On June 25, 1941, Masha Artemyeva escorted her husband Ivan Sintsov to the war. Sintsov goes to Grodno, where their one-year-old daughter remained and where he himself served as secretary of the army newspaper for a year and a half. Located near the border, Grodno from the very first days falls into the bulletins, and it is not possible to get to the city. On the road to Mogilev, where the Political Directorate of the Front is located, Sintsov sees many deaths, gets bombed several times, and even keeps records of interrogations imposed by the temporarily created “troika”. Having reached Mogilev, he goes to the printing house, and the next day, together with the junior political instructor, Lyusin, goes to distribute a front-line newspaper. At the entrance to the Bobruisk highway, journalists are witnessing an air battle of the three “hawks” with significantly superior German forces and are trying to help our pilots from a downed bomber in the future. As a result, Lyusin was forced to remain in the tank brigade, and the injured Sintsov was hospitalized for two weeks. When he is discharged, it turns out that the editorial office has already managed to leave Mogilev. Sintsov decides that he can return to his newspaper only with good material in his hands. By chance, he learns about thirty-nine German tanks that were shot down during the battle at the location of the regiment of Fedor Fedorovich Serpilin, and goes to the 176th division, where he unexpectedly meets his old friend, photojournalist Mishka Weinstein. Acquainted with the brigade commander Serpilin, Sintsov decides to stay in his regiment. Serpilin is trying to dissuade Sintsov, because he knows that he is doomed to fighting in the encirclement, if in the next few hours there is no order to retreat. Nevertheless, Sintsov remains, and Mishka leaves for Moscow and dies on the way.

... The war brings Sintsov with a man of tragic fate. Serpilin ended the civil war, commanding a regiment near Perekop, and before his arrest in 1937 he lectured at the Academy. Frunze. He was accused of propagating the superiority of the fascist army and was sent to a camp in Kolyma for four years.

However, this did not shake Serpilin’s faith in Soviet power. Everything that happened to him was considered by the brigade commander an absurd mistake, and the years spent in the Kolyma were incompetently lost. Released due to the efforts of his wife and friends, he returns to Moscow on the first day of the war and goes to the front, without waiting for either re-certification or reinstatement in the party.

The 176th division covers Mogilev and the bridge across the Dnieper, so the Germans throw significant forces against it. Before the start of the battle, a commander Zaychikov arrives in the regiment to Serpilin and soon gets seriously wounded. The battle lasts three days; the Germans manage to cut off three regiments of the division from each other, and they are taken to destroy them one by one. In view of the losses in the command staff, Serpilin appoints Sintsov as political instructor in the company of Lieutenant Khoryshev. Having broken through to the Dnieper, the Germans complete the encirclement; having defeated the other two regiments, they throw aircraft against Serpilin. Having suffered huge losses, the brigade commander decides to start a breakthrough. The dying Zaychikov gives Serpilin command of the division, however, at the disposal of the new commander there are no more than six hundred people of whom he forms a battalion and, having appointed Sintsov as his adjutant, begins to leave the encirclement. After a night battle, one hundred and fifty people remain alive, but Serpilin receives reinforcements: he is joined by a group of soldiers carrying the division’s banner, artillerymen with a gun and a small doctor, Tanya Ovsyannikova, as well as a soldier Zolotarev and an undocumented colonel Baranov, joins him. whom Serpilin, in spite of his former acquaintance, orders to degrade into soldiers. On the first day of leaving the environment, Zaychikov dies.

On the evening of October 1, a battle-led group by Serpilin breaks into the location of the tank brigade of Lieutenant Colonel Klimovich, in which Sintsov, returning from the hospital where he brought the wounded Serpilin, recognizes his school friend. Those who leave the encirclement are ordered to surrender the captured weapons, after which they are sent to the rear. On the way to Yukhnovskoye highway, part of the convoy collides with German tanks and armored personnel carriers starting to shoot unarmed people. An hour after the disaster, Sintsov met Zolotarev in the forest, and soon a small doctor joined them. She has fever and dislocation of her legs; the men take turns carrying Tanya. Soon they leave her in the care of decent people, and they themselves go on and fall under fire. Zolotarev lacks the strength to drag a wounded man to the head who has lost Sintsov’s consciousness; not knowing whether the political instructor is alive or dead, Zolotarev removes the gymnast from him and picks up the documents, and he goes for help: the surviving fighters of Serpilin, led by Khoryshev, returned to Klimovich and, together with him, break through the German rear. Zolotarev is about to go after Sintsov, but the place where he left the wounded is already taken by the Germans.

