The book is dedicated to the operations of the Red Army in the summer-autumn campaign of 1942 and their development in the winter of 1942-1943. For the first time in Russian literature, Operation Mars near Rzhev in November-December 1942, “Zvezda” and “ Jump" near Kharkov in the winter of 1943. Alexey Isaev puts forward and defends the thesis that the Supreme Command of the Red Army had its own strategic offensive plan for the 1942 campaign, which was purposefully implemented and became the basis for the successes of the Red Army at Stalingrad and Leningrad and the final transition of the strategic initiative into the hands of the Soviet command. The book is as depoliticized as possible and written based on declassified documents and a wide range of foreign sources.