Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 61 - Soviet Afghan War 7: Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

On 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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,
Starting point is 00:00:22 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.
Starting point is 00:00:44 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.
Starting point is 00:01:02 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
Starting point is 00:01:33 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.
Starting point is 00:01:49 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.
Starting point is 00:02:06 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.
Starting point is 00:02:34 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.
Starting point is 00:02:58 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.
Starting point is 00:03:18 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
Starting point is 00:03:43 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,
Starting point is 00:04:02 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.
Starting point is 00:04:34 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
Starting point is 00:04:54 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,
Starting point is 00:05:12 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,
Starting point is 00:05:26 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
Starting point is 00:05:41 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
Starting point is 00:05:57 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.
Starting point is 00:06:17 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.
Starting point is 00:06:43 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.
Starting point is 00:06:58 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.
Starting point is 00:07:06 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.
Starting point is 00:07:22 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,
Starting point is 00:07:55 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.
Starting point is 00:08:14 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.
Starting point is 00:08:40 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
Starting point is 00:08:52 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
Starting point is 00:09:00 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.
Starting point is 00:09:25 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
Starting point is 00:09:41 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
Starting point is 00:09:58 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.
Starting point is 00:10:13 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.
Starting point is 00:10:26 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'
Starting point is 00:10:45 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
Starting point is 00:11:01 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.
Starting point is 00:11:22 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.
Starting point is 00:11:35 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
Starting point is 00:11:54 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.
Starting point is 00:12:12 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,
Starting point is 00:12:32 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
Starting point is 00:12:56 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.
Starting point is 00:13:33 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.
Starting point is 00:13:51 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
Starting point is 00:14:11 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
Starting point is 00:14:37 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.
Starting point is 00:15:06 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
Starting point is 00:15:25 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
Starting point is 00:16:11 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
Starting point is 00:16:36 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
Starting point is 00:17:17 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.
Starting point is 00:17:49 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,
Starting point is 00:18:12 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,
Starting point is 00:18:22 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
Starting point is 00:18:47 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.
Starting point is 00:19:04 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,
Starting point is 00:19:45 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
Starting point is 00:19:59 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.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Yeah. Where the two sides were just murdering the goddamn shit off each other. I imagine as a guard they were kind of like,
Starting point is 00:20:18 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.
Starting point is 00:20:34 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.
Starting point is 00:20:50 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
Starting point is 00:21:06 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.
Starting point is 00:21:32 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
Starting point is 00:21:55 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.
Starting point is 00:22:11 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.
Starting point is 00:22:27 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.
Starting point is 00:22:47 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.
Starting point is 00:23:03 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
Starting point is 00:23:16 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
Starting point is 00:23:36 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.
Starting point is 00:23:53 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.
Starting point is 00:24:15 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.
Starting point is 00:24:41 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,
Starting point is 00:24:53 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.
Starting point is 00:25:11 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
Starting point is 00:25:34 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
Starting point is 00:25:50 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.
Starting point is 00:26:06 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.
Starting point is 00:26:17 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
Starting point is 00:26:34 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.
Starting point is 00:27:10 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.
Starting point is 00:27:25 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.
Starting point is 00:27:43 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.
Starting point is 00:28:01 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.
Starting point is 00:28:20 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!
Starting point is 00:28:42 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
Starting point is 00:29:12 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
Starting point is 00:29:28 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
Starting point is 00:29:43 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
Starting point is 00:30:00 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.
Starting point is 00:30:16 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
Starting point is 00:30:39 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.
Starting point is 00:31:03 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.
Starting point is 00:31:23 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.
Starting point is 00:31:41 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,
Starting point is 00:31:57 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?
Starting point is 00:32:11 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
Starting point is 00:32:23 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
Starting point is 00:32:38 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.
Starting point is 00:32:56 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.
Starting point is 00:33:09 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?
Starting point is 00:33:25 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.
Starting point is 00:33:44 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
Starting point is 00:34:00 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
Starting point is 00:34:17 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.
Starting point is 00:34:28 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
Starting point is 00:34:43 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,
Starting point is 00:35:00 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.
Starting point is 00:35:18 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.
Starting point is 00:35:48 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.
Starting point is 00:36:16 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.
Starting point is 00:36:38 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
Starting point is 00:37:17 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.
Starting point is 00:37:54 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,
Starting point is 00:38:09 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.
Starting point is 00:38:18 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
Starting point is 00:38:30 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
Starting point is 00:38:45 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.
Starting point is 00:39:01 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.