Meanwhile, Sintsov regains consciousness, but cannot remember where his documents are, whether he unconsciously removed the gymnast with the commissioner stars or whether Zolotarev did it, considering him dead. Without passing even two steps, Sintsov collides with the Germans and is captured, however, during the bombing, he manages to escape. Crossing the front line, Sintsov goes to the construction battalion, where they refuse to believe his "fables" about the lost party card, and Sintsov decides to go to the Special Department. On the way, he meets Lyusin, and he agrees to take Sintsov to Moscow until he finds out about the missing documents. Landed near the checkpoint, Sintsov is forced to independently get to the city. This is facilitated by the fact that on October 16, due to the difficult situation at the front in Moscow, panic and confusion reign. Thinking that Masha might still be in the city, Sintsov goes home and, without catching anyone, falls on the mattress and falls asleep.

... Since mid-July, Masha Artemyeva has been studying at the communications school, where she is being trained for sabotage work in the rear of the Germans. October 16, Masha is released to Moscow for things, as soon she will have to start the assignment. Arriving home, she finds the sleeping Sintsov. The husband tells her about everything that happened to him over these months, about all the horror that had to be experienced during seventy-odd days of leaving the environment. The next morning, Masha returns to school, and soon she is thrown into the German rear.

Sintsov goes to the district committee to explain about his lost documents. There he met with Alexei Denisovich Malinin, a personnel officer with twenty years of experience, who was preparing Sintsov's documents at the time, when he was accepted into the party, and enjoyed great authority in the district committee. This meeting is decisive in the fate of Sintsov, since Malinin, believing his story, takes a lively part in Sintsov and begins to bother about restoring him to the party. He offers Sintsov to enlist in the volunteer communist battalion, where Malinin is the senior in his platoon. After some delays Sintsov gets to the front.

Moscow replenishment sent to the 31st Infantry Division; Malinin is appointed the company’s political director, where Sintsov is credited with his patronage. There are continuous bloody battles near Moscow. The division retreats from its positions, but gradually the situation begins to stabilize. Sintsov writes a note to Malinin stating his “past.” Malinin is going to submit this document to the political department of the division, but for now, taking advantage of the lull, he goes to his company, resting on the ruins of an unfinished brick factory; in the nearby factory chimney, Sintsov installs a machine gun on Malinin’s advice. The shelling begins, and one of the German shells gets inside an unfinished building. A few seconds before the explosion, Malinin falls asleep with crumbling bricks, so he remains alive. Having got out of the stone grave and dug up the only living fighter, Malinin goes to the factory chimney, which has already heard an abrupt knock of a machine gun for an hour, and together with Sintsov reflects one after another the attacks of German tanks and infantry to our height.

On November 7, on Red Square, Serpilin meets Klimovich; this last informs the general about the death of Sintsov. However, Sintsov also takes part in the parade on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution - their division was replenished in the rear and after the parade is transferred to Podolsk. For the battle at the brick factory, Malinin is appointed commissar of the battalion, he represents Sintsov to the Order of the Red Star and offers to write a statement on the restoration of the party; Malinin himself had already managed to make a request through the political department and received an answer, where Sintsov’s affiliation to the party was documented. After replenishment, Sintsov is credited with the platoon commander of machine gunners. Malinin gives him a description that should be attached to the application for reinstatement in the party. Sintsov is being approved at the party bureau of the regiment, but the divisional commission is postponing the decision on this issue. Sintsov has a heated conversation with Malinin, and he writes a sharp letter about the Sintsov case directly to the political department of the army. The division commander, General Orlov, arrives to present awards to Sintsov and others, and soon dies from the explosion of a random mine. In his place Serpilin is appointed. Before leaving for the front, the widow of Baranova comes to Serpilin and asks for details of her husband’s death. Upon learning that Baranova’s son was volunteering to avenge her father, Serpilin said that her husband had died the brave, although in fact the deceased shot himself while leaving the encirclement near Mogilev. Serpilin goes to Baglyuk’s regiment and on the road passes Sintsov and Malinin, who are going on the offensive.

