A new Russian book reframes the Second World War as it was remembered in letters by Soviet soldiers. According to an article in the Moscow Times by Kevin O’Flynn, veterans started writing letters to local newspapers in the 1980s in a wave of challenges to the official history of the war. After perestroika, soldiers and their families felt free to share their stories, telling of being “left to fight without weapons at the start of the war,” of being “stigmatized for decades because their sons were labeled ‘missing in action,'” and “punished for having been in concentration camps.” The article includes a selection of the letters, present the unheard-of narrative of the war. The book, entitled I Saw It . . . New Letters about the War, is published by Vremya.