Russian State Archive boss: "USSR wasted time preparing for WWII" [Archive]

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Das war einmal

3rd September 2010, 17:45

Tavarisch_Mike

3rd September 2010, 19:19

Well what i know Stalin did know that Hitler would evetually attack the Soviet Union, but he didnt belive that it would come so soon. What ive heard is that he thought that the invasion would come not before 43 and yes he ignored the early signs, in this case Stalin was really naive, he belived that honest Adolf actually wouldnt break the mol-ribb-pact.

The Author

3rd September 2010, 19:20

Clearly, Mironenko has been repeating the official story of what happened on June 22, 1941 that has not been said already. He may claim that it is necessary to look at things scientifically and not politically, but it is not as if he has not done the same thing. I have a lot of trouble believing people like him, and it is not due to ideological reasons but because no one, regardless of status or access to archives or history is infallible in their views. It is an interesting article nonetheless. But I have my doubts.

Why? Well, there are interesting opposing views and documentary evidence on what happened on 6-22-41, and I've been keeping my eye on them on Stalinism.ru. Using Google translate, there was an article titled, <<22 июня в документах, мемуарах и исследованиях>> which is related somewhat to Mironenko's official statement. It can be found here,

http://stalinism.ru/Stalin-i-Armiya/22-iyunya-v-dokumentah-memuarah-i-issledovaniyah.html

Nevertheless, I am going to take the trouble to use Google Translate to cross the language barrier and try to get an idea of the article in question because what it has to say is interesting. If a Russian-speaking comrade can provide a better translation, please do so. Because it is this very language barrier that has denied access to non-Russian speaking users of key important information which could shed light on a lot of issues and debates that range around here. Anyway, here goes:

June 22 in the documents, memoirs and studies | Print |
By Oleg Kozinkin
Studying the documents the last days in the western districts, as well as some memoirs, again returning to the directive number 1 of 21 June 1941, it is possible to reach a clear conclusion: the highest officer of the Red Army, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff has received from the Head of Government IV Stalin all necessary and possible guidance to reflect the German aggression, a few days before Germany attacked the USSR. And the "Directive № 1" - only the last link in the pre-war orders and instructions to prepare the Army for war. It was just the latest directive of the peace time, and not "first", which began a long war. And even more so this directive does not result in part of the western districts on alert.

At that time, returning to the "Directive number 1 of 21 June 1941", be noted that, in fact, the Directive itself was originally introduced into circulation is Marshal of the Victory GK Zhukov. Knowing the propensity to marshal his creative writing whitening, you can also doubt that this directive to "one hundred" true, accurate, that this directive was given by Zhukov literally and completely. It seems that it is still a "truncated" in the text, as indicated in his works Martirosyan. It is possible that because of this it seems to many researchers "strange", like as "an exceptionally ignorant, unprofessional and almost impossible", and "absurd" the Directive? Nowhere and nobody raises a number of the Directive of archival data. It seems that only "Recollections and reflections" and is known for its text, and even her "number» - «№ 1 of 21.06.1941, the". But Zhukov himself wrote that was originally prepared by himself another directive, more volume. Stalin asked Zhukov and Timoshenko Vatutin the Kremlin and Zhukov, "brought with him a draft directive for the troops" and Stalin agreed to the border district of this directive and declare the same in these districts "full alert". But Stalin's proposal Zhukov Vatutin made a new, shorter "draft directive Commissar" in which Stalin had made some "amendments and gave the People's Commissar for signature. And further, Zhukov and leads in his memoirs, the text of the Directive № 1 from 21.06.1941, the ". But it is good to read the original text of the Directive № 1 "on June 21, 1941. And it's good to look with one eye on the "original", with "corrections" of Stalin ...
And the fact that this Directive still only informs and confirms the exact date of the German attack, complements the previously ordered to be alerting the western parts of the districts, but does not cause these parts to full combat readiness (for a pair (!) Hours before the attack in Germany to "release" Marshal Zhukov), confirms the single question posed by our generals "to summarize the experience of past wars, its initial period in the late 1940's:" When it was ordered the troops on alert in anticipation of attack of Nazi Germany in the morning on 22 June; what and when were given instructions to implement this order and that was done the troops? ".

A bit more about this and other issues just below, but for now I would like to bring memories of the officers who served in two different districts. One was a major (or rather the captain), political officer in the tank battalion Panzer ID Chernyakhovsky in PribOVO, the Baltics and the other was a colonel in the KOVO first, in 1940 Chief of the Operations Division of the Headquarters of 12 Army of the Kiev Special Military District, then chief of the Operations Division staff of the Kiev district.

From the memoirs of General Chernyakhovsk ID Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Chelombitko Antonovich, head of the 7 th Division of the Military Order of Lenin Academy of armored and mechanized forces of the Soviet army name IV Stalin. (Recorded August 23, 1948 Recorded from the words of Lieutenant-Colonel Chelombitko. Recorded researcher of the Central Museum of the Red Army Ivanov OT TSMVS. B-4/67. L. 1 - 7 vol. Original. Typescript.)

"... Until the month of February 1941 I worked as a Commissioner (political officer) of a separate tank battalion [27 th] Armoured Brigade, which was then in Riga. The battalion stood at 40 km from Riga, in Latvian SSR Mitau. At the end of February 1941, our battalion was transferred to Riga and incorporated in the [28 th] Panzer Division, whose commander was appointed lieutenant colonel Chernyahovskiy Ivan Danilovich ... "

"... The latest study was the commander 12 - June 15, 1941 After three days of classes Chernyakhovsky called a meeting and announced the division on the teaching and ordered to prepare a part of the intervention and wait for further orders. The situation in those days was already tense, so after the meeting, we surrounded the division commander and began questioning him, will not we have to fight soon. "Perhaps we shall fight" - I asked Chernyakhovs'kogo. - Then you must assemble a campaign thoroughly. "I do not know - said Chernyahovskiy - but if you'll take an extra load, useful for training regiment. Anyway, in the economy and the thread is useful, as the proverb says."

We arrived at the regiment, and soon received orders: 18 - 19 June to speak at the doctrine. The route: through the settlements of the Lithuanian SSR. The division was made. On March Chernyakhovs'kogo I have not seen, as our regiment was a separate column.

June 22 our regiment stopped to rest in the forest. Suddenly we are flying aircraft, the commander declared the drill, but suddenly the aircraft started to bomb us. We realized that the war began. Here in the woods, at 12 h [ace] of the day we listened to Comrade Molotov on the radio and on the same day at noon were the first military order Chernyakhovs'kogo's speech division forward in the direction of Siauliai.

June 24th, our regiment joined in the first battle with the enemy tanks ....»

But it describes the last days of peace Baghramian Bagramyan, who served in the KOVO (Ukraine) in Kiev district headquarters and is in the center of events, because and through him to the headquarters of the Kiev district just passed and the orders of the General Staff and the People's Commissariat of Defense in those prewar days. Therefore, his memories of a more detailed and interesting. Although it raises many questions ("So began the war, Moscow Military Publishing, 1971 http://www.fidel-kastro.ru/2WW/bagr_beginning/index.html): (http://www.fidel-kastro.ru/2WW/bagr_beginning/index.html%29:)

"... In early May, we received operational directive of the People's Commissar of Defense, which identified the problem forces the district to the case of sudden attack of the Nazis in our country.

