Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 61 - Soviet Afghan War 7: Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan
Episode Date: July 29, 2019On the 7th (and final) installment in our Soviet Afghan series we take a look at what life was like as a Soviet conscript and just how miserable life had to be before you started drinking boot polish ...to get drunk. Support the show! https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy Joe's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Fire-Book-ebook/dp/B07SG7KH5Z/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1564425872&sr=8-1 Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline,
five sheets of high-powered blotter acid,
a salt shaker half full of cocaine,
a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers,
also a quarter tequila, quarter rum,
a case of beer, a pint of raw ether,
and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip,
but once you get locked into a serious drug collection,
the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether.
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
Hello.
Bow, bow, bow, bow!
That's Nick.
Welcome to another episode
of Lions Led by Donkeys.
Fucking ready, dude. And this is
the absolute final
Soviet-Afghan war
episode.
Up to number seven now.
So it's officially the longest series we've ever done.
At this point, I'm just looking
forward to not reading about soviet military casualties
yeah it's kind of depressing yeah it's sad um so this episode's a little different uh it has
nothing to do with the main series trajectory because that's it's over we're not we're not
going to add anything. No CIA.
No, actually.
No cocaine in the mountains party.
I used a lot of CIA memos for
sources, so I guess they did help me
do research this time.
Actually, I am a CIA shill.
You bastard.
This whole podcast has been a front.
When were you going to tell me?
That was the goal.
Now I have to kill everybody that listens to this.
Steven, help.
That's why Steven Seagal hangs out with us.
At least the cardboard non-rapey version.
I don't know.
He gives us the googly eyes every once in a while.
So full disclosure, we actually recorded this episode once before.
Yeah.
And we were so drunk it made no sense.
I don't remember some of it.
And that is only the second time we've ever had to do this.
That's awesome.
Though, to be fair, the first time we did it, that was a completely different shit show.
But we're here.
I don't even know what to call this one.
Fear and loathing in the Soviet Army.
I don't know.
That's not bad.
I'm going to go with that because it kind of fits.
So the main reason why I wanted to do this.
The fall of the Adidas stripe?
The maskers.
Yes.
The main reason I want to do this is I only had the Iran-Iraq war to compare this series to.
Because we had done other series, like two or three episodes.
But nothing like this.
Yeah, this was seven.
Yeah.
That's two hands.
This was seven.
Yeah.
That's two hands. I wanted to chart the chaos and the dysfunction and the disillusionment of the Soviet military.
There's really no way to do it in the regular episodes.
It just didn't fit in.
All of it was normally out of order in all the firsthand accounts I was finding.
There was no fucking way I was going to piece through there
and put them all in order.
So I made a whole episode about it.
So this whole episode is just about...
So one of the things I learned through the series is
the life of a Soviet conscript
might just be one of the
most miserable in modern history.
Oh,
and that actually kind of continued unbroken all the way through the nineties
in the Russian army after the Soviet union fell.
we're not going to talk about the Russian army.
We're talking about the Soviet army.
Um,
uh,
We're talking about the Soviet army.
One of the key parts of almost any long-term military operation is the military and how they deal with the operations through attrition, how they handle casualties.
One side's eventually going to break.
They're going to lose the will to fight.
People are going to start deserting, whatever it may be.
That's not something that happened to the Soviet army during the Afghan war.
It was something that already existed in the Soviet army before it even went to war.
Really?
Yeah.
So a big old haze fest.
Oh, God.
It puts a whole concept of hazing in a completely different light to me. I'm not saying more gentle hazing is
okay. Hazing is bad.
But I feel
like this crossed the line somewhere from being
hazing to being
abuse.
I would argue all hazing is abuse,
but just
psychopathic torture
sessions, which we will get to that.
I promise we'll get to that.
So I talked countless times,
and I will this episode,
calling them conscripts.
They're all conscripted for the most part.
So you're probably wondering
how the fuck you end up in the Soviet army.
According to the Soviet draft law,
quote,
all men, citizens of the USSR,
irrespective of their origin, social
and property status, race
and ethnicity, education, language,
attitude to religion, type and nature
of occupation, place of residence,
they are required to undergo military
service with the armed forces of the
USSR. Oh, they cover their
bases. And that also is
absolutely not true.
As we talked about before,
it was really easy to get out of the draft.
Now,
this was a duty that was
very, very easy to get out of.
Whether it be from good old-fashioned
bribes, connections,
or simply lying your ass off
to be ruled ineligible.
Now, it needs to be noted,
if you got out of the draft,
you did not get labeled a draft dodger.
People just considered you smart.
Everybody knew how awful Army service was.
The main problem was if you dodged the draft completely,
the Soviet state could find you.
Now, remember, this is an all-encompassing state apparatus.
Would they care enough to find you, though?
They don't have to.
That's the thing.
They make it so you don't have a choice.
Not that you have a choice to serve, but you have to legitimately get out of it.
They make it kind of hard.
You actually have to work for it
for a simple reason.
Everything goes through the state.
If you're a draft dodger,
you won't get shit.
You'll just get arrested
and then put back in the army.
That's your job.
You work for the state.
There's no private enterprise.
If you dodge the draft,
you're a criminal.
You can't work for the state, so you a criminal. You can't work for the state.
Right.
So you're unemployed.
You can't get any kind of benefits or housing.
All these things require government input.
So say, and now this might not be 100% accurate,
but say you wanted an apartment.
You'd have to apply to get an apartment.
You wouldn't just go rent one.
There's no landlords.
Right.
There's no HOAs or there's no like um well i guess i
would argue the entire soviet union was one big hoa but i guess that's a bit of a spicy take but
uh so you would have to apply to get an apartment uh and through the whatever the local committee
was that handed out apartments so you'd have to have whatever your social ID is,
an ID.
And they would find out if you're a draft dodger or not.
And also your status within the party,
whatever it may be,
depends on where you got to live.
So generally speaking,
if you were poor,
maybe you weren't the best communist.
You didn't get to live in Moscow.
These guys had your Facebook profile before Facebook was around.
Oh, definitely.
The KGB invented a literal book of faces.
If it was back in the NKVD days, it would literally be made out of face skin.
That would be a floppy book.
Not like paperback, floppy back.
Leatherback.
So a lot of the firsthand accounts I found
made it abundantly clear.
Getting drafted was more of an intelligence test
than anything else.
It was an IQ test.
It only really...
So if you were from
St. Petersburg
Moscow
a nicer city
you just didn't get drafted
unless you wanted to be
that's the thing
some dudes wanted to go
in the military
that makes
yeah
um
now
if you didn't want to get in
all you had to do is say
so a lot of the
accounts I found
was just like
just piss yourself say you wet the bed that was good enough i'll shit myself right now yeah watch
sir we just required you to be shut up i'm pooping yeah i'm committed i'm a man of my word
i'm shitting in these pants um so other people would just hold on hope that um that the draft
offices couldn't find them.
Because if they couldn't find you, you didn't
technically dodge the draft.
They would just move and
not update the record with the office.
Really? That simple.
Holy fuck.
And that's the thing.
If they couldn't
find you, technically you didn't dodge
the draft. Exactly exactly so they eventually
got around that by making you report to the draft
office and that didn't work anymore
which no shit that's pretty easy
so at the draft office
you just shit yourself
just go in and immediately brick in your
pants yeah just walk in
preemptively
down like whatever the Russian version of
fajitas is?
I just imagine it's a lot of borscht.
What is that?
It's cold beet soup.
No.
Why?
It's like it's a normal Russian food.
You make it sound like it's good.
