The second, radically revised, expanded and corrected edition of the main military-historical bestseller! The best domestic research on the most closed, scandalous and taboo topic! The whole truth about penal battalions and barrier detachments of the Red Army! Created during the fratricidal Civil War, these units became a truly mass phenomenon during the Great Patriotic War, when the number of penal battalions numbered tens of thousands. Their combat use still remains one of the darkest, controversial and little-studied pages of history - Perhaps no other topic has given rise to so many myths, has not acquired so many rumors and legends: “suicide bombers from penal battalions”, “barrier detachments shooting at their own” , “fields strewn with corpses”, etc., etc. This fundamental research, based on recently declassified archival materials and numerous testimonies of veterans, puts an end to this issue, debunking speculative myths about penal battalions and barrage detachments of the Red Army and restoring the true a picture of their creation, replenishment and combat use on all fronts of the Great Patriotic War.