Women killed in the Afghan war. In war as in war - sometimes they shoot, rob and rape. Lykova Tatyana Vasilievna, serving in the Soviet army, sent to war by the Ministry of Defense

British women serve in one of the most dangerous parts of Helmand province.
They know the Pashtun language, establish contact and communicate with Afghan women.
But even in such harsh conditions, a woman always remains a woman.
There are a lot of cosmetics in the barracks, underwear with lace is hung outside, the shower takes a long time.
Going to the desert, be sure to take a cream to protect against the scorching sun, so as not to burn.

1. Patrolling: Lieutenant Jessica French visits a community in Helmand province. Her job is to win the trust and support of Afghan women. (AllisonBaskerville)

2. Lieutenant French communicates with local residents. She believes that education is the key to a brighter future for Afghan women. (Allison Baskerville)

3. The shower is one of the few things that men and women do separately here. (AllisonBaskerville)

4. Lieutenant French cleans the service pistol "Zig Sauer". (Allison Baskerville)

5. Evening at the TV, almost like at home. (AllisonBaskerville)

6. Washing. As you can see in the photo, not all NATO fighters refuse to fight without washing machines and ice cream ... (AllisonBaskerville)

7 Essentials: Cosmetics and personal care products take pride of place on the makeshift dressing table. (AllisonBaskerville)

8. Comments are unnecessary. (Allison Baskerville)

9. In this case, free time is used most rationally: for sleep. (Allison Baskerville)

10. Captain Crossley, a medic from the hospital of University College London, against the backdrop of a military camp and mountains. (Allison Baskerville)

11. Win hearts and minds: With the help of her knowledge of the language, Anna was able to get into the village and interest the residents. (AllisonBaskerville)

12. Photos of Allison Baskerville help to get an idea not only about the service of the British in Afghanistan, but also about how local communities survive. (Allison Baskerville)

13. Captain Crossley on patrol in the Gereshk Valley in Helmand. The party stops to see if they can enter the village. (AllisonBaskerville)

14. Gathering: two women are preparing to go on patrol, during which they must visit several villages and teach the locals the basics of veterinary practice. Most often, goat care is entrusted to children. (Allison Baskerville)

15 Lance Corporal Rachel Clayton braids her hair to keep her hair less dusty and easier to wear a helmet. (AllisonBaskerville)

16. Captain Crosslim joins the fighters from the 3rd rifle regiment preparing to patrol. (Allison Baskerville)

17. Captain Crossley (pictured) says that he often sees admiration on the faces of Afghan women when he comes to the village and takes off his helmet and glasses and speaks to them in their mother tongue. (Allison Baskerville)

18. Captain Crossley's mother sends her a parcel every week with rosehip tea and sweets. (Allison Baskerville)

19. Captain Suzanne Wallis oversees future female officers studying at the military training center in Kabul. (AllisonBaskerville)

20. Rest after drill. Despite the fact that women study separately from men, they insist on equal conditions for final exams. (Allison Baskerville)

Women ended up in Afghanistan for various reasons. If they served in the army, they went there by appointment, whether they liked it or not. By the beginning of the 1980s, women accounted for 1.5% of Soviet military personnel (222). During the Second World War, women were part of the crews of bombers and fighters, were tank commanders and snipers. Now they served as archivists, ciphers and translators in the headquarters apparatus, worked at the logistics base in Puli Khumri or Kabul, as well as doctors and nurses in hospitals and front-line medical units. Civilian specialists have been appearing in Afghanistan since 1984. They worked at headquarters, in regimental libraries, in military stores and laundries, in Voentorg, and were secretaries. The commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade in Jalalabad managed to find a typist who could also perform the duties of a hairdresser (223) .

The motives of those who came voluntarily varied. Doctors and nurses were sent to work in hospitals and first-aid posts out of a sense of professional duty. Some had to tend to the wounded under fire, like their predecessors during the Second World War, and already in the first days after their arrival in Afghanistan they faced terrible wounds (224) . Some women were driven by personal motives: failures in their personal lives or money. In Afghanistan they paid double the salary (225) . Others sought adventure: for single women who had no connections at the top, civil service under Soviet forces abroad was one of the few ways to see the world. Unlike military women, civil servants could always break their contract and be home in a week.

Elena Maltseva wanted to contribute to the assistance her country provides to the Afghan people. She was nineteen, and she studied at the Taganrog Medical Institute. In 1983, she wrote in Komsomolskaya Pravda that her classmates - not only boys, but also girls - want to test themselves, to temper:

And, besides, we all the time felt the need to prepare ourselves for the defense of the Motherland (sorry for the big words, I can’t express it otherwise) and defend it ... Why am I eager to leave now? It may sound silly, but I'm just afraid not to be in time. After all, right now it is difficult there, there is an undeclared war going on. And further. I will teach children, educate them. But to be honest, I'm not ready for it yet. You can teach, educate when there is some kind of life experience, life hardening ... It is difficult there, and I want to be there. Are my hands not needed? (Again big words, but can you say otherwise?) I want to help the people of this country, our Soviet people who are there now (226) .

