July 1941

Grigory Baklanov was a Soviet writer, screenwriter, and publicist—a front-line veteran, one of the vivid representatives of “lieutenant prose,” among which were Viktor Astafyev, Yuri Bondarev, Vasily Bykov, Boris Vasiliev, Viktor Nekrasov… In 1941, when Baklanov was 17, he volunteered for the front, took part in battles in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and Hungary. The end of the war caught him in Austria, holding the rank of junior lieutenant. The reliable episodes of the war reflected in Baklanov’s works often ran counter to official, parade history, but they carried the truth the author wanted to tell about what he had seen and experienced.

“New generations can’t imagine what the so-called ‘lieutenant prose’ was like in its time—in the late 50s, early 60s,” Baklanov recalled. “First of all, it was a different view of the war. They wrote what they themselves had brought back from the battlefields—truth made public.”