It's actually not bad.
I fucking don't know you.
I think it's beet.
Someone's got to correct me on that. It's cold soup. Yeah, cold soup still isn't good soup. I fucking don't know you. I think it's beets. Someone's going to have to correct me on that.
It's cold soup.
Yeah, cold soup still isn't good soup.
I would disagree.
Maybe it's because I'm Armenian.
I have to stand up for our terrible food.
I think you do.
So, like I said, there's a common saying that you would never run into anybody from St. Petersburg or Moscow who are conscripts.
Moscow who are conscripts.
The vast bulk of the army was, despite this being the Soviet workers'
paradise, overwhelmingly drafted
from the rural poor and the outlying
Soviet republics.
But regardless of whatever
weird barriers were
in the way, every year around 2 million
18-year-old Soviet citizens
are rounded up at the local military draft
offices. That's a fair
amount. It's a fair amount.
It's a huge country.
Yeah.
Now, the way this works is you'd show up,
and they'd give you a battery of tests.
Special forces, like airborne, Spetsnaz, stuff like that. Like put the shapes inside the corresponding shape holes.
Tie your shoes.
Fuck!
So if you scored high on all the tests,
like you managed to...
I did a double knot.
If you managed to make the cow go moo on the spinning dial,
you immediately went to Spetsnaz or Airborne.
Nice.
Right off the top.
The fastest, smartest, whoever it may be,
were gone immediately.
The regular ground forces would be everybody else.
Trying to put the square in the triangle
yeah alright looks like you're
gonna drive a tank
that one
ate the shapes you were a cook sir
I can only
imagine how you try to get in the tank how can I fit
through this small little barrel
no
Pavel.
You go through the hatch.
That'll make no damn sense.
Never mind.
No, you go in the tank.
The people are in the tank?
Like, Zoolander, the files are in the computer?
So after being found good enough for a couple years of service,
they are sent off to their units where,
or what that unit would be was left to be a total mystery to everybody.
Uh,
you did,
they just throw you on a train and you'd get out at one point and be like,
where am I?
And like,
welcome to the fucking 365th dick sucking regiment.
Like,
damn it.
Yes.
I didn't want to do this. I just left my job at the dick sucking factory yeah my jaw is sore all the time so what do your orders say it's just a blank
paper that's the things they wouldn't even get paper orders so like they would send like
requisition paperwork to the unit that's getting them like they're a piece of equipment the actual conscript wouldn't get anything yeah they're like oh there's
a body um so another thing is uh most armies have centralized basic training uh the soviet army did
not now there's a lot of reasons for that. The Soviet Union is fucking huge.
And they'd have military districts.
Inside those military districts,
they'd have different regiments.
So they just said, fuck it.
We'll leave basic training up to the regiments.
You get new soldiers, and then you'll train them.
From my experience, sometimes that's a terrible idea.
Guess what, Nick?
You are very right.
That was a very bad idea. Some what, Nick? You are very right.
That was a very bad idea.
Some units just don't give a fucking or lazy as shit.
Now, expand that to some units too.
All of the units.
Nobody knew anything.
They were just like, I don't know, that's the new guy.
Fuck him.
Pretty much.
Now, a lot of people would learn through osmosis. So they just kind of learned through hanging out long enough.
Now, some of this changed when you went to specialized units
like armor, artillery, stuff like that.
They'd have some kind of training.
You'd actually have to learn how to use something?
Kind of.
Infantry, definitely not.
Most of these guys wouldn't even fire the rifles um now a lot of that would
change like every once in a while the soviet union would put like huge war games up there's a very
good chance that in their two years of service which is the term of the conscription um that
would be the only time they'd fire their weapon oh okay or really the only time they go on maneuvers
like oh there's a very good chance you just sit around in a barracks for two years drinking yourself to death.
Which happened a lot.
I believe it.
So another thing was training costs money.
Even in the Soviet Union.
They didn't want to spend a lot of that because they were at the, especially towards the end of the Soviet Union, they simply didn't fucking have any.
Ammo costs money.
Gas costs money. They simply didn't fucking have any. Ammo costs money, gas costs money.
They just didn't have it.
Not to mention, much like we've talked about countless times here,
the Soviets would be supplied from the top down,
meaning a lot of that shit would just be sold off.
So there was nothing actually left for the unit.
Living just costs money, and that's just something they can't afford. Yeah.
So instead of training
however a conscript did get was wholesale torture nice and the soviet army or like the good kind
there's there what good kind let's say we uh went into the bed like if that's if that's your like
your fetish yeah i'm i wouldn't so i would be like so i feel like consent plays in a in a heavy hand on
that one but maybe they would stop torturing him if they just said that felt really good
nikolai and they would be like do it oh fuck oh god let me give him a hug i hate that um
yeah didn't catch any firsthand accounts something like you know what I loved my time in the army
I didn't see that
I really liked getting cornholed
by my fellow
so
in the days of the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent
the Russian army
there is a system in place called
Dorozhina which means the rule
of the grandfathers that
sounded really good i practiced did you no google translate oh man so i was using it when you watch
a youtube video and i found quite a few youtube videos where i used for research uh there's an
option for subtitles if that if that's an option the other option is just let youtube
translate it by what the whatever the weird algorithm thinks the language is saying but it
translates it into english what it sounds like it's saying in russian but not what it's actually
saying in russian so i i was like balled over like laughing my ass off like as i was watching this
like um alcoholic old grizzled
paratrooper talk about his time as a conscript but it's saying like yes and then the ponies
were very angry and then the grass exploded what the fuck is going on it was like maybe that's what
he was actually saying it's like he was just drunk as shit they just turned like a documentary into
ad libs that's fucking and that's the only way I ever want to watch anything now.
That's great.
So the origin of the problem of Dadafshina
can kind of be traced back to a change in conscription law in 1967.
So before then, if you had a criminal record,
you could not be drafted.
And it sounds like cool.
How severe the crime?
It didn't matter.
So if you had served time in a penal colony, you could not be drafted.
And there was times in Soviet history where like, just, Hey, you at the face,
you're going to the fucking gulags.
Like it wasn't a good place to live for large stretches of their existence.
Um,
so,
and without the military service,
they were not allowed to live in certain places.
it's kind of like having criminal record now,
actually.
Okay.
Um,
you just get fucked for life.
Um,
that changed from a very severe shortage of people.
So when that law changed,
it included people that already had criminal records,
people with new convictions,
and people who were given the,
were sent to the army rather than prison.
These ex-convict soldiers would end up bringing
the cutthroat prison culture of the Soviet prison
into the military.
And Soviet prison culture is intense.
They wanted to feel like they were back at home.
So if you get a large amount of convicts together,
they're probably going to act like convicts.
If you get a large amount of soldiers together,
they're probably going to act like soldiers.
Very true.
That's kind of what happened. Not to mention they the soviet prison culture is
really interesting and in a completely just an insane uh amount of weird shit that happened in
there um for instance there was um during world war ii um st Stalin told people in penal colonies,
if you fight in the army, you will be free when the war is over.
That ended up being a complete lie,
but there is a thing in Soviet prisons called thieves-in-law.
So part of the law is you do not work with the state.
That includes being cops, prison guards,
or soldiers.
You simply do not fucking do it.
You're a traitor.
And if you do it,
you'll get killed.
Oh.
So at the end of World War II,
all those people who thought they were fighting for the freedom got
immediately dumped back in penal colonies.
So immediately made them second class citizens in their own prison,
which led to
what is known
as the Suka War.
Suka means bitch.
