War and the Pull of Life: Ex-Combatants in Putin's Russia

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 every...