Starting point is 00:39:17 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,
Starting point is 00:39:31 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.
Starting point is 00:39:45 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
Starting point is 00:40:12 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.
Starting point is 00:40:33 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
Starting point is 00:40:54 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.
Starting point is 00:41:09 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
Starting point is 00:41:24 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
Starting point is 00:41:39 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
Starting point is 00:42:07 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
Starting point is 00:42:25 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
Starting point is 00:42:42 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
Starting point is 00:42:57 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
Starting point is 00:43:13 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?
Starting point is 00:43:28 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?
Starting point is 00:43:41 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
Starting point is 00:43:53 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.
Starting point is 00:44:04 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.
Starting point is 00:44:28 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,
Starting point is 00:44:46 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.
Starting point is 00:45:22 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
Starting point is 00:45:43 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
Starting point is 00:45:57 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.
Starting point is 00:46:20 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.
Starting point is 00:46:56 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
Starting point is 00:47:07 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
Starting point is 00:47:18 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
Starting point is 00:47:29 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.
Starting point is 00:47:46 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.
Starting point is 00:48:08 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,
Starting point is 00:48:41 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.
Starting point is 00:48:59 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.
Starting point is 00:49:11 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.
Starting point is 00:49:33 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.
Starting point is 00:49:53 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
Starting point is 00:50:23 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
Starting point is 00:50:53 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
Starting point is 00:51:13 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,
Starting point is 00:51:33 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.
Starting point is 00:51:47 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,
Starting point is 00:52:08 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.
Starting point is 00:52:23 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.
Starting point is 00:52:38 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.
Starting point is 00:52:56 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
Starting point is 00:53:09 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.
Starting point is 00:53:28 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
Starting point is 00:53:43 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
Starting point is 00:54:00 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.
Starting point is 00:54:39 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?
Starting point is 00:55:05 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
Starting point is 00:55:28 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,
Starting point is 00:55:55 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.
Starting point is 00:56:12 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
Starting point is 00:56:28 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
Starting point is 00:56:45 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
Starting point is 00:57:00 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.
Starting point is 00:57:31 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.
Starting point is 00:57:54 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
Starting point is 00:58:16 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
Starting point is 00:58:31 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
Starting point is 00:58:48 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.
Starting point is 00:59:08 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
Starting point is 00:59:21 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.
Starting point is 00:59:35 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,
Starting point is 00:59:55 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.
Starting point is 01:00:12 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.
Starting point is 01:00:30 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.
Starting point is 01:00:45 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.
Starting point is 01:01:04 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.
Starting point is 01:01:24 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
Starting point is 01:01:40 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.
Starting point is 01:01:56 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
Starting point is 01:02:18 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.
Starting point is 01:02:34 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.
Starting point is 01:02:49 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
Starting point is 01:03:06 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
Starting point is 01:03:21 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.
Starting point is 01:03:37 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
Starting point is 01:03:59 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.
Starting point is 01:04:17 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.
Starting point is 01:04:43 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
Starting point is 01:04:59 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
Starting point is 01:05:14 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,
Starting point is 01:05:28 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
Starting point is 01:05:44 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.
Starting point is 01:05:55 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
Starting point is 01:06:19 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
Starting point is 01:06:39 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
Starting point is 01:06:55 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
Starting point is 01:07:11 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,
Starting point is 01:07:29 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.
Starting point is 01:07:46 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,
Starting point is 01:08:09 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.
Starting point is 01:08:30 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
Starting point is 01:08:45 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
Starting point is 01:09:01 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.
Starting point is 01:09:17 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
Starting point is 01:09:35 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.
Starting point is 01:10:03 Wow. Yeah, yeah. Afghanistan. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, that, that's the episode. Uh,
Starting point is 01:10:10 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,
Starting point is 01:10:19 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
Starting point is 01:10:43 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
Starting point is 01:11:01 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?
Starting point is 01:11:18 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.
Starting point is 01:11:33 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
Starting point is 01:11:52 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
Starting point is 01:12:08 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
Starting point is 01:12:23 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
Starting point is 01:12:40 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
Starting point is 01:13:08 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
Starting point is 01:13:25 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.
Starting point is 01:13:42 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
Starting point is 01:13:58 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
Starting point is 01:14:13 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
Starting point is 01:14:33 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
Starting point is 01:14:50 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
Starting point is 01:15:06 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
Starting point is 01:15:22 the dollop we're gonna feed your balls to a T-72. So until next week, y'all. Later.

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