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Soviet Union [USSR] Force Projection on the Periphery
The Soviet armed forces have exercised their "external
function" mainly on the periphery of the Soviet Union. They
occupied eastern Poland in 1939 and annexed Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania in l940
(see Soviet Union USSR - Prelude to War
, ch. 2). Subsequently, during
World War II they "liberated" Eastern Europe from German rule and
then incorporated it into a bloc of socialist states
(see Soviet Union USSR - Appendix C).
The Soviet Union managed to turn these territories into an
outpost of socialism, as well as into a defensive buffer against an
invasion from the West. This buffer became increasingly valuable to
the Soviet Union both as an extension of Soviet air defenses to the
end of the Soviet defense perimeter and as a potential springboard
for an offensive against NATO.
In l956 the Soviet Union set a precedent for military
intervention "in defense of socialism" when it suppressed the
uprising that threatened communist rule in Hungary. In August 1968,
the Soviet Union again intervened militarily in Eastern Europe when
it invaded Czechoslovakia in response to the Czechoslovak reform
movement begun in the spring. The invasion later was justified on
the basis of the doctrine of "limited sovereignty" of socialist
states. Also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, the doctrine was first
enunciated on September 21, l968, in a Pravda editorial, to
justify the invasion. Because Czechoslovakia and Hungary lie on the
Soviet defense perimeter, national security considerations, in
addition to ideological and political concerns, undoubtedly played
a part in the Soviet decision to intervene.
The December l979 invasion of Afghanistan was another case in
which doctrinal concerns and interests of state security coalesced
(see Soviet Union USSR - Asia
, ch. 10). Although nominally nonaligned, Afghanistan was,
according to Soviet arguments, well on its way to socialism in
l979, and a reversal was unacceptable to the Soviet Union. In
addition, because Afghanistan borders the Soviet Union, Soviet
leaders sought to prevent it from aligning itself with the West or
from becoming an Islamic republic allied to Ayatollah Sayyid
Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's Iran. The invasion, although "correct"
according to Soviet ideological criteria, plunged the Soviet Union
into one of the longest
local wars (see Glossary) it had ever
fought, second only to the 1939-40 Soviet-Finnish War, in which
over 100,000 Soviet troops died. In l988 the Soviet leadership
declared that it would negotiate a troop withdrawal from
Afghanistan and seek a political settlement. On April 14, 1988,
Soviet foreign minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze signed an agreement
in Geneva providing for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan by February 15, 1989.
The invasion of Afghanistan tarnished the Soviet image abroad,
where the invasion was perceived and condemned as an act of
aggression. Some Western analysts regarded it as an unprecedented
extension of the Brezhnev Doctrine of
"socialist internationalism" (see Glossary) to a country that
was nonaligned and thus not part
of the world
socialist system (see Glossary). A majority vote in
the United Nations (UN) censured the invasion as a flagrant
intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Soviet
leaders hoped that the 1988 Geneva agreement, which stipulated a
unilateral withdrawal of Soviet forces, would placate world opinion
and repair the political damage done by the war.
The only benefit that the Soviet Union appeared to have derived
from the war in Afghanistan was the use of Afghan territory to
train Soviet troops to fight in mountainous terrain and to test
Soviet weapons. However, Soviet concepts of offense and combined
arms, and Soviet troops and weapons, fared poorly in the difficult
mountain terrain. Tanks were of little use in ground combat in
narrow mountain passes. The Soviet military learned that
helicopters were of greater importance in the mountains because
helicopters could carry out air attacks and could land troops on
enemy territory. The Soviet military also found that the enemy's
surface-to-air missiles posed a grave threat to attacking Soviet
aircraft. Thus, the Soviet Union probably decided to withdraw from
Afghanistan not only for political but also for military reasons.
Data as of May 1989
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