Великая Отечественная Война (pronounced Velikaya Otechestvenaya Vaina; lit. Great Fatherland War, but more often translated as Great Patriotic War) is how the subset of the events which involved the Soviet Union during World War II (or the Second World War as it's known in Europe) is referred to in Russia, then and now-- the complete saga (which had many, many theaters with little or no Russian participation-- just like there was little or no Allied participation on the Eastern Front) is known as Вторая Мировая Война (pronounced Vtoraya Mirovaya Vaina; lit. Second World War).

That specific subset of events occurred between 22 June, 1941 when the Wehrmacht invaded Russia breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of nonaggression between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union and 9 May, 1945. The German name for these maneuvers was Operation Barbarossa. This is the reason for the dates specified on the watch. It would be cool if you posted a picture of the watch itself as well because memorabilia from that period is quite cool-- but I digress.

That end date I mention is interesting to look at as well because Victory in Europe Day is celebrated in the United States and Europe on 8 May every year because the 7 May, 1945 signature of the so-called instrument of surrender stipulated the official end of hostilities would take effect at 23:01 Central European Time (CET) on 8 May, 1945. Moscow Standard Time (MSK) is an hour ahead of CET so 23:01 8 May, 1945 in CET was 00:01 9 May, 1945. That day is referred to as День Победы (pronounced Dyen Pabyedi; lit. Day of the Victory, but more often translated as Victory Day) in Russia and is celebrated with great élan to this day.

The Soviet Union then (and increasingly the Russian Federation today) put far less emphasis on the collective resolution of the Second World War as being a collaborative effort than that which is typically reinforced in the west. In fact, many modern Russians generally feel that the descendants of their erstwhile allies disregard Soviet participation as supportive or unessential while simultaneously putting forward that the Western Front was itself trivial. Both are historically incorrect-- the Red Army was responsible for killing three of every four Wehrmacht soldiers and lost roughly 8.6 million soldiers killed-- the Red Army broke the back of the Wehrmacht. This is commonly understood in educated circles. Simultaneously, the western allies delivered 17.5 million tons of war materiel to the Soviet Union-- no paltry sum at no small expense, as the Allies typically delivered these at fire sale prices. Unfortunately, internet memes circulate a great deal more quickly than historical writings about the war-- especially among those whose first language is not English.

That said, during those years, Russia lost something 30% of their fighting-age male population which had demographic effects from which the country has yet to fully recover (obviously all the brain drain and economic woes of the rest of the Soviet Union's existence did not help either). As a whole, the population of the Soviet Union in 1941 was ~196,716,000. In 1945 it was ~170,548,000. Modern Russia has ~142,857,000. Both of those World War II era numbers numbers are estimates which cannot be considered completely valid because under Stalin, Soviet government documentation was quite prone to, shall we say, touching up. In fact, Stalin initially publicly claimed the amount of deaths during the war to number only about 7 million-- an absolutely insulting minimization which was the official position of the Soviet Union until the Khrushchev-era and De-Stalinization.