For the Motherland! for Stalin!
A Red Army Officer's Memoir of the Eastern Front
Boris Bogachev author Professor Geoffrey Roberts author Maria Bogacheva translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
Published:18th May '17
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Boris Bogachev's highly readable account of life as a young platoon commander during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 makes for a fascinating read.The son of a Soviet military commissar, Bogachev volunteered to fight as soon as reached the age of seventeen. Life in the Red Army was harsh, with food shortages, inadequate equipment and fear - not only of the well-armed enemy ahead, but also of the trigger-happy political officers behind.Bogachev fought in many campaigns throughout the war, including the 15-month Rzhev salient 'meat-grinder' which resulted in huge Soviet losses. On three occasions he was threatened with execution. Three times he was wounded. Determined and resourceful, he managed to obtain papers authorizing him to have his wounds treated in hospital, but instead smuggled himself aboard a train to travel across Russia to visit his family in Kazakhstan before returning to the front. Boris Bogachev, who retired from the Soviet army in 1984 as a much-decorated colonel, tells his story of the hell that was the Eastern Front with freshness and candor. He vividly conveys the wide gap between ideology and reality in Stalin's Russia, the warm camaraderie among those who fought the Nazis and his horror at the inhumanity of war.
'A valuable document … unusually candid and humane.' * The Sunday Telegraph *
'This informative, poignant memoir of a man who went straight from school into battle is a must-read for anyone interested in the horrors and pities of war, particularly on the brutal Eastern Front. Bogachev's story is harrowing in places, but his humility and humanity make it impossible to put down.' -- Jonathan Smele, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen Mary University of London and author of 'The "Russian" Civil Wars'
'Like its ironic title, For the Motherland! is a subtle, thoughtful account of an ingenuous young Russian-Ukrainian on the Eastern Front. Bogachev avoids the conventional portrayals of Red Army soldiers as either grunting subhumans or square-jawed supermen, describing his comrades humanely, yet unromantically--as very ordinary people living through hell.' -- Owen Hatherley, author of 'Landscapes of Communism' and 'The Ministry of Nostalgia'
‘This remarkably honest memoir. . . shows in exemplary ways the extent to which rule breaking and the outright refusal to obey orders were endemic necessities in this war. . . Bogachev died in 2015. He hoped that his memoirs would be ‘of interest for those researching our complicated lives in the future’. They are, indeed – and not only to researchers. Their translation into English also provide an incredible resource for anybody teaching this war in the English-speaking world.’
'A candid and powerful account of life in the Red Army. Bogachev, a serving junior officer throughout World War II, was a front-line artilleryman and engineer for two extended periods. His memoirs offer vivid descriptions of combat and unique insights into the attitudes of both fighting men and post-war veterans.' -- Evan Mawdsley, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, and author of 'Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War'
'Raw, eyewitness testimony to the callous incompetence of the Soviet regime, which squandered hundreds of thousands of its citizens' lives in the battles of World War II.' -- Arch Tait, translator of Ivan Chistyakov's 'The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard'
ISBN: 9781849047975
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages