Robert Capa (1913–1954) - Stalingrad (today Wolgograd) 1947

Under sit besøg i Kyiv blev Steinbeck chokeret over krigens ødelæggelser i Ukraine, og for at formidle det til amerikanerne skrev han:
"If the United States were completely destroyed from New York to Kansas, we would have about the area of destruction the Ukraine has. If six million people were killed, not counting soldiers, fifteen per cent of the population, you would have an idea of the casualties of the Ukraine. Counting soldiers, there would be many more, but six million out of forty-five million civilians have been killed. There are mines which never opened because the Germans threw thousands of bodies down into the shafts."
A Russian Journal, (1948) forsøger kun “honest reporting, to set down what we saw and heard with editorial comment, without drawing conclusions about things we didn’t know sufficiently,” according to its author John Steinbeck. Bogen opstod ud af Steinbeck og Robert Capa’s ønske om at producere en øjenvidneberetning om hverdagslivet i Stalinistiske Sovjetunionen. Parret begav sig langs den såkaldte Vodka Circuit – Moskva, Kyiv, Stalingrad og Georgien – i fyrre dage mellem den 31. juli og midten af september 1947, og dokumenterede menneskene og landskaberne, de mødte.