Говорите ли вы по-русски? If you don't feel comfortable working with non-English language sources, that's fine too, but the English-language writing on the topic is honestly pretty thin. Hell, the accessible Russian-language writing on it is still sort of limited. There are relatively few Soviet training manuals floating around, particularly for basic tactical training and the individual soldier.

What type of course is this paper for? Is it a film critique class, or a more directly history-focused class? I'll try and provide sources that will help with either direction, though I am far less familiar with Russian & Soviet film criticism than the military history aspects.

Useful terms & abbreviations

VDV: the Воздушно-десантные войска [Vozdushno-desantnye voyska], the Soviet/Russian airborne forces (lit. "Air-Landing Troops"). Paratroopers are called desantniki.

Aфганцы [afgantsy]: 'Afghans,' Russian shorthand for the veterans of their war in Afghanistan. As discussed in some of these sources, has a set of cultural connotations and implications beyond simply referring to someone as a veteran.

English Only:

Svetlana Alexeivich's 1989 Zinky Boys is probably as good a place to start as any. It's a collection of interviews with afgantsy and the family members of Soviet soldiers who died in Afghanistan. It will help you situate the events of the movie in the actual lived experiences, thoughts, and feelings of a range of people who participated in or were affected by the war. Zinky Boys is a product of the moment in which it was written - many of the interviews emphasize the gritty, surreal, and depressive aspects of the war, as well as the sense of futility and alienation felt by both veterans and the families of the dead. Caveat: this book will help you for either a history or a film-focused course, but I don't think it directly answers your training question. I believe one or two of Alexeivich's interviews are with desantniki but none who fought at Hill 3234. I don't recall if the interviews say anything substantial about training, either.

E.S. Williams & C.N. Donnelly's 1986 The Soviet Military: Political Education, Training, and Morale will give you an acceptable overview of the basics of the Soviet training system, though as it was written from an outside perspective during the Cold War it must be taken somewhat critically. The authors do not give much time to the exact training standards for individual branches, and the VDV are only referred to once or twice in the text.

Lester Grau's translations of the Frunze Military Academy study "Боевые действия советских войск в Республике Афганистан" [Combat Actions of Soviet Troops in the Republic of Afghanistan; Grau's annotated translation is published as The Bear Went Over the Mountain] and the Russian General Staff study on the war [translated and published as The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost] are still the defining English language references for the military conduct of the war, in my opinion. The tactical vignettes offered in The Bear Went Over the Mountain give a good window into the mindset and thinking of Soviet junior officers, which will in of itself illuminate aspects of their training. Many of these vignettes cover VDV units.

Grau also wrote an article specifically on the Battle of Hill 3234 in Journal of Slavic (Soviet) Military Studies, several years after the movie was released: Grau, L. W. (2011). "The Battle for Hill 3234: Last Ditch Defense in the Mountains of Afghanistan." The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 24(2), 217–231. doi:10.1080/13518046.2011.572704. This article is admittedly just a summary of a couple of extant Russian secondary sources on the battle, but it's a tidy summary and it references the differences between the real battle and the film's events in several places. Note of caution: Grau is a good source, but you have to be careful with his editorial commentary. He's been known to project some of his own experiences and outlook as an American soldier, and there are tactical critiques in these comments that reflect that.

There's an old RAND report titled "Inside the Soviet Army in Afghanistan" which might have something worth reading? Sort of doubtful, based on the general quality of American analysis of the Soviet military at that time, but you never know. It's available on DTIC under the ADA number AD-A213 733.

The US Army's 1991 FM-100-2-3 "The Soviet Army: Troops, Organization, and Equipment" is freely available online and has a short summary of training standards, plus some helpful organizational and doctrinal notes on VDV units.

Russian Language Sources:

Боевой устав воздушно-десантных войск [Field Manual of the Airborne Forces]. The 1984 manual governing the training, equipment, and doctrine of the VDV. I've been able to track parts II and III online, governing, respectively, the battalion and company levels, and the squad and platoon levels. The hyperlink here is for part III, but part II is on that site as well. Frustratingly, I am unable to be sure if this is still the manual in use by the late Afghan occupation, or if there were revisions made later on. I also have little visibility on whether or not there were modifications, formal or informal, made for units deploying as part of OKSVA during the occupation.

Igor Gennadievich Slavin, НИКТО КРОМЕ НАС. Правда Афгана глазами солдата ВДВ [Nobody But Us: The Truth of Afghanistan Through The Eyes of a VDV Soldier]. This 4-part memoir series is similar in tone to many of the interviews in Zinky Boys: bitter and condemning towards the Soviet military apparatus, who the author excoriates in Part 3 for the apparently poor training he was given at the Lithuanian training ground. Slavin claims that fresh troops were functionally useless for the first six months until they'd been trained by the experience of combat. Most of the other memoirs on this site are much shorter - Sergei Chervonopisky's, for instance, is only a few paragraphs but is worth reading. This one you can probably muddle through with Google Translate.

Vladimir Ozeryanin, ВДВ глазами медика [The VDV Through A Physician's Eyes]. A 19-part memoir (perhaps originally published as a book? Unclear to me.) Ozeryanin, as I recall, did not actually ever go to Afghanistan, but the first chapter goes into more detail on his training than most of these memoirs.

Yury Lapshin, Афганский дневник [Afghan Diary]. Lapshin was a deputy regimental commander in 345 Guards Separate Parachute Regiment from February 1987 to the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. His diary, unlike some of the memoirs and interviews I've listed here, was written during the war rather than through the haze of memory, and as such is quite valuable for capturing the day-to-day of the occupation. He discusses, at various points, the time he spent assisting in the VDV training camps before his regiment deployed and then when he was on leave.

Roman Alekhin, Воздушно-десантные войска: история российского десанта [Airborne Forces: A History of Russian Desant]. A decent summary history of the Soviet & Russian airborne forces, containing more primary source exposure and insider anecdote than you can find in English language histories, generally. Does perhaps over-emphasize the 'elite' nature of the VDV more than is warranted.

Film Study Sources

I have fewer of these to offer, but I can recommend off the top of my head Denise Youngblood's article "A War Remembered: Soviet Films of the Great Patriotic War" [The American Historical Review Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 839-856]. Actually predates 9 rota, but it will help you situate the movie within the overall filmic context that it was produced in - namely, hypermasculine war narratives emphasizing the noble yet futile sacrifice of the Russian soldier. Also, more broadly, McGarry and Carlsten, Film, History and Memory (2015, Palgrave McMillan). Film is a unique medium in which the collective memory of historic events is constructed and renegotiated, and 9 rota is just dripping with this kind of thing.

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I suggest you start by searching using terms in Russian (Cyrillic letters). You can back translate from there. Using search terms советский военный афганистан подготовление (Soviet military Afghanistan preparation), I got hits that might be useful to you. The Russian for hill is холм. Lots of acronyms are in common use, so find relevant ones and toss them in, like ввс VVS for Air Force. http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Designations/Russian_MIC_Acronyms.htm