After serving nearly a year in Volgograd, Zhenya received 20-day home leave, his first leave since being drafted. In October of 1994, he came back to Kazan, a proud, clean-cut young soldier anxious to see his family and fiancee. He didn't tell Natasha he was coming, but instead surprised her, showing up in his army uniform at the Lycee -- where she still was a student and where they had first met three years before. --, Natasha and the other students were delighted.

Two nights after his return, Zhenya and his buddies gathered at the Lycee for a celebration. His friends and family still occasionally watch the video footage taken on that night, which shows a slightly drunken, very happy Zhenya cutting up with his friends and playing the piano. At one point in the video, Zhenya turns from the piano solemnly to face the camera, which zooms in on his young, handsome face. It is at that moment difficult to believe that the man in the flickering video image no longer exists anywhere but in memory.

On November 7 -- formerly October Revolution Day, one of the biggest holidays on the Soviet calendar -- Zhenya's family and friends took him to the railway station for the trip back to Volgograd. The beginning of the conflict in Chechnya was still more than a month away.

"Zhenya promised to try to get back for New Year's," says his mother. "He thought he would be able to get leave somehow. And even if he couldn't get leave, his discharge from the army was scheduled for May, which didn't seem that far off.

"I never dreamed when we went to the station that day that that would be the last time I ever saw my son. We saw him off that day just as though we'd be seeing him in a few weeks."