After the demonstration of the television series “Penal Battalion”, you cannot find a person who would not know about the existence of penal units in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. Evaluating the film is not the main goal of the book by military historian Yu.V. Rubtsov, nevertheless, it is clearly expressed and consists in the rejection of the artistic and civic position of the screenwriter E.Ya. Volodarsky and director N.N. Dostalya. The main objectives of the book are to show the historical and life truth about the fines of the Great Patriotic War and a reasoned rebuff to “new readers” of all stripes. The situation around the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Victory showed that the battle for the historical sanity of Russian citizens has already unfolded at the last frontier. Today we are being told that everything in our history was either “wrong” or even “criminal”, trying to destroy in the minds of Russians the last thing that preserves holiness, that unites us all - the memory of the Great Victory.