Contract women, like conscripts, had to go through the draft board. Many hoped to get to Germany, but there were few vacancies there, and military registration and enlistment office workers had to fulfill the quota for Afghanistan. Therefore, they persuaded or even forced women to apply there.

Women did not participate in the battles, but they also came under fire from time to time. During the war, forty-eight civilian employees and four female ensigns died: some as a result of enemy actions, others as a result of an accident or from illness (227). On November 29, 1986, three women were killed in an An-12 plane shot down over Kabul airport. Two of them were on their way to their first job in Jalalabad; one was recruited sixteen days earlier, the other less than a week before the disaster (228). A total of 1350 women received for service in Afghanistan state awards {229} .

Like soldiers, women were first sent to a temporary camp in Kabul, and they were there until the authorities determined their fate. Some enterprising girls did not want to wait and took matters into their own hands. Svetlana Rykova, 20, asked for a plane ride from Kabul to Kandahar, then persuaded a helicopter pilot to take her to Shindand, a major airbase in western Afghanistan. There she was offered a job in the officer's canteen. She refused and decided to wait. Finally, a vacancy for an assistant to the head of the financial service has opened at the base. Rykova worked in Afghanistan from April 1984 to February 1986.

Tatyana Kuzmina, a single mother in her thirties, first worked as a nurse in Jalalabad. Then she managed to beg for a job in the combat agitation and propaganda detachment (BAPO). Tatyana was the only woman in this detachment, which delivered food and medicine to the mountain villages around Jalalabad, conducted propaganda, arranged concerts, and helped the sick and mothers with babies. She was already supposed to finally return to the USSR, but shortly before that she went on a mission with a detachment and drowned in a mountain river. Tatyana's body was found only two weeks later (230).

Lilia, a qualified typist at the headquarters of one of the Soviet military districts, received too little, and in order to live up to her salary, she had to collect and return bottles. She couldn't even buy normal winter clothes. And in the 40th Army she was greeted friendly and well fed. She did not even imagine that such a thing happens (231).

Many of these women in Afghanistan got married, although they may not have originally intended to do so. One said: “Here all the women are lonely, disadvantaged. Try to live on one hundred and twenty rubles a month - my salary, when you want to get dressed, and it's interesting to relax during your vacation. They say, for the suitors, they say, they came? Well, and if for the grooms? Why hide? I am thirty-two years old, I am alone ”(232). Marriages could only be registered by Soviet officials in Kabul. A young couple from the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade in Jalalabad went to the airport and came under grenade attack shortly after leaving the base. Both died. Natalya Glushchak and her fiancé, an officer from the communications company of the same brigade, managed to get to Kabul and register their marriage. They decided not to fly back, but drove in an armored personnel carrier. At the entrance to Jalalabad, an armored personnel carrier was blown up by a remote-controlled mine. They collected only the upper half of Natalya's body (233).

There were many times more men than women, and the attitude towards the latter was complex. Colonel Antonenko, commander of the 860th separate motorized rifle regiment, said: “There were forty-four women in the regiment. Nurses, water treatment plant lab assistants, waitresses, cooks, canteen managers, shop assistants. We didn't have blood supplies. When the regiment returned from combat, if there were wounded, these women sometimes gave them blood. It was real. We had amazing women! Worthy of the most best words» (234) .

The role of nurses and doctors did not raise questions. One nurse told how the soldiers brought the wounded, but did not leave: “Girls, we don’t need anything. Can I just sit at your place?" Another recalled how a young guy whose friend had been blown to pieces kept telling her about it and was unable to stop (235) . A telephone operator from a Kabul hotel arrived at a mountain outpost, whose employees could not see strangers for months. The commander of the outpost asked: “Girl, take off your cap. I haven't seen the woman for a whole year." All the soldiers poured out of the trenches to gawk at her long hair. “Here, at home,” one nurse recalled, “they have their mothers and sisters. Wives. They don't need us here. There they trusted us with something about themselves that in this life they will not tell anyone ”(236).

A young officer who had been discharged from the Central Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kabul, where he was treated for typhus, cholera and hepatitis, began an affair with a nurse who cared for him. His jealous comrades told him that she was a witch. Like, he paints portraits of his lovers and hangs them on the wall, and three of his predecessors have already died in battle. And now she took up his portrait. Superstitious feelings took possession of him. However, the nurse never finished the drawing, and the officer was injured but did not die. “In the war, we soldiers were terribly superstitious,” he recalled with regret. After Afghanistan, he did not see the nurse again, but he retained fond memories of her (237).

Ultimately, nurses did not receive official recognition. Alexander Khoroshavin, who served in the 860th separate motorized rifle regiment in Faizabad, twenty years later learned with bitterness that Lyudmila Mikheeva, who worked as a nurse in his regiment from 1983 to 1985, did not receive any benefits due to any veteran (238) .

Women were often pressured by men who were ready to resort to both flattery and threats. Many veterans spoke of them with resentment and contempt, calling them "Chekists" and hinting that they sold themselves for checks, the currency used by Soviet citizens in Afghanistan. Some acknowledged that the nurses and doctors may have gone to Afghanistan with the best of intentions. But few people had kind words for the rest - secretaries, librarians, storekeepers or laundresses. They were accused of going to Afghanistan for men and money.

