Confrontation

The main actions of the novel unfold during the war in the winter and spring 1942 near Vyazma. This is the last stage of the Moscow battle, when a significant number of our troops were cut off during the rapid, but not secured by the Western Front of the offensive, including the 33rd Army of General Efremov - the legendary personality, by the will of the complex posthumous fate that has not been appreciated for a long time. The hero of the defense of Moscow in the Naro-Fominsky direction, and under Vyazma heroically fought for almost three months, surrounded with his shock grouping of the army. He refused to fly to the Great Earth at the suggestion of Stalin and Zhukov, personally led the withdrawal of the troops. In a hopeless situation, heavily wounded, he shot himself so as not to be captured. But this is a narrative not only about the fate of the commander. This is the epic of the cruel confrontation of our surrounded troops with superior forces of a very formidable enemy. This is a motley canvas about the fate of our fighters and officers - so different, but equally experiencing hunger and other hardships of the environment. The idea of ​​the novel was built on a combination of artistic presentation, reconstruction of events with contrasting severity of archival documents. And all this in the dynamics of the presentation step by step, from January to April and early May 42nd. Nobody will leave anyone indifferent and complex, tense relations of M.G. Efremov with the leadership of the Western Front, primarily with the commander of the front G.K. Zhukov.
2nd edition, corrected and supplemented