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 Vladislav Tamarov is a young Russian writer and photographer. The book, A Russian Soldier’s Story is Tamarov’life story. He serves as an eighteen-year-old infantry man on the Soviet front in Afghanistan. Tamarov witnesses the wounds and death of his fellow soldiers who have become his friends.
Tamarov photographs the lives of the infantry in stark black and white detail. An excerpt from the opening pages of his diary reads, 'I am asked if I think the war was a just war...how can I answer? I was a boy born and raised in beautiful Leningrad, a boy who loved his parents and went obediently to school. A boy who was yanked out of that life and dumped in a strange land where life followed different rules.'
Tamarov, physically whole, but emotionally crippled, writes about his return, 'When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College...my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book.' The picture Tamarov submitted for the exhibit is on the cover of the book and shows him with an arm in friendship around the shoulders of an Afghan soldier.
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