The influence of ideology on the soviet information space in the context of the Afghan war (1979-1989)

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The influence of ideology on the soviet information space in the context of the afghan war (1979-1989)

B. Drogomyretskyi Bogdan Khmelnytskyi Melitopol state pedagogical University

Abstract

The article characterizes the influence of ideology on the Soviet information space in the context of the Afghan war (1979-1989). It is determined that during the period of the existence of the Soviet Union, almost all of its mass media were under the strict ideological control of the government and the Communist party leadership. At the same time, it is noted that it is propaganda in the form of informational influence that has a significant ideological load on the consciousness of people. Hundreds of thousands of people became victims of such ideological propaganda, who to one degree or another suffered from the Afghan adventure of the Kremlin leaders. The traditional principles of conventional warfare and the unconventional warfare that took place in the Afghan War waged by the Soviet Union for nearly a decade. It was emphasized that elements of hybrid and information-sabotage confrontation were also used in it. It is noted that the leaders of the Soviet Union at any cost sought to provide precisely the ideological and informational and propagandistic basis of their "Afghan policy". At the same time, quite often large losses of material and even human resources did not have such a significance for the Soviet leadership in this military adventure as the military-political component. It was concluded that for the Soviet participants in the Afghan war, according to the information coverage of the latter, perhaps the most outrageous was the fact that the mass media of the Soviet Union covered almost all the events of the latter as actions of the government troops of Afghanistan. But the participation of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in this war was subject to an informational taboo. Also, the soldiers could not remember a single new kindergarten or school, which was often written about in Soviet newspapers.

Key words: ideology, Soviet information space, Afghan war, information sphere, television.

Анотація

Вплив ідеології на радянський інформаційний простір у контексті Афганської війни (1979-1989)

Б.Я. Дрогомирецький Мелітопольський державний педагогічний університет імені Богдана Хмельницького

У статті здійснюється характеристика впливу ідеології на радянський інформаційний простір у контексті Афганської війни (1979-1989). Визначається, що впродовж періоду існування Радянського Союзу практично всі його засоби масової інформації перебували під жорстким ідеологічним контролем уряду та партійного комуністичного керівництва. Водночас наголошується, що саме пропаганда у вигляді інформаційного впливу має значне ідеологічне навантаження на свідомість людей. Жертвами такої ідеологічної пропаганди стали сотні тисяч людей, які тією чи іншою мірою постраждали від Афганської авантюри кремлівських лідерів. Аналізуються традиційні принципи ведення конвенціональної та неконвенціональної війни, котрі мали місце в Афганській війні, котру вів Радянський Союз упродовж майже десятиріччя. Підкреслено, що в ній були використані також елементи гібридного та інформаційно-диверсійного протистояння. Наголошено, що лідери Радянського Союзу за будь-яку ціну прагнули забезпечити саме ідеологічне та інформаційно-пропагандистське підґрунтя своєї «афганської політики». Водночас, досить часто великі втрати матеріального й навіть людського ресурсу не мали для радянського керівництва в цій військовій авантюрі такого значення, як військово-політична складова. Підсумовано, що для радянських учасників Афганської війни, щодо інформаційного висвітлення останньої, чи не найобурливішим було те, що засоби масової інформації Радянського Союзу практично всі події останньої висвітлювали як дії урядових військ Афганістану. Натомість участь Обмеженого контингенту радянських військ у цій війні підлягала під інформаційне табу. Також воїни не могли пригадати жодного новозбудованого дитсадка чи школу, про котрі часто писалося в радянських газетах.

Ключові слова: ідеологія, радянський інформаційний простір, Афганська війна, інформаційна сфера, телебачення.

afghan war government guide

Problem statement. Historically, the ideological factor has almost always been the determining factor in world events. With the development of the information space, ideological manifestations and influences have acquired a higher quality and scale. Thanks to the mass media, ideology was able to transform into powerful propaganda. This, in particular, took place during the Afghan War (1979-- 1989), which was unleashed by the leaders of the Soviet Union.

The analysis of sources and recent researches. Analysis of recent research and publications. Currently, Ukrainian historiography lacks a comprehensive study of this topic. Some of its aspects are covered by V. Rybalka1, Yu. Kaganov and V. Kulik . The use of propaganda in military operations of a hybrid nature was considered by A. Bliznyuk . On the Afghan war, O. Sytnyk suggested that it was "symmetrical" . But M. Liebig noted a- asymmetric manifestations in this war . V. Klimenko noted that the war of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan showed the complete unpreparedness of the military-political leadership and all state structures to conduct special operations in nonstandard conditions of information and psychological confrontation . All this, according to A. Kovalkov, the Soviet political and ideological apparatus tried to compensate with propaganda . At the same time, according to I. Kremenovskaya, the Kremlin technologies have always consisted of zombifying people with television content . However, it should be noted that, in general, the problem of the influence of ideology on the Soviet information space in the context of the Afghan war (1979-1989) remains not fully covered.

