Why did thousands of Russian people - Cossacks and former white officers - fight during the Great Patriotic War against Soviet power? Who are they really? Is doom their state of mind, their future, their eternal cross? The author does not give clear answers, leading his heroes through the entire war, showing without embellishment blood, self-sacrifice, and betrayal. But this is not the war that we know about and which Soviet generals wrote about in their memoirs. Let the reader decide for himself whether he needs the truth “unvarnished,” with grief and despair, but only by learning this truth can we understand how our grandfathers lived and forgive.