Presidential Library commemorates the 30th anniversary of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

The 30th anniversary of withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan is marked in February 2019. On February 15, 1989 at 10:30 a.m. Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, commander of the 40th Army, was the last to cross the Amu Darya River on the Soviet-Afghan border, following his soldiers. The operation intended to provide international assistance to the people of Afghanistan began on December 25, 1979 and lasted for a decade, or 3,341 days.

Under the military oath over 600,000 Soviet soldiers and officers took part in the Afghan War. Thousands of soldiers sacrificed their own lives while performing their military duty. The war in Afghanistan reflected many contradictions of the epoch. But in any case, we have no right to forget about the heroism of compatriots.

As part of the video lecture for the youth, which took place in the Presidential Library, Colonel-General Valery Yevnevich, commander of the 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan in 1986-1988, said that for the successful accomplishment of command missions more than 200,000 Soviet soldiers received state awards, while the Hero of the Soviet Union title, the highest distinction, was given to 85 servicemen.

Many other combatants also took part in the lecture. In particular, Nikolay Prokudin, Chairman of the Military-Patriotic, Adventure and Detective Literature Department of the Writers' Union of St. Petersburg, veteran of the war in Afghanistan, the 180th motorized rifle regiment, also shared his memories.

He formulated the main idea of ​​all those, who attended the event. He noted: "Everyone has his own war." A soldier in trenches remembers it in his own way, memories of a middle-level officer are different, a general thinks of it from another viewpoint. But all these memories are very valuable, in particular for the education of the younger generation, future soldiers and defenders of the Fatherland. He announced that a series of books about the Afghan War will come out or will be republished in the near future: "Unforgotten War", "Back Alive", "Alien War" and others.

Vasily Serebryakov from Ryazan, a colonel in the reserve who commanded the 137th Parachute Regiment, joined the event via videoconferencing. He noted that the attitude towards the Afghan War in our society has changed for the past 30 years. People began to take a more balanced view of those events, taking into account the context of the epoch, and the threat of international terrorism, which exists nowadays.

The main audience of the video lecture - students, cadets, Suvorov Military School students from different cities of Russia gathered in the building at Senate Square, 3 in St. Petersburg and in Ryazan. Specialists of the Presidential Library Reserve Center in Moscow, and librarians from Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Omsk and Surgut joined the event via videoconferencing.

A variety of materials about Afghanistan are available on the portal of the Presidential Library. In particular, in an article in “Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya” newspaper (No. 265, 1985) a well-known Soviet writer Yulian Semyonov shares his impressions of the trip to Afghanistan at the height of hostilities.

Photos of his trip to Afghanistan show Babrak Karmal, the country's leader at that time, the local servicemen, etc.

By the way, Yulian Semyonov’s very first book entitled “The Diplomatic Agent” is dedicated to Ivan Vitkevich (1808–1839) - the first Russian ambassador to Afghanistan. The film “I am like a candle flame ...”, which is available in the collections of the Presidential Library, was also made in memory of this Russian intelligence agent and diplomat.

The book by V. I. Mezhov “Bibliography of Asia” (1891–1894) and M. A. Terentyev’s book “Russia and Britain in Central Asia” (1871) cast light on the relations between our country and Afghanistan at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries.

The modern period of relations between the two states is represented mainly by dissertation abstracts. They include: “Russia’s Foreign Policy Interests in Afghanistan: Modern Priorities” by Anastasiya Chikhrinova and “The Soviet-Afghan Relations in 1975-1991: The Historical Experience of Development and Implementation of Military and Political Strategy of the USSR” by Vladimir Toporkov.

The Day of Remembrance of the Russians who Served Abroad is an official commemorative date in the Russian Federation. It was established in 2011 and is marked every year on February 15 in commemoration of withdrawal of the limited contingent of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.