What is less well known is that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was actually only half fought.
At that time, there was a very highly called strategic plan among the military top brass: after the rapid collapse of the regime of Afizora Amin, the Soviet army should continue to move south, directly to the shores of the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. In this way, the Soviet army running through the north and south could suppress the remnants of the Afghan resistance from many directions, and the Soviets gained an extremely valuable outlet to the sea. With the support of the extremely strong national strength at that time, this plan was obviously feasible, and a group of senior generals represented by the old marshal Trikov were very supportive of it. However, Brezhnev, who was very happy in his daily life, instigated at the crucial moment, and the situation became the way we are familiar with it.
The defeat of the strategic stratum of the Afghan campaign directly turned the Soviet Union from prosperity to decline, and perhaps the most lost in the process was Marshal Akhromeyev, the architect of the original plan.
It is not easy to bring down the old opponents, and the Western countries naturally want to single-handedly fall into the well and criticize those "big figures" who held the great power of the Soviet Union in the past. In this process, Akhromeyev was one of the few high-level Soviet figures who were not affected, but were given a very high evaluation by the other side. He is called a pure soldier and a true patriot, so what is the concept of "true patriotism"? Let's start at the beginning.
Most of the exploits of Soviet generals were established in the Great Patriotic War, but until the end of World War II, Akhromeyev only served as a battalion commander in a tank regiment. This is not because his military talent is too mediocre, but because his "pursuit" is too simple.
Akhromeyev did not start slowly, and in the Battle of Leningrad in September 1942, he became a company commander at the age of 19. However, he has a very classical warrior spirit in his bones, believing that the duty of a soldier is to defend his family and defend the country, and as long as the motherland needs it, his only responsibility is to pick up the gun and rush to the most dangerous place. Therefore, the 19-year-old Ahromeyev resolutely applied to join the party and asked his superiors to transfer him to the post of political commissar.
It is worth mentioning that the duties of the political commissar of the Soviet army are probably not the same as those of many friends, especially in World War II, whenever the troops encountered resistance to the offensive and the morale was hit, the political commissar immediately transformed into a "death squad" and took the lead in rushing to the enemy position with a banner. The soviet political commissar behaved very "Spartan", believing that in a war, only advance was allowed and not retreat. They often ignored the orders of their superiors to "strategically retreat" and demanded that officers and men fight to the death, but sometimes they hurt the overall deployment of the top level. All in all, it was impossible to be the commissar of the Soviet army without courage, and the death rate of this group was so terrible that the high command had to be specifically ordered to be stripped from the position of commissar, and at the same time to restrict them from sending heads.
War is the stage for soldiers, and the end of the war means that many soldiers are about to face "unemployment". Fortunately, Akhromeyev was well-behaved after the war, he first entered the military academy of the armored mechanized unit to receive systematic theoretical education, and the upper echelons found potential in him and sent him to the General Staff Military Academy for further study. In the following twenty or thirty years, Akhromeyev's position rose not quickly or slowly, and his rank was "as usual" 5 years and one liter. By the mid-1970s, Akhromeyev had attained the rank of General of the Soviet Army, and with the status of "Veteran of the Great Patriotic War", he had established considerable authority among the soviet military top brass.
Of course, Ahromeyev did not just rely on mixing, and in an important position, he did not change his true colors, but was committed to transforming the Soviet troops with his spirit of "disobedience and doing it". For example, at the end of 1965, having just been transferred to the Volga Military District as commander, he immediately ordered the use of a large number of the latest weapons in the armed forces, and also tailored a new set of tactics for this purpose. Akhromeyev was appreciated by The Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Olgakov, and after being promoted to the position of First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces in April 1968, Akhromeyev immediately formed the General Directorate of Strategic Deception of the USSR. Under his manipulation, the Soviets sometimes desperately advocated the power of some kind of new equipment, while carefully hiding the real ace of the edge. With the incomparable tacit cooperation between him and his superiors, the real strength of the Soviet army in the eyes of the Western countries became virtual and real, and it was difficult to distinguish between true and false, and even the KGB could not figure out which of the words said by the army was true. As a result, one can only say helplessly: the enemy can only see what Olgakov wants them to see.
There is no doubt that Akhromeyev was a complete hawk in the Soviet army, but he was not a reckless man.
In 1977, Akhromeyev was promoted to chief of the general staff and also served as first deputy minister of defense, but at this time he was at odds with his superiors on a number of issues. Perhaps even Olgakov did not expect that the right-hand man who had done what he could do would actually vote against the invasion of Afghanistan. Akhromeyev is not instigating, believing that a limited war will not solve the problem, but will make it more serious. At the high-level meeting, neither of them could convince the other, and Olgakov angrily said harshly: "It's not your turn to teach us a lesson!" As a result, the top brass did not fully consider Akhromeyev's proposal, launched an inappropriate war at an inappropriate time, and did not fight the battle to the end with a single blow, and finally ended up in an embarrassing dilemma.
