Igor’ Sdvizhkov was born in Lipetsk on 15 March 1964. He graduated from the Department of History of the Lipetsk Pedagogical Institute and subsequently taught both History and English at school level and at the institute. In his research work, Sdvizhkov focuses on the history of the combat operations of the summer of 1942 on the Briansk and Voronezh Fronts - using archival materials from the Russian Defense Ministry’s Central Archive, the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Russian History and the US National Archives. To date, he has published articles in the Russian-language Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv [Military-historical archive] and three books, including the present one.
Stuart Britton is a freelance translator who resides in Cedar Rapids, IA. He is responsible for a growing number of translated Russian military memoirs, battle histories and operational studies, which saw an explosion in Russia with the opening of secret military archives and the emergence of new Russian scholars who take a more objective look at the events and historical figures. Two works that received prizes or prominent acclaim were Valeriy Zamulin’s Demolishing a Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk 1943 and Lev Lopukhovsky’s The Viaz’ma Catastrophe, 1941: The Red Army’s Disastrous Stand Against Operation Typhoon. Notable recent translations include Valeriy Zamulin’s The Battle of Kursk: Controversial and Neglected Aspects and Igor Sdvizhkov’s Confronting Case Blue: Briansk Front’s Attempt to Derail the German Drive to the Caucasus, July 1942. Future translated publications include Nikolai Ovcharenko’s analysis of the defense, occupation and liberation of Odessa, 1941-1944, and Zamulin’s detailed study of 7th Guards Army’s role and performance in the Battle of Kursk against Army Detachment Kempf.
