"Russia Heroes is the story of the ordinary and extraordinary men and women soldiers of Russia: the snipers who engaged in duels in No Man's Land; Cossack cavalry regiments crossing the ice at night to raid ammunition dumps; pilots out of ammunition using their propellers to cut off the tailplanes of enemy aircraft ... soldiers who fought in an insane, giant conflict - the largest theatre of war the world has ever seen in which 27 million died.". "For more than 60 years the politics of the Cold War made it unacceptable for the real story of the Eastern Front to be told. Now using interviews and primary evidence collected in Russia, much of it never previously published, Albert Axell tells the story of the epic struggle as it unfolds, interweaving his accounts of individual exploits with the progress of the war itself."--BOOK JACKET.