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فتيان الزنك

(Голоса утопии #3)

Svetlana Alexievich,

سفيتلانا ألكسييفيتش,

عبد الله حبة (translator)

4.33 · Rating details · 5,713 ratings · 842 reviews

سفيتلانا أليكسييفيتش في كتابها فتيان الزنك وثقت التدخل السوفيتي في أفغانستان بين العامين 1979 و 1985. جمعت فيه مقابلات مع جنود عائدين من الحرب، أو مع أمهات وزوجات جنود قتلوا هناك، وأعيدت جثثهم في توابيت مصنوعة من الزنك.

كانت نتيجة الحرب آلاف القتى والمعوقين والمفقودين، مما دفع سفيتلانا إلى أثارة أسئلة حساسة حول الحرب، من نحن؟ لماذا فعلنا ذلك؟ ولماذا حصل لنا ذلك؟ ولماذا صدقن ...more

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Paperback, الطبعة الأولى, 368 pages

Published 2016 by دار ممدوح عدوان للنشر والتوزيع (first published 1989)

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ليس للحرب وجه أنثوي by Svetlana Alexievich

النورس جوناثان ليفنجستون by Richard Bach

الساعة الخامسة والعشرون by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu

قائمة ما سأنتقي من معرض القاهرة الدولي للكتاب 2017

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Aug 09, 2012 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Military History buffs

Shelves: afghanistan, military-non-fiction, soviet-union

I remember back in the '70s having to sit through long presentations regarding the Soviet Union and the military might thereof. These briefings were given by American military personnel and the general theme was that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, armed to the teeth. It seemed that they had endless munitions and hordes of personnel under arms, all of whom wanted our stuff. They had no stuff in the Soviet Union, we were told, and they would be coveting our stuff, which we had in abundance. I remember back in the '70s having to sit through long presentations regarding the Soviet Union and the military might thereof. These briefings were given by American military personnel and the general theme was that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, armed to the teeth. It seemed that they had endless munitions and hordes of personnel under arms, all of whom wanted our stuff. They had no stuff in the Soviet Union, we were told, and they would be coveting our stuff, which we had in abundance. Some of this propaganda had a grain of truth in it: the Soviets were starved for consumer goods and they did have a lot of men under arms, but the weaponry was outdated and defective and the soldiery reluctant and usually coerced into service. And while there was a shortage of consumer goods, even the most fashion-conscious was unlikely to risk death for a pair of jeans. Somehow the people doing the briefings neglected to mention that part. In short, while the Soviet Union had enough punch to mess the world up considerably, they were extremely unlikely to start anything, military bombast notwithstanding.

After the "invasion" of Afghanistan, I recall even more anti-Soviet propaganda. One US-based military magazine sought donations to purchase ammo for the mujahidin. If I recall correctly, the slogan was "Kill a commie for Mommy" or some such blather. I have often wondered if anyone ever contributed and, if so, whether any of the contribution actually made it to Afghanistan. I guess what I'm getting at with all of this preamble is that we were pretty much brainwashed into an intense dislike of all things Soviet.

This book is the result of many personal interviews the author conducted with returned soldiers and civilians and also with the next of kin of those who were returned in zinc coffins, or zinky boys as they became known. Alexievich has managed to put a human face on the Soviet soldier for me, and I have come to realize that soldiers are soldiers the world over. Our governments start wars, and governments legislate soldiers into action whether the soldier likes it or not.

In the case of the Russians, many of them were told that their intervention in Afghanistan prevented the takeover of the country by the USA, which was on the point of invading. Many soldiers were told they were being airlifted to some other destination, only to find themselves in Afghanistan when the plane touched down. Some volunteered for the job, as the bazaars in Afghanistan had more consumer goods than the Soviet shops. Ponder that for a moment; a backwater like Afghanistan having more produce than your home country!

