A Fractured Brotherhood: Soviet-Afghan War Veterans in the Post-Soviet World

Webinar
A Fractured Brotherhood: Soviet-Afghan War Veterans in the Post-Soviet WorldProf. Markus Göransson, Department of Military Studies, Swedish Defense University

14 de Abril, quarta-feira, 15h00-17h00

Entrar na reunião Zoom
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/86134252343
ID da reunião: 861 3425 2343

 Scattered far and wide across the countries of the former Soviet Union, Soviet-Afghan War veterans form an important transnational collective in the post-Soviet space. United by a common set of experiences, a generational bond and a shared exposure to discourses about what it means to be a Soviet war veteran, former servicemen of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-1989) have continued to maintain a strong collective identity as veterans more than three decades after the end of the Soviet intervention. Yet, as the post-Soviet space continues to fragment, that collective identity sits increasingly uneasily with the reality of post-Soviet nation-building, as many veterans find themselves caught between a need to demonstrate allegiance to their independent states and maintaining close ties with the transnational veterans’ community in a context of growing international tensions in the post-Soviet space. This presentation seeks to situate the transnational Soviet-Afghan War veterans’ community historically while also outlining a project for researching it in a context of growing fragmentation of the post-Soviet space.  

Biografia: Markus Balázs Göransson is an assistant professor in war studies at the Swedish Defense University. He holds a PhD in international politics from Aberystwyth University where he defended a thesis in 2016 about Soviet-Afghan War veterans in Tajikistan and their emergence as a political collective in the late Soviet period. His research covers Soviet-Afghan War veterans in the post-Soviet space as well as Soviet and Russian warfare and military theorizing.