From: Monte Davis 

George Sherwood  wrote:

>"They were preparing to bring about the defeat of
>the U.S.S.R. in the event of attack by imperialist countries..."

"..although in this respect their efforts were laughable compared to
the peerless activity of I.V. Stalin from 1935 through June 21,
1941..."

I've recently read (and strongly recommend):

_A Writer at War_ by Vasily Grossman, star correspondent for the Red Army
newspaper... analogous to Ernie Pyle, with a reputation as the
straight-talking soldier's friend -- but a lot of what was in his notebooks
was not only too honest to get past the Moscow editors, but too honest for
him to file at all. First-rate writing from Smolensk, Stalingrad, Kursk,
East Prussia, Berlin.

_Ivan's War_ by Catherine Merridale, a bottoms-up account based on a lot of
interviews with veterans and on military archives that are still opening
up. Strong on the day-to-day texture of life in combat, heartbreaking on
the soldiers' hopes that Stalinism would "thaw" with victory.

One example: I'd already known that the small minority of Soviet soldiers
who survived German captivity were treated almost as traitors afterward.
Merridale notes that the same went for MIAs -- so if your body wasn't
identified, your family would be politically suspect for a generation
(severe impact on schooling, jobs, etc) just as if you'd surrendered to the
fascists.

Then, while describing one of the scores of hastily-raised militia
divisions in the early fall of 1941, she adds one more ghastly twist.
Civilians from Moscow, a few weeks' training, a few practice shots with a
rifle; dozens of such divisions were hastily mustered into the army just
before being thrown out onto the approaches to Moscow.

No surprises: ~7500 "soldiers" facing a panzer division are
reduced in one day to 300 survivors.

Not bad enough? In the haste of that time, their army induction paperwork
was lost or never completed. So the handful who *did* survive and escaped
captivity -- even some who joined other units and fought on until 1945 --
were still "MIA" on the books... and thus virtual traitors ever
after...

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