It was known
as the bitch war.
Yeah.
Where the two sides
were just murdering
the goddamn shit
off each other.
I imagine as a guard
they were kind of
like,
uh,
I don't know.
So this prison culture
mostly exists
as thieves in law and although the mafia is controlling things culture mostly exists, these thieves in law,
and although the mafia is controlling things,
mostly exists because of a completely hands-off approach
to keeping prisons.
Also, they're out in the middle of nowhere,
so where the fuck are they going to escape to?
That's true.
But they brought all that into the army,
surrounded by a ton of 18-year-olds
who are completely fresh-faced and have no idea what they're walking into.
Oh, yeah.
I love the fresh ones.
Like most militaries, the Soviets always had a kind of hazing.
But it was always thought of something like an initiation.
It wasn't anything brutal.
You might get slapped around a bit.
I got slapped around a bit.
But that was in 2005.
It wasn't too bad.
But after 1967 1967 that turned into
something completely different the first thing that would happen is a soldier would get to their
unit and all of their shit would be stolen now the ussr generally only issued one set of uniforms
for someone's entire conscription period remember that's two years smart two years i'd never had a
uniform last two years i think think, in my life.
Never.
Even when they always say, hey, keep a clean one.
Yeah.
Never worked out for me.
As you can imagine, they quickly got torn up, stained, ruined, whatever.
Uniforms don't last long.
And that's it with modern technology and fibers and whatever.
I can imagine this shit falls apart two times as fast.
So the oldest conscripts who were
around 20 years old would
take what they needed and
what they were wearing would be passed on
to the people below them.
And the newest guy was
left with torn up rags or nothing
at all. So think of it as
like a ranking
system.
Within six months,
you are considered not dog shit anymore.
So you just had to withstand the six months of,
right.
And then after that,
now that people have been there a year would still fuck with you,
but everybody fucks the people who have been there less than six months.
Right.
So it's a trickle down,
a trickle down torture. Yeah's trickle-down torture.
They'd also be robbed of their paycheck,
which, if you were to guess how much a Soviet conscript got paid,
how much do you think they got paid?
Remember, this is in the Soviet Union, not Afghanistan,
so they're actually getting money.
I'd say before their allotments.
They didn't have any, don't worry.
Yeah, I know they didn't.
I'm going to go $200, $300.
All right, so before you came over, you bought a bottle of Old Crow.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
How much did that bottle of Old Crow cost?
It was $25.
That is more than double how much a Soviet conscript made.
They made $10 a month.
That's good money.
Now, even adjusted with the player. What do you buy? Nothing. You buy nothing. You just die. That's good money. Now, even adjusted with the plane.
What do you buy?
Nothing.
You buy nothing.
You just die.
You just get robbed.
You just fucking rob.
So soldiers, now almost everybody sent things to their family who were conscripted because
they knew that the state wasn't going to supply them with stuff.
That would also all be stolen.
Now, a lot of
soldiers realize that their families who are also
hard off probably don't want to send their shit to
their son just to get stolen. So they would
write their family, please stop sending me
things that are just being stolen. Then they
would just get their asses kicked
for ratting.
That sucks so bad. So they're like, no, no, no.
Write your family. Tell them to keep sending you shit so I
can steal it from you. Tell them you really want those fucking awesome chips they brought you last time.
Yeah.
That shit was the bomb.
Ask your mom to send us a picture of her tits.
Yeah.
What?
Do it.
The abuse did not end there.
New conscripts would be forced to do tasks for days at a time without sleep.
And when they obviously began to fail because their sleep driver passed out, they would be beaten until they woke back up.
Just for funsies?
Sure.
Well, I mean, it's a barracks life, so they had normal cleaning duties to do that were distributed equally amongst everybody by the
leaderships.
Sergeants were really not involved.
It was mostly lieutenants and above.
And then the older conscripts would pile all their duties on the youngest
ones.
So if you had three new draftees in your platoon,
they were doing everybody's work.
Oh,
and if they failed to get the shit beat out of them.
Good.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
The abuse was so mainstream within the ranks
they even had names for the torture.
Do they have a fucking board that say,
all right, you fucked up.
What are you going to get?
Spin the reel of misery.
Oh, Boris is going to hit you with the stick again.
Sweet.
That one's better than... Oh, Boris is going to hit you with a stick again. Sweet. That one's better than...
Oh, thank God.
So one was known as the elephant.
They just fucking step on your dick or something?
Someone just stomps on you with a really big pair of boots.
This is because Soviet gas masks at the time had one of those long tubes.
They shit in it.
Oh, like the jackass and he shits down the tube? gas mask at the time had one of those long tubes. They shit in it.
Oh, like the jackass that shits down the tube?
Yeah. Oh, that'd be so much worse. Oh, it's worse?
No, no, no. The one that you just
made up is worse than the Soviets did.
Congratulations, Nick. You're worse than they are.
Thank you.
So, they had
the gas mask had a long tube that
would connect to a pack to filter air
they would
uncork that tube
and plug it
so when the tube was sealed they could not breathe
after that they were forced
to do wind sprints until they just blacked out
I'd rather
smell shit
than break straight into your face
yeah like fuck it.
You know they're gonna
jiggle the tube
so it gets all the way down too.
Nobody said it had to be elevated.
It's getting elevated?
Like a fucking beer pong?
I would imagine
it is a beer bong of poop.
I'll pass out, dude.
Alright, I'll do some sprints.
You got me for like two sprints.
You're not gonna last long.
No.
That's the day that you just hope your seal isn'tints yeah oh you're not gonna last long no that's it that's the day
that you just hope your seal isn't good so you just fucking black out rather than have to run
around and like have like getting waterboarded your own sweat yeah you just get that little
cat bear just like fuck yeah it's just hissing as you sweat into it so and another one of them
they had forced a conscript to balance on the four corners of a four corner post bed
like batman or something it's like now picture a four corner post bed you got a foot on on the
bottom post and a hand on both tablets and you're just suspending yourself it's called a pyramid so
yeah i feel like pyramid batman can go either way yeah um and then people would just ruthlessly
punch and kick you in the stomach while you're balancing.
Oh, they give you an ab workout, like from Bloodsport.
Yeah, exactly.
This is a Jean-Claude Van Damme heavy torture.
Okay.
He was in Bloodsport, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, if you fell because you're being savagely beaten, they just beat you again.
And then get back up on those posts.
So it's a lose-lose kind of deal.
It turns out in torture, you never win.
Okay.
And you just do that until they get bored, I guess.
Now, there's a remix of the Batman method that I just talked about.
Instead of falling on the bed below and getting a beating,
the soldiers would instead remove the mattress and place a bayonet.
That's not soft.
No, that's just murder.
That's not even hazing, that's just murder.
That's not even hazing at this point.
You're going to be impaled and die.
I'd rather get elephant.
Yeah, I'd rather have that.
So far, the elephant's the best one.
Yeah.
Now, sometimes they would become so savage, they just gave up on giving fancy names.
They would resort to extreme sexual abuse.
Now,
all joking aside, this happened so
much that according to a CIA
report on the Soviet Army, soldiers
raping young conscripts with glass bottles
and metal objects was considered
incredibly common.
Yeah,
okay. Yeah.
It was also not uncommon for conscripts to just
be straight up murdered.
The body would then be sent back home to the families in a barely marked zinc coffin
with a note that explained to them that their son died in a training accident.
Just like a sad face.
Smiley!
We send you the saddest emoji we have, man.
