The Second World War occupies a special place in Russian memory. Between June 1941 and the liberation of Berlin in May 1945, over 26 million Soviet civilians, servicemen and women were killed fighting the Nazis. The war also occupies a special place in the history of Russian poetry. Poems written by Red Army soldiers were published in newspapers and broadcast on the radio. Alexander Tvardovsky's much-loved epic poem Vasili Tyrokin was turned into a play and a film. Alexei Surkov's 'In the Dugout' and Konstantin Simonov's 'Wait for Me' became well-known as popular songs.

Russia is Burning brings together for the first time in Russian and English over fifty poets, including Boris Slutsky, Boris Pasternak, Olga Berggoltz, , Alexander Tvardovsky, Samuel Marshak, Irina Bem, Evgeny Vinokurov, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky and Ilya Ehrenburg. It includes poems written by soldiers on the front-line and civilians in the Leningrad blockade, by emigre poets, by prisoners of war and Gulag prisoners, by poets who wrote 'for the drawer' and by later writers who tried to understand the war and its long-term effects on Russian society. Russia is Burning is a testimony to the power of poetry to resist Fascism and to the extraordinary heroism and endurance of the Soviet people in the war against Nazi Germany.