Alexievich and zinc boys. Svetlana Alexievich: Zinc boys. About the book “Zinc Boys” Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich

Zinc boys

Eternal man with a gun

...A man is lying on the ground, killed by another man... Not by an animal, not by the elements, not by fate. A different person... In Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan... In Chechnya...

Sometimes a terrible thought flashes through about war and its secret meaning. It seems that everyone has gone crazy, you look around - the world around seems to be normal: people watch TV, rush to work, eat, smoke, mend shoes, slander, sit at concerts. In our world today, what is abnormal, what is strange is not the one who put a machine gun on himself, but the other one, the one who, like a child, asks without understanding: why is a man again lying on the ground, killed by another man?

Remember, from Pushkin: “I love bloody wars, and the thought of death is sweet to my soul.” This is the 19th century.

“Even having destroyed the reserves of universal death, people will retain the knowledge of how to create them again; there is no longer a path to ignorance, the inability to kill everyone and everything.” This is from Ales Adamovich. This is the 20th century.

Art has exalted the god Mars, the god of war, for centuries. And now there is no way to rip off his bloody clothes...

This is one of the answers why I write about war.

I remember how in our village on Radunitsa (Remembrance Day) an old woman buried her knees in an overgrown hillock - without words, without tears, she didn’t even say a prayer. “Go away girl, don’t look at this,” the village women took me aside. “You don’t need to know, no one needs to know.” But there are no secrets in the village, the village lives together. Then I finally found out: during the partisan blockade, when the whole village was hiding from the punitive forces in the forest, in the swamps, plump from hunger, dying of fear, this woman with three little girls was with everyone. One day it became obvious: either all four would die, or someone would be saved. At night the neighbors heard the smallest girl asking: “Mommy, don’t drown me, I won’t ask you for food...”

Notches remained in the memory...

On one of my trips... A little woman, wrapped in a downy shawl in the summer and quickly, quickly reprimanding, whispering: “I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to remember, for a very long time after the war, for decades, I couldn’t go to butcher shops or see cut meat , especially chicken, it reminded me of a human one, I couldn’t sew anything from red fabric, I saw so much blood, I don’t want to remember, I can’t..."

I didn’t like reading books about the war, but I wrote three books. About war. Why? Living among death (and conversations, and memories), you involuntarily become hypnotized by the limit: where is it, what is beyond it. And what is a person, how much person is there in a person - these are questions to which I look for answers in my books. And, as one of the heroes of “The Zinc Boys” answered: “There is not much in a person, that’s what I learned in the war, in the Afghan rocks.” And another, already old man, who signed for the defeated Reichstag in 1945, wrote to me: “In war, man is lower than man; both the one who kills justly and the one who kills unjustly. It all looks just like an ordinary murder.” I agree with him, it is no longer possible for me to write about how some people heroically kill others... People kill people...

But our vision is structured in such a way that even to this day, when we talk or write about the war, for us it is first of all an image of the Great Patriotic War, a soldier of the forty-fifth. For so long we were taught to love a man with a gun... And we loved him. But after Afghanistan and Chechnya, the war is something else. Something that for me, for example, called into question much of what was written (by me too). Still, we looked at human nature through the eyes of the system, not the artist...

War is hard work, constant killing, a person always hovering near death. But time passes, dozens of years, and he only remembers the hard work: how they didn’t sleep for three or four days, how they carried everything on themselves instead of a horse, how they melted without water in the sand or were frozen into ice, but no one talks about murder. Why? War has many other faces besides death, and this helps erase the main, hidden thing - the thought of murder. And it’s easy to hide it in the thought of death, of heroic death. The difference between death and murder is fundamental. In our consciousness it is connected.

And I remember an old peasant woman telling how as a girl she sat by the window and saw how in their garden a young partisan was hitting an old miller on the head with a revolver. He did not fall, but sat down on the winter ground, with his head cut open like a cabbage.

“And then I fell in love, went crazy,” she said and cried. “My mom and dad treated me for a long time and took me to healers. As soon as I see a young guy, I scream, I fight with fever, I see that old miller’s head, cut open like a cabbage. I never got married... I was afraid of men, especially young ones..."

Here is the old story of a partisan: they burned their village, her parents alive, in a wooden church, and she went to watch how the partisans killed captured Germans and policemen. I still remember her crazy whisper: “Their eyes were popping out of their sockets, bursting; they were stabbed to death with ramrods. I looked, and then I felt better.”

In war, a person learns things about himself that he would never have guessed in other conditions. He wants to kill, he likes it - why? This is called the instinct of war, hatred, destruction. We don’t know this biological person at all; we don’t have enough of him in our literature. We underestimated this in ourselves, having too much faith in the power of words and ideas. Let us also add that not a single story about the war, even an extremely honest one, can be compared with reality itself. She's even scarier.

Today we live in a completely different world, not the one it was when I wrote my books about the war, and therefore everything is interpreted differently. No, it’s not invented, but changed. Is it possible to call a soldier’s life in the barracks normal, based on the divine plan? From the tragically simplified world in which we lived, we return to the multiplicity of suddenly discovered connections, and I can no longer give clear answers - there are none.

Why am I writing about the war?

It is easier for our streets with their new signs to change than for our souls. We don't talk today, we scream. Everyone shouts about their own. And with a cry they only destroy and destroy. They're shooting. And I come to such a person and want to restore the truth of that past day... When he killed or was killed... I have an example. There, in Afghanistan, a guy shouted to me: “What can you, woman, understand about war? Writing lady! Do people die in war the way they do in books and movies? There they die beautifully, but yesterday my friend was killed, a bullet hit him in the head. He ran for another ten meters and caught his brains... Is that how you write it?” And seven years later, this same guy - he is now a successful businessman, loves to talk about Afghanistan - called me: “What are your books for? They're too scary." This was already a different person, not the one whom I met in the midst of death and who did not want to die at twenty years old...

Truly, a person changes his soul and then does not recognize himself. And the story, as it were, about one life, fate, is a story about many people who for some reason are called by the same name. What I have been doing for twenty years is a document in the form of art. But the more I work with him, the more doubts I have. The only document, a document, so to speak, in its pure form, which does not inspire distrust in me, is a passport or a tram ticket. But what can they tell in a hundred or two hundred years (there is no certainty about looking further now) about our time and about us? Only that we had bad printing... Everything else that we know under the name of the document is a version. This is someone's truth, someone's passion, someone's prejudices, someone's lies, someone's life.

In the trial of the “Zinc Boys,” which the reader will also read about in this book, the document came into close contact with mass consciousness, hand-to-hand. Then I once again realized that God forbid, if the documents were edited by contemporaries, if only they alone had the right to them. If then, thirty to fifty years ago, they had rewritten “The Gulag Archipelago”, Shalamov, Grossman... Albert Camus said: “The truth is mysterious and elusive, and each time it has to be conquered anew.” To conquer, in the sense of comprehending. Mothers of sons killed in Afghanistan came to court with portraits of their children, with their medals and orders. They cried and shouted: “People, look how young they are, how beautiful they are, our boys, and she writes that they killed there!” And my mothers told me: “We don’t need your truth, we have our own truth.”

And it is true that they have their own truth. So what is a document? How much is he in the power of people? How much does it belong to people, and how much to history and art? For me these are painful questions...

The path from reality to its embodiment in words is long, thanks to which it remains in the archives of humanity. But from the very beginning we must admit that reality in the form of the present time does not seem to exist. There is no present, there is a past or a future, or what Brodsky called the “present continuous tense.” That is, reality is a memory. What happened a year ago, what happened in the morning, or an hour, or a second ago, is already a memory of the present. This is a disappeared reality, remaining either in memory or in words. But you must admit that memory and words are very imperfect tools. They are fragile, they are changeable. They are hostages of time. Between reality and the word there is still a witness. Three witnesses to one event are three versions. Three attempts at truth...

© Svetlana Alexievich, 2013

© “Time”, 2013

On January 20, 1801, the Cossacks of Don Ataman Vasily Orlov were ordered to go to India. A month is given to travel to Orenburg, and from there three months “through Bukharia and Khiva to the Indus River.” Soon thirty thousand Cossacks will cross the Volga and go deeper into the Kazakh steppes...

In the struggle for power. Pages of the political history of Russia in the 17th century. M.: Mysl, 1988, p. 475

In December 1979, the Soviet leadership decided to send troops to Afghanistan. The war lasted from 1979 to 1989. It lasted nine years, one month and nineteen days. More than half a million soldiers of a limited contingent of Soviet troops passed through Afghanistan. The total human losses of the Soviet Armed Forces amounted to 15,051 people. 417 military personnel went missing and were captured. As of 2000, 287 people remained among those who had not returned from captivity and were not found...

Prologue

- I’m walking alone... Now I have to walk alone for a long time...

He killed a man... My son... With a kitchen hatchet, I cut up meat with it. He returned from the war and killed here... He brought the hatchet and put it back in the morning, in the cabinet where I keep the dishes. In my opinion, on the same day I prepared chops for him... After some time, they announced on television and wrote in the evening newspaper that fishermen caught a corpse in the city lake... Piece by piece... A friend called me:

– Have you read it? Professional murder... Afghan handwriting...

The son was at home, lying on the sofa, reading a book. I didn’t know anything yet, didn’t guess anything, but for some reason after these words I looked at him... A mother’s heart...

