The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

decision. The Afghans listened to his lectures with great interest. They were fascinated by theSoviet Union.It is possible that whoever reads this book now will not believe us. Why would Afghanofficers be so attracted by the Soviet Union but not by the West, where life seemed so much morecomfortable? But that was really the case. Surprisingly, those Afghans who had been sent to studycivilian professions or military and police affairs in American or Western European (mostlyFederal Republic of Germany) universities expressed disappointment in the Western lifestyle, andoccasionally even hostility towards it, upon return to Afghanistan. On the basis of that hostilitytowards the West, they would eagerly become agents of Soviet intelligence and members of thePDPA. They were much more pro-Soviet than their comrades who were educated in the USSR.Why such disdain for Western society? When the Afghans were asked to explain this, theyusually could not articulate the reasons behind their bias. Some talked about immorality andvague concepts such as conscience and honor. Some didn’t like that they, officers of the Afghanarmy, were perceived in the West as second-class and were treated with thinly veiled disdain.Attempting to explain their dislike of the West, the Afghan officers could not formulate the essenceof their observations. People of traditional society were repelled by the Western destruction oftraditionalism and the dominance of individualism over collectivism. At the same time, in theUSSR, those traditional collectivist values were carefully protected and codified in the Moral Codeof the Builder of Communism.Zaplatin was different from many other Soviet advisers who went to Afghanistan (and alsoto Angola, Ethiopia, Cuba, etc.) to make money. He treated his work with great responsibility. Thisis why he soon had to deal with unpleasant issues. For example, he discovered that many of hiscolleagues, instead of working ten- or twelve-hour days as would be expected during164