The publication's purpose. The article is devoted to the ideological influence on the information space of the Soviet Union and the activation of information and propaganda means of forming the consciousness of Soviet citizens, in particular - Soviet soldiers, warrant officers, officers and civilian employees, during the Afghan war (1979-1989).

Statement of the basic material. It is well known that in the modern world, media and information space, in general, are gaining more and more weight, becoming a tool for attracting public attention. At the same time, they even receive a certain status of exercising control over the activities of power structures . However, this state of affairs was not achieved immediately. Moreover, if we consider the period of existence of the Soviet Union, then practically all mass media here, without exception, were under the strict ideological control of the government and the party communist leadership before the period of "perestroika".

During the perestroika period of "perestroika" the mass media gradually gained independence from the party and state apparatus. In particular, in the second half of the 1980s. Soviet television got the opportunity to kind of "program" people thanks to live broadcasts, political debates, direct participation of citizens in discussions, a reduction in the list of taboo topics, the emergence of publicists and journalists with a personal, independent point of view, increased efficiency in presenting information, and the emergence of a new format of television broadcasts. Also at this time, television received the opportunity to express critical remarks about the government, party nomenklatura and demonstrate the situation in the country objectively, while exposing all its acute, painful problems11. Among them, one of the main was the so-called "Afghan problem", which had a significant information and propaganda component. After all, this next adventure, actually unleashed by the Soviet party leadership, to expand its military-political influence in the world must be somehow justified and, if possible, legitimized.

It should be noted that it is propaganda in the form of informational impact that has a signi- ?icant ideological load on the consciousness of people. At the same time, mass communication is an extremely important factor, since it allows propagandists to achieve their goal as efficiently as possible. For this they use almost all forms of mass communication, to correct mass consciousness. Propaganda depends on the nature of information technology and the characteristics of influencing the broad masses in order to: disorient and misinform the enemy through the dissemination of carefully selected facts, views and arguments or rumors; destabilizing the enemy's situation; introducing into the public and individual consciousness of hostile, harmful ideas and views to form the necessary public opinion propagandist; weakening of beliefs, foundations, changes in the mass consciousness of the enemy; weakening of his position; intimidating your people with the image of an enemy; intimidating the enemy with their power. Usually, the defining directions of propagandists' activities are: undermining the moral and political state of the personnel of the armed forces and the population of the enemy, paralyzing their will to fight; mobilization of its population for broad support of military operations, shackle pacifist sentiments and speeches; providing moral support for the actions of their troops by the armed forces and the population of the allies; misleading the enemy, misinforming public consciousness in order to conceal true intentions, etc.1. Possessing unlimited control over the media and the entire public space, the Soviet leadership, under the guise of internationalism and fraternal unity, contributed to the education of a whole generation of citizens with a mythologized consciousness. Hundreds of thousands of people became victims of such ideological propaganda, who to one degree or another suffered from the Afghan adventure of the "Kremlin elders".

The traditional principles and way of waging conventional warfare by European states, with respect for the enemy and adherence to the code of honor, usually ceased to operate when faced with representatives of other non-European civilizations. Then the principles of unconventional warfare came into effect, which were used by European peoples in wars with peoples with a different mentality and other traditions. These are the principles of warfare that took place in the Afghan war, which the Soviet Union waged for almost a decade. It also used elements of hybrid and information-sabotage confrontation. At the same time, according to O. Sytnyk, the Afghan war, initiated by the Soviet Union, had signs of a “symmetric war" . Although a "symmetric war" is characterized as a classic armed conflict between states with approximately the same military potential . According to the information dimension, the symmetrical component means as complete and detailed dissemination of the real motivations and tasks of any information operation as possible. While asymmetric means, as a rule, are directed to counteract the manifestations of the spread of negative information with powerful positive information messages . There is no doubt that the leaders of the USSR at any cost sought to provide precisely the ideological, informational and propagandistic basis of their "Afghan policy". At the same time, quite often large losses of material and even human resources did not have such a significance for the Soviet leadership in this military adventure as the military-political component.

As A. Kovalkov noted, Soviet soldiers and officers were sent to the DRA to "provide international assistance to the fraternal Afghan people in the matter of revolutionary transformations and repelling external aggression". In order to maximize the dissemination of this ideological information component, the entire political and ideological propaganda apparatus of the Soviet army was involved. “We went to make a revolution! So we were told and we believed..." - said after the war one of the ordinary soldiers of the OKRV1. However, as it turned out, “revolutionary transformations” in Afghanistan did not improve the lives of most of the country's population.