Life was hard for these soldiers. The Soviet army turned a blind eye to the constant hazing and abuse of recruits. New soldiers were routinely robbed and beaten by the older soldiers or "grandfathers". An excerpt from a soldier's letter home:

"Mum, buy me a puppy and call it Sergeant so I can kill it when I get home." (p.46)

Even the female civilian employees were not free from abuse. They volunteered for service; some for patriotic reasons, some for the extra pay, and yet others for the shopping opportunities. Whatever their motivation, they were universally assumed to have come hunting for men. Sadly, many of them felt a need to take on a man as protection against the predations of others. Better one devil you know than many you don't.

Alexeivich has really been able to express the anguish and heartache of those who came back to a country that was so neglectful that Afghanistan casualties, Zinky Boys, were not allowed to be buried in the same section of a cemetery, like they were a collective dirty secret. I won't even go into the sense of loss and betrayal expressed by grieving mothers who were never given adequate details regarding the death of their respective children. In spite of this, the reaction to the author's work was mixed, and I leave you with this final quote from a call she received:

"Who needs your dreadful truth? I don't want to know it!!! You want to buy your own glory at the expense of our sons' blood. They were heroes, heroes, heroes! They should have beautiful books written about them, and you're turning them into mincemeat" (p.187) ...more

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Jul 24, 2007 Naeem rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books-of-a-lifetime

I could not and still cannot read this book for more than 10 pages at a time. I put it down, wipe my tears, walk around the house a few times, and get back to it with some wariness. One of my friends/students once said to me, "Never, never teach a class on Afghanistan without this book." Or for that matter on war.

The love of a mother for her son (and sometimes daughter) has never, for me, been so strongly conveyed as in this book. The fear and idealism of the soldier never opened up so carefull ...more

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May 02, 2017 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir-letters, non-fiction, svetlana-alexievich, own, russia-ukraine, 4-star, translated

Prologue
From the Notebooks

--Boys in Zinc

Post Mortem
'Boys in Zinc' on Trial ...more

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Oct 09, 2015 PGR Nair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

ZINKY BOYS: A REQUIEM TO THE REMEMBERED

When I read a few days ago in Ladbroke betting site that Svetlana Alexievich, the great Belarusian writer, is topping as a probable candidate for 2015 Nobel prize for literature, I felt a palpitation in my heart. Ever since I read her book Zinky Boys, I have been a great fan of this writer. Now that she has won the prize, my joy knows no bounds as she is a truly deserving writer to win Nobel Prize. I own two books of her-Zinky Boys and Voices from Cherneob ...more

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Oct 26, 2009 Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Vincent Di Caro

Shelves: books-read-in-2009

What made this book so powerful, so heartbreaking, was its simplicity. In Zinky Boys, Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviews the mothers, widows, civilians and soldiers whose lives were destroyed by the USSR's ten year war in Afghanistan. The 197 pages are filled with dozens of short interviews which left me close to tears, depressed, imagining myself burying a son or thinking what it would take to kill without judgment.

Page 23. An army nurse recalls, "Sometimes we massacred a whole v ...more

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Jun 25, 2017 Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A brutal look at the Afghanistan war of the 1980s, as told from the Soviet perspective. Alexievich is a journalist (the book is mostly interviews of soldiers, civilian employees, mothers, and widows affected by the war), but it's clear that she presents these responses for her own narrative and rhetorical purposes. Even if you have no interest in this specific war, this book is an utterly compelling look at so many things: the mentality of obeying orders without questioning them (a particular ta ...more

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Apr 24, 2016 Adam Dalva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Very good collection of monologues from Soviet participants in the Afghanistan War - full of insight and depressing reality, and often quite beautiful. I think this fell a bit short of the truly excellent VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL, both with its slightly clunkier frame and its more universal backdrop. While Chernobyl is unique, war is horrifically usual, and so we're somewhat more inured to the tragic arc of the narratives here. That does not rob this book of its notable power, but it did diminish t ...more

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Nov 02, 2018 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: war-genocide, woman-authors, non-fiction, 7-russian, nobel

"‘I cried when I read your article, but I shan’t read the whole book, because of an elementary sense of self-preservation. I’m not sure whether we ought to know so much about ourselves. Perhaps it’s just too frightening. It leaves a great void in my soul. You begin to lose faith in your fellow-man and fear him instead.’"