At the very beginning of the battle, Malinin was seriously wounded in the stomach. He does not even have time to really say goodbye to Sintsov and tell about his letter to the political department: the battle resumes, and at dawn Malinin, along with other wounded, is taken to the rear. However, Malinin and Sintsov were wrongly accusing the party committee of delay: the party case was requested by the instructor, who had previously read Zolotarev’s letter about the circumstances of the death of Political Party I. Sintsov, and now this letter lies next to the statement of Junior Sergeant Sintsov about reinstating the party.

Having taken the station Voskresenskoye, the regiments of Serpilin continue to move forward. Due to losses in the command staff, Sintsov becomes a platoon commander.

The second book. Soldiers are not born

New, 1943 Serpilin meets near Stalingrad. The 111th Infantry Division, which he commands, has already surrounded the Paulus group for six weeks and is awaiting an order for the offensive. Suddenly Serpilin is summoned to Moscow. This trip was caused by two reasons: firstly, it is planned to appoint Serpilin the chief of staff of the army; secondly, his wife dies after a third heart attack. Arriving home and questioning a neighbor, Serpilin learns that before Valentina Yegorovna fell ill, her son came to her. Vadim was not native to Serpilin: Fedor Fedorovich adopted a five-year-old child, marrying his mother, the widow of his friend, the hero of the civil war Tolstikov. In 1937, when Serpilin was arrested, Vadim disowned him and adopted the name of his real father. He denied it not because he really considered Serpilin “an enemy of the people”, but out of a sense of self-preservation, which his mother could not forgive him. Returning from the funeral, Serpilin collides on the street with Tanya Ovsyannikova, who is in Moscow for treatment. She says that after leaving the partisan circle, she was underground in Smolensk. Serpilin tells Tanya about the death of Sintsov. On the eve of his departure, the son asks for his permission to transport his wife and daughter to Chita from Moscow. Serpilin agrees and, in turn, orders his son to file a report on sending him to the front.

After seeing Serpilin, Lt. Col. Pavel Artemyev returns to the General Staff and finds out that he is wanted by a woman named Ovsyannikov. Hoping to get information about Masha’s sister, Artemyev goes to the address indicated in the note, to the house where the woman he loved before the war lived, but managed to forget when Nadia married another.

... The war began for Artemyev near Moscow, where he commanded a regiment, and before that he had served in Transbaikalia since 1939. Artemyev got to the General Staff after a serious wound in the leg. The consequences of this wound still make themselves felt, but he, burdened by his adjutant service, wants to return to the front as soon as possible.

Tanya tells Artemyev the details of the death of his sister, whose death he learned a year ago, although he never ceased to hope for the fallacy of this information. Tanya and Masha fought in the same partisan detachment and were friends. They became even closer when it became clear that Mashin’s husband, Ivan Sintsov, brought Tanya out of his circle. Masha went to the scene, but did not appear in Smolensk; later partisans learned about her execution. Tanya also reports the death of Sintsov, whom Artemyev has long been trying to track down. Shocked by Tanya’s story, Artemyev decides to help her: provide food, try to get tickets to Tashkent, where her parents live in Tanya’s evacuation. Leaving home, Artemyev meets Nadia, who has already widowed, and, returning to the General Staff, once again asks to be sent to the front. Having received permission and hoping for the post of chief of staff or commander of the regiment, Artemyev continues to take care of Tanya: gives her cars orders that can be exchanged for food, organizes negotiations with Tashkent - Tanya finds out about her father’s death and the death of her brother and that she husband Nikolai Kolchin is in the rear. Artemyev takes Tanya to the train station, and, parting with him, she suddenly begins to feel something more than just gratitude to this lonely person tearing to the front. And he, surprised at this sudden change, reflects on the fact that once again, pointlessly and irresistibly, his own happiness flashed, which he again did not recognize and took for someone else's. And with these thoughts Artemyev calls Nadia.

