Editors Reads Verdict
Alexievich's Afghanistan book is the most politically dangerous of her testimonies: the veterans and mothers speaking here are accusing the Soviet state of sending young men to die in a secret war for no reason they can discern—and being made to feel ashamed for asking.
What We Loved
- The most politically charged of Alexievich's books—and the most dangerous for her to have published
- Veterans' voices carry a moral complexity that conventional war literature rarely achieves
- The mothers' testimony is among the most powerful in the cycle
- Crucial context for understanding the Soviet Union's final crisis
Minor Drawbacks
- The violence described is more graphic than in Alexievich's other books
- Some testimonies are fragmentary in ways that frustrate rather than illuminate
- Less formally polished than Voices from Chernobyl or Secondhand Time
Key Takeaways
- → The Soviet Afghan war was fought in secrecy—the dead came home in sealed zinc coffins
- → Moral injury is distinct from physical injury; it can be inflicted by the state you are serving
- → Veterans who fought in an unjust war are victims twice: of the war and of the silence afterward
- → Shame and grief are different responses to the same loss—the book contains both
- → Lying about a war to those who fought it is its own category of atrocity
| Author | Svetlana Alexievich |
|---|---|
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
| Pages | 240 |
| Published | April 11, 2017 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Oral History, Literary Nonfiction, War Literature |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Readers of oral history and war literature, particularly those interested in the human cost of the Soviet Afghan campaign and the moral injury inflicted by fighting an acknowledged war. |
The Zinc Coffins
Between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet Union fought a war in Afghanistan that it could not officially acknowledge. The war was not declared; the casualties were not announced; the bodies came home in zinc-lined coffins that were sealed. Families were told, in many cases, not to open them. They were given death certificates that listed causes of death that were not combat. They were told their sons had died of illness or accident. They were asked to bury the coffins quietly, without drawing attention.
‘Zinky boys’ was soldiers’ slang for themselves—the young men who knew the odds of coming home in a zinc box. The title is not heroic; it is the dark humor of men who have been sent somewhere they should not be, for reasons they have not been told, with equipment that is inadequate and orders that do not match the reality they find. The slang was not in the official vocabulary. Neither was the war.
Alexievich gathered the voices of these soldiers and their families beginning in the late 1980s, as the war ended and the veterans began returning to a Soviet Union that did not know how to talk about what they had done. The zinc coffin is the book’s central image: the sealed container, the forbidden opening, the truth that the state could not permit to be seen.
The Veterans
The soldiers who returned from Afghanistan did so into a silence that became its own form of injury. There was no word in Russian for what they had—what would later be named post-traumatic stress disorder in the American literature on the Vietnam War—and there was no social or institutional structure for addressing it. They had fought a war; they were told they had not been fighting a war. They had done things in that war; they were told those things had not happened.
Alexievich’s veterans describe specific acts of violence with a moral directness that is bracing and disturbing. A soldier describes the first time he killed a person who was not trying to kill him. Another describes executing prisoners on orders he knew were illegal. A third describes the drug use that was endemic and unacknowledged, the way the mind adapts to sustained exposure to death. These are not men confessing to crimes—they are men trying to account for themselves in a language that their country has given them no way to speak.
The moral injury is precise: they were sent to fight a war they were told was just, discovered it was not, did things in it that they cannot process within any framework of justification they were given, and came home to be told nothing had happened. The shame that runs through the veterans’ voices is not guilt for what they did; it is the shame of having been used, without consent, for a purpose that turned out to be a lie.
The Trial
Zinky Boys was published in 1989 and immediately became a cause for legal action. Families of soldiers who had died in Afghanistan sued Alexievich for libel, claiming that the testimonies in the book defamed the memory of their sons—that their sons had not done what the veterans in the book described doing, that the book portrayed the Soviet Afghan campaign as criminal, and that Alexievich was using the dead to slander the Soviet state.
The trial was a revelation. It dramatized the exact problem the book was about: the impossibility of telling the truth about the war when the official version of the war was a fiction. The families who sued were not wrong that the book accused the state of something; they were wrong that the accusation was a lie. Alexievich was ultimately not convicted, but the pressure she faced was substantial, and the trial became part of the historical record that the book itself was creating.
In the context of Alexievich’s cycle, Zinky Boys sits between The Unwomanly Face of War (the earlier war, more distant, more formally resolved) and Voices from Chernobyl (the disaster that made the Soviet state’s dishonesty impossible to sustain). Together, they constitute a sustained investigation into what the Soviet system did to the people it was supposed to serve.
Our rating: 4.3/5 — The most politically urgent and formally raw of Alexievich’s books: the veterans and mothers speaking here are some of the most morally complex voices in her cycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War" about?
Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan (1979-1989) returned home in zinc coffins or with wounds that could not be named. Alexievich interviews the survivors, the mothers, and the widows—recording a war that the Soviet state refused to acknowledge. 'Zinky boys' was soldiers' slang for the zinc-lined coffins the bodies came home in.
Who should read "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War"?
Readers of oral history and war literature, particularly those interested in the human cost of the Soviet Afghan campaign and the moral injury inflicted by fighting an acknowledged war.
What are the key takeaways from "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War"?
The Soviet Afghan war was fought in secrecy—the dead came home in sealed zinc coffins Moral injury is distinct from physical injury; it can be inflicted by the state you are serving Veterans who fought in an unjust war are victims twice: of the war and of the silence afterward Shame and grief are different responses to the same loss—the book contains both Lying about a war to those who fought it is its own category of atrocity
Is "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War" worth reading?
Alexievich's Afghanistan book is the most politically dangerous of her testimonies: the veterans and mothers speaking here are accusing the Soviet state of sending young men to die in a secret war for no reason they can discern—and being made to feel ashamed for asking.
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