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One Soldier's War
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Military & War
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Publisher's Summary
One Soldier's War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier's experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr's Dispatches, and the book won Russia's inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write despite, not because of, their life circumstances.
In 1995 Arkady Babchenko was an 18-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naïve conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war - the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror - and twists them into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.
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What listeners say about One Soldier's War
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dave Gruder
- 2022-05-20
Harrowing story of life in the Russian Army during Chechen Wars
Like this title says, not an easy or relaxing listen. I knew the Russian Army was a rough place but it sounds like in the 90s it was nothing so much like a prison camp. Extremely difficult to listen to but compelling. If you’re interested in grim realities, this one is for you.
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- Clint Webb
- 2022-03-08
Outstanding
Full of incredible prose and profound insights into life. I was completely unaware that this type of brutality happened in the late 90's.
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- Ilikethisbelt
- 2022-01-27
brutal book, very well done. I learned many things
I wasn't aware of Dedovshchina. It's awful what the young soldiers go through. This book was hardcore and I wont forget it
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- Thebriggs
- 2019-01-20
amazing he puts you right there in chechnya
loved it his visual way of describing the environments he dealt with are astounding he makes you feel you are sitting on a BTR passing death right next to him.
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- Jacobus Slabbert
- 2018-02-22
Raw.
This book is the best description of what war is really like. I wish every politician would read this book before starting pointless wars.
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- Patrick
- 2016-05-09
Real, Brutal, & Honest
This book is a very strong revealing testament to the Russian experience of war, both during training and fighting. It's a hauntingly stark, but captivating read of a Russian Soldier's experience in the Chechen war. Beware, this book is not for the squeamish, and it will stick with you for a long time. A substantial part the book deals with the author's experiences behind the front lines, waiting to be sent to war. It's during this time that Russia is extremely hard on her own soldiers. There were periods during the book that I had to remind myself that these events happened not during WW2, but in the 1980s-90s.
The complete lack of any discipline, the outright barbarism and the total corruption of this rag-tag gang posing as an army is shocking, disturbing, and in all ways gruesome. Combine this with the futility of a war fought for unclear reasons far from home, in an inhospitable country against a fierce and cruel enemy, and you have Babchenko's experience as an 18-year old boy.
The narrator did an excellent job and told the story perfectly.
Overall: Superb; and one of the best war memoirs I've read. Babchenko's account realistically reveals the modern Russian army and its wars in Chechnya--but fundamentally his perspective rings true for soldiers' experiences of every nation and every generation.
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20 people found this helpful
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- shalte
- 2015-08-15
Join the Ruissian Army - Live the Nightmare
All I can say, after listening to this audiobook, is that I thank all of the panoply of the gods that I was not born a Russian male in, say, 1979 and would have been subject to call up for the Chechen Wars of the 1990's. What Mr. Babchenko went through while serving in the Russian Army was abjectly horrific, depressing and violent - and that was before he even heard a shot fired in anger by the Chechens.
To say that the Russian Army is a brutal organization where its recruits are subject to a degree of harassment by NCO's and "short timers" is like saying Genghis Khan and Adolph Hitler made life slightly unpleasant for Europeans during their respective careers. In other words, Mr. Basbchenko and his fellow squad mates basically spent half of their enlistment period either getting the shit beat out of them, preparing to get the shit beat out of them, rceovering from getting the shit beat out of them or trying to avoid getting the shit beat out of them day in and day out in a seemingly endless cycle of physical and mental abuse perpetrated by a cadre of heroine addicted NCO deadbeats who can only be described as sadistic bastards and bullies who got off on terrorizing their underlings and knew they were not subject to reprimand from above.