There's nothing more we can do
uh if you resisted you're beat without mercy uh so surprise surprise a conscript to report so uh
this is a conscript who did not go to afghanistan he was just showing up to his first unit uh a
conscript reported to his first unit and said as he walked towards the barracks soldiers were hanging out of the window
drinking from bottles and
brandishing knives at him screaming you might
as well hang yourself now
oh god
I wonder if he was like
oh these guys are gonna be great
can I get back on the train
I'd like to get back on the train now
like seriously
Siberia and a gulag is better than this
I would rather get like
Exiled to the worst part of the Soviet Union
Than spend one fucking day in the army there
God that would suck
So you're probably wondering
How in the fuck was this allowed to happen
I mean this is
A state that everybody gets
Incredibly oppressive
Everybody's being tracked and
traced. Nobody does anything. It's a
secret. How
is this going on? And the Soviet
military is completely oblivious.
Well,
about that. It was the
main method of control that the Soviet
leadership used on its own army.
Sometimes you gotta grip the balls.
And twist.
Officers and NCOs expected older conscripts
to keep the younger ones in line.
And if they didn't,
they would have that torture visit upon them.
Oh.
Which, remember, they had already survived once,
and they know how bad it is.
So it was like...
So they have techniques now.
They could do it worse.
Well, it's... You gain experience. The trick could do it worse well it's gain experience the
trickle-down torture has a purpose because the people so the people who are abusing people were
victims of abuse themselves exactly nobody escaped this so now nobody in the regular army escaped
this spetsnaz and airborne this does include that. Now, they had their own horrible things,
but not nearly as bad as the regular army.
So they're like, fuck, I need to torture the shit out of this kid,
or the lieutenants are going to come and, you know,
rape me with a metal rod or whatever.
So that was the main method of control.
There was no discipline.
It was just awful torture.
You think the lieutenants would show off?
Like, hey, this would hurt you, but watch this. And they'd do it to themselves and be like, It was just awful torture. You think the lieutenants would show off?
Like, hey, this would hurt you, but watch this.
And they'd do it to themselves and be like, straight in, straight out.
You know, I'm curious if officers went through anything.
I didn't find any accounts of officers being treated like this.
I don't think they were.
Okay.
But they did sure order it to happen a whole lot. So like I talked about before,
the youngest conscripts were considered less than human for at least six
months,
at which point a new batch would show up.
Cause they remember that the draft periods every six months.
Um,
and that cycle would repeat itself with the soldier who was just being
abused.
Now becoming the abuser completing the cycle.
Oh man.
So, a lot of people are like,
how could they possibly do this?
You would fucking do it, too.
For sure.
Because, now remember,
after six months,
suddenly people aren't beating you anymore,
and like, look,
you're one of us now,
but you gotta do what we did to you,
to him. You'd be like, fuck yeah you're one of us now, but you got to do what we did to you, to him.
You'd be like, fuck yeah.
Fuck that guy.
Why are we angry?
Just fuck him.
Okay.
Steal his pants.
Yeah.
Now, as you can imagine,
this led to a lot of desertion, suicide, and murder.
It is not uncommon to find stories of conscripts
shooting a ton of their comrades
before running off into the woods.
This still happens today.
Now the US
army is also not
void of this.
People who are in the army listening
or Nick,
it's 2019, the shit
still happens.
During the Afghan
war, remember we said during that
whole period,
the Soviet military admits to between 13,000 and 15,000 deaths.
That was my,
honestly,
that's what I'm actually curious about.
What the actual number is?
Their numbers on,
not from the Afghanistan,
their Afghanistan war,
but their training accidents. Oh boy.
So if you remember,
multiple generals put the number at around
75,000.
Yeah.
About that.
During the Afghan war and the five years before it,
120,000 Soviet
soldiers would either die from quote unquote
training accidents, murder, suicide,
or complications from hazing.
120,000?
Okay, that's a big number.
Yes.
That is multiple times over
more people died in Afghanistan.
You, like, just existing in the Soviet Army
was more deadly than being deployed.
The army was also incredibly racist!
That's not surprising.
It's not surprising at all
so the Soviet Union was a huge nation
that encompassed more races
cultures and ethnicities
than any of us will count
and it's probably one of the
biggest melting pots of different people in human history
maybe outside the fucking
Mongols or something
it's certainly more of a melting pot
quote unquote than America.
That did not stop the Russians
from being just the most racist
as they could possibly be.
Central Asian minorities
were absolutely never given technical jobs
within the military,
which we have talked about.
The enemy thought they were too dumb
to learn Russian,
when in reality,
they just were teaching them Russian.
Oh, yeah.
Makes no sense.
When regulations were...
The military and the
politicians of the Soviet Union
weren't dumb when it came to the racism
within the military. A lot of people
realize the army is the
main thing that binds this thing,
this USSR
game together. We need to keep
it as equal as possible because people are starting
to notice. So they
came up with regulations to allow more of
the Central Asians,
some of the Caucasian groups like
Uzbeks, Tajiks,
Armenians,
all those guys into the ranks of officers
and NCOs.
The Soviet high command ignored it
because they were, quote,
trying to make the army yellow.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
Also, I haven't even gotten to Afghanistan yet.
Oh, there's more.
So you've heard me say the thing. i i guess you could call it a saying
that i have now it's not a bug it's a feature i think i probably said that a hundred times during
the iran iraq war uh like it's an air so deeply ingrained in a piece of technology like the blue
screen of death or the red ring of death and like an xbox um that you just know it wasn't an accident.
Somebody fucked up somewhere and the design was wrong.
Yeah.
That is the Soviet army and self-destruction.
So like I said before,
there's two different kinds of soldiers in the Soviet army.
You have everybody else and you have the airborne or Spetsnaz.
Those guys would do the majority of what we now consider counterterrorism.
They were the ones kicking in doors,
taking VIP, or HTIVs,
whatever the fuck you want to call them.
Everybody else were occupying forces.
Now, that would change occasionally
whenever they did a huge offensive,
like the battle on the hill we talked about.
All those.
Operation Typhoon, Magistral.
Those are regular army guys,
but they didn't do that kind of shit that often.
Normally, they just kind of drove around in circles waiting to get hit.
If that sounds familiar, hello.
I was also one of them um except uh
at least i had more than one uniform i had that yeah um so we're not going to talk about the
the special forces either because it's they actually did their job um So the Soviet occupying forces consisted around 80% of everybody in the country.
Actual combat missions
was a very, very rare part of their job.
The Soviet soldiers who found themselves
deployed to Afghanistan
were by and large pretty goddamn unlucky.
The Soviet military was massive. I i cannot it's tens and tens
of millions of people um it was fucking huge um and only a sliver of that was ever really in
afghanistan yeah but a hundred thousand give or take um so you drew the short end. About that.
There was, of course, enthusiastic volunteers whenever the chance for career advancement
comes up through war,
which we talked about before.
Yeah.
But that petered out pretty goddamn fast.
The war on many of the units deployed
ended up being populated,
uh,
by criminals.
Um,
so,
uh,
soldiers who,
uh,
violated regulations,
uh,
violated law,
got arrested.
They were sent there in lieu of a court martial because it was easier.
Uh,
in essence,
Afghanistan had become the dumping ground of the Soviet military.
Yeah.
It sounds more like a punishment.
So a lot of those guys who were like
so you would go serve
X amount of years in a penal colony
but you're going to go into the army for
two years and you're going to Afghanistan for two years.
Two whole years.
Remember, almost
all these conscripts are doing their
entire time in country.
One of
the Soviet soldiers' main way to pass time
drinking was taken away.
That's horse shit.
