Columnist Susan Snyder: Transplanted soldier is still fighting

Friday, Nov. 23, 2001 | 1:02 a.m.

There, he tells of Afghan prisoners, some of whom are shown in a photograph on the facing page. Tamarov was the photographer behind the camera.

And the soldier behind the gun.

"... Another bullet whistled by right next to me. Apparently, this Mujahadeen was not the only one here. Again, I aimed at his head, but again something stopped me. I saw how his hands were trembling; I noticed the horror in his eyes. 'He is only a boy!' I thought and pressed the trigger."

With such pointed, candid accounts, the Las Vegas resident and former Soviet soldier describes what war was like for the young men sent to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story" was first released in 1992 under a different title. Tamarov said publishers clamored for reprints after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"After the attack all the first editions of the book sold out in two days," Tamarov said. "People were even pre-paying for the book before it was printed again."

It would be easy to assume that Tamarov is riding high on a second wave of fame and fortune. It also would be wrong.

Tamarov's life in Las Vegas has been by accident and struggle. Uprooted when his California apartment was destroyed by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, he planned to return to Russia after stopping in Las Vegas for a couple of days.

A week later he was penniless. He lost his $7,000 bankroll in a drinking and gambling binge he doesn't remember. He lived on the street or with friends for the next three years, playing credits on slot machines to support the addictions that choked a psyche already damaged by 621 days of guerilla warfare.

"My dream had always been to publish a book," he said. "But I did that so fast, I didn't know where to go next. I wasn't prepared."

Tamarov began shooting photos at 13. As a solider he worked as a minesweeper and took photos on the sly. Shooting pictures was illegal. He developed photos at night behind a few lengths of dark cloth hung in the barracks.

"While everyone else slept, I printed pictures," he recalled.

He says his book is "for people who know nothing about war."

"It's not about the war," he adds. "It's about people."

People such as Sasha Zaichenko on Page 161. Tamarov's best friend holds a rifle while kneeling in shrubbery a foot taller than he is.

"Like me, he was nineteen," Tamarov wrote. "But he didn't come home. He was killed twelve hours after this photo was taken."

The book goes on sale in national chain stores Monday. But signed copies are available at Eliseevsky Russian Restaurant, 4825 W. Flamingo Road, and the Bagel Bakery, 840 S. Rancho Drive.

Tamarov also is to lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at UNLV's Barrick Museum auditorium. And he will sign books at 2 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Ahavaht Torah Synagogue, 2620 Regatta Drive. A $5 donation will be collected.

Tamarov's war was fought in a different time, but it is not so different. His book provides a view of Afghan conflict political experts can't give.

A hard view.

"It made me an old young man."

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