This is the second book I have that is written by Svetlana Alexievich and her books really do make me wonder about why I read. On one hand, her books are about truth - and pl

"‘I cried when I read your article, but I shan’t read the whole book, because of an elementary sense of self-preservation. I’m not sure whether we ought to know so much about ourselves. Perhaps it’s just too frightening. It leaves a great void in my soul. You begin to lose faith in your fellow-man and fear him instead.’"

This is the second book I have that is written by Svetlana Alexievich and her books really do make me wonder about why I read. On one hand, her books are about truth - and plain, ugly truth at that which needs to be told or it would be suppressed, and thus exactly the kind of books that should be read on the priority basis. On other hand, her books are so depressing - being full of accounts of lost and wasted lives; making one wonder whether there really is any point in reading them.

Though not as depressing as Chernobyl diaries, this one is full of sad accounts of all those whose lives were ruined in Afghanistan - including accounts of soldiers who lost their limbs, mothers, and wives of soldiers who lost their lives, the traumatic experiences of women who were sent there as nurses etc. The name of the book comes from the Zinc coffins in which the Russian soldiers who died in Afghanistan war were brought back home - in an effort by the Soviet government to maintain secrecy about the existence of a conflict. And it is Zincy Boys because they were really boys too young to understand life at all, many still mamma's boys. And though they were forced to go there through coercion or fraud, they and their families still have to deal with prejudice of people who hold them responsible for the war. They try to get together because no one who wasn't in the war could understand them.

"In the eight years since the war the number of suicides - officers as well as other ranks - is about the same as the number of fatalities in the war itself.”

The worst parts are those where an account of a compassionate soldier or nurse, contains details of Afghan Children who lost his or her limbs or life in war.

"I drove to a hospital for Afghan civilians with a group of nurses – we brought presents for the children. Toys, candy, cookies. I had about five teddy bears. We arrived at the hospital, along barracks. No one has more than a blanket for bedding. A young Afghan woman approached me, holding a child in her arms. She wanted to say something – over the last ten years almost everyone here has learned to speak a little Russian – and I handed the child a toy, which he took with his teeth. "Why his teeth?" I asked in surprise. She pulled the blanket off his tiny body – the little boy was missing both arms. "It was when your Russians bombed." Someone held me up as I began to fall."

The introduction focuses on the similarities between the Vietnam war and Afghanistan war. In both cases, a government of one of the most powerful countries of the time decides to wage a useless war and forced or frauded her boys (the ones who were not rich enough to pay their way out of it) into going to fight in a third world country that was fighting for its independence. Moreover, in both cases, people of the attacking countries didn't support the war.

It is tragic how people are quick to jump to conclusions that wars are the only solutions to most international conflicts.

Why is it that seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds find it easier to kill than thirty-year-olds, for example? Because they have no pity, that’s why. When the war was over I noticed how violent fairytales were.
People are always killing each other, Baba Yaga even roasts them in her oven, but the children are never frightened. They hardly ever even cry!

Of course, most of these people have never been to an actual war themselves. And this kind of books are solutions to their ignorance. This is what a textbook on history should be like, instead of a book that makes you learn things like strategies each side employed or why a particular side won or which General or major won which battle. I kind of don't understand how can anyone with open mind continue to justify any of those - the need for war, need for armies and need for the feeling of nationalism (which if you think about it is just a fancy name for tribalism):

"I had my son’s stone engraved with these words: “Remember, friends, he died that the living might live.” I know, now, that that was not true - he did not die for the sake of the living. I was lied to when I was young and continued the process with him. We were so good at believing. “Love the Motherland, son, she’ll never betray you and love you always.” I used to repeat to him. Now I would like to write something different on his grave: “Why?” ’ (A mother)

More Quotes

"‘I was on holiday by the Black Sea and saw a few young lads crawling over the sand to get to the water. I didn’t go to the beach anymore, I’d just have started crying. They were laughing and trying to flirt with us girls but we all ran away from them."

