War and the Pull of Life
Ex-Combatants in Putin's Russia
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A moving and unsettling ethnography of veterans living under the shadow of ongoing war and militarism, War and the Pull of Life traces how war makes its way into daily life in Putin’s Russia. Based on research in St. Petersburg, the book describes how war veterans struggle to “find a place” for themselves and their wartime experiences in language, in ties of kinship and friendship, and within the state.
Hervouet-Zeiber shows that, for veterans, war is not an interruption. It seeps into everyday life as veterans try to create a domestic space, play hockey, discuss illnesses with friends, drink alcohol, loiter, joke, and envision the future. The book describes the texture of these soldiers’ lives, refusing to typify their experiences into predefined pathways to rehabilitation or to absorb them unproblematically into the language of a militarized existence. What matters to veterans is shaped with difficulty and negotiated through the relationships that form the fragile ground of their lives. Some are anchored in the present through the experience of disability or the slowing of an aging body. War persists for others, as they return, once again, to the front. Still others are torn between efforts to mend intimate relationships, a faithfulness to what they witnessed on the front, and a desire to fight again. By viewing the ongoing presence of war as a concrete feature of these lives, the book explores the tensions and alignments between war and a pull of life.
"An extraordinary immersion into the daily lives of Russian veterans. Never before has an ethnographic inquiry allowed us to come so close to the subjective realities of the effects of war and of its disenchanting aftermath on combatants. Overturning the commonplaces that punctuate classic post-war narratives through writing of rare power that weaves together the intimate and collective history, the author does more than demonstrate: he describes a world, a form of life, in which war is ever-present. Even when the guns have fallen silent, wars never end; they flood everyday life, animate gestures, creep into conversations, slip into jokes, pollute dreams, and alter emotional relationships. To conduct an ethnography of the ghosts of war is not merely to evoke the memory of the departed; it is war itself that is at stake here, but in its most timeless form, like an indelible shadow haunting the heart of life. A masterful demonstration of the extraordinary importance of the details of daily life."—Richard Rechtman, EHESS – École des hautes études en sciences sociales
“War and the Pull of Life is an original and sensitive ethnography of Russian war veterans’ civilian lives. Hervouet-Zeiber deftly reports on the aspects of everyday life that only careful and skilled ethnography can capture. His argument points to the continuity of experiences across multiple conflicts as well as the presence of war and violence for veterans in so-called civilian life, even as he is careful to show how his findings resist any easy framing.”—Eugene Raikhel, University of Chicago
“Hervouet-Zeiber’s groundbreaking focus on Russian veterans illuminates a new aspect to veteran life, the multigenerational and multi-conflict dimensions of veteran experience. Hervouet-Zeiber’s rich ethnography makes its case through powerfully attending to specific lives and stories.”—Jocelyn Chua, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
