What is the Eastern Front known as in Russia?

by mediumhydroncollider

I don't suppose it's as simple as the Western Front?

PaintedScottishWoods

This can be a bit confusing, so I will use italics for Latinized Russian and bold for English translations

If you're asking about the Eastern Front of WWII, the single massive continuous front (geographic area) is known by Russians as Великая Отечественная Война (Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna), meaning Great Patriotic War

The Patriotic War (Otechestvennaya Voyna) would be WWI, which is also sometimes known as Вторая Отечественная война (Vtoraya Otechestvennaya Voyna), or Second Fatherland War, with the First Fatherland War being the war of Napoleon's invasion, which confusingly was the original Patriotic War

Confusingly for English-speakers, the Great Patriotic War consisted of several military units also known as фронт (front in Latinized Russian), which in this case means a Soviet military formation equivalent to an army group of most other militaries, and not the geographic area you are asking about. You can see the flag on the right in this video says "1 БЕЛОРУССКИЙ ФРОНТ" (1st Belorussian Front in Latinized Russian), which most accurately translates to 1st Belorussian Army Group in American English

Because of the two meanings for "front", it would be confusing to read, "The Eastern Front had many fronts." The proper translation would be, "The Great Patriotic War involved many army groups, some of which were named 1st Belorussian Front (1st Belorussian Army Group), the 2nd Belorussian Front (2nd Belorussian Army Group), and 1st Ukrainian Front (1st Ukrainian Army Group)."