Remembering that historic day on the Volga

February 23 is a public holiday in Russia. It's Defender of the Fatherland Day.

But tomorrow across the Russian Federation people will recall the great event that happened on February 2, 1943.

Seventy seven years ago today against all the odds the Red Army declared victory at Stalingrad.

On that famous day the German Sixth Army under the command of Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Red Army under the overall command of Marshal General Georgi Zhukov.

It was a spectacular victory. The genius of the Russian people, the sacrifice they made.

Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on Sunday, June 22, 1941, brought unspeakable terror and barbarity to the people of the Soviet Union.

In the early days, the Red Army kept retreating, kept moving headquarters east. And then the mood changed. Word went out that not another step east and under no circumstances would the feet of Red Army soldiers cross the river Volga.

And so it was.

The battle for Stalingrad cost approximately 1.3 million Soviet lives. Many more lost and seriously injured and maimed for life. The victory was against all the odds. 

We in the West have been slow to appreciate the sacrifice and genius that allowed Stalingrad to happen.

We all heard of D-Day but never a word about Stalingrad.

It was the first significant defeat for the German Army. From that day onwards the Red Army rushed towards Berlin. But for Stalingrad the war could have taken a very different turn and certainly Auschwitz would not have been liberated in January 1945.

Anthony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' is a classic read on the military engagement. But to sense the mood of the people, the lives of the 'ordinary' men, women and children, then Vasily Grossman's 'Stalingrad' is essential reading.

He takes a Stalingrad family and recounts their lives and the lives of their friends in the lead up to the great battle and then the battle itself.

Experts say that Grossman is to Russian literature in the 20th century what Leo Tolstoy was in the 19th century.

Vasily Grossman was born in Ukraine to a family of the Jewish faith. He worked as a journalist during the war behind Soviet lines.

After the war he fell in and out of favour with the Communist Party.

His book 'Stalingrad' had many editions and it was only last year, 2019 that it appeared in English.

Marshal Georgi Zhukov also fell in and out of favour with the Communist Party and Josef Stalin. Stalin was nervous about him and certainly jealous.

There is at present a public petition in Volgograd to rename the city 'Stalingrad'.

No one wants their city called after a dictator but the city on the Volga will be forever known as that place, Stalingrad, where the German Army was routed and sent running from a place it should never have gone.

And this date, 02.02.2020 is a palindrome, the only occasion it will happen this century.