In Chechnya, there are some of the most poignant, truthful and modern stories about valor, courage and honor. In our time, the exploits of soldiers and officers of the Great Patriotic War are becoming a thing of the past. While the events in Chechnya are close and familiar to everyone. Even young people themselves remember how alarming reports were broadcast on the evening news every evening. That is why these works are so popular today.
Black book
Books about the war in Chechnya are often not works of art, such as just a minority, but the testimony of people who were personally present at the events described. Such is the book The documentary narration about the events in the south of Russia is called "The Black Book of the Chechen War".
It was prepared in 2000 as a report intended for the MEPs. Its main goal was to convince European politicians, who often based their opinion on this war on biased sources.
The author tries to prove with dry facts that the war against separatists restores peace in the republic, and in no way violates human rights. In this specific description of the crimes committed by Chechen gangs, violations of the rights of the Russian population, as well as a detailed and impartial analysis of the actions of the Russian authorities at different stages of the confrontation.
However, the book was never published in Europe; it was published only in Russia, where it remains relevant today.
In a trap
Prokopenko is looking for answers to questions that still torment many Russians. Why did this terrible tragedy take place? Why did the state and government make so many unforgivable mistakes? Why is this an unprecedented war on the scale of stupidity, cynicism and betrayal?
The main characters of the story are ordinary soldiers and officers. According to the author, who has visited the hot spot himself, the main culprits of this tragedy are the representatives of the Kremlin, who have repeatedly betrayed their own army and people. And sometimes they acted simply cowardly and illiterate.
General's stories
Books about the war in Chechnya were written not only by military journalists, but also by direct participants in the events.
This is how the memoirs of General Gennady Troshev "My War. Chechen Diary trench general", published in 2001. One of the leaders russian army describes in detail the events of both the First and Second Chechen campaigns.
According to the author, a large number of lies and untruths published about this war prompted him to sit down at the writing table. The general talks about the events that he knows for certain, and also expresses his opinion and attitude towards many popular politicians and military leaders on both sides.
True story
One of the most sincere works - "Diary published in 2011. Stories about chechen war presented here on behalf of the writer herself, who was born in Grozny in 1985.
The diaries describe the events of 1999-2002, when the author was 14-17 years old. The book has been translated into many languages \u200b\u200bin Europe and beyond. It came out without abbreviations, everything was published as it was in the original, that is, in the diaries themselves.
Great interest was aroused by the story of the war on behalf of a teenager, a sincere story about interethnic relations between Russians and Chechens, the fate of civilians during the Second Chechen campaign. At first, many considered it a fiction, but there were witnesses, including the head of the Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina, who confirmed that they had personally seen these diaries.
We dug in the past and chose 5 books about the war in Chechnya - fiction and documentary. It is worth studying them, if only in order to understand what imprint the war left on the public consciousness.
Second Chechen / Anna Politkovskaya
As a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya's task was to tell about the life of the inhabitants of Chechnya during the second military campaign. They say about this book: "It hurts and scary to read." She is about something that was never talked about in the Russian media - Politkovskaya was not afraid to thoroughly write about what she saw. And she was shot in her own entrance in 2006. The print run is out of print, but the book can be found online.
Eve of the summer of 2002, the 33rd month of the second Chechen war. Hopelessness and impenetrability - in everything that concerns its finale. "Cleansing" does not stop and look like mass auto-da-fe. Torture is the norm. Extrajudicial executions are routine. Looting is commonplace. The abduction of people by federal servicemen for the purpose of subsequent trafficking in workers (alive) and corpses (dead) is a trivial Chechen way of life.
Ritual a 1a "37th year" - traceless nocturnal disappearances of "human material".
In the mornings - shredded, mutilated bodies on the outskirts, planted at curfew.
And for the hundredth, the thousandth damned time - I hear how children habitually discuss on rural streets, which of their fellow villagers and in what form they found ... Today ... Yesterday ... With the ears cut off, with the scalp removed, with the severed fingers ...
- No fingers on your hands? One teenager asks casually.
- No, Alaudin is on his feet, - the other answers apathetically.
Forgotten Chechnya: pages from military notebooks / Yuri Shchekochikhin
Another book from the correspondent of "Novaya" and part-time deputy of the State Duma. The author is trying to figure out why everything was started and to draw public attention to what actually happened in the conflict zone. Yuri Shchekochikhin was poisoned in 2003. “He left us feeling happy. And - the cases that he did not manage to bring to victory. " - colleagues from Novaya say about him.
