HISTORY 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Gerontocracy, Al-Qaeda, Mikhail Gorbachev
Document Summary
Communist coup: soviet train officers make a coup and take over the country, 1978 communism from the top (mostly military, communist, khalq. Tajiks: nur muhammad taraki becomes president, announces land reform. Land was owned by a few big land lords: wants to break up the estates and distribute land to the people, women"s rights. Rural people weren"t in favor: assassinated 1978. Amin (khalq: assasinated taraki, part of the khaq, brezhnev distrusts him bc he thinks amin sympathizes with moa too much. B sends in troops on christmas in 1978 because he knew wester military was on vacation: did(cid:374)"t wa(cid:374)t afgha(cid:374)ista(cid:374) (cid:272)oup to fail (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause. People living in it were muslim, wanted to convert them to atheism. If the coup fails, religion would take hold in afghanistan and reignite religion in other central asian countries who had been converted to atheism: amin was assasinated by soviets.
