Russia's Heroes - Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2001

Russia's Heroes. Albert Axell. Constable. [pound]18.99. 264 pages. ISBN 1-84119-312-7. This book seeks to right what the author considers an historic imbalance. In Britain, Europe and America the western front of the last world war has been given undue importance when set against the eastern. Until the Normandy Invasion in 1944, the 'number of Axis divisions operating against Russia was fifteen to twenty times greater than that of the divisions fighting against the Allies'.

Almost three of every five people killed in World War Two were Russians and about sixteen million civilians perished because of the war. The author wants to 'restore a few missing pages to the history books' by describing what the Russians call the 'Great Patriotic War' as seen through the experiences not just of commanding officers but of men (and women) on the ground. Why soldiers should die for the evil regime established by the Bolsheviks and Stalin mystifies westerners but die they did. In some cases this was because not to do so wou ld mean certain death at government hands but in most it was because of their love for Mother Russia. The author has combined historical research with interviews to give readers a lively and sometimes very moving account of this unprecedented struggle in world history.