Free Fall: A Sniper's Story

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When I turned eighteen, I already had a past behind me. But the world had one too, and it was decidedly more complex than mine. My country was turning into a realm of the absurd. Capitalism, so longed for, never came. The mentality of the crook reigned, the mentality of people out for easy money who wished to look smarter than God himself. Or, as my grandfather would say, ‘Everyone wanted to take God’s beard and try it on for size.’

In Transnistria people did nothing but talk about Western society. The United States and Europe were living examples of economic and social prosperity; everybody wanted to become Western, thinking that if they wore designer clothes, ate fast food and bought foreign cars, democracy would naturally follow, and take root in our great and beautiful Land. It was like an infectious disease, a fever whose origin and character nobody could explain.

Post-Soviet society had erased the values of my forebears, the people who had raised me and who, for me, represented the pinnacle of human wisdom. The more this Western euphoria grew, the clearer it became that chaos would rule our days.

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