... Sintsov was wounded a week after Malinin. While still at the hospital, he began to make inquiries about Masha, Malinin and Artemyev, but did not know anything. After being discharged, he enrolled in the school of junior lieutenants, fought in several divisions, including in Stalingrad, joined the party again and after another wound received the post of battalion commander in the 111th division, shortly after Serpilin left it.

Sintsov comes to the division just before the start of the offensive. Soon he was summoned by the commissar of the regiment Levashov and introduced to journalists from Moscow, in one of which Sintsov recognized Lyusin. During the battle, Sintsov is injured, but the commander Kuzmich stands up for him before the regiment commander, and Sintsov remains at the forefront.

Continuing to think about Artemyev, Tanya arrives in Tashkent. At the station, she is met by her husband, with whom Tanya actually broke up even before the war. Considering Tanya dead, he married another, and this marriage provided Kolchin with armor. Directly from the station, Tanya goes to her mother to the factory and there she meets the party organizer Alexei Denisovich Malinin. After his wound, Malinin spent nine months in hospitals and underwent three operations, but his health was completely undermined and there was no question of returning to the front, which Malinin so dreams of. Malinin takes a lively part in Tanya, assists her mother and, having called Kolchin to him, seeks to send him to the front. Soon Tanya receives a call from Serpilin, and she leaves. Having come to Serpilin’s reception, Tanya meets Artemyev there and realizes that he has nothing to do with friendly feelings.Serpilin completes the rout, saying that a week after Artemyev, as assistant chief of the operational department, arrived at the front, “one impudent woman from Moscow” flew to him under the guise of his wife, and only what saved him from the wrath of his bosses was Artemyev according to Serpilin, an exemplary officer. Realizing that it was Nadia, Tanya puts an end to his passion and goes to work in the medical unit. On the very first day, she goes to take our prisoner of war camp and suddenly encounters Sintsov there, who participated in the liberation of this concentration camp, and now is looking for his lieutenant. The story of the Death Machine does not become news for Sintsov: he already knows everything from Artemyev, who has read in Krasnaya Zvezda a note about the battalion commander, a former journalist, and who has spotted the brother-in-law. Returning to the battalion, Sintsov finds Artyomiev who has come to spend the night to him. Recognizing that Tanya is a great woman to marry, if not to be a fool, Pavel talks about his unexpected visit to the front of Nadi and that this woman, whom he once loved, belongs to him again and literally seeks to become him wife. However, Sintsov, who has been feeding antipathy to Nadia from school, sees in her actions a calculation: the thirty-year-old Artemyev has already become a colonel, and if not killed, he can become a general.

Soon, Kuzmich opened an old wound, and the commander Batyuk insisted on his removal from the 111th division. In this regard, Berezhnoy asks a member of the military council Zakharov not to remove the old man at least until the end of the operation and to give him a deputy for combat training. So in the 111th comes Artemyev. Arriving at Kuzmich with the inspection. trip, Serpilin asks to send greetings to Sintsov, the resurrection of which from the dead he learned the day before. And a few days later, in connection with the connection with the 62nd Army, Sintsov was given a captain. Returning from the city, Sintsov finds Tanya at his place. She was seconded to a captured German hospital, and she is looking for soldiers to guard.

Artemyev manages to quickly find a common language with Kuzmich; For several days he worked intensively, participating in the completion of the defeat of the VI German army. Suddenly he was called to the divisional commander, and there Artemyev became a witness to the triumph of his brother-in-law: Sintsov captured the German general, the division commander. Knowing Sintsov’s acquaintance with Serpilin, Kuzmich orders him to personally deliver the prisoner to the army headquarters. However, a joyful day for Sintsov brings Serpilin great grief: a letter arrives announcing the death of his son, who died in his first battle, and Serpilin realizes that, in spite of everything, his love for Vadim did not die. Meanwhile, news of the surrender of Paulus is coming from the front headquarters.