Can't you hear the dog barking? No? And as soon as I start talking about it, I hear a dog barking. Like dogs running... There in the prison where he is now sitting, there are big black shepherd dogs... And people are all in black, only in black... Back in Minsk, I’m walking down the street, past a bread store, a kindergarten, carrying a loaf of bread and milk, and I hear this dog barking. Deafening bark. It makes me blind... I almost got hit by a car once...

I’m ready to go to my son’s grave mound... I’m ready to lie there next to him... But I don’t know... I don’t know how to live with this... I’m sometimes scared to go into the kitchen, to see that cabinet where the hatchet was... Don’t you hear? You don’t hear anything... No?!

Now I don’t know what he is like, my son. What will I get in fifteen years? They gave him fifteen years of strict regime... How did I raise him? He was fond of ballroom dancing... We went with him to Leningrad to the Hermitage. We read books together... (Cries.) It was Afghanistan that took my son away from me...

...We received a telegram from Tashkent: meet such and such a plane... I jumped out onto the balcony and wanted to shout with all my might: “Alive! My son returned alive from Afghanistan! This terrible war is over for me!” – And lost consciousness.

Of course, we were late for the airport; our flight had arrived long ago; our son was found in the park. He lay on the ground and held onto the grass, surprised that it was so green. He didn’t believe that he was back... But there was no joy on his face...

In the evening, neighbors came to us, they have a little girl, they tied a bright blue bow to her. He put her on his lap, pressed her and cried, the tears flowing and flowing. Because they killed there. And he... I realized this later.

At the border, customs officers “cut off” his imported swimming trunks. American. It's not allowed... So he arrived without underwear. He was bringing a robe for me; I turned forty that year; the robe was taken from him. I was bringing a handkerchief to my grandmother and they took it too. He arrived only with flowers. With gladioli. But there was no joy on his face.

In the morning he gets up still normal: “Mommy! Nurse!" In the evening, the face darkens, the eyes are heavy... I can’t describe it to you... At first I didn’t drink a drop... He sits and looks at the wall. He will fall off the sofa, by his jacket...

I'll stand at the door:

-Where are you going, Valyushka?

He will look at me as if into space. Let's go.

I’m returning late from work, the plant is far away, it’s second shift, I ring the doorbell, but he doesn’t open it. He doesn't recognize my voice. It’s so strange, okay, he doesn’t recognize his friends’ voices, but mine! Moreover, “Valyushka” - only I called him that. It was as if he was always waiting for someone, he was afraid. I bought him a new shirt, started trying it on, and I saw that his hands were covered in cuts.

- What is this?

- It’s a small thing, mom.

Then I found out. After the trial... During the “training” he opened his veins... At a demonstration exercise, he was a radio operator, and did not have time to throw the radio into a tree in time, did not meet the allotted time, and the sergeant forced him to empty fifty buckets from the toilet and carry them in front of the formation. He began to wear and lost consciousness. At the hospital they diagnosed him with mild nervous shock. That same night he tried to open his veins. The second time in Afghanistan... Before they went on a raid, they checked: the radio did not work. Scarce parts disappeared, someone stole one of their own... Who? The commander accused him of cowardice, as if he had hidden the details so as not to go along with everyone else. And they all stole from each other there, dismantled cars for spare parts and took them to dukans and sold them. They bought drugs... Drugs, cigarettes. I'm going. They always went hungry.

There was a program on TV about Edith Piaf, and we watched it together.

“Mom,” he asked me, “do you know what drugs are?”

“No,” I told him a lie, and I was already watching him: was he smoking?

No traces. But they used drugs there - I know that.

– How is it in Afghanistan? – I asked once.

- Shut up, mom!

When he left home, I re-read his letters from Afghanistan, I wanted to get to the bottom of it, to understand what was wrong with him. I didn’t find anything special in them, he wrote that he missed green grass, asked his grandmother to take a photo in the snow and send him a picture. But I saw, I felt that something was happening to him. They returned another person to me... It was not my son. And I myself sent him to the army, he had a deferment. I wanted him to become courageous. She convinced him and herself that the army would make him better, stronger. I sent him to Afghanistan with a guitar and arranged a sweet farewell table. He invited his friends, girls... I remember I bought ten cakes.

Only once did he talk about Afghanistan. In the evening... He comes into the kitchen, I’m cooking a rabbit. The bowl is covered in blood. He blotted this blood with his fingers and looks at it. Looking at it. And he says to himself:

- They bring a friend with a broken stomach... He asks me to shoot him... And I shot him...

His fingers are covered in blood... From rabbit meat, it is fresh... He grabs a cigarette with these fingers and goes out to the balcony. Not another word from me this evening.

I went to the doctors. Give me back my son! Save! She told everything... They checked him, looked, but they didn’t find anything except radiculitis.

I come home one day: there are four unfamiliar guys at the table.

- Mom, they are from Afghanistan. I found them at the station. They have nowhere to sleep.

- I’ll bake you a sweet pie now. Instantly. – For some reason I was happy.

They stayed with us for a week. I didn’t count, but I think we drank three cases of vodka. Every evening I met five strangers at home. The fifth was my son... I didn’t want to listen to their conversations, I was scared. But in the same house... I accidentally overheard... They said that when they sat in ambush for two weeks, they were given stimulants to make them bolder. But all this is kept secret. What weapon is best to kill... From what distance... Then I remembered this, when it all happened... I then began to think, feverishly remember. And before that there was only fear: “Oh,” I told myself, “they’re all kind of crazy. Everyone is crazy."

At night... Before that day... When he killed... I had a dream that I was waiting for my son, he was not there and was not. And so they bring him to me... Those four “Afghans” bring him. And they throw him onto the dirty cement floor. You understand, there is a cement floor in the house... In our kitchen... The floor is like in a prison.

By this time he had already entered the preparatory faculty at the Radio Engineering Institute. I wrote a good essay. He was happy that everything was fine with him. I even began to think that he was calming down. He'll go study. Gets married. But evening will come... I was afraid of evening... He sits and stares blankly at the wall. He falls asleep in the chair... I want to rush over, cover him with myself and not let him go anywhere. And now I dream about my son: he is small and asks for food... He is hungry all the time. He stretches out his hands... I always see him small and humiliated in my dreams. And in life?! Once every two months - a date. Four hours of conversation through glass...

There are two dates a year when I can at least feed him. And this barking of dogs... I dream of this barking of dogs. He chases me from everywhere.

One man began to look after me... He brought flowers... When he brought me flowers: “Get away from me,” she began to scream, “I am the mother of a murderer.” At first I was afraid to meet anyone I knew; I would lock myself in the bathroom and wait for the walls to collapse on me. It seemed to me that everyone on the street recognized me, showed me to each other, whispered: “Remember, that terrible incident... It was her son who killed. Quartered a man. Afghan handwriting..." I only went outside at night and studied all the nocturnal birds. I recognized them by their voices.

The investigation went on... Several months went by... He was silent. I went to Moscow to the Burdenko military hospital. I found guys there who served in special forces, like him. Opened up to them...

- Guys, why could my son kill a man?

- So there was a reason.

I had to see for myself that he could do it... Kill... I questioned them for a long time and realized: he could! She asked about death... No, not about death, but about murder. But this conversation did not evoke any special feelings in them, the kind of feelings that any murder usually evokes in a normal person who has not seen blood. They talked about war as a job where you have to kill. Then I met guys who were also in Afghanistan, and when the earthquake happened in Armenia, they went there with rescue teams. I was interested, I had already staked my claim on this: were they scared? How did they feel when they saw death? No, they were not afraid of anything, their feeling of pity was even dulled. Torn... flattened... skulls, bones... Entire schools... Classrooms buried underground... As the children sat in class, they went underground. And they remembered and talked about something else; what rich wine warehouses they dug up, what cognac, what wine they drank. They joked: let it shake somewhere else. But in a warm place where grapes grow and good wine is made... Are they healthy? Do they have a normal psyche?

“I hate him dead.” He wrote this to me recently. Five years later... What happened there? Silent. I only know that that guy, his name was Yura, boasted that he earned a lot of checks in Afghanistan. And then it turned out that he served in Ethiopia, an ensign. He lied about Afghanistan...

At the trial, only the lawyer said that we are judging the patient. In the dock is not a criminal, but a patient. He needs to be treated. But then, seven years ago, there was no truth about Afghanistan yet. They were all called heroes. Internationalist warriors. And my son was a murderer... Because he did here what they did there. Why were they given medals and orders there... Why was he the only one tried? Those who sent him there were not judged? Taught me how to kill! I didn't teach him this... (He breaks down and screams.)

He killed a man with my kitchen hatchet... And in the morning he brought it and put it in the cabinet. Like an ordinary spoon or fork...

I envy the mother whose son came back without both legs... Let him hate her when he gets drunk. The whole world hates... Let him rush at her like a beast. She buys him prostitutes so that he doesn’t go crazy... She herself once became his mistress because he climbed onto the balcony and wanted to throw himself off the tenth floor. I agree to everything... I envy all mothers, even those whose sons lie in their graves. I would sit near the mound and be happy. I would wear flowers.

Do you hear dogs barking? They are running after me. I hear them...

