Reply #376: Yup, the Marxist government of Afghanistan came into power in March 1978 [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I was living in Japan at the time, and the Japanese press reported it.

Back in the U.S. in December 1979, I was astonished to hear the official U.S. line that the Soviets had just up and "invaded" Afghanistan simply because they were nasty Soviets and that's what nasty Soviets do.

For the record, for all their faults, from the 1950s onward, the Soviet Union never sent troops into any country that didn't already have a Communist government.