Soviet invasion of Afghistan during the early 1920s

Could the Soviets invade Afghanistan during or shortly after the Russian civil war and install a communist government similar to what happen to Mongolia

Would this lead to more British support for anti-Soviet rebels in Central Asia

Would this lead to more left wing Pakistani and Indian independence movements
 

destiple

Banned
afghan SSR
it will increase muslim fundamentalism in the subcontinent with full support of british
hell they might even carve out a much bigger and stronger pakistan to help serve as a bulwark against soviets
we might even see a Haji george more devout than a Haji Wilham
 
Aside from the issue of resources to do this, and dealing with the inevitable insurgency, I doubt the British in the 1920s would be supine over the Russian move in the "great game". India is still the jewel in the crown...
 
Could the Soviets invade Afghanistan during or shortly after the Russian civil war and install a communist government similar to what happen to Mongolia

The analogy does not really hold because Outer Mongolia had been a Russian sphere of influence before World War I, whereas Afghanistan had been a buffer state between British India and Russia. Hence, having driven out the White Russians from Mongolia, the Soviet government could in effect re-establish the protectorate without any real opposition from any powerful nation (China was too weak to do anything about it and Japan at the time satisfied with influence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia). By contrast, invading Afghanistan would invite a conflict with the British that the Soviets in the early 1920's could not afford. And the risks involved would be quite unnecessary, because Afghanistan under Aminullah Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanullah_Khan had fairly good relations with the Soviets, whom they tried to use to counteract British influence. Indeed, Afghan-Soviet relations under Amanullah were so good that when he was overthrown in 1928 the Soviets tried to restore him:

"The swift pace of Amanullah's reforms and efforts at modernizing Afghanistan, however, ultimately produced a revolt in November 1928 that drove him from power. In an inept effort to regain the throne for him, the Soviets sent 850 to 1,000 men into northern Afghanistan disguised as Afghans and under the nominal leadership of the Afghan ambassador. During April-June 1929 this force captured Mazar-i-Sharif and Tashkurghan and moved toward Kabul, but it was withdrawn in the face of international disapproval. In June 1930 the Soviets again sent a force into Afghanistan, this time in 'hot pursuit' of the Basmachi leader Ibrahim Beg. The resolution of this issue led to the signing of a second treaty, the Treaty of Neutrality and Nonaggression of 1931, between the Soviet Union and the government of the new Afghan king, Nadir Shah. Despite this new treaty, both Nadir Shah and Zahir Shah, the king who succeeded him in 1933, grew disenchanted with the Soviets and distanced Afghanistan from the USSR in the 1930s..." Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 47. http://books.google.com/books?id=6pbIziLpG7cC&pg=PA47

If in the face of "international disapproval"--even Persia and Turkey, sympathetic to Amanullah's reforms but also suspicious of Soviet ambitions, protested--the Soviets backed down in 1929 (when they weren't even trying to install a communist government) it is really hard for me to see them trying to communize Afghanistan in the early 1920's when the Soviets were much weaker than they would be in 1929, and the Afghan government more friendly.
 
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Britain would most likely intervene militarily, there's no way they'd allow a pro-Soviet communist state right next to India.
 
It should be noted that Bolshevik rule in the USSR was not entirely secure in the immediate years following the Civil War. In order to get production and commerce back Lenin had to authorize the NEP (New Economic Plan), of course after these neo-capitalists had gotten some sort of economy going again, well eggs and omelets. The kulaks were also being encouraged at this point to produce enough food to feed the country, it would be Stalin who scrambled there situation in the 30s. The point of this is invading Afghanistan is going to provoke a military response from the UK and won't bode well for the USSR. There could be a restart of insurgencies, both in Muslim areas and places like the Ukraine. By the mid-1920s the brief euphoria over worldwide or at least continental Europe wide revolution had faded and the official policy was becoming revolution/communism in one country. Invading a country that was even less "ready" for a proletarian revolution than Russia, which at least had a proletariat unlike Afghanistan is ideologically nuts as well as nuts on other levels.
 
Not to mention that the British Empire struggled greatly with their own invasions of Afghanistan; so I strongly doubt that Soviet Russia (which was still recovering from the aftermath of a bloody revolution / civil war) would be any more successful. At most, the Soviets could try to support some sort of communist proxy in Afghanistan, but a direct invasion would be disastrous for them.
 
How would the Soviet Union, a country reeling from one of modern history's most devastating civil wars (and the bloody nose it got facing off the Poles) successfully invade a country which even the British Empire couldn't hold down?

Besides that obvious point, there's the whole "why bother?" issue. Invading Afghanistan, something the Russian Empire never dared do, would tick off the Brits to a degree which the Soviets really couldn't afford in their weakened state.

it will increase muslim fundamentalism in the subcontinent with full support of british

How and why?

hell they might even carve out a much bigger and stronger pakistan to help serve as a bulwark against soviets

Attlee and Bevin were against partition. The governance of the Raj might have been based on the maxim of divide and rule, but Pakistan was not a British invention.
 
Besides that obvious point, there's the whole "why bother?" issue. Invading Afghanistan, something the Russian Empire never dared do, would tick off the Brits to a degree which the Soviets really couldn't afford in their weakened state.

Actually, it did occupy parts of what is now northern Afghanistan for a bit. However, that was before the Russo-Afghan border was finalised.
 
Doing so would have been a major challenge to the Soviets to say the least. The border region was still under the influence of nomadic tribes to some degree, and they only pacified when the Soviets excreted their influence in Eastern China in the late 20's/early 30's. Afghanistan could likely muster around 70-90,000 men in the regular army and have the support of another 120-200,000 tribesmen, bolstered by another six thousand from the northern border region. Afghanistan also had around 200 artillery pieces
25 10cm Krupp howitzers, 46 75mm Krupp mountain guns, 100 7 pounder cannons among what they managed to grab from the British.
 
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