Notes from a meat grinder

Grozny Diary of a soldier who wants to forget everything

This notebook was handed over to one of the New Times reporters in February 1995 in Grozny. She was found human rights activists in the mud of a bombed city. There is almost nothing in it about that terrible war and at the same time in it - all about the war. Among almost still children's drawings, car stickers, motorcycles and inscriptions NBA Action (there was such a television advertisement in the early 90s, promoting the best basketball league of the world), for example: “I got this madhouse” or “Army is a dream, and God forbid it to repeat”. And also - several St. Petersburg addresses: Zhenya Egorova Street, house 12, Liteiny Prospekt, house 3, Lunacharsky Street, house 20. After 15 years we learned who this book belongs to. Sergei Tarasov was drafted into the army on December 14, 1993. He served in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region, the village of Kamenka, military unit No. 67636. Exactly a year later he was sent to Chechnya and hit the very, as he himself, the meat grinder. Sergei miraculously survived. The New Times also found Sergey himself: he lives and works in St. Petersburg, recently divorced. But he flatly refused to talk with us about Chechnya. He didn’t even want us to return his book to him. “I really am not at all interesting to watch all this again.” He wants to erase everything that he experienced in Grozny ...