The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2005 Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS. 2005. Softcover/Trade Wraps. Stated 10th Anniversary Edition. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Near Fine; scant edge bumping; small nick at head. No DJ. Pictorial card stock wraps. Wraps are not bent or folded; spine is not creased or split; text is secure in binding. 221 pp 8vo. Bear Went Over the Mountain is really not a single book; it is a compilation of forty-odd short vignettes of Soviet combat actions from their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The accounts were taken and translated from a volume printed by the Frunze Combined Arms Academy in Moscow. They were originally compiled for the use of Soviet military students and not for general publication – and so they make light of both the successes and mistakes of the commanders involved, to which the author (an infantry officer, Vietnam vet, and Soviet analyst for the Foreign Military Studies Office) has added his own commentary. Ironically, the book was nearly not published in 1996, when the National Defense University pulled its funding just prior to publication on the grounds that the US would never again be fighting a counter-insurgency. A clean very presentable copy.