Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (1990, 1992)— a book review — in their own words

© 2018 Peter Free

 

29 May 2018

 

 

Piercing — not for those prone to dodging reality

 

Svetlana Alexievich's  Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (1990, 1992) requires no review.

 

It speaks for itself.

 

Below are a just a few quotations. All are copyrighted to Svetlana Alexievich.

 

The "Zinky" in the title refers to the Soviets' habit of shipping their Afghanistan dead home in zinc caskets.

 

 

Extracts

 

On military life

 

Army life itself kills the mind and saps your resistance to the point that they can do what they want with you. [page 46]

 

Dostoevsky described military men as 'the most unthinking people in the world'. [page4]

 

I've been an army man all my life. True soldiers think in a particular way, which doesn't include asking questions like whether this or that war is just or unjust. [page 157]

 

A lieutenant was brought back from the bush with no arms or legs. They'd cut off his manhood too. You know what his first words were, when he came out of shock. 'How are my men?' [page 36]

 

Our artillery wipes his village off the face of the earth so thoroughly that when he goes back he literally can't find a trace of his mother, wife or children. Modern weaponry makes our crime even greater. . . . When I hear the order 'Fire!' I don't think, I fire, that's my job. Still, I didn't go there to kill people. Why couldn't the Afghan people see us as we saw ourselves? [page 112]

 

Even in death there was a hierarchy. For some reason dying battle was more tragic than dying in hospital. [page 24]

 

 

Backdoor questions

 

[W]e came to a village and asked for something to eat. According to their law it is forbidden to refuse warm food to a person who comes to the door hungry. The women sat us down and fed us. After we left the other villagers beat them and their children to death with sticks and stones. They knew they'd be killed but they didn't send us away. [page 37]

 

Sometimes we massacred a whole village in revenge for one of our boys. Over there it seemed right, here it horrifies me. I remember one little girl lying in the dust like a broken doll with no arms or legs. And yet we went on being surprised that they didn't love us. [page 23]

 

Whenever I see mountains now I get the feeling I'm going to get bombed. Once, during a bombardment, I saw a girl just kneeling and crying and praying. I wonder who she was praying to. [page 76]

 

 

Evil and secrecy

 

'This is classified information! You can't go around telling everyone your son has been killed! Don't you know that's not allowed?' [page 83]

 

'It's forbidden for them to be buried together. They have to be spread about the rest of the cemetery.' [page 87]

 

 

Soul — abandoned and found

 

In the middle of the road a young Afghan woman kneels by her dead child, howling. I thought only wounded animals howled like that. [pages 5-6]

 

Why is it that seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds find it easier to kill than thirty-year-olds, for example? Because they have no pity, that's why. [page 90]

 

Who was it described the insane as 'those whom life has taken by surprise'? [page 147]

 

In these conditions good men get better and the bad get even worse. [page 41]

 

 

 A telling non sequitur

 

I know I'll never be needed the way I was there. I saw the most incredible rainbows there, great high columns of colour all over the sky. I'll never see rainbows like those again, covering the whole sky. [page 139]

 

 

Mother's loss

 

He'd hidden presents under the Christmas Tree. Mine was a big scarf. A big black scarf.

 

'Why did you choose black, my love?' I asked.

 

'There were various colours there, Mama, but by the time I got to the front of the queue there was only black left. Anyhow it suits you.'

 

I buried him in that scarf, and wore it for two years afterwards. [page 63]

 

 

Widow's grief

 

The most terrible thing was getting used to the thought that I must stop waiting, because there was no one to wait for. [page 166]

 

Can you hear me? [page 106]

 

 

The moral? — The people most likely to read Zinky Boys are those least likely to need its message

 

Isn't that the way it pretty much always works?

 

I often wonder who we're writing to.