Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War
Svetlana Alexievich
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“Well, I admit it. I had the greatest respect for the Afghan people, even while I was shooting and killing them. I still do. You could even say I love them. I like their songs and prayers, as peaceful and timeless as their mountains.”
“We were told that this was a just war, that we were helping the Afghan people to put an end to feudalism and build a wonderful socialist society.”
“We don’t need anything. Just listen to us and try to understand. Society is good at doing things, ‘giving’ medical help, pensions, flats. But all this so-called giving has been paid for in very expensive currency. Our blood.”
“Life was full of adventure: I learnt the smell of danger — I’ve got a sixth sense for it now. We’re homesick for it, some of us; it’s called the ‘Afghan syndrome’.”
“A soldier must be like a bullet, constantly ready to be fired.’ I learnt that by heart. You go to war in order to kill. Killing is my profession — that’s what I was trained to do.”
“still remember the way a twenty-year-old shouted, ‘I don’t want to hear about any political mistakes! I just don’t want to! Give me my two legs back if it was all a mistake.”
“Yur Karyakin once wrote: ‘We should not judge a man’s life by his perception of himself. Such a perception may be tragically inadequate.’ And I read something in Kafka to the effect that man was irretrievably lost within himself.”
“I accepted the official line so completely that even now, after all I’ve read and heard, I still have a minute hope that our lives weren’t entirely wasted. It’s the self-preservation instinct at work.”
“That first March a pile grew up behind the hospital — a pile of amputated arms, legs and other bits of our men. Dead bodies with gouged-out eyes, and stars carved into the skin of their backs and stomachs by the mujahedin.”
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