Soviet War in Afghanistan in Popular Culture - Media and Popular Culture

Media and Popular Culture

• The Art of War project, dedicated to the soldiers of the recent wars, set up by the veterans of the Afghan war. Has Russian and English versions
• Afghan Girl is a portrait of an orphaned refugee during a bombing of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1984.
• "Blood Type" is a protest song by the Russian rock band Kino concerning the Afghan War.
• "Guns for the Afghan Rebels" is a song by the English Oi! punk band Angelic Upstarts from their 1981 "2,000,000 voices" album, concerning the Soviet-Afghan war.
• Rambo III was an action movie with Sylvester Stallone set within the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
• Spies Like Us A comedy about two totally incompetent applicants, Emmett Fitzhume (Chevy Chase) and Austin Millbarge (Dan Aykroyd), are chosen from a CIA recruitment program. They are parachuted into Pakistan and eventually end up in Afghanistan, chased by the Soviets, where they learn they are being used as decoys to draw out the Soviet defenses.
• The song Washington Bullets by The Clash has a heavy political content. The last verse of the song is a major assault on both the People's Republic of China's violent mass murder of pacifist Buddhist monks during the Cultural Revolution and the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan.
• The Beast is a movie released in 1988 about the crew of a Soviet T-55 tank and their attempts to escape a hostile region, set during the invasion of Afghanistan in 1981.
• Afghan Breakdown (Afganskiy Izlom), the first in-depth movie about the war, produced jointly by Italy and the Soviet Union, in full cooperation with the Red Army, in 1991.
• The 1987 James Bond movie The Living Daylights, with Timothy Dalton as Bond, was fictionally set in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
• The 9th Company, the biggest Russian box office success to date. Based upon true events (but largely fictionalized too), it details the 9th Company being left behind as the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and was slaughtered before the withdrawing Soviets came to the rescue. Some versions available with subtitles.
• The Road to Kabul ("الطريق الى كابول") Arabic television series explored Arab youth participation in the Afghan war.
• Afgan is a documentary by Jeff B. Harmon about the war in Afghanistan shot from the Soviet side.
• Jihad is a documentary by Jeff B. Harmon about the Mujahideen fighting in Kandahar province.
• Afghantsi is a documentary by Peter Kosminsky about Soviet soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
• Charlie Wilson's War, the 2007 movie about the real-life Congressman Charlie Wilson and his relentless efforts to increase CIA support for anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents. Tom Hanks plays the role of Congressman Wilson.
• The Kite Runner a multi-awarded film that showed the escape of a family to Pakistan during the start of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
• The Truth About 9th Company is a first Russian documentary computer game dedicated to the Battle for Hill 3234.
• Peshavarskiy Vals, the 1994 movie by Timur Bekmambetov about uprising of Soviet war captives in Badaber training camp occurred in 26 April 1985.
• The 2001 PlayStation game Syphon Filter 3 features several levels that are set in and around Kabul during the war, in 1987.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the character Nikolai compares the chaos taking place in the campaign mission "The Enemy of My Enemy" to the time he served with the Soviet military in Afghanistan.
• In Black Lagoon the fictional group Hotel Moscow is composed of veterans of the Soviet Afghanistan war lead by a VDV Captain nicknamed Balalaika.
• In the book Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, he describes his experiences fighting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 features a flashback mission in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, as a CIA SAD operative, Alex Mason supporting the mujahedin in Khost.