The reader might question the need for such a directive: after all a reflection of possible aggression provided the plan covering the state border. But by the time the plan has not yet been approved by Moscow. Apparently, therefore, the People's Commissar decided a special directive to increase the combat readiness of the western border districts. Task was specific: to correctly identify the concentration of forces of our potential adversaries, grouping their forces to prevent invasion of the aggressor on the territory of the USSR, to be ready to protect our stubborn defense mobilization and deployment of troops District.

In the first echelon, as provided plan (covering the state border, which should be available in each border region - K.O.YU.), preparing for the deployment of the infantry corps, and the second - Mechanized (one for each of the four armies). Infantry units had at any price to stop the aggressor in the line of border fortifications, and broken through its power to destroy the decisive blows by heavy mechanized corps and air force. In addition to the plan covering the directive commissar demanded from the command of the district hastily prepared in 30 - 35 kilometers from the border of the rear line of defense, which derive five infantry and four mechanized shell comprising the second echelon troops District. All these movements of troops were to begin on special order Commissar ...

... During this work I had a question: was very small provided the total depth of defense - only 50 kilometers. And if the enemy breaks through? Who will meet in the rear? After all, in command of the district reserve forces had little ...

... In the second half of May, we received a directive instructed to take from the North Caucasus Military District and placed in camps management 34 Rifle Corps from Hull, four infantry and one mountain division ... The first train was due to arrive May 20. ... In late May, much of the commanders of the district staff was busy reception and accommodation of the incoming troops. The train followed the train.

... In early June we learned that management formed the 19 th Army. It will be located in Cherkasy. In the new army will consist of all five divisions of the 34 th Rifle Corps and three divisions of 25 Infantry Corps of the North Caucasus Military District. The Army will be subordinate to the Commissar. Be headed by Commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Lieutenant-General Konev. A day later, the General Staff warned: to adopt another, 16-Army Lt. Gen. MF Lukin. It will be transferred from the Lake Baikal in the period from 15 June to 10 July. ... So, is the second army was sent to us. It happy. The apprehension that in case of war with us in depth will not have the troops disappeared. (These two armies were not the district, and the subordination of Moscow and received orders from Moscow direct, bypassing the district headquarters - K.O.YU.)

... After the first decade of June (approximately 8-9 June), the commander called a council of war, where the chief of the intelligence reported everything he knew.

... Commander. - And that's what. I believe we must immediately give the troops constituting the second echelon of our district, the following order: Each regiment carried supply of ammunition to have a direct units at each light and heavy machine guns, and half their stuff in the tapes and discs; grenades stored in the warehouses, but now distributed on their units; half ammunition artillery shells and mines to keep the final running order as anti-aircraft guns, too, reserves of fuel for all types of vehicles have at least two gas stations: one - in the car, another - in barrels. Finally, I propose to minimize the time to bring troops on alert: for the infantry and artillery units to be reduced to two hours, and for the cavalry, motorized and artillery on mehtyage - up to three hours. In short, the second-line troops brought in a state of high alert, as well as covering forces abroad.

... When Kirponos paused, rubbing his forehead with his palm, as if trying to remember all he said, chief of staff could not resist.

- Well, what about the Divisions of completion of the second-tier buildings to full staff? - He asked Kyrponosa. - After happen that now, and the body will not be able to bring a significant part of the artillery - no tractors, transport, many Division provided no means entirely, not on what will be a lift of ammunition. And people do not have enough ...

- ... To man up people of our divisions and corps up to full staff, provide them with the missing fleet of tractors, cars and other means of national economy, require a partial mobilization, which in cross-border military district is almost impossible to hide from the Nazi intelligence. It is unlikely that management will be able to go to such measures.

- Well, not so impossible - not rest Purkayev - but let's at least a refund artillery regiments and an engineer battalion with the county grounds in the division.

With this agreement all ...

... Less than a day after the discussion at the Military Council of new measures to improve the combat readiness of troops, both received a telegram from Moscow. General Staff asked for: on what basis of the fortified area were ordered to take a foreland? Such actions may provoke the Germans to an armed clash. Instructed to immediately cancel this order ... "

Interestingly behaves commander. On the one hand, he willfully gives a command to take "foreland and war almost ready to begin tomorrow, on the other - only at the insistence of the Chief of Staff of the District agrees to return to landfills artillery and combat engineers in locations?

"... In Moscow, of course, the situation on the other side of the border knew better than us, and our military high command took action. June 15 we received orders to begin June 17 nominations in all five infantry corps of the second tier to the border. We have all been trained to do so. The reader will remember that we are still in early May on the orders of Moscow have done considerable work: they collected the directive corps, conducted reconnaissance of routes and areas of concentration. Now it remained only to give the team performers. We were not slow to do so.

In preparation for a forced march-maneuver corps was given two to three days. Part of the divisions was to address the evening of June 17, the rest - one day later. They take with them everything necessary for fighting. In order to stealth move troops should only at night. All they need from eight to twelve-night transitions.

The plan was developed in detail. 31-Rifle Corps from the area Korosten the morning on June 28 was supposed to go to the border near Kovel. Corps Headquarters until June 22 ought to remain in place, the 36 th Rifle Corps was to occupy the border area Dubno, Kozin, Kremenets the morning of June 27, 37 Rifle Corps already in the morning on June 25 it was necessary to focus Rayo Peremyshliany, Brezzhany, Dunayuv , 55 Rifle Corps (without a single division, which remained in place) were instructed to go to the border June 26, 1949-th - to June 30.

To the Nazis did not notice our movements, areas of concentration of buildings were not chosen on the frontier, and in a few day's march east ... "

It was about these 5 infantry corps of the second echelon numbering under 200 thousand men, that starting from June 18 began to move to the border from the depths of the district and wrote in his book, A. Isaev the outbreak of war in the Kiev District - "Dubno. 1941. The greatest tank battle of World ". Office 36 th, 37 th and 49 th infantry corps (ie, commander of the ordinary and partly NCO and enlisted) participated in all military companies - Polish campaign, Bessarabia and Finnish companies. That is, were the most capable and prepared part of the area with military experience? But behind the infantry corps had to move another 4 mechanized corps and the second echelon. That was still about 150 thousand soldiers. (Just KOVO was 8 mechanized corps.)

"... To oversee the organization of the march Military Council asked to send representatives in each division, the operations department headquarters. But they simply would not be enough, so we had to attract officers from other divisions.

... All this led to recall the general Purkayev my long-standing request for an increase of the operational department. Was present during the conversation General Antonov shook his head:

- Ah, Bagramyan where there increased. They say that the General Staff ordered within two weeks to identify new downsizing central and regional units to 20 percent ... So that you count up with someone you leave.

- Where is this order? - Asked irritably Purkayev.

