Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer

Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is the moving tale of two families, those of Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov, fathers of the young pioneers. Inseparable, both men have survived the devastating war against the Germans, with all its horror and senseless carnage. Yakov – or Yasha, as he was known – emerged physically intact but scarred forever from the moment he had been lifted out of a mountain of frozen bodies at a camp in liberated Poland. Pyotr, a skilled sniper who operated behind the German lines, lost both his legs, not at the hands of the Germans but as an “unfortunate artillery mistake” by his own forces.

During these postwar years of hardship and repression, the two families try to piece together their shattered lives. Arkady and Alyosha grow up and go their separate ways, Arkady to Leningrad and mathematics school, Alyosha the narrator to the Savorov military academy, later to become an army officer who takes part in the grisly Afghanistan war. Eventually both emigrate to the West, Arkady to the States, Alyosha to Paris. It is to Arkady that, in the opening pages of this masterful novel, Alyosha addresses these remembrances of their parents’ ordinary heroism and their gradual awakening from the counterfeit glories of the Soviet dream.