Reader Rating: 7.5/10
The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role In The Fall Of The Soviet Empire on amazon.com
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Book Review: The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role In The Fall Of The Soviet Empire
Reader Rating: 7.5/10
Salaams! Getting behind on my book reviews here, as while I was sick with the flu bug recently I managed to work through a couple good books. The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role In The Fall Of The Soviet Empire was written by Anthony Arnold and published in 1993. Arnold spent 2 years (1974 - 1976) working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, monitoring Afghan-Soviet relations. He is VERY knowledgeable about both and has a real depth of understanding concerning the former Soviet Union's inner workings.
The book details the development of the Afghan Communist Party (PDPA = People's Democratic Party of Afg) and the various evolutions it went through after its initial establishment (Jan 1, 1965). This includes the significant differences between the two PDPA factions which emerged very early on, in fact predating the 1965 PDPA formation: the Parchamis ("Banner/Flag"), mainly urban, upper crust intellectuals wanting to move slower and to cloak their Marxist-Leninist ideology in a "democratic/progressive" cloak, and the Khalqis ("People/Masses"), mainly of rural descent, but brought up in urban boarding schools, who believed that only a militant, openly Marxist-Leninist group could bring about the radical changes needed in Afghan society.
Arnold's major concentration is on the internal factors at play in the Soviet Union's government over the period of their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan--leading to the fall Soviet Union in 1992. The three critical and intertwined pillars of support needed for the survival of the Soviet Union had proven ineffectual and weak: 1) the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (political), 2) the conventional military, and 3) the secret and all-knowing KGB. Arnold shows how each of these Soviet pillars was given a period of time during the Afghan invasion to bring about a solution, and how each one failed. He argues that this had a great effect on the Soviet Union's ability to continue to exist, an effect that went far beyond the events unfolding in Afghanistan. People in the Soviet Union finally began to see the truth behind the lies of their leaders, and to see their inability to stem the tide of change that swept them out the door and into the dustbin of history, following the aborted coup of Gorbachev in 1991.
The quote that the author prefaces the book with sums it up so well: "A dead tired man may stumble over a pebble and fall; but his weariness, rather than the pebble, is the cause." --George Stewart, Storm
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Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan's Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire
by Anthony Arnold (Author), Jr. Theodore L. Eliot (Foreword)
Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
A comprehensive analysis of the effects of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan & the ensuing war for Afghan independence on the Soviet Russian imperial system. The Soviet defeat in the Afghan war was one of the key factors in causing the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which was already beset with a myriad of economic, social & political problems. Provides unique perceptions of Russian & Afghan psychology, & a historical view of how military defeat had led to earlier Russian domestic upheavals. Describes how the Communist Party, the Soviet mil. establishment & the KGB had successfully defended Moscow's empire in the past
Product Details
Hardcover
Publisher: Diane Pub. (1993)
ISBN: 0788158368
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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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