The story of one conscript illustrates the stresses associated with stodnevka particularly vividly. On May 27, 2002, Dmitrii Samsonov wrote to his parents and grandmother that the stodnevka was starting on June 19. He asked them all to send him supplies. For example, he wrote to his mother: “Mama, this is what I need for the next four months: every week a transfer of forty to fifty rubles, and a small package with Prima [cigarettes] and filter cigarettes… Mama, don’t forget to send this immediately. Immediately!”

The letter was delivered late and his parents received it only the day before the start of the stodnevka. A few days later, a second letter arrived in which Samsonov expressed his desperation:

Today the stodnevka is starting and I haven’t received anything from you, nor from mama or grandma… I don’t know what to do. It’s 2:00 p.m. now. It will be lights-out in eight hours. I think that I will not survive this night. Or actually, I will survive but it will cost me a lot. I wrote to you, begged you—just in case, I also wrote to grandma—so you would [send me money] quickly but nobody responded. You just don’t understand how important it was for me. I needed 200 rubles for the stodnevka, a pack of Yava Zolotoi [a cigarette brand name] and four cigarettes per day by June 19. That was it…

As a post scriptum to the letter, Samsonov wrote: “I love you very much and miss you but I don’t know how I’m going to survive now.” In a letter dated July 13, 2002, Samsonov wrote that he was in a military hospital with a broken wrist. He wrote: “I’m not going to explain how that happened. It would take too long. I just wanted to inform you that I survived the beginning of the stodnevka.” In the letter, he repeated his requests for money and cigarettes.

On July 24, 2002, his parents received a telegram saying that their son had died the day before. Later, they were told that he had slit his veins.