Who doesn’t know the expression “soldier’s truth”? The latter is often contrasted with the “general’s truth”: it is supposedly much more severe and objective than the general’s truth, which is formed in a reliable dugout or office. But the Great Patriotic War showed that such a contrast is very conditional. Everyday comfort was losing its advantages over the need for military leaders to perform not only purely military, but also political functions, which in the conditions of Soviet reality was an additional risk factor. So it would be a rare soldier who would agree to share the fate of one of the heroes of the new book by military historian Yu.V. Rubtsova.

The series of essays traces how the acute conflicts of the war and the post-war period affected the fate of some generals and marshals who were completely dependent on the will of the leader of the Soviet Union, be it Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev or Gorbachev.