Please help me find this book

[alan]

I'm looking for a book that i read years ago . The only clues i've got are. Its about a young peasant boy in the soviet union who wants to come to the west, but to get a passport he has to join the russian army and become an officer, It's about his time in the army. I think it may have been written in the first person so the authors name would probably be Russian.(paperback)