The Great Patriotic War in literature: the best works about the feat of the Soviet people. World War II in Russian literature of the XX century: Works Military novels list

These books are about the exploits of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, about death, love and hope, about grief and joy, about the desire to live and self-sacrifice for the sake of others - in a word, about what this war was like and what it had to pay for.

Valentin Rasputin. "Live and Remember"

The action of the story takes place in 1945, in the last months of the war, when Andrei Guskov returns to his native village after being wounded and hospitalized - but it so happened that he returns as a deserter. Andrei simply did not want to die, he fought a lot and saw a lot of deaths. Only Nasten's wife knows about his act, she is now forced to hide her fugitive husband even from her relatives. She visits him from time to time at his hideout and it is soon revealed that she is pregnant. Now she is doomed to shame and torment - in the eyes of the whole village she will become a walking, unfaithful wife. Meanwhile, rumors are spreading that Guskov did not die or go missing, but is hiding, and they are starting to look for him. Rasputin's story about serious spiritual metamorphoses, about the moral and philosophical problems facing the heroes, was first published in 1974.

Boris Vasiliev. "Not listed"

The time of action is the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the place is the Brest Fortress besieged by the German invaders. Along with other Soviet soldiers, there is also Nikolai Pluzhnikov, a 19-year-old new lieutenant, a graduate of a military school, who was assigned to command a platoon. He arrived on the evening of June 21, and in the morning the war begins. Nicholas, who did not have time to be included in the military lists, has every right to leave the fortress and take his bride away from trouble, but he remains to fulfill his civic duty. The fortress, bleeding, losing lives, heroically held out until the spring of 1942, and Pluzhnikov became its last warrior-defender, whose heroism amazed his enemies. The story is dedicated to the memory of all unknown and nameless soldiers.

Vasily Grossman. "Life and Destiny"

The manuscript of the epic was completed by Grossman in 1959, was immediately recognized as anti-Soviet because of the harsh criticism of Stalinism and totalitarianism, and was confiscated in 1961 by the KGB. In our homeland, the book was published only in 1988, and even then with abbreviations. In the center of the novel is the Battle of Stalingrad and the Shaposhnikov family, as well as the fate of their relatives and friends. There are many characters in the novel whose lives are somehow connected with each other. These are the fighters who are directly involved in the battle, and ordinary people who are not at all ready for the troubles of war. All of them manifest themselves in different ways in the conditions of war. The novel turned a lot in the mass ideas about the war and the sacrifices that the people had to make in an effort to win. This is, if you will, a revelation. It is large-scale in scope of events, large-scale in freedom and courage of thought, in true patriotism.

Konstantin Simonov. "Alive and Dead"

The trilogy ("The Living and the Dead", "No Soldiers Are Born", "The Last Summer") chronologically covers the period from the beginning of the war to July 44, and in general - the people's path to the Great Victory. In his epic, Simonov describes the events of the war as if he sees them through the eyes of his main characters Serpilin and Sintsov. The first part of the novel almost completely corresponds to Simonov's personal diary (he served as a war correspondent throughout the war), published under the title "100 Days of War". The second part of the trilogy describes the period of preparation and the Battle of Stalingrad itself - the turning point of the Great Patriotic War. The third part is devoted to our offensive on the Belorussian front. The war tests the heroes of the novel for humanity, honesty and courage. Several generations of readers, including the most biased of them - those who went through the war themselves, recognize this work as a truly unique work, comparable to the high examples of Russian classical literature.

Mikhail Sholokhov. "They fought for their country"

The writer worked on the novel from 1942 to 1969. The first chapters were written in Kazakhstan, where Sholokhov came from the front to the evacuated family. The theme of the novel is incredibly tragic in itself - the retreat of Soviet troops on the Don in the summer of 1942. Responsibility to the party and the people, as it was then understood, could induce to smooth out sharp corners, but Mikhail Sholokhov, as a great writer, openly wrote about insoluble problems, about fatal mistakes, about chaos in front-line deployment, about the absence of a “strong hand” capable of to clean up. The retreating military units, passing through the Cossack villages, felt, of course, not cordiality. It was not at all understanding and mercy that fell to their lot on the part of the inhabitants, but indignation, contempt and anger. And Sholokhov, dragging an ordinary person through the hell of war, showed how his character crystallizes in the process of testing. Shortly before his death, Sholokhov burned the manuscript of the novel, and only separate pieces were published. Is there a connection between this fact and the strange version that Andrei Platonov helped Sholokhov write this work at the very beginning - it doesn’t even matter. It is important that there is another great book in Russian literature.

