Rating: 
Summary: Easy Read
Review: An easy read that points out both Soviet flaws and outstanding performances in their battle to overcome the guerillas of Afghanistan in the 1908s. Superbly translated from an official Russian document. One of the few Soviet documents accurately showing their fame and faults that ever made it out of the country. A MUST read if you care at all about what the Soviet military was involved in during the 1980s.
Rating:
Summary: Easy Read
Review: An easy read that points out both Soviet flaws and outstanding performances in their battle to overcome the guerillas of Afghanistan in the 1908s. Superbly translated from an official Russian document. One of the few Soviet documents accurately showing their fame and faults that ever made it out of the country. A MUST read if you care at all about what the Soviet military was involved in during the 1980s.
Rating: 
Summary: Tactically good but not so exciting
Review: Being in afghanistan I ordered a few books to learn where I was and this one was a great tacitcal book, I could overlfy some places this book talked about and point out areas well but as for the average reader, its black adn white, no cool photos and no real exciting stories. Its more of a pure military history of battle book.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrid!!!
Review: I believe this book originally started off as a Military paper, which got published and sold. Mr. Grau has done a 3 part series on the Afghan-Soviet war. This is part 1 in the series.
Like the other comments, very easy to read, and to the point. Goes over specific battles, what happened, and how it all broke down. The conclusions and commentary at the end of each battle are excellent. This book works great with the others in the series, esspecially "The Other side of the Mountain: Mujahidden Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War" - which does the same thing, but talks about the battles from a Mujahideen standpoint. The second book is almost impossible to find...... doesn't carry it. Lastly, there's a third book coming out called "Russian General Staff: The Soviet-Afghan War" which looks at the war from the general level - I guess overall strategy. Overall, excellent book on tactics. And easy enough to read that you don't need to be an officer in the military to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Very Nice Breakdown
Review: I believe this book originally started off as a Military paper, which got published and sold. Mr. Grau has done a 3 part series on the Afghan-Soviet war. This is part 1 in the series.
Like the other comments, very easy to read, and to the point. Goes over specific battles, what happened, and how it all broke down. The conclusions and commentary at the end of each battle are excellent. This book works great with the others in the series, esspecially "The Other side of the Mountain: Mujahidden Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War" - which does the same thing, but talks about the battles from a Mujahideen standpoint. The second book is almost impossible to find...... doesn't carry it. Lastly, there's a third book coming out called "Russian General Staff: The Soviet-Afghan War" which looks at the war from the general level - I guess overall strategy. Overall, excellent book on tactics. And easy enough to read that you don't need to be an officer in the military to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Death of a Thousand Cuts
Review: The Soviets experienced in Afghanistan the slow death of a thousand cuts. In his book, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", Lester Grau carefully examines some of those small cuts. The book consists of a number of short vignettes written principally by Soviet Platoon and Company Leaders. In these short narratives, these leaders describe their combat experiences in such realms as ambush, convoy escort and urban fighting. At the end of the story, there is the Frunze Military Academy analysis of the narrative in which the strengths and weaknesses of the action are analyized. The vignettes end with Lt. Col. Grau's analysis of the action. This book is not for someone looking for a general military history of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. It is a book about small unit tactics and about what works and what fails. I only hope that this valuable book and his other book, "The Other Side of the Mountain" is being ready by young American Platoon and Company leaders currently fighting in Afghanistan. I obtained both books through Amazon.com UK.
Rating:
Summary: Death of a Thousand Cuts
Review: The Soviets experienced in Afghanistan the slow death of a thousand cuts. In his book, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", Lester Grau carefully examines some of those small cuts. The book consists of a number of short vignettes written principally by Soviet Platoon and Company Leaders. In these short narratives, these leaders describe their combat experiences in such realms as ambush, convoy escort and urban fighting. At the end of the story, there is the Frunze Military Academy analysis of the narrative in which the strengths and weaknesses of the action are analyized. The vignettes end with Lt. Col. Grau's analysis of the action. This book is not for someone looking for a general military history of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. It is a book about small unit tactics and about what works and what fails. I only hope that this valuable book and his other book, "The Other Side of the Mountain" is being ready by young American Platoon and Company leaders currently fighting in Afghanistan. I obtained both books through Amazon.com UK.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Russian View of the War in Afghanistan
Review: This book is a series of vignettes by Russian officers at the Frunze Military Academy on their experiences in Afghanistan, ranging from attack, defense, raids and reconnaissance. Oddly, the Russians typically misused their reconnaissance units in a combat role. Most Soviet units were seriously undermanned - usually only about 30% strength. Lack of a real counterinsurgency doctrine was a serious handicap. The sketch maps are very good, despite use of Soviet symbology.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Russian View of the War in Afghanistan
Review: This book is a series of vignettes by Russian officers at the Frunze Military Academy on their experiences in Afghanistan, ranging from attack, defense, raids and reconnaissance. Oddly, the Russians typically misused their reconnaissance units in a combat role. Most Soviet units were seriously undermanned - usually only about 30% strength. Lack of a real counterinsurgency doctrine was a serious handicap. The sketch maps are very good, despite use of Soviet symbology.
Rating:
Summary: Horrid!!!
Review: This is not a slight on Mr Grau who I believe was only the translator of this Soviet era text; however, do not expect to learn much from this book. The translation is excellent, this book reads as if it was written in English. Unfortunately this is the only good thing I can say about this work. The idea that the original collection of these vignettes was done at the Frunze academy, the equivalent of one of the US Military's war colleges, goes far in helping to explain the pathetic performance of the Soviet military in Afganistan, Chechnya, and their other post WWII encounters. The vignettes are poorly written, only include one point of view, and lack almost every aspect of detail that would normally be required in this sort of work. Yet, based on a vague outline consisting of at most 150 words that describe a three day offensive action the original authors at the Frunze academy would make sweeping "lessons learned" comments on the importance of intelligence, or the coorindation of fire and maneuver. Of course, beyond making these couple of statements, nothing of practical value in the area of tactics, techniques or procedures are provided to the reader. The quality of these after action reviews are poor and they offer very little to learn from. For a comparison I would urge any reader to contact the US Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. The history department at the CGSC has produced numerous texts of the same type, but the quality is incomparably better. ...
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