The war in Afghanistan tarnished the Soviets, but Akhromeyev found the field in his own way. In September 1981, the Soviet Army used hundreds of thousands of combat units, tens of thousands of armored units and four main fleets to concoct the largest "Western-81" military exercise in human history. This move directly caused panic in the Western world, and some people added fuel to the fire: on the surface, the Soviet army is exercising, but in fact, it is not live broadcast how to flatten Western Europe? U.S. experts believe that the Soviets have the strength to end the operation against NATO within a week, and even if nuclear weapons are used, the U.S. military can only delay the actions of the Soviet army. The U.S. military top brass also said: "Maybe when our troops are just halfway through, the war in Western Europe will be over, and the Russians will stand on the shores of the Atlantic And wait for us." ”
Gorbachev's tough stance of reform from the very beginning of his presidency is clearly something to look forward to for Akhromeyev, who cares about his country. However, the latter did not expect that the young supreme leader would be more aggressive. In the disappointment, the gap between the two suddenly deepened.
Goethe harshly criticized the Soviet Union's "politics of the elderly", and incidentally negated some of the policies of the 70s. He believed that the country's prosperity in that era was simply maintained by military power, and the tanks that were desperately built at that time were useless, and it was simply exhaustive. When Ahromeyev heard this, he was on fire and said on the spot: "Do you want to let my soldiers go to the battlefield empty-handed after the next war breaks out?" Later, Gorbachev's experts turned to attacking the Navy, claiming that the Soviet Army was seriously corrupt, especially the Navy. Ahromeyev once again fought back: the villas of the 160 admirals of the Navy were rented by the state, and the rent was not much to pay. In contrast, these so-called "experts" raised by the government all day long, casually slandering others without sufficient evidence, eating vegetarian food, not contributing to the country in the slightest, but keen on provoking incidents, with the suspicion of provoking internal divisions, these people are the real scum.
Akhromeyev's criterion for dividing "enemies" and "comrades-in-arms" is rather simple, and he proposes that anyone who acts of harm to the Soviet Union, no matter who he is or what his status is, is an enemy of the Soviet Union; and as long as it is an enemy, it must be ruthlessly destroyed, even the president of the Soviet Union. Therefore, in the subsequent "August 19 coup", Akhromeyev was very opposed to Yazov's principle of "not shooting his own people". He always insisted that the army should be used directly to eliminate Yeltsin and his supporters, because the latter were no longer "their own people", they were enemies trying to split the motherland. However, as the rulers indecisively ruined the situation in vain, Akhromeyev finally realized that the gang was cowardly at heart, and that they did not dare to take responsibility, let alone save the country.
In the early morning of August 22, 1991, Gorbachev, who had escaped the disaster, landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport by special plane. When the hatch opened, he saw the crowd spontaneously gathered at the airport and couldn't help but sigh: "I seem to have come to another country." In fact, most of these people hoped that the Soviet president could do something to help the country tide over the difficulties, but Gorbachev was only happy that he was not dead, and did not even think about how to regain control of the situation. Just as Gorbachev was sitting in his office again like nobody else to issue documents, disheartened Sergei Fedorovich Akhromeyev put on his marshal's uniform and wore a medal and committed suicide by raising a gun in his office.
Akhromeyev never gave Americans a good look, and once an American reporter asked him how many spies the Soviet Union had planted in the Pentagon. He replied lightly: Not too much, as many as there are in the Pentagon. However, judging from the evaluation alone, it seems that the Western countries are more sad than the Soviets about the fall of the Soviet marshal. Akhromeyev's "purity" lies in the fact that he has devoted his life entirely to the country, and in contrast, a great soldier like Zhukov also made some "deals" to consolidate his position of power after the war, but Akhromeyev never thought so. He only did his duty well, distinguished between "comrades-in-arms" and "enemies" for the country, and waged unremitting struggle against the enemies. He lives for his conviction, which is the Soviet. By contrast, politicians such as Yazov, cloaked in "military" clothing, not only survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even tried to deny their own faults.
In the last days of the Soviet Union, when Yeltsin and his allies were attacking the soviet political arena in an unstoppable position, at one meeting, Akhromeyev seriously said to the other side: "You are too rash with our constitution, perhaps for you socialism is just a slogan, but to me it is the life and struggle of the people of the whole country for decades." ”