Stalin’s Sniper: The War Diary of Roza Shanina

Not a lot of information on the Eastern front and the courageous soldiers in the USSR Red Army. The book is a diary of a young woman. Very interesting to read.

Malgré la guerre et le chaos, elle était une jeune et jolie fille entourée de garçons et les histoires de coeur se mêlent aux horreurs de la guerre. Ce carnet nous permet de rentrer dans l'intimité de ses pensées et d'avoir une idée du quotidien d'un soldat durant cette guerre, un témoignage de première main d'une grande valeur historique. Ce livre m'a beaucoup touché, la personnalité de Roza est très attachante.Je recommande ce livre sans réserve, il va surement vous émouvoir et parfois il vous fera sourire.

This book is a bit of a scam. The actual diary entries, which are only from October '44 to January '45, would barely constitute a small pamphlet. Everything has been done to pad the book out. The layout has been tailored so that chapters are only two or three pages long and chapter after chapter ends with a one- or two-sentence page and the remainder blank. This is followed by a new chapter which starts with a page that is half blank. Paragraphs are often followed by four or five blank lines. In addition, the author has elicited memories from relatives, teachers, etc. to fill it out even more. Having said this, what little material there is of Rosa is not without interest. Much of it concerns her crushes on fellow soldiers and theirs on her or which sniper-girls are making catty remarks about her or her friends, but in itself this is an insight into the Red Army of those fearful days. Books about the war in the East by journalists or generals are not hard to find, but ones like this that recount the trivia of a common soldier's existence are rare. The military history buff will also find some tidbits of information of interest and value.

This book is not a diary at all. This tells the story of a vey dedicated communist that desperately wanted to do her duty and more in "The Great Patriotic War." Looking at it from 30,000', it is little more than a listing of her soulmates. Every 1-3 days she is madly in love with someone else. And she says she resents female soldiers looked at as "trench sluts."And calling this a "book" is stretching things quite a bit. it has been padded more than any book that i haver read. Everything has been done to make chapters look longer and add pages.Don't waste your time and money on this one.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book is a mix of (a little) fictional exposition, used to flesh out what we know of Roza’s life, along with some short letters from 1944, and her diary, which was written from October 1944 up until just before her death in January of 1945. From a historical perspective, it is an invaluable English translation of an extraordinarily rare document: the unvarnished personal reflections of a lively and brave warrior-woman who died far too young. Credit to Ms. Mogan for tracking down the latest published manuscript of the diary, which was made available in 2016 by a local Russian municipal archive, and having it professionally translated, along with snippets of biographical material which have been published about Roza over the past few years in Russia. The upshot is that this book was clearly a labor of love for Ms. Mogan and I am grateful for her efforts to bring it to English-speaking audiences around the world.In terms of the basic content, if you are expecting to find tactical or technical details of military operations you will be disappointed. There is violence discussed in the diary, both combat and sexual, and while nothing exceedingly graphic is presented, you may want to tread carefully if you are personally dealing with traumas of either type. Furthermore, the overall environment in which Roza and her comrades served was at times downright hellish and at other times hellishly mundane. One moment she is breezily debating which of her male suitors she wants to write or reflecting on her new found celebrity, the next entry she is matter-of-factly recounting raiding an enemy trench or being shot in the shoulder by a “Fritz” sniper.With regard to the heroine of the tale, the real reason to buy this book, other reviewers have said it, but I will reiterate it: if you read this diary, you will never forget Roza Shanina. The tone of the young sniper’s entries ranges from poetic and melancholy to coarse and catty, but through it all you can’t help but coming away liking her. She lived the way she wanted, even if, like all of us, she wasn’t always exactly sure what she wanted. There is a profound spirtual sadness underlying each page since the reader knows her fate, and, despite her reckless bravado and occasional suicidal despondency, one hopes that, in another time and place, it didn’t end for Roza the way it did for her here.