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Afghanistan's relations with the erstwhile Soviet Union began to take a specific direction in the wake of the British departure from the Subcontinent and with the creation of Pakistan in consequence of the partition of the subcontinent. The new orientation in Soviet-Afghan relations was due to the United States' reluctance to play the role which the British had been playing before its exit from the Subcontinent. Most of the ruling elites of Afghanistan were more inclined to the United States and very early sought to develop a nexus with America. However, US preferred Pakistan over Afghanistan and continued the policy during Cold War. Secondly, Pakistan played a significant role in pushing Afghanistan towards the Soviet Union as it exploited the Pashtunistan issue to its advantage. The Soviet Union utilized American reluctance, and alienation between Pakistan and Afghanistan and enhanced its political and military influence in Afghanistan so much so that the Soviet inspired communists managed successfully to overthrow the government of President Daoud in April 1978. The entry of Soviet military in Afghanistanpaved the way for the involvement of US which made Afghanistan a battlefield for prolong wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, which is part of an ongoing monographic study of the Société Européenne de Culture, looks at the SEC's relationship with Europe's communist intelligentsia during the first phase of the Cold War. European intellectual life during this period is generally associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Yet the SEC, the membership of which included some of Europe's most eminent figures, ranging from Camus and Jaspers, to Adorno and Merleau-Ponty, to Lukács and Sartre, can be seen as having provided a reference point particularly for the European left, not least because of its unique openness to communist participation. Giving special attention to the Dialogue Est-Ouest (Venice, March 1956), one of the earliest encounters between Europe's eastern and western intellectuals since before the war, this essay considers how the SEC's engagement with contemporary Marxist theory there not only embedded the dialectic as the SEC's operational method. It also provided an early indication of that institution's imminent shift from a preoccupation with universal values to an awareness of cultural difference and diversity, as a result of the critique of current western liberal ideology and its cultures, undertaken by the SEC in light of the Thaw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]