Mother

From notebooks (in war)

June 1986

I don’t want to write about the war anymore... Again, live among the “philosophy of disappearance” instead of the “philosophy of life.” Collect endless experience of non-being. When I finished “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” I couldn’t see for a long time how blood was coming out of a child’s nose from an ordinary bruise, I was running away on vacation from fishermen who were cheerfully throwing fish snatched from distant depths onto the shore sand, I was sick of her frozen bulging eyes. Everyone has their own reserve of strength to protect themselves from pain - physical and psychological, mine was completely exhausted. I was driven crazy by the howling of a cat hit by a car, turning its face away from a crushed earthworm. A frog dried up on the road... I thought more than once that animals, birds, fish also have the right to their own story of suffering. It will be written someday.

And suddenly! If you can call it “suddenly”. The war is in its seventh year... But we know nothing about it except heroic television reports. From time to time, we are made to perk up by zinc coffins brought from afar, which do not fit into the pencil case sizes of Khrushchev-era apartment buildings. The mournful fireworks will die down - and again there will be silence. Our mythological mentality is unshakable - we are fair and great. And they are always right. The last reflections of the ideas of the world revolution are burning and burning out... No one notices that the fire is already at home. My own house caught fire. Gorbachev's perestroika began. We are rushing towards a new life. What lies ahead for us? What will we be capable of after so many years of artificial lethargy? And our boys are dying somewhere far away, no one knows why...

What are they talking about around me? What are they writing about? About international debt and geopolitics, about our sovereign interests and southern borders. And they believe it. They believe! Mothers, who recently struggled in despair over the blind iron boxes in which their sons were returned to them, speak in schools and military museums, calling on other boys to “fulfill their duty to the Motherland.” Censorship carefully ensures that military essays do not mention the death of our soldiers; we are assured that a “limited contingent” of Soviet troops helps the fraternal people build bridges, roads, schools, deliver fertilizers and flour to villages, and Soviet doctors deliver births to Afghan women . Returning soldiers bring guitars to schools to sing about something worth shouting about.

I talked to one for a long time... I wanted to hear about the agony of this choice - to shoot or not to shoot? But for him there’s no drama here. What well? What is wrong? Is it good to kill “in the name of socialism”? For these boys, the boundaries of morality are delineated by military orders. True, they talk about death more carefully than we do. Here the distance between us is immediately revealed.

How to experience history and write about it at the same time? And you cannot take any piece of life, all the existential “dirt” by the collar and drag it into a book. Into history. We must “break through time” and “catch the spirit.”

“The present sorrow has a hundred reflections” (W. Shakespeare. Richard III).

...At the bus station, in a half-empty waiting room, an officer was sitting with a travel suitcase, next to him a thin boy with a soldier’s haircut was digging with a fork in a box with a dried ficus. The village women ingenuously sat down next to them and asked: where, why, who? The officer accompanied home a soldier who had lost his mind: “From Kabul he digs whatever he gets his hands on: with a shovel, a fork, a stick, a fountain pen.” The boy raised his head: “We have to hide... I’ll dig a hole... I can do it quickly. We called them mass graves. I’ll dig a big hole for all of you..."

For the first time I saw pupils the size of eyes...

I'm standing in the city cemetery... There are hundreds of people around. In the center are nine coffins lined with red chintz. The military perform. The general took the floor... The women in black are crying. People are silent. Only a little girl with pigtails is choking over the coffin: “Dad! Pa-a-kidney!! Where are you? You promised to bring me a doll. A beautiful doll! I drew you a whole album of houses and flowers... I’m waiting for you...” The girl is picked up by a young officer and carried away to the black Volga. But for a long time we hear: “Dad! Pa-a-a-kidney... Favorite pa-a-kidney..."

The general speaks... The women in black are crying. We are silent. Why are we silent?

I don’t want to be silent... And I can’t write about the war anymore.

September 1988

Tashkent. It's stuffy at the airport, it smells like melons, not an airport, but melons. Two o'clock in the morning. Fat, semi-wild cats, they say, Afghan cats, fearlessly dive under taxis. Among the tanned resort crowd, among the boxes and baskets of fruit, young soldiers (boys) are jumping on crutches. Nobody pays attention to them, they are already used to it. They sleep and eat right there on the floor, on old newspapers and magazines, for weeks they cannot buy tickets to Saratov, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Kyiv... Where were they crippled? What were they defending there? Nobody cares. Only the little boy does not take his wide-open eyes from them, and a drunken beggar woman approached one soldier:

- Come here... I'll regret it...

He waved it away with his crutch. And she, without being offended, added something sad and feminine.

The officers are sitting next to me. They talk about how bad our prosthetics are. About typhoid fever, cholera, malaria and hepatitis. Just as in the first years of the war there were no wells, no kitchens, no baths, there was nothing even to wash the dishes with. And also about who brought what: who brought a video recorder, who brought a tape recorder - Sharp or Sony. I remember with what eyes they looked at beautiful, rested women in open dresses...

We've been waiting for a long time for a military plane to Kabul. They say that they will load the equipment first, and then the people. A hundred people are waiting. All are military. Surprisingly many women.

Excerpts from conversations:

- I'm losing my hearing. I was the first to stop hearing high-singing birds. The consequence of a concussion in the head... For example, I can’t hear fescue completely. I recorded it on a tape recorder and run it at full power...

- First you shoot, and then you find out who it is - a woman or a child? Everyone has their own nightmare...

- The donkey lies down during the shelling; when the shelling ends, it jumps up.

– Who are we in the Union? Prostitutes? We know this. At least earn money for the cooperative. What about the men? What guys? Everyone drinks.

– The general spoke about international duty, about the defense of the southern borders. He even got emotional: “Give them some candy. These are children. The best gift is sweets.”

- The officer was young. I found out that my leg had been cut off: I started crying. The face is like a girl’s – ruddy and white. At first I was afraid of the dead, especially if they were without legs or arms. And then I got used to it...

- They are taken prisoner. They cut off their limbs and tie them with tourniquets so they don’t die from blood loss. And they leave it in this form; our people pick up the stumps. They want to die, they are forcibly treated. And after the hospital they don’t want to return home.

“At customs they saw my empty bag: “What are you carrying?” - "Nothing". - "Nothing?" They didn't believe it. They forced me to strip down to my underpants. Everyone brings two or three suitcases.

On the plane, I got a seat next to an armored personnel carrier tied with chains. Fortunately, the major next to me turned out to be sober; everyone else around was drunk. Nearby, someone was sleeping on a bust of Marx (portraits and busts of socialist leaders were piled up without packaging); they were carrying not only weapons, but also a set of everything necessary for Soviet rituals. There were red flags, red ribbons...

Siren howl...

- Get up. Otherwise you will sleep through the kingdom of heaven. – It’s already over Kabul.

We're about to land.

... The roar of guns. Patrols with machine guns and wearing body armor require a pass.

I didn't want to write about the war anymore. But here I am in a real war. Everywhere there are people of war, things of war. Time of war.

There is something immoral about looking at someone else's courage and risk. Yesterday we went to the dining room for breakfast and said hello to the guard. Half an hour later, he was killed by a mine fragment that accidentally flew into the garrison. I spent the whole day trying to remember this boy’s face...

Journalists here are called storytellers. Writers too. Our writing group is all men. They are eager to go to distant outposts, they want to go into battle. I ask one:

- I'm interested. I’ll say: I was at Salanga. I'll shoot.

I can’t help but feel that war is a product of male nature, largely incomprehensible to me. But the everydayness of war is grandiose. From Apollinaire: “Oh, how beautiful war is.”

In war, everything is different: you, nature, and your thoughts. Then I realized that human thought can be very cruel.

I ask and listen everywhere: in a soldier’s barracks, a canteen, on a football field, in the evening at a dance—the unexpected attributes of peaceful life here:

“I shot point-blank and saw a human skull fly apart. I thought: “First.” After the battle - wounded and killed. Everyone is silent... I dream about trams here. How I'm going home on the tram... Favorite memory: my mother bakes pies. The house smells of sweet dough...

– You’re friends with a good guy... And then you see his guts hanging on the rocks. You begin to take revenge.

- We are waiting for the caravan. In ambush for two or three days. We lie in the hot sand, walk under ourselves. By the end of the third day you will become Satan. And with such hatred you release the first line. After the shooting, when it was all over, they discovered: the caravan was coming with bananas and jam. You've had your fill of sweets for the rest of your life...

- We captured the “spirits”... We asked: “Where are the military warehouses?” They are silent. They picked up two people in helicopters: “Where? Show me." They are silent. They threw one onto the rocks...

– Making love during the war and after the war is not the same thing... In war, everything is like the first time...

- “Grad” is shooting... Mines are flying... And above all this there is a point: live! live! live! But you know nothing and do not want to know about the suffering of the other side. Live - that's all. Live!

To write (tell) the whole truth about oneself is, as Pushkin noted, a physical impossibility.

What saves a person in war is that the consciousness is distracted and scattered. But the death around is ridiculous, random. Without higher meanings.

...On the tank in red paint: “We will avenge Malkin.”

In the middle of the street, a young Afghan woman was kneeling in front of a murdered child and screaming. Probably only wounded animals scream like that.

Current page: 1 (book has 17 pages total) [available reading passage: 12 pages]

Svetlana Alexievich
Zinc boys

© Svetlana Alexievich, 2013

© “Time”, 2013

On January 20, 1801, the Cossacks of Don Ataman Vasily Orlov were ordered to go to India. A month is given to travel to Orenburg, and from there three months “through Bukharia and Khiva to the Indus River.” Soon thirty thousand Cossacks will cross the Volga and go deeper into the Kazakh steppes...

