About the book: 2012 / Time passes, and what yesterday was considered a great state secret ceases to be so. The secret becomes common property and helps to understand the logic of both heroic and tragic events in the history of our Motherland. The Afghan epic, at first glance, is no longer something secret, a taboo topic that is best not touched upon. But none of the recent publications contain a clear, unambiguous answer to the question: to whom do we owe “Afghan”? The Old Square hid its true goals in Afghanistan as quickly as possible. Even when making the decision to send troops on December 12, 1979, she did not dare to give an unambiguous explanation in the name of why the Soviet army was invading the territory of a state friendly to us. Reconstruction of the events of 1979 makes it possible not only to trace from beginning to end the entire process of “maturation” of the final decision to send a “Limited contingent of Soviet troops” to Afghanistan, but also to observe how Old Square, the supreme authority in the Soviet Union that was not accountable to anyone, behaved. The book is published in the author’s edition.