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| One Soldier's War By Arkady Babchenko Translated by Nick Allen Grove Press 395 pp., $25 |
The rigors of a Russian at war
A young conscript vividly describes how combat made him a hardened veteran.
from the February 19, 2008 edition
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Later, Babchenko writes, "We didn't need to reason with him, just one word and it was all clear. We warned him off and off he went. But later he came back anyway, because he wanted to be with us. It was his choice, no one forced him. Then our food started to run out."
Sharik's fate is clearly sealed and all I could do was to finish his story, close the book, and gasp. Being new to Babchenko's story, one dog's passing still had the power to wound me. And this young soldier was wounded by it, too. But it would become a minor horror in the greater scheme of things.
The system of military indoctrination called dedovshchina is stunning in its brutality. It involves the systematic beating of all young recruits approved by Russian military tradition. There is certainly nothing like it in American military life.
Should Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" be a part of your worldview, then these depictions of Russian Army life will make it pale by comparison. Weapons are sold on the black market to the very Chechen rebels who are the targets of this struggle. Medals are given to cooks and clerks by military leaders while combat troops stand at attention, receiving none themselves. Mothers, desperate for one last encounter, search the battlefields for the bodies of their sons.
In his concluding pages, Babchenko interviews a wounded war veteran who spends his days watching the citizens of Moscow head to work on the subway. In one of the book's most impassioned tales, this young man becomes an eloquent spokesman for all young veterans.
"I don't understand this world. These people. Why are they alive? What for? They were given life at birth and didn't have to pry it away from death.... But how do they spend it? Do they invent a cure for AIDS and build the world's most beautiful bridge, or make everyone happy? No. They want to rip everyone off, stash away as much money as they can, and that's it. So many boys died, real kids, and these people here fritter their lives away as ignorantly as a kitten playing with a ball and have no idea why they are alive.... It's not we who are the lost generation, it's them, those who didn't fight, they are."
Please allow the eloquence of this magnificent book to become part of you. You will be the better for it. I believe now that I am.
• Larry Sears is a freelance writer in El Paso, Texas.
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