Leadership may not have actually wanted to
supervise these soldiers, but they knew
well enough that drunk soldiers with guns is a bad
idea. I mean, they saw how
well it worked in garrison, so they knew what they were dealing
with.
Now, officers could drink.
Enlisted could not.
Soldiers would buy, steal, and barter
for local booze, even though they
were warned the Mujahideen had poisoned it, which
they did. Not to
the extent that you would think.
It was pretty rare.
It's kind of like you hear
in Platoon or
the Pacific. They
poison the coconuts. Right.
Like in Platoon,
they say the Vietnamese
poison the weed.
So if soldiers smoked it,
they wouldn't want to fight.
They didn't have to poison the weed.
When you're high,
you don't want to fucking fight anybody.
Yeah.
It quickly became apparent, however,
that it may have not been
the Mujahideen poisoning anything.
Drinking poison was just one of the Soviet Army's favorite pastimes.
So we have talked before about the MiG-25, one of my favorite military vehicles to ever exist.
Is it?
So being assigned to the ground crew of MiG-25 was a fucking primo spot.
And the main reason for that was
the jet was known as the Gastronom,
which meant delicatessen.
The reason for that was its nose-mounted
radar and generator were cooled by
a water-ethanol mixture.
You could drink it.
It'd get you fucked up. Nice.
One defecting pilot
who fled to the West
complained that the de-icing machine in his aircraft almost never worked because the maintenance personnel drank the goddamn alcohol meant to cool it.
That's fucking awesome.
Fuck the mission.
I'm getting fucked up.
And then there was the Samogon.
It was a homebrew that actually predates vodka.
Its strength has been called atomic.
That's not good.
It's blinding.
About that, it was actually so strong that even the Soviet soldiers who, remember, were
just drinking liquids out of jets, limited themselves to a shot or two a day.
Otherwise, there was blindness.
Holy fuck.
That's awesome.
Are you ready for me to say it?
Wait.
It gets worse.
Nice.
I was ready for it.
So in the U.S. Army,
we call things observation posts,
which are far flung out groups of soldiers.
The Soviets called them eagle's nests,
which is a much cooler name.
It is.
So they are so remote
that it would force helicopters
to be their main route of supply.
Daily supplies would be rationed
so getting things
like Samogun or
jet fuel was a little bit harder.
These rations, however,
did not stop the Soviets from getting
absolutely torn up.
The solvents that the Soviet army
used were all ethanol based
uh but they're full of other stuff too that would kill you if you drank it so they couldn't just like
take it to the head as soon as the helicopter landed they had to do some purification they
also had to find out one way that hey this isn't good or it's just fucking dropped dead right now
probably yep so uh one of the ways they
actually found out if what they were
drinking was good as they would hand it
to the newest conscript oh I thought
the soldiers figured out if they filled
up a cooking pan with these solvents and
left it outside in the middle of the
Afghan winter it would freeze now the
ethanol wouldn't free okay his ethanol
doesn't freeze. It would remain
a liquid while all the additives that would
hypothetically kill you would froze.
That really does sound like Beric's bro science.
Definitely. I wonder how many people died before they
figured this out. They would then
chip out all the ice and then drink the liquid.
And you got
ice in your drink and it's cold? Tons of
people got sick and died from this.
That never stopped them from doing it.
Ice cold drinks, man. And then
there was the boot polish.
Like kiwi. Yeah.
Sweet. It was also
ethanol based because the
Soviet army only existed to make things
that could get you drunk.
They would spread boot polish on a piece of bread
and then toast it over a fire.
That sounds fucking terrible.
Now, the theory was that the bread would act as
a sponge for the ethanol base,
absorbing the liquid
while all the additives that were
incredibly toxic would be burned to
the top of the toast and the black crust.
They would then scrape all the black shit off
and eat the bread.
It'd also do the same thing for toothpaste,
which was also somehow ethanol-based.
What the fuck?
Why?
The Soviet Union had a lot of ethanol.
I don't fucking know.
I mean, if it's ethanol-based,
Soviets are going to drink it.
Yeah.
It actually reminds me,
have you ever watched Chris Rock's
Bigger and Blacker?
No, I have not.
So there's a scene in it
where he's talking kind of
about something like this.
If you take drugs away from people,
they'll turn into fucking chemists.
They're like,
if we put a couple of lima beans
in this can and smoke it,
you'll get fucked up.
Yeah.
Same shit.
But you know,
like in a war zone.
On a large scale.
So sometimes this just didn't work.
So this came to what is known as pseudo-alcohol.
Soldiers were down rose water, aftershave, hand lotion, and rubbing alcohol.
To the point that one Soviet surgeon who was treating a wounded soldier
said that when he cut open the soldier's stomach to remove some shrapnel,
he just smelled like booze.
What the fuck?
They're doing mixed drinks out there. some shrapnel. He just smelled like booze. What the fuck?
They're doing mixed drinks out there.
So this kind of
alcohol substitute abuse was so
common that eventually the Soviets banned
aftershave.
That's awesome.
Does it get worse? Yeah.
Rampant drug addiction.
Like we've talked about before,
Afghanistan is what is known as the golden crescent of drug cultivation.
Weed, opium, they all grow there in the wild.
They're literally everywhere.
So it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody
that opium and heroin would become rapidly abused by Soviet soldiers.
heroin would have become rapidly abused by Soviet soldiers.
Not to mention, drugs in the Soviet Union were pretty fucking hard to come by.
There wasn't like weed trickled in here and there, but it wasn't like flooded with drugs.
So this is a lot of time the soldiers are dabbling in drug use for the first time.
And oh boy, did they discover that they like some drugs.
So I can attest that it is incredibly common for Afghan soldiers, police, and street merchants
to just offer you drugs.
Like all the time.
Like, you know all those really bad PSAs
we had to watch when we were in school?
Like drug dealers will just give you a free sample
and try to get you addicted.
The shit that isn't true,
that actually happens in Afghanistan.
I have been offered more
drugs in Afghanistan
than actual drugs I have
purchased in America.
Really? And I used to smoke a
lot of weed.
I mean, and it's
incredibly cheap.
You can get a a grip of like compressed hash for like a dollar.
What?
Yeah.
Okay.
This led to rampant drug addiction within the ranks of the Soviet army.
So many Soviets got addicted to heroin that they just stopped counting.
And you can imagine that people reusing needles just spread HIV rampantly.
Smoking weed on patrol became so common that nobody bothered to stop people anymore.
So Russia and most of the former Warsaw Pact countries are undergoing something of a renaissance of heroin addiction these days.
And a lot of people trace it directly back to this war.
That's a lot of people.
Yeah.
Holy fuck.
Because the Soviet soldiers, the veterans went home, bringing their addictions with them.
Right.
And a lot of people...
No 12-step program.
Oh, no, no, no.
I would imagine. Their 12-step program. Oh, no, no, no. I would imagine.
Their 12-step program
was just being homeless
and dying.
It's just two steps.
Yeah, it's only two.
You're missing a whole 10.
Yeah.
So,
you're probably asking
just how miserable
could one of these
deployments be
that soldiers were risking
HIV
and blinding themselves
with booze
just to deal with the pain.
In short, the Soviet army was hilariously ineffective
on the ground.
The occupation troops were so bad at fighting
that they tried their best simply to never do it.
In earlier episodes, we talked about how
entire battalions would just get wiped out
because they would just sit there
and get surrounded and die in their vehicles.
That story is by far not a one-off.
Those senior soldiers who pawned off all their garrison cleaning duties,
they're the same thing for their combat duties, too.
