Even the most monstrous of mankind's creations - war - is also life. With their own laws and regulations. And it has a place for everything that surrounds us in peaceful reality. Greatness and meanness, fear and courage, love and hate, light and darkness. Only brighter, more prominent, and more exposed.

The Afghan war still causes different assessments of politicians, historians, and the military. And this can be considered quite normal. Something else is alarming. Over time, historical generalizations and the scale of conclusions displace a simple worker of the bitter and harsh hard times-a soldier of that unknown war. Regardless of his shoulder straps or even their complete absence (there are a lot of civilian personnel among the "Afghans"). About them, quite specific soldiers-internationalists, less and less is said, removed, written. And this is bad. What will we leave to our descendants, how and what will they say about the "Afghan" warriors? And will they even talk? If we convey to them only a trail of criminal proceedings on individual semi-criminal veteran funds, if we remain indifferent to disabled people sitting in wheelchairs in underground passages with an outstretched hand, if we allow ourselves to repeat only a political mistake and a military adventure to please the market. If we forget about the simple soldier of war, about the greatness and immortality of his military service, even on a foreign land, but to his Fatherland.

He who has never known war, let him never know it. It is bitter and painful to know it from the inside. But how important it is, even in a small fraction, even in a thousandth part, to come into contact with it, to get into the feelings, thoughts, and actions of those who fought there, Of course, the archival photographs of a front-line correspondent can tell very little. War has many faces. But one thing is immediately clear in these unsophisticated plots: war is the hardest work. So, it is impossible to treat its simple worker without respect. It is impossible not to bow our heads before him for his military work, loyalty to duty, honor, and order. And it is not at all necessary to reward for actions exclusively heroic, committed in moments of unprecedented selflessness.

Everyday, day after day, month after month of service in the war - this is already a feat. Isn't this high word defined, for example, the aspirations of hundreds of our guys who, before the withdrawal of troops at the end of 1989, asked the command to leave them in their units? They didn't want to put the young and untried at risk. Although they knew that the bullet overtakes its victim, without making allowances for age, service life.

The Afghan war has left many similar examples of the same remarkable moral force. Because with its exhausting, mysterious nature, extreme climatic conditions, it continuously bent our soldier, squeezed all the juices out of him, but it never broke. No, there were, of course, in Afghanistan, as in any other war, and scoundrels, and traitors, and weaklings. No one is hiding it. But the fundamental question is: how many were there? In Afghanistan, the proportion of those who committed crimes was only half a percent. So what? Because of a small handful of broken now all one paint - black?

"An unjust war... So, our soldiers were invaders and murderers, " the cynics say. And what is the cost of the already classic bureaucracy: "I didn't send you to Afghanistan "? And the soldiers never found out who sent them there. Just all ten years of fighting on the roads, gorges, deserts, "green". Countless dusty columns of "bulk carriers ", KAMAZ trucks with bread, ammunition, and fuel rolled along. They burned them, hammered them with heavy machine guns, and placed land mines under them. And they combed the "green areas" and took heights, "cleared" villages and cities, not thinking about what another duval passed will turn out for them. They served in outposts and field hospitals. Under the merciless sun, they "grabbed" hepatitis and other nasty things.

It was ten years, woven from thousands of impromptu events, collisions, situations, raids, operations, in which every soldier, officer and ensign serving in the Soviet Army made their unique contribution. They retained their courage and steadfastness, loyalty to the banner and the commander, and holy faith in that. that the blood shed is not in vain. This is how we know them, so let their descendants remember them. Front-line photos of photojournalist Viktor Khabarov are just about that.

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