A woman describes her husband, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan:
Delusions of grandeur: We fought in a war! We're tough! The first toast is always: "The world is shit, all people are whores, the sun is just a fucking streetlight." And it goes on and on until the morning: "To resting in peace," "To health," "To medals," "Death to them all." Things haven't worked out for them.... I couldn't tell you if it's because of the vodka or the war. They're mean as wolves! They hate the Jews and all the people from the Caucasus. The Jews, because they killed Christ and ruined Lenin's plan. Home life is no fun for them anymore: Wake up, wash up, eat breakfast. It's boring! At the drop of a hat-- just call 'em up-- they'd all march straight to Chechnya. To be heroes again! There's this bitterness left over, they're mad at everybody: the politicians, the generals, and everyone who wasn't there with them. Especially the last category.... more than the rest.... Just like my husband, many of them don't have any sort of career. Or they all have the same career: walking around with a handgun. They say they drink because everyone here betrayed them..... Boo hoo! They drank when they were out there, too....
[Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time, p. 411]
Aleksander Laskovich, soldier, entrepreneur, emigrant, interviewed periodically between the ages of 21 and 30:
Papa belonged to the Idea, he wasn't really a human. You must love the Motherland with your entire being. Unconditionally! That was all I ever heard, my entire childhood. The only reason we were alive was so we could defend the Motherland.......
While Papa served the great Idea. It was as though everyone had been lobotomized, they were all terribly proud of living without any pants on, but clutching a rifle..... We grew up... we all grew up a long time ago... Poor Papa! Life, in the meantime, changed genres.... What used to be an optimistic tragedy is now a comedy and action flick. What crawls on its belly and gnaws on pinecones?
[Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time, p. 368]
Once participants on a key battleground of the Cold War, where U.S.-backed guerrilla fighters dealt a humiliating blow to the Soviet Union and the Afghan military it trained, Afghan war vets are again taking up arms in Ukraine by the thousands—whether on the side of the separatists or for the Ukrainian government. For these men, called “Afgantsy” in Russian, the impulse to fight is almost innate—a response to what they view as another proxy war between the West, which backs Ukraine, and Russia, which openly supports the separatists.
Despite their age, for many Afgantsy, the nearly 2-year-old Ukraine conflict, which has killed almost 9,000 people and displaced at least 1.4 million, is a natural next step. It is their third war in at least 25 years, with the 1990s Chechen wars sandwiched in between. The middle-aged fighters’ hardened reserve, combined with much-needed combat experience, makes them desirable in a conflict defined by poverty and incompetence, in which recruits on both sides have been accused of robbery, drug-dealing and hard drinking.
[Amie Ferris-Rotman, Politico]
Russians express their thoughts on September 3rd, The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism:
We need a war, maybe then we'll have real, upstanding people. My grandfather always said that he only ever met truly good people during the war. There's not enough kindness these days.
Every person from the Caucasus is a potential terrorist.
I hate the Chechens! If it weren't for us Russians, they'd still be up there in their mountains, living in caves. I also hate journalists who stand up for Chechens! Fucking liberals!
Today it's them, tomorrow it's going to be us. And no one says anything, everyone is okay with it.
Terrorism: is it a good thing or a bad thing? It's what passes for good these days.
[Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time, pp. 363-365]
The field expedients the Soviets poured into their hapless bodies may have brought a degree of oblivion to their wartime misadventures. These noxious and innovative drinks were competing with the opium that was so readily available and also with such alternatives as chifir’, a punishingly strong tea that was actually used in the Gulags to induce a mild high or stave off pain and exhaustion. They also contributed to as much as 20 percent of the cases addressed by the Military-Medical Service in Afghanistan. One army doctor recounted to me a tale of having to operate on a soldier hit by shrapnel from a rebel mortar, whose innards still smelled of cheap cologne. Stalin reportedly encouraged the distribution of 100 grams of vodka — equivalent to a double shot — to soldiers before an assault.
[Mark Galeotti, War on the Rocks]