As a reward for working in a German hospital, Tanya asks her boss to give her the opportunity to see Sintsov. Met on the road Levashov escorts her to the regiment. Using the delicacy of Ilyin and Zavalishin, Tanya and Sintsov spend the night together. Soon, the military council decides to build on success and launch an offensive, during which Levashov dies, and Sintsova takes off her fingers on the once crippled arm. Having handed over the battalion to Ilyin, Sintsov leaves for the medical battalion.

After the victory at Stalingrad, Serpilin was summoned to Moscow, and Stalin proposed that he change Batyuk to the post of commander. Serpilin gets acquainted with the widow of his son and little granddaughter; daughter-in-law makes the most favorable impression on him. Having returned yes to the front, Serpilin calls in at the hospital to Sintsov and says that his report with a request to leave in the army will be considered by the new commander of the 111th division, - Artemyev has recently been approved for this position.

The third book. Last summer

A few months before the start of the Belarussian offensive operation, in the spring of 1944, Commander Serpilin, with a concussion and a broken collarbone, ends up in a hospital, and from there to a military sanatorium. Olga Ivanovna Baranova becomes his attending physician. During their meeting in December 1941, Serpilin withheld from Baranova the circumstances of the death of her husband, but she still found out the truth from Commissioner Shmakov. Serpilin’s act made Baranova think a lot about him, and when Serpilin got to Arkhangelsk, Baranova volunteered to be his doctor in order to get to know this person better.

Meanwhile, a member of the military council of Lviv, having called Zakharov to himself, raises the question of removing Serpilin from his post, citing the fact that the army preparing for the offensive has been without a commander for a long time.

Sintsov comes to the regiment to Ilyin. After being wounded, having struggled with difficulty from a white ticket, he got to work in the operational department of the army headquarters, and his current visit is connected with checking the state of affairs in the division. Hoping for an early vacancy, Ilyin offers Sintsov the post of chief of staff, and he promises to speak with Artemyev. Sintsov is left to go to another regiment when Artemyev calls and, saying that Sintsov is called up to the army headquarters, calls him to his place. Sintsov talks about Ilyin’s proposal, but Artemyev does not want to breed nepotism and advises Sintsov to talk about returning to duty with Serpilin. Both Artemyev and Sintsov understand that the offensive is not far off, in the immediate plans of the war - the liberation of all Belarus, and therefore Grodno. Artemyev hopes that when the fate of his mother and niece is clarified, he himself will be able to escape at least for a day to Moscow, to Nadia. He had not seen his wife for more than six months, however, despite all the requests, forbade her to come to the front, since on her last visit, in front of the Kursk Bulge, Nadya greatly damaged her husband’s reputation; Serpilin then nearly removed him from the division. Artemyev tells Sintsov that he works much better with Boyko, the chief of staff, acting as commander in the absence of Serpilin than with Serpilin, and that he, as a divisional commander, has his own difficulties, because both of his predecessors are here in the army, and often drop in on their former division, which gives many ill-wishers of the young Artemyev an occasion to compare him with Serpilin and Kuzmich in favor of the latter. And suddenly, remembering his wife, Artemyev tells Sintsov how bad it is to live in a war, having an unreliable rear. Upon learning by phone that Sintsov will be traveling to Moscow, Pavel sends a letter to Nadia. Arriving at Zakharov, Sintsov receives letters from him and the headquarters of Boyko for Serpilin asking him to return to the front as soon as possible.

In Moscow, Sintsov immediately goes to the telegraph to give “lightning” to Tashkent: in March, he sent Tanya home to give birth, but for a long time he has no information about her or her daughter. Having sent a telegram, Sintsov goes to Serpilin, and he promises that by the beginning of the battles Sintsov will again be in operation. From the commander, Sintsov goes to visit Nadia. Nadia begins to inquire about the smallest details concerning Pavel, and complains that her husband does not allow her to come to the front, and soon Sintsov becomes an unwitting witness to the clarification of the relationship between Nadia and her lover and even participates in the expulsion of the latter from the apartment. Justified, Nadia says that she loves Pavel very much, but is unable to live without a man. Saying goodbye to Nadia and promising not to say anything to Pavel, Sintsov goes to the telegraph and receives a telegram from Tanya’s mother, where it is said that his newborn daughter died, and Tanya flew into the army. Upon learning this bleak news, Sintsov goes to Serpilin to the sanatorium, and he offers to go to his adjutants instead of Evstigneev, who married the widow of Vadim. Soon Serpilin passes the medical commission; Before leaving for the front, he makes a proposal to Baranova and receives her consent to marry him at the end of the war. Meeting Serpilina Zakharov reports that Batyuk has been appointed the new commander of their front.

