About the book: 2012 / “..That’s why we don’t shout “Hurray!” - We play the silent game with death.” Vysotsky’s famous song is echoed by many veterans: “When we went on the attack, we didn’t shout “For the Motherland, for Stalin.” All swearing - this was the “Hurray!” of the penal company. There was no time for Stalin there..."; “The penalty officers did not shout “Hurray!” or “For Stalin!” They went on the attack with obscenities. And how can one shout “For Stalin!” if he sentenced them to death...” This “vow of silence” was observed after the war - even “having washed away the guilt with blood,” they preferred not to remember service in penal battalions and penal companies: out of tens of thousands of survivors Only a few penal prisoners left memoirs, whose voices are now drowned in the cacophony of loud “revelations”, cheap sensations and deceitful films like the scandalous “Penal Battalion” or the completely indecent “Pending”. Based not on rumors and gossip, but on archival documents and personal correspondence with veterans (most of this precious evidence is being published for the first time), the author restores the true history of the penal formations of the Red Army, through which almost 420 thousand soldiers of “variable composition” passed through during the Great Patriotic War, half of whom did not return from the battle. “There was a rumor along the front that - Penalties are forbidden to shout “Hurray” - so they swear at you. This is nonsense. Checkmate was the second battle cry of our entire army after “Hurray”, and the penalty box was no different from others in this…»