Artyom Borovik (1960–2000)

This book is an excellent ground-level view of the Soviet war in Afghanistan from a Soviet journalist who was "embedded" in the Red army. While those who may be expecting a military or political history of the war will be disappointed, what this book does so well is capture what it was like to be a soldier in caught up in the conflict. The book itself was patched together from a series of articles that appeared in the age of glasnost.

The first part of the book was written during the author's first 'tour' of afghanistan in 88-87 and the second part in the days leading up to the Soviet withdrawal in 88. The first part focuses more on the lives and experiences of various soldiers and is full of vivid, gripping anecdotes, such as that of the soldier who was killed 3 times in a day and survived (the first 'death' when he stepped on a mine, the second when one of the soldiers carrying him on a stretcher to a waiting helicopter stepped on a mine and the third when the helicopter medevacing him and the other wounded is shot down) or the soldier who is flying home to Moscow for 14 days leave but gets stranded at Tashkent where no flights are available and gets increasingly desperate to be back with his wife while day after day is eaten up waiting for alternative route back home. What comes through is the bravery of the soldiers just trying to do their jobs and stay alive in the face of an implacable enemy, terrible conditions, poor leadership, and a home front which does not understand what they have to face.

The second part of the book is much grimmer in tone. While there was some questioning of why the war was happening in the first part, by the time of the second, the sheer incompetence and unnecessariness of the war has sunk in, discipline has broken down to a greater degree so that there officers are indulging in drugs and arms trafficking, and the unpopularity of the war on the home front leaves returning soldiers feeling like outcasts. The author also visits the USA where he interviews deserters who were taken back to the States and now live lives of luxuriant loneliness, missing their homes, but not trusting the asylum offered by the communist government.

All in all this is the story about the pity of war and the devastating impact it had on a generation of young Soviet men. It was also a landmark book, as the author mentions in an afterward because when it was first published it tested the boundaries of glasnost in the USSR, with many army and party officials wanting it severely censored. Its a pity the author died before he had the chance to revise the book - its origins as magazine articles is obvious and there are times (particularly in the first part) where the author seems to tiptoe around certain details, perhaps due to censorship reasons. But all in all, this captures the Soviet experience of the war vividly.… (more)