Women were indignant and invented protection. Some found a patron to keep others away from them. Many generals of the Second World War, including Konstantin Rokossovsky and Georgy Zhukov, had PPZh, "field wives." During the Afghan war, this institution was revived. Andrey Dyshev describes him sympathetically in the novel PJP, which tells the story of a nurse, Gulya Karimova, who voluntarily went to Afghanistan, and Captain Gerasimov, her lover (239) .

Military translator Valery Shiryaev believed that this reflected the social reality of Russia itself: many soldiers were from the provinces and viewed women as prey or as an object of beating. But in Afghanistan, at least the party workers behaved reasonably and did not try to interfere in relations between people, as in their homeland. Tensions were inevitable: "The smaller the garrison, the fewer women and the greater the competition, sometimes leading to fights, duels, suicides and the desire to die in battle" (240) .

Not all Soviet women in Afghanistan worked for the state. Some met Afghans (especially students) in their homeland, in Russia, and entered into marriage with them. Galina Margoeva married engineer Haji Hussein. She and her husband lived in Kabul, in their apartment in a microdistrict, not far from the airport and next to a housing construction plant. Galina witnessed all the changes in the regime, all the horrors civil war and the atrocities of the Taliban. One woman named Tatyana married an Afghan officer, Nigmatulla, who studied in the USSR. They got married, despite the opposition of her relatives and his superiors. Their first child was born in Minsk. Five years later, Nigmatullah was assigned to Kabul, then to Kandahar, and then to Herat. He served under different regimes: he was a political worker in a division under Najibullah, in a brigade under the Mujahideen, and again in a division during the rule of the Taliban. Tatyana stayed with him. She wore a veil, learned Farsi, but still remained an atheist. When Nigmatulla's three brothers were killed, Tanya adopted nine orphans into her family and raised them with her own children (241) .

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The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly advertised. Severe male faces are depicted on numerous steles and obelisks in memory of that war.

Today, a civilian nurse who had been ill with typhoid fever near Kabul, or a military saleswoman wounded by a stray shrapnel on her way to a combat unit, are deprived of additional benefits. There are benefits for officers and male privates, even if they were in charge of a warehouse or repaired cars. However, there were women in Afghanistan. They dutifully performed their work, steadfastly endured the hardships and dangers of life in the war and, of course, died.

How women got to Afghanistan

The female soldiers were sent to Afghanistan by order of the command. In the early 1980s, there were up to 1.5% of women in uniform in the Soviet army. If a woman had the necessary skills, she could be sent to a hot spot, often regardless of her desire: “The motherland said - it’s necessary, the Komsomol answered - yes!”

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls that in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to apply through the military enlistment office for service in the Soviet troops with deployment in Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, Poland. Tatyana dreamed of seeing Germany and filed in 1980 required documents. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the draft board and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatyana was forced to agree, and she was sent as an operating room and dressing nurse to Faizabad. Returning to the Union, Evpatova abandoned medicine forever and became a philologist.

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could also get into Afghanistan - among them there were also a small number of women. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army for service in the limited contingent. Civilians, including women, were contracted and flown to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What was instructed to women in hot spots

Women soldiers were sent to Afghanistan as translators, ciphers, signalmen, archivists, and employees of the logistics bases in Kabul and Puli Khumri. Many women worked as paramedics, nurses and doctors in front-line medical units and hospitals.

Civil servants received positions in military offices, regimental libraries, laundries, worked as cooks, waitresses in canteens. In Jalalabad, the commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade managed to find a secretary-typist who was also a hairdresser for the soldiers of the unit. Among the paramedics and nurses, there were also civilian women.

Under what conditions did the weaker sex serve?

The war does not distinguish by age, profession and gender - a cook, a salesman, a nurse in the same way came under fire, exploded on mines, and burned in wrecked planes. In everyday life, they had to cope with the numerous difficulties of a nomadic, unsettled life: a toilet-booth, a shower from an iron barrel with water in a fence covered with tarpaulin.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and a hospital were located in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the shabby fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains so that these creatures did not fall on the naked body, recalls nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - they covered themselves with wet sheets. Already in October frosts hit - we had to sleep in straight pea jackets. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having obtained chintz in the military, we sewed simple overalls.

Special assignments are a delicate matter

Some women coped with tasks of unimaginable complexity, where experienced men failed. Tajik Mavlyuda Tursunova arrived in the west of Afghanistan at the age of 24 (her division was stationed in Herat and Shindand). She served in the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and Navy, which was engaged in special propaganda.

Mavlyuda spoke her native language perfectly, and more Tajiks lived in Afghanistan than in the USSR. Komsomol member Tursunova knew many Islamic prayers by heart. Shortly before leaving for the war, she buried her father and listened to memorial prayers read by the mullah every week for a whole year. Her memory did not fail her.

Tursunova, the instructor of the political department, was given the task of convincing women and children that the Shuravi were their friends. A fragile girl boldly walked around the villages, she was allowed into the women's houses. One of the Afghans agreed to confirm that he knew her as a small child, and after her parents took her to Kabul. To direct questions, Tursunova confidently called herself an Afghan.

