Colonel Dmitry Zhankovskii of Red Army Military Intelligence will experience the hell of World War II in the surreal world of Soviet Russia. Not only does he fight the German invaders at home and abroad, he must also defend himself against the agents of the rival Soviet intelligence agency, the NKVD. His war is fought in an environment of total engagement. In Red Tears, the first of a series of novels, we accompany Zhankovskii across the early days of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, from the all encompassing surprise of the Nazi attack which results in the almost complete governmental and military collapse of Stalin's regime, to the "Miracle of Moscow" when the city is saved in December of 1941. Along the way battles and individual actions are fought and personal qualities are put to the ultimate test. While Dmitry and his colleagues battle the German invader, more ominously he and his lover, Irina, a Red Army medical doctor, are targeted for elimination by the NKVD. The plot recounts how Dmitry's parents, devoted Bolsheviks, died mysteriously during the 1920 Communist invasion of Poland, in which Stalin was the Chief Political Officer. Who or what is behind the plot is a continuing mystery. Whether training partisans, fighting desperate last stands at the Russian rivers to slow the rapidly advancing Nazis, or recounting his saving of Lenin when he was a teenager, Dmitry opens the Soviet world for us to view in all of its brave new hopes and crushing destructiveness. Due to his parents' status and his own status as Lenin's savior, Dmitry moves easily amongst the highest levels of the Soviet government, military, and Communist Party. His journey encompasses not only love and war but exposure to the true nature of the Soviet state.