HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 50

Vladimir DAL earlier in the century and supple-
mented them with tales from popular chapbooks
and from the collection of the Russian Geo-
graphical Society. His reputation rests on two
highly acclaimed works. Russian Folk Tales was a
monumental and comprehensive collection of
diverse material ranging from animal tales to
longer tales of fantastic heroes, which he worked
on for 15 years. The second, Russian Folk Legends,
was banned by the censor on the insistence of
the clergy. Initially published in London in 1860,
it came out in Russia only in 1914. A third work,
Frivolous Tales, a bibliographical rarity including
tales that satirized priests and nobles, was also
banned and published in Russian only in Geneva.
Afanasiev was active in other fields, writing for
progressive journals, publishing a multivolume
work on Slavic views of nature, as well as other
works on Russian satirical periodicals, folklore,
and literature.

After World War I, the Russian Revolution tem-
porarily dampened Russia's interest in the region,
while in 1921 Afghanistan regained control of its
foreign affairs as a result of the Third Afghan War.
In the 1950s the Soviet Union again began to
display interest in Afghanistan, in the context of
the cold war and as part of its broader involve-
ment in the Third World. In 1955, Prince
Mohammad Daoud, prime minister of Afghani-
stan, turned to the Soviet Union for military aid,
after his request to buy military equipment was
turned down by the United States. A period of
close relations between Afghanistan and the
Soviet Union began in 1956. In 1965, the Afghan
Communist Party was secretly formed, later gain-
ing representation in the national parliament
during the first nationwide elections held in
Afghanistan. In 1973, Daoud, who had been
removed as prime minister in 1964, overthrew
King Zahir Shah in a military coup with the sup-
port of the Afghan Communist Party. He abol-
ished the monarchy and declared himself
president of the new Republic of Afghanistan.
Five years later in 1978 the Afghan Communist
Party, led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, seized
power in a bloody coup in which Daoud was
killed, and which was followed by a campaign of
mass arrests. A guerrilla resistance movement,
known as the Mujahideen, quickly took shape in
the countryside. Later that year Afghanistan
signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet
Union.
On December 24, 1979, with growing resis-
tance to the Afghan Communists and with the
Communists themselves in a virtual civil war,
the Soviet Union took the fateful decision of
intervening directly in Afghan politics by invad-
ing the country. The Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan marked a crucial turning point in the
diplomatic history of the cold war as well as in
Soviet domestic politics. In foreign policy it trig-
gered a new round of tensions with the West,
after the détente of the 1970s, leading directly to
a U.S.-led grain embargo of the Soviet Union
and a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in
MOSCOW . The Soviet Union's inability to defeat

Afghanistan
Russia's initial involvement in Afghanistan in the
19th century was colored by the larger rivalry
with Great Britain known as “The Great Game.”
While seeking to counter growing Russian influ-
ence in the region and increase their own, the
British fought three mostly unsuccessful wars
with the Afghan rulers (1839-42, 1878-80,
1921). On the other hand, Russia first established
a fixed boundary between Afghanistan and its
newly conquered territories around BUKHARA ,
Tashkent, and SAMARKAND , and promised to
respect Afghanistan's territorial integrity in 1873.
In 1885, however, Russian forces seized the Pan-
jdeh Oasis, a piece of Afghan territory north of
the Oxus River. After some fighting the Russians
retained Pandjeh and promised once again to
respect Afghanistan's territorial integrity. Ten
years later, the northern border between Afghan-
istan and Russia was fixed through diplomatic
negotiations. In 1907, as relations between Great
Britain and Russia improved, both sides signed
the Convention of St. Petersburg declaring
Afghanistan outside Russia's sphere of influence.