“The heroism of Soviet men and women is the heroism of a whole people.”
This volume brings together true stories of the Soviet youth whose courage, intellect and sacrifice shaped the course of the Great Patriotic War. Drawn from the heat of the Eastern Front, to the fury of the industrial factories, to the life of the common people, these portraits depict simple men and women of the Stalin breed, whose deeds shine with an intensity which the book describes “like ruby wine,” with “a quick, frank smile full of youthful audacity,” as well as a steadfast vow: “We cannot rest until the last enemy on our soil has been destroyed.”
Among others are:
— The foundryman Faina Sharunova, who methodically “wrings out her oven like a sponge” to produce 150 per cent of her quota, mastering a blast furnace once a closed opportunity for women, facing down mockery to become our foundryman.
— The Glinka brothers, BB and DB, airmen and holy terrors to the Germans, credited with downing fifty enemy aircraft. “Not in pursuit of glory or fame,” but to fulfil “their father’s behest — to strike the enemy until he has been wiped from the face of their native land.”
— The mathematician Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, a “jolly, very lively and very sociable young man,” who set aside theoretical work to study the flight of shells, believing “science needs the support of society, but society no less needs that of science.”
— The doctor Mikhail Chumakov, who braved the taiga’s ticks, mud and plague to track and cure tick-borne encephalitis, enduring paralysis in one arm, but not in his warrior spirit.
— The engine-driver Nikolai Lunin, whose name became bound up with the birth of a new conception of professional honour in Soviet transport, in which the worker “fills the breach at any time and at any job.”
These men of the Stalin breed — snipers, steelworkers, microbiologists, airmen — embody a singular message: “Death engenders death. He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.” Theirs was not a heroism of self-interest, but work for a common purpose — for the enemy's defeat at any and all costs.
A book of intense deeds and revolutionary fire — it describes an entire generation that refused to retreat in the face of the gravest danger the world has ever known. This is what makes that generation the most glorious in the history of mankind, for which they deserve our eternal memory, honour and gratitude.
Republished for the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory.