- Today or tomorrow we shall get it - calmly answered our specialist "for the organization and mobilization."

- Here is where we get, then we think. - After a pause, Purkayev added: - Operations Division I will not have to cut. Look at the expense of other departments.

- Yes, Max A., - readily agreed Antonov. Remained happy that at least reduce, the Chief of Staff of banned ... (Order this we have not managed to do: the war began. And then I began to think that simply could not have been such an order a week before the fighting began. In writing this book, I decided to check, did not fail to put me in memory. It turned out that such an order was nevertheless .)...»

It is interesting going to organize "downsizing central and regional units to 20 percent" in the General Staff, a week before the start of the war. Sorry for the marshal who wrote up such a thought of the People's Commissariat of Defense in Moscow .... Too bad it did not leave his memoirs Army General AI Antonov, that the June 41 th was the chief "Orgmob Management («... specialist" on the organization and mobilization "...») KOVO, and ended the war chief of General Staff. Anton believes promoted by and even "pet" of Stalin, and he is just, and could shed light on those days, and to clarify - what share of responsibility borne by all officials. From Stalin to the District Commander. However, in those years, when it became established version of the GK Zhukov at the event "22 June", such as the Antonov, through which according to their official duties were all the orders and directives of the General Staff in the district in the last week of peace, chose to remain silent ...

Thus, summing up the memories of the officers of different levels in different districts (especially the word of the Operations Division of the District "), who wrote his memoirs at different times and under different rulers, it appears that the Baltic states and Ukraine, part of the county from 15 June to get started orders of the General Staff to nominate to the border, on the defenses. Part (rifle corps in KOVO and armored divisions in PribOVO) raised the alarm, and they were all equipped to the almost complete state personnel from among the reservists called to "training sessions" in May, was fully mobilized and armed for combat action. That is, all combat troops in the Baltic states and Ukraine, have received these orders (which plainly says Baghramyan, then serving in KOVO) in fact were put on "full alert" orders from Moscow! Not to "own initiative", not "against the tyranny of Stalin," namely, on orders from Moscow, they put on a war footing and began to advance to the border. (In this case these parts, even small arms has had the most new - self-loading rifle SVT-38 SVT-40, that arm, above all, it is combat units of the infantry.)

In the western district headquarters on June 15 came a telegram from Moscow to nominate alerted parts in "concentration areas" on the "doctrine" (that fact already means bringing parts of these districts in the "full alert", because without bringing on a war commitment is not possible to send a military unit, even in theory). The command of these districts gave the orders for the District of its portion of the second echelon for nearly a month of manned and equipped for warfare, to come up with these parts in the pre-defined lines of defense of the border. Or vice versa, some parts were set aside from the border, on pre-prepared lines (and were in fact part of the first tier, which are directly at the border).

However, the nomination of different parts required in order to disguise begin on different days - 17 and June 18, 1941 th. However, only the commanders of divisions and corps knew the exact contents of these telegrams, orders from Moscow. The other officers reported that the decrease of "the teachings" ...

Also, different parts of the pose its own particular time of arrival at the defenses. Perhaps the thought that these days the enemy is not to go so far from the border inland. Perhaps even doubted the Kremlin that it is next Sunday, June 22, will attack Germany. And it is possible that these dates are arrival at our defense had been appointed parts in the same KOVO intentionally. With such a scatter-time infantry corps after June 22 did not have time to take an elementary defense and dig in (and still had to explore the area to hold events, etc.), because of the delay units into battle and crushed the Germans, it is piecemeal. If only because the Germans had already captured the data lines. And our troops into battle on the move ...

For example, "... 31 th Rifle Corps from the area Korosten the morning on June 28 was supposed to go to the border near Kovel. Corps Headquarters until June 22, ought to remain in place; .. "(in Korosten). Korosten is located 300 km from the border and 250 km from Kovel in a straight line on a map (in the reality of Korosten to Kovel up to 300 km of roads). Housing was supposed to withdraw from Korosten June 17-18, and arrive in Kovel to June 28. 10 days allotted small corps to go 300 km. 30 km per day. '... From eight to twelve-night transitions ...».

If on foot, as it often was in the course of the war, then, just 10 days and need. But in general in the prewar army had to be machines for transportation of personnel and even at night it is possible to pass a much greater distance than 30 km. But most importantly, Kovel is located only 60 km from the border, on which the direction of Kovel just goes to highways and railways. Interestingly, the command KOVO how much time is devoted to border guards and border parts of the first line of defense for Kovel, if determined the arrival of the second tier as much almost a week after the attack? (Although for the 36 th Infantry Corps, which "was supposed to take the border area of Dubno, Kozin, Kremenets the morning of June 27 .." The time of arrival at Dubna to June 27, at 120-150 km from the border, can still be a stretch to assume "acceptable.") However, time marches could still be cut if necessary ...

Together with the orders from Moscow to stand part of the second echelon in the areas of concentration "to" exercise ", and then to bring the remaining pieces in" full combat readiness, commanders of the western districts is now 15 th, and even more 18 June 1941, and certainly probable date of the attack were reported by Germany - June 22. But the command KOVO poses problems often come to the district as much a focus of the end of the month. First Kirponos ready to go to war for 10 June and gives commands to take a "foreland, what gets a scolding from Moscow, but having received clear instructions from Moscow to the nomination is the most" foreland "June 15, gives the command units to overcome the distance of 300 km as much 10 days! Sorry not write Baghramyan who has set deadlines for withdrawal to the border of the Rifle Corps - New York City or the Commanding General of the Kiev Special District Kirponos, in which both served as chief of the Operations Division of the District Colonel Bagramyan?

The Author

3rd September 2010, 19:23

Here's more:

Why I am sure that the command of the western districts is now 15 th, and was, indeed, on June 18, knew the likely date of the attack - June 22, 1941 th? A stated in the issue before the generals (among them the must have answers to the survivor of the war General Purkayev, Chief of Staff KOVO before June 22) after the war: "When it was ordered the troops on alert in anticipation of an attack Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, what and when were given guidance on the implementation of this order and that was done the troops? ". Perhaps ordinary commanders, as the same tank battalion commissar in a tank division in Chernyakhovs'kogo PribOVO, and said June 15 that they fall off "the teachings" on alert, but the District Commander and the commanders of major compounds clear about what they were part of the decrease in boundary. They knew the date of the attack commanders districts, and even less aware of the date "22 June" Chief of General Staff of the People's Commissar of Defence. What they were informed personally by Stalin, who gave the command to move to border troops of the second echelon of June 15. Once in the newspapers on June 14 was published that same "TASS" that supposedly "disorienting" Red Army commanders.

