Tag: war

Book: Leonid Rabichev “War Excuses Everything”

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I was born in the USSR, where the Great Patriotic War was part of the country’s terrifying history. But I don’t recall anyone back then trying to glorify it and shouting “We can do it again.” They did heroize it—yes—and films often added notes of humor, without which, perhaps, war is impossible to endure. Yet they didn’t bombard us with rah-rah patriotism. Apparently because in every family the memory of those times was still fresh. Parents or grandparents remembered that war; many families had lost loved ones.

Then it was also shown from very frightening angles, like the documentary Triumph Over Violence or Elem Klimov’s acclaimed and very heavy Come and See.

Only they didn’t bring to the fore the flip side of any war—that in war there are no absolutely good and absolutely bad. War is blood, brutality, and sheer meanness on both sides; only the degree varies. Yes, many knew about “trophies” taken out from occupied territories, but that wasn’t considered looting, and they certainly didn’t make films about it. In one way or another, war also harmed the civilian population—and by no means only the enemy’s; it’s enough to read the recollections of the partisan movement in Belarus (a few years ago, incidentally, eyewitnesses were still alive).

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Song: Nogu Svelo! “Ukraine. A Year of War”

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This time I won’t write anything of my own. I’ll just quote the text for this video from Nogu Svelo! themselves:

Today is a terrible date for each of us—the anniversary of the start of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. It is still hard to believe; it is very hard to accept. We see daily reports of new destruction and new victims. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or wounded; millions have lost their homes and were forced to leave their native country without knowing when they will be able to return. It is a grief that cannot be measured in numbers. On this day we want to say: “We stand with you—in spirit and in deed.” We have already held more than one charity concert, supporting and helping to raise funds for Ukrainian hospitals and refugees. And we will continue to help for as long as it takes. Until the missiles stop flying, until people return to their homes, until peace comes.

Our new release is dedicated not only to every Ukrainian, but to everyone who stands against the darkness closing in around us. Maksim doesn’t speak Ukrainian, but he specifically learned and performed a few lines at the end. You’ve already heard this song—it’s “Ukraine.” But on this day we perform it in a new way—in a church, with an organ. Many thanks to director Alexey Musin, who filmed the original music video and has now taken on this new work. Thanks to the whole team. Thank you for your support and sincerity.

Vse bude Ukraina! (Ukraine will prevail!)

Ногу Свело! — Украина. Год войны

Book: Bulat Okudzhava “From School to the Front”

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Since my youth I have liked the work of Bulat Okudzhava, though back then I knew him only as a performer of songs. At home we had several of his records, and I enjoyed listening to the entire collection of my parents’ music. A little later I discovered Okudzhava also as the author of music and lyrics for many film songs, which I still enjoy listening to today.

Among other things, Bulat Okudzhava wrote quite a few songs for war films. I am sure almost everyone knows at least “We Face Deadly Fire” from Belorussky Station, or “Drops of the Danish King” from Zhenya, Zhenechka i ‘Katyusha‘. Okudzhava’s songs were able to convey the full range of feelings, and between the lines you could sense that the author knew what he was writing about.

And then I came across a book by Okudzhava from the series “My War,” in which veterans’ memoirs are published.

From School to the Front is not a single work but a collection of recollections that can formally be divided into “novellas” and “stories.” Formally — because this is not fiction, but rather the memoirs of Bulat Shalvovich, conveyed in his own manner.

The book begins with excerpts from interviews with the author, and only then come his writings. Okudzhava’s childhood was not easy. His father was repressed, and his mother also endured prison as the wife of a repressed man. And then came the war, at the start of which Bulat Okudzhava was only 17 years old.

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Book: Pavel Filatyev “ZOV”

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Many media outlets wrote about Pavel Filatyev’s book, as it offered a view of the war in Ukraine through the eyes of a professional Russian soldier who found himself there from the very first days.

Pavel Filatyev is a junior sergeant in the Russian Airborne Forces and comes from a military family. His father was also a paratrooper, and Pavel essentially grew up on a military base—where he would later return to serve. A real military lineage, much like in the Soviet film Officers, where they serve because “there is such a profession — to defend the Motherland.”

Moreover, both his father and Pavel himself were not just stationed idly at their units—they had real combat experience. Pavel fought in Chechnya. However, over time, the army became increasingly irrelevant, and he left for civilian life, where he spent nearly 10 years doing work unrelated to the military. But after a failed business venture and financial difficulties, he began considering a return to the army under a contract. He specifically wanted to join the same unit he’d known since childhood—though by then, it had already been restructured and relocated from his hometown to Feodosia, in Crimea, which had by that point been annexed.

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Book: Eva Mozes Kor “The Twins of Auschwitz”

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Josef Mengele is one of the Nazis whose name is synonymous with the atrocities of the Hitler regime. He was not only personally responsible for sorting prisoners at Auschwitz but also conducted horrifying experiments in his camp clinic.

