When NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, they abandoned the country to its fate. The USSR did something similar several decades earlier. Between 1979 and 1989, it intervened in Afghanistan with over 600,000 soldiers, but was unable to bring peace to it, which ultimately led to the withdrawal and overthrow of the government at the time. Around 15,000 USSR citizens lost their lives in the longest war in Soviet history. Based on self-conducted biographical interviews, the study examines how former Soviet veterans in Russia today remember the war, what importance they attach to it and how they as a group try to get recognition for their efforts from the Russian government and society.