The plane in which Tursunova flew from Kabul was shot down on takeoff, but the pilot managed to land on a minefield. Miraculously, everyone survived, but already in the Union, Mavluda was paralyzed - she caught up with a shell shock. Luckily, the doctors were able to get her back on her feet. Tursunova was awarded the Order of Honor, the Afghan medals "10 years of the Saur Revolution" and "From the grateful Afghan people", the medal "For Courage".

How many were

To this day, there is no accurate official statistics on the number of civilian and military women who participated in the Afghan war. There is information about 20-21 thousand people. 1350 women who served in Afghanistan were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

Information collected by enthusiasts confirms the death of 54 to 60 women in Afghanistan. Among them are four ensigns and 48 civilian employees. Some were blown up by mines, came under fire, others died from illness or accidents. Alla Smolina spent three years in Afghanistan, served as the head of the office in the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison. For many years she has been scrupulously collecting and publishing information about heroines forgotten by her homeland - saleswomen, nurses, cooks, waitresses.

Typist Valentina Lakhteeva from Vitebsk voluntarily went to Afghanistan in February 1985. A month and a half later, she died near Puli-Khumri during the shelling of a military unit. Paramedic Galina Shakleina from the Kirov region served for a year in a military hospital in Northern Kunduz and died of blood poisoning. Nurse Tatyana Kuzmina from Chita served for a year and a half in the medical clinic of Jalalabad. She drowned in a mountain river while saving an Afghan child. Not awarded.

Didn't make it to the wedding

The heart and feelings cannot be turned off even in war. Unmarried girls or single mothers often met their love in Afghanistan. Many couples did not want to wait to return to the Union to get married. The waitress of the canteen for the flight crew, Natalya Glushak, and the officer of the communications company, Yuri Tsurka, decided to register their marriage at the Soviet consulate in Kabul and drove there from Jalalabad with a convoy of armored personnel carriers.

Shortly after leaving the checkpoint of the unit, the convoy ran into an ambush of the Mujahideen and came under heavy fire. The lovers died on the spot - in vain at the consulate they waited until late for the couple to register the marriage.

But not all girls died at the hands of the enemy. A former Afghan soldier recalls: “Natasha, an employee of the military department in Kunduz, was shot dead by her boyfriend, the head of the Special Department from Hairatan. He himself shot himself half an hour later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and an order was read about her in front of the unit, calling her a "dangerous currency speculator."

On the same topic:

What did Soviet women do in the Afghan war How Soviet women fought in Afghanistan

Glory to the Soviet Union, which sends its sons to death and obscurity!
I recommend this slogan to all soviet lovers. Because it reflects reality.

And the reality is this. Just watched on Channel 5 (St. Petersburg) Andrey Maksimov's program "Personal Things" with Mikhail Shemyakin (October 30 at 13.00-14.00) (link to the announcement). In which Shemyakin told how he and his American wife went to Afghanistan to see the Mujahideen in what conditions the Soviet prisoners were kept (there were about 300 of them). Some of which were kept in acceptable conditions - by Rabbani, and some - by Hekmatyar - were subjected to cruel reprisals. The Soviet government declared all the prisoners "missing" and did not hint at the negotiations about returning them to their homeland. Shemyakin heard something out of the corner of his ear about the prisoners (he somehow arranged an auction and gave the proceeds about 15 thousand ue to Radio Afghanist - and he was reminded of this). That is why he got indignant and set up the International Committee "For the Rescue of Soviet Servicemen in Afghanistan" - in order to draw attention to the problem.

The scoop was a betrayal from the beginning - from the Bolshevik betrayal of their own Motherland in World War 1, from the Brest separate surrender immediately after the usurpation of all power - the betrayal of Russia's allies, etc. - to the end - to the betrayal of their captured soldiers in Afghanistan. Therefore, it is not surprising that the people did not oppose another betrayal - the betrayal of the nomenclature clans of the Soviet Union itself - the collapse of the USSR.

Postsovok is a continuation of the Soviet, the same power of the same nomenklatura, only diluted with ethnomafies and bandits. The attitude towards the problem of prisoners is almost the same.

I searched the net and found an article on the topic, which I reprint below, under the cut.

http://nvo.ng.ru/wars/2004-02-13/7_afgan.html
http://nvo.ng.ru/printed/86280 (for printing)

Independent military review

Cursed and forgotten?
It is difficult to search for the missing in Afghanistan, but even more difficult to overcome the indifference of their own officials
2004-02-13 / Andrey Nikolaevich Pochtarev - candidate of historical sciences.

When the Limited Contingent of Soviet Troops (OKSV) was introduced into the DRA, no one could have imagined that this "friendly action" would cost more than 15 thousand lives of Soviet soldiers and more than 400 missing.

"BROTHERHOOD" IS NOT FOR EVERYONE

What are you, what kind of "Combat Brotherhood" is there, - with irony answered my question about the associations of "Chechens" or "Afghans" the military commissar of the Inza district of the Ulyanovsk region, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Korobkov. - It is in the capital that they are active - they are engaged in political games, but in the outback everyone is abandoned, who survive as best they can. And the military registration and enlistment office does not even have funds for elementary internal needs ...

There are 15 "Afghans" in the Inza district. Only few people have heard the name of the former private Nikolai Golovin.

