Remaking the Revolution : An Unpopular War: Soviets Seek Way Out

In a far corner of the suburban Peredelkino cemetery, a woman sobbed and wailed over a fresh grave marked with the photograph of a dark-haired young soldier killed in Afghanistan.

For those who watched from afar, her grief was a vivid reminder of the pain and sorrow felt by thousands of Soviet soldiers and their relatives who have borne the human cost of a guerrilla war that has gone on for nearly eight years.

Victory seems as elusive as ever in the drawn-out conflict that has produced little but frustration for Soviet leaders. Although the fighting in that distant land has never become a major public issue, recent newspaper reports and an unpublished public opinion survey indicate that some citizens are deeply disturbed by the war dead and don’t understand why 115,000 Soviet troops are still tied down in Afghanistan.

“Our poor boys are dying for nothing in Afghanistan,” a middle-aged Russian woman complained recently.

Switch From Earlier Stand

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who has called the war against anti-Communist resistance fighters a “bleeding wound,” has said he wants to withdraw Red Army forces if a political settlement can be negotiated. That is a switch from past talk about seeking a military victory.

Western diplomats said Gorbachev apparently sees benefits in a troop withdrawal, especially as the Afghan resistance fighters--called moujahedeen-- in recent months have been knocking down more Soviet aircraft with U.S.-built, shoulder-fired Stinger missiles.

Recent Soviet-American talks have focused on whether an interim government in Afghanistan could be established to monitor a pullout of the Soviet troops and a shut-off of Western military aid to the resistance.

To its credit, the Soviet press has increasingly revealed the savagery of the fighting and its brutalizing effects on young men, the skill and weaponry of the enemy and the callous indifference Soviet officials and the general public often show toward veterans of the war.

Split Down to Family Level

For the first time, Soviet readers also were told last month of a deep split in the Afghan Communist Party that “reaches down to family level.” An article in the weekly Literary Gazette also described the enemy, normally denigrated as bandits, as a “superbly equipped, well-paid, well-trained and mobile army, capable of staging bold operations and incursions.”

In another departure from past reports in the Soviet media, the article raised the question of fairness in the assignment of soldiers to fight in Afghanistan.

The author, Kim Selikhov, said he found primarily the sons of workers and peasants on Afghan duty, adding: “Only rarely did I come across children and grandchildren of writers, cultural figures, high and leading officials. . . . I think this deserves special attention.”

At the same time, the Soviet press has never disclosed the circumstances under which Soviet troops invaded in 1979. The official position remains that the Afghan government invited the Red Army, despite the fact that the Afghan leader at the time was killed in the process. Nor has the Soviet public ever been told how the decision to invade was reached, or given a clear picture of the war’s devastating effects on the social fabric of Afghanistan.

Figures Not Released

Despite Gorbachev’s declared policy of glasnost , or openness, the media also has never released official figures on the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan or the number of war dead. Western analysts offer estimates that range from 15,000 to 30,000 dead since the invasion.

The literary weekly article recommended a monument in Moscow to commemorate the Soviet soldiers who died performing their “internationalist duty,” a phrase associated with service in Afghanistan.

There is no active anti-war movement here. But, according to Soviet sources, an official but unpublished opinion survey taken in June among about 1,000 Moscow residents showed that negative attitudes toward involvement in the war are fairly strong.

As expected in a society where many feel the safest answer on any subject is what Pravda says about it, a majority voiced unqualified approval of Soviet intervention, on the ground that national interests were threatened.

One person in six, however, took the opposite view that the use of Soviet troops was wrong and unjustifiable by any internal developments in Afghanistan. Significantly, according to sources who described the survey results, half said they knew other people who believe that Soviet armed forces should not have intervened in Afghanistan, and only one-third said they would approve of a close relative’s being sent to fight there.

In public, there appears to be growing restlessness about the purpose of the war and the callous way many veterans are being treated by the bureaucracy. It is the parents of young men who must serve two years in the army, with a possible tour of duty in the Afghan contingent, who show the greatest concern about the war. On the street, there talk of danger, death and possible addiction to hashish.

The official callousness extends to the dead. The markers on the graves of young men killed in action often give no indication of where they died. Parents of young men killed there have even been told that there is no reason to put an obituary in the local newspaper.

A. N. Shevchenko, the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, said that thousands of townspeople attended his son’s funeral, and he was buried with military honors, yet the authorities rejected his request for a newspaper obituary.

“Writing in our newspaper about fallen soldiers such as your son just isn’t done,” he quoted a Communist Party official in Kovel, a city in the western Ukraine, as saying. “Your son isn’t the first one to be killed. What are we supposed to do, write in the newspaper about every one?”

Shevchenko, complaining about the incident in a letter to the party newspaper Pravda, said: “One might think he had been killed in a drunken brawl. . . . What are we ashamed of?”

A similar complaint was registered by Lyubov S. Yarovaya, of Volgograd, who suggested that the gravestones of men killed in action in Afghanistan should be inscribed with that fact.

“It occurs to me that even now, when the war is still going on, we’re trying to erase it from our memory,” she wrote. “But if the state sends soldiers, weapons in hand, to perform their internationalist duty, and the lives of these 18- and 19-year-olds were not spared, to consign them to oblivion is immoral in the highest degree. Or am I wrong about something?”

Many veterans complain about a lack of recognition for the living and a lack of respect for their comrades who died in battle. According to a newspaper in Tadzhikistan, the families of 40 soldiers from Dushanbe, the republic’s capital, who were killed in action never received a condolence call from city or party officials. Also, the newspaper said, the soldiers’ graves have been neglected.

