Uncivil War

The Washington Post reviews a Russain Army conscript’s new book: In One Soldier’s War, his memoir of Russian army life, Arkady Babchenko confirms that this kind of sale was rife. He describes how two new recruits were beaten, tortured and expelled from his unit for selling ammunition through the fence of their base to buy vodka. But their real mistake was not that they traded with the enemy. It was that they were new: “We don’t watch the beating. We have been beaten ourselves and it has long ceased to be of any interest. Nor do we feel particularly sorry for the gunners. They shouldn’t have gotten caught. . . . They have seen too little of the war to sell bullets — only we are entitled to do that. We know death, we’ve heard it whistling over our heads and seen how it mangles bodies, and we have the right to bring it upon others. And these two haven’t. What’s more, the new recruits are strangers in our battalion, not yet soldiers, not one of us. But most of all we are upset that we can no longer use the gap in the fence.”