When a war begins, words become superfluous - actions are needed. And then it turns out that the words themselves have changed, crumbled, acquired new

senses and sound - began with fragments of stories heard and experienced, and became a way to record the experience of heavy losses and irreversibility, pain and belief in victory. Ostap Slyvinsky, carefully collecting documentary evidence, gave them a new form. Among the people whose voices the Dictionary of War" speaks are those who were forced to leave their homes and venture into the unknown; volunteers and doctors; military; social activists and artists are very different, but united by a common experience and a single impulse, people whose lives were changed by the war."