Soviet military translators Keywords:, Afghanistan. Мали Oleg Kuzmin, a student who had just graduated from the third to fourth year of the ISAA of Moscow State University, where he studied Dari and Pashto, was invited to Staraya Ploshchad in Moscow in the late summer of 1979. The instructor of the CPSU Central Committee announced the decision to send him to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan as an interpreter. What is your opinion on this issue?" The instructor asked me politely. "Of course, yes!" was the reply. How different could it be? After all, I was and still am an orientalist, at that time I was studying the languages of Afghanistan and dreamed of seeing this country. Together with me, five other fellow students from our language group were sent to different provinces of Afghanistan. I was going to work in Ghazni. A RUSSIAN SPEECH RANG OUT FROM THE ARMOR... In Kabul, where we arrived in early September, I was introduced to an adviser to whom I was "attached" as an interpreter. It was the second secretary of one of the district committees of a regional city in western Russia. The situation in the city was calm. Local residents received Soviet people - "Shuravi" - in a brotherly way. Soon we were sent from the capital to the city of Ghazni with a population of about 60-70 thousand people, about 120-140 km southwest of Kabul. The road leading to this provincial center from the capital is a serpentine road that stretches first through the mountains, then down into the valleys,and then back into the mountains. At the airport, we were put on board an old An - 2 along with a group of Afghan civilians and military personnel. It was on this "heavenly slow-moving vehicle" in the sky over Ghazni that I received, if I may say so, my baptism of fire. The plane was flying about five hundred meters above the road, using it as a reference point. Half an hour later, I saw through the porthole a column of military vehicles on the road below. The Afghan pilot looked out an ... Read more