The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

At that time, the staff of the International Department of the CPSU CentralCommittee had little time to console members of the Afghan opposition. In the USSR,preparations for the first state visit of the head of the Afghan state, general secretary of theCentral Committee of the PDPA, chairman of the Revolutionary Council, prime minister ofthe Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Nur Mohammad Taraki, were underway.On November 27, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kozyrev invited the DRA’sambassador to the Soviet Union to a meeting to discuss details of the forthcoming visit withhim. Raz Mohammad Paktin, until recently an anchor of Kabul Radio, had become theambassador in the summer. He asked his Soviet comrades to allocate a personal tutor tohim who would educate him in social sciences and international relations to “acquire theexperience in political work that I lack.” Paktin assured them that he, along with otherAfghans studying in the Soviet Union at the time, would be a dedicated student of Marxism-Leninism. He assured his Soviet colleagues that from now on, all Afghan students studyingin the Soviet Union would return to their motherland as communists.On the eve of Taraki’s visit, Paktin confirmed the Afghan side’s readiness to sign theTreaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborliness and Cooperation, as well as the agreement onestablishing the permanent Soviet-Afghan Commission for Economic Cooperation, and thedraft of the Joint Communiqué about Taraki’s visit in Moscow. Deputy Minister Kozyrevexpressed his wish that the Soviet side provide the guest with an opportunity to speak onSoviet television, and to receive a complementary medical examination in one of the clinicsof the Fourth Directorate of the Ministry of Health, which was in charge of the health of theSoviet nomenklatura.251