The book is devoted to the operations of the Red Army in the summer-autumn campaign of 1942 and their development in the winter of 1942-1943. For the first time in Russian literature, Operation Mars near Rzhev was analyzed in detail in November-December 1942, "Star" and "Jump" near Kharkov in the winter of 1943. Alexey Isaev puts forward and defends the thesis that the High Command of the Red Army has its own strategic offensive plan for the 1942 campaign, purposefully carried out and became the basis for the successes of the Red Army near Stalingrad and Leningrad and the final transition of the strategic initiative into the hands of the Soviet command. The book is as depoliticized as possible and written based on declassified documents and a wide range of foreign sources.