Viktor Astafiev. "Cursed and Killed"

Astafiev worked on this novel in two books (“Devil's Pit” and “Bridgehead”) from 1990 to 1995, but never finished it. The name of the work, which covers two episodes from the Great Patriotic War: the training of recruits near Berdsk and the crossing of the Dnieper and the battle to hold the bridgehead, was given by a line from one of the Old Believer texts - “it was written that everyone who sows confusion, wars and fratricide on earth, will be cursed and killed by God. Viktor Petrovich Astafiev, a man by no means of a courtly nature, in 1942 volunteered to go to the front. What he saw and experienced melted into deep reflections on the war as a "crime against the mind." The action of the novel begins in the reserve regiment's quarantine camp near the Berdsk station. There are recruits Leshka Shestakov, Kolya Ryndin, Ashot Vaskonyan, Petka Musikov and Lekha Buldakov ... they will face hunger and love and reprisals and ... most importantly, they will face a war.

Vladimir Bogomolov. "In August 44th"

The novel, published in 1974, is based on real documented events. Even if you have not read this book in any of the fifty languages \u200b\u200binto which it has been translated, then everyone must have watched the film with the actors Mironov, Baluev and Galkin. But the cinema, believe me, will not replace this polyphonic book, which gives a sharp drive, a sense of danger, a full platoon, and at the same time a sea of information about the "Soviet state and military machine" and about the everyday life of intelligence officers.

So, the summer of 1944. Belarus has already been liberated, but somewhere on its territory a group of spies goes on the air, transmitting strategic information to the enemies about Soviet troops preparing a grandiose offensive. A detachment of scouts led by a SMERSH officer was sent in search of spies and a direction-finding radio.

Bogomolov is a front-line soldier himself, so he was terribly meticulous in describing the details, and in particular, the work of counterintelligence (the Soviet reader learned a lot from him for the first time). Vladimir Osipovich simply harassed several directors who were trying to film this exciting novel, he “sawed” the then editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda for an inaccuracy in the article, proving that it was he who first spoke about the method of Macedonian shooting. He is an amazing writer, and his book, without the slightest loss of historicity and ideological content, has become a real blockbuster in the best possible way.

Anatoly Kuznetsov. "Babi Yar"

A documentary novel based on childhood memories. Kuznetsov was born in 1929 in Kyiv, and with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, his family did not have time to evacuate. And for two years, 1941 - 1943, he saw how the Soviet troops retreated destructively, then, already in occupation, he saw atrocities, nightmares (for example, sausage was made from human flesh) and mass executions in the Nazi concentration camp in Babi Yar. It is terrible to realize, but this “former in the occupation” stigma fell on his whole life. He brought the manuscript of his truthful, uncomfortable, terrible and poignant novel to the journal Yunost during the thaw, in 1965. But there frankness seemed excessive, and the book was redrawn, throwing out some pieces, so to speak, "anti-Soviet", and inserting ideologically verified ones. The very name of the novel Kuznetsov managed to defend by a miracle. Things got to the point that the writer began to fear arrest for anti-Soviet propaganda. Kuznetsov then simply put the sheets in glass jars and buried them in the forest near Tula

In all the stories of the Belarusian writer (and he mostly wrote stories), the action takes place during the war, in which he himself was a participant, and the focus of meaning is the moral choice of a person in a tragic situation. Fear, love, betrayal, sacrifice, nobility and meanness - all this is mixed in different heroes of Bykov. The story "Sotnikov" tells about two partisans who were captured by the police, and how, in the end, one of them, in complete spiritual baseness, hangs the second. Based on this story, Larisa Shepitko made the film "Ascent". In the story "The Dead Doesn't Hurt", a wounded lieutenant is sent to the rear, ordered to escort three captured Germans. Then they stumble upon a German tank unit, and in a skirmish, the lieutenant loses both prisoners and his companion, and he himself is wounded in the leg a second time. Nobody wants to believe his report about the Germans in the rear. In the Alpine Ballad, a Russian prisoner of war Ivan and an Italian Julia escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. Pursued by the Germans, exhausted by cold and hunger, Ivan and Julia grow closer. After the war, the Italian lady will write a letter to Ivan's fellow villagers, in which she will tell about the feat of their fellow countryman and about three days of their love.