"Until I 988, Soviet psychologists had never heard of PTSD, until American psychologists expert with post-war trauma visited and told them. Up till then, their answer was behavior modification with drugs - the way Soviet psychiatry had always dealt with mental illness."

"A boy might be blown up by a mine and there’d be nothing left except half a bucket of flesh, but we wrote that he’d died of food poisoning, or in a car accident, or he’d fallen into a ravine."

"We wanted to shut the doors so no one would hear, because there were soldiers dying alone next door, boys with no one to weep for them. ‘Mum! Mum!’ they’d shout, and I’d lie to them, ‘I’m here.’ We became their mothers and sisters, and we wanted to be worthy of their trust."

"Nowadays I don’t just hate war. I can’t even stand seeing a couple of boys having a scrap in the park. And please, don’t tell me the war’s over now. In summer, when I breathe in the hot dusty air, or see a pool of stagnant water, or smell the dry flowers in the fields, it’s like a punch in the head. I’ll be haunted by Afghanistan for the rest of my life ..."

"When we went on a raid we’d pin a note to the upper part of our body and another to the lower part so that if we were blown up by a mine one or the other would be found. Or else we wore bracelets with our name, number and blood group engraved on them. We never said ‘I’m going ... ’ always ‘I’ve been sent ... ’ And we never said the word ‘last’:
‘Let’s go and have a last drink.’"

"‘Could you have refused to go to Afghanistan?’ Me personally? Only one of our group of professional army officers, Major Bondarenko, a battery commander, refused. The first thing that happened was, he had to face a ‘court of honor’, which convicted him of cowardice. Can you imagine what that does to a man’s self-esteem? Suicide might be the easiest way out. Then he was demoted to captain and posted to a building battalion as punishment. Then he was expelled from the party and eventually discharged with dishonor. How many men could go through all that? And he was a military man to the bone - he’d spent thirty years in the army."

"That was five years ago. I still have this dream. I’m in a long mine-field. I’ve drawn up a plan, based on the number of mines and the number of rows, and markers to find them by. But I’ve lost the plan. (In fact we often did lose them, or else the marker was a tree which had been destroyed or a pile of stones which had been blown up. Nobody wanted to go and check, and risk getting blown up by our own mines.) In my dream I see children running near the mine-field, they don’t know there are mines there. I want to shout: ‘Stop! Mines!’ I want to warn the children. I want to warn the children ... I’m running ... I have both my legs back, and I can see, my eyes can see again ... But that’s only at night, only in my dream. Then I wake up."

"Did you know that drugs and fur coats were smuggled in coffins? Yes, right in there with the bodies! Have you ever seen necklaces of dried ears? Yes, trophies of war, rolled up into little leaves and kept in matchboxes! Impossible?"

"In the amputee wards, the men’ll talk about anything except the future, according to some girls I know. In fact, no one likes to think of the future here. Perhaps it’s more frightening to die if you’re happy." ...more

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Aug 17, 2017 Al rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When I was young, for a while I wanted to be a historian. I was fascinated by the past, but particularly by individuals. I remember writing a sweeping story from the point of view of Robespierre, his life, loves, even his mum. My teacher gave me a shit grade and told me history is not about people, but about events.
Over two weeks I just read Boys in Zinc, and A Chernobyl Prayer. This is a review for both books. I almost stopped reading after the first account in A Chernobyl Prayer. The pain of ...more

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Sep 18, 2019 Sean Blake rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, cold-war, non-fiction

Not many books have had me wiping tears from my eyes. However, some of the harrowing stories told by these soldiers and mothers whose lives were irrecoverably damaged by the 'political error', later called a 'crime', that was the Soviet-Afghan War had my eyes filled with tears. Svetlana Alexievich's Boys in Zinc documents this tragic history that pretty much brought down the Soviet Union.

