One Soldier's War

A surreal depiction of the first and second Chechen wars. A read for anyone who wants to join the army and those who glorify war. The side a broadcast wont show and figureheads wont see.

Arkady Babchenko's book about his participation in the wars in Chechnya was a rare find for me. I've been greatly interested in these modern and current wars but the literature on them is quit limited and usually comes with a bias/agenda. Accounts from the soldiers themselves are rare, as rare as those from the Soviet-Afghan war. Such an account will more than likely come with a bias of its own, but there is a distinct difference between a primary source (an eyewitness account in this case) and a secondary source with an agenda. Since, in this case, the author is regularly critical of both the government and military high command, the majority of this book simply deals with what it takes for a soldier to survive such a war. For those interested in this account, you should be warned it is not an easy read. War is never glamorous, and the type of war Russian soldiers found themselves in during the Chechen conflict regularly involved atrocities, torture, wanton destruction and murder. That being said, the book is separated into three parts. The first part consists of mini-chapters, 1-3 pages each, with no real linear narrative to connect them to each other. Just quick "sound bytes" of what war was like. These quick glimpses into the war are probably what stayed with the author long after he had returned home. Arkady was drafted and participated in the first Chechen war, then volunteers for the second. He claims that while his body may have left the war his soul had stayed. The overall translation is good, but not great, as there are a few mistakes and omissions which tend to take away from the storyline(s). But this can be overlooked as some of the events recalled here are simply too powerful to forget, more than once I had to reread entire paragraphs just to make sure I understood what the author was saying. The period of time spent in Mozdok is eye opening. Hard as it might be to believe, soldiers do go through a hazing process when they first arrive in the army. It was the same during the Soviet Union and it seems to have lasted after the fall of the USSR. Most of the men in my family served in the Soviet Army and quite a few had something to say about the hazing process. Granted, I have never heard of the extremely barbaric experiences described here, but that might be because when my family members served the Soviet Union was not at war. But it isn't hard to believe that such beatings, torture, and humiliation took place on a regular basis if you have been keeping up with news coming out of Russia. Suicides by soldiers have been quite high and many take place because boys of 18, 19, or 20 simply cannot take being beaten on a regular basis for months on end. The author explains how he learned to deal with it or try to avoid it, some of his friends went AWOL, while another spent time in a hospital after suffering a broken finger during his latest beating. The chaotic situation the regiment he belonged to is also telling of the time. The mid 199

Wow ----- never thought I would be caught up in a book until 1:30 a.m. This is an account that I will never forget. It allows a non-military person a rare look into the workings of what must be one of the most brutal military organizations in the world. The hardships are probably overcome by fear, love of mother Russia, and personal comradeship. Certainly there should be no loyalty to such a corrupt organization. A remarkable account. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in military issues or contemporary Russia. The style of writing is objective, not editorial. Young Arklady Babchenko simply tells it as it happened. Many thanks to Nick Allen for bringing this to the English-speaking world.

Soldiers War details hell on earth in a clear laconic voice of someone who was there and now can never leave. The descriptions of the war are so graphic and the detailing of the confusion of military and political leadership are simply chilling. The CIA was wrong about the evil empire's military prowess, I think all the Russians hoped to do was absorb enough bullets from the West and walk in with the remainder. Worth a close read.

I purchased this book among twenty or so others to learn more about the First and Second Chechen wars. In all honesty, this book has been one of the best I have read about the subject, no doubt due to the author having took part in the fighting there. He provides a raw, untainted account of what the journalists and public were not privy to during this time. His writing style is extremely effective, making the book a surefire "page-turner". Highly recommended!

Arkady Babchenko is a journalist, but he came to that career after having served 7 years in both Chechen campaigns. In his introduction, he explains that he has changed some names, reported some events he only heard about but didn't see, created composite characters out of several, and changed the timeline of certain events in the telling of the stories, as he tried to bring all the stories together to form a book. As it is, the stories are disjointed and disconnected, some incredibly short and some extremely long, each an interlude in an interminable conflict. Yet they come together to sketch a frightening, hauntingly fractured portrait of a war that is otherwise not well known in the West. Babchenko's episodic style seems to recall, perhaps quite consciously, the greatest Russian novel by a war journalist, Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry. Both are unflinchingly brutal in their descriptions of human decay, moral and physical, of the blood and filth that attaches to bodies in conflict, and the corrupt souls that flock to it. He says multiple times that no one can be made to understand war if they haven't seen it, and that every soldier who served in Chechnya left their life there; the book is a personal catharsis for a man who cannot leave behind what he took from the battlefield. For anyone who reads it, it's a profoundly moving attempt to explain why.