And in July 1988, the story of this guy flew around the front pages of newspapers. How - from Canada to the Union voluntarily returned one of those whom foreign journalists managed to take to the West - Private Nikolai Golovin. He returned immediately after the statement by the Prosecutor General of the USSR Sukharev that the former servicemen who were captured in the DRA would not be subjected to criminal prosecution.

He won’t tell you anything, - Nikolay Lyuba’s wife met me. - Two years as a disabled person of group I. As he returned, the wedding was played, two daughters bore him. Didn't notice any weirdness. Only at night sometimes he screamed and jumped up. He did not like to spread about Afghanistan, he closed himself. Then he began to drink. Got into an accident. She barely got out, but only with his head he became ill. You need to be admitted to the hospital for permanent treatment. And if I send it, how will we live with the girls? The plant has been closed for a long time, there is no work. We live on one of his pensions.

In the neighboring village there is another "Afghan" - Alexander Lebedev. For him, the "undeclared" war ended just as badly. And now the former warrior-internationalist is wandering around the village, constantly talking to himself, collecting funeral scraps for food at the local cemetery.

Part of the truth about the Afghan captivity of Golovin was revealed by an article in Ogonyok for 1989 by Artem Borovik about meetings with those who were captured in Afghanistan, got out with foreign help and stayed in America - Alexander Voronov, Alexei Peresleni, Nikolai Movchan and Igor Kovalchuk. It was Kovalchuk, a former paratrooper who served in Ghazni and, 9 days before returning home, who escaped from the guardhouse in Kunduz a second time, was the one with whom Private Nikolai Golovin, a diesel operator, spent all 4 years in captivity.

Yes, in Afghanistan, OKSV, in which about 1 million soldiers and officers served during the 9 years of the war, everything happened. Along with the selfless fulfillment of military duty, there were also cases of cowardice, cowardice, leaving units with and without weapons in an attempt to escape from "non-status", suicides and shooting at friendly people, smuggling, drugs and other crimes.

According to the military prosecutor's office, from December 1979 to February 1989, 4,307 people were prosecuted as part of the 40th Army in the DRA. At the time of entry into force of the resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (December 15, 1989) "On amnesty for former servicemen of the contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan who committed crimes," more than 420 former internationalist soldiers were in prison.

Most of those who left the location of their units, consciously or not, fell into the hands of dushmans. As the former prisoners said, the first question that interested their new owners was: did they shoot at the Mujahideen and how many were killed? At the same time, they did not give a damn about any military secrets or secrets of the Russians. They didn't even care about their names. In return, they gave theirs.

The irreconcilable, as a rule, were immediately shot, the wounded, hesitant or expressing obedience were taken with them to gangs, where they were forced to learn the Koran and convert to Islam. There were also renegades who took up arms and went to fight together with the "spirits" against their own.

Major General Alexander Lyakhovsky, who served in Afghanistan for two years (1987-1989) as part of the Operational Group of the USSR Ministry of Defense, recalls how Lieutenant Khudaev, nicknamed Kazbek, became the leader of one of the gangs. A certain bearded Kostya was also known, who boldly fought against his own at Ahmad Shah Massoud in Panjshir. He escaped somewhere in 1983, for a long time he was listed as the personal guard of the "Panjshir lion", until he expressed a desire to return to the Union. At Masud, according to the memoirs of the former head of the Operational Group of the USSR Ministry of Defense (1989-1990), General of the Army Makhmut Gareev, another former Soviet prisoner of war, whose name was Abdollo, was training machine gunners. He was given a house, he got married and in 1989 already had three children. He answered all secret offers to return home with a categorical refusal.

ALL CIRCLES OF HELL

Here is what private Dmitry Buvaylo from the Khmelnitsky region said in December 1987 after his release: “On the very first day of capture, I was brutally beaten, my uniform and shoes were torn off. imprisoned, the food was from nothing but waste.Sometimes after eating I felt some strange state of excitement, then depression.Later, one captured Afghan cellmate said that this was the effect of drugs added to food.In prison, for 8-10 hours daily, the guards forced to learn Farsi, to memorize suras from the Koran, to pray.For any disobedience, for mistakes in reading suras, they beat them with lead clubs until they bled.

Western correspondents often visited the prison. They brought a lot of anti-Soviet literature, excitedly told what a carefree life awaits me in the West, if I agree to go there.

Dmitry was lucky - he was exchanged for convicted rebels. But some agreed. According to the USSR Foreign Ministry (as of June 1989), 16 people remained in the United States, about 10 - in Canada, a few - in Western Europe. After July 1988, three people immediately returned home: one from America and two from Canada.

In the Pakistani camp Mobarez there was a prison, which was a cave in the rock without access to light and fresh air. Here in 1983-1986. 6-8 people of our citizens were kept. Haruf, the head of the prison, systematically subjected them to abuse and torture. They spent more than two years there, and before that, privates Valery Kiselev from Penza and Sergey Meshcheryakov from Voronezh spent in the Ala-Jirga camp. Unable to stand it, the first committed suicide on August 22, and the second on October 2, 1984.