According to M. Liebig, in Afghanistan, Soviet troops faced asymmetric manifestations of military operations that had a military-strategic character of a guerrilla or even a national liberation war . It is these modern manifestations of irregular war that usually appear not in a "pure" form, but intersect and superimpose, depending on certain ideological and militarypolitical conditions. According to A. Bliznyuk, an expensive war is asymmetric, because there are no completely identical opponents. Therefore, asymmetric hostilities usually take place at different levels and take on a wide variety of forms. In particular, at the operational level, the following are used: special operations, terrorist acts, etc .; at the military-strategic level - guerrilla actions, blitzkrieg and the like; and in the end, at the political and strategic level - a religious war, manifestations of the confrontation between civilizational cultures, and the like. At the same time, different forms cover the asymmetry of strength, means, methods, organization, values and time .

During the Cold War, as a result of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA, the forms and methods of information-psychological influence were improved. Although, according to V. Klimenko, the war of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan showed the complete unreadiness of the military-political leadership and all state structures to conduct special operations in nonstandard conditions of information and psychological confrontation. After all, the war in Afghanistan has become unusual and unconventional for the Armed Forces of the USSR. Moreover, a rather vague idea of the political goal of this special operation, its tasks and the artificial isolation of this campaign from the Soviet public had a very negative impact on the Soviet troops. At the same time, the purpose of the stay of the Soviet contingent in Afghanistan was formulated as "providing military assistance to a friendly national democratic regime in suppressing counterrevolutionary forces relying on US and NATO assistance, international reaction in general, as well as to ensure the security of the southern borders of the USSR" . In fact, for the leadership of the Soviet Union, the defining goal of all foreign policy was to implement the idea of expanding the influence of socialism and the USSR. At the same time, the latter was assigned the role of a kind of ideological leader and inspirer of other peoples around the world in the direction of achieving a happy future, thanks to the establishment of a socialist and communist system . All this was accompanied by a rather powerful informational and propaganda load in the USSR mass media in the minds of Soviet citizens. For them, an information picture of everything that happened in Afghanistan was artificially formed - as an important mission of the armed forces of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the task of the Soviet media was to convince the Soviet people that the USSR is doing everything possible for peace in Afghanistan and throughout the world.

Yu. Kaganov noted that instead of the term "war in Afghanistan" on Soviet television, definitions were used like "international debt of a limited contingent" . Although the chairman of the Ukrainian Union of Afghan Veterans (SoldiersInternationalists) S. Chervonopisky considers the events in Afghanistan in the period 1979-1989. "Military-political special operation" . A. Kostyria, scientific adviser to the chairman of the Ukrainian Union of Afghanistan Veterans, also considers the war in Afghanistan to be a military-political special operation. In his opinion, it became the final one in a number of local wars and armed conflicts in the world in the second half of the XXth century. with the participation of the Armed Forces of the USSR. At the same time, he views this war in the context of the confrontation between the United States and the USSR since the Cold War, in which the United States applied a strategy of “low intensity conflict”. The latter is defined by the author as "a limited political and military struggle to achieve political, social, economic or psychological goals", was aimed at "deliberately dragging the Soviet Union into the war in Afghanistan and shifting the burden of the war onto it as much as possible, exhausting it economically and morally. To achieve this goal, the United States resorted to strategic disin- ?ormation. With their ostentatious indifference, dosed information to the special services, they led the leaders of the USSR to the conviction that the United States did not even suspect about the preparations for the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. It pretended that when it happened, then without significant foreign policy losses for the USSR. This information corre- ?ponded to the expectations of the Soviet leadership, and it “swallowed the hook” . This kind of position, which depicts the United States as the world hegemon and even the organizer of the terrorist sabotage guerrilla struggle of the Afghan rebels against the Soviet military contingent in Afghanistan, is quite biased. It, among other things, testifies to a certain tendency of the already post-Soviet information space to preserve old Soviet stereotypes and information cliches.

But ordinary warriors-internationalists adhere to a slightly different position. So, on May 8-9, 2015, members of the Rivne city organization of the Ukrainian Union of Afghan Veterans took an active part in city-wide events dedicated to this event. Together with veterans of the Second World War, veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, veterans of the "Afghans" and other local conflicts, veterans of the modern Russian- Ukrainian war were in the same ranks. It was they who drew an analogy between the latter and other wars waged by the Soviet Union (the legal successor of which Russia considers itself to be, and unleashed the last Russian-Ukrainian war). At the same time, the enemy was the one who called himself a brother. And this, in the opinion of veterans, is the most disgusting thing that can happen at all. Consequently, they tend to consider this war "hybrid", like most of the previous ones unleashed by the Soviet Union, including the "war in Afghanistan" .