The famous book written by Granin in collaboration with Adamovich is called the book of truth. The first time it was published in a magazine in Moscow, the book was published in Lenizdat only in 1984, although it was written back in 77. It was forbidden to publish the Blockade Book in Leningrad as long as the city was led by the first secretary of the regional committee, Romanov. Daniil Granin called the 900 days of the blockade "an epic of human suffering." On the pages of this amazing book, the memories and torments of exhausted people in the besieged city seem to come to life. It is based on the diaries of hundreds of blockade survivors, including the records of the deceased boy Yura Ryabinkin, the historian Knyazev and other people. The book contains blockade photographs and documents from the archives of the city and the Granin fund.

The theme of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) became one of the main topics in Soviet literature. Many Soviet writers were directly involved in the fighting on the front lines, someone served as a war correspondent, someone fought in a partisan detachment ... Such iconic authors of the 20th century as Sholokhov, Simonov, Grossman, Ehrenburg, Astafiev and many others left us amazing evidence. Each of them had their own war and their own vision of what happened. Someone wrote about pilots, someone about partisans, someone about child heroes, someone about documentaries, and someone about fiction books. They left terrible memories of those fatal events for the country.

These testimonies are especially important for today's teenagers and children, who should definitely read these books. Memory cannot be bought, it can either not be lost, or lost, or restored. And it's better not to lose. Never! And don't forget to win.

We decided to compile a list of the TOP-25 most notable novels and short stories by Soviet writers.

Ales Adamovich: "The Punishers"
Viktor Astafiev: "Cursed and killed"
Boris Vasiliev: ""
Boris Vasiliev: "I was not on the lists"
Vladimir Bogomolov: "The moment of truth (In August forty-four)"
Yuri Bondarev: "Hot snow"
Yuri Bondarev: "The battalions are asking for fire"
Konstantin Vorobyov: "Killed near Moscow"
Vasil Bykov: Sotnikov
Vasil Bykov: "Survive until dawn"
Oles Gonchar: "Banners"
Daniil Granin: "My lieutenant"
Vasily Grossman: "For a Just Cause"
Vasily Grossman: "Life and Fate"
Emmanuil Kazakevich: "Star"
Emmanuil Kazakevich: "Spring on the Oder"
Valentin Kataev: "Son of the regiment"
Viktor Nekrasov: "In the trenches of Stalingrad"
Vera Panova: "Satellites"
Fedor Panferov: "In the country of the defeated"
Valentin Pikul: "Requiem for the PQ-17 Caravan"
Anatoly Rybakov: "Children of the Arbat"
Konstantin Simonov: "The Living and the Dead"
Mikhail Sholokhov: "They fought for their Motherland"
Ilya Ehrenburg: "The Tempest"

More about the Great Patriotic War The Great Patriotic War was the bloodiest event in world history, which claimed the lives of millions of people. Almost every Russian family has veterans, front-line soldiers, blockade survivors, people who survived the occupation or evacuation to the rear, this leaves an indelible mark on the entire nation.

The Second World War was the final part of World War II, which swept like a heavy roller throughout the European part of the Soviet Union. June 22, 1941 was the starting point for it - on this day, German and allied troops began the bombardment of our territories, launching the implementation of the "Plan Barbarossa". Until November 18, 1942, the entire Baltic, Ukraine and Belarus were occupied, Leningrad was blocked for 872 days, and the troops continued to rush inland to capture its capital. The Soviet commanders and the military were able to stop the offensive at the cost of heavy casualties both in the army and among the local population. From the occupied territories, the Germans massively drove the population into slavery, distributed Jews to concentration camps, where, in addition to unbearable living and working conditions, various kinds of research on people were practiced, which led to many deaths.

In 1942-1943, Soviet factories evacuated deep to the rear were able to increase production, which allowed the army to launch a counteroffensive and push the front line to the western border of the country. The key event in this period is the Battle of Stalingrad, in which the victory of the Soviet Union became a turning point that changed the existing balance of military forces.

