This book by historian and writer S.E. Mikheenkov is a unique collection of soldiers' stories about the war, which the author worked on for more than thirty years. The most striking episodes, thematically arranged, form a coherent, captivating narrative about the war from the perspective of the Russian soldier. This, in the words of the poet, ‘hard-won, harsh truth of the soldiers’ will astound...

The author is a veteran of the elite Russian airborne troops. In his book, he describes not only his own career, but the service of this elite group in the Afghan war.

The book is a collection of articles dedicated to the current problems of studying memory (of recent history) as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The author examines the causes behind the economic crises of Russia in the 1990s - which he terms the great post-Soviet depression.

The book examines the inter-war period of European history and raises the question, if the second world war was unavoidable.

Bi-lingual edition: Russian/German. Poetry of East Prussia.