They shouted at me as if I were the only journalist in all of Russia: “Stop spitting on us! Are we the most guilty? .. Chechens are people, and who are we? Where were you before with your human rights, when there was a complete genocide of the Russian population in Chechnya? Why weren't they indignant when Russians were forced to sell their houses for nothing?! .. "
I told them about the devastated city, and they told me: "Why don't you write how they hung eleven soldiers upside down on the building of the Council of Ministers?" I am about how an army captain put four civilians out of a machine gun who were absolutely not involved in the fact that only six soldiers survived from his battalion, and they told me how much they found in Chechen houses from robbed trains.
And I understood their personal righteousness - each individually, who experienced during these days here something that would not have dreamed even in a nightmare. But I knew that somewhere in another basement of another house, one of my colleagues, sitting with Chechen militants in the same way, was listening to stories about the torture that Russian soldiers subjected Chechens to, about young guys who, despite being wounded, remained in the ranks, about courage and meanness that always coexist in any war, and, of course, about destroyed houses, about humiliation. And about everything, about everything that they also experienced during these days of the war.
War | T1om / Arkady Babchenko
Semi-autobiographical work of fiction.Arkady Babchenko went through two Chechen campaigns and later became a war correspondent. He says: “Ha person who has not fought cannot be explained the war - he simply does not have the necessary senses. You can only survive the war. " But still the author explains the war to us quite clearly.
The hatred for each other is mutual. There is something to hate for. Officers' "contractors" - for stealing stewed meat without hesitation; sell solarium in cisterns; for lack of professionalism and inability to save soldiers' lives; for careerism on blood; for robbing right and left, driving trophy "Pajero", and stuffing tents with leather furniture and carpets; for the fact that drunken "contractors" are beaten with boots, while they themselves allow themselves to get drunk in the mud; for lynching and bullying; for layoffs without money; for the fact that humanitarian aid never reached the platoons even once; for cowardice in battle. The officers of the "double basses" hate them for the same thing they hate them for - for getting drunk and selling them to solarium; for shooting officers in the back; for being caught in the bazaar with cartridges; for the fact that the marauders are all as one and all as one alcoholics and trash podzabornaya; for the fact that they do not know how to fight and do not want to, but only know how to rummage around the ruins and stuff sidor with junk; for throwing machine guns in the middle of a battle; for the fact that everyone as one wants to leave this damn army from which they, except for money, need nothing. They also hate for their poverty, eternal hopelessness and poorly fed children. Conscripts - also because they die like flies, and have to write funerals for mothers.
Ant in a glass jar / Polina Zherebtsova
War and life in the occupied city through the eyes of a child. "Ant in a Glass Jar" is a collection of extremely sincere diaries kept by Polina Zherebtsova from 1994 to 2004. First love, everyday life, domestic conflicts. An ordinary diary of an ordinary girl, only the entourage - brutal war... Book nit has been translated into many European languages. After the publication, Polina could not stay on the territory of the Russian Federation due to incoming threats.
The Russian military destroyed the market. There are no tables. No earnings. And no food at all. People are crying, they say that they robbed the lockers. They took the men. Yesterday we walked to the market to see if there are boards or have they all been burned? We traded a little on nobody's boxes. We bought two loaves of bread and canned fish.
Towards evening, someone blew up an armored personnel carrier near the mosque. Shooting began "anywhere". Bullets are whistling through the market! Strongly somewhere nearby there was a bang! The people rushed to run! We, naturally, too.
Pathology / Zakhar Prilepin
The author took part in the hostilities in Chechnya in 1996 and 1999. Based on his impressions, he writes a novel about a philosophizing special forces soldier sent to Chechnya. Both critics and readers speak positively about the novel. “At first it was a novel about love, but gradually (I worked for three or four years) it turned into a novel about Chechnya as about my strongest life experience - as they say, whatever you do here, a Kalashnikov assault rifle comes out. "
They stood up to their waist in water, looking at the school, wrying their mouths, making hoarse sounds. And at school, almost everyone who came here to die has already been killed. We, who remained, stood with burnt faces, with icy eyelashes, with a diseased brain, with drunken eyesight, with mutilated lungs that had experienced a long shock ...
We went out to the road, and they picked us up.
The burnt black asphalt cracked when we stepped on it like dry bread. A swallow flew past and touched my face with its wing.
"The world will be."
