Salon

Vadim Chekunov was writing short stories about his two-year stint in the Soviet Army at the very moment when it stopped being Soviet. Like many other Russian authors, he published his works on the Internet, but unlike the texts of a multitude of others, his received a lot of favorable attention, which culminated in the publication of the novel "Kirza" ("Boots") by Popular Literature, a relatively new publishing house with aggressive marketing tactics. The print run of "Boots" is 30,000 ?€” a figure beyond the wildest dreams of most other publishers.

I knew Chekunov ?€” we were in the same class at the philology department at Moscow State University. Then he disappeared; now I know why. In his honest autobiographical book, he tells how substandard academic performance and discipline issues led to his expulsion from the university and, as a result, immediate draft into the army. He returned to his studies after I had already graduated.

Chekunov documents his two years in chronological order. In the Soviet army, and to a large degree in today's Russian army, almost all relations between the soldiers were governed not by military doctrine or a set of rules but by an intricate web of domination and submission, mostly based on a person's degree of advancement through the two years of service ?€” from the shivering, powerless "rookies" to the arrogant, cruel "granddads." Chekunov describes his slow and painful ascent up this ladder.

Plainly said, it is horrible. There is no war, no military action whatsoever; no one is killed in the book, and the physical abuse, though inescapable and omnipresent, is usually not lethal. But the hero's life is depicted as simply one dehumanizing experience after another. Even as the book's protagonist, Chekunov does not set himself apart from the other soldiers. The overwhelming impression the reader gets of army life is days full of constant pain, humiliation, lack of sleep, language consisting mostly of four-letter words, rampant racism and xenophobia and an utter lack of purpose.

I think that Chekunov managed to write such a brutally honest book because he does not fully appreciate how horrible the world that he describes is. It is human nature to adapt to anything; after all, there is no better survival strategy when facing inhuman circumstances. But the fact that after 17 years it is still the most powerful experience in a man's life ?€” to such an extent that it forces him to become a writer ?€” is testimony enough to the force of the ordeal. Many people who have gone through it want to forget it. Chekunov's book does not allow them to.