With a high degree of probability, it can be argued that they were shot while trying to escape or for disobedience, Private Vladimir Kashirov from the Sverdlovsk Region, Corporal Alexander Matveev from the Volgograd Region, Junior Sergeant Gasmulla Abdulin from the Chelyabinsk Region, Private Andrei Gromov from Karelia, Anatoly Zakharov from Mordovia, Ravil Sayfutdinov from Perm region, Sergeant Viktor Chekhov from Kislovodsk, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Zayats from the Volyn region ...

"VOLGA" FOR RUTSKOY

The countdown of the missing began already in January 1981. At that time, four military advisers did not return from Afghan regiment where the rebellion began. At the end of 1980, there were already 57 such people, including 5 officers, and by April 1985 - 250 people.

In 1982, we managed to reach an agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on assistance in rescuing our soldiers from captivity and transferring them to Switzerland to the Zugerberg camp. Conditions: complete isolation, promotion of Western values, work in the subsidiary farm, for which 240 francs a month were due, excursions to the city on weekends. The term of imprisonment was set at two years. 11 people passed through the Zugerberg. Three returned to the USSR, eight remained in Europe. Therefore, in 1986, the assistance of the ICRC was refused.

For a long time in the Special Department of the 40th Army, the department for the search for missing servicemen was headed by Colonel Yevgeny Veselov. According to him, over 9 years of the war, counterintelligence officers managed to literally wrest from captivity (exchange, ransom) more than 50 people. The first on this list was pilot Captain Zaikin, who was handed over in February 1981 to the USSR Embassy in Pakistan. Then there were servicemen Korchinsky, Zhuraev, Yazkuliev, Battakhanov, Yankovsky, Fateev, Charaev.

Future Vice President of the Russian Federation Hero Soviet Union Major General of Aviation, and at that time (August 4, 1988) the Deputy Commander of the Air Force of the 40th Army, Colonel Alexander Rutskoi was shot down during a bombing and assault strike near the village of Shaboheil south of Khost, from where only 6-7 remained to the border with Pakistan kilometers (aircraft were strictly forbidden to approach the border closer than 5 km). After the attack, Rutskoy's Su-25 loitered at an altitude of 7,000 meters and corrected the work of the other seven "rooks" that were hiding behind a flight of MiG-23 fighters. Near the Pakistani border, he was caught by a pair of F-16s of the Pakistan Air Force, led by pilot Ater Bokhari. After a series of maneuvers from a distance of 4,600 meters, Bokhari shot down Rutskoi's Su-25 with a Sidewinder missile. The pilot barely managed to eject. According to fragments of the map, he found that he was 15-20 kilometers on the other side of the border. After five days of wandering in the mountains, skirmishes, and attempts to come to their side, captivity followed at the Pakistani base of Miramshah. According to the memoirs of Valentin Varennikov, to rescue Alexander Vladimirovich from captivity, they used all the channels of communication between our military intelligence officers and KGB intelligence officers with dushmans, as well as the channels of the President of the DRA Najibulla. A week later, the officer was redeemed. As one of the participants in these events testified, his head was valued approximately at the cost of the Volga car (some soldiers were ransomed for 100,000 Afghani).

LONG ROAD TO HOME

Activists of the All-Union Association of Families of Soviet Prisoners of War "Nadezhda" collected a file of 415 missing persons. In the summer and autumn of 1989, its delegations worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The result was the transfer in November of the same year in Peshawar of Valery Prokopchuk from the Zhytomyr region, who spent two years in captivity, and Andrei Lopukh from the Brest region, who was held by dushmans for two and a half years. The names of six more prisoners of war were established. Two, of whom one was thought dead for a long time, were released. Private Alloyarov managed to be redeemed for 12 million afghani.

In the mid-80s, there was an International Committee "For the Rescue of Soviet Servicemen in Afghanistan" in the United States, led by the artist Mikhail Shemyakin, and in June 1988 a similar Soviet Coordinating Committee of the Soviet Public for the Liberation of Soviet Servicemen was created under the leadership of the Deputy Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Vladimir Lomonosov , where various officials, artists and public figures "worked". The results of their work were deplorable, if not zero.

A number of foreign figures also did something. Thus, in 1984, a member of the European Parliament Commission on Human Rights, Lord Bethell, was taken to England by former prisoners of war Igor Rykov from Vologda and Sergei Tseluevsky from Leningrad regions(later returned to the Union).

Through the representative of the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat - Abu Khaled, in December 1988, 5 more servicemen were released from the dungeons of Hekmatyar. At the same time, it was reported that 313 people remained in captivity, and a total of up to 100 military personnel were returned.

In 1991, the 1st department of the Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR took up this issue, and two years later military intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers of the then Ministry of Security of Russia joined in. Under the President of the Russian Federation, a Commission was created to search for prisoners of war, internees and missing citizens, headed by Colonel General Dmitry Volkogonov. As time has shown, she was more interested in finding not her compatriots, but American ones.

And only one organization since its creation in December 1991 (registered in March 1992) has remained true to the chosen direction - the Committee on the Affairs of Internationalist Warriors under the Council of Heads of Government of the CIS Member States. In its structure there is a department international cooperation and coordination of work on the search and release of prisoners of war. His boss is retired colonel Leonid Biryukov, an "Afghan".

