SHADOWS OF WAR: SNIPERS OF STALINGRAD

ТЕНИ ВОЙНЫ: СНАЙПЕРЫ СТАЛИНГРАДА

Мельников Владислав Сергеевич

курсант, кафедра перевода и переводоведения, Новосибирский ордена Жукова военный институт имени генерала армии И. К. Яковлева войск национальной гвардии Российской Федерации

РФ, г. Новосибирск

Далецкая Татьяна Анатольевна

научный руководитель, доц. кафедры перевода и переводоведения, Новосибирский ордена Жукова военный институт имени генерала армии И. К. Яковлева войск национальной гвардии Российской Федерации,

РФ, г. Новосибирск

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the events of the Great Patriotic War: the Battle of Stalingrad, in which snipers played an important role. The preservation of historical memory is important today for the unification of the people, for the formation of national pride and patriotism. Cultural meanings about our country and our people are anchored in the events of the Second World War.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Данная статья посвящена описанию событий Великой Отечественной войны: Сталинградской битве, в которой важная роль была отведена снайперам. Сохранение исторической памяти сегодня важно для объединения народа, для формирования национальной гордости и патриотизма. В событиях ВОВ закреплены культурные смыслы о нашей стране, о нашем народе.

Keywords: Great Patriotic War, the Battle of Stalingrad, history, the feat of snipers, cultural memory, society.

Ключевые слова: Великая Отечественная война, Сталинградская битва, история, подвиг снайпера, культурная память, общество.

Nowadays when there is a struggle against falsification of history, Russian people should remember the events of the Great Patriotic War, when our great-grandfathers fought against fascism. The year of 2025 is the year of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, declared by the President as the Defender of the Fatherland Year.

“The outcome of the Second World War was determined by decisive victories in major battles of Moscow and Stalingrad….” said the President in his speech at the Military Parade [1]. The focus of this paper is to describe the role of snipers at the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the most important and largest general battles of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. The unique feature of the Battle was street fighting, which is very different from ordinary field combat. The combat was for every house and inside the house – for a floor, for a staircase, for an apartment where military units operated in small assault groups.

In Stalingrad the difficulty was that the opposing sides were located no further than a hundred meters from each other, sometimes even up to twenty-five meters. In many places heavy weapons and assault aircraft could not fire without risking hitting their positions. Therefore, in the struggle for the fire initiative, the decisive role belonged to grenade launchers, anti-tank rifles (ATGM) shooters, and, above all, snipers.

The snipers operated alone in a narrow section of their company (about 200 m long) and both sides were watching each other very closely. Every careless move, every oversight was immediately punished. In these conditions the snipers were hunting for the Nazis.

At the front where special military units acted against the enemy, the sniper was an independent combat unit. It was the sniper who played a crucial role in the Battle of Stalingrad. The main task of any sniper was to defeat the commanding and cohesive staff and to destroy camouflaged single targets.

Vasily Grigorievich Zaitsev was a Soviet sniper, Hero of the Soviet Union.  At the beginning of the war Zaitsev proved himself to be an excellent marksman and later he was appointed a sniper.

During the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of 1942, he destroyed about 242 enemy soldiers and officers, including 11 snipers [2]. Zaitsev became famous for his sniper duel with the German ace sniper Major Koenig, commander of the Berlin Sniper School. Vasily Zaitsev killed a German ace sniper in this sniper duel.

In 1943 V. Zaitsev became blind and only repeated operations with Professor Filatov was he able to restore his eyesight. At the end of February 1943, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

V. Zaitsev also developed a method of sniper hunting in group of six and wrote two textbooks for snipers. After the war he worked in Kiev and died on December 15, 1991 at the age of 77. He was buried in Kiev. On January 31, 2006 Vasily Zaitsev's ashes were reburied with military honors at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd.

We must remember “generation that crushed Nazism and won freedom and peace for all humanity at the cost of millions of lives…. remember the lessons of World War II and will never agree with the distortion of those events or attempts to justify the murderers and slander the true victors” [1].

References:

1. Speech by the President of Russia at the military parade // [электронный ресурс] – Режим доступа. – URL: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76879 (дата обращения 7.11.2025)
2. Цикл «Лучшие советские снайперы». Василий Зайцев // [электронный ресурс] – Режим доступа. – https://warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=481 (дата обращения 7.11.2025)