The Soviet-Afghan War and Retro-Nostalgia

In recent years, internet-based aesthetic movements have gained popularity, largely focusing on evoking feelings of nostalgia. These movements often manifest through the pairing of music with archival footage and are characterized by several distinct traits. Common elements include warped, out-of-tune, or slowed soundscapes combined with grainy, skippy, VHS-style visuals; the desired effect being to foster a deep emotional connection to a specific era and the people who lived through it. One particularly striking example of this phenomenon is the aesthetic movement surrounding the Soviet-Afghan War.

Spanning from 1979 to 1989, The Soviet-Afghan War is a conflict that is largely forgotten today. In fact, the Soviet Union itself no longer exists. This conflict had catastrophic consequences for the USSR and is often credited with contributing to its eventual collapse. Today, those Russians who do remember the war look back on it with shame and consequentially those who lived through it, their stories and their memory, are largely relegated to the dust bin of history. Thus, the Soviet-Afghan War is a platform through which we can immerse ourselves into the spectral dreamscape of a bygone era.

Footage of the era has a very distinct quality and by proxy contributes greatly towards defining the aesthetic. The 80’s were a particularly transient period for camera technology as film was being phased out, but digital technology had not yet matured. Therefore, footage of the era is quite uniquely fuzzy and packed with artifacts and scan lines. Thus, the images flicker and bleed, imbued with unintentional artistry.

Sound plays an equally crucial role in this aesthetic. Modern reinterpretations often pair archival footage with somber, distorted music, melancholic synths, fractured beats, or slowed-down folk songs. One notable example is a YouTube video titled Kabul ’89, which overlays ethereal footage of a helicopter flight with a slowed down version of Resonance by Home, a vaporwave piece deliberately crafted to evoke nostalgia through the distortion of familiar pop chord progressions. This pairing of sound and imagery amplifies the emotional weight of the footage, transforming it into more than a historical artifact. It becomes a meditation on loss, memory, and the passage of time.

The visuals themselves are equally evocative: grainy horizons blurred by dust and heat, great beast-like helicopters suspended in amber skies, their passengers staring longingly into the distance. Muted browns of desert dust, tattered pale military fatigues, and the faded blues of obsolete Soviet insignia blend to create a hazy dream-like feeling. You can’t help but feel nostalgia. You don’t know why but you feel drawn there; not for the war, the politics, or even the history, but for that singular moment in time, suspended between stillness and motion, as though it holds a fragment of something lost yet achingly familiar.

At its core, the Soviet-Afghan War aesthetic is about loss: the loss of life, of ideals, of a nation that no longer exists. It is a requiem for an empire that overreached and collapsed under its own weight, a visual and emotional archaeology of a forgotten war.

3 Comments. Leave new

  • I really appreciate this aesthetic, Robert. There’s something hauntingly poetic about how the remnants of a bygone conflict can still resonate so deeply with a modern audience. In a similar way, I find the aesthetics of World War I, the Cultural Revolution, and other periods tied to Soviet history equally compelling. Maybe it’s my fascination with machinery and the ingenuity of past engineers, but the mobilization of mass forces—whether for better or worse—says a great deal about a society’s identity. My own family traces its lineage to the Hun and Mongol hordes, and while I don’t condone the destruction they left in their wake, it’s fascinating to consider how those legacies continue to shape the world today. This aesthetic, however, captures a much more immediate historical moment, and I really appreciate the way you’ve identified the key elements that define it. Funny question, but imagine any other aesthetic depicting this time in history, what could that look like? Further, are there any historical periods or conflicts whose aesthetics you find particularly compelling or emotionally resonant?

  • Jules Fischer-White
    January 27, 2025 4:25 pm

    What an interesting aesthetic! I had very little prior history of this war and yet I still felt the nostalgic feeling that you talk about in this post. I think part of that comes from the way the camera-person focuses a lot on people’s faces and on human details, like decoration on the inside of a tank, which evokes the feeling that these soldiers, even though they’re from a different time and place, are much like us.
    I think part of the draw of this aesthetic also comes from glorifying war, especially in this bygone age of machinery, before modern electronic warfare. There was a point in the Kabu | ’89 video where the helicopters flares were going off in sync with the beat that feels really cool, and therefore kind of pro-war. What artistic era do you think this aesthetic belongs to? Is it postmodern, since the art is intertwined with the meaning and history of this era/war?

    • Robert Forstbauer
      January 28, 2025 10:38 pm

      Hi Jules,
      I really appreciate your interest in this aesthetic. I completely agree that the camera’s focus on faces and human details plays a significant role in entrancing us into the scene. It’s those fleeting, personal moments like the soldier playing music inside the tank or looking out a passenger window that form this strong human connection, despite being from a different time and place. When I watch Kabul ’89, I always find myself drawn to the person staring out of the helicopter window. I can’t help but wonder about his story, what he might have been thinking, and what became of him. These moments of reflection are what I hope viewers take away from this kind of work.
      To address your second point, I must respectfully push back on the idea that this aesthetic glorifies war, as that was not my intent. If anything, I believe the aesthetic focuses on the tragic and deeply human cost of conflict and the fleeting transience of the conscious experience. For instance, three of the videos I’ve posted feature Russian folk songs from the war, and the lyrics are utterly heartbreaking. One song tells the story of a man pleading with his sister not to tell their mother he’s been sent to war, fearing the grief it would cause her. Another opens with a spetsnaz soldier expressing his confusion about the necessity of any war, lamenting that their presence in Afghanistan was a mistake. These are not glorifications of war, rather they are meditations on its futility and the shared humanity of those caught in its machinery. Ultimately what I am trying to convey is that there is no singularly definable good or evil; most people act in ways they believe are right. The ability to put oneself in another’s shoes is a vital step toward recognizing one’s own flawed thinking.
      As for the artistic era this aesthetic belongs to, I’d lean toward classifying it as postmodern. The reason lies in how the art recontextualizes archival footage, music, and memory to create meaning. It isn’t just about history; it’s about how we interact with that history emotionally and intellectually. By layering nostalgic visuals with haunting soundscapes, this aesthetic forces us to engage with the past in a deeply personal way. It blurs the lines between art and history, between nostalgia and critique, which I think is quintessentially postmodern.

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