Published in the familiar soft back landscape format we have come to expect from this prolific publisher.

It has 48 pages with 109 black and white photographs, along with 8 sets of plans in 1/35 scale and 7 sets of side view plans in 1/70 scale. It has over 15 sketch drawings of close up details and internal diagrams. There are 8 colour artworks of various tanks in service. It is bilingual only as far as the captions, which is great pity; more about this later.

The quality of the photographs varies from excellent to mediocre, which is understandable considering the conditions at the time they were taken. This in no way distracts from the research value they offer. In fact in some ways it adds to the whole aspects of warfare. Some are obviously factory photographs and the others are combat photographs.

The quality of the draughtsmanship is once again outstanding and the selection of plans and sketches help to understand the tank better. The artwork is what we have come to expect from this company just brilliant. We in the west can learn a lot on how artwork should be presented from this publisher.

Unfortunately there is a down side and it in three critical areas. Some of the photographs could have been better presented as they are too small and on the odd occasion too many to a page to be of any  use. Not all the plans are the same scale, which is a pity. Lastly and this applies to all the publications printed in Russia, why do they still insist in publishing in Russian? The text is  meaningless to us in the West. They would increase their sales 10 fold if they published in English since this is the International Language of modelmakers, historians, researchers, and now the Internet.

Overall final comments, the authors are to be congratulated in filling an other gap in the early development of tanks in Russia. I would have been willing to pay more if it had, had more pages to  accommodate the larger sizes for the plans and photographs.

Now that a kit of the BT-7 is to be released later in the year, this book will help you to add all those missing details. And turn it into a showstopper. Get your now before they sell out.

Even though it has its faults, these I can live with and I recommend it to all those who build Russian Tanks or study the history of them.

Ian Sadler

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