In the struggle for power. Pages of the political history of Russia in the 17th century. M.: Mysl, 1988, p. 475

In December 1979, the Soviet leadership decided to send troops to Afghanistan. The war lasted from 1979 to 1989. It lasted nine years, one month and nineteen days. More than half a million soldiers of a limited contingent of Soviet troops passed through Afghanistan. The total human losses of the Soviet Armed Forces amounted to 15,051 people. 417 military personnel went missing and were captured. As of 2000, 287 people remained among those who had not returned from captivity and were not found...

Prologue

- I’m walking alone... Now I have to walk alone for a long time...

He killed a man... My son... With a kitchen hatchet, I cut up meat with it. He returned from the war and killed here... He brought the hatchet and put it back in the morning, in the cabinet where I keep the dishes. In my opinion, on the same day I prepared chops for him... After some time, they announced on television and wrote in the evening newspaper that fishermen caught a corpse in the city lake... Piece by piece... A friend called me:

– Have you read it? Professional murder... Afghan handwriting...

The son was at home, lying on the sofa, reading a book. I didn’t know anything yet, didn’t guess anything, but for some reason after these words I looked at him... A mother’s heart...

Can't you hear the dog barking? No? And as soon as I start talking about it, I hear a dog barking. Like dogs running... There in the prison where he is now sitting, there are big black shepherd dogs... And people are all in black, only in black... Back in Minsk, I’m walking down the street, past a bread store, a kindergarten, carrying a loaf of bread and milk, and I hear this dog barking. Deafening bark. It makes me blind... I almost got hit by a car once...

I’m ready to go to my son’s grave mound... I’m ready to lie there next to him... But I don’t know... I don’t know how to live with this... I’m sometimes scared to go into the kitchen, to see that cabinet where the hatchet was... Don’t you hear? You don’t hear anything... No?!

Now I don’t know what he is like, my son. What will I get in fifteen years? They gave him fifteen years of strict regime... How did I raise him? He was fond of ballroom dancing... We went with him to Leningrad to the Hermitage. We read books together... (Cries.) It was Afghanistan that took my son away from me...

...We received a telegram from Tashkent: meet such and such a plane... I jumped out onto the balcony and wanted to shout with all my might: “Alive! My son returned alive from Afghanistan! This terrible war is over for me!” – And lost consciousness. Of course, we were late for the airport; our flight had arrived long ago; our son was found in the park. He lay on the ground and held onto the grass, surprised that it was so green. He didn’t believe that he was back... But there was no joy on his face...

In the evening, neighbors came to us, they have a little girl, they tied a bright blue bow to her. He put her on his lap, pressed her and cried, the tears flowing and flowing. Because they killed there. And he... I realized this later.

At the border, customs officers “cut off” his imported swimming trunks. American. It's not allowed... So he arrived without underwear. He was bringing a robe for me; I turned forty that year; the robe was taken from him. I was bringing a handkerchief to my grandmother and they took it too. He arrived only with flowers. With gladioli. But there was no joy on his face.

In the morning he gets up still normal: “Mommy! Nurse!" In the evening, the face darkens, the eyes are heavy... I can’t describe it to you... At first I didn’t drink a drop... He sits and looks at the wall. He will fall off the sofa, by his jacket...

I'll stand at the door:

-Where are you going, Valyushka?

He will look at me as if into space. Let's go.

I’m returning late from work, the plant is far away, it’s second shift, I ring the doorbell, but he doesn’t open it. He doesn't recognize my voice. It’s so strange, okay, he doesn’t recognize his friends’ voices, but mine! Moreover, “Valyushka” - only I called him that. It was as if he was always waiting for someone, he was afraid. I bought him a new shirt, started trying it on, and I saw that his hands were covered in cuts.

- What is this?

- It’s a small thing, mom.

Then I found out. After the trial... During the “training” he opened his veins... At a demonstration exercise, he was a radio operator, and did not have time to throw the radio into a tree in time, did not meet the allotted time, and the sergeant forced him to empty fifty buckets from the toilet and carry them in front of the formation. He began to wear and lost consciousness. At the hospital they diagnosed him with mild nervous shock. That same night he tried to open his veins. The second time in Afghanistan... Before they went on a raid, they checked: the radio did not work. Scarce parts disappeared, someone stole one of their own... Who? The commander accused him of cowardice, as if he had hidden the details so as not to go along with everyone else. And they all stole from each other there, dismantled cars for spare parts and took them to dukans and sold them. They bought drugs... Drugs, cigarettes. I'm going. They always went hungry.

There was a program on TV about Edith Piaf, and we watched it together.

“Mom,” he asked me, “do you know what drugs are?”

“No,” I told him a lie, and I was already watching him: was he smoking?

No traces. But they used drugs there - I know that.

– How is it in Afghanistan? – I asked once.

- Shut up, mom!

When he left home, I re-read his letters from Afghanistan, I wanted to get to the bottom of it, to understand what was wrong with him. I didn’t find anything special in them, he wrote that he missed green grass, asked his grandmother to take a photo in the snow and send him a picture. But I saw, I felt that something was happening to him. They returned another person to me... It was not my son. And I myself sent him to the army, he had a deferment. I wanted him to become courageous. She convinced him and herself that the army would make him better, stronger. I sent him to Afghanistan with a guitar and arranged a sweet farewell table. He invited his friends, girls... I remember I bought ten cakes.

Only once did he talk about Afghanistan. In the evening... He comes into the kitchen, I’m cooking a rabbit. The bowl is covered in blood. He blotted this blood with his fingers and looks at it. Looking at it. And he says to himself:

- They bring a friend with a broken stomach... He asks me to shoot him... And I shot him...

His fingers are covered in blood... From rabbit meat, it is fresh... He grabs a cigarette with these fingers and goes out to the balcony. Not another word from me this evening.

I went to the doctors. Give me back my son! Save! She told everything... They checked him, looked, but they didn’t find anything except radiculitis.

I come home one day: there are four unfamiliar guys at the table.

- Mom, they are from Afghanistan. I found them at the station. They have nowhere to sleep.

- I’ll bake you a sweet pie now. Instantly. – For some reason I was happy.

They stayed with us for a week. I didn’t count, but I think we drank three cases of vodka. Every evening I met five strangers at home. The fifth was my son... I didn’t want to listen to their conversations, I was scared. But in the same house... I accidentally overheard... They said that when they sat in ambush for two weeks, they were given stimulants to make them bolder. But all this is kept secret. What weapon is best to kill... From what distance... Then I remembered this, when it all happened... I then began to think, feverishly remember. And before that there was only fear: “Oh,” I told myself, “they’re all kind of crazy. Everyone is crazy."

At night... Before that day... When he killed... I had a dream that I was waiting for my son, he was not there and was not. And so they bring him to me... Those four “Afghans” bring him. And they throw him onto the dirty cement floor. You understand, there is a cement floor in the house... In our kitchen... The floor is like in a prison.

By this time he had already entered the preparatory faculty at the Radio Engineering Institute. I wrote a good essay. He was happy that everything was fine with him. I even began to think that he was calming down. He'll go study. Gets married. But evening will come... I was afraid of evening... He sits and stares blankly at the wall. He falls asleep in the chair... I want to rush over, cover him with myself and not let him go anywhere. And now I dream about my son: he is small and asks for food... He is hungry all the time. He stretches out his hands... I always see him small and humiliated in my dreams. And in life?! Once every two months - a date. Four hours of conversation through glass...

There are two dates a year when I can at least feed him. And this barking of dogs... I dream of this barking of dogs. He chases me from everywhere.

One man began to look after me... He brought flowers... When he brought me flowers: “Get away from me,” she began to scream, “I am the mother of a murderer.” At first I was afraid to meet anyone I knew; I would lock myself in the bathroom and wait for the walls to collapse on me. It seemed to me that everyone on the street recognized me, showed me to each other, whispered: “Remember, that terrible incident... It was her son who killed. Quartered a man. Afghan handwriting..." I only went outside at night and studied all the nocturnal birds. I recognized them by their voices.

The investigation went on... Several months went by... He was silent. I went to Moscow to the Burdenko military hospital. I found guys there who served in special forces, like him. Opened up to them...

- Guys, why could my son kill a man?

- So there was a reason.

I had to see for myself that he could do it... Kill... I questioned them for a long time and realized: he could! She asked about death... No, not about death, but about murder. But this conversation did not evoke any special feelings in them, the kind of feelings that any murder usually evokes in a normal person who has not seen blood. They talked about war as a job where you have to kill. Then I met guys who were also in Afghanistan, and when the earthquake happened in Armenia, they went there with rescue teams. I was interested, I had already staked my claim on this: were they scared? How did they feel when they saw death? No, they were not afraid of anything, their feeling of pity was even dulled. Torn... flattened... skulls, bones... Entire schools... Classrooms buried underground... As the children sat in class, they went underground. And they remembered and talked about something else; what rich wine warehouses they dug up, what cognac, what wine they drank. They joked: let it shake somewhere else. But in a warm place where grapes grow and good wine is made... Are they healthy? Do they have a normal psyche?

