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

by Artyom Borovik

Until his death in 2000, Artyom Borovik was considered one of the preeminent journalists in Russia. With The Hidden War he provided the world its first glimpse inside the Soviet military machine, capturing the soldiers' terror, helplessness, and despair at waging war in a foreign land against an unseen enemy for unclear purposes. When first published, Borovik's groundbreaking revelations exposed the weaknesses beneath the Soviet Union's aura of military might, creating an enormous controversy both in Russia and around the world. A vital and fascinating portrait of the Soviet empire at the twilight of its power, this is a book that still resonates today. "An honest and graphic account of individual and general disillusionment during the very worst kind of war." -Christopher Hitchens, New York Newsday; "Alternately fascinating and horrific.... A fascinating look at the life and death of Soviet soldiers." -- Bill Wallace, San Francisco Chronicle; "I have read no other account of the war in Afghanistan equal to this ... this is literature." -- Graham Greene

Genres: History, Russia, War, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Military History, Middle East

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that this war was a mistake is to say nothing at all. It's a lot easier to find a mistake than to find the truth.

"Franz Ferdinand is alive! World War I was a mistake!"

"Leonid Brezhnev was wrong! The war in Afghanistan was a mistake!"

Those two phrases deserve each other.

The Soviet Union's nine year war in Afghanistan, despite their staunch refusal to admit as much, was their version of the USA's Vietnam war. Borovik only mentions this fact in passing in his wonderfully crafted, first hand journalism of the war, but any American reader that has passed eyes over one or two books on the Vietnam War will immediately recognize similarities. The parallels between two Superpowers - countries on the opposite ends of the political and economic spectra - and their independent inability to wage war against a seemingly rag-tag group of rebels is uncanny. Without consciously doing so, Borovik confirmed that humanity fails and breaks at the same weak points in our national character. Democracy or communism makes no difference - the lies we tell our soldiers, our populace and the rest of the world are born from the same failings. It's depressing, but at least we are all in this shit together.

Borovik's book is told in two halves: the first portion covers the journalist's first tour in Afghanistan when hopes were high of defeating the resistance. The second portion is told as the Soviet forces are withdrawing from the country, tail between legs, and the mess that comes with the strategic withdrawl. The writing in each section follows the pattern of the Soviet's war path. The first half of the book is replete with well told vignettes of Borovik's first hand experiences of the soldier life in multiple theaters across the country (all of them sound like they could have been told by American soldiers during the last 75 years). Page after page the linearity of the narrative is crisp, beautifully written (Graham Greene's blurb on the front cover referring to the book as "literature, not journalism" is best reflected in this part) but like the Soviet army it has no idea where it is headed. The second part of the book, like the Red Army, knows where it is headed. And like the retreat, the telling of this part of the story is all over the map. Written five years after the first section the reader can easily detect Borovik's growth as a writer and his disinterest in waxing poetic about war. It's a mess, and his telling of the mess isn't going to be bound by the same linearity of the first section. Wonderfully done.

I mentioned in my first update when I started this book on Saturday that Vollmann's reference to this book in Rising Up and Rising Down pushed me to pick it up impulsively. There is this wonderful exchange between Borovik and an Afghani 1/3 of the way through the work that called to mind Vollmann's penchant for analyzing (and writing both fiction and non-fiction about) the destruction of native culture by the globalization of imperial powers. I'll finish the review by quoting that exchange in all of its sad reality:

I ask, "If you were in the shoes of the wisest of the wise man - who, let's suppose, thoroughly and correctly understands the perspective of society's development but also sees thousands of people living in misery, backwardness, even barbarism - wouldn't you have a desire to help those people and bring culture within their reach?"

My interlocutor answers without delay: "I am deeply convinced that barbarism is the opposite of culture only within a society whose views and attitudes have grown out of its culture. Outside such a society, however, backwardness and barbarism mean something quite different, not at all the opposite of culture."

[mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1990). Artyom Borovik. Hahahah, hohohoh. This can’t be … can it? I turn on NPR this morning and hear that Barack Obama, America’s brand new, progressive, liberal, Generation Next, first ever bi-racial president—is sending more troops and more advisors into Afghanistan. The mission: to strengthen and tame that country, make it a safe place for freedom, democracy, and capitalism—i.e. a friend of America. I thought Obama was smarter than that—that he was well read. Well, he should read this book, and then see if he can explain how THIS TIME things will be different. Now, I understand that the US Military is … well, actually, men are men and soldiers are soldiers and commanders are commanders, and it matters little if you are from the USSR or the USA, or if it’s the 1980’s or the 2010’s. War is war and people are people, and unless you are prepared to station a platoon of soldiers on every hilltop with superior firepower to enforce your will, the will of Established Power will prevail. Can they all be killed? Probably not. Can they be bought? Probably so. Can they be changed? Probably not. Change happens through death, destruction, drugs, and/or domination (and sometimes, rarely, through psychotherapy.) I’m posting a reading from my novel: ATTACHMENT: a novel of war and peace. The episode is about soldiers and war —and the hidden desires of men. Borovik’s account is about what war does to men. Watch my reading at: www.youtube.com/user/mrkrhn. Read Borovik’s book. (Oh, he died at age forty— imagine that.)

[RANGER · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy and are familiar with Russian literature, you must read The Hidden War by Artyom Borovik. Because for its time, circa 1990, and for its content, the senseless Russian misadventure in Afghanistan, it is a classic work of period Russian memoir-journalism. The content of this book was originally two separate works. One was a personal memoir of Borovik's service as a Soviet soldier deployed to the worst place imaginable in 1987. The second was a journalist's account of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 when Borovik was a correspondent for a Russian news magazine. Borovik would go on to become a pioneer investigative journalist in the post-Soviet period. He died in a plane crash in 2000.
The Hidden War: A True Story of War in Afghanistan serves the same purpose as many memoirs of the Korean War do, to highlight the people, accomplishments, circumstances and madness associated with a war that impacted very few citizens, was fought in an obscure corner of the world, and which has been largely lost in the shuffle of larger world events.
Borovik's method is to describe the people, places and things he saw. To humanize the people that turned into mere numbers in the offices of government officials and foreign news outlets. He often subtly portrays the flawed mission of the Soviet Russian Army by focusing on people caught in impossible and pointless situations that were all part of the mysterious master plan of Soviet military strategy that no one could quite figure out. And it's not meant to be funny. This is "just the facts" journalist so the observations are wry, cynical and subtle, letting the Slavic intensity and emotions of the people involved speak for itself. And probably as radical as Borovik could have written in the 1990 Soviet Union, when glasnost was just taking root in the Russian intellectual mind.
As a Russian book, this memoir sometimes bends time and events in a non-linear way that is either exotic or confusing to the Western mind. I sometimes lost track of what exactly Borovik's job was, journalist or soldier, at different moments of the book.
As a book about Afghanistan, I would argue that this work would not provide much insight for a deploying military servicemember or a curious family member associated with our current exercise in frustration over there. It's more about the Russians than the Afghans. But it might suggest to the American reader that Afghanistan is un-fixable. Due, no doubt, to the long-history of those who have tried and only succeeded in making it a more stubborn place for change.
But if you love a good war/anti-war memoir like I do (and a very Russian one indeed), then read this book. The Hidden War is one of my favorites in this genre. HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in late 2001, as I was interested in learning about what the United States was getting itself into as its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan took shape following the atrocities of 9/11. The risks of such an endeavor were palpable: Afghanistan was notoriously a country that had never been 'conquered,' and the Soviets learned that bitter lesson first-hand during their invasion and occupation from 1979-1989. Afghanistan was the 'Soviet Vietnam', in that it began under dubious circumstances and ended as a quagmire with a messy closure, much like the American experience in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s.

Artyom Borovik was a journalist traveling (these days we would call it 'embedded') with Soviet units on a couple of tours during the 80s. His observations begin as cautiously optimistic, but by the end his dispatches are increasingly weary and pessimistic. What becomes most clear in Borovik's writings is the negative effect of the Afghan insurgency on the morale of Soviet troops. Like the American war in Vietnam, many Soviet conscripts became increasingly disillusioned about the Afghan war and just wanted to get home safely to their families. The conflict became a slow battle of wills: the Afghans weren't leaving, and many weren't capitulating; they were hanging on and giving Soviet units the stick until the occupiers eventually gave up and left.