These 'live voices, live destinies', as described by Svetlana Alexievich, paint the raw and gruesome reality ...more

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Feb 11, 2019 Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sveltana Alexievich is among that rare breed of writers who has the distinction of inventing a genre. It isn't really oral history--the statements too concise, too prone to arrive at a well-expressed point for that and I recall a more careful reader pointing out a bit of repetitiveness in one of her other books: not the kind resulting from slopping editing but the kind that comes from a single mind articulating the same point. That said, the veterans, widows and parents of dead soldiers whose vo ...more

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Jun 06, 2018 Richard Newton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir-or-biography, central-asia-to-eastern-europe, history-and-prehistory

This is a shocking book. About a war fought for limited reason and gain, in which 15,000 or so Soviet troops died and many more were injured, and some unknown number of Afghan's died (usually estimated at over 1 million). It shows the full unpleasantness of war, especially a war fought often by unprepared troops with terrible equipment, cynically manipulated and often terribly abused by their own side. It is often both unpleasant and truly disturbing to read.

A comparison with Sebastian Junger's This is a shocking book. About a war fought for limited reason and gain, in which 15,000 or so Soviet troops died and many more were injured, and some unknown number of Afghan's died (usually estimated at over 1 million). It shows the full unpleasantness of war, especially a war fought often by unprepared troops with terrible equipment, cynically manipulated and often terribly abused by their own side. It is often both unpleasant and truly disturbing to read.

A comparison with Sebastian Junger's book War is appropriate. Both books deal with the experiences of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. But whereas Junger's book looks only from the viewpoint of a small troop of American soldiers, Alexievich paints a wider canvas - including the views of civilian helpers in Afganistan, mothers and other members of Soviet society. Like Junger's book though, it includes no Afghan voices. Major cultural differences show. The American troops were many times better equipped and supported. The Soviet troops are often more poetic in their thinking and reflection on life and war, and for them always in the background, lurking, is a comparison with their images of the Great Patriotic War.

The individuals in the book come across as a mixture of naive idealists, poetic souls, humanists, brutal bullies and murderers, and admirable people surviving difficult times. Perhaps this is always true in war. Their sense of betrayal when they come home is profound, and understandable.

As the explanation of the court case at the end of the book indicates, documentary narrative is not the same as a verbatim recording and the author has edited the words and made choices as to what to include. As readers we each have to decide whether to trust Alexievich's interpretation, even though it mainly uses real words of real people.

I don't think this is Alexievich's best - even so it is still 5 star material. However, I suggest you only pick this up when you are in the right frame of mind for a very disturbing read. ...more

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Apr 06, 2019 Paltia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

For a thoughtful and intelligent review read keen’s. I have been left speechless and devastated. This is the kind of book that makes me want to throw a brick through a window. Damn it all.

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Jan 21, 2016 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, russia, history

The tile refers to the zinc coffins in which the dead from the Soviet war in Afghanistan were returned to their families. There was usually no initial contact: A military contingent would show up at the parents' or widow's door with a zinc coffin.

Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 for her unique style of letting people speak for themselves. These included soldiers and civilians returned from the war, mothers, and widows.

Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanis ...more

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Sep 28, 2016 Lubinka Dimitrova rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, award-winning, heartwrenching, female-author, history-non-fiction, war, based-on-real-events, history-will-teach-us-nothing, dark, russia-n

A soul-crushing narrative about the absurdness and futility of war. Young boys and girls died, children were orphaned, women were widowed, mothers lost their precious boys and girls, and for what? All wars are irrational, but this particular one was among the most terribly pointless wars ever.

Humans ("Humans"?) are humanity's worst enemy, and books like this make me think that there's no hope for this planet. ...more

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Mar 13, 2016 Will rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: journalism, favorites, history, family

We never learn about the reality of war. We never hear about smashed, liquefied skulls or melting flesh. We never hear about the 18 year old Soviet boys, the future of the nation, who were sent to their deaths indiscriminately.

The Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) is seldom written or spoken about anymore, often glossed over just as Vietnam is. The parallels between the wars are nauseating. Millions of conscripts sent to fight senseless wars to prop up broken ideologies, drugs everywhere, b ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 Elo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: informatiivne

"It is a human right not to kill. Not to learn to kill. A right that is not recorded in a single constitution." ...more

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Dec 28, 2015 Alexander added it · review of another edition

Scary. It's really scary -- but I think that everybody has to read at least some book by Svetlana. Upon reading it you get a sort of vaccination against blind support for whatever the government feeds you with ("help establish Bla in that poor country", "we can't just watch, we have to step in", ...). Read and see what war does to people. I don't think that it's specific to [former] USSR and Afganistan -- it rather generic.

I won't be setting any rating -- the book is beyond this. It's not about ...more

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Jun 21, 2019 Jenia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm so happy I finished it! Honestly it was probably a 5-star book but reading it filled me with so much тоска that I just can't bring myself to give it 5. Everyone should read it etc. ...more

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Jan 17, 2017 Marcella Wigg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: countries-afghanistan, countries-russia-soviet-union, modern-history, communism

This is one of the most heartbreaking books I've ever read. It consists almost purely of firsthand accounts of people affected by the Soviet side of the Soviet-Afghan War, from men and women sent abroad as soldiers or civilian employees to the mothers and widows of soldiers who died fighting the Mujahideen. I had read a little about the "USSR's Vietnam," as I've heard it called, but there are few accounts of war as affecting as those of the people on the ground, living through the conflict.

The This is one of the most heartbreaking books I've ever read. It consists almost purely of firsthand accounts of people affected by the Soviet side of the Soviet-Afghan War, from men and women sent abroad as soldiers or civilian employees to the mothers and widows of soldiers who died fighting the Mujahideen. I had read a little about the "USSR's Vietnam," as I've heard it called, but there are few accounts of war as affecting as those of the people on the ground, living through the conflict.

The image that emerges from these accounts is not dissimilar to the experience of American GIs in Vietnam. Sent abroad by a government that justified what many would consider a war of aggression by saying that the opposing Cold War power would intervene if not for their own intervention, the soldiers found the reality of war was far uglier, and far more pointless, than they expected. Not only did they suffer in the theater of war, but they returned home to find a nation in which they were not considered heroes. Unlike their ancestors who had fought in World War II, the Afgantsy were widely considered pawns in an unnecessary war desired mainly by Party warmongers, and there were rumors about the riches they had taken with them from Afghanistan.

Most of the firsthand experiences offer an image of war that is pretty universal: horror, youth stolen by serious injury or PTSD, extreme stress, and death. Every story basically centers on the same themes. But the diversity of perspectives is very moving, from mothers who constantly visit the graves of their sons to soldiers who feel alienated from society or the military due to their experiences to women who speak of the sexual politics of the war and the widows who debate whether they can ever remarry again.

Even though there are so many parallels you can draw between the US-Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan War, there are interesting differences that appear here too. Soldiers had to find their own way home from Central Asia. The USSR, as a more closed society, did not have a media that reported on its dead the way the American media could report on Vietnam death tolls; people were said to be "doing their patriotic duty" when they died, a euphemism for death in combat. The Soviet Union had long used US imperialism as a mark against it on the world stage, and yet here it was, fighting its own war against local fighters on their own land, unable to find much success.

I cried several times reading this, and was on the verge of tears constantly. It's a very moving account of the effects of conflict in general, and incredibly well-compiled by Alexievich. Highly recommended. ...more

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Jan 24, 2016 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone who can read

Shelves: russia, women-writers, war, read-in-2016, non-fiction

I stayed home ill from work, and what better condition to finish off “Zinky Boys” by Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize last year for her writing - “a monument to suffering.”

The title refers to the zinc coffins used to ship the remains of Soviet soldiers from the nine-year war in Afghanistan. The coffins arrived sealed because sometimes just one body part was inside, or a shovelful of dirt to add heft. The warfare often involved land mines, and it was hard to get through four or five I stayed home ill from work, and what better condition to finish off “Zinky Boys” by Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize last year for her writing - “a monument to suffering.”

