By and large, very close to nothing has ever come out on this conflict, but the mere fact of Russia voluntarily giving away Central Asia speaks volumes. I believe part of the Russian incentive to fight in Afghanistan was to prevent more discontent from spreading into their Central Asian territory. Since the Russians abandoned communism in 1991, This is freed them to court the Islamicists.The first I heard about the ongoing war inside the USSR was from a classmate who interviewed a mercenary (this was circa 1974) who had fought uprisings in the employ of the Soviets. In retrospect, and assuming the account is true, I could see that as one of the precursors to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan after the establishment of the usual puppet state and mutual defense pacts and the usual nonsense.
"The Soviet Union fell in 1991, but Communism is just single party state dictatorship, which makes it identical to Nazism and Fascism (just the propaganda of what they say they are is different; what they do and how they operate is identical). Putin and company have never abandoned that."
In terms of level of evil and in terms of being hostile to the U. S. and being a threat to the U. S.---I agree that the current government of Russia is the same as the Communists.
Of course, Russia today does not really operate a communist system. They have a total dictatorship, true, with no real freedom, no freedom of the press, no independent judiciary, all of which is just like communism. They are hostile to the United States and practicing subversion throughout the world, just like the Communist government did.
However, they do not operate a system in which all economic processes are directly controlled by the government, as was the case under Soviet communism. Remember, private enterprise was completely illegal in the Soviet union during most of its existence. In maybe the last decade (the 1980s), I believe they legalized very small private enterprises, such a small restaurants.
Of course, the current system is not true capitalism, they have no transparency, they are practicing crony capitalism, their economy is dominated by large "trusts" that consist of large segments of the old government economy, sold off primarily to people who used to be high-ranking Communists, at ridiculously low prices. And having new real independent judiciary illuminates the possibility of fair competition or any real type of market, as we know it.
As bad as the system is, it actually works much better than communism did. This is not a testament to how well Russia is working now, but to how very badly it worked in the past.