Hot Snow

ON THE APPROACHES TO STALINGRAD December 1942. A tank group of Manstein is rushing to the aid of the encircled Paulus army in Stalingrad. An army led by Lieutenant General Bessonov is deployed on the Germans' path, directly from the rails. The center of the narrative is the fate of the artillery battery of Lieutenant Drozdovsky. Leaving the train, the battery hastily advances to meet the enemy, covering 200 km under the most severe weather conditions. On the banks of the Myshkov River, the artillerymen take positions and prepare to face the enemy. After a few hours, German tanks launched an offensive. The platoons of Lieutenants Kuznetsov and Davlatyan engage in fierce combat with the German tanks. The artillerymen suffer losses from enemy fire, crews are taken out, ammunition runs out, and the medical instructor Zoya Yelagina perishes. Finally, General Bessonov commits tank and mechanized corps to a counterattack. Surviving Lieutenant Kuznetsov walked through the trench and cried, remembering his fallen comrades, "And when he wiped his face, the snow on the sleeve of his padded jacket was hot from his tears"… In 2013, the novel was included in the list of books recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia. The illustration on the cover was created by Kostya Schwartz.