In 1943-1945, the Soviet army went on the offensive, recapturing the occupied territories of the right-bank Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. In the same period, a partisan movement flared up in the territories that had not yet been liberated, in which many local residents, including women and children, took part. The ultimate goal of the offensive was Berlin and the final defeat of the enemy armies, this happened late in the evening of May 8, 1945, when the act of surrender was signed.

Among the front-line soldiers and defenders of the Motherland were many key Soviet writers - Sholokhov, Grossman, Ehrenburg, Simonov and others. Later they would write books and novels, leaving to posterity their vision of that war in the form of heroes - children and adults, soldiers and partisans. All this today allows our contemporaries to remember the terrible price of a peaceful sky overhead, which was paid by our people.

The most popular books about the war were written by eyewitnesses of the terrible war years:

The three most popular writers who covered the events of the war years:

The famous Soviet writer Boris Vasiliev went to the front at 41, while still a schoolboy. His most famous work can be considered the story "The Dawns Here Are Quiet", a film was made based on this book, which occupies an honorable 1st place in our rating of the TOP 70 best films about the war. Boris Vasilyev wrote quite a few interesting books about the war, which later formed the basis of films.
No less popular Belarusian writer Vasil Bykov. He, like Boris Vasiliev, was still very young when the Great Patriotic War began. In June 1941, V. Bykov graduated from the 10th grade, and in 1942 he was called to the front. He participated in military battles. Fame brought him works: "Sotnikov", "To live until dawn", "To go and not return" and others.
Konstantin Simonov is another famous Soviet military writer. With the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the army. He was a war correspondent and visited all fronts. In 1943 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, after the war he was promoted to colonel. Konstantin Simonov wrote not one of the best books about the war. It is not for nothing that his name is often found on our list.

In our list of the best books about the war, you will see the works of famous writers such as Y. Bondarev, M. Sholokhov, B. Polevoy, V. Pikul and others.

Great battles are described in many works about the war. Many historical facts can be learned from these artistic books. Therefore, they are very useful for reading to teenagers and schoolchildren. Patriotism and courage are also described in poems about the war, such poems make everyone think.

The best books about battles and battles

"In the trenches of Stalingrad" - Viktor Nekrasov
"The Living and the Dead" - Konstantin Simonov
"Soldiers are not born" - Konstantin Simonov
"Last Summer" - Konstantin Simanov
"Hot Snow" - Yuri Bondarev
"Battalions are asking for fire" - Yuri Bondarev
Blockade Book - Ales Adamovich, Daniil Granin
"They fought for the Motherland" - Mikhail Sholokhov
"Road of Life" - N. Hodza
“I wasn’t on the lists” - Boris Vasiliev
"Brest Fortress" - Sergey Smirnov
"Baltic Sky" - Nikolai Chukovsky
"Stalingrad" - Viktor Nekrasov

The heroism of an ordinary person during the war is not so grandiose, no less important, because it is thanks to the Russian people that we won a great victory over fascism.

The best books about heroism and the fate of people

Sotnikov - Vasil Bykov
"Vasily Terkin" - Alexander Tvardovsky
"Obelisk" - Vasil Bykov
"Survive Until Dawn" - Vasily Bykov
"Cursed and Killed" - Viktor Astafiev
"Life and Fate" - Vasily Grossman
"Live and Remember" - Valentin Rasputin
"Penal Battalion" - Eduard Volodarsky
"In war as in war" - Viktor Kurochkin
"Officers" - Boris Vasiliev
"Aty-bats were soldiers" - Boris Vasiliev
"Sign of trouble" - Vasil Bykov
"Swamp" - Vasil Bykov
"The Tale of a Real Man" - Boris Polevoy

Soviet intelligence officers made no small contribution during the Great Patriotic War, which is why so many books have been written about the exploits of Soviet intelligence officers. We have selected for you the best books on this subject.

Best Scout Books

"Moment of Truth" - Vladimir Bogomolov.
"Seventeen Moments of Spring" - Y. Semyonov
"Strong in spirit" - Dmitry Nikolayevich Medvedev
"Shield and Sword" - Vadim Kozhevnikov
"Take Alive" - Vladimir Karpov
"On the edge of the abyss" - Y. Ivanov
"Ocean Patrol" - Valentin Pikul

The role of Russian women during the war. They fought on a par with men, not without reason their heroism is described in the best books about the war.