“I hate him dead.” He wrote this to me recently. Five years later... What happened there? Silent. I only know that that guy, his name was Yura, boasted that he earned a lot of checks in Afghanistan. And then it turned out that he served in Ethiopia, an ensign. He lied about Afghanistan...

At the trial, only the lawyer said that we are judging the patient. In the dock is not a criminal, but a patient. He needs to be treated. But then, seven years ago, there was no truth about Afghanistan yet. They were all called heroes. Internationalist warriors. And my son was a murderer... Because he did here what they did there. Why were they given medals and orders there... Why was he the only one tried? Those who sent him there were not judged? Taught me how to kill! I didn't teach him this... (He breaks down and screams.)

He killed a man with my kitchen hatchet... And in the morning he brought it and put it in the cabinet. Like an ordinary spoon or fork...

I envy the mother whose son came back without both legs... Let him hate her when he gets drunk. The whole world hates... Let him rush at her like a beast. She buys him prostitutes so that he doesn’t go crazy... She herself once became his mistress because he climbed onto the balcony and wanted to throw himself off the tenth floor. I agree to everything... I envy all mothers, even those whose sons lie in their graves. I would sit near the mound and be happy. I would wear flowers.

Do you hear dogs barking? They are running after me. I hear them...

Mother

From notebooks (in war)

June 1986

I don’t want to write about the war anymore... Again, live among the “philosophy of disappearance” instead of the “philosophy of life.” Collect endless experience of non-being. When I finished “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” I couldn’t see for a long time how blood was coming out of a child’s nose from an ordinary bruise, I was running away on vacation from fishermen who were cheerfully throwing fish snatched from distant depths onto the shore sand, I was sick of her frozen bulging eyes. Everyone has their own reserve of strength to protect themselves from pain - physical and psychological, mine was completely exhausted. I was driven crazy by the howling of a cat hit by a car, turning its face away from a crushed earthworm. A frog dried up on the road... I thought more than once that animals, birds, fish also have the right to their own story of suffering. It will be written someday.

And suddenly! If you can call it “suddenly”. The war is in its seventh year... But we know nothing about it except heroic television reports. From time to time, we are made to perk up by zinc coffins brought from afar, which do not fit into the pencil case sizes of Khrushchev-era apartment buildings. The mournful fireworks will die down - and again there will be silence. Our mythological mentality is unshakable - we are fair and great. And they are always right. The last reflections of the ideas of the world revolution are burning and burning out... No one notices that the fire is already at home. My own house caught fire. Gorbachev's perestroika began. We are rushing towards a new life. What lies ahead for us? What will we be capable of after so many years of artificial lethargy? And our boys are dying somewhere far away, no one knows why...

What are they talking about around me? What are they writing about? About international debt and geopolitics, about our sovereign interests and southern borders. And they believe it. They believe! Mothers, who recently struggled in despair over the blind iron boxes in which their sons were returned to them, speak in schools and military museums, calling on other boys to “fulfill their duty to the Motherland.” Censorship carefully ensures that military essays do not mention the death of our soldiers; we are assured that a “limited contingent” of Soviet troops helps the fraternal people build bridges, roads, schools, deliver fertilizers and flour to villages, and Soviet doctors deliver births to Afghan women . Returning soldiers bring guitars to schools to sing about something worth shouting about.

I talked to one for a long time... I wanted to hear about the agony of this choice - to shoot or not to shoot? But for him there’s no drama here. What well? What is wrong? Is it good to kill “in the name of socialism”? For these boys, the boundaries of morality are delineated by military orders. True, they talk about death more carefully than we do. Here the distance between us is immediately revealed.

How to experience history and write about it at the same time? And you cannot take any piece of life, all the existential “dirt” by the collar and drag it into a book. Into history. We must “break through time” and “catch the spirit.”

“The present sorrow has a hundred reflections” (W. Shakespeare. Richard III).

...At the bus station, in a half-empty waiting room, an officer was sitting with a travel suitcase, next to him a thin boy with a soldier’s haircut was digging with a fork in a box with a dried ficus. The village women ingenuously sat down next to them and asked: where, why, who? The officer accompanied home a soldier who had lost his mind: “From Kabul he digs whatever he gets his hands on: with a shovel, a fork, a stick, a fountain pen.” The boy raised his head: “We have to hide... I’ll dig a hole... I can do it quickly. We called them mass graves. I’ll dig a big hole for all of you..."

For the first time I saw pupils the size of eyes...

I'm standing in the city cemetery... There are hundreds of people around. In the center are nine coffins lined with red chintz. The military perform. The general took the floor... The women in black are crying. People are silent. Only a little girl with pigtails is choking over the coffin: “Dad! Pa-a-kidney!! Where are you? You promised to bring me a doll. A beautiful doll! I drew you a whole album of houses and flowers... I’m waiting for you...” The girl is picked up by a young officer and carried away to the black Volga. But for a long time we hear: “Dad! Pa-a-a-kidney... Favorite pa-a-kidney..."

The general speaks... The women in black are crying. We are silent. Why are we silent?

I don’t want to be silent... And I can’t write about the war anymore.

September 1988

Tashkent. It's stuffy at the airport, it smells like melons, not an airport, but melons. Two o'clock in the morning. Fat, semi-wild cats, they say, Afghan cats, fearlessly dive under taxis. Among the tanned resort crowd, among the boxes and baskets of fruit, young soldiers (boys) are jumping on crutches. Nobody pays attention to them, they are already used to it. They sleep and eat right there on the floor, on old newspapers and magazines, for weeks they cannot buy tickets to Saratov, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Kyiv... Where were they crippled? What were they defending there? Nobody cares. Only the little boy does not take his wide-open eyes from them, and a drunken beggar woman approached one soldier:

- Come here... I'll regret it...

He waved it away with his crutch. And she, without being offended, added something sad and feminine.

The officers are sitting next to me. They talk about how bad our prosthetics are. About typhoid fever, cholera, malaria and hepatitis. Just as in the first years of the war there were no wells, no kitchens, no baths, there was nothing even to wash the dishes with. And also about who brought what: who brought a video recorder, who brought a tape recorder - Sharp or Sony. I remember with what eyes they looked at beautiful, rested women in open dresses...

We've been waiting for a long time for a military plane to Kabul. They say that they will load the equipment first, and then the people. A hundred people are waiting. All are military. Surprisingly many women.

Excerpts from conversations:

- I'm losing my hearing. I was the first to stop hearing high-singing birds. The consequence of a concussion in the head... For example, I can’t hear fescue completely. I recorded it on a tape recorder and run it at full power...

- First you shoot, and then you find out who it is - a woman or a child? Everyone has their own nightmare...

- The donkey lies down during the shelling; when the shelling ends, it jumps up.

– Who are we in the Union? Prostitutes? We know this. At least earn money for the cooperative. What about the men? What guys? Everyone drinks.

– The general spoke about international duty, about the defense of the southern borders. He even got emotional: “Give them some candy. These are children. The best gift is sweets.”

- The officer was young. I found out that my leg had been cut off: I started crying. The face is like a girl’s – ruddy and white. At first I was afraid of the dead, especially if they were without legs or arms. And then I got used to it...

- They are taken prisoner. They cut off their limbs and tie them with tourniquets so they don’t die from blood loss. And they leave it in this form; our people pick up the stumps. They want to die, they are forcibly treated. And after the hospital they don’t want to return home.

“At customs they saw my empty bag: “What are you carrying?” - "Nothing". - "Nothing?" They didn't believe it. They forced me to strip down to my underpants. Everyone brings two or three suitcases.

On the plane, I got a seat next to an armored personnel carrier tied with chains. Fortunately, the major next to me turned out to be sober; everyone else around was drunk. Nearby, someone was sleeping on a bust of Marx (portraits and busts of socialist leaders were piled up without packaging); they were carrying not only weapons, but also a set of everything necessary for Soviet rituals. There were red flags, red ribbons...

Siren howl...

- Get up. Otherwise you will sleep through the kingdom of heaven. – It’s already over Kabul.

We're about to land.

... The roar of guns. Patrols with machine guns and wearing body armor require a pass.

I didn't want to write about the war anymore. But here I am in a real war. Everywhere there are people of war, things of war. Time of war.

There is something immoral about looking at someone else's courage and risk. Yesterday we went to the dining room for breakfast and said hello to the guard. Half an hour later, he was killed by a mine fragment that accidentally flew into the garrison. I spent the whole day trying to remember this boy’s face...

Journalists here are called storytellers. Writers too. Our writing group is all men. They are eager to go to distant outposts, they want to go into battle. I ask one:

- I'm interested. I’ll say: I was at Salanga. I'll shoot.

I can’t help but feel that war is a product of male nature, largely incomprehensible to me. But the everydayness of war is grandiose. From Apollinaire: “Oh, how beautiful war is.”

In war, everything is different: you, nature, and your thoughts. Then I realized that human thought can be very cruel.

I ask and listen everywhere: in a soldier’s barracks, a canteen, on a football field, in the evening at a dance—the unexpected attributes of peaceful life here:

“I shot point-blank and saw a human skull fly apart. I thought: “First.” After the battle - wounded and killed. Everyone is silent... I dream about trams here. How I'm going home on the tram... Favorite memory: my mother bakes pies. The house smells of sweet dough...

– You’re friends with a good guy... And then you see his guts hanging on the rocks. You begin to take revenge.