For eleven years of work of our department, - says Leonid Ignatievich, - the Committee managed to return 12 people to their homeland, and in total since February 15, 1989 - 22 people. Identified three places of burial of those killed in captivity Soviet soldiers, the burial place of the shot political adviser and the place of death of the An-12 transport aircraft with Vitebsk paratroopers on board. During the same period, we organized about 10 meetings of parents with their sons, who for various reasons remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Today, the names of 8 servicemen who refused to return to their homeland are known: D. Gulgeldiyev, S. Krasnoperov, A. Levenets, V. Melnikov, G. Tsevma, G. Tirkeshov, R. Abdukarimov, K. Ermatov. Some of them started families, others became drug addicts, and still others have the blood of compatriots on their conscience.

In our file of missing persons, Leonid Biryukov continues, there are 287 names, including 137 from Russia, 64 from Ukraine, 28 from Uzbekistan, 20 from Kazakhstan, 12 from Belarus, 5 each from Azerbaijan, Moldova and Turkmenistan, 4 each from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, 1 each from Latvia, Armenia and Georgia.

Over the past three years, the search has received an additional impetus in connection with the discovery of new details of the uprising in the prisoner of war camp in the Pakistani village of Badaber.

BADABER - A SYMBOL OF THE UNSUBITED SPIRIT

Badaber was a typical Afghan refugee camp. On an area of 500 hectares, about 8 thousand people lived in adobe huts. Another 3,000 unmarried refugees huddled in about 170 tattered tents. But most importantly, there was a support The educational center armed formations of the IOA Rabbani. Closer to the spurs of the Khyber, in the far corner of the camp behind an eight-meter fence, the training regiment "Khaled-ibn-Walid" was based. About 300 Mujahideen cadets were trained there for 6 months. The head of the center was Major Kudratullah of the Pakistani Armed Forces. The teaching staff consisted of up to 20 Pakistani and Egyptian military instructors and 6 American advisers, headed by a certain Warsan.

A special zone of the center (fortress) was considered 6 warehouses with weapons and ammunition and 3 underground prisons. The latter contained up to 40 Afghan and 12 Soviet prisoners of war. The agents of the Ministry of State Security of the DRA established their Muslim names: Abdul Rahman, Ibrahim Fazlikhuda, Kasym, Rustam, Muhammad Islam, Muhammad Aziz Sr., Muhammad Aziz Jr., Kanand, Islameddin and Yunus. According to witnesses, the elders among them were tall, under two meters, 35-year-old Abdul Rahman and 31-year-old, slightly below average height Yunus, aka Viktor.

Soviet prisoners were kept in shackles and periodically taken to work in a quarry and unload ammunition. They were systematically beaten by the guards, led by the commandant of the prison, Abdurakhman, who wore a whip with a lead tip.

But every patience has a limit. On the evening of March 26, 1985, having removed two sentries (the rest, having laid down their arms, prayed), the Soviet and Afghan prisoners quickly took possession of the arsenal. Twin ZPU, DShK were put up on the roof. The M-62 mortars and RPGs were put on alert.

However, among the rebels there was a traitor from among the Uzbeks or Tajiks named Muhammad Islam, who escaped from the fortress. The entire regiment of "spirits" rose in alarm. But their first attack was repelled by heavy, well-aimed POW fire.

The entire area was soon blocked by a triple ring of detachments of the Mujahideen, Pakistani Malishes, infantry, tank and artillery units of the 11th Army Corps of the Pakistani Armed Forces.

The fight went on all night. And the next morning, an assault began, in which, along with the Mujahideen, regular Pakistani troops took part. MLRS "Grad" and a link of helicopters of the Pakistani Air Force were used. Radio intelligence of the 40th Army recorded a radio interception between their crews and the air base, as well as a report from one of the crews about a bombing attack on the fortress. Obviously, the ammunition depot was detonated from the explosion of an aerial bomb. Everything went up in the air. Fragments rained down in a radius of a kilometer. More than 120 Mujahideen were killed (IPA leader Hekmatyar reported 97 dead "brothers in faith"), 6 foreign advisers and 13 representatives of the Pakistani authorities. 3 Grad MLRS, about 2 million rockets and shells of various types, about 40 artillery pieces, mortars and machine guns were destroyed. Most of the Soviet prisoners of war also died from the explosion. And although in November 1991 Rabbani claimed in Moscow that "three of them survived and were released," there is evidence that they, wounded, buried under the rubble, were finished off by brutal dushmans with grenades.

What our guys have done in Afghanistan, of course, can be equated with heroism. Hekmatyar appreciated this in his own way, who gave a ciphered circular instruction to his thugs: henceforth, do not take Russians prisoner and strengthen the protection of the existing ones. But, as it turns out, this order was not carried out by everyone. And after until the end of 1985, for example, privates Valery Bugaenko from the Dnepropetrovsk region, Andrey Titov and Viktor Chupakhin from the Moscow region were captured.

Soviet military intelligence, following the order of the Minister of Defense, bit by bit collected data on the participants in the uprising. Our diplomats also took part in this. Some breakthrough came with the coming to power of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan (Zia Ul-Haq died in a plane crash in 1988). In November 1991, Rabbani told something about the participants in the uprising during his visit to the USSR. At the same time, he named 8 names held by Soviet military personnel. Later, during 1993-1996, 6 of them were released from captivity. The fate of the other two - Viktor Balabanov and Archli Jinari - remains unknown to this day.

