Starshina I have little or no faith in anything the Russians write or wrote about what they did during the Great Patriotic War because everything was written to glorify and point out how well a system that has failed was. So there goes what you read in my eyes right away. I would believe Lapin before them if you find that possible to believe? He writes to keep food on the table so I frankly find his motivation more logical at least
History is history you read and take it as a grain of salt till you keep seeing the same grains of salt being repeated over and over in reputable non-biased sources. Then you have mearly a concensus guess about what really happend. We never really know for sure unless we were there and watched it happen, then you have the simple fact that if ten people watch the same thing you have ten different stories and accounts of what happend.
If you ask my opinion of ex-snipers they were ordinary rifles which went through no extra checks for accuracy and had a scope mounted on them and were given to certain people who sometimes turned out to be good shots and other times were killed very shortly. What do I base this statement on? The Russians couldn't get enough infantry rifles out to the troops what in the name of heaven makes people think they had time to make special rifles for snipers? Anyone who was successfull became a hero of the state and if they weren't they are bureid over in Russia somewhere. This again is just my opinion and if you take the writings of Russians to be gospel then you have a different opinion which I can not agree with.
History can be both written and read by people of different educations, ranks, and positions in life but it is still history regardless of who does the deed. None of the things I mentioned makes any one in that group right or wrong but it does however make them responsible for what they say about other peoples reading and interpretations. It requires them to respect the others opinions and thoughts and somewhere down the line we hopefully come to a conclusion and concensus is arrived at too. Till then we just have opinions and nothing more. Bill




