Arkady Babchenko - One Soldiers War

ARKADY BABCHENKO was born in 1977. In 1995, at the age of 18, he was drafted to fight in the first Chechen War and then in late 1999 volunteered to return for six months during the second Chechen War. A law graduate, he currently works as a journalist on the non-conformist newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

This is his first book.

NICK ALLEN is a British journalist working for the German Press Agency DPA in Pakistan. He worked in Russia for 11 years, also covering the conflict in Chechnya, and has translated for the literary journal Glas New Russian Writing.

From the international reviews of One Soldiers War in Chechnya:

Like Tolstoy, Babchenko was a Russian soldier in the Caucasus before he was a writer, and his remarkable stories cast a frequently shocking light on the barbaric conduct of the occupying forces... In the tradition of Joseph Hellers Catch-22 or Ernest Hemingways A Farewell to Arms [...] One Soldiers War is an artfully contrived narrative deploying fictional techniques as well as autobiography... A devastating testimony from an extremely talented young writer. New Statesman

Illuminating and darkly humorous... Babchenko is also capable of arresting lyricism. Daily Telegraph

Arkady Babchenkos prose is raw and uncut and his subject matter is one of the most terrible wars in the world - without a doubt the most under-reported... Babchenkos book is an account from an ordinary Russian grunt, and its fundamental honesty makes unbearable reading... A fine book. Literary Review

A riveting, semi-autobiographical soldiers tale of brutality and boredom in the Chechen war Boyd Tonkin, Independent

'One Soldiers War is a gripping narrative and a sobering one. For all the horrors he describes, Babchenko doesnt seem to intend a simple antiwar message; nor does he judge the moral rightness of the Chechen war. The book itself comes garlanded with comments comparing it to All Quiet on the Western Front and other masterpieces of combat literature... it certainly deserves a place in that notable literary tradition [...] for showing us that war, up close, could be as appalling toward the end of the 20th century as it was at the beginning. Watt Street Journal

Remarkable - my book of the year. Matthew Sweet, Night Waves, BBC Radio 3

Arkady Babchenko fought in both Chechen Wars. One Soldiers War in Chechnya is the extraordinary result, as damning as it is harrowing. It tells all those stories that were never allowed to appear in the press at the time... His account is vivid, stark and horrifying. The cruelty is all the more wrenching because of the moments of fleeting, lyrical beauty. Babchenko, like the best war reporters, is able to report war how it is, but also reflect on it... Babchenkos honesty is unblinking, his prose at times, unbearable. It is a tour de force. A grim testament to the worst of wars. New Humanist

Right up there with Catch-22 or Michael Herrs Dispatches. Tibor Fischer

I have not read a book about war and soldiering like it since All Quiet on the Western Front. Babchenkos prose, like Remarques, is stark but evocative, eloquent in its simplicity, and absolutely unflinching in its honesty. He presents the face of war with all cosmetics off, an utterly brutal and brutalizing experience that does nothing but kill and maim people spiritually as well as physically. His book should be required reading for anyone who still harbours the illusion that war has some redemptive qualities. Phil Caputo, author of A Rumor of War

Arkady Babchenko has written a hypnotic and terrifying account of his enforced participation in the Chechen wars, one that is entirely free of the self-absorbed razzle-dazzle that too often passes for literary writing these days. The books power is in its clarity and detail. Babchenkos honesty has the force of a blunt object. He is surrounded by killing and by death, eager for a wound that will not kill him but take him out of hell. The killing he does shatters him to his core. It is simply a great book. Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

Babchenkos clear, vivid, factual language, and his mercilessly detailed descriptions of sensual experiences, absorb the reader and torpedo any reflex to suppress emotion. Pictures stay with the reader, which are impossible to forget. Berliner Zeitung

This literary account from the front is a modern equivalent of All Quiet on the Western Front: harrowingly good. SonntagsZeitung

ONE SOLDIERS WAR IN CHECHNYA

ARKADY BABCHENKO

Translated from the Russian by Nick Allen

ONE

Only those who have spent time in the mountains can imagine what theyre like. The mountains are as bad as it gets. Everything you need to live, you carry with you. You need food, so you discard all the things you can do without and stuff dry rations for five days into your backpack. You need ammunition, so you load an ammo box of bullets and half a box of grenades into your pockets, backpack and cartridge pouches, and hang them on your belt. They get in the way when you walk, rasping on your groin and hips, their weight pulls on your neck. You chuck your AGS automatic grenade launcher over your right shoulder and the launcher of your wounded mate Andrei Volozhanin over your left shoulder. You string two belts of grenades in a cross over your chest, like the sailors in the old Revolution movies, and if you have a spare hand, you also grab a snail box of ammo belts.

Then theres your tent, pegs, hatchet, saw, spade and whatever else the platoon needs to survive. And the things you need for yourself - your rifle, jacket, blanket, sleeping bag, mess tins, thirty packs of smokes, a change of underwear, spare puttees, and so on - about seventy kilos in total. Then when you take your first step uphill you realize theres no way youll make it to the top, even if they put a gun to your head. But then you take the second and third steps and start to clamber and scramble up, slide, fall, and start back up again, clinging tooth and nail to the bushes and branches. Stupefied, you sweat and sweat, thinking about nothing except the next step, just one more step...

The anti-tank platoon is scrambling alongside. They are even worse off: my grenade launcher weighs eighteen kilos, while their PTURs - guided anti-tank missiles - weigh forty-two kilos. And Fat Andy whines: Commander, how about we dump one rocket, eh, how about it? And the commander, an enlisted lieutenant who also has tears of exertion in his eyes, asks: Come on, Andy, fat ass, whats the sense in us being up there without rockets, eh? Our infantry are dying up there...