Really?
Yeah.
So, like, if somebody was putting a patrol together or a convoy together,
the older soldiers who might actually know what they're doing is like,
hey, you new guy, you're going in my place,
until, like, nobody knew what they were doing.
So, survive a couple patrols, there's a good chance you don't have to go in anymore it's a good deal i guess yeah soviet sergeants had virtually no power or control
of the units they were in um all that power rested mostly in the officer corps yes top heavy
yep uh this meant that it led to an incredibly rigid
and centralized chain of command
that didn't just not really like critical thinking.
It actively discouraged it.
So if things didn't work out exactly as the officer
ordered you to do,
you'd simply wait for him to tell you something new
instead of just like, okay, that didn't work,
time to move.
In the US Army, and most
westernized armies these days, you're always
trained to do the job of the person above you.
If my platoon leader
died, I don't think anything would have changed.
If my platoon sergeant died, I don't think anything would have
changed. If the platoon leader
of a Soviet platoon dies, the platoon stops working.
Period.
Oh, they're fucked.
Yeah, they just don't work anymore.
Shut down.
Cool.
Yeah.
Like, it's a chain that if one link breaks, the whole thing is broken.
I imagine it changed now.
I don't know.
I hope so.
Well, it certainly didn't in the Chechen Wars.
No, it didn't.
No. So it was not uncommon for foreign journalists to be invited along to witness ambushes of Soviet columns slowly winding their way through the mountains.
Now, I mean, to be invited with the Mujahideen.
Once attacked, these lumbering vehicles would stop dead in their tracks.
They made no attempt to outmaneuver the ambush or run through it.
They'd simply wait to receive orders or artillery or airstrikes.
Man.
You're probably wondering, what kind of vehicles
were these guys driving in?
Actually, yeah. I'd like to know.
Not good ones, turns out.
So, this brings us to the vehicles
that the Soviet Union was using.
Though it has been a well-worn joke
for years now, the Soviets really did excel
at creating weapons that totally disregarded the safety of the people using them um for instance
in the united states army and again most westernized armies most vehicles are built with
the survivability of the crew in mind like how many times can this thing be hit and the people
inside still survive that was never really put in the equation at any point for any of these vehicles.
This has something to do with Soviet doctrine at the time.
The Soviets were fairly open in their reliance on inferior weapons.
Great numbers of tanks that might go only 250 hours without a major overhaul, but cost less, are
preferable to more expensive and
durable models. They can get them off the
line faster. Okay.
Which brings us to the T-62
and the T-72 tanks.
Not the T-55, which I will never
make fun of.
The T-62
expelled spent shells
to a small porthole via an automatic ejector.
So kind of think of it as a rifle,
except instead of that whole bolt action
that the empty brass is coming out of.
It only has a hole just big enough
for the shell to come out of.
So any deviation from that, you get a jam.
About that.
In theory,
what would happen most of the time
is the ejector would miss the hole,
sending the shell wildly cartwheeling
around the inside of the turret
with enough force to badly injure people.
Oh, fuck, that one sucks.
Now, Soviet tank crews
were not issued hard helmets.
They issued soft CBC helmets,
which is something I wore as well.
The cruisers were wearing cooking pots on their heads
whenever they were using D-62s.
What the fuck?
Like a fucking Tom and Jerry cartoon?
Yeah.
Somehow, this is still better than the T-72.
The T-72, like most Soviet tanks, had an autoloader.
The 72, unlike any other tank in human history,
had an autoloader that, according to Jane's weapons and tactics,
had a, quote, nasty habit of castrating the gunner.
Oh, God.
What?
Why?
I have no idea.
Why was that a design?
They just left it at that.
Like, welcome to the ball crusher.
Do you think they tested it?
And the dude that was testing it was like,
they were like, good to go.
Yeah, they tested it exactly one time
and the gunner they were using was a Castrani
and didn't notice the difference.
Like, still good.
Yeah.
Slick down here.
Like a turtle shell.
Oh.
Then the
piece de la resistance. The BMP-1.
So it's worse?
Alright, I'll let you be the judge of that.
Okay. So far,
that one sucks. I don't think
I can pick.
But I'll let you be the judge here. Does the loader
fucking straddle
so it's
alongside it takes up like half
the tank
how his nutsack ends up in it
I legitimately have no idea
I feel like he's using it wrong
you have to
so you lay your dick and your nutsack
you have to give
you have to give the autoloader the Roman
helmet at all times.
Sir, comrade lieutenant,
it says here I have to teabag
the gun. That can't be right.
It says in the manual, comrade sergeant,
you have to do it.
Sometimes you get fancy with it. Maybe you want to give
the gun a batwing.
Give it the fucking
Abraham Lincoln.
Is it just balls on the chin?
No, I think that one is just
you gotta shave your pubes
in a way where it has the Abraham Lincoln
look to it. You give it like a
dick goatee? You can, I guess.
Somebody will
correct this.
You officially made the goatee
somehow worse
and that's not something i thought was possible all right back to the bmp which doesn't involve
pubic hair as much as i'm aware so due to the way the front slope was on the bmp1
if the vehicle ran over a tilt rod landmine which is a landmine exactly how it sounds. You tilt a rod over to trigger it, which was very common in Afghanistan.
It was because of the upward slope of the front of the vehicle.
It was almost assuredly to be under the crew compartment.
God.
And the BMP's armor was so thin that virtually every anti-tank weapon in the country could destroy it.
Now, here comes the bigger, almost cartoonish flaw.
Extra fuel tanks.
That isn't inherently bad.
They're driving a long distance.
Those extra fuel tanks doubled as the doors.
The doors? The troop doubled as the doors. The doors?
The troop doors in the back.
So if you were to exit the vehicle,
you were opening a fuel tank and running past it.
Who came up?
Oh, the chief, yeah, okay.
The rear doors where dismounted soldiers
were supposed to use to exit were full of fuel.
This meant that any armor-piercing strike to the rear
had the potential to ignite the fuel
and send a wave of fucking fire into the troop compartment
where it would ignite extra ammo,
which was also fucking stored there for some reason.
The BMP-1 is the Soviet army in a vehicle.
You are absolutely correct.
It's just terrible all the way through.
Now, full disclosure, if I'm to defend the BMP-1 on one issue,
those fuel tanks were not supposed to be full of fuel when they rode into battle.
They're actually to be full of dirt.
What's the point?
So the idea was, oh, we're going on a long patrol. actually to be full of dirt. What's the point?
So,
the idea was,
oh, we're going on a long patrol,
we'll fill up the extra fuel tanks.
Now,
what do you think this vehicle's main duty was in Afghanistan?
Going on long patrols on roads
where it would be ambushed.
So, it was like,
this thing was only ever full of fuel.
I would stop
filling it with fuel. Also if you filled it with
dirt and then later
attempted to fill it with fuel
you would just explode your own engine by
pumping it full of mud.
This is
I don't
Who the fuck came up with this idea?
Who thought this was a great idea? Now can I say it? Maybe it was the dude who came up with this idea Like who thought this was a great idea
Uh now can I say it
Maybe it was the dude who came up with the castration
This gun is fueled by nutsacks
Yeah
Combat engineer
Did you make a gun that purposely
Castrates people
No
Now let me see them without balls
Uh Now I'm gonna have to say it again No. Now let me see them without balls.
Now, I'm going to have to say it again.
Wait, it gets worse.
Okay.
Now, picture an image of the Soviet-Afghan War.
You're probably thinking of a lot of Soviet soldiers riding on top of vehicles, right?