- We are waiting for the caravan. In ambush for two or three days. We lie in the hot sand, walk under ourselves. By the end of the third day you will become Satan. And with such hatred you release the first line. After the shooting, when it was all over, they discovered: the caravan was coming with bananas and jam. You've had your fill of sweets for the rest of your life...

- We captured the “spirits”... We asked: “Where are the military warehouses?” They are silent. They picked up two people in helicopters: “Where? Show me." They are silent. They threw one onto the rocks...

– Making love during the war and after the war is not the same thing... In war, everything is like the first time...

- “Grad” is shooting... Mines are flying... And above all this there is a point: live! live! live! But you know nothing and do not want to know about the suffering of the other side. Live - that's all. Live!

To write (tell) the whole truth about oneself is, as Pushkin noted, a physical impossibility.

What saves a person in war is that the consciousness is distracted and scattered. But the death around is ridiculous, random. Without higher meanings.

...On the tank in red paint: “We will avenge Malkin.”

In the middle of the street, a young Afghan woman was kneeling in front of a murdered child and screaming. Probably only wounded animals scream like that.

We drove past murdered villages that looked like a plowed field. The dead clay of the recent human habitation was worse than the darkness from which they could shoot.

In the hospital, I placed a teddy bear on the bed of an Afghan boy. He took the toy with his teeth and played like that, smiling, he didn’t have both hands. “Your Russians were shooting,” his mother’s words were translated to me. - Do you have children? Who? Boy or girl? I still don’t understand what is more in her words – horror or forgiveness?

They talk about the cruelty with which the Mujahideen deal with our prisoners. It looks like the Middle Ages. It really is a different time here; the calendars show the fourteenth century.

In Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time,” Maksimych, assessing the actions of the highlander who stabbed Bela’s father, says: “Of course, in their opinion, he was absolutely right,” although from the Russian point of view the act was brutal. The writer caught this amazing Russian trait - the ability to take the position of another people, to see things “in their own way.”

And now…

Day after day I see a person sliding down. And rarely - up.

In Dostoevsky, Ivan Karamazov remarks: “A beast can never be as cruel as a man, so artistically, so artistically cruel.”

Yes, I suspect: we don't want to hear about it, we don't want to know about it. But in any war, no matter who wages it and in the name of what - Julius Caesar or Joseph Stalin - people kill each other. This is murder, but we don’t usually think about it, even for some reason in schools we talk not about patriotic, but about military-patriotic education. Why am I surprised though? Everything is clear - military socialism, a military country, military thinking.

You can't test a person like that. A person cannot withstand such tests. In medicine, this is called an “acute experience.” Live experience.

In the evening, a tape recorder was turned on in the soldiers' dormitory opposite the hotel. I also listened to “Afghan” songs. Children's, not yet formed voices wheezed to Vysotsky: “The sun fell into the village like a huge bomb,” “I don’t need fame. We should live - and that’s all the reward”, “Why do we kill? Why are they killing us?”, “I’ve already begun to forget our faces,” “Afghanistan, you are more than our duty. You are our universe”, “Like big birds, one-legged ones jump by the sea”, “Dead, he’s no one’s anymore. There is no longer hatred on his face.”

At night I had a dream: our soldiers were leaving for the Union, I was among the mourners. I approach one boy, he has no tongue, is mute. After captivity. Hospital pajamas stick out from under the soldier's uniform. I ask him something, and he only writes his name: “Vanechka... Vanechka...”. I can so clearly distinguish his name - Vanechka... His face is similar to the boy with whom I talked during the day, he kept repeating: “My mother is waiting for me at home.”

We drove through the frozen streets of Kabul, past familiar posters in the city center: “Bright future - communism”, “Kabul is a city of peace”, “The people and the party are united”. Our posters, printed in our printing houses. Our Lenin stands here with his hand raised...

I met cameramen from Moscow.

They were filming the loading of the “black tulip”. Without raising their eyes, they say that the dead are dressed in old military uniforms from the forties, even with riding breeches, sometimes they are laid to rest without being dressed, and sometimes even this uniform is missing. Old boards, rusty nails... “They brought new dead into the refrigerator. It smells like stale boar.”

Who will believe me if I write about this?

I saw the fight...

Three soldiers were killed... In the evening everyone had dinner; they didn’t remember the battle or the dead, although they lay somewhere nearby.

The human right not to kill. Don't learn to kill. It is not written down in any constitution.

War is a world, not an event... Everything is different here: the landscape, the person, and the words. The theatrical part of the war is memorable: the tank turns around, commands are heard... Glowing bullet paths in the dark...

Thinking about death is like thinking about the future. Something happens over time when you think about death and see it. Next to the fear of death is the attraction of death...

There is no need to invent anything. Excerpts from great books are everywhere. In everyone.

In the stories (often!) one is struck by the aggressive naivety of our boys. Recent Soviet tenth graders. And I want to achieve from them a dialogue between man and man in himself.

But still? What language do we speak to ourselves and to others? I like the language of colloquial speech, it is unencumbered, released into the wild. Everything is walking and celebrating: syntax, intonation, accents, and - exactly the feeling is restored. I follow the feeling, not the event. How our feelings, not events, developed. Maybe what I do is similar to the work of a historian, but I am a historian of the traceless. What happens to big events? They migrate into history, but the small ones, but the main ones for the little person, disappear without a trace. Today, one boy (due to his fragility and sickly appearance, little like a soldier) told how unusual and at the same time exciting it was to kill together. And how scary it is to shoot.

Will this remain in history? With despair I do (from book to book) the same work - reducing history to a person.

I thought about the impossibility of writing a book about war in war. Pity, hatred, physical pain, friendship interfere... And a letter from home, after which you so want to live... They say that when they kill, they try not to look even a camel in the eye. There are no atheists here. And everyone is superstitious.

I am reproached (especially by officers, less often by soldiers) that I didn’t shoot myself and they didn’t take me to gunpoint - how can I write about the war? Or maybe it’s good that I didn’t shoot?

Where is the person for whom the very thought of war brings suffering? I don't find it. But yesterday, an unfamiliar bird lay dead near the headquarters. And it’s strange... The military approached her, trying to guess who it was? They regretted it.

There is some kind of inspiration on the dead faces... I just can’t get used to the usual madness in war - water, cigarettes, bread... Especially when we leave the garrison and climb the mountains. There a person is alone with nature and chance. Will the bullet fly past or not? Who will shoot first - you or him? There you begin to see a person from nature, and not from society.

And in the Union they show on TV how they are planting avenues of friendship, which none of us have ever met or planted here...

Dostoevsky in “The Possessed”: “Belief and man are, it seems, two different things in many ways... Everyone is guilty... if only everyone were convinced of this!” And he has the same idea that humanity knows more about itself, much more, than it has managed to record in literature, in science. He said that this was not his idea, but Vl’s. Solovyova.

If I had not read Dostoevsky, I would be in greater despair...

Somewhere far away the Grad installation is working. It's creepy even from a distance.

After the great wars of the 20th century and the mass deaths, writing about modern (small) wars such as Afghanistan requires a different ethical and metaphysical position. The small, the personal and the separate must be demanded. One man. For some, the only one. Not how the state treats him, but who he is to his mother, to his wife. For a child. How can we get our normal vision back?

I am also interested in the body, the human body, as a connection between nature and history, between animals and speech. All the physical details are important: how the blood changes in the sun, a person before leaving... Life is unimaginably artistic in itself, and, no matter how cruel it may sound, human suffering is especially artistic. The dark side of art. Yesterday I saw how the guys who were blown up by an anti-tank mine were put together piece by piece. I might not have gone to watch, but I went to write. Now I am writing...

But still: was it necessary to go? I heard the officers chuckle behind me: the young lady would be scared. I went and there was nothing heroic about it, because I fainted there. Either from the heat, or from shock. I want to be honest.

I went up in a helicopter... From above I saw hundreds of zinc coffins prepared for future use, glittering beautifully and terribly in the sun...

You come across something like this and immediately think: literature is suffocating within its boundaries... Copying and fact can only express what is visible to the eye, and who needs a thorough account of what is happening? We need something different... Captured moments taken from life...

I will return from here to free people... I was not one until I saw what we are doing here. It was scary and lonely. I will return and will not go to any military museum again...

* * *

I don’t mention real names in the book. Some asked for the secret of confession, others themselves want to forget about everything. Forget about what Tolstoy wrote about - that “man is fluid.” It has everything.

