several books I read while at VT. My degree was in Interdisciplinary Studies with a primary focus in political science. So I ended up taking quite a few classes with Eastern Europe being the focus. A few of those classes had additional required reading outside the standard textbooks. A few of those books were autobiographies or biographies of various Eastern European people who lived during WWII. Some were ordinary citizens (like Ann Frank) and others were involved in the military (like Vasily Zaitsev).

Now I will say that long before "Enemy at the Gates" was released in 2001, a video game was released for the original Sony Playstation. Users would start out with the USSR storyline before being allowed to move on to the US and British storylines. For the USSR storyline, your character was the one holding the bullets and you were supposed to follow the guy with the rifle. While you are following a path up a hill being bombarded by the Germans, you would hear a commanding officer say "Cowards and deserters will be shot. There is no retreat." So there appears to be some element of truth to that movie.