In the summer of 1941, when German divisions advanced 70 km a day in the Baltic states, it might have seemed that the fall of Leningrad was only a matter of time, and in a matter of weeks. For some, this is a reason to curse our “mediocre command,” which is overdue (in Stalin’s words) for the start of the war and has paid for its own mistakes with millions of soldiers’ lives. Others will remember that PribOVO was the weakest of all the special districts, that in the first days of the war it was attacked by two Wehrmacht tank groups at once, that the Red Army fought in territory with an unfriendly population, that it was in the north-west, near Soltsy, that the most successful counterattack of 1941, that Leningrad was still able to be held... A new book by a leading military historian, based on materials from not only domestic but also German archives, for the first time restores the full picture of the battles in the North-Western direction: not a lonely KV-2, but a grandiose tank battle near Raseiniai; not a rapid “blitzkrieg”, but positional “Verdun”; Soviet aviation dominating the skies; a team of competent and bright staff officers who remained in the shadow of Marshal Voroshilov; swift counterattacks that destroyed the plans of the aggressors... Refuting common myths and upending previous ideas, this study pays tribute to the feat of the Red Army that defended Leningrad.