Stories about the Chechen war
Anthology
Alexey Borzenko
Dedicated to "Gyurza" and "Cobra", the fearless scouts of General Vladimir Shamanov
“I thought I would die anyway, but not like that ... Why did I rarely go to church and got baptized at twenty-five? Perhaps that is why such a death? Blood oozes slowly, not like from a bullet wound, I will die for a long time ... ”- Sergei with difficulty inhaled the air deeply. That's all he could do. For the fifth day, there was not a crumb in his stomach, but he did not want to eat. The unbearable pain in the punctured arms and legs temporarily disappeared.
"How far you can see from this height, how beautiful the world is!" thought the sergeant. For two weeks he saw nothing but the earth and the concrete walls of the basements, turned into zindans. Machine gunner, he was taken prisoner by militant scouts when he was lying unconscious at the edge of the nearest forest, shell-shocked by a sudden shot from a "fly".
And now he has been floating in the air for two hours in a light wind. Not a cloud in the sky, unbearable spring blue. Directly below him, near the militants' trenches streaming in uneven snakes, a serious battle unfolded.
The fighting for the village of Goiskoye had been going on for the second week. As before, Gelayev's militants took up defensive positions along the perimeter of the village, hiding from artillery behind the houses of local residents. Federal troops were in no hurry to storm, the new generals relied more on artillery than on infantry breakthroughs. After all, it was already the spring of 1995.
Sergei came to himself from a kick in the face. He was brought on a stretcher to interrogate the militants. The taste of salty blood in the mouth and the pain from the knocked out teeth brought to life immediately.
Good morning! - the people in camouflages laughed.
Why torture him, he doesn't know anything anyway, just a sergeant, a machine gunner! Let me shoot you! - Impatiently, swallowing the endings, said a bearded militant of about thirty with black teeth in Russian. He took up the machine gun.
The other two looked at Sergei dubiously. One of them - and Sergei never found out that it was Gelayev himself - said, as if reluctantly, tapping his wand on the toes of his new Adidas sneakers:
Aslan, shoot him in front of the trenches for the Russians to see. The last question for you, kafir: if you accept Islam with your soul and shoot your comrade now, you will live.
Only then Sergei saw another bound prisoner - a young Russian guy of about eighteen. He did not know him. The boy's hands were tied behind his back, and he, like a ram before being slaughtered, was already lying on his side, huddled in anticipation of death.
The moment lasted a full minute.
No, - as if poured out of his mouth like lead.
I thought so, shoot ... - the field commander answered succinctly.
Hey Ruslan! Why shoot such a good guy? There is a better offer! Remember the story that the Gimrs, our ancestors, did more than a hundred years ago - this was said by a militant in a brand new NATO camouflage and in a green velvet beret with a tin wolf on his side who came up from behind.
Sergei with his broken kidneys dreamed of quietly falling asleep and dying. Most of all, he did not want to have his throat cut with a knife in front of a video camera and his ears cut off alive.
“Well, shoot like a man, you bastards! - the soldier thought to himself. - I deserve it. I put so many of yours from a machine gun - do not count! "
The militant approached Sergei and looked inquiringly into his eyes, apparently to see fear. The Heavy responded with calm blue eyes.
Kafirs have a holiday today, Christ's Easter. So crucify him, Ruslan. Right here in front of the trenches. In honor of the holiday! Let the infidels rejoice!
Gelaev raised his head in surprise and stopped tapping the rhythm of the zikt on his sneakers.
Yes, Hasan, it was not in vain that you went through the school of psychological warfare with Abu Movsayev! So be it. And the second, young, also on the cross.
The two commanders, without turning around, walked towards the dugout, discussing the tactics of the village defense on the way. The prisoners had already been erased from memory. And from the list of the living.
The crosses were built from improvised telegraph poles and Muslim burial boards, which were stuffed across and obliquely, imitating church crosses.
They put the sergeant on the cross, removing all his clothes except for his underpants. The nails turned out to be "weaving", they were not found larger in the village, so they drove several of them into the hands and feet at once. Sergei groaned softly as his hands were nailed. He didn't care anymore. But he screamed loudly when the first nail pierced his leg. He lost consciousness, and the rest of the nails were driven into the motionless body. No one knew how to nail the legs - directly or crosswise, overwhelming the left to the right. Nailed directly. The militants realized that the body would not be able to hold on to such nails anyway, so first they tied Sergei by both hands to a horizontal board, and then pulled his legs to the post.
He came to his senses when a wreath of barbed wire was put on his head. The gushing blood from the torn vessel flooded the left eye.