I'm also thinking a good amount of them may be castrated.
I'd really like to know how many people lost their balls to the T-72.
Do you think that's an accurate number of their casualties?
If they kept metrics?
Yeah.
So the BMP-1 and the BMP and the BRDM family of vehicles were so unsafe that soldiers were just right on top instead.
Makes sense.
Fuck it.
I mean, I would rather get shot to shit than burn alive if I had to pick.
As you can imagine, all this had a really bad effect on the Soviet morale.
We've talked about before that Soviet retention rates were less than 1%.
I'd imagine. we've talked about before that Soviet retention rates were less than 1% so less than
1% of people would re-enlist
after their conscription period of 2 years
now crazy enough
if you enlisted once you actually
had a 50% chance of retiring
within the military
I'm assuming
it's because you're so mentally wrecked
after drinking
boot polish and sexually
assaulting people around you that you know
you cannot have a job literally anywhere else
yeah pretty much
now morale was so
low that fragging or the
intentional murdering of a superior usually
a frag grenade was
incredibly common so
common in fact that officers
would sleep under an armed guard
of soldiers from a different unit
that didn't know how big of an asshole they were.
That's fucking awesome.
Also, desertions were very common.
But not as common as you would think.
There seems to be an overwhelming belief
that hundreds of Soviet soldiers
simply ran off into the mountains
and end up staying in Afghanistan.
It's actually not what happened.
Now, the Mujahideen really did capture
hundreds of Soviet soldiers
during the course of the war.
In the early stages,
it was almost,
when they captured someone,
you were almost always just shot
and left them the side of the road.
One of the most common ways
for Soviets to get caught early on the and left them the side of the road. One of the most common ways for Soviets to get caught
early on in the war was in the act of
looting. Because
Soviet soldiers would walk off
post by themselves and just start
robbing people.
Which makes them very easy to be captured.
So they came up with a policy
that no less than two people could go out
together.
But soon, the Mujahideen learned
how valuable these soldiers actually were
because the Mujahideen ended up becoming kind of media savvy
when they realized, like,
holy shit, the entire world hates the Soviet Union.
Everybody's on our side.
We got to look good.
So they would show the Soviet, like,
look how good we're taking care of these guys.
They had a whole production going on.
Makeup, sound, lights.
Also, they had a deal with the CIA.
They turned these guys over to the CIA.
And sometimes the CIA would be like, hey, tell us whatever you know about the Soviet Army.
We'll give you a passport.
You can just go to the United States or go to Canada or wherever.
Did they actually give that to them?
Yeah, hundreds of people.
That's a good deal.
A lot of people took it.
I'd take that over getting a vodka bottle shoved up my asshole.
Those scales are
not even. There's actually a lot
of soldiers who did not do that
because they
are loyal to their country or whatever.
It's understandable but
fucking retards. That's understandable, but... Fucking retards.
Yeah.
That's a bad fucking choice, guys.
Yeah.
I'm pretty loyal to the United States,
but if I had to choose between a passport to England
or Ireland or fucking Afghanistan
or being viciously raped with vodka bottles,
I guess I'm moving to Kabul.
I thought you were going to pick the vodka bottle.
Definitely not.
So,
this led to
a bit of a problem for the soldiers who were captured.
The Soviet army had a long-standing
belief that if you were captured,
you must have surrendered.
Because you didn't die fighting. Which means you were a traitor. must have surrendered because you didn't die fighting,
which means you're a traitor, or at
best, you cannot be trusted because you
were turned. They really jumped to conclusions.
Oh, yeah. One famous
case of this was Joseph Stalin refusing
to exchange a German POW for
his own son, who was
then killed in captivity. What?
Yeah. I didn't know that.
I mean, Joseph Stalin's gonna Stalin. He was just an asshole.. What? Yeah. I didn't know that. I mean, Stalin's gonna Stalin.
He was just an asshole.
Yeah.
He tried to equate it out to be like a rank thing because his son was like a lieutenant
or a captain or something.
I think his name is Yakov.
And the Germans wanted a field marshal in return.
And he's like, last time I checked, the lieutenant and the field marshal are in equal ranks.
I bet you his son was like, dad.
Oh, I am absolutely sure
Yakov knew that his dad was not going to exchange
him. Oh yeah, probably not. He's like, guys, I don't even
know why you're trying this.
My dad didn't even
hug me. And like the vast majority
of like Soviet POWs who were
repatriated to the Soviet Union immediately
went to gulags after World War II.
They thought
they were compromised.
You clearly aren't down with the communism
because you surrendered, whatever it may be.
The soldiers knew this and were
fucking terrified to return
home.
Many of them went with the
CIA, but
Mujahideen gave them another option.
Convert to Islam and chill with us.
Fuck yeah, dude.
A lot of them took that.
Party in the fucking mountains.
Many of those guys are still there today.
I've seen a little small documentary on one of the guys.
Yeah, his name is Nick Muhammad.
Yes.
We'll talk about him.
Nick Muhammad does not have a good story
So these guys would take
Muslim names, Afghan wives
And settle into the community
Many of them have like dozens of children
Yeah like he did
To this day
Afghan veterans associations in Russia
Are trying to track them all down
Because no one's really sure where they all are
Or how many of them are still around
In a what way?
Well.
Negatively?
So Afghanistan after the war
was a pretty closed off to the outside world.
And the Soviet Union was falling apart.
So communications was non-existent.
The vast majority of these people's families
didn't even know they were alive.
Oh, okay. So most of this Soviet missing in action nobody
sure if they're living in Afghanistan they're
dead or whatever
so they're trying to track him down for like closure for the families
that's actually good
which brings us back to our boy
Franz Klitschewich from
our last episode.
He runs one of those groups now.
Does he?
Yeah.
He found one guy who had been an Afghan.
He's been an Afghan living with the Afghans since around 1985.
Who could hardly speak Russian anymore.
And refused to go back saying, quote, it's been 25 years and I am fucking done with Russia.
Hell yeah, dude. Some of them eventually do decide they want to go back, saying, quote, it's been 25 years and I am fucking done with Russia. Hell yeah, dude.
Some of them eventually do decide they want to go home, however.
One of those men did after living in Afghanistan for 10 years,
only to quickly sour on living in Russia,
pretty much figuring out he has nothing in common with any of these people,
and going back to Afghanistan, where he remains to this day.
In 2018, the U.S. discovered
former Soviet Lieutenant Sergei
Palantyuk living with
an Afghan family in a village near Kunar.
He had been listing his missing in action
ever since he went missing,
and he actually left his wife and
small child behind
in Russia. What?
Yeah, when he deployed,
his wife had just given birth.
Holy shit.
He had since taken a different wife
and had about eight kids.
This one's cooler.
Now, one of the weirdest stories
probably involves a Ukrainian
named Nikolai Bastriov.
He was captured while his patrol
was over in northeastern Afghanistan.
While in captivity,
he was beaten and tortured
and he was almost 100% certain he was going to die. While in captivity, he was beaten and tortured, and he was almost 100% certain
he was going to die. Until one day,
he was randomly exchanged to a different group of
Mujahideen for some supplies and weapons.
Because remember, having a Russian
prisoner, prestige.
It's like
having spinners on your car. Like, check out
this fucking Soviet I got.
And actually, that
kind of continues to this day.
A lot of foreigners
who are captured,
mostly in Syria,
get traded around
from group to group.
They're kind of like bartered for.
Yeah.
Now the group he was traded to
was led by our boy,
Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Oh, really?
Thankfully for Nikolai,
Massoud's a good guy.
