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Soviet Propaganda in the War in Afghanistan, 1979–1989
WHILE THE SOVIET FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA during the War in Afghanistan as well as the internal ideological and political activities intended to maintain the morale of the troops in Afghanistan have been widely discussed in the literature, the topic of the Soviet information operations has been studied less systematically. One of the reasons that might explain this lacuna is that the information operations during this war were quite inconsistent in their content, methods, and the assessment of success. Many conducted information operations appear to contradict not only the official Soviet ideology and foreign policy, but also common sense. In this chapter, we suggest that these contradictions were the result of two different approaches to the understanding of the role of information operations by the various organizations deployed to conduct them. For example, while the military Special Propaganda Units (SPUs) measured their effectiveness formally, by the total amount of the conducted operations, organizations responsible for political propaganda, and the overwhelming majority of scholars, tended to measure the success of information operations in a significantly broader political context. Consequently, in this chapter we attempt to analyze the mechanisms, means, and methods of the Soviet information operations in Afghanistan, drawing on various open sources, including the memoirs and diaries of participants in military operations, declassified military and intelligence reports, published archival documents, visual materials, and interviews with retired SPU personnel.
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