the time. Then after the events of 09.11.01, i had to pull it back out and give it another read. This work shows how a war in Afghanistan was fought in the 1980's. It shows the fears and fraility of soldiers at the fore frontof a war without front lines. It gives graphic accounts of the difficulties found in fighting the Afghanis. It is a book the leaders of the world who will be deciding on whether to put ground troops into Afghanistan should take heed of and take copious notes.
Mr. Borovik does the fighting men of the then Soviet Army a proud service by showing the war as it was, not as the Soviet propaganda portrayed it.
His insights are invaluable to todays fighting men and women who may be going into harms way in the near future.

As an avid enthusiast of all things Russian, Soviet, etc. and especially the failed occupation of Afghanistan, I found this book at a book store going out of business. What an incredible find! It was an original first print (Different cover picture) and was written from a Russian point of view, through Russian eyes, but not necessarily a military view. Artyom Borovik was a journalist covering the war. A combat correspondant...sorta. All I can say is READ it since this tells the story of an event that ultimately leads to the fall of the Soviet Union and also leads us to September 11, 2001 and the World Trade Center tragedy. This is where the recent batch of fundamentalism in the Islamic world got it's fire...fighting against an imperialist super-power. The same fire we face today. Just as we fought the Soviets through the Vietnamese, they fought us through the Mujahadin in Afghanistan. Another good book told through Soviet eyes, although fiction and way out of print, is "Red Army" by Ralph Peters. It's a book about a war that never happened. :) If you can find it, it'll be worth it!

First: I am a big fan of Military History. I love first-hand accounts, books that relive strategies/tactics/lives.

This book was good, but it was missing something... First hand descriptions of what actually was going on.

Borovik references a great deal of events, but never delves into them. This comes about primarily because the book is a collection of articles about the Soviet-Afghan experience. Mainly though, it was a depressing half-hearted diatribe against Soviet authorities who drove the war effort.

Being a student of Soviet Studies, it was clear to me that the style was quintessentially Russian. Meaning, it talked about hardships, was vivid in visual details, and rich in melancholia. However, it lacked details on what really happened there, how troops conducted themselves, what the Afghans were like, and how the war was waged.

Frankly, the book left me a bit cold. However, if you are looking for a book that gives the somber nature of the Soviet feelings towards the Afghan war, this is a decent book to read.

This book has the taste and smell of war in it. You see the Kishlaks passed by at night, raging gunfire spewing forth through the day, you taste the axel grease, bake in the heat of the desert. Artyom Borovik captures the experience and the personality of the Afghanistan War that the Soviets unwillfully got bogged down in through the 80's.

Though there are several things this book is, there are also things it is not. It is not a higher level capturing of the causes of the Afghan war. It doesn't analyze the history. It is not linear. Instead it takes a broader look at what it did to the psyche of the soldiers that fought there. It spans the globe to follow those that escaped the war to America and yet yearn to return to the rodina. Borovik's writing reads like a novel and you'll find yourself caught up in the details of military operations and wonder how he got out of there alive with a soul intact.

The Afghanistan War closely resembles our Vietnam and strangely enough doesn't mirror the current war waged on terrorism, but there are lessons to be drawn from here. Outside superpower influence in countries to topple governments and sponsor leaders almost always seems to turn out poorly. The real lesson learned is to go after Bin Laden like a tribal warlord in a land where there are many factions, the terrain is unforgiving, the people strong and willful. One gets the sense that war is eternal in this country and that the people pay the price. So if we don't get diverted from our initial objectives, keep those objectives clear, we can avoid the pitfalls Borovik tells of when superpowers become involved in Afghanistan.

Don't hesitate to go get this book and internalize it. Knowledge will pull us through these times.

Not only does Artyom Borovik clearly show that the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan was militarily and politically parallel to the US in Viet Nam, he does it in a style that holds our attention when the images want us to turn away. The writing is as clear and personal as anyone could be after witnessing the endless crushing brutality of Afghanistan terrain, climate, and rebel attacks.

The lengthy Introduction contains many valuable conclusions, one of which is merely: stay out of Afghanistan and they will probably continue the war with each other.

Is what this book's main feature is. That, and interviews with three Soviet deserters. Most of the highlights (soldier killed 3 times, cheating wives, going back home) are the same kind of things soldiers trade over chow. The only military application you could get out of it is: Always bring sappers. The complaints of corruption, brown noses advancing over hard workers, unclear mission and directives, are in every army that has ever been. Overall, it did not live up to the hype, but I did learn allot of slang off it.

Borovik died before getting the chance to re-edit the book, so what you'll get is a striking juxtaposition of stances toward the Russian-Afghan war. The first section of the book was written in 1987, when Borovik was working for the Soviet magazine Ogonyok. It's the sort of patriotic, sentimental journalism you'd get a 19th-c. British or 20th-c. American reporter: lots of conversations with goodhearted, homesick grunts, but very little thought about what they're doing or whether it's working.

The second part of the book describes the very messy withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Afghanistan. It was written only two years later, but it's a completely different style of journalism. With the Soviet verities crumbling, Borovik can describe the chaos and folly of an Imperial war gone wrong. His account of the Soviet convoys trying to get through the Salang Pass without being ambushed is a weirdly lyrical, beautiful description of military failure as high drama.

This isn't an account of the war, nor a carefully-crafted essay on war journalism. It's a collection of articles by a very good journalist describing the collapse of his country, as refracted in the latter stages of the disastrous Soviet Afghan adventure.

There are actually 2 books combined in "Hidden War". The first is a few years in to the war when the writer a journalist, who has been to the USA several time and knows a bit about the west, writes as a adventure, propaganda piece. He includes the feeling of the soldiers and commanders at the time. Several years pass and the writer has been back to the USA and interviewed several soldiers who have surrendered to the mujahadin and been expatriated to the west. Also Glasnost or Openness is in full force in the USSR. The army is pulling out after 8 years of a war that produced nothing. The change in tone of the second book is sharp when compared to the hope of doing their duty in the first book.

Mistakes are made by people attempting to draw parallels between America's wars in Vietnam or Iraq. This would be a mistake and reading 'Hidden War' would prove this. The United States is not the Soviet Union, decayed and on the brink of collapse. No is the media as tightly controlled as in the first part of this book (the book was written after the Soviet Union imploded, it could not have been published before then). There are no conscripts in the American Army as there is in the Soviet or Russian armies.

This is a good book about a war many in the west have forgotten due to the current war in Afghanistan.