The Candle of Memory campaign was held in Afghanistan

22 June 2020


The campaign "Candle of Memory" was held in the cemetery of Soviet citizens in Afghanistan,  a representative of Rossotrudnichestvo in Kabul, Vyacheslav Nekrasov said.


June 22, 1941 is one of the saddest dates in Russian history. On this day  the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) began, the liberation war of the Soviet peoples against Nazi Germany and its allies, which is the most important and decisive part of the Second World War (1939-1945). At dawn on this day in 1941, Nazi Germany without declaring war attacked the Soviet Union.


As Nekrasov reminded, the battles of the Second World War did not rumble in Afghanistan, but it became an arena of unprecedented struggle of special services. "On the one hand - Germany, Italy, Japan, on the other - the Soviet Union and Britain. This fight was invisible, but no less sophisticated and fierce. Fascists were preparing uprisings of Pashtun tribes, which would facilitate the planned passage of 17 divisions of the Wehrmacht to India after the capture of Stalingrad and the Caucasus," he said.


The battle ended in the victory of the special services and diplomatic representatives of the Soviet Union and Britain. German "geologists, builders, engineers, surveyors" were expelled from the country. "But there were also victims in this fight, and their names are still unknown," Nekrasov said.


According to him, in the southern part of Kabul on the Shir Darwaza Mountain above the famous Babur Garden there is a small burial site "Cabr-e-Shuravi" - a Soviet cemetery, where there are only 12 graves, most of them nameless, some of them still bear the inscription "Citizen of the Soviet Union". "And only on one monument there is a well readable full name - Anna Malkova, 9.05.1900 - 26.08.1933", said the representative of Rossotrudnichestvo. Some orientalists argue that it was she who played a significant role in the fight against the German security services and to prevent the assassination attempt on the King of Afghanistan Mohammed Zahir Shah by agents of Berlin. She later became the prototype of the main character in the movie "Mission in Kabul".


On the day of Memory and Sorrow representatives of Rossotrudnichestvo in Afghanistan, employees of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kabul, President of the Association of Afghan graduates of CIS countries came to worship her and other compatriots in "Cabr-e-Shuravi".


"As throughout Russia, on the graves of "citizens of the Soviet Union," who sacrificed their lives in the name of our great homeland, far beyond its borders, the "Candle of Memory" lit up,"  Nekrasov concluded.

 

GSV "Russia - Islamic World"

Photo: Alexander Ryumin / TASS

Based on materials from RIA Novosti