The best books about the exploits of women

"The Dawns Here Are Quiet" - Boris Vasiliev
"War has no woman's face" - Svetlana Alekseevich
"Madonna with ration bread" - Maria Glushko
"The Fourth Height" - Elena Ilyina
"Go and not return" - Vasily Bykov
"The Tale of Zoya and Shura" - Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya
"Mother of Man" - Vitaly Zakrutin
"Partisan Lara" - Nadezhda Nadezhdina
"Girl's team" - P. Zavodchikov, F. Samoilov

War through the eyes of children and adolescents. How early they had to grow up.

The best books about the exploits of children and youth

"Young Guard" - Alexander Fadeev
"The last witnesses. Solo for children's voice - Svetlana Alekseevich
"Street of the youngest son" - Lev Kassil, Max Polyanovsky
"Son of the Regiment" - Valentin Kataev
"Boys with bows" - Valentin Pikul

Peaceful life before the war years. Romance, love and hope - all this was cut short by the war.

The best books about life before the war

"Tomorrow there was a war" - Boris Vasiliev
"Goodbye Boys" - Boris Balter

You might want to add to our list of the best war books. Leave your comments

15 war books everyone should read

The further the Great Patriotic War is from us, the more memory games we have than memory itself. And now, for many, the old-fashioned “Never Again!” and there are arguments about war as a way to solve political or economic problems. We have selected 15 books that, for good, each of us should read. At least in order to feel how it all really was.

“Tomorrow there was a war”, Boris Vasilyev

The war, it seems, has nothing to do with it, it is only in the name: a promise, and nothing more. Ordinary life, ordinary anxieties, small and large, of boys and girls in 1940. The stronger the horror of the impending, inevitable disaster that will fall on the main characters, doubt their fate, crush, take away all the joys. A trouble against which all others, so important now, will fade.

"Life and Fate", Vasily Grossman

This is epic. It must be read long and slow, digesting each line. The book is about the war in all its horror: death at the front and behind the front, inhuman humiliations and inhuman fortitude. About the fact that there is meanness of one's own and that from this the enemies do not cease to be enemies. Everything here is the voice of a witness: Vasily Grossman was a war correspondent, and knew the war both from the front and from the rear, and his mother ended up in the Jewish ghetto and was shot. On the night before her death, the woman managed to write a letter to her son and managed to pass it on. In this letter was the whole history of humiliation, all the horror of people waiting for murder. Grossman's epic was written more than with the blood of the people: with the blood of the mother. It is more terrible not to invent ink.

"War has no woman's face" Svetlana Aleksievich

Again the voices of witnesses, only direct speech. Belarusian journalist Svetlana Aleksievich carefully collected the memories of women who fought. Moreover, she collected that face of the war, which is almost not customary to remember - as if wars only affect men. This book is also impossible to read excitedly, living pain oozes from its pages.

"Mother of Man", Vitaly Zakrutkin

The main character of the book did not go to the front, but still could not avoid the war. Alas, when hostilities are going on, there are no civilians anymore, if only simply because there is no peace. The woman found herself in the face of trouble without a weapon in her hands, and she had to fight for her life and for the life of her children solely with her will and her hard work.

The General and His Army, Georgy Vladimov

It describes the war from the angle in which it is seen by those who took responsibility for thousands of other people's lives. When the scale becomes such that the soldiers seem like toy soldiers, and the cities and villages look like dots on the map, some are tempted to start the game and drag the rest into it.

Sotnikov Vasil Bykov

The book is about how war reveals a person: features that are invisible in peacetime, in an extreme situation come out and determine the main motives and actions of the heroes. One goes to the end, risking his life, the other is a coward and retreats. And yet, reading Sotnikov, one can feel very well how difficult it is to be like the first, and how hard it is to condemn the second when death breathes in the face.

"Time to live and time to die" Erich Maria Remarque

Written from the point of view of a German soldier, this novel tells the story of how there are at least two sides to every war and how it feels to be a miserable pawn on the other side. Even more: “A Time to Live and a Time to Die” is a book about how war is never good and war is never good. If you're even a little human, of course.

