The title refers to zinc-plated coffins [ru] in which the fallen soldiers were transported home to the Soviet Union as "cargo 200".
The reader accompanies people full of enthusiasm and a willingness to sacrifice themselves into a war that brutalizes them to the extreme.
Young men who love their parents and grow up with books, pictures and music become killing machines whose idealism is not long enough to cope with the bloody reality.
While official propaganda at home cultivates the image of the heroic "internationalist fighter" who helps the Afghan people throw off the yoke of feudalism, builds wells and roads, takes part in the collectivization of agriculture and paves the way for women to have a self-determined future, people on the ground live in constant danger of death, poorly equipped and with inadequate food supplies, drawing strength for the next few hours from drugs and alcohol and often mutilating themselves to escape the horror.
Professor Jeff Jones of the UNC Greensboro argues that the representation of women in the book "reflects a changing discourse in Soviet society on the war in Afghanistan that helped pave the way for the collapse of the USSR.