One of his “projects” was an attempt to understand the nature of twins. Because of this, twins had a slightly higher chance of survival—not being sent directly to their deaths—even if they were unfit for labor in the camp. However, Mengele never considered them human and subjected both adults and tiny children to monstrous experiments. To him, they were nothing more than test subjects.

Eva Mozes Kor was one such twin, destined to die so that Mengele could observe how it would affect her sister. But against all odds, Eva survived. After the war, she wrote her memoirs about her time in that hell.

Eva lived with her family in Transylvania when the war arrived. Her father wanted to escape to Palestine, where Jews were beginning to build their own state, but her mother couldn’t bring herself to leave everything behind and take the children into the unknown. Because of this, their once well-off family was among the first to experience the hatred and cruelty of their former neighbors. And when they finally decided to flee, it was already too late.

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Book: Ben Elton “Two Brothers”

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I haven’t written in my blog for a long time, but I’m returning with a book that has unexpectedly become highly symbolic of current events—when one country, under the pretext of “brotherly help,” wages war against another. And a third, also supposedly “brotherly,” sometimes helps the first, sometimes tries to stay on the sidelines. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Since childhood, I was taught that we must never allow the return of Nazism. I was psychologically crushed when, at around 12 years old, I saw the film “Triumph Over Violence“ (in Russian its title literally means ‘An Ordinary Fascism‘) on TV (I even felt physically sick from what I saw). For many years, I’ve continued reading and reflecting on how the dehumanization of entire nations and the transformation of people into monsters become possible. Documentaries, memoirs, and historical works are often far more terrifying than any fiction because with fiction, you can always think: “Well, this is just made up—things couldn’t have been that bad.” Even though you know they could. And they were. And now we see just how easy it is to “repeat it”—ironically, by those who, on a genetic level, should have carried an unshakable aversion to repeating it.

But sometimes, there are brilliant books on this very subject, and “Two Brothers” by Ben Elton is one of them. Perhaps because it is based on the real-life story of the author’s own family.

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Auschwitz: A History in Photographs

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auschwitz

In 2013, my wife and I took a road trip through Poland. One specific stop on our itinerary was Auschwitz, not the town, but the museum located on the site of the former concentration camp. This was a place I absolutely wanted to visit. The genocide of the Jews is part of my family’s history.

I won’t talk about the museum itself right now, that’s a subject for another conversation. But before leaving, I bought a photo album titled Auschwitz: A History in Photographs from the shop near the exit. It’s one of the few books I took with me when we moved to another country. However, for some reason, I only started to study it in detail five years later. I don’t quite know how to write about this book, but I still want to.

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Eugene Rogan “The Fall of The Ottomans”

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Living in Cyprus, where the island has been divided into two parts for the past 40 years and the topic of the Turkish occupation is very painful, I suddenly found myself increasingly interested in the history of these lands. At some point, I realized that I actually knew very little about the Ottoman Empire, whose influence on the local way of life would be foolish to deny. Then, I randomly came across a book by Eugene Rogan titled The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East.

I must say, that most people from Soviet and post-Soviet backgrounds know more about the Great Patriotic War. Even about World War II as a whole — less so (for example, in school we didn’t really study the war in the Pacific that the Americans fought). And as for World War I — even less, with only the basic clichés: gas attacks, trench warfare, Archduke, and revolution ending the war. I personally had no idea that there were battles in the Middle East at the time. That’s why I found it extremely interesting to learn about life there and why the war led to the collapse of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire. From Soviet history, I remembered that Russians had fought the Turks for centuries. But I knew much less about the details. Here, however, a Western author painstakingly reconstructs the history of that time, also relying on Turkish sources that are now available.

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Sun Tzu “The Art of War”

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The book is, of course, interesting, if only because it’s so frequently referenced. Many of the ideas are quite thought-provoking, especially in the context of warfare and strategy in general. However, more than half of the book consists of commentary and footnotes. And the main takeaway from these is that no one really knows what Sun Tzu actually meant. Everyone interprets it in their own way.

And that’s all I have to say about this treatise.

Book: Nick Perumov “The Empire Above All”

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I read the first novel of Nick Perumov’s The Empire Above All dilogy as soon as it was released, but had to wait for the second part. By the time it came out, I could barely remember the plot of the first book. So, I decided to reread the entire dilogy, starting from the beginning.

The events of the dilogy take place in a future roughly two centuries behind our current time. However, the people of that time are almost no different from us. The differences lie not in the people, but in their place of residence—various planets. Even in terms of technology, civilization hasn’t progressed much.

In this world, the largest power is the Empire. It controls nearly all human-inhabited planets, though there are always those who are discontented. The main character of the book, Ruslan Fateev, is Russian, hailing from the Russian planet New Crimea. The inhabitants of this planet fiercely hate the Empire and long for independence, and with that goal in mind, Ruslan joins the Imperial assault forces—to undermine the enemy from within. Naturally, everyone around him, including his beloved, considers him a traitor.

For reasons unexplained, the Empire also calls itself the Fourth Reich, with its army bearing the insignia and unit names of the infamous Third Reich. It’s hard not to hate them for that.

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