In December 1991, after Alexander Rutskoi's visit to Islamabad, the Pakistani authorities handed over to Moscow a list of 54 prisoners of war who were with the Mujahideen. 14 of them were still alive at that time.

And finally, in early 1992, the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Shahriyar Khan, conveyed Soviet side list of participants in the uprising in Badaber. It originally included 5 names: privates Vaskov Igor Nikolaevich (military unit 22031, Kabul province, from the Kostroma region), Zverkovich Alexander Anatolyevich (military unit 53701, Bagram, from the Vitebsk region), junior sergeant Sergey Vasilyevich Korshenko (in / unit 89933, Fayzabad, from the Crimean region), corporal Dudkin Nikolai Iosifovich (military unit 65753, Balkh, from the Altai Territory) and Private Kuskov Valery Grigoryevich (military unit 53380, Kunduz, from the Donetsk region). Later, Kuskov's surname disappeared due to the appearance of information about his death during shelling in the summer of the same 1985 in the village of Kubai, which is 10 kilometers from Kunduz. He was buried at the local cemetery near the Kunduz airfield.

According to the story of Rabbani and the Afghan officer Gol Mohammad, it was possible to establish the name of Yunus, the fifth participant in the uprising. It turned out to be an employee of the SA Dukhovchenko Viktor Vasilyevich from Zaporizhia, who worked as a diesel operator in the Bagram KECh.

Thanks to the activity of the Ukrainian State Committee for Veterans Affairs, headed by its chairman Major General Serhiy Chervonopisky, by the end of 2002 information came from Pakistan that junior sergeant Mykola Grigoryevich Samin (military unit 38021, Parvan, from the Tselinograd region) and private Sergey Levchishin (military unit 13354, Baglan, from the Samara region). Thus, they became seven out of twelve.
MEMORY IS NEEDED ALIVE

At the request of the State Committee for Veterans Affairs, on February 8, 2003, President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, by his decree, posthumously awarded Sergey Korshenko the Order "For Courage" III degree "for special courage and courage shown in the performance of military duty."

In 2002, a similar request was sent to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to award the Russians Igor Vaskov, Nikolai Dudkin and Sergei Levchishin. In May last year, petitions went to the presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan so that they, in turn, would award the natives of their former republics Alexander Zverkovich and Nikolai Samin. On December 12, 2003, President Nazarbayev awarded Nikolai Semin with the Order of Valor, III degree. posthumously.

And here is the answer from the awards department of the Main Directorate of Personnel of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. We read: "According to the lists at our disposal (Book of Memory of Soviet soldiers who died in Afghanistan), the internationalist soldiers you mentioned are not among the dead.

I inform you that the award for the fulfillment of international duty in the Republic of Afghanistan ended in July 1991 on the basis of the Directive of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR on personnel dated March 11, 1991.

Based on the foregoing, and also, given the lack of documentary evidence of the specific merits of the former military personnel indicated in the list, at present there are no grounds for initiating a petition for an award. "Commenting on this reply is pointless.

And these overwhelmingly 20-22-year-old guys, whom a bunch of officials sent to Afghanistan, abandoned and forgot, performed feats. So it was in Badaber in April 1985. And in 1986 near Peshawar, where a group of prisoners of war led by junior sergeant Yuri Siglyar from Krasnodar entered into a fight with the "spirits" (we have yet to find out about this). We also have to learn about those who preferred death to captivity: tanker Private Nikolai Sokolov, who defended the commander in the last battle, Muscovite Private Andrey Nefedov, who covered his comrades, interpreter Junior Lieutenant German Kiryushkin, and adviser to the Afghan commando brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Borodin, who fought to the last surrounded by gangsters, and about many others whose names are still on the list of the missing.

The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly advertised. Severe male faces are depicted on numerous steles and obelisks in memory of that war.

How women got to Afghanistan

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls that in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to apply through the military enlistment office for service in the Soviet troops with deployment in Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, Poland. Tatyana dreamed of seeing Germany and filed the necessary documents in 1980. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the draft board and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatyana was forced to agree, and she was sent as an operating room and dressing nurse to Faizabad. Returning to the Union, Evpatova abandoned medicine forever and became a philologist.

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could also get into Afghanistan - among them there were also a small number of women. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army for service as part of a limited contingent. Civilians, including women, were contracted and flown to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What was instructed to women in hot spots

Under what conditions did the weaker sex serve?

The war does not distinguish by age, profession and gender - a cook, a salesman, a nurse in the same way fell under shelling, exploded on mines, and burned in wrecked planes. In everyday life, they had to cope with the numerous difficulties of a nomadic, unsettled life: a toilet-booth, a shower from an iron barrel with water in a fence covered with tarpaulin.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and a hospital were located in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the shabby fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains so that these creatures did not fall on the naked body, ”recalls nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - they covered themselves with wet sheets. Already in October frosts hit - we had to sleep in straight pea jackets. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having obtained chintz in the military, we sewed simple overalls.