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Broken Jewel The Betrayal Game The Assassins Gallery Liberation Road Last Citadel Scorched
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Photos: Russia
Vera Andreievna Michailovna, the physical model for Tania Chernova. I met Vera in Irkutsk, Siberia. Peasants, thought Zaitsev, like me. We're all peasants. All the better. Accustomed to hardship. Zaitsev stepped before a tall, lithe blonde girl. He noted her stare. This, he thought, is no peasant. "Chernova," she said. —War of the Rats
Memorium bell tower at Prokhorovka battlefield. Easy hills and shallow hollows as far as he could see were broken only by sparse copses of trees and brush. Few villages and streams spoiled the expanse. This was beautiful cavalry country, classic campaign terrain, where giants could fit all their killing wares at once and surge at one another, to clash eye to eye. —Last Citadel 
Mameyev Kurgan, in modern-day Volgograd,
better known as Stalingrad.
Two blocks of houses have been left in their battered state after the battle of Stalingrad. The museum with Zaitsev's sniper rifle is in the background. 
A typical home in a Russian village. Note the pastel colors, shutters, garden in the back and external sauna. 
Just me in Red Square. 
The elevated view of the Oder river valley from a graveyard in Seelow. All these graves, in what was East Germany, are Russian. 
Me in a pack of Russian school kids on the Prokhovova battlefield, during my research on the battle of Kursk. The tank is a T-34/85, which—oddly—was not manufactured in time for the battle.  Inside the Hall Of Fallen Heroes at Stalingrad. The red mosaic banners on the walls bear the names of the battle's Soviet dead, almost a million of them.  A craftsman and former political prisoner I met in Siberia, the inspiration for Yuri in War Of The Rats. At the top of his carved totem are Stalin and Levrenti Beria. Tania looked at Yuri's hand shake Fedya's. His fingers were thick and powerful with blunt nails. The knuckles were gnarled from labor. She guessed he had worked on one of the millions of Soviet collective farms. In Fedya's smooth white grasp, Yuri's calloused hand looked more like a tan bag of chestnuts than flesh. —War of the Rats |
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