The peculiarity of the Afghan war (1979-1989) lies primarily in the fact that a huge mass of the population took part in it, which had never before held a weapon in their hands. Recruitment into the ranks of the dushmans was led by a wide network of agents throughout the country. The advantage of the mujahideen was the absence of a certain center in them. Throughout the entire armed conflict, it was a collection of numerous disparate groups. They were led by field commanders, but there was no "leader" among them. Many Soviet raids were canceled out by the effective propaganda work of the enemy among the local population. For the Afghan majority (especially in deep provinces with a patriarchal order), the Soviet military have always been occupiers. Ordinary Afghans did not feel any sympathy for socialist ideology . Dogmatic "proletarian internationalism" has led not only to an incorrect assessment of the situation and forecasts regarding the results of the use of force. In fact, it was he who caused the defeat of the Soviet Union in the course of the ideological confrontation with the Western states, accelerated the deformation of the Soviet communist system as a whole.

As V. Rybak noted, initially in the Afghan war the image of an internationalist warrior was formed as an ideological means of influencing the consciousness of Soviet people. Subsequently, this image turned into an ideological cliche and became one of the most widespread in the media. Numerous posters, articles in newspapers and magazines, radio and television programs, documentaries and even feature films were dedicated to the Afghan warriors. The events in Afghanistan generated great interest among young people. And many of the young men at the recruiting offices wrote reports about their desire to fulfill their international duty in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Poems and songs written by "Afghans" that spread throughout the USSR are becoming popular. That is, the influence of the image of a warrior-internationalist on the psychology of the masses has gained maximum efficiency. However, the truth of life never resembles the propaganda cliches advertised by the Soviet leadership. But since the end of the 1980s from a purely positive, heroic image of an internationalist warrior, it turns into an image of a warrior-occupier, a warrior who was sent by the government to an “unnecessary war"1. And the media, taking advantage of freedom of speech in the context of perestroika and glasnost, are making a sharp turn towards criticism of Afghan warriors.

It should be noted that it is propaganda in the form of informational impact that has a significant ideological load on the consciousness of people. Hundreds of thousands of people became victims of this kind of manipulative ideological propaganda, who to one degree or another suffered from the Afghan adventure of the “Kremlin elders". Now in the occupied territories of Donbass, a similar scenario is actually being repeated. The only difference is that the Russian Federation is already carrying out a large-scale ideological propaganda campaign.

According to F. Turchenko and G. Turchenko, "information war" with the use of "dirty" information technologies is an integral part of the military policy of the Russian Federation . One of the Kremlin's technologies is to brainwash people with television content. Each project has its own, clearly defined, target audience (groups of viewers of the corresponding age, gender, education, occupation) and the corresponding airtime. Topics for bringing up for general discussion will always be resonant, loud events or extreme situations, otherwise the audience will not be interested . And this trend has existed since the days of the Afghan war.

Now we are witnessing an unprecedented information and propaganda campaign at the international level using the full range of opportunities (television, press, Internet, information events, etc.) with the aim of forming among citizens of foreign states favorable for the Russian Federation ideas about the events around Ukraine and own image as a "savior", "peacemaker" and so on. In order to cover up various actions (the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the conflict in Donbass, the tragedy with the Malaysian airliner, etc.), Russian diplomats have often resorted and continue to resort to a shift in emphasis regarding the events in eastern Ukraine and shifting responsibility for them onto our state. Russian propaganda makes extensive use of any diplomatic opportunities and informational reasons for conveying their ideological messages and strengthening informational influences . And the origins of such a hybrid policy reach precisely the period of the Afghan war.

In general, hybridity provides for a large role of informational influences on the population, which are carried out at all levels of communication, influencing all aspects of the worldview. Also, one of the indicators of hybrid warfare is the use of asymmetric combat operations, which are characterized by a significant difference in military strength and strategies and tactics of the participating parties. This is the meaning of hybrid aggression.

Conclusions. It should be summed up that the Afghan war had signs of hybridity, primarily in terms of information and ideological propaganda impact on citizens, and especially on Soviet soldiers, warrant officers, officers and civilian employees, who were convinced that their main mission in Afghanistan was to build socialism.

For the Soviet participants in the Afghan war, according to the information coverage of the latter, perhaps the most outrageous was the fact that the mass media of the Soviet Union covered almost all the events of the latter as the actions of the government troops of Afghanistan. But the participation of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in this war was subject to an informational taboo. Also, the soldiers could not remember a single new kindergarten or school, which was often written about in Soviet newspapers.

Throughout the Afghan war, the leadership of the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces did not improve the material and logistical support of their servicemen. But the main attention was paid to agitation and propaganda. But for a rather short time (from the end of the 1980s - until the collapse of the USSR) the heroic image of the Soviet soldierinternationalist was discredited and tarnished even by the most false essence of the Soviet system. In fairness, it should be noted that at the beginning of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war, many former "Afghans" came to the defense of Ukraine, thus showing real patriotism and real devotion to their own Motherland.

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