So, the command PriOVO, Zapovit and KOVO June 15 received a telegram about the beginning of the nomination of individual parts of the second echelon "for teaching". Already a precise and specific "order of enforcement to combat readiness in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22 was issued on June 18 in the three districts simultaneously. After that, the Baltics and Ukraine, the command was initially given the necessary orders to their subordinate units of the second tier from 15 June to move up to the boundary line of defense in place of "concentration areas" (Again, it is not possible to "exercise", not resulting in part at least "high alert", and it is rather pointless to send the "doctrine" to the border is not part of the full state). And then, after June 18, were brought into full alert and the remaining parts of these two districts and the more should have been alerted and depart on the defenses the remaining part of the second tier - 4 mechanized corps in KOVO that were supposed to depart with shooting under the May directive, and all remaining parts of counties included. However, small parts of the second echelon in KOVO was given "eight to twelve-night transitions, and some of them were expected to arrive in the concentration areas and the defense much as 8 days after June 22. A mechanized corps in general, seems to have remained in the field of their locations?

However, having received orders on June 18 for bringing in "full alert" parts of their districts, and the exact date of the attack - June 22, at the command of the western counties still had time to give commands to the quicker pace for the arrival of infantry units of the second echelon in the concentration areas and to engage in frontier Defense in 30-50 km from the border as envisaged by Directive Commissariat of Defense from the beginning of May 41 th. After all, even in early May, the district received "... operational directive of the People's Commissar of Defense, which identified the problem forces the district to the case of a surprise attack on our country Nazis ...», which the painted steps districts in sufficient detail. And in parts of the second wave that began after June 15, move up to the border, were representatives of the operations department of the district staff, subordinates, Colonel Bagramian.

Marshall IH Baghramyan and said that it was stated in the still of the May directive Commissar SK Tymoshenko: "In the first tier, as provided plan, preparing for the deployment of the infantry corps, and the second - Mechanized (one for each of the four armies). Infantry units (first tier) were required at any price to stop the aggressor in the line of border fortifications, and broken through its power to destroy the decisive blows by heavy mechanized units (second echelon), and aviation. In addition to the plan covering the directive required the people's commissar of the command County hastily prepared in 30 - 35 kilometers from the border of the rear line of defense, which derive five infantry and four mechanized corps, comprising the second echelon troops District. All these movements of troops were to begin on special order Commissar ...».

"Special Order commissar" to "move the troops" entered the Western District of June 15, 1941-th. However, in those days was still hope to move the date of the attack (which Stalin knew exactly) at a later date. To do this, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR VM Molotov had tried to go to a meeting with Hitler and the last test conducted in parallel in intelligence, timing attack. However, after the overflight border on June 18, it became clear that German troops would commit an attack from day to day, and 22 June was a real date. After that, the evening of 18 June and given encryption of the General Staff in the Western District of bringing to full combat readiness of all parts of these districts and reported accurate (extremely probable) date of the attack - 22 June 41 th.

Upon receipt of this encryption, June 19-20, at the command of the western counties still had time to speed up the marches of the infantry of the second echelon in the defensive line and then to raise the remaining portion of the second echelon (mechanized corps), and to accelerate their advancement to the frontiers of they are intended - the mechanized corps which were to simply roll up like a skating rink, its power, the invading enemy. But this did not happen in reality. Perhaps our generals were convinced that it is only in Poland and France, the Wehrmacht was going to fight the rapid blows-breakthroughs "blitzkrieg". But in Russia the Germans must "change" tactics and will spend a week in order to pass these 30-60 km from the border and provide our glorious Red Army arrived in time for the defenses, the time to practice defense, and the Germans will continue to mark time on this line while mechanical parts had not arrived to the place of battles ... (And as if on a plan of our command of the first echelon rifle standing directly on the border and had to provide part of the second echelon to exit on their lines ...)

However, it seems that both "thinking" for the Wehrmacht one Kirponos and Pavlov, commanders KOVO and Zapovit. Yes can still Zhukov, Timoshenko in Moscow. The same Rokossovsky writes in his memoirs: "... Even for those scarce materials that I could get from various sources, could draw some conclusions from the actions of the German troops in Poland and France. The Germans have borrowed some of the theory of deep battle. In offensive operations the lead they look to the tank, motorized units and bombers; concentrated all power in one fist to smash the enemy in a short time, struck a powerful wedge, leading the attack rapidly along converging lines. Of particular importance they attached surprise ... "

Rokossovsky also wrote that still serves "... of Primorye and in Transbaikalia in 1921-1935 years ...», to parts of the border districts' ... There was a well-developed plan and cover the deployment of main forces, he changed in accordance with changes in the overall atmosphere in the theater. In the Kiev Special Military District that, in my opinion, lacked ...

And this is one of those memories KK Rokossovskogo that were cut during the first Soviet edition is his book "Soldier's duty" in 1969:

"... Service in the Red Army, the troops stationed in border areas, taught me a lot. Anyway, had a full view of all activities undertaken by the troops, whose task was to ensure (cover) the deployment of the main forces in the event of war. The combat readiness of these forces has always been determined not days or hours ...

... Quite carefully studying the nature of the German forces in operations in Poland and France, I could not figure out what the plan of action of our troops in this situation in case of attack by the Germans ... "

But then it turns out that the commander of the 9 th Mechanized Corps KOVO, second tier, Maj. Gen. KK Rokossovsky do not put the command of the Kiev district aware of the start advancing parts of the first and second tier, and that his body should begin to advance after 18 June?! Also, no mention Rokossovsky and the May directive of the General Staff, which writes Bagramyan, as is the very version of the "plan covering" ... But as Major General, commander of the mechanized corps of frontier district of KC Rokossovsky simply had to know the contents of the May directive of the General Staff that painted the action of the district in case of attack. It turns out that before the commander of the 9 th Mechanized Corps, General Rokossovskogo Chief Novograd-Volyn garrison command of the Kiev district simply did not follow any mayskauyu directive of Moscow, no order from Moscow on June 15? " But he simply had to be, as commander of the second tier, put the command of the district notified on June 15, when the extension to the boundary of the infantry of the second tier! But this is generally not in the memoirs of Marshal KK Rokossovsky.

Reading further memories Bagramian and reaching events of June 18, when the county went to a telegram of bringing parts of these districts to full combat readiness, it is clear that Baghramyan anything about this cable, too, did "not know" or disingenuous. After all, his "Memoirs" were written after the already published and approved versions of the war against Zhukov, on which part of the western districts, were presented in full alert until the night of June 22, but no team until June 22 of the General Staff and Commissariat defense for the western district was not at all. However, about one telegram from the General Staff Baghramyan said. That's what Baghramyan wrote about those days.

"... On the same morning (June 19) received a telegram from Moscow, Zhukov that the People's Commissar of Defence ordered a battlefield management and on June 22, throw it in Tarnopol. Instructed to keep it "in the strictest secrecy, as to warn personnel of the district staff.

... According to our calculations, all front-line management of transport by road was not only difficult, but too much. Therefore it was decided to use the railway. District Commander ordered the railroad to send the train from Kiev in the evening on 20 June and the main headquarters convoy - in the first half of the next day.

- And what about the troops? - I asked the Chief of Staff.

- So far received only available on the district administrative staff. But you need to lose no time to prepare all the documentation on the operational plan of the district, including the plan covering the state border, and not later than 21st June by train to send it to the proper protection of the General Staff. After this, together with his department quit following us by car, to no later than seven o'clock in the morning the 22nd June to be in place in Tarnopol.

