Quotes from Rodric Braithwaite

whom we betrayed and sold down the river when we left Afghanistan, leaving them and their families to the mercy of the victors.

Russians like the rest of us prefer to believe that their history has progressed in a straight and positive line. They explain away troubling events such as brutal reigns of Ivan the Terrible or Stalin as necessary stages on the path to greatness.

Russia is a country with unpredictable past.

Tanks could not solve what was essentially a political problem. If the revolution in Afghanistan could only be sustained with Soviet bayonets, that was a route down which the Soviet Union should not go.

It was perfectly clear that Afghanistan was not ripe for socialism: religion was a tremendous force, the peasants were almost completely illiterate, the economy was backward. Lenin had set out the necessary elements of a revolutionary situation. None were present in Afghanistan.