The Great Patriotic War is otherwise known as World War II by other nations, but I soon learned to not call it that while in Russia. I was there in May, which was the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.
Russia and England bore the brunt of WWII resistance in Europe to the German war machine. They were ill prepared for it, largely by their own making. Stalin purging the best of the military did not help, and then there was the general chaos of totalitarianism that seems to inevitably follow catastrophic regime change and revolution.
The remarkable resistance of St. Petersburg was one of the most lethal in world history. It lasted for 900 days, from September 1941 to January 1944. Russians say that Troy fell, Rome fell, but not St. Petersburg. Somewhere around a million people starved during the siege, and it was a bitter long fought battle, one that exemplified the resistance that the Russians put up. That and their vast frontier made them unconquerable, and they are justifiably proud of their WWII record, even if all the credit cannot be laid at their feet.
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