"I see the sun" Nodar Dumbadze

Very light, warm and bright book. The main characters are teenagers from a Georgian village, an orphan boy raised by his aunt, and a blind girl who dreams of seeing the sun. Somewhere far away there is a war. Here, in Georgia, they don't kill, they don't drop bombs, they don't shoot by tens and hundreds. But even this heavenly place is devastated by war, no matter how far the front goes. And they reach, reach for the light, despite all the hardships, the future people of the world, those who will one day heal the wounds of their country and live for those who did not return.

"Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade" by Kurt Vonnegut

A semi-fantastic, or rather surrealistic book about the author's experience of the war on the front lines, German captivity and the bombing of Dresden - by those in Dresden. The book is about ordinary people, physically and mentally tired, whose only dream is to simply return home.

Blockade book Ales Adamovich, Daniil Granin

A documentary and therefore a very heavy book, after which one somehow unbearably wants to live, breathe, enjoy the air, rain, snow. Call friends, relatives, just to hear them and know that they are with you. This book is not a glorification of the military feat of Leningraders, but a chronicle of suffering for which a person cannot be destined. The authors recorded the stories of dozens of witnesses to the blockade. After each terrible memory, it seems that it cannot be worse. But the next one is even worse.

"Blockade ethics" Sergei Yarov

Another incredibly heavy book about the blockade. About how inhuman suffering in some people shifts the ideas of black and white, while in others it makes them clearer, sharper, more contrasting. Without a doubt, one of the most terrible works about the war.

"Memories of the War" Nikolai Nikulin

These are the memoirs of a famous St. Petersburg art critic about his war years. The author wrote them in the mid-seventies, as he put it, in order to remove from the soul an incredible burden that had been pulling all these years. The manuscript was published only in 2007, two years before Nikulin's death. The book describes a view of the war from the point of view of the private. About how and how a soldier lives, when every next minute brings someone's death.

“War is the biggest scum that the human race has ever invented, ... war has always been mean, and the army, an instrument of murder, has always been a tool of evil. No, and there were no just wars, all of them, no matter how they are justified, are anti-human.

"It's us, Lord!" Konstantin Vorobyov

Another face of war. A book about the other side of courage. About what captivity is, especially Nazi captivity. About torture, about the humiliation of the spirit through the humiliation of the body, about horror and suffering. And, of course, about death nearby. There is no war without this gloomy companion.

"In the trenches of Stalingrad", Viktor Nekrasov

The title of the book fully reveals its plot. This is one of the most brutal and important battles of the Great Patriotic War. The author shows the war from the trenches - from where the strength of the hand and confidence in comrades are more important than decisions made from above. When life and death go side by side, separated by centimeters and moments, people are revealed as they are. With fear, despair, love and hate.

Cursed and Killed, Viktor Astafiev

Another book from the perspective of a soldier that could teach you how to count human lives. 20,000 when taking a height at school is just a voiced figure. And after this book, 20,000 turn back into people. Dead painfully, ugly, left to lie on the ground, sour with blood. Because war is about people, not numbers.

Text: Vladimir Erkovich

In this selection, we have collected the best books about the war of 1941 - 1945. A list of the most interesting works about the Great Patriotic War, about children, heroes, pioneers, and on a larger scale - about the Second World War.

Valentin Pikul. Ocean Patrol. Book one. Askold's people. Volume 1

The reader is presented with the Great Patriotic War near the sea. Heroes are fighting not only against enemies, but also against elemental whims. Fighting two enemies at once is much more difficult and dangerous. Each character in the fleet is important to their loved ones, who are expected on land. Further

Vladimir Karpov. Take it alive!

This work was written by the former front-line soldier Vladimir Karpov and is a collection of various stories about the difficult days of a simple intelligence officer Vasily. Many of the events described look hard to imagine, but the author convinces of their authenticity. Further

Valentin Kataev. son of the regiment

This story tells about the share of an ordinary peasant boy Ivan Solntsev, who became an orphan during the Great Patriotic War, which made many children orphans. Vanya was also orphaned, and when he grew up, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps in order to honor his memory with his deed - he entered a military school. Further

Svetlana Alexievich. Last Witnesses. Solo for children's voice

This work became the second in the documentary cycle "Voice of Utopia". Here, the reader is presented with the memories of the Great Patriotic War of its smallest witnesses - children. Everything that children's eyes could convey turned out to be a terrible and merciless sight. Further