And I saved the names in the diary. Maybe someday my heroes will want to be recognized:

Sergey Amirkhanyan, captain; Vladimir Agapov, senior lieutenant, crew chief; Tatyana Belozerskikh, employee; Victoria Vladimirovna Bartashevich, mother of the deceased private Yuri Bartashevich; Dmitry Babkin, private, operator-gunner; Saya Emelyanovna Babuk, mother of the deceased nurse Svetlana Babuk; Maria Terentyevna Bobkova, mother of the deceased private Leonid Bobkov; Olympiada Romanovna Baukova, mother of the deceased private Alexander Baukov; Taisiya Nikolaevna Bogush, mother of the deceased private Viktor Bogush; Victoria Semenovna Valovich, mother of the deceased senior lieutenant Valery Valovich; Tatyana Gaisenko, nurse; Vadim Glushkov, senior lieutenant, translator; Gennady Gubanov, captain, pilot; Inna Sergeevna Galovneva, mother of the deceased senior lieutenant Yuri Galovnev; Anatoly Devetyarov, major, artillery regiment propagandist; Denis L., private grenade launcher; Tamara Dovnar, wife of the deceased senior lieutenant Peter Dovnar; Ekaterina Nikitichna Platitsyna, mother of the deceased Major Alexander Platitsin, Vladimir Erokhovets, private grenade launcher; Sofya Grigorievna Zhuravleva, mother of the deceased private Alexander Zhuravlev; Natalya Zhestovskaya, nurse; Maria Onufrievna Zilfigarova, mother of the deceased private Oleg Zilfigarov; Vadim Ivanov, senior lieutenant, commander of a sapper platoon; Galina Fedorovna Ilchenko, mother of the deceased private Alexander Ilchenko; Evgeniy Krasnik, private, motorized rifleman; Konstantin M., military adviser; Evgeniy Kotelnikov, foreman, medical instructor of the reconnaissance company; Alexander Kostakov, private, signalman; Alexander Kuvshinnikov, senior lieutenant, mortar platoon commander; Nadezhda Sergeevna Kozlova, mother of the deceased private Andrei Kozlov; Marina Kiseleva, employee; Taras Ketsmur, private; Pyotr Kurbanov, major, commander of a mountain rifle company; Vasily Kubik, ensign; Oleg Lelyushenko, private, grenade launcher; Alexander Leletko, private; Sergei Loskutov, military surgeon; Valery Lisichenok, signal sergeant; Alexander Lavrov, private; Vera Lysenko, employee; Arthur Metlitsky, private, scout; Evgeny Stepanovich Mukhortov, major, battalion commander, and his son Andrey Mukhortov, junior lieutenant; Lidia Efimovna Mankevich, mother of the deceased sergeant Dmitry Mankevich; Galina Mlyavaya, wife of the deceased captain Stepan Mlyavy; Vladimir Mikholap, private, mortarman; Maxim Medvedev, private air controller; Alexander Nikolaenko, captain, helicopter flight commander; Oleg L., helicopter pilot; Natalya Orlova, employee; Galina Pavlova, nurse; Vladimir Pankratov, private, intelligence officer; Vitaly Ruzhentsev, private, driver; Sergei Rusak, private, tank driver; Mikhail Sirotin, senior lieutenant, pilot; Alexander Sukhorukov, senior lieutenant, commander of a mountain rifle platoon; Timofey Smirnov, artillery sergeant; Valentina Kirillovna Sanko, mother of the deceased private Valentin Sanko; Nina Ivanovna Sidelnikova, mother; Vladimir Simanin, lieutenant colonel; Thomas M. , sergeant, infantry platoon commander; Leonid Ivanovich Tatarchenko, father of the deceased private Igor Tatarchenko; Vadim Trubin, sergeant, special forces soldier; Vladimir Ulanov, captain; Tamara Fadeeva, bacteriologist; Lyudmila Kharitonchik, wife of the deceased senior lieutenant Yuri Kharitonchik; Anna Khakas, clerk; Valery Khudyakov, major; Valentina Yakovleva, warrant officer, head of the secret unit...

If war does not bring death, it always leaves its mark on a person, interferes with the fate of his loved ones, and sometimes changes him beyond recognition. Sometimes you don’t want to see it, you don’t want to believe that it happened in reality, but you need to know about it. Svetlana Alexievich’s book “Zinc Boys” is dedicated to the Afghan war. This is the third book in the “Voices of Utopia” series, which became a bestseller and received many different reviews. Some deeply experience everything described, others do not want to believe it. There was a trial based on this book, since there were those who considered the writer’s words offensive and false, but as a result, no significant violations were revealed.

This is documentary fiction. The author vividly conveys the memories of those who took part in the war in Afghanistan: soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, home front employees. Svetlana Alexievich talked with everyone affected by this war, including mothers and wives who were left without their beloved men.

The book talks about the war itself and its causes, and the author also talks about the last years of Soviet power, which was undermined by the Afghan war. What actually happened in that war, what was kept silent then, what was impossible to ask about? Why did sons and husbands fight? Why did they sacrifice their health and lives? This truth may turn out to be so terrible and painful that you will not want to accept it. People who returned from the war will never forget about it. And even if they were not injured, their psyche was still seriously damaged. What was it for? The answers can be found in this book.

On our website you can download the book “The Zinc Boys” by Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.

I will note a strange detail from the writer’s biography. In any case, this is how it is presented:

“In 1989, S. Alexievich’s new book “Zinc Boys” was published - a book about the criminal Afghan war, which was hidden from its own people for ten years. To write this book, she traveled around the country for four years, meeting with mothers of fallen soldiers and former Afghan soldiers. I myself visited the war, flew to Afghanistan (ModernLib.Ru).”

Excuse me, “going to war” and “flying to Afghanistan” are different.

This is how the book “The Zinc Boys” is introduced:

“Without this book, which has long become a world bestseller, it is no longer possible to imagine either the history of the Afghan war - an unnecessary and unjust war, or the history of the last years of Soviet power, which was completely undermined by this war. The grief of the mothers of the “zinc boys” is inescapable; their desire to know the truth about how and why their sons fought and died in Afghanistan is understandable. But having learned this truth, many of them were horrified and abandoned it.”

There are so many who want to own the truth, the truth. But, often, lies can be found under white robes.

The structure of the book is the revelations of those who visited Afghanistan. But can you trust them? Often memories are embellished or, conversely, denigrated. Once upon a time, on my way home after demobilization (conscript service in the airborne special forces brigade in the GSVG), I watched on the bus as my colleague bragged to the girls about his exploits. And he was actually a privateer: he gave out trousers, bedding, shoes, and clothes to soldiers and officers. Did not participate in the exercises.

From September 5 to September 25, 1988, according to records, Alexievich was with a group of correspondents in Afghanistan. There were five months left before the withdrawal of Soviet troops. It immediately begins with incidents. How I want to tell you that you visited a real war:

“We’re going to land.
...The roar of guns. Patrols with machine guns and wearing body armor require a pass.
I didn't want to write about the war anymore. But here I am in a real war.”

It’s hard for me to even imagine what kind of cannonade there was in Kabul? I don’t think that the army command would allow the plane to land (or even take off from Tashkent) during active hostilities. In general, the confrontation between Soviet troops and mujahideen (spirits) can hardly be called a “real war.”

We have to agree. But these storytellers can ruin the fate of more than one person.

Periodically, S. Alexievich interrupts his memories with inserts from overheard stories. They are designated “From stories...”. Here is the first tale (fairy tale):

“- They captured the “spirits”... We asked: “Where are the warehouses?” They are silent. They picked up two people in helicopters: “Where? Show me...” They are silent. They threw one onto the rocks...”

I imagine “spirits” who know their terrain from a helicopter flight height. And what kind of warehouses are we talking about? It was as if they were there in every village. I will mark this episode with number (1).

I also find it hard to believe the following:

I met cameramen from Moscow.

“They were filming the loading of the Black Tulip. Without raising their eyes, they say that the dead are dressed in old military uniforms from the forties, even with riding breeches, sometimes they are laid to rest without being dressed, and sometimes even this uniform is missing. Old boards, rusty nails... New dead were brought to the refrigerator. It smells like stale boar.
Who will believe me if I write about this?

The question is reasonable.

Here's another fairy tale: “I saw the battle... Three soldiers were killed...”.

It's like on TV, it turns out. Who took her, the correspondent, to combat? It's mind boggling.

Or this:

"23 September
I went up in a helicopter... From above I saw hundreds of things prepared for future use.
zinc coffins, shining beautifully and terribly in the sun...”

Was she being taken on a helicopter ride over Kabul airport? And what are these “hundreds of zinc coffins”? And a little earlier she writes: “old boards, rusty nails.” So are there wooden or zinc coffins?

In the stories of participants in Afghan events, the period of 80-81 is often indicated. And this is what one of the soldiers says:

“I was called up in eighty-one. The war had been going on for two years..."

Of course, this is a big statement. In the first years, there could be no talk of war as such, since there were no active actions of the Mujahideen yet. Indignation at the lawlessness of individual units of the Fortieth Army was just beginning to grow.

“I was trained to shoot wherever I was told. He shot without sparing anyone. Could have killed a child. After all, everyone fought with us there: men, women, old people, children. There is a column going through the village. The engine in the first car stalls. The driver gets out, raises the hood... A boy, about ten years old, stabs him in the back with a knife... Where the heart is. The soldier lay down on the engine...”

Those who served in the army (not necessarily in Afghanistan) can imagine what the hood of a military vehicle is like. This is not a car: he lifted the hood and bent over the engine. The ten-year-old boy just waited for days for the column to thrust a shuravi knife into the heart area from behind. If such an event suddenly happened, the soldier would not “lay down” on the engine, since it is located high, but would fall near the car. In general, another fairy tale.

Or here’s from a motorized rifleman’s story:

“Every day we were shot at, we were killed. They killed a guy nearby... The first one before my eyes... We didn’t know each other very well... They fired from a mortar... There were a lot of fragments in it...”

Where was this motorized rifleman that they shot at him every day? This did not happen even in the Kandahar zone. Or in Kunduz before the withdrawal of troops. Well, “there were a lot of fragments from the mortar” - this is for the ignorant. Only if a mine exploded very close. So she would have destroyed the eyewitness. Many fragments can hit one person from the explosion of a cumulative directed mine. And from a mine from a mortar, fragments fly in all directions, and at a distance one or a couple of fragments can be caught.

