Outspoken men did not normally last long in Stalin's Russia. Marshal Zhukov was an exception, although he came very close to sharing the fate of many Red Army officers who offended Stalin. One of the few generals to survive Stalin's purges, he beat the Japanese in a border battle on the Mongolian frontier on the eve of the war, then saved the day in 1941 when the German invasion was only halted at the gates of Moscow. From there to Stalingrad and to the ultimate battle for Berlin, Zhukov was the Soviet Union's leading commander.