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November, 1942. Novikov, a tank commander, prepares his troops for Operation Uranus, the campaign which is to be the turning point in the Battle of Stalingrad.

On his way to the front, he visits Zhenya, his lover, in Kuibyshev. He dreams of marrying her but she is still torn between him and Krymov. She tells an anecdote about Krymov and Trotsky, a slip of the tongue that leads to betrayal.

Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in Vasily Grossman鈥檚 epic saga.

Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov ..... Don Gilet
Getmanov ..... Philip Jackson
Nyeudobnov ..... Peter Wight
Zhenya Shaposhnikova ..... Raquel Cassidy
Nicky ..... Simon Bubb
Vershkov ..... Stuart Mcloughlin
Galina Terentyevna ..... Jane Whittenshaw
Mashuk ..... Peter Polycarpou
Zhakharov ..... Sean Baker

With Jonathan Forbes, James Lailey, Daniel Rabin and Alun Raglan

Dramatised by Mike Walker

Original music by John Hardy with Rob Whitehead

Directors: Alison Hindell and Jonquil Panting.

Producer: Alison Hindell.

Set against the ferocious Battle of Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman鈥檚 huge novel charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war and is increasingly hailed as the most important Russian novel of the 20th century. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the manuscript itself was arrested. Grossman died in 1964, never knowing that his book would be smuggled to the West and eventually published in 1980.

First broadcast on 鲍鱼tv Radio 4 in September 2011.

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