Stanislav did not want to join the army. It was his mother who said he must. Stanislav’s father didn’t argue. Father had once been brave enough to fly a fighter plane in World War II, but that had been a long time ago. One glorious act of bravery in a man’s youth tells you nothing of his future. Reality can steal the wind out of any man’s sails, given enough time. An unhappy marriage, a brother in the gulag, and the loss of a child far too young left the family at the mercy of a tired and embittered mother who no longer wanted the burden of feeding a teenage boy. His father should have told her no. But he didn’t. When Stanislav had peered into his father’s eyes, pleading silently for a lifeline, some kind of support, his father’s dead eyes turned away with a shrug of the shoulders and sigh that said, “What can I do?” So, at seventeen, Stanislav shipped off to the army. His parents never left the three-room apartment in the far eastern Russian port city of Vladivostok. It had been twenty-six years since he boarded a train for Moscow. That was the last time he had taken the seven-day journey or ever would again. Stanislav called his father once a month, just to make sure neither he nor his mother had died.
Life for a Soviet soldier was about the same as it has always been for soldiers. Hard. The training is hard, the sergeants are hard, the food is barely passable and never quite enough. But what could Stanislav do? That was life. If he were a soldier, life would be hard. If he were not a soldier, life would be hard. So, Stanislav worked hard for himself and for his country. And now he was not just
