Точка
The Outpost
C1 · Advanced · fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An advanced first-person account of a year of conscript service at a remote northern post — a wholly fictional story, set in peacetime in 2012. Fourteen young men, two buildings and an aerial, four hundred kilometres from the nearest town, watching a screen on which nothing ever appears. Nothing happens in it, and that is the point: the trial is boredom, the difficulty is a sergeant eighteen months older holding petty and complete authority, and the discovery is that life at home ran at exactly the same speed without him. There is no politics in it and no conflict of any kind: it argues neither for nor against conscription, and is here to carry the everyday vocabulary of service, rank and routine that a reader of Russian meets constantly and rarely learns from a textbook.
Characters
- Sergei (Сергей) — Conscript, 19
- Marat (Марат) — Conscript, the next bunk
- Sergeant Belov (Сержант Белов) — Eighteen months older
- His mother (Мать) — In Yekaterinburg
Vocabulary from this story
- служба — military service
- призыв — call-up, conscription
- часть — unit
- точка — detached outpost
- казарма — barracks
- койка — bunk
- форма — uniform
- сапоги — boots
- антенна — aerial
- экран — screen
- смена — shift, watch
- наряд — duty detail