 In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two.In 1999, his novel "Jolly Soldier", which portrayed the horrors of the Soviet Army was met with extremely adverse reaction, which may have brought about a heart failure.In the years when many Soviet war literature authors (like Fyodor Parfyonov or Ivan Stadnyuk) were singing paeans to an idealized, invincible Soviet war hero, crushing the enemy under the Communist Party leadership, Viktor Astafyev became one of the first to rebel against the officially-approved convention and reveal the darker, unglamorous side of what was happening in 1941–1945.