War and the Pull of Life

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.