Published by Cornell University Press, A Slow Reckoning examines the Soviet Union's and the Afghan communists' views of and policies toward Islam and Islamism during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989).
As Vassily Klimentov demonstrates, the Soviet and communist Afghan disregard for Islam was telling of the overall communist approach to reforming Afghanistan and helps explain the failure of their modernisation project. The book also discusses the Soviet attitudes toward Islamism in the late 1980s as Arab ‘foreign fighters’ joined the Mujahideen in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Drawing on his book's findings, Vassily Klimentov will also discuss how the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is important, to understand both the US failure in Afghanistan in the 2000s, and today’s decision-making in the Kremlin that led to the invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker:
Vassily Klimentov is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Zurich and a Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at the EUI’s Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Vassily Klimentov’s articles have appeared in multiple peer-reviewed journals and he regularly comments on the war in Ukraine for the Swiss television. He has previously worked as a security analyst in the Middle East for international NGOs.
Discussant:
Olivier Roy is a Professor at the EUI’s Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. He is a world-renown expert on Afghanistan and Islamism, Olivier Roy has published multiples books and peer-reviewed articles in English and French. His last book L'Aplatissement du monde. La crise de la culture et l'empire des normes was published by Seuil in 2022.