A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy

Excellent telling of the story of the Kursk tragedy. ( )

Life on a submarine - who would willingly choose it? Perhaps if you're living on one of the Arctic Russian military bases, the choice is easier, because the way of life portrayed here makes the social contact and conditions within a submarine seem almost cosy. This book was as much about the decline and changes within Soviet society that the Kursk disaster highlighted, but also the openness that the country was trying to awkwardly embrace. Okay, the Russians were slow to ask for outside assistance, but thirty years ago the submariners would have died in a veil of secrecy, and their suffering denied to the world. And the depiction of Putin being publicly interrogated by grieving relatives would never have happened pre-Gorbachev. Whether or not the West could have rescued the men in the Kursk even if they had been on the scene is a moot point, but there is no doubt that there would have been a better chance of it. Everyone tried their best under the circumstances, and it's strange to think that even as I sit and write this, there are probably hundreds of men submerged somewhere under our oceans, spying on one another. Rather them than me. ( )