The title refers to the zinc coffins used to ship the remains of Soviet soldiers from the nine-year war in Afghanistan. The coffins arrived sealed because sometimes just one body part was inside, or a shovelful of dirt to add heft. The warfare often involved land mines, and it was hard to get through four or five pages before someone new had lost his legs or arms or head, or was simply blown to pieces. Only some pieces, and not always the right ones, made it into the coffins.

“After it was all over we collected up our boys in bits and pieces, even scraping them from the sides of the APC. We spread out a tarpaulin, their common grave, to try and sort out which leg or fragment of skull belonged to whom. We weren’t issued identification tags because of the ‘danger’ of them falling into enemy hands. This was an undeclared war, you see - we were fighting a war that wasn’t happening.” (p. 170 Private, Intelligence Corps)

What struck me most about this book was the terrible sorrow of mothers who lost their children. Their grief was powerful and tragic. When Alexievich won the Nobel Prize the committee noted her work isn’t a history of events but a “history of emotions ... an emotional world,” and that is clear here and also in her book “Voices of Chernobyl.”

Beyond the emotional impact, the most striking thing was the veterans’ and their loved ones’ sense of betrayal by a pointless war poorly fought.

The pain and emotional upheaval makes the book uneasy reading. The format helps, however, consisting of short interviews with veterans or loved ones left behind. When Alexievich won the Nobel Prize last year the committee cited her use of “polyphonic writings,” which refers to the mix of voices that constitute her books. She rarely intrudes; she conveys.

If there is a weak spot it is that the book is occasionally monotonous in tone, partly because the veterans all have a similar story to tell. But the women medics and nurses do help with a different perspective, as do the widows and mothers.

I was drawn to this book because I was overwhelmed by “Voices of Chernobyl” a couple years ago. That was the better book, in my opinion, because it seemed more diverse in its story-telling. ...more

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May 11, 2019 Surabhi Chatrapathy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

One can write about the beautiful things about this life with a certain ease, but to sit face to face with the vile side humanity is a soul wrenching job. Svetlana Alexievich's Boys in Zinc is an ode to the worst of what human beings are capable of. The book tells the stories of Soviet soldiers who took part in the Soviet war and occupation of Afghanistan.
The book speaks of the illusion the Soviet Union created, the indoctrination the youth and the people were subjected to and the disillusionme ...more

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Sep 12, 2016 Delara H F rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: war, history, favorites, russian-literature, documentary

The first "polyphonic" book I've read and also my first Alexievich read! I loved the way it was written. Every monologue has its own tragic way to take you on a breathtaking journey through the horrifying war. It's a documentary about the war between Soviet Union and Afghanistan. ...more

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Sep 28, 2019 Gopa Thampi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, russia, war, afghanistan

This is my second reading from Svetlana Alexievich’s impressive oeuvre; the first being Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. As many reviewers here have observed, Zinky Boys is a very difficult and disturbing work to read. Alexievich possesses the magical ingredients to concoct an alchemy which converts staccato voices to a kaleidoscopic visual shrapnel that not just explodes in your mind but embed deep into your soul. The polyvocality of her narrators provides multiple vantage points to ha ...more

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Jul 20, 2010 Pavel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, russian

Another "documentary novel" by Svetlana Alexievich this time tells about Soviet Afgan War. Real monologues of ordinary people who participated in that war - soldiers, officers, medics. Their stories, impressions, post-war syndroms.
...How propaganda posters were delivered and placed before any medical equipment even arrived while war was already started
...How soldiers (USSR had no professional army, so it were 18 years old boys, taken right from their schools and dropped into fire) was calling fo Another "documentary novel" by Svetlana Alexievich this time tells about Soviet Afgan War. Real monologues of ordinary people who participated in that war - soldiers, officers, medics. Their stories, impressions, post-war syndroms.
...How propaganda posters were delivered and placed before any medical equipment even arrived while war was already started
...How soldiers (USSR had no professional army, so it were 18 years old boys, taken right from their schools and dropped into fire) was calling for their mamas in the hospital and nurses were pretending to be their mothers to calm imjured down
...How those boys were buying hepatitus urine and drinking it to be invalid out of the army
...How few years later those soldiers who stayed alive forced newly arrived boys to lick their boots and wash their underwear
etc etc etc

Dozens of stories like that are the pieces of of one puzzle, which is main theme of this book - those boys turned out to be public enemy and scape goats against this war. Society started to hate them, trying to get rid of them while those who started the war and was really responsible for all the atrocities that happened, they bear no resposibility up untill now.

