Snipers of the Soviet Union played an important role mainly on the Eastern Front of World War II, apart from other preceding and subsequent conflicts. In World War II, Soviet snipers used the 7.62x54R rifle cartridge with light, heavy, armour-piercing (B-30), armour-piercing-incendiary (B-32), zeroing-and-incendiary (P3), and tracer bullets. Most Soviet World War II snipers carried a combat load of 120 rifle cartridges in the field. Unlike the militaries of other nations, these snipers could be men or women. In 1943, there were over 2.000 women functioning in this role, many girls from age 17.
The top ten of Russian snipers are, no 10, Stepan Vasilievich Petrenko: 422 kills, no 9, Vasilij Ivanovich Golosov: 422 kills, no 8, Fyodor Trofimovich Dyachenko: 425 kills, no 7, Fyodor Matveyevich Okhlopkov: 429 kills, no 6, Mikhail Ivanovich Budenkov: 437 kills, no 5, Vladimir Nikolaevich Pchelintsev: 456 kills, no 4, Ivan Nikolayevich Kulbertinov: 489 kills, no 3, Nikolay Yakovlevich Ilyin: 494 kills, no 2, Ivan Mihailovich Sidorenko: around 500 kills and no 1, Simo Häyhä: 542 Kills (705 unconfirmed) .
The greatest battle between two snipers with on one side was Vasily Zaitsev, the Soviet army’s deadliest sniper, with some 400 kills. On the other was one “Major Erwin Konig,” the head of the German army’s sniper school in Berlin, whom the Nazi high command had dispatched to Stalingrad to hunt down Zaytsev. They met on a fateful afternoon—two marksmen stalking each other on the battlefield. Only Zaytsev survived. Zaytsev describes slaying Konig in the afternoon after sunlight glints off the German’s rifle or scope. But for that to happen, Konig must have been facing west into the setting sun, even though the German lines were facing east. Or so the popular retelling would have you believe.