Red Army Sniper A Memoir on the Eastern Front in World War II

ix

Preface

This book is not the work of a writer. The author was a sniper – a
role that he came into during the Second World War and never
escaped. In the naïve heroism of the narrative we encounter the
ageing fighter reflecting on his younger self of forty years ago,
seeking to unearth the facts of war and the words to capture his
experience.
The biography is thus made up of selective memories, an
assemblage of experiences moulded over time that insists on the
narrative of a victor. It cannot accommodate ambiguities because it
is precisely through these proverbial blind spots that the protagonist
gains the ability to locate himself and create a fixed identity within
the chaos and impossibility of war. Horror, pain, dis array and
catastrophe do not figure in this book. Instead, the text is structured
by an unbroken line of heroic acts; of unity between mother and
son, soldier and fatherland, comrades in arms, commanders and
subordinates, but also between the past and the present. These
relationships are what give us a deeper insight into the realities of
war combined with an impressive collection of photo graphs, docu­
ments, Soviet newspaper clippings and private correspondence.
With this publication in English, a part of our country’s history
is unexpectedly crossing borders. Nikolaev’s tale gains an entirely