For me though this book was less interesting then Chernobyl one. Mainly because I was left with feeling that these were only SOME stories of some people and I know that other people could tell another stories of another kind. This is usually with wars. You can describe what in Russian is called Trench Truth - little details of the ways war goes, everyday life of soldiers with its dirt and death and blood. or you can go with heroism and stuff. Or you can try to enlight political aspects. Usually there's place for all those things, but if you go with only one IMO you're limiting your work

With Cheronobyl she had disaster generated by technology and people who suffered from it. And that was enough. In this book she had people who suffered but nothing more and when they heard they fought for nothing and there were nothing else then this suffering (I had such impression from the book as well), they just sued Alexievich (not that I support thoese sues in any way whatsoever). ...more

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Jan 18, 2018 Berit Lundqvist rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

This might be the most heart-breaking book that I’ve ever read. A choir of voices gives you the uncensored realities of war.

If you, like me, live in a country which hasn’t been to war for a very long time, the ability to imagine a war gets lost somewhere on the way. There is no one left to remember, no memories to share, and all the old tales are gone.

Sure, some people go to war as UN-soldiers, volunteer in the French Légion Étrangère or another foreign military force. But they are few, very fe ...more

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Dec 29, 2015 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

These are almost unbearable accounts of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

But to be honest, there’s not a lot in this book that surprised me. As with most accounts of war I’ve read, the soldiers either told themselves that they were doing their duty, and/or thought of the war as a personal challenge of courage, will, etc.; their experiences in combat were horrific and far removed from whatever justifications and platitudes their government offered; and the reader can’t help thinking that those who s ...more

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Jan 28, 2019 Ben rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's impossible to convey how profound this book is. If I could recommend it to everyone, I would. Through stories that are clear, honest, and heartbreaking, we experience the Soviet war in Afghanistan through the eyes of soldiers, nurses, and civilians—all of them grappling to make sense of why they were sent to war and the toll it took on their lives. Perhaps harder to deal with are the stories from mothers and widows who can't make their sacrifices add up to the silence and shame heaped on th ...more

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Oct 20, 2015 Blair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the first book I've read by this year's Nobel Laureate and it's some of the grimmest reading I've ever done. The approach appears to be relatively hands off from Alexievich as, apart from some diary entries at the beginning and a postscript at the end, it's told in the voices of people who were involved in the Soviet War in Afghanistan, whether as participants or as mothers or spouses or civilian workers. There has obviously been a lot of crafting involved in the presentation of their vo ...more

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Oct 12, 2015 Robert Wechsler marked it as tasted · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, nonviolence, bio-autobio

Hell meets Heaven in this new Nobel Prize winner's book. Heaven is the quality of the first-person narratives Alexievich drew (à la Studs Terkel) from people involved with the Soviet Union's Afghanistan war, at the front or on the home front. Hell is what they describe. I could only take so much of the Hell.

Every public discussion or speech on war (including campaign appearances and debates) should begin with the reading aloud of one or two of these narratives (or similar ones). Every member of ...more

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About Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich

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Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine. Her father was Belarusian and her mother Ukrainian. Alexievich grew up in Belarus, where both her parents were teachers. She studied to be a journalist at the University of Minsk and worked a teacher, journalist and editor. In Minsk she has worked at the newspaper Sel'skaja Gazeta, Alexievich's criticism of the political regimes in the Sovi ...more

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“Fear is more human than bravery, you’re scared and you’re sorry, at least for yourself, but you force your fear back into your subconscious.” — 16 likes

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