Svetlana Alexievich's Another Nurse: An Analysis

From 1979 until 1989, Soviet troops fought a brutal war in the mountains of Afghanistan, but at home the war was virtually nonexistent. The Soviet government attempted to hide the war by censoring letters, prohibiting photographs, and suppressing information regarding dead soldiers. It claimed that troops were fulfilling their ‘international duty’ and promoting a socialist state, helping to build schools, hospitals, etc.; in reality, young men, mostly ages 18-20 were facing fierce resistance by the mujahideen who violently objected to Soviet presence (Heinemann x). Although the war is strongly associated with young men, women also participated and faced countless challenges both abroad during war and once they returned home. Svetlana Alexievich’s …show more content…
She had believed that women had gone to war to save lives, to help, and to show love, not only to Soviet soldiers, but also to locals who they perceived to need fostering into a socialist state. However, after a while, she became filled with hatred, she came to hate the sand, the villages, and the locals (Alexievich 23). This hatred was a natural aversion to what she witnessed every day, it made her question why she was there and shaped who she would become. Upon first entering the war, she was surprised that mankind had forged the weapons that caused the horrors she witnessed, recalling the growing piles of body parts behind hospitals, dead bodies mutilated by the mujahedin with gouged out eyes and stars carved into their skin, it is no wonder that she grew to hate everything in Afghanistan–it represented the cruelty that her Soviet brothers suffered. Moreover, she had to cope with the disturbing sights of soldiers still alive as their limbs had to be amputated, intestines untangled, all the while crying out “‘Mum!’ when they were frightened and in pain” (22). She shared that they always called for their mothers and she would sometimes appease them in their last moments by saying “I’m here” (24). In some ways, nurses filled a void, becoming confidantes for soldiers and comforting them like mothers and sisters. The connections and sympathy she felt for wounded soldiers increased her hatred, as each body served as a reminder of the severity the mujahedin pressed upon the Soviets. Nevertheless, following the war, she felt guilt about hating the locals so much; when the troops were there, destroying a whole village was validated by revenge, but in retrospect, she felt horror that in Afghanistan she had believed killing to be right. Further, she felt that her profession meant saving people and was disappointed that they had lost so many due to lack of equipment and drugs. She also regretted that