On the eve of the offensive, Sintsov receives leave to see his wife. Tanya talks about their deceased daughter, the death of her ex-husband Nikolai and the "old party organizer" from the factory; she does not name her name, and Sintsov will never know that Malinin died. He sees that Tanya is oppressing something, but thinks that it is connected with their daughter. However, Tanya has one more trouble that Sintsov still does not know about: the former commander of her partisan brigade told Tanya that Masha, the sister of Artemyev and the first wife of Sintsov, might still be alive, as it turned out that instead of being shot she was stolen in Germany. Without saying anything to Sintsov, Tanya decides to part with him.

According to Batyuk’s plans, Serpilin’s army should become the driving force of the upcoming offensive. Under the command of Serpilin there are thirteen divisions; The 111th is brought to the rear, to the displeasure of the commander Artemyev and his chief of staff Tumanyan. Serpilin plans to use them only when taking Mogilev. Reflecting on Artemyev, in which he sees experience combined with youth, Serpilin credits the division commander with the fact that he does not like to flicker with his superiors, even with Zhukov, who had recently come to the army, whom, as the marshal himself recalled, Artemyev served in 1939 in Khalkhin Gol.

On June 23, Operation Bagration begins. Serpilin temporarily takes away the regiment of Ilyin from Artemyev and transfers it to the advancing "mobile group", which is tasked with closing the enemy’s exit from Mogilev; in case of failure, the 111th division will enter the battle, blocking the strategically important Minsk and Bobruisk highways. Artemyev is eager for battle, believing that together with the "mobile group" he can take Mogilev, but Serpilin finds it inappropriate, since the ring around the city has already closed and the Germans are still powerless to escape. Having taken Mogilev, he receives an order to attack Minsk.

... Tanya writes to Sintsov that they should leave because Masha is alive, but the offensive that has begun prevents Tanya from transmitting this letter: she is being transferred closer to the front to monitor the delivery of the wounded to hospitals. On July 3, Tanya meets Serpilin's “jeep”, and the commander says that with the end of the operation he will send Sintsov to the front line; Taking this opportunity, Tanya tells Sintsov about Masha. On the same day, she is injured and asks her friend to give Sintsov a letter that has become useless. Tanya is sent to the front-line hospital, and along the way she finds out about Serpilin’s death - he was mortally wounded by a shell fragment; Sintsov, as in 1941, brought him to the hospital, but the commander was put dead on the operating table.

By agreement with Stalin, Serpilin, who did not find out about the assignment of the rank of colonel general, was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery, next to Valentina Egorovna. Zakharov, who knows from Serpilin about Baranova, decides to return her letters to her commander. Having led a coffin to Serpilin’s body to the airfield, Sintsov calls at the hospital where he finds out about Tanya’s wound and receives her letter. From the hospital, he appears to the new commander Boyko, and he appoints Sintsov as the chief of staff to Ilyin. This is not the only change in the division - Tumanyan became its commander, and Artemyev, after taking Mogilev who received the rank of Major General, Boyko takes to himself the chief of staff of the army. Arriving in the operations department to meet new subordinates, Artemyev learns from Sintsov that Masha may be alive. Stunned by this news, Pavel says that the neighbor’s troops are already approaching Grodno, where at the beginning of the war his mother and niece remained, and if they are alive, then everyone will be together again.

Zakharov and Boyko, returning from Batiuk, commemorate Serpilin - his operation is completed and the army is being transferred to a neighboring front, to Lithuania.