Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier’s Story

VLADISLAV TAMAROV was drafted into the Soviet Army and sent to fight in Afghanistan at the age of nineteen. This is his story of 621 days of war and 217 days of combat missions, which he secretly recorded by camera and in his private diary. Through the chronicles of his many missions in the mountains, Tamarov shares the fear, futility, and violence of an insane war. Photographs depicting the haunted faces of both soldiers and civilians, the country’s rugged and beautiful mountain terrain, and the banality of daily life between missions are interspersed with Tamarov’s unsentimental but passionate prose, in which he reveals his growing disorientation and assails his government’s folly for engaging in a disastrous campaign against Afghanistan.

A powerful example of the photo essay, AFGHANISTAN: A RUSSIAN SOLDIER’S STORY presents a powerful portrait of a traumatic war. With images and words bursting with insight, anger, and beauty, Tamarov proves himself a poet of both the word and the image in this moving account.