Honestly, I am surprised that the soldiers of the Russian Army ever got around to fighting the Chechen separatists at all because it seems that they spent most of the time either hammered on bad vodka they obtained from some Chechen teenager in exchange for boxes of assault gun ammunition that would inevitably be passed on to the Chechen forces, or they were busy devising new and creative ways to beat the snot out of some skinny, pigeon chested recruit from the ass end of Southern Nowhereski near Smolensk. Put it this way, the author describes an incident he witnessed when two guys accused of trading ammunition for vodka were punched and kicked into unconsciousness by a couple of NCO's, then tied up to improvised racks - you know those medieval torture devices - and then used as target practice in the middle of the military camp, i.e. smack dab in the center of the parade grounds within easy viewing of the colonel in charge of the camp's office. Now, I am not saying the guys who traded ammo for booze should not have been punished. What they did endangered the lives of the men in their unit in a big way and they needed to be dealt with severely. I just can't envision this degree of unsanctioned punishment being duplicated in, say, some US Army forward camp in Afghanistan. It just goes to show the gulf that exists between Russia and pretty much every other "civilized" State when it comes to military culture and basic respect for the men and women who serve.
Mr. Babchenko stepped up like the man he is and wrote a brutally honest account of his experiences. I bought this audiobook last night and just finished listening to it and I must tell you, fair review reader, that this book impacted me deeply, and I am not exactly what you might call a "lilting lily" kind of individual. His accounts of the operations he participated in and the tragic cost in human life among his comrades, his opponents and civilians who were caught in the crossfire or rocket barrage reaffirmed General Sherman's bare bones description of war, ".........it is all moonshine, War is Hell." l give Mr. Babchenko utmost respect for writing this book.
To close this review - GET THIS AUDIOBOOK! I wish I had more words in my quiver to describe what I just listened to. This audiobook still has me shaking my head in a numbed..... I can't really describe the feeling. Just get this audiobook and you will know what I mean.
15 people found this helpful
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- ESB
- 2017-11-23
Life as a Russian soldier is hell
I knew life as a Russian soldier was hard, but I had no idea it was as brutal as Babchenko described it. The only thing I didn’t like is that with Audible, there are no mpas/photos and sometimes hard to follow timewise.
5 people found this helpful
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- A. M.
- 2019-11-01
Russian Brutality Exposed
What a dismal people these Russians are. The entire story is one bog slog of dehumanization and brutality, and that's mostly between the Russians themselves. There's very little positive about this story nor should there be. It was very well written and narrated...I couldn't stop listening.
We Americans take for granted too much...
4 people found this helpful
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- Anthony West
- 2021-08-11
Excellent rare Soviet grunt perspective.
Straight forward story about a brutal Russian Army that was unforgivingly harsh as the combat itself.
2 people found this helpful
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- Jeff Flowers
- 2021-07-15
What a difference from Russian military
This shows me that our free democracy in the USA is going this route. Terrible.
2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 2016-12-13
Interesting insight
Interesting insight into the wars in Chechnya and the Russian Army. As a combat veteran, the end was fantastic.
2 people found this helpful
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- Adam
- 2015-12-11
A necessary book for soldiers and civilians alike.
This book tackles the complexities of warfare from a personal perspective. As a combat veteran I appreciate a similar thought model in processing the violent nature of warfare. However, from a global perspective it is fascinating to learn more about an unfamiliar conflict.
2 people found this helpful
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- J.Brock
- 2021-09-24
One of the Very Best Memoirs
“One Soldier’s War” is shocking and unbelievable. In the United States one can’t fathom treatment that these soldiers endure from their own and just in general. There are no words for the appreciation one feels living in a free nation. And as we let that slip away, we know what awaits us. But these brave men endured and all we can all just marvel at their bravery and ability to survive. Blown away. Derek Perkins is at his best here.
1 person found this helpful
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- Enemy O' the State
- 2021-02-03
Like No Other War Story
I've read many war books, many from just about every war. This book is unlike any of the others, which is why you must read it. It's a book about an army at war - with itself. It's a story about the unmitigated brutality that Russian soldiers inflict on each other and everyone is in on it, one way or the other, from the lowest private up to the generals. It's a story about an army of dissolute men who despite their misery live to form a bond.
1 person found this helpful