Viktor Kurochkin. In war as in war

The author is known to the reader as one of the extraordinary writers of the war. This story conveys to the reader everyday affairs in times of military reality, as well as how great the real heroism of ordinary people was. Based on the book, a famous feature film was made. Further

Valentin Rasputin. Live and remember. Novels and stories

The prose of this writer touches upon issues of morality. The novels and stories of Rasputin fight for the preservation of Russian customs and traditions and are part of the golden fund of Russian literature. The language with which he created was very lively, and with bright colors betrayed to the reader the inexplicable beauty and passion of the world. Further

Viktor Astafiev. Cursed and killed

Several teenage recruits arrived at the front. There they are waiting for the harsh attitude of the commander, wild cold and merciless hunger. Over time, the crowd of boys becomes a real brotherhood of soldiers and acts together. Their subsequent fate will leave a mark on the soul of every reader. Further

Vasil Bykov. Live until dawn

Soldier Ivanovsky was lying on the road, holding a grenade under him. A wagon was approaching him, and he was ready to be seen by the Germans. He tried his best to remain still and even stopped breathing. The Germans shouted something in his direction, but he did not respond. What will happen to him next? Further

Nadezhda Nadezhdina. Partisan Lara

This story shows us the young partisan Lara during the Great Patriotic War. For many, she has become a symbol of the courage of the partisans. The girl wanted a peaceful life and did not want to fight at all, but the enemy got to her village, blocking access to it. She had to help her loved ones. Further

The author of this story himself visited the front. It was the events of his history that became the basis for the plots of the books. His story tells about a man who was tortured by the icy water of impenetrable swamps, the mud of trenches and the wilderness of the forest. But the main torture is the uncertainty of the outcome of hostilities. Further

This book tells about the fate of a little girl. This talented actress in the future became famous as a sensitive and wise person who loves her homeland and people. The life of such an outstanding person as Gulya (as she was called) is worthy of the reader's attention. Further

This is the first war book in the Voices of Utopia series. This is the last edition in which the writer finalized the book, adding new episodes and supplementing women's confessions with some of the pages of her diary. This book is a guide to the spiritual world of a woman surviving in a war. Further

The author went to the front at the age of 17 and decided to write about those with whom he fought in the same trench. The main character Nikolai, like the author, is a young boy who grows up at the front. Losing friends, he pours enemy blood on his native land. Thanks to the author, the main character became almost immortal. Further

The book tells about the Soviet military counterintelligence. This group was able to neutralize the German agents. While the fighters of our army were involved in the liberation of the Baltic states, Russian counterintelligence officers were able to detect the German Neman group. Further

This book is an autobiographical novel. In it we can learn about the life of the inhabitants of the Solovetsky Islands. The author was presented in the role of the main character Savka Ogurtsov, who lived in the Jung School. Further

In this novel, the writer, who himself fought in Russia and Poland, tells about the events in Stalingrad, namely one of the decisive events of the Great Patriotic War. Every death is perceived as a violation of justice. Further

This novel is the last in the Living and the Dead trilogy. The writer leads the main characters on the victorious paths of the last summer of the Great Patriotic War. All the power of the Soviet army began to gain momentum and, to the glorious music, goes to the long-awaited victory. Further

Boris Vasiliev. Tomorrow Was War (compilation)

The author, who himself visited the battlefields, talks about the war in a very realistic way. He shows the problems of love and fidelity, as well as morality, which are opposed to cynicism and officialdom. All these problems are described on the one hand in times of war, and on the other - in peacetime. Further

A very famous story about the pilot Alexei Maresyev, who was a hero of the Soviet Union. The basis of the story is his boundless dedication to his work. The protagonist was able to pull off a lot of brilliant military operations in the air, and even after amputation of both legs, he continued to fight! Further

Yulian Semyonov. Seventeen Moments of Spring (compilation)

This novel about the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Stirlitz won the sympathy of the masses of readers. The main character has become a real people's favorite. In our time, jokes are often made about him and argue about his prototypes. Colonel Maxim Isaev is a famous Soviet intelligence officer who is used to risking his life. Further

These were the best books about the war of 1941 - 1945. Be sure to bookmark the list. And if you know more novels about the Great Patriotic War and World War II in general, write to us in the comments.