Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story
by Vladislav Tamarov
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Book Summary Information
Author: Vladislav TamarovEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-11
ISBN: 1580084168
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Book Reviews of Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story
Book Review: Boy soldiers in a war that turned out to be a "mistake."
Summary: 5 Stars
Growing up in Germany and learning about World War II in school and from my parents and grandparents, among the things that impressed me most - that I just couldn't get out of my mind - were the pictures of those boys drafted into Adolf Hitler's "Volkssturm" (literally: "People's Storm"); the pictures of those 16-, 18- and 19-year-old boys torn out of school before they had even had a chance to graduate, and turned into cannon fodder; the pictures of those eyes staring out of faces grown old long before their time. I have now seen those same eyes and those same faces again in Vladislav Tamarov's photo-journalistic report on his experiences as a Russian soldier in Afghanistan, subtitled simply "A Russian Soldier's Story."
There is, for example, Sergei, the author's best friend in Afghanistan, who had his leg shattered by an exploding bullet - and so much more than just his leg was shattered with it. Then there is Sasha, who wanted to be a pilot and asked his friend Vlad, who was from Leningrad (St. Petersburg), whether his parents could enquire for him about the application procedures for the city's flight school - and who didn't even live to receive his answer. There is Aleksei, who walked into a minefield because somebody misread a map. There is Aleksandr, who got killed covering his commanding officer's body with his chest and who was posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's highest medal - which was given to his mother, to take the place of her dead son. There is Kravchenko, who went out to check a road with a couple of newcomers and was blown up by a mine - only weeks before he was scheduled to return home. There is Volodya, who couldn't look into the eyes of other minesweepers returning to camp if he hadn't gone out with them - and who was also killed only months before his time in Afghanistan was supposed to be over. There is the group picture of Oleg, Renat, Aleksandr, Vladimir and Sergei, taken while they are resting somewhere under a tree - only 14 hours before one of them would be killed by an ambush, 46 days before two more of them would be seriously injured and another one killed, and one year before the last of them would also be killed. And there is Vladislav Tamarov himself, who in 1984, like so many others, suddenly found himself in a boot camp, being trained for a two-year turn of duty in Afghanistan because the Supreme Soviet had proclaimed seven years earlier in the country's revised constitution that "[t]o serve in the Soviet army is the honorable duty of Soviet citizens" - and ever since the Communist party leaders' 1979 decision to yield to the "call for help" issued by the communist satellite government in Kabul, that "honorable duty" consisted in "supporting the Afghan revolution." And so Tamarov was pulled out of university, learned to put on a parachute and jump into the abyss below his plane (a completely useless skill in Afghanistan), learned to kill boys as young as himself in order to survive, was made a minesweeper without any prior training at all; and as a minesweeper, quickly learned that you make a mistake only once - it's between you and that mine, and there is no second chance. Not ever.
"Afghanistan - A Russian Soldier's Story" is Vladislav Tamarov's intensely personal report of his two-year turn of duty in Afghanistan; not a journalist's or a professional writer's detached account but the story of one who was there, experienced "what it was like" and came back alive: the human side of the inhumanity of war. The book very much has the feeling of a conversation with the author - in the form of letters, perhaps, or excerpts from a diary shared with the book's readers. Divided into chapters entitled for the main components of the author's experience (Boot Camp, Combat Missions, Minesweepers, the Base, etc.), the narrative structure nevertheless frequently alternates between the report of events in Afghanistan and the sensation of being back home again afterwards; thus introducing the reader to the confusing feeling of conflicting audiovisual and sensory associations; and of waking up in the morning and not knowing for a few seconds where you are. Most impressive, however, are Tamarov's black and white photographs, processed by the author himself (primarily while still "in country"), which convey a darkly acute and poignant sense of Afghanistan, of the Russian soldiers' scarce encounters with its people, and again and again, of the dangers and desolation of a minesweeper's life, and his loneliness even in a group of fellow soldiers. The author's comparisons of his experience with that of American VietNam veterans further add to the complexity of his account, and deepen the understanding that the terror of war is the same, regardless on which side you are fighting. "When you live next to death ... you don't think about it anymore, you just try to encounter it as seldom as possible," Tamarov writes, and: "We didn't believe in tomorrow. And we couldn't forget what had happened yesterday." Like too many others, Tamarov had to learn to live with this experience for the rest of his life - and it's certainly not made easier by the Soviet Union's belated admission that the war in Afghanistan was "a mistake." His story is a powerful reminder that regardless of its motivation, war is never, ever a glorious thing - at least not for those who are sent to fight it; even if they are not as young as the boys who made up the largest contingent of the Soviet Union's troops in Afghanistan.
Also recommended:
The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost
The Kite Runner Illustrated Edition
Summary of Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story
Drafted into the Soviet Army in April, 1984 and sent at the age of nineteen to serve in Afghanistan as a minesweeper, Vladislav Tamarov turned in secret to the pen and the camera to chronicle his 621 days of war. Photographs depicting the haunted faces of both soldiers and civilians, the country's rugged yet beautiful mountain terrain, and the banality of daily life between missions are interspersed with Tamarov's unsentimental but passionate prose, in which he reveals his growing disorientation and takes to task his government for a campaign that has been widely dubbed "the Soviet Vietnam".Afghanistan Books
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