The defense of Brest Fortress was the first battle of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union launched on 22 June 1941.

The German Army attacked without warning, expecting to take Brest on the first day, using only infantry and artillery, but it took them a week, and only after two bombardments by the Luftwaffe.

According to the terms of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the territory around Brest and 52 per cent of Poland was assigned to the Soviet Union.

The fortress had no warning when the Axis invasion began on 22 June 1941, and it became the site of the first battle between Soviet forces and the Wehrmacht.

Only two air raids took place on 29 June 1941, but then only the East Fort on the northern island of the fortress was bombed by the Luftwaffe.

[10] The initial artillery fire took the fortress by surprise, inflicting severe material damage and personnel casualties.

[13] Of the fighting around East Fort, the commander of the 45th Infantry Division, Generalmajor Fritz Schlieper, wrote to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, German armed forces high command) It was impossible to advance here with only infantry at our disposal because the highly-organised rifle and machine-gun fire from the deep gun emplacements and horse-shoe-shaped yard cut down anyone who approached.

We were ready to use any means available to exhaust them... Our offers to give themselves up were unsuccessful...[14]Although the Soviet soldiers in the opening hours of the battle were stunned by the surprise attack, outnumbered, short of supplies and cut off from the outside world, many of them held out much longer than the Germans expected.

[14]Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf wrote, We only gradually managed to take one defensive position after another as a result of stubborn fighting.

[1] On 26 June small Soviet forces tried to break out from the siege but failed and suffered many casualties; that day Zubachyov and Fomin were captured.

[17] Zubachyov was sent to a POW camp in Hammelburg where he died; Yefim Fomin was executed on spot under the Commissar Order and as a Jew.

20.VII.41.It is said that Major Pyotr Gavrilov, one of the best known defenders of Brest (later decorated for it as Hero of the Soviet Union) was captured only on 23 July.

[18][24] The only documented proof of resistance after 29 June 1941 is a report that states that a shoot-out occurred on July 23, 1941, with the subsequent capture of a Soviet lieutenant ("Oberleutnant") the next day.

Stories and novels, poems and historical studies will be written about you, about your tragic and glorious struggle, plays and films will be created.

Ten years ago, the Brest Fortress lay in forgotten, abandoned ruins, and you - its hero-defenders - were not only unknown, but, as people who mostly went through Hitler's captivity, you encountered offensive distrust of yourself, and sometimes experienced direct injustice."

At the end of the novel, when Pluzhnikov was captured by the German troops and was interrogated, he simply replied "I am a Russian soldier," and died due to exhaustion from months of fighting.

Vasilyev's novel was dramatized in the 1995 film I, a Russian soldier (Я — русский солдат), directed by Andrey Malyukov.