Крещение

The novel is dedicated to the events of the first year of the Great Patriotic War and is perceived as a living document, written by a miraculously surviving participant in the most terrible tragedy of the 20th century. The first two parts of the novel describe events from the initial days of the war to April 1942. The third part is devoted to the study of the reasons for the failure of the spring offensive on the Southern Front. And although the action here is transferred to the location of headquarters, divisions, and even to the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, the reader does not leave the feeling of real complicity and empathy, because in the foreground there are still the fates and deeds of ordinary people, ordinary soldiers, former scientists, workers, peasants who have risen to protect not some great-power interests, but their land, their family, their children, their future.

The novel "Baptism" rightly received recognition from both readers and official criticism as the best work about the war in history domestic literature. For this novel, Ivan Ivanovich Akulov was awarded the A.M. Gorky State Prize in 1980.

The new edition offers readers a complete author's version of a wonderful novel that will impress anyone interested in the heroic history of the Fatherland.