Zinky Boys

Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War by Svetlana Alexievich, Introduction by Larry Heinemann. Norton, 1992. 

The Invasion of Afghanistan

Starting in 1979 and continuing during the 1980s, the Soviet Union invaded the country of Afghanistan. It was a war of aggression and expansion; Afghanistan had done nothing to harm the Soviet Union. The rulers of the Soviet Union tried to keep the war a secret from their own people. The government-controlled news services did little reporting on what was actually going on in the war. Men drafted into the army were not told where they were being deployed. The author interviews the mothers of the boys who came home in zinc coffins. The leaders of the Soviet Union had no respect for their soldiers and treated them as cannon fodder. This is war from a very personal perspective.