Free Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich

they were known) had taken the ridge. The Greens were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.
    Only the cream were selected. No one wanted to be posted to dreary provincial Russian towns like Tula, or Pskov, or Kirovabad. We begged to go to Afghanistan. Our Major Zdobin tried to convince me and my friend Sasha Krivtsov to withdraw our applications. ‘Let Sinytsin get killed instead of either of you,’ he advised us. ‘The State’s invested too much in your education.’ Sinytsin was a simple peasant lad, a tractor-driver, but I had my degree and Sasha was studying at the faculty of German and Romance Philology at Keremovo University. (He was a good singer, played the piano, violin, flute and guitar, composed his own music and had a talent for drawing. We were like brothers.) At our political instruction seminar the talk was all of heroic deeds, and how the Afghanistan war was like the Spanish civil war — and then, lo and behold! ‘Let Sinytsin get killed instead of either of you.’
    War was interesting from a psychological point of view. First of all, it was a test of oneself, and that attracted me. I used to ask lads who’d been out there what it was really like. One, I realise now, completely pulled the wool over our eyes. He had a patch on his chest, like a bum in the shape of a ‘p’, and he deliberately wore his shirt open so that everyone could see it. He claimed that they’d landed in the mountains from ‘copters’ at night. I can hear him now, telling us that paras were angels for three seconds (until the parachutes opened), eagles for three minutes (the descent) and cart-horses the rest of the time. We swallowed it hook, lineand sinker, I’d like to meet that little Homer now! If he ever had any brains they must have been shell-shocked out of him.
    Another lad I spoke to tried to talk us out of going. ‘Don’t bother,’ he’d say. ‘It’s dirty and it ain’t romantic!’ I didn’t like that. ‘You’ve had a go, now it’s my turn,’ I told him. Still, he taught us the ten commandments for staying alive: ‘The moment you’ve fired, roll a couple of metres away from your firing position. Hide your gun-barrel behind a wall or rock so the enemy can’t see the flame when you fire. When you’re fighting, don’t drink, or you’re finished. On sentry-duty, never fall asleep — scratch your face or bite your arm to keep awake. A para runs as fast as he can, then as fast as he has to, to keep alive.’ And so on.
    My father’s an academic and my mother’s an engineer. They always brought me up to think for myself. That kind of individualism got me expelled from my Oktyabryata group [an approximate Soviet equivalent of the Cubs and Brownies] and I wasn’t accepted into the Pioneers for ages. When eventually I was allowed to wear that bright red Pioneer scarf I refused to take it off, even to go to bed. Our literature teacher once stopped me while I was saying something in class. ‘Don’t give us your own ideas — tell us what’s in the book!’ she said.
    â€˜Have I made a mistake?’ I asked.
    â€˜It’s not what’s in the book.’
    You remember that fairy-tale where the King hated every colour but grey? Everything in our kingdom-state was dull grey, too. ‘Teach yourselves to think so that you won’t be made fools of like we were, and come home in zinc coffins!’ That’s what I tell my own pupils now.
    Before I went into the army it was Dostoevsky and Tolstoy who taught me how I ought to live my life. In the army it was sergeants. Sergeants have unlimited power. There are three to a platoon.
    â€˜Now hear this! Repeat after me! What is a para? Answer: a bloody-minded brute with an iron fist and no conscience!
    â€˜Repeat after me: conscience is a luxury we can’t afford! Conscience is a