A powerful, groundbreaking narrative of the ordinary Russian soldier's
experience of the worst war in history, based on newly revealed
sources.
Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II,
eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by
German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a
ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting
force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their
epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan -- as the ordinary Russian
soldier was called -- remain a mystery. We know something about hoe the
soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the
world, or why they fought.
Drawing on previously closed military and secret police archives,
interviews with veterans, and private letters and diaries, Catherine
Merridale presents the first comprehensive history of the Soviet Union
Army rank and file. She follows the soldiers from the shock of the
German invasion to their costly triumph in Stalingrad, where life
expectancy was often a mere twenty-four hours. Through the soldiers'
eyes, we witness their victorious arrival in Berlin, where their rage
and suffering exact an awful toll, and accompany them as they return
home full of hope, only to be denied the new life they had been fighting
to secure.
A tour de force of original research and a gripping history, Ivan's
War reveals the singular mixture of courage, patriotism, anger, and
fear that made it possible for these underfed, badly led troops to
defeat the Nazi army. In the process Merridale restores to history the
invisible millions who sacrificed the most to win the war.
