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When my plane landed in Prague on August 8, 2008, friends from all over started calling and asking where I was. I had returned from Georgia on the very same day the war began there. That five-day war has been added to the list of “the shortest military conflicts in history” or “the Blitzkriegs of the 21st century”—the definition depending on whether or not a difference can be found between a war and a military conflict. Despite the “lightning speed” of the war, two weeks after its termination there appeared colourful books on sale in Moscow about the history of the conflict, informing the public how “bad Georgia” had engaged in genocide against the Ossetians for years and years until “fair Russia” put an end to that disgrace. Perhaps this is all true; history has always been contradictory. Still, books written, illustrated and published at that speed stink of propaganda. Anyway, while my plane was leaving the Caucasus, an area that had already become dear to me, Georgian military jets were bombing Ossetia, and Russian planes, just a little later, entered Georgian airspace at the very same time. Later on, everyone told me I had been lucky, but I kept recollecting in despair how I had been trying to change the ticket and how I had failed to, and I kept thinking that I should have been there. I cannot explain what precisely this would have changed, but I simply felt that I could no longer live pretending that the war did not exist. All this began when, in a Moscow bookshop called Falanster, a strange magazine titled Art of War caught my eye. I bought all the issues and began to read them in small doses, unable to digest such artwork. Boys on tanks, heads in bandages, dirt, blood, amputated limbs, tormented children, despair—the usual indications of any war's absurdity. At the very same time, one of our authors, Konstantin Rubakhin, offered to Umelec a series of the Chechen photos for publication. The photos looked vigorous. Indeed, peaceful life is being arranged, the universal Mars and Snickers and bananas are being sold, men with cheerful faces cheer on their favorite teams, and women in headscarves covering their faces sweep the streets completely ruined by bombing. Gentle green grass sprouts forth amid the detritus. Well, yes, the grass; it will always grow. I did not want to be the grass; I wanted to learn “a truth of my own.” I wanted to understand how it all had begun and how it happened that people, who had lived together for decades, suddenly began
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