Naturally, I expressed surprise that the command goes to the command center without surgical department: in fact happen that it will not be able to control the troops, not having to hand any officers operators or specialists hidden connection. But the proposal to leave me two or three officers, and others headed by my deputy to send along with the Military Council was not approved Purkayev. This is not necessary, he explained: in the morning on June 22 will have an operational division in Tarnopol, and before that he probably did not need.

... Evening of 20 June we held the train and in the middle of the next day - leaving for the vehicles.

... Saturday (June 21) we have finished sending all urgent documents to Moscow. By the entrance of the district staff drove a few buses and trucks.

... I rode in a car at the head of the column. Glanced at the newspaper, which did not manage to look during the day. On the pages there was nothing alarming.

And yet my heart was restless. Apparently, because I and my assistants knew much more than reported in the newspapers.

... Unforeseen delays disrupted the schedule of the march. The looming prospect that by 7 o'clock in the morning (22 June) I do not know how to lead his convoy in Tarnopol. To equip the army in pursuit of precise fulfillment of the order is not allowed to put up with this. Besides the night tormented by the thought that at dawn can break out war. I order to expedite the movement. Dawn found us not far from Brody - a small, buried in verdure Ukrainian town. Here we have another ten minute stop.

... Back at the head of the column, I was about to give a signal "Next", when suddenly the air was heard over the roar of Brody. All raised their heads, staring at the sky. We knew that here we have an airfield, which is based fighter and attack aircraft. Something sooner our pilots began their working day ...

... But I heard booming explosions ... "The war started.

Maybe IH Baghramyan and had the gift of "foresight", but most likely, and he also knew that June 22 will be war. Oh, and then he tells about the status of the fur case of the second echelon.

"... cover the majority of compounds (part of the first tier) were dispersed in a considerable distance from the state abroad, and the body of the second echelon were from him in the 250-300 km. Is it possible to delay the enemy (the first tier parts)? Mobilization of other second-tier buildings will be destroyed, and they will join the battle in their current state - with a great shortage in manpower and equipment ...».

How could deter the Germans rifle corps first echelon, that day, too, were still en route and never reached the area of concentration? A "shell second-tier KOVO that were on the border" of 250-300 kilometers (those same five infantry corps of the second tier, a total of about 200 thousand men and four mechanized corps, a total of under 150 thousand bayonets), which should They were to meet the enemy in the 30-50 km from the border, and that began to move up to the border after 15 June to Sunday 22 June really never left the concentration areas, were dispersed on the "far removed from the state abroad, and, quite simply, were still on the march.

The border guards, of course, performed the miracles of heroism, but the Germans simply bypassed our outposts and moved on, and really a handful of border guards and border parts, could not stop the Wehrmacht at the border for several days. The infantry corps on a march into battle with the Germans scattered, parts and on the move, without preparing defensive positions, the infantry against the tank spearheads the Wehrmacht. Our first wave of Germans had just wrapped on the track, and our infantry and mechanized corps of the second tier into battle and with the move. Without training.

Read more memories of the commander of the mechanized corps of the second echelon in KOVO Major General KK Rokossovsky. As he greeted the war, as after June 22, broke the locks on the warehouse, to get weapons and ammunition on county databases (whose command was also not put the command KOVO aware of a possible attack, and on Sunday 22 June absent from their jobs), as requisitioned trucks as receipts scribbled with ... But Rokossovsky even refused to give up given to it by artillery on the ground "for the firings" a week before June 22 by the Chief of Staff has asked Purkayev June 10 to withdraw from landfills and back into the part, and which has even written a GK Zhukov, saying that commanders KOVO and Zapovit on his own initiative sent to the artillery of their constituencies on the grounds, did not return it to the side on the eve of war.

Rokossovsky as commander of the mechanized corps in general has not been advised command of the Kiev District of telegrams from the 15 th and even more so by June 18. He was not aware of whether his Mechanized Corps part of the second echelon of defense, should be nominated in the concentration area. He did not set properly advised, even that diminishes the district headquarters in Tarnopol on June 20 and why: "... It was learned that the headquarters KOVO began redeploying from Kiev to Tarnopol. What was the reason, we were not informed. In general, must reiterate reigned for some calm and no information was received from the top ...». "Top" for the corps Rokossovskogo means of district staff, to whom the subordinate body Rokossovskogo. This 9-Mechanized Corps Rokossovskogo personnel was staffed until the state, but the technique and the same obsolete tanks - only 30%. But Rokossovsky served as a commander of a mechanized corps for six months, and in KOVO served in the autumn of 1940. (His 9-Mechanized Corps began its formation in December 1940, 2, 4 th and 8 th Mechanized Corps were formed in July 1940. But unlike the other four mechanized corps KOVO, 15 th, 16 th, 19 th and 22 th, that began to form at all in March 41 th, body Rokossovskogo was manned tanks only 30%. Smaller tanks were only in the 24 th Mechanized Corps, which also was formed in March 41 st.)

It seems that in KOVO, as in Belarus, the District of Pavlov's also tried to ignore orders from Moscow to align parts on full alert of 18 June, and were not aware of their subordinate generals, division commanders and corps' second tier "of orders and telegrams from Moscow in the last days before the attack?"

From the memoirs Baghramyan: "... received the order to discard the invading enemy behind the line of the state border, the division of the first echelon of our troops under the cover for the continued bombing rushed to the west. First hit by German aircraft while for the troops was a surprise, did not cause panic. In difficult circumstances, when everything that could burn, it was engulfed in flames when the eyes were crumbling barracks, houses, warehouses, disrupted communications, commanders have made every effort to maintain leadership. They are determined to follow the requirements of fighting, they became known after the autopsy kept their packages.

The first were made to meet the enemy advance units 45, 62, 87 and 124 th Infantry Divisions 5 th Army, 41, 97, 159 th Infantry and 3rd Cavalry Division 6 th Army, and the 72 th and 99 th 26 infantry divisions Army. (72 th Mountain Division 26 th Army Kiev PSB commander Maj. Gen. PI Abramidze, of which a little later, and this is seems to be part of the first tier? - K.O.YU.)

In order for these units occupied border fortifications, they needed at least 8-10 hours (2-3 hours to rise to anxiety and the collection, 5-6 hours to march and organize the defense). And to bring to full combat readiness and deployment of all forces of the armies covering the state border plan called for two days! ...

These "two days", it's just that most the time necessary to become an 18-th of the order for putting in "full alert" all parts of the district to fulfill its attacks to date - to June 22. After June 20 The district staff still received from the People's Commissar of Defence ordered a front-line management and by June 22 to get him in Tarnopol, where and decline of Kiev ...

But if KOVO performed very least some measures to improve combat readiness, the Zapovit, Belarus, and orders of the General Staff of the nomination in "concentration areas" of June 15, some parts of the first and second-tier, and the disposal of alerting in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, "which was received on 18 June, and on which he had already raised all of the second tier - District Command, DG Pavlov was generally just completely ignored and prosabotirovano. That is about 400 km of virtually open-front along the Soviet border. At which, according to "completely random" and "unforeseen" our command coincidence, the Wehrmacht, and he delivered his main attack. After which in the end, and the rest of the district-fronts were to crumble like dominoes ...

