on this day the anti-Communist insurgency in Afghanistan gained a significant strategic victory with the capture of the government airbase at Bagram.

Part 8 - Afghan DebacleUp until then the airbase had been a major component of the Kabul regime's war to crush the insurgents; its capture dealt a heavy blow to that campaign and would later be cited by post-Cold War historians as an early link in the chain of events that led to the Marxist dictatorship's collapse just six months later. A new installment in Necessary EvilThe rebels' capture of the Bagram airbase was aided by disaffected Afghan regular army troops who'd gotten fed up with their low pay and the repressive nature of their government; these men would later join their new allies in repulsing an attempt by government forces to retake the base. Two days after this failed offensive was turned back, the Afghan army's chief of staff was fired.

The Marxist regime in Kabul immediately petitioned the Soviets for the immediate deployment of massive contingents of Red Army combat soldiers to Afghanistan to shore up the crumbling Afghan regular army. But with the Soviet Union mired deep in its own internal political crisis, Moscow could only spare 10,000 troops -- and even this small force would be hastily withdrawn when food riots erupted in Kiev and Minsk in June of 1980 and pushed the USSR one step closer to the brink of anarchy. The withdrawal soured Afghan-Russian relations in the final years of Communist rule in Moscow and seriously damaged the Red Army's reputation as a fighting force.


Interestingly, some of the same Soviet troops who served in the 10,000-man Red Army contingent briefly deployed to Afghanistan would later join the anti-Communist rebellion that broke out in Russia in the fall of 1980.

on this day food riots erupted in Kiev and Minsk, prompting Soviet authorities to declare martial law in both cities.

Part 9 - Martial Law declared in Soviet UnionEnforcing the martial law decree, however, proved easier said than done as some of the militia units assigned to carry out that duty chose instead to side with the rioters; this forced the Kremlin to recall its 10,000-man troop contingent from Afghanistan as well as withdraw substantial numbers of military units from East Germany and Poland. CPSU leader Konstantin Chernenko (pictured) assured his generals these re-deployments were only temporary and the military units involved would return to their original assignments once order had been restored.

But Chernenko would turn out to be dead wrong on that score; Soviet forces would never return to Afghanistan and by 1983, when the civil war in Russia was at its peak, the once-massive Red Army contingents in Poland, East Germany, and Hungary had been reduced to a shadow of their old formidable selves. A new post from the Necessary Evil Thread by Chris OakleyIndeed, an ironic consequence of these withdrawals was that at the end of the civil war the only major Red Army detachment left in Germany was the security guard detail at the Soviet embassy in Bonn, capital of the United States' longtime NATO ally West Germany. Even the Soviet defense advisory brigade in Cuba wasn't spared from manpower cutbacks; by the time of Chernenko's death there were less than 100 advisors left on Cuban soil.


The massive Soviet troop withdrawals from East Germany hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall and were later credited by Western historians with paving the way for Germany's reunification after the Russian civil war ended.

October 13^rd,

on this day American voters went to the polls in what would be the closest presidential election since the JFK-Nixon showdown in 1960. Incumbent president Jimmy Carter was seeking a second term in the White House, while Republican challenger Ronald Reagan sought to restore the Oval Office to GOP control for the first time since Carter beat Ford in the 1976 elections.

1980 Presidential ElectionAfter Iranian Islamic militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in late 1979 Carter's approval rating had taken a steep dive; it started to rise again, however, as events in the Soviet Union appeared to be vindicating Carter's "soft" foreign policy rather than the "hard" policy advocated by Reagan. Sensing that attacking Carter on foreign policy matters might backfire, Reagan's campaign strategists opted instead to focus on the weaknesses in Carter's economic policy. This proved to be the right call given the recession which was plaguing the U.S. at the time; during the summer of 1980, as political unrest in the USSR spiraled out of control and the Summer Olympics in Moscow played to much smaller crowds than previously expected, Reagan gradually closed the gap on Carter.

Part 11 - Reagan ElectedBy late September the former California governor was just four percentage points behind Carter in most opinion polls. What might have been the most critical moment of the final weeks of the '80 campaign came when, in what later became known as "the October surprise", Reagan campaign staffers got hold of a Carter debate strategy memo and used it to craft a devastating counterattack for Reagan when he and Carter squared off in their final presidential debate. On the morning of Election Day itself Carter and Reagan were locked in a statistical dead heat and would remain so for several hours as the returns came in on Election Night. Not until 1:32 AM Eastern on November 5th, more than two hours after the polls had closed on the West Coast, did Reagan begin to pull away from Carter-- and even then he had to wait another five hours before he could declare victory.

Reagan's win came as a surprise to many political experts, who had expected Carter to get a second term as president. But the GOP nominee turned President-elected had worked tirelessly to build support among moderate and conservative voters, particularly Americans of Eastern European descent who shared his anti-Communist ideals, and that ultimately helped tip the scales in his favor. The new president wouldn't have to wait long for an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to ending Communist domination of Eastern Europe; just twenty days after he won the presidency, the Russian civil war began

November 24^th,

 

the PLM captured the Soviet government naval base at the Black Sea port of Odessa, seizing tons of ammunition and equipment and thwarting the Kremlin's hopes of reinforcing besieged Red Army troops in the Ukraine via amphibious landing.

Part 13 - Fall of OdessaPost-Cold War historians would later cite the rebel victory at Odessa as the point where the tide of the Russian civil war began to turn against the Communists once and for all; the events at Odessa seriously damaged morale in all sectors of the Soviet regular armed forces, and in the late stages of the war Red Army commanders found themselves increasingly plagued by desertions. By 1986 some 200 Red Air Force pilots had gone over to the PLM side and fifty Soviet naval personnel had been executed on suspicion of mutiny.

By the time the war ended in 1987 only a handful of combat troops were still fighting on the Communist side-- the rest, with the conspicuous exception of a shrinking cadre of hard-line generals, had all chosen to throw in their lot with the insurgents. In fact, the very week of the final Communist surrender to the PLM one of the few remaining Russian naval warships still under Kremlin control was torpedoed by a rebel submarine in the Baltic; the submarine's captain would later be appointed chief of staff for the post-civil war Russian navy.