Kirill Martynov: “No to war”

“Aleksievich is a very old and important story. He was an author who wrote about the toughest, blackest thing, which it was impossible not to write about, but from which Russian society always turned away bashfully, engaged in survival, earning money: about a shameful war, about betrayal their own, about fear and pain, and also about attempts to glorify those things in the past that, in an amicable way, are a reason for mourning.

I often remembered Alexievich when I said that Russia remained silent about the Afghan war, and that this was a huge shame. Americans have thousands of books about Vietnam, we have only inept memories of the “Afghans” and silence. And also Alexievich."