Alexander Eckinger

“The novelist and veteran Vyacheslav Kondratyev recalled on Victory Day, 1990, that the war put a great responsibility on every soldier: 'You felt as though you alone held the fate of Russia in your hands.' After the war that heady obligation no longer mattered. 'Whether I exist,' Kondratyev continued, 'whether I do not exist, everything will flow on as usual.”
― Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort, 1941-1945