The Union: Legacy of an Unpopular War

The gloom of a hospital ward, an injured man contemplating his future, a young soldier’s face on a tombstone: all part of the aftermath of a war the Soviets started in 1979 and abandoned last February, when the last of Moscow’s troops rolled out of Afghanistan. The Kremlin’s misadventure not only cost the lives of some 15,000 Soviet soldiers and left 35,000 injured but also marked the first time the U.S.S.R. had ever been defeated in war. As illustrated by these photographs, mostly taken at a military hospital outside Moscow, the agony of Afghanistan goes on, especially for the luckless wounded, wearing their bandages like withered garlands of battle.