Book description
They died in their millions, shattered by German shells and tanks,
freezing behind the wire of prison camps, driven forward in suicidal
charges by the secret police. Yet in all the books about the war on
the eastern front, there is very little about how the Russian soldier
lived, dreamed and died. Catherine Merridale found archives of
letters, diaries and police reports that have allowed her to write a
major history of a figure too often treated as part of a vast
mechanical horde. Here are moving and terrible stories of men and
women in appalling conditions, many not far from death. They allow us
to understand the strange mixture of courage, patriotism, anger and
fear that made it possible for these badly fed, dreadfully-governed
soldiers to defeat the Nazi army that would otherwise have enslaved
the whole of Europe. The experience of the soldiers is set against a
masterly narrative of the war in Russia. Merridale also shows how the
veterans were treated with chilling ingratitude and brutality by
Stalin, and later exploited as icons of the Great Patriotic War before
being sidelined once more in Putin's new capitalist Russia.
Catherine Merridale is the author of Night of Stone, described
by Misha Glenny as 'an epic and moving history' and by Anthony Beevor
as 'an original and intriguing study of death in Russia'. She is
Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London.
