From the Finland Station to the Khyber Pass: The Soviet Union in Afghanistan, 1978-1988 (Research Brief)
February 15, 2011
This project provides a critical history of the Soviet Union's relationship with Afghanistan and the broader Persianate world during the late 1970s and 1980s – an experience marked first and foremost by the war in Afghanistan but, more than that, a complex story about institution-building and alternative visions of modernity for the Muslim world. Based on research in Moscow and Dushanbe, it provides a ground-level account of Soviet efforts to emancipate Afghan women, to sell their vision of progress to Muslim audiences in the wake of the war in Afghanistan, and to build Afghan Communist institutions in remote areas of Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Download the pdf at the top of this page for the full brief.
Timothy A. Nunan, of Oxford University, was a 2010-11 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.