Well, how are you feeling? Ah, machine gunner! You see what kind of death we have invented for you on Easter. You will go straight to your Lord. Appreciate! - smiled a young militant who hammered five nails into Sergei's right hand.
Many Chechens came to watch the ancient Roman execution out of pure curiosity. They did everything before their eyes with the captives, but they crucified on the cross for the first time. They smiled, repeating among themselves: “Easter! Easter!"
The second prisoner was also put on the cross and nails were hammered in.
A blow to the head with a hammer stopped the screams. The boy's legs were punctured when he was already unconscious.
They came to the village square and locals, many looked at the preparation of the execution with approval, some, turning away, immediately left.
How the Russians will get angry! This is a Easter gift for them from Ruslan! You will hang for a long time, sergeant, until yours spank you ... out of Christian mercy. - The gunman, tying the bloody legs of the machine gunner to the post, laughed raspingly with a hoarse laugh.
Finally, he put on both prisoners over the barbed wire and Russian helmets on their heads, so that General Shamanov's camp no longer doubted who was crucified on the outskirts of the village by the field commander Ruslan Gelayev.
The crosses were taken out to the front line, put up standing, dug right into the heaps of earth from the dug trenches. It turned out that they were in front of the trenches, under them there was a machine-gun point of the militants.
At first, a terrible pain pierced the body, sagging on thin nails. But gradually the ropes tightened under the armpits took over the center of gravity, and less and less blood began to flow to the fingers. And soon Sergey no longer felt his palms and did not feel the pain from the nails driven into them. But the disfigured legs ached terribly.
In the old days, temples were erected on the battlefields in memory of the heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the Motherland. On Kulikovo, on Borodinskoye, on Prokhorovskoye, military Russian churches are whitewashed. This book is a temple dedicated to the glory of the Russian troops who went through the Afghan campaign against those who fought the war in Chechnya. I wrote pages and chapters of how frescoes are written, where instead of saints and angels - officers and soldiers of Russia, and instead of horses and halos - armored vehicles, and tanks, and the bloody glow of burning Kabul and Grozny.
Trench truth of the Chechen war Alexey Volynets
Most of the authors of this book are terribly far from professional journalism. These are privates and lieutenants, adventurers and militants, occasional fellow travelers and prisoners - witnesses, participants, accomplices, heroes and victims of the war in Chechnya. Fights in the mountains and conversations in a compartment, conversations on bunks and in zindans, skirmishes on roads and markets, in forests and cities. Unprofessional, unadorned, trench truth ... The book covers the entire period and the entire geography of the Chechen war - from the New Year's storming of Grozny in 1995 to the battles with the Wahhabi underground in Dagestan in the summer of 2007.
Soul Guardian Vasily Shakhov
Before you is a mystical action movie with elements of a crypto-history about the mysterious country of Oritan. The action begins today, around the middle of the 90s of the twentieth century, when the The Soviet Union the "brothers" began to drive around without hindrance in cool foreign cars, when the war in Chechnya was raging, and Russia was still hesitantly stepping on the road of capitalism. The Chinese say: "Do not wish your enemy to live in an era of change!" The fate of the heroes of the novel develops in such a way that they live precisely in such an era. As we are with you. Daughter of the Novosibirsk businessman Alexander ...