That is what is written on the subject, Colonel A. Savvino in the Defense Ministry newspaper "Red Star" in № 220 from 12.03.2008, the (http://www.redstar.ru/2008/12/03_12/6_01.html): (http://www.redstar.ru/2008/12/03_12/6_01.html%29:)

"... Under pressure from the deteriorating situation on the western border of the June 18 Stalin ordered the People's Commissariat of Defence of additional precautionary measures. Some researchers argue that with the permission of the Kremlin chief of staff sent a command of five western military districts and three fleets (the Baltic, Northern, Black Sea), telegram or a directive concerning the reduction of troops and forces in readiness. The text of this document, researchers do not have. But there is indirect evidence that any document in the army and navy left. Not to be unfounded, we present the facts.

In 2008, the publishing house Kuchkovo field "book was published by Vladimir Yampolsky" ... Destroy Russia in spring 1941, which included material on the Western Front to the Commander General of the Army DG Pavlov. The minutes of a closed hearing of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of July 22, 1941 is such an episode. Member of the Court, AM Orlov reads the testimony of the defendant - the former head of communications staff of the Western Front, Major General AT Grigorieva during the investigation: "... And after the telegram Chief of General Staff of June 18, troops of the district were put on alert. " Grigoriev, confirms: "All this is true" ...

... Are another document proving the direction of 18 June 1941 addressed to the Western Military Region Command telegrams to Chief of Staff. This study, carried out in late 1940 - the first half of 1950 the military-scientific management of the General Staff under the leadership of Colonel-General AP Pokrovsky. Then, even during Stalin's life, summed up the experience of concentration and deployment of Western military districts under the plan covering the state border on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. To this end, five questions were put to the participants of the tragic events before the war, who held command positions in the armed forces of the western districts (fragmentary answers to some questions were published in the Journal of Military History "in 1989)

The questions were as follows:

1. Was brought to the troops in part, for their part, plan to defend the border, and when and what was done and the command headquarters for the implementation of this plan?

2. How long and under what orders the troops have begun to cover the border and how many of them have been deployed before the outbreak of hostilities?

3. When it was ordered the troops on alert in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, what and when were given instructions to implement this order and that was done the troops?

4. Why do most of the artillery was in the training centers?

5. It is staffs were trained in the management of troops and to what extent this affected the course of conducting operations of the first days of the war?

The editors of Military History magazine has managed to publish the answers to the first two questions, but when the turn came to answer the third question: "When it was ordered the troops in readiness?" Someone over ordered to cease publication. But from the first two answers should be (especially the generals answers to the question number 2, "How long and under what orders the troops have begun to cover the border and how many of them had been deployed before the outbreak of hostilities?" - KO Yu), that the telegram (or directive) Chief of Staff, apparently was.

Colonel-General armored troops PP Poluboyarov (former head of avtobronetankovyh troops Baltic PSB) recalled after the war: "On 16 June in 23 hours 12 Command Mechanized Corps had received a directive on the reduction of connection alert. The corps commander, Major-General NM Shestopalov reported it in 23 hours on June 17 on his arrival from the 202 th Motorized Division, where he has verified the mobilization readiness. 18 June corps commander raised formations and units on combat alert and ordered to bring them within the planned areas. For 19 and 20 June it was done. June 16 order of the district staff put on a war footing and the 3rd Mechanized Corps (commanded by Maj. armored troops AV Kurkin), which in the same time concentrated in the area.

Maj. II Fadeev (former commander of the 10 th Infantry Division, 8 th Army PribOVO): "June 19, 1941 was received an order from the commander of 10 Infantry Corps, Major General IF Nikolayev on bringing the division in combat readiness. All parts were immediately removed to the area of defense, took the pillboxes and artillery emplacements "

Maj. Gen. PI Abramidze (former commander of the 72 th Mountain Division 26 th Army Kiev PSB): "June 20, 1941 I received a coded message to the General Staff:" All units and parts of your connection, located on the border, take back a few kilometers, that is, the line of prepared positions ... All the units should be put on alert. Execution bring to 24 hours of June 21, 1941 "...

There are some other archival documents showing that the June 16-20, 1941, in the west of the Soviet Union put on a war footing. In: Handbook of military documents of the Great Patriotic War (Issue 33), published in Voyenizdat in 1957, published a report of staff of 12 Mechanized Corps PribOVO the fighting corps in the period from June 22 to August 1, 1941. It reads:
"6/18/1941 PM Based on the directive of the Military Council of the Baltic Military District on the hull had been ordered for the number 0033 on the reduction in combat readiness of the case, speech to the new location and concentration ..."

The foregoing suggests that Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was not a surprise to command formations and the western military districts ...».

And the more Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was not "unexpected" for the commanders of the western most counties and the more so for the Chief of General Staff of the Red Army, Army General GK Zhukov and the Soviet People's Commissar of Defence Marshal SK Timoshenko, issued the very same orders to advance parts of the western districts closer to the border on June 15 in Moscow in the district, and even more so to order the reduction in full combat readiness of these counties, 18-19 June 1941.

Look again, that wrote Baghramian about those days. After all, surely its "answers" were written after the war on the very same 5 questions. And his memories in the early 1970's, he clearly and unequivocally is responsible for 2-nd question: "How long and under what orders the troops have begun to cover the border and how many of them had been deployed before the outbreak of hostilities?".

However, beyond any sort of hint at what were some other instructions on bringing into full combat readiness of 18 June, or at least the 19 th. But then again re-read the answer to the post-war issues Maj. Gen. PI Abramidze, former commander of the 72 th Mountain Division 26 Army of the same PSB Kiev, in which Chief of the Operations Division of the District served as a colonel IH Baghramyan: June 20, 1941 I received a coded message to the General Staff: "All units and parts of your connection, located on the border, take back a few kilometers, ie the line of prepared positions ... All the units should be put on alert. Execution bring to 24 hours of June 21, 1941 "...

Division Abramidze become "mountain rifle" just in the May 41 th, but she was always in the KOVO, participated in all events, from Poland to Finland and Bessarabia, campaigns, and subject only to Kiev, Moscow and not directly as Army Konev and Lukin. But this, located at the border division on June 20 was "a coded general staff" of alerting all of its parts! And the general Abramidze could get this "coded message to the General Staff" only from the staff of the Kiev district, from General Kyrponosa, his chief of staff and their immediate superior - the commander of 26 Army KOVO. And the division Abramidze accomplished this task and took her place on the "turn up prepared positions" of the first echelon.

Baghramyan indicates those parts that first went into battle: "The first were made towards the enemy advance units 45, 62, 87 and 124 th Infantry Divisions 5-Army, 41, 97, 159 th Infantry and 3rd Cavalry Division 6 - Army, as well as 72 th and 99 th infantry division 26 Army ...».

