Patriotic Interpretation in the Retrospective Assessment of the War in Afghanistan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2020.2.470Keywords:
war in Afghanistan; Russia; departmental interpretations; patriotic interpretationAbstract
This article refers to memoirs of high-ranking participants and witnesses of the war in Afghanistan (1979–1989) published in the 1990s: it singles out two departmental interpretations of the war by military and intelligence veterans and examines their influence on the study of the history of the war. The article takes an unprecedented look at important transformation in interpretations at the turn of the century. The authors provide a holistic picture which they define as a patriotic perspective and describe its elements. Also, the article demonstrates the main peculiarity of its formation and support, i. e. the use of interpretations of current international events to justify a positive assessment of the war in Afghanistan. The authors conclude that the formation of the patriotic perspective diminished the objectivity of knowledge about the war in Afghanistan and is probably going to further impede access to it. Together with this, the patriotic perspective has made it possible for the war veterans to complete their withdrawal from the war as they have given up disputes about the character of the war which endured from its start.
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