The story of the Soviet war in Afghanistan remains encrusted by myth and Cold War propaganda both in the West and in Russia itself. The Soviets entered the war reluctantly, and though they did not believe that they had been defeated on the battlefield, the overall situation deteriorated until they were eager to leave. They lost many fewer men in Afghanistan than the Americans in Vietnam, or the French in Indochina and Algeria; but like the French and Americans they inflicted heavy casualties on the local civilian population.

   The soldiers in Afghanistan, like the soldiers in Vietnam, Indochina, and Algeria, blamed the politicians for getting them into a mess; and then refusing to give them the tools and the authority to finish the job. They returned home to an uncomprehending and often hostile people. Some went into politics. Some took to crime or were broken by their experiences. Most of them resumed a normal life among their families and their communities. Many of them retain a deep fascination for the country where they had spent some of the most impressionable years of their youth. 

   As the Soviet Union guttered to a close, some of the junior officers and soldiers concluded that it was the system itself that had betrayed them: they supported the changes that were then overtaking the country, and some of them defended Yeltsin's White House against the coup that was mounted in August 1991. But some of the more senior generals were deeply angry at the humiliation of the army and the destruction of a great power by the so-called democrats and liberals. A few were deeply involved in the August coup. Others remained bitter and supported a variety of nationalists and patriotic movements designed to give Russia back its lost authority and prestige in the world.