Borovik's candor is brave and refreshing, especially because its ground-level perspective is apart from what the Soviet regime sought to portray (again: analogous to our Vietnam war). Seeing the evolution of Borovik's writing and how he slowly became disenchanted himself, much like the soldiers he documents, makes this one of the essential books about that conflict.

It is unfortunate that we don't see this kind of journalism as the norm even in today's Russia.

[Luke Farris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best books I have read on war. It shows what the soldiers were thinking at such a time. How the morale carried from high at the beginning and it reached an all time low at the end of the war. At the same time Borovik talks about the war tearing up the mountain sides, he talks about how peaceful it truly was when there was no war.

[Tariq Mahmood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heros or zeros? The Russian soldier was sent into Afghanistan to fight the American soldier and to help the Afghani people retain their freedom. Instead they found themselves fighting against the very same people who they were supposed to save. For a soldier steeped in ideological propaganda it was a horrid experience. The soldier found his escape shooting drugs to get over shooting ordinary Afghans. Looks like moral was a major issue in the 1980 invasion of Afghanistan. War without proper justification results in low moral.

When I was knocking off twenty people at a time on your orders, you said well done! Here is an army man with excellent results in combat. Put his name in the board oh honour. But when I got hungry, I did get plastered, I was drunk then, and went to get the lamb because there was no food, I killed some people that I always killed. This time however it wasn't your orders. So now you've decided to try me?

Proxy wars are the best method of winning, because there is little chance of exposing propaganda lies over a sustained period. The real battle was between ideologies, Russia had superior arms, greater numbers and much more resources but were poor reasons to occupy Afghanistan with its archaic 1000 year old Allah ideology. But the Allah ideology was well entrenched, understood, and widely accepted by the disparate Afghani people, as they united behind it to fight their Russian oppressor.

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a telling account of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which was one of the disasters that cemented the fall of the Soviet Union. Some of the writing, by a Russian journalist, is very good.

One hospital scene reminded me of Bob Dylan’s song “Ballad of a Thin Man,” in its portrayal of a reporter trying to understand an un-understandable world (though Dylan's was a critique of the profession, and author Artyom Borovik's was not). Here it is:

Colonel Frolov, the chief of the hospital’s psychiatric service, arrived to join him colleague for the farewell supper.

“Are you afraid?” I asked him.

“Should a man who sees a puddle in front of him and steps around it be called a coward?” he replied. “I am fifty years old. I am a colonel. Why should I run my life?”

His logic was bulletproof.

I went out into the courtyard, where the soldier once again offered to sell me some condensed milk. This time was the price was lower, but he was still asking more than a journalist on assignment in Afghanistan could afford.

Leaning against the obelisk, a woman in a military uniform was sobbing, her tiny body convulsing as if she were in an electric chair. The tears kept streaming out of her eyes, leaving whitish traces of salt that resembled the lines on the sweaty rump of a horse after a quick blow of the crop.

“By are chance are you from the relocation office?” she asked me, barely able to hold back the spasms that choked her throat.

“No, I’m just a reporter.” The woman burst into tears again, and I immediately felt sorry that I wasn’t from the relocation office. Her lips were quivering. Her eyebrows puckered over the bridge of her nose.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good read. Intriguing depictions of Soviet Russian soldiers on the frontlines in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War from 1979-1988. Probably the most fascinating thing to me was how much this truly read like a depiction of the American soldier's experience in Vietnam, as cliched as that may sound. Simoly substitute the sub-tropical climate and malaria-ridden jungles of southeast Asia for the desolate montaine regions of Aghanistan, and you have the perfect parallel. Soldiers suffering immensely, needlessly, for some bankrupt ideology, for some callous bureaucrat trying to save face, or maybe even avoid the Gulag. It's always politicians destroying youths. Just as the United States had no business trying to impose a Western ideology upon Vietnam, the USSR had no business attempting to protect the fragile, much-hated communist ideology upon a nation that was hardly homogeneous and far from unified. The USSR never had a chance. If the American folk singers and rockers and poets lament the fates of poor and working-class lads being sent to the frontlines in the interest of Rich Old White Capitalists, so, too, does Borovik hint at the sins of the Soviet Fathers and their roles in providing the killing fields for their their native sons.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borovik's account of the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan goes into some harsh truths about the war and the people who fought in it. He devotes less time to maneuvers and engagements than I expected, focusing instead on quiet conversations with soldiers, deserters, officers and politicians. The overall sentiment is one of wasted efforts, resources and lives cloaked by government-sanctioned media that present a much rosier picture of progress and achievement. It is sad (and fucked up) how familiar this disconnect between war and policy is in the present.

