This book connected events that took place thousands of kilometers from each other. In 1941, the inexperienced Red Army, starting the war, lost the Baltic states in less than a month, but stubbornly resisted the German invasion in Karelia and the Arctic. And in the summer of 1945, wise from the experience of a victorious war, the Soviet Armed Forces also defeated the famous Kwantung Army in Manchuria within a month with few losses. And only the battle for the Kuril Islands turned into a bloody confrontation between the Red Army and the soldiers of the Japanese Mikado.