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Russian General Staff. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost. Edited by Lester W. Grau, translated by Michael A. Gress. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2002. 364pp. $45
This book, edited by Lester Grau of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is the last of a trilogy that covers the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-89. His translator, Michael Gress, served in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Volume 1, The Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, was an early translation of original Russian documents prepared by student-officers-who had direct combat experience in Afghanistan-at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. It was first published in Russian in 1991, then republished in English in 1996 by the National Defense University. For the second volume, The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahedeen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (1996, U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Va.), Grau had the valuable assistance of Ali Jalali, a former colonel in the Afghan army.
The third volume was written by a team of Russian military academicians led by Colonel Professor Valentin Runov, with contributions from officers who had served during the war....