[Naeem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two essays. The first has the hopefulness of an naive "embedded" journalist. The second brims with the pain of defeat as the last Soviet soldiers leave Afghanistan.

Odd as it may sound, to gain perspective today,I think it is crucial to read Soviet accounts of war in Afghanistan. In Soviet idealism and in Soviet misery, US-ians can find an echo in their twin.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in late 2009. It is a good start to understand the deception and self-deception a nation must employ to believe what the Russians once believed: that the entity called Afghanistan is ours to save.

[Dirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost gave this book five stars. Deffinitely the best read of books about Afghanistan.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting first person accounts of the Soviet war in Afghanistan written by a journalist. Reminded me a lot of similar books I've read about Vietnam.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russian journalists account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 80's.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young Russian journalist spends a month with Soviet troops during the invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989). A rare account of life and war with the secretive Soviet Army and their own Vietnam.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borovik's book is to the Soviet-Afghan War sort of what 'Dispatches' is to the American war in Vietnam, though Borovik was a bit less stream-of-consciousness in style than Herr. Very good.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roughly the size of Texas and with a population of 39 million, approximately that of California, Afghanistan has withstood the test of time, power, greed, and violence. Joining the elite ranks of the campaigns of Alexander the Great and the British in the era of Kipling, the Soviet Union was paving the way for the United States from 1979 to 1989, and to eventually morph the whole historic club into a menage a quatre. That is a current view of things in the Graveyard of Empires, but all throughout the 1980s, the world and the US were skeptical and critical about the ongoing 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, even sending in fictional super-soldier John Rambo in the the 1988 Sylvester Stallone action flick RAMBO III. With the lessons on public display in the media and the (most likely) fictional prayer offered by the Afghan sidekick (played by an Israeli actor) in RAMBO III, how did the US slide into disaster not 12 years after the Russians left?

THE HIDDEN WAR proffers its own theory to answer that question (in Russian context) with a report by Soviet journalist Artyom Borovik of his touring among the Soviet soldiers who had to serve their two year deployments in the cauldron. It's been uttered about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that "to say this was a mistake is to say nothing at all. It's a lot easier to find a mistake than to find the truth." Bearing this in mind, Borovik is on a mission to find truth, to gauge the Soviet sentiment on the ground about the war in the Graveyard of Empires. The most glaring find appears to be that it was a war of few resources and a lot of unresolved problems that in turn created dissatisfaction, dissent, and discontent among the invaders.

In the midst of gruesome warfare, Artyom Borovik goes through the paces; fighting on the plains, mountains, and kishlaks, and the motivations and reasons for the campaign and ending with the Russian retreat in January 1989. THE HIDDEN WAR is a direct parallel to the US war in the same country that lasted twice as long (and achieved equally little or half as much -- though UBN was taken off the board...) and appears to showcase that when looking at many of the army's biggest problems, it's easy to see that they're rooted not only in irresponsibility and lack of professionalism, but quite often in a shortage of kindness. The Russian voices of despair speak volumes. Descending into a dangerous slough of bloody warfare with erosion of civility among combatants and down the line from the Kremlin to Kabul and could very well have been the prescription for curing the Afghanistan blues that blossomed in the new millennium for another Empire. THE HIDDEN WAR stands as record in plain sight of how disaster in Afghanistan could have been avoided and serves as partial emetic for those excoriating policy ex post de facto in the Graveyard of Empires.

