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One Soldier's War | 
 enlarge | Author: Arkady Babchenko
Creator: Nick Allen
Publisher: Grove Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy Used: $12.38
You Save: $12.62 (50%)
New (32) Used (17) from $12.38
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 279927
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0802118607
Dewey Decimal Number: 947.52
EAN: 9780802118608
ASIN: 0802118607
Publication Date: January 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: THIS IS A NEW BOOK THAT SHOWS MINOR HANDLING WEAR FROM BEING ON THE STORE SHELF!!! crisp, clean text / tight spine / clean cover w/ very minor shelf wear to dust jacket / ENJOY!
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Product Description
One Soldier’s War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier’s experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as “right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr’s Dispatches,” and the book won Russia’s inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write “despite, not because of, their life circumstances.” In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naive conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war—the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror—and twists it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Haunting. A modern classic. January 29, 2008
Alexander F. Remington (Washington, DC USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
The Horror March 24, 2008
H. Feifs (Durham, NC USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Brutal Look At Modern Russian Army Life February 29, 2008
Alex (VA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In this first book written by a young Russian law graduate, who winds up serving two tours in Chechnya, we see how brutal and poorly run the modern Russian army is. The Russian army depicted is the exact opposite of the US army: conscripts versus all-volunteer, poorly trained, discipline enforced through physical violence at all levels including majors and colonels, and rampant theft of supplies and equipment. The book is organized as a series of independent chapters, which aren't well connected. I would recommend the book, but don't expect a highly polished, professional narrative.
A Compelling Narration March 16, 2008
K. Ouellette
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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!
A rare look inside the Russian military. March 26, 2008
D. D. Runnells (Fort Collins, CO)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
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