This motorized rifleman said the only thing for sure: “ A dead peasant lies - a frail body and large hands...." Peasants everywhere are hardworking, but Afghan peasants have hard work, since there is practically no mechanization.

Well, again, “he returned in the eighty-first year.” That is, it was at the very beginning, when there was no active hostilities yet.

The nurse talked like crazy. Of course, a woman. He swears that he is not a “Chekist” (the talkative ones will talk about “Chekist” below). The eightieth year, mind you, there were no active hostilities. Al-Qaeda too.

“All March, cut off arms, legs, and the remains of our soldiers and officers were dumped right there, near the tents. The corpses lay half naked, with their eyes gouged out, with stars carved on their backs and stomachs...”

This is in Kabul. Darkness. Only women can lie like that. But the following revelation is quite reliable; such cases (single cases) seem to have occurred:

“We sometimes killed an entire village for one of our dead.”

I will mark this episode with number (2). Here's another horror story from a nurse with an incredible summary:

“Yes, our boys sold everything. I don’t blame them, more often than not I don’t. They died for three rubles a month - our soldier received eight checks a month... Three rubles... They were fed meat with worms, rusty fish... We all had scurvy, and all my front teeth fell out. They sold blankets and bought marijuana.”

What does an ordinary artilleryman do in war? Yes, he is constantly near his gun. Here's what an ordinary artilleryman who served in Afghanistan says:

“Near Bagram we went into a village and asked for food. According to their laws, if a person is hungry in your house, he cannot be denied a hot cake. The women sat us at the table and fed us. When we left, the village threw stones and sticks at these women and their children to death. They knew that they would be killed, but they still didn’t kick us out. And we came to them with our laws... We wore hats and entered the mosque...”

It looks like some kind of booth, not an army. The private left his post and went to have a snack in the village. A touching story. Why did he go to the mosque?

But the employee outdid everyone. Perhaps, with her revelations, I’ll finish this unpleasant task: reading nonsense. I will quote it in a block with short comments.

“From first impressions? Transfer in Kabul - barbed wire, soldiers with machine guns, dogs barking. Only women. Hundreds of women. The officers come and choose who is prettier and younger.”

It looks like some kind of concentration camp. How many planes delivered such valuable cargo for the army - hundreds of women? I got the impression that the employee’s psyche was not all right, but S. Alexievich carefully wrote down her story and put the blame on the readers’ ears.

“An ordinary KamAZ with a tarpaulin. Coffins were thrown like boxes of ammunition. I was horrified. The soldiers understood: “New girl.” We arrived at the unit. It's sixty degrees."

This is in Kabul! Does it get this hot in the Sahara?

The battalion commander immediately persuaded the employee to cohabitate, but she actively fought back, including from others. But, in the end, she became a “chekist” - she gave herself to military personnel for money - checks. True, he says that there is only one, which I have little faith in.

The following seems like nonsense:

“We were driving an armored personnel carrier. I covered him with myself, but, fortunately, the bullet went through the hatch. And he was sitting with his back. We returned and wrote to my wife about me. He has not received letters from home for two months.
...I like to go shoot. I release the entire store in one burst. I feel better.
She killed one “spirit” herself. We went to the mountains, to breathe, to admire. A rustle behind a stone shocks me back, and I’m in line. First. She came up and looked: a strong, handsome man was lying..."

And these are the details on the question of the employee’s psyche:

“...I came, opened the refrigerator and ate a lot, so much that another time it would have been enough for me for a week. Nervous breakdown. They brought a bottle of vodka. I drank, I didn't get drunk. It was scary: if I had missed the mark, my mother would have received “a load of two hundred.”
I wanted to be in the war, but not in this one, but in the Great Patriotic War.”

“...And in the battle one soldier covered me with himself. As long as I live, I will remember him. He didn't know me, he only did it because I was a woman. Will you forget this? And where in ordinary life can you check whether a person can close you? Here the best is even better, the bad is even worse. They are shelling... And the soldier shouted something vulgar to me. Dirty. And they killed him, cut off half of his head, half of his body. Before my eyes... I began to shake as if I had malaria.”

Not all women can lie like that. Here's more about the "chekists". This does not apply to all women who were in Afghanistan.

“Our women are sold to dukans [traders] right in the dukans, in the back rooms, and they are so small... You go into the dukan, the bochata [children] shout: “Khanum, jik-jik...” - And they point to the back room. Their officers pay with checks and say: “I’ll go to the “chekist” ....”

At this point I stop analyzing disgusting reading from Svetlana Alexievich. I think it’s clear why it was popular in 1989. Just like her book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face.” Only at the beginning of perestroika was it possible to publish such dregs in millions of copies.

Svetlana Alexievich recklessly published fragments of the trials that took place in Minsk in the early nineties. There were still some brave souls (and it didn’t matter at all whether someone pushed them to file a lawsuit or not) who demanded compensation for moral damage from such writings. From what was published it is clear how the author of a sensational, I don’t know, novel or documentary story, although it is neither one nor the other, falsified the stories and tales of people who trusted her.

From the lawsuit of Oleg Sergeevich Lyashenko, a former private, grenade launcher:

“Aleksievich completely distorted my story, added what I did not say, and if I did say it, I understood it differently, and made independent conclusions that I did not draw.”

In the heat of the moment, in court, Alexievich confesses to Oleg:

“And I changed your last name. I changed it to protect you, and now I have to protect myself from you with the same thing. Since it’s not your last name, it’s a collective image... And your claims are unfounded...”

How cleverly everything is turned. So what does this have to do with eyewitnesses, if they were made into a collective image, and the author put in her fantasies?

This is what the mother of a deceased officer in Afghanistan tells the documentary filmmaker:

From the lawsuit of Ekaterina Nikitichna Platitsina, mother of the deceased Major Alexander Platitsin:

“The monologue published in the newspaper and book distorted my story about my son. S. Alexievich, despite the fact that the book is documentary, added some facts of her own, omitted many of my stories, drew her own conclusions and signed the monologue with my name.”

And this is the pain caused to only one of the mothers:

“He was an officer. Combat officer. And here he is shown as a crybaby. Was it really necessary to write about this?
Judge T. Gorodnicheva: I’m ready to cry myself. And I cried more than once when I read this book, your story. But what here offends your honor and dignity?
E. Platitsina: You see, he was a combat officer. He couldn't cry. Or here’s another: “Two days later it was New Year. He hid gifts for us under the tree. I need a big scarf. Black. “Why did you choose black, son?” - “Mommy, there were different ones. But by the time my turn came, only the black ones remained. Look, it suits you...”
It turns out that my son stood in lines; he hated shops and lines. And here he is standing in line during the war... For me, for a scarf... Why did I have to write about this? He was a combat officer. He died".

However, it is in vain to appeal to the shameless “writer” who collected rumors and published them in troubled times. This was her shot in the back of the Afghans, who could not help but serve their Motherland at that time.

I end my analysis of this fake book with the following emotional statement:

From the speech of T. M. Ketsmur

“I was not preparing to speak, I will not speak from a piece of paper, in normal language. How did I meet the most famous world-class writer? We were introduced by front-line soldier Valentina Chudaeva. She told me that this writer wrote the book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” which is being read all over the world. Then, at one of the meetings with front-line soldiers, I talked with other women veterans, they told me that Alexievich managed to make a fortune and fame for herself from their lives, and now she has taken on the “Afghans.” I’m worried... I apologize. ..
She came to our Memory club with a voice recorder. I wanted to write about many guys, not just me. Why did she write her book after the war? Why did this writer with a great name, worldwide, remain silent for ten years? Never shouted?
Nobody sent me there. I myself asked to go to Afghanistan, wrote reports. I figured out that a close relative of mine died there. I’ll explain the situation a little... I can write a book myself... When we met, I refused to talk to her, so I told her that we ourselves, who were there, would write a book. Let's write it better, because she wasn't there. What can she write? It will only hurt us.
Alexievich is now writing a book about Chernobyl. It will be no less dirt than what was poured on us. She deprived our entire “Afghan” generation of moral life. It turns out that I am a robot... A computer... A hired killer... And my place is in Novinki near Minsk, in a madhouse...
My friends call and promise to punch me in the face that I’m such a hero... I’m excited... I apologize... She wrote that I served in Afghanistan with a dog... The dog died on the way...
I asked to go to Afghanistan myself... You see, on my own! I'm not a robot... Not a computer... I'm excited... I'm sorry..."

P.S.: I numbered two rather “dumb” episodes above - (1) and (2). On the portal I asked what is this? There was no one to answer the question. Strange. And everything is quite simple: this is a message about war crimes. In 1989, when the first edition of the book was published, there was still the Soviet Union. So, the prosecutor’s office simply HAD to initiate a criminal case based on the revelations. The journalist had audio recordings and information on paper. Everything would immediately become clear from the very first interrogations, and not only slander could the “writer” be charged with. Instead, the “Afghans” and the mother of the deceased major, offended by the scribbler, initiated only a civil case (low bow to them). Naturally, the judicial authorities wentoft their heads, and S. Alexievich became a hero.

I would like to point out that war crimes have no statute of limitations...