Ruslan Aushev, a former infantry officer who was wounded in Afghanistan, told Pravda that the traditionally close ties between officers and men have been strained by the war. Further, he said, the bravest soldiers are not being rewarded. “Why are we so stingy with medals?” he wanted to know.

“Perhaps it’s a war of a different scale but the bullets are the same,” Aushev said. “The torn limbs are the same, the mutilated bodies are the same. Courage and selfless action are the same.”

Since Gorbachev took over the Soviet leadership in March, 1985, Kremlin policy on Afghanistan has shifted. Babrak Karmal, the Afghan leader installed after the Soviet invasion of 1979, was removed from office in May, 1986. Najibullah, the former head of Afghanistan’s secret police, was then elevated to the top post.

At the start of this year, Najibullah, acting with Soviet support, declared a unilateral cease-fire and a policy of reconciliation. He offered to share government posts with the resistance groups--but not the key ministries controlling the army and secret police--if they would lay down their arms.

The proposal was rejected and the war has continued, though Najibullah formally extended the cease-fire until next January. Gorbachev, meanwhile, has insisted that the Soviet Union wants to withdraw its troops and will do so if there is an end to “foreign intervention.”

The spectacle of about 115,000 Soviet troops fighting to shore up a shaky regime in a foreign land does not go well with the Kremlin leader’s effort to polish Moscow’s image as a champion of peace.

Senior Communist Party officials and foreign policy experts, at meetings in the West, have acknowledged privately that the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake.

“The war is unpopular, and the leadership knows it,” a Soviet official who took part in a conference in Britain said recently.

According to another Soviet official, when Red Army troops entered Afghanistan in the closing days of 1979, Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov told the Politburo they would be there only a few weeks. But the war has dragged on for years as Afghan resistance groups have refused to give in to the Soviet-backed regime and have carried on the fight with massive military help from the United States, Britain, China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

A recent article in Pravda tended to reinforce a widely held view that the strength of the resistance caught the Kremlin by surprise.

“Our press,” it said, “was apparently unprepared for a turn of events in which we have had to remain in Afghanistan for many years.”

Many Western analysts have taken the view that the Soviet Union could fight in Afghanistan indefinitely, since there is no anti-war movement; casualties are thought to have been relatively low, and the Red Army is acquiring valuable battlefield experience.

But Kremlin thinking may have changed, particularly since the resistance began shooting down Soviet aircraft with the Stinger missiles. Pravda recently reported that the number of Stingers being used by the rebels has increased sharply.

The question of a compromise settlement--with the United States and the rest of the West cutting off aid to the resistance--was raised in Washington in recent talks between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. It seems certain to come up in the summit meeting between Gorbachev and President Reagan, beginning Dec. 7.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said in mid-September, in a commentary couched in terms that recalled Washington’s optimism about the war in Vietnam: “Despite the difficulties, light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. A real prospect of reaching agreement on a political settlement (in Afghanistan) has appeared at last.”

The optimism was not shared by a senior Western diplomat in Moscow, who said: “They are trying to get out without getting out--to withdraw on their terms. I have seen no evidence that they’ve decided to bite the bullet and leave.”

Commentator Optimistic

But Alexander Bovin, a senior political commentator for the government newspaper Izvestia, said there is not the slightest doubt in his mind that Soviet forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

“Public opinion of this country pushes us toward the necessity of withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan,” he said in an interview. “The government is completely aware of that fact and is searching for a way to extricate itself from this situation.”

“This is a war--our children are perishing, our brothers--and no one finds great joy in that,” he added. “The sooner the war ends, the better it will be.”

For Gorbachev, who was not in the leadership when the decision was made to send troops to Afghanistan, a pullout would have advantages. It would help Soviet relations with Iran, a much larger and more powerful neighbor, and ease strains with other Muslim nations; China also has made a Soviet pullout one of its conditions for improving relations with Moscow.

A Western analyst observed: “A (Soviet) politician without a stake in it may ask hard questions--why are we there? If the Soviets argue, as they do, that the war is a U.S. plot to bleed the Soviet Union, that creates the kind of thinking necessary for withdrawal.”

With guarantees against other powers using Afghanistan as a military base, and assurances of security for the southern Soviet border, the analyst said, a settlement could be possible within a year or two.

In the last few weeks, the Soviet press has been providing more realistic reports on the grim conditions in Afghanistan--and it is a chilling picture.

Military grumbling about the conduct of the war has appeared with increasing frequency in the pages of Red Star, the newspaper of the Defense Ministry. A recent article said the unilateral cease-fire ordered by Najibullah allowed resistance groups to rearm and regroup, and that while Afghan army troops returned to their bases and Soviet troops held their fire, the insurgents were attacking cities and shooting down Afghan airliners “right and left.”

The article said that when a fighter plane flown by Soviet pilot Konstantin Pavlukov was hit by an American-made Stinger missile, Pavlukov bailed out and fought with a pistol until he ran out of ammunition, then was stabbed more than 200 times.

Body Turned Over

Afterward, the article said, Soviet troops surrounded a village and presented an ultimatum to the Afghan resistance--surrender the pilot’s body or see the village destroyed. It said the body was turned over.

Not long ago, Moscow’s evening television news program showed Soviet troops ambushing a resistance truck convoy.

“These irreconcilable and inflexible ‘freedom fighters,’ at the bidding of their masters and despite common sense and the people’s will, continue to fan the fire of fratricidal war,” correspondent Mikhail Leshchinsky said. “Afghanistan is a school where we eat and sleep together, and die in ambush.”