Kandahar outpost Alexander Prokhanov
Rodnenky Alexander Prokhanov
In the old days, temples were erected on the battlefields in memory of the heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the Motherland. On Kulikovo, on Borodinskoye, on Prokhorovskoye, military Russian churches are whitewashed. This book is a temple dedicated to the glory of the Russian troops who went through the Afghan campaign against those who fought the war in Chechnya. I wrote pages and chapters of how frescoes are written, where instead of saints and angels - officers and soldiers of Russia, and instead of horses and halos - armored vehicles, and tanks, and the bloody glow of burning Kabul and Grozny. Included in the collection War from the East. Book about the Afghan campaign "
Dream of Kabul Alexander Prokhanov
In the old days, temples were erected on the battlefields in memory of the heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the Motherland. On Kulikovo, on Borodinskoye, on Prokhorovskoye, military Russian churches are whitewashed. This book is a temple dedicated to the glory of the Russian troops who went through the Afghan campaign against those who fought the war in Chechnya. I wrote pages and chapters of how frescoes are written, where instead of saints and angels - officers and soldiers of Russia, and instead of horses and halos - armored vehicles, and tanks, and the bloody glow of burning Kabul and Grozny. Included in the collection War from the East. Book about the Afghan campaign "
Virgo sign Alexander Prokhanov
In the old days, temples were erected on the battlefields in memory of the heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the Motherland. On Kulikovo, on Borodinskoye, on Prokhorovskoye, military Russian churches are whitewashed. This book is a temple dedicated to the glory of the Russian troops who went through the Afghan campaign against those who fought the war in Chechnya. I wrote pages and chapters of how frescoes are written, where instead of saints and angels - officers and soldiers of Russia, and instead of horses and halos - armored vehicles, and tanks, and the bloody glow of burning Kabul and Grozny. Included in the collection War from the East. Book about the Afghan campaign "
Yod Andrey RUBANOV
In the new novel, Andrei Rubanov returns to the autobiographical manner that made him famous, to the hero of his early books Plant and Grow and The Great Dream. "Iodine" - cruel story love for your friends and your country. The story of the zero years, which began for the hero with the war in Chechnya and ended with painful experiences in prosperous Moscow. The classic "black book", shocking and direct, without mercy. Bloody confession of a man who has watched reality from the inside out for too long. The hero of the novel "Yod" has a past and a future ...
Allah's Bride Sergey Baksheev
A poignant story of hatred, compassion and love between a Muscovite who went through the war in Chechnya and a suicide bomber. He saves her from the wrath of an angry crowd, but she doesn't want to live. They are enemies in the eyes of the intelligence services and targets for the organizers of the terrorist attack. Treacherous traps, betrayal of friends and cruel pursuits bring them closer together. But the forces are not equal. He must be killed, and she is destined to explode in a crowded place in the bride's dress. At what cost can tragedy be prevented?
Stone towers Wojciech Jagielski
Wojciech Jagielski received the title of Honorary Member and the Golden Insignia of the Polish Press Agency PAP, where he worked from 1986 to 1991. He has worked with Gazeta Wyborcza since its inception. Wojciech is the author of the books “ A good place for Death ”about the Caucasus and“ Prayer for Rain ”about the war in Afghanistan. The book "Stone Towers" tells about the war in Chechnya.
The garrison is not leased Evgeny Kostyuchenko
Russian officer Vadim Grantsov went through three wars. He fought in Africa, and his homeland paid him in currency. In Afghanistan, he paid off his country's international debt with blood. For the war in Chechnya, the state paid him back with shame and humiliation. And Grantsov decided - enough to fight. He chose a peaceful life on an abandoned "point" where a tiny garrison is trying to maintain combat readiness despite all the efforts of the new masters of life. Here he found true friends and met his beloved woman. But in order to defend his home and his love, he again has to take ...
Russian captain Vladislav Shurygin
War consists of moments, from a short burst of machine guns, from a cry of rage or pain, from deafening silence after the battle. The war in Chechnya, seen through the eyes of a soldier, is not at all a pretentious heroic battle. This is a every second test of everything that is in a person. Interrogating a prisoner, shooting a traitor, burying a friend is hard, exhausting work. And tomorrow you will be back in battle, and you must be ready for the hardest moral tests.
Letter from the future Aslan Shataev
The action develops against the backdrop of the war in Chechnya. The hero falls in love with his classmate, but does not admit his feelings to her. Time passes, a war begins, in a moment of danger, he discovers the ability to travel in time and decides to change his future.
Bullet as a gift Maxim Shakhov
War in Chechnya. The commander of the reconnaissance company, Captain Artyom Tarasov, has his old scores with the terrorist Umar. They have already clashed in bloody battles more than once. This time, fate did not smile at the captain: as a result of a hot battle, the commando was taken prisoner by Umar. The officer manages to escape, simultaneously destroying several more militants. Umar is furious. In revenge, the Chechen gives the order to kill the captain's girlfriend Marina. Artem declares the terrorist to be his bloodline and vows to destroy the bandit. And not to fulfill your promises is not in the captain's rules ...
One year in the life of the director, or How we got out ... Alexander Malinovsky
The reader, having read these notes, may find them too haphazard and chaotic. But, nevertheless, one year in the life of the director of a large Volga chemical enterprise, a difficult year, in many respects a turning point for the fate of Russia - 1994, which began with a deep systemic crisis caused by Gaidar's ill-conceived economic reforms, and ended with the war in Chechnya, which was a consequence of the adventurous policy of the Yeltsin administration - this year is reflected here quite clearly. The author of the notes is sincerely experiencing all the consequences ...