guys.
1. from the formal viewpoint, Vasily Zaitsev was a marine.
2. No step backwards order just motivated the troops, as many soldiers' and officers' memoirs state. Before that, it was disorderly retreat. After that, the retreat started to cease.
3. Yep, it COULD be that in 400.000-people Stalingrad there were 500.000 civilians in summer, 1942, as the city was an important evacuation hub (see Nekrasov, In Trenches of Stalingrad). But no one dares say the people were not evacuated. Just they were coming and coming from the west. Also, in 1941 and 1942 there awere opeople who refused to evacuate. Justy it was their home, and all that.
4. The thesis about NKVD holding mass executions to run weapons productions... I am awfully sorry, but it was simply crap instead of facts.
a) there was simply no need to oppress people like that, making them obey orders: the reppresions boom of late 1930s put everyone to obedience.
b) people in Europe, not to say in Russia, are community-minded, so I can't imagine regular failure to obey orders.
c) by summer 1942 the motivation of the people was already like this: it is not just the government's affair, it's one of my own, as the German forces carried the regime that was far from friendly to the people - just remember that by that time SOME of the territories occupied by the Nazi, were already liberated, so there WERE facts of nazi violence and regular pillage revealed. And the propaganda machine provided the people with them.
d) guys, I do not know if you do, but the evacuation hazzle of 1941 and 1942 was much less disorderly as it could be - as the evacuation plan was compiled well before the war, for every defence-related plant and factory - the hardware and people as well. So, who'd work on those plants back in Siberia, when NKVD shoots workers in huge numbers? But they did issue weapons, and land lease weapons were a great help just for teh period of plants movement and start of their work. Already in 1943 and 1944, the national weapons production was in full swing, decreasing the precentage of aircobras, vallentines etc in the troops. The US help with raw materials, transport aircraft, trucks and jeeps was great, no crap. But the import of weapons was vital only in transition period of 1941 and 1942.
5) I would like to have some info on why Russian data is either a fake or incomplete info, while the guys who bnever crossed teh Atlantic possess the Sacred Truth in their books. Especially bearing in mind that during the Cold War there was a lot of semi-propaganda stuff (on both sides!!!) that crept into regular historiography, distorting the real picture. Not to say Europeans and especially Russians have a more community-oriented mentality, so it is completely wrong to tell those days' guys motivations from the viewpoint of a 21-century American.