"Approximately 2,500 documents, compiled and indexed by the National Security Archive of the Fund for Peace, Inc., arranged in chronological order. Includes copies of cables, situation reports, confidential memoranda, briefing papers, airgrams, and foreign press reports. Quality of reproduced material varies, and because many documents were previously classified, sections or pages are sometimes obliterated"--The Library of Congress Guide to the Microform Collections in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, online version.

This is a collective volume on Soviet-American relations with the three rimland states of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The contributors argue that what happens in these three states would ultimately affect the states in the Gulf and the Middle East. The USA maintains friendly relations only with Pakistan, while her relations with Iran and Afghanistan are antagonistic. The future penetration of the Soviet influence in Iran and Afghanistan is assessed and probable scenarios are discussed by the seventeen contributors, who represent the military, diplomacy and academia. The concluding chapter synthesizes the discussions and the criticism of various papers. The book is the most up-to-date thorough analysis of superpower relations with the three neighbouring states of the Soviet Union currently available.

February issue includes Appendix entitled Directory of United States Government periodicals and subscription publications; September issue includes List of depository libraries; June and December issues include semiannual index

After awakening from its long communist slumber, Russia in the 1990s was a place where everything and everyone was for sale, and fortunes could be made and lost overnight. Into this free-market maelstrom stepped rookie Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Brzezinski, who was immediately pulled into the mad world of Russian capitalism -- where corrupt bankers and fast-talking American carpetbaggers presided over the biggest boom and bust in financial history. Brzezinski's adventures take him from the solid-gold bathroom fixtures of Moscow's elite, to the last stop on the Trans-Siberian railway, where poverty-stricken citizens must buy water by the pail from the local crime lord, and back to civilization, to stumble into a drunken birthday bash for an ultra-nationalist politico. It's an irreverent, lurid, and hilarious account of one man's tumultuous trek through a capitalist market gone haywire -- and a nation whose uncertain future is marked by boundless hope and foreboding despair.

The Fateful Pebble explores the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as a catalyst that helped trigger the first extraordinary political event of the 20th century, the self-generated collapse of the Soviet empire. At the dawn of the 1980s decade, the Soviet military machine seemed invincible and Moscow's expansionist designs unswervable. Intermediate-range SS-20 missiles were intimidating Western Europe, the Soviet ICBM force was at least the equal of America's, and, with the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979, the Kremlin showed its willingness to project its power directly into a neighboring nonaligned country. But nearly ten years later, the last Soviet army regular units withdrew into Central Asia without ever having conquered the elusive Afghan resistance fighters who had spontaneously risen up against them. Less than three years after that retreat, the Soviet Union itself had ceased to exist. The early chapters provide unique perceptions of Russian and Afghan psychology, a historical view of how military defeat had led to earlier Russian domestic upheavals, and a description of how the Communist Party apparat, the Soviet military establishment, and the KGB had successfully defended Moscow's empire in the past. The details of the consecutive failure of each of these institutions to solve Moscow's "Afghanistan problem" show how the authority of each was seriously undermined at home and abroad. Each, as it lost its prestige with the public and its own middle-grade officers. Internally splintered, no longer mutually supportive, and resting on an eroding foundation of war-weakened public confidence, eventually the three institutions collapsed, together with the regime they supported.The book illustrates how the KGB in particular suffered defeat because it came to believe its own disinformation. In the end, the implosion of the vast false-front "Potemkin village" that had been the Soviet Union can be ascribed in large part to the cruel truths of the Afghan war.

The story of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is well known: the expansionist Communists overwhelmed a poor country as a means of reaching a warm-water port on the Persian Gulf. Afghan mujahideen upset their plans, holding on with little more than natural fighting skills, until CIA agents came to the rescue with American arms. Humiliated in battle, the Soviets hastily retreated. It is a great story-but it never happened. In this brilliant, myth-busting account, Rodric Braithwaite, the former British ambassador to Moscow, challenges much of what we know about the Soviets in Afghanistan. He provides an inside look at this little-understood episode, using first-hand accounts and piercing analysis to show the war as it was fought and experienced by the Russians. The invasion was a defensive response to a chaotic situation in the Soviets' immediate neighbor. They intended to establish a stable, friendly government, secure the major towns, and train the police and armed forces before making a rapid exit. But the mission escalated, as did casualties. Braithwaite does not paint the occupation as a Russian triumph. To the contrary, he illustrates the searing effect of the brutal conflict on soldiers, their families, and the broader public, as returning veterans struggled to regain their footing back home. Now available in paperback, Braithwaite carries readers through these complex and momentous events, capturing those violent and tragic days as no one has done before.