About the Author

Kenneth Slepyan is professor of history and chair of the Social Sciences Division at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

Reviews

"Characterized by sound scholarship, clarity, and acute attention to detail, Ellis's work adds substantially to our understanding of the Battle of Stalingrad and the travails of the troops who fought, suffered, and often perished in the fighting."--David M. Glantz, author of The Stalingrad Trilogy"Ellis has uncovered a number of previously unavailable or neglected sources that offer valuable insight into the daily struggles for survival in the Stalingrad cauldron."--Stephen G. Fritz, author of Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East"A fascinating and essential volume for all students of the Eastern Front."--Robert M. Citino, author of The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Losing War, 1943

"Essential reading for anyone interested in the partisans, and it makes an important contribution to the social and political history of the Soviet Union at war."--Journal of Modern History"Nothing less than a history of Soviet society at war, seen from the vantage point of the irregulars. . . . Carefully researched and engagingly written."--Slavic Review"Slepyan's book offers a fresh perspective on the Soviet partisan movement that emerged during the Second World War. . . . His conclusions, based on a broad set of personal recollections and archival documents, reveal much about emerging Stalinist society in a time of crisis. . . . This work offers a more detailed and nuanced understanding of how the regime harnessed the unwieldy and often disorderly guerilla movement to the successful war effort. More importantly, Slepyan sheds greater light on how the Stalinist system that had evolved over the course of the 1930s was uniquely suited to meet the terrible burdens placed on Soviet society by total war."--The Russian Review"Through defining the political nature and achievement of the Soviet partisan movement, Slepyan makes a serious contribution to the debate on how the Stalinist regime both survived and was changed by the Second World War."--The Historian"Slepyan provides new insights about why partisans fought, the lesser-known but still gruesome episodes of violence in the war, institutional conflicts within the state, and the behavior of ordinary human beings in a situation of almost unimaginable danger."--American Historical Review"A work of great value to not only military historians but also anyone interested in Soviet history. Slepyan presents a thoughtful, well-documented account of the social aspects of the partisan movement during World War II. . . . This is a great book. Slepyan's reliance on Soviet archival sources, memoirs, journal articles, and books in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, as well as his use of Western sources, allows him to present the Soviet partisan movement both from within and from above in a way that previous scholarship has not."--Army History"This important book gives us valuable new insights into both the dynamics of the partisan movement and the nature of Stalinist society."--International History Review"An excellent analysis of the psychology and sociology of insurgents within the context of their larger society, and this is a topic of considerable utility in the current age of cross-cultural, asymmetrical warfare."--Military Review"This well-researched book is a 'bottom-up' history that exposes the war within war that partisans suffered. It also illustrates the cruelty of partisans against their own brethren."--Journal of Military History