The poetry collection by Oleg Ladyzhensky is titled "Ballad of a Soldier." The genre of the ballad is lyrical-epic, combining the seemingly incompatible: objective narration and a subjective internal perspective.

In essence, this is what we are trying to do now, having found ourselves in circumstances once thought impossible. "If only there were no war," we said for many years, with the subtext "of course, there won't be; it can't happen because it can never happen." But war exists.

Now, we need to rediscover everything: God, the world, people, and ourselves. We must look from both inside and outside. This painful reflection is what Ladyzhensky's poems are all about.