Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

by Lester W. Grau

Release Date: March, 1996

Edition: Paperback

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Tactically good but not so exciting

Being in afghanistan I ordered a few books to learn where I was and this one was a great tacitcal book, I could overlfy some places this book talked about and point out areas well but as for the average reader, its black adn white, no cool photos and no real exciting stories. Its more of a pure military history of battle book.

Horrid!!!

This is not a slight on Mr Grau who I believe was only the translator of this Soviet era text; however, do not expect to learn much from this book.

The translation is excellent, this book reads as if it was written in English. Unfortunately this is the only good thing I can say about this work.

The idea that the original collection of these vignettes was done at the Frunze academy, the equivalent of one of the US Military's war colleges, goes far in helping to explain the pathetic performance of the Soviet military in Afganistan, Chechnya, and their other post WWII encounters. The vignettes are poorly written, only include one point of view, and lack almost every aspect of detail that would normally be required in this sort of work. Yet, based on a vague outline consisting of at most 150 words that describe a three day offensive action the original authors at the Frunze academy would make sweeping "lessons learned" comments on the importance of intelligence, or the coorindation of fire and maneuver. Of course, beyond making these couple of statements, nothing of practical value in the area of tactics, techniques or procedures are provided to the reader.

The quality of these after action reviews are poor and they offer very little to learn from. For a comparison I would urge any reader to contact the US Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. The history department at the CGSC has produced numerous texts of the same type, but the quality is incomparably better.

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