The two became fast friends and Bast bastrioff moved into masood's house to live with his family what bastrioff would soon become
masood's not only closest friend but most loyal bodyguard this guy's a stand-up guy he even began
fighting the soviets holy shit Now, he did not go on
offensive operations. He
defended the Panjshir Valley, so there's a good
chance he fought in Operation Typhoon
against his own people.
That's crazy. Eventually,
he grew tired of the constant warfare.
So, when the Soviets
left, he stayed there through
the 90s, all the way up until
2001. Which was when he decided he was sick he stayed there through the 90s all the way up until 2001
which was
when he decided he was sick of the
Afghan civil war
and he was going to return back to Russia
bring his Afghan wife and kids with him
you know what else happened in 2001
yeah
Massoud was assassinated only weeks after
Bastrioff left the country
Bastrioff left the country.
Bastrioff blames himself for Ahmad Shah Massoud's death.
Holy fuck. Because he said, quote,
if I was there, that camera
never would have made it into his house.
What the fuck?
Yeah. He does not deal with
that very well.
So he's still around
now. Yeah. Nikolai's still alive.
Okay. That's insane.
Our final story brings us to Nik Muhammad,
or as he was born, Gennady Shima.
He was captured by the Mujahideen
soon after arriving in Afghanistan
and immediately converted to Islam to save his own ass,
which, sure.
Solid choice.
He lived in the mountains with the rebels for years,
getting married to an Afghan woman before settling down in Kunduz.
I wonder, there's so many of these guys living in Kunduz,
I wonder if they have a little association.
Or they just don't even notice that they're Russian.
Hello, other Afghan man.
He was eventually discovered by a British journalist in 1991,
and he was filled in with everything that had happened on the outside world.
Because remember, there was no media.
There's internet and cable TV in Afghanistan now,
but this is 1991.
Shit didn't exist.
He did not know about the Berlin Wall coming down
or even the fall of the Soviet Union.
Things were so insane to him that he simply could not believe it
and called the journalist a liar.
So the journalist came back
with his dad.
His dad was able
to convince him what the journalist said was true
and he begged for his son to return home.
Remember, his dad
thought he was dead for years.
Now,
unlike most of these other guys, Muhammad
really did want to go home
but his wife didn't
so he's like well
we already live here she wants to live here
we're raising our kids here so we're going to stay
it's pretty good
in the chaos of never ending war
however Muhammad decided to change his mind
and after his one of his sons
was very nearly killed in an airstrike
one of our airstrikes
our bad guys so he decided he wanted to return home After one of his sons was very nearly killed in an airstrike. One of our airstrikes.
Yeah.
Our bad guys.
So he decided he wanted to return home.
The problem?
He wasn't the citizen of any country.
Now, he was born the citizen of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine,
which no longer existed.
He did not have a passport.
And he was never an Afghan citizen so is he like
limbo? yeah he does not legally
exist because he was
also declared dead by Ukraine
in the Soviet army
so to make matters worse he was
technically a legal immigrant in Afghanistan
what?
yeah he just remember he came as part of the Soviet army and never left.
I would imagine they wouldn't care.
Well, it's been making him getting an Afghan passport a real motherfucker,
and that's what he's been waiting for ever since.
He's still in Afghanistan.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah. Afghanistan. Wow. Yeah.
Yeah.
So,
um,
that,
that's the episode.
Uh,
glad to end on a sad note.
Yeah.
Uh,
big ups to our boy,
Nick Muhammad.
Uh,
hopefully you get back to the Soviet Union or get back to Russia or Ukraine
or wherever the Z you're going,
um,
wherever you find home.
And so they're thinking that between 300 and 500 Soviet soldiers
stayed in Afghanistan after the war ended.
I wonder how they got those numbers.
They actually don't know how many are living in Afghanistan,
how many are missing, or how many are dead.
They actually don't even know how many have returned to Russia
or whatever republic they were from.
They're not keeping good records, is what I'm trying to say. No, they're not, yeah.
So,
which
vehicle is worse?
Yes, okay. So,
I would... Oh, fuck.
At least in the BMP, I could actually
get on top of it. Yeah. I'll get on top
of it. I would fucking hate to have
my nuts eaten by
a main gun. Yeah.
Okay. I agree.
I'd go BMP.
What would you rather drink
of all the things that we've talked about?
What would I rather drink?
Honestly, I like to eat, too.
So I think I'd go with the boot polish, maybe.
The boot polish toast? I'd try some of that a little bit.
Maybe it has good texture to it.
Who knows?
Close second is definitely some of that fucking jet.
I'm going with the jet coolant.
Yeah.
Because they drank so much of it that it probably wasn't that bad.
But also the pseudo alcohol.
No, it was probably really bad, but they just didn't care.
The pseudo alcohol, probably not the worst.
I mean, it's awful for your insides but like
in modern day Russia they actually
have a whole industry of like aftershave
that is marketed and was very clearly
liquor bottles
because if they
sell it as aftershave they can sell it for like
you know dirt fucking cheap because there's not
there's a minimum amount of
what liquor can cost to try to
stave off
mass alcoholism.
Aftershave!
It's aftershave!
Put it on your face, take a little swig.
It looks exactly like a bottle of vodka,
but it's aftershave.
Thank you everybody for tuning in
to this
never-ending series of misery
I guess that both goes for
this series and our
entire podcast I wonder if there's going to be a part
8 that's just going to be sprung upon
me
not unless I write it because I'm done with script
I
stopped researching this
last month when we started recording
and I have to say this is the longest I've researched anything to include I stopped researching this last month when we started recording.
And I have to say this is the longest I've researched anything to include any of my grad papers or anything like that.
Nice.
I'm over it.
I wish I could say this is the last time I'm going to talk about the Soviet Union this year, but it won't be.
We have other pots on that fire to make our toast which we can then eat and get drunk
so thank you everybody
for listening thank you for
taking this journey with us
if you think what we do is worth a dollar
you can give it to us on Patreon
you can get access to all of our episodes
at least a day early
you can also get access to at least one bonus
episode a month. If you donate
$5 or more, you get more bonus content
than that and a free copy of my book
The Hooligans of Kandahar on
digits. I heard the book
is in fact a book.
So take that as a review.
It has words.
It is several hundred
pages of words on a white background
so yeah
if you want a shirt
buy a shirt from us on Teespring
at Teespring backslash
lines led by donkeys
we don't have any shirts from the Soviet
Afghan series yet we'll try to think of one
if you have any ideas slide it into
our DMs
maybe it could be a main gun
eating balls yeah
I don't even know how we could make that a shirt
like Pac-Man
just Pac-Man
uncontrollably eating balls
oh there's no way we could
make that a shirt
I would hate it too I wouldn't even wear it
so we've also had a lot of people
sending us stuff in DMs for
bonus episodes please do that
we are having a
reading series for like alternative
history books there's a lot out there I haven't heard
of if you think of a book that you think
that we should read tell me
the title I'll get around to it probably
as long as it's nothing like Battlesource
Battlesource Waterloo the
worst fucking book I would say
that's the worst book I've ever read but I
have read On the Road by Jack Kerouac and I
wanted to fucking die
but it's neither here nor there
thank you again
rate and review us on iTunes all that shit is great
it helps us
crawl our way up
the leaderboards of podcasting
soon we'll go into
blood sport death match against them
yeah I'm actually gonna
challenge the dollop to a fight to the
death I feel like we could take them
I feel like we could too
so yeah you're on notice
the dollop
we're gonna feed your balls to a T-72.
So until next week, y'all.
Later.