I'm tearing my hair out looking for the exact wording / context and author of this quote, so I know it's a long shot.
The quote is something like "Don't take one step back" or "Don't take a single step back", something on those lines about not retreating even a single step. I'm almost certain it's in the context of the siege of Leningrad and may have been said by Stalin or Marshall Zhukov. I love the emotion of the quote so much, I'd love to have a concrete copy of it since I use it a lot. I even named one of my bands Leningrad after the heroism and tradgedy of the siege.
Please can you help me?
Many thanks,
Valentin

It was a policy stated by Stalin. Pretty damned bloody one too, with the efforts the commissars made to enforce it too.

Same thing was promoted in Stalingrad, causing that whole seige in the first place since neither side would give up. I'm a bit rusty and unexperience when it comes to strategy, but the USSR had plenty of space to trade for time rather than staying stuck like that. The Nazis were overextended in the winter as is, they could have just pushed it further off and completely ruined them, like Napoleon. But that's just an outlook.

Yes, Stalin wasn't fit to command a single troop, let alone all the forces of the USSR. Zhukov, nonetheless, did well to carry out his orders and keep the city for 900+ days. The cost of life was high (I've read estimates are around 800,000) but please don't get me wrong, I have no admiration for Stalin, nor do I agree with his kind of politics. I just think it's a tribute to human spirit that the unprepared and unsupported men and women of Leningrad did so well to keep the city in their impossible position. There's no worse scenario than being shot by both sides, as Zhokov himself was to find out in later life.
Thanks for the background.
Valentin

Ive heard over a million combined deaths, but the carnage in that battle was so emmense I doubt a good estimate will ever be truely attained.

In russian it goes like that - (fonetical transcription) "Ni shaga nazad" - "No step back"

Ohhh. Russia... *Shivers of the thought of hearing the Russia language*