The Soviet–Afghan War had an important impact in popular culture in the West, due to its scope, and the great number of countries involved. The Russian-Ukrainian film The 9th Company,[1] for example, became a blockbuster in the former USSR earning millions of dollars and also representing a new trend in Russia in which some domestic films are "drawing Russian audiences away from Hollywood staples."[2] The use of the war in Russian cinema has attracted scholarly attention as well.[3] Some of this attention focuses on comparisons of the conflict with other modern wars in Vietnam and Iraq.[4] Other work focuses on the war and fictional accounts of it in the context of Soviet military culture.[5] Even when not directly portrayed, service in the war is sometimes used as a backstory for Russian characters to explain their combat prowess, such as in the manga and anime series Black Lagoon.
"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 (1988) was an action movie with Sylvester Stallone set within the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It earned over $100 million internationally and originally ended with the statement that "This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan."[6]
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 heavy political content. The last verse of the song comments 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 9th Company, the biggest Russian box office success to date.[7] 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.[8] 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.
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 Japanese manga series Black Lagoon, the fictional Russian mafia group Hotel Moscow is composed of veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, led by former Soviet Airborne Troops Captain nicknamed Balalaika.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 features a flashback mission set in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which saw three CIA-SAD operatives, Alex Mason, Frank Woods and Jason Hudson alongside Chinese intelligence operative Tian Zhao supporting the Mujahideen in a black operations in Khost Province.
^Elena Shulman, "Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914-2005 (review)," The Journal of Military History 71.3 (July 2007): 967-968. The article discusses how "The book begins with a discussion of films set in the context of World War I, the Russian Civil War, World War II, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan..."
^"A Glimpse into Soviet Military Culture" - "Review of The Military Uses of Literature: Fiction and the Armed Forces in the Soviet Union by Mark D. Van Ells on H-War (August, 1996).
