In Boys in Zinc, Svetlana Alexievich set herself the task of compiling testimonies from victims and relatives of those who died in the war that the former Soviet Union unleashed in Afghanistan, i.e., the Russian “Afghans.” The dead numbered in the thousands, arriving in sealed zinc-lined coffins. Most never knew what was inside.
Who could fail to be deeply affected by a book in which death, mutilation, the pain of mothers, separation, and helplessness reign supreme from beginning to end? Even when Gorbachev began to shake things up, bombs were still falling and soldiers were dying in minefields.
Alexievich explores the effects of war, but her approach goes much further: she examines a totalitarian regime in its twilight years. The work is also about mothers deeply scarred by death, mutilation, helplessness, and the pain of separation.
The author managed to meet the mothers of several young men who died there. She also met nurses sent to care for the wounded and mutilated who received a pension and a medal for bravery. More or less the usual in regimes that do not stand out for their respect for life and attention to certain rights.
The book contains a lesson on the role of the writer. After publishing some previews of the book, two witnesses recanted and decided to take her to court. One of them, the mother of a fallen soldier, returns as the president of the committee of victims’ families and alleges that the author lied about the memory of her children, that she slandered and distorted history, and mentions the greatness of the Russian people, which has always been a bone in the throat, presumably referring to the West. The author is accused of being a Judas in the service of a vile Europe. They say she did not say what appears in the book. They deny that it is possible to write literature and make money from their pain.
And this is where the stature of a writer rose to make things clear: as a person, I understand them, but as a writer, I can do nothing other than what I did. Behind both of them, said the author, I see the epaulettes of generals, and also a misunderstood nationalism and patriotism because they advocate exaltation in exchange for forgetting the error. And they are also unaware of the pain caused to the other side, to the victims of the other side.
“You cannot arrive at the truth without pain,” she tells them in her defense.
I also remembered one of the cruelest passages in Alexievich’s book. A mother tries to get her son exempted from being sent to war. An officer tells her that if she brings him a letter signed by a recruiter, he will make sure her son does not travel to Afghanistan. The mother then goes to the military bureaucrat, but he does not understand her request: he refuses because it is beyond his narrow scope of authority.
Shortly afterwards, the military bureaucrat knocks on the door of the family apartment: he brings the boy’s remains in a zinc coffin. When I read that passage, I suspected what would happen; there could be no other outcome, and that is why the book leaves you with a sombre mood that lingers for a long time.
An extraordinary book.