[Bruce Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, by Artyom Borovik (1990, 288pp). This is an amazing account of a Russian journalist’s time spent embedded with various Russian military units in Afghanistan during their unsuccessful and costly war. Other reviewers have complained about the poor Russian-to-English translation, but while accurate, rough translation hardly detracts from the story. Sadly, the Russian Army’s experience mirrors in so many ways the subsequent U.S. experiences: a conflict begun for political reasons with arguably unobtainable objectives, dealing with an unreliable Afghani government, failure to understand Afghanistan politics (all politics really is local), inability to distinguish friend from foe, military forces hamstrung by political leaders (a.k.a. trying to effect nuanced political aims with blunt force military means), excessive civilian deaths, failure to obtain meaningful impacts before withdrawal, etc. This book’s observations and revelations were the cause of much outrage from the Russian government, even in an era of Glasnost. The author, a controversial journalist who spoke truth to power, died at age 40 under questionable circumstances. Purely as an aside, I was struck by the number of soldiers with whom Borovik worked who hailed from the Ukraine. Well worth reading.

[Fastidiously Facetious · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Steinbeck and Kapuscinski, Borovik has a keen eye for the details that can so often get lost in wartime narratives but are essential to humanize the participants.

This book is actually two books in one: the first part is a collection of his dispatches from the early stages of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the second part of the book is his collection of dispatches from the last stages of the war.

Written by a Soviet journalist, this book is a fascinating insider view of the conflict from a unique perspective. He masterfully captures the insanity and despair of this war, treating all of his subjects with empathy. The author also does an excellent job weaving together a lot of people and facts and locations into a coherent, flowing narrative.

I highly recommend it to anybody interested in war, Afghanistan, Russian history, or just how nations keep making the same mistakes year after year, decade after decade, and millennia after millennia.

4 / 5 stars

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author acknowledges in the beginning of the book that this is only a snapshot and one person's perspective. With that understanding, this is a great book that provides a unique perspective into the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The story reads like a novel because the author tells it so well. He also manages to capture the perspective of the Russian participants, providing a much different picture of the war than what is portrayed in most other accounts that I've read.

[Nikky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borovik's book is one of the very few primary sources of the Soviet-Afghan written in English, and is invaluable in shedding additional light onto the USSR's VIetnam-ish quagmire. The advent of Glasnost made this work possible, and is written focusing on the mid-1980s and beyond. The author weaves together interviews of soldiers with his own experiences to put yourself among those charged with fighting in a foreign land for an indeterminate goal.

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was compelling. I read a tweet recommending it and found it in our university library. It is very well-written and combines my interests in the Soviet Union and foreign policy. It is excellent war journalism. I'm going to have to chew this one up for a long time to really understand it.

It is really good. Read it.

[Rich Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best accounts of war you will read. Up there with the better known ‘Dispatches’ as both books cover similar conflicts - Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Although written in the 1980s from the soviet perspective it reads just like reports from the coalition involvement in the same country and both ended with the ‘great’ powers retreating from an unconquered Afghanistan

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

i bought a used copy of the book in 2002 and read the first half. two decades later, lifetimes later, i finally read the whole thing. it is just such good, evocative reporting, from the start to finish of the soviet union’s escapades in afghanistan, all the growing disillusionment and horror. borovik is a tremendous writer.

[Peter Panico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instantly in my top 10 all time books I have read, and maybe the best war book I've ever read. Some of the accounts will remind Americans of Vietnam, some our own war on Afghanistan, and others are just unique to a Soviet Russian. Heartbreaking and lyrical, the writing is beautiful. Highly recommended and should be on every student of modern history's reading list.

[Santi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb book written by a valiant journalist on the ground in Afghanistan, witnessing the horror and emptiness of war. A beautiful piece of literature that illustrates what cruelty does to the individuals and countries who practice it. The ghosts of the dead still haunt Russia, are haunting the US and will haunt Israel.

[Thomas Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolute Soviet doomer-core. Loved it!

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

The translation is a little weak, but it he interviews and tells the story of a lot of high level and interesting people.

[V D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest and graphic journalistic account

[Jim Moorby · Rating 5 out of 5]

slightly depressing as one would expect but fascinating and eye opening