All Division 5 th and 6 th Army were from the KOVO (participated in 1940 in Bessarabia, the company, and prior to that in Finland and in the Polish campaign, that is considered that took military experience) and the team received only from the district staff, and not directly from Moscow, as they could, for example, the division of the 19 th Army Konev, or 16 th Lukin, arriving in KOVO in those days. Why did the commander of 72 Division Abramidze received a coded message on June 20 the General Staff, and he was tasked to deliver on its performance to its direct command (ie, the commander of the KOVO Kirponos) by midnight on June 21 (!!!) in 1941, as chief operating Department (!) Staff of the Kiev district about it "knows" and in his memoirs mentions?? Probably because this time the operations section of the Kiev district on June 20 being loaded onto trucks and the telegraph to the telephone to receive a coded message from the General Staff of the Enforcement part of the district on a war footing, just no one there ...

Baghramyan wrote that in the morning on June 19 "... received a telegram from Moscow, Zhukov that the People's Commissar of Defence ordered a front-line management and by June 22 to get him in Tarnopol. Instructed to keep it "in the strictest secrecy, as to warn personnel of the district staff "...». And then immediately switched to a story about how they were loading cars at the district headquarters on June 20. And told me that on Saturday, June 21, sent urgent documents in the Moscow district. That is, the Operations Division to the last until Saturday evening June 21 was still in the district headquarters in Kiev, and he could not accept "an encryption of the General Staff. It turns out that a little disingenuous IH Baghramyan?

However, in such a "cunning" Bagramian already catch a researcher Yuri Mukhin, in his book "If it were not for the generals, how Kyrponosa headquarters, which was and Bagramyan managed to overcome in the autumn of 41-second when you exit the" Kiev pot to 10 km in a few days ... Yes, and wrote his "memoirs" IH Baghramyan the beginning of war in 1971, soon after, in 1969 left "Memoirs" GK Zhukova, that all the blame for "not alerting" parts of the western districts blame on Stalin. They say he did not let him, and Tymoshenko result of these districts on full alert in advance, before Hitler's attack on the USSR.

Or maybe yet, given, and such command-encryption to bring parts of these districts in full combat readiness is August 18-19 and went to the Western District? And can "Directive number 1 of 21 June 1941", yet does not lead parts of the western districts on alert, but after a GK Zhukov, "remembered" and Bagramyan? Moreover, this directive Baghramyan not really very great attention to in his memoirs. And the "Directive" it does not call - just a warning telegram, with specific activities. But it somehow "taken" much as 2:00 ...

"... In 0 hours and 25 minutes on June 22 county communications center in Tarnopol began receiving telegrams from Moscow. It is addressed to the commanders of all the western districts. Commissar and Chief of General Staff warned that "in the city may 22-23.6.41 sudden German attack, and demanded, not succumbing to any provocative actions lead troops in full combat readiness to meet the sudden attack of the Germans and their allies" . Next, in a telegram identifies the specific actions that should accomplish:

"A) During the night of 22.6.41, the secretive occupy firing positions fortified areas on the state border;

b) before dawn on 22.6.41, the disperse of temporary airfields all aircraft, in including army, carefully camouflaged;

c) all of the lead in combat readiness, the troops kept dispersed and camouflaged;

g) defenses to be alerted without lifting a bonded structure, prepare all the arrangements for blacking out cities and sites;

d) any other activities without special orders not to.

Only half of the third night is over welcome this very important, but, unfortunately, very lengthy directive. Prior to the fascist attack was less than one and a half hours.

The reader may ask, but not simpler it would save time to file from the headquarters due to the short signal, taking command of the district which would order the troops just as briefly: to enact "KOVO-41" (we call it a plan for covering the state border ). All it would take no more than 15-20 minutes.

It seems that in Moscow is not resolved. Because the signal of implementing the plan would mean covering not only the rise of all troops on combat alert and output them to their targets, but also for mobilization throughout the region ... "

But the whole trick is that the "Directive" not play a special role (or should!) To improve "readiness" of the western districts. It only confirmed the earlier orders and warnings that the war really begins June 22. It, "Commissar and Chief of General Staff, warned that" during 22-23.6.41, the possibility of surprise attack Germans "...»

But then Bagramyan Baghramyan rightly wrote that post in the district to recorded facts of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union directives, the signals on the enactment of "cover plans" (KOVO-41 "for the Kiev region), as announced in the Soviet Union in advance "Mobilization" was impossible. This gave Hitler the opportunity to accuse the Soviet Union and Stalin's aggressive preparations for an attack on Germany and throughout Europe, and Stalin had just could not go.

Memoirs of a tank battalion commissar (maximum of Major at that time) in the Baltic States and chief of operations of the district staff (Colonel) in Ukraine completely coincide in part on the events of 15 June 41 th when the team went from Moscow to advance to the border units of the district "to exercise. But they seem no mention of that on June 18 went to "encrypt the General Staff from Moscow to bring the parts of these districts on full alert (the abstract" alert "does not happen: either the" constant "in time of peace, or" elevated "or" complete "in the prewar and war period), which showed the commander of the 72 th Mountain Division 26, Army Maj. Gen. PI Abramidze the same Ukraine.

But the political officer of tank battalions nobody ever such "coded message of the General Staff" in popularity never set and will not put. But the head of the Operations Division of the district staff about the telegram-encoded on the 18 th or 19 th of June, which seek to separate divisions to hold them to set "milestones prepared positions, and determined that" All the units should be put on alert. Execution bring to 24 hours of June 21, 1941 ...», was obliged to know according to his official duties ...

However, it is very possible that can still get new ones, "complemented" versions of books Marshal Bagramian, with additions, that in those years were cut by the censor. Who knows ... But even that describe in his memoirs, Marshal IH Bagramyan Marshal KK Rokossovsky and Maj. Gen. PI Abramidze, just enough to understand the big picture in KOVO, but on the basis of this understanding, as should have been, and in fact the unfolding of the events in the western districts (Attach here and memories of an officer from Panzer Chernyakhovsky in PriOVO). A picture is like that.

According to the directive from the beginning of May 1941 is the first in the western districts were supposed to work out a "plan covering the border. According to this "plan", after receiving the command from Moscow, about 10-15 km from the border exposed infantry units of the first echelon. Behind them, in the 30-35 km defense is built second wave of infantry and mechanized corps. And then in the western districts, coming from the interior districts Army (the two armies arrived only in the Kiev region), are building the third echelon of defense. The first wave of infantry division is on alert "high" (at least) and begins to advance to the border (the "teachings"), or from the boundary, its boundaries after June 15, after receiving from Moscow that very special instructions ("All These troop movements were to begin on special order Commissar ...»). The second echelon, consisting of infantry and mechanized corps district (and even the commanders of major units) at this time should be notified (mandatory!) On the early parts of the nomination of the first echelon, and should also begin to be invoked to "heightened" state of alert and to move up to their defense line to the border - on the defensive in the rear parts of the first echelon.

The events associated with the date of June 15 and is talked about in question number 2, given after the war, our generals: "How long and under what orders the troops have begun to cover the border and how many of them had been deployed before the outbreak of hostilities?" . And their answers were partly published in the Journal of Military History "in 1989.

For more click to launch and to bring on a war footing "full", "in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, the remaining parts and mechanized corps were to be on June 18-19. And in these days of the second tier in which to coordinate the actions of the district staff officers were in the same KOVO should have received a command to accelerate the movement to the frontier to take up defensive positions at its borders by June 22. Time after June 18, to even inside their barracks Mechanized Corps had come to his line of defense is sufficient. After all, wrote as Operations Chief of Staff of the Kiev district, Colonel Bagramyan, "... to bring to full combat readiness and deployment of all forces of the armies covering the state border plan called for two days !...»

And the events associated with the date of June 18, referred to in question number 3: "When it was ordered the troops on alert in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, what and when were given instructions to implement this order and that was made the troops? "

After the war, and was asked a question about what had happened to the artillery district commanders and the Pavlov Kirponos that Rokossovsky and his ilk still managed to "defend" and leave their buildings, the question number 4: "Why do most of the artillery was in training centers? "

But the answers to these and more so on the following issues for a long time will be hidden from researchers ...

But what actually happened, and told the marshal and the marshal Baghramyan Rokossovsky that, as Maj. Gen. Abramidze, and General Purkayev after the war, gave their answers, "testimony" about how the war started ... Conclusions as they say, can themselves make. What was the command given by the Kiev District - "slob," "negligence, willful or not execution of their duties, which in wartime is considered solely as a betrayal, and what is actually executed command of all the neighboring Zapovit, Belarusian County? Historians in this for a long time to sort out ...

And finally I would like to stay and how to "illuminate" the theme "22 June" in some books as a sort of written with respect to Stalin, almost "Stalinist". In 2009 the book was published Vl. Suhodeeva "For Stalin! Strategist of the Great Victory ", previously appeared under the title" Commander Stalin ", in collaboration with BG Soloviev. And like about Stalin "only good", but as soon as the authors have come to the events surrounding the "22 June", about how Stalin took the decision - a primitive repeat of "officialdom" the Brezhnev era. As if not out on the subject of the book Mukhina, Martirosyan, Prudnikova, Sava and other authors in recent years. A five-volume Martirosyan "200 myths about Stalin" and "200 Myths of the Great Patriotic War", where the theme of the same "intelligence before the war", the theme of "Stalin, by decision-making" in the days before June 22 covered in sufficient detail what it takes. And all of these works were written several years ago and the authors had time and opportunity to become acquainted with them and even to try yourself poanalizirovat, but in the end, all the same set of stamps since Khrushchev, Zhukov. After all, the same military scholar and historian AB Martirosnya in his book on June 22. Blitzkrieg or treason? "Did an analysis of the report of General Golikov, which showed that this report is a model of professionalism of General Intelligence.

Here are some moments from the book "The commander of Stalin, as an example of a" naive authors ". If there is no fraud. Anyway, so as not to offend Stalin sincerely admire people who try to forgive and "ignorance" by the authors of some things. Example.

"... It is not possible to determine, at least in quantitative terms, how much came from the intelligence accurate information about Germany's preparations for an attack on the USSR, and much misinformation, even though the latter was more than enough. In particular, exploration NKGB was the victim of disinformation operation worked for the Nazis O. Burlings (nicknamed "Lyceum student"). And he was considered a valuable source. Through it was misinformation about the preparation of the invasion of Germany in England, Germany, the treaty of allegiance in 1939, and others the exposure of "Lyceum student was only after the war. Known today documents indicate that a number of reports actually been reaching disavowed by leaders razvedvedomstv and senior military commanders. Here are the facts concerning this issue ....»

Well, why not possible to determine how much was received accurate information about Germany's preparations for an attack? In the five-volume Col. SVR KGB AB Martirosyan (and not only) a very even a decent amount of these "reports stated. And Stalin is for "ignoring" these razveddoneseny most often "blamed", saying "Sorge an exact date, but Stalin did not believe him and sent him to hell ... But in general, Stalin could not as a statesman of such magnitude "trust" or "not trusted" razveddoneseniyam. He simply took into account and analyzed. But rather precise date of the attack - June 22, he knew about a month. Of course, that date, he assessed the same as a probability, but all the same as the most serious. And even more so since June 12, when the date of the attack reported from London, K. Philby and the "Cambridge Five". Read Martirosyan work on this issue. Coming soon to re-book on 22 June and there will be more precisely razveddoneseny on "date" the beginning of the war and about how Stalin was "aware" and to whom he "trusted" or "not believe". But to write that "a number of reports actually been reaching disavowed by leaders and senior military commanders razvedvedomstv" can still be either out of stupidity and thoughtlessness, or even of meanness. And lead with the exact words of the same Golikov? But the same military scholar and historian AB Martirosnya in his book on June 22. Blitzkrieg or treason? "Made a detailed and powerful analysis of the report of General Golikov, which showed that this report is a model of professionalism of General Intelligence.

Read on and carefully as possible:

"... Chief of Intelligence, the Red Army General Golikov's report to Stalin on Mar. 20, 1941, outlining options for action in Germany in the coming months, concludes:" 1. Based on all the above statements and possible options for action this spring believe that the most possible time, against the USSR would be the time after the victory over England or the conclusion of her honorable peace. 2. Rumors and documents that tell us about the inevitability of this spring, the war against the Soviet Union should be regarded as the misinformation coming from the British and even, perhaps, Germany's intelligence "...».

Let's deal with the words Golikov more and more time.

Golikov considered only option and that is that the war will begin in spring 1941. After all, it is about the spring of 1941 involved in a reducible message? : "Based on all the above statements and possible options for action this spring ...». That is, Golikov March 41 th does not build projections for the summer of 41-th. And only in the spring, for the next couple of months. Distant "forecasts" in this case they are not considered, and perhaps never in its jurisdiction.

More Golikov believes that "... possible time action against the USSR would be the time after the victory over England or the conclusion of her honorable peace ...".

We read again - Golikov believes that the attack on the Soviet Union can only take place after Hitler had a "win" England, or after an appointment with her on some version of peace, truce (Golikov believes that the best would be "an honorable peace "). And that is not true? Hitler was not really able to fight on two fronts. Such a war no one will stand it, no country in the world. Proposed to Hitler England "peace with honor"? Of course, suggested. This "Dunkirk" and most importantly - the flight of Hess May 10, 1940, if he has not made an "honorable peace", but at least it was actually signed a "truce". Indeed, since June 11, 1941, after the arrival of Hess, three! year, the mass of hostilities with England, the more massive air raids on England was not. For the "massive battles, we regularly give out fighting Rommel's corps with the British in Africa, which was strategically crucial for England, but for the Wehrmacht, this building was not big losses in the war with Russia, USSR. Instead, Churchill was "promised" Hitler did not open a second front in Europe until Hitler was fighting in Russia, and raids on Germany by Britain as the special was not. So what Golikov itself "wrong" and how he Stalin "misled"?? Golikov gave quite accurate predictions and the actions of Hitler and the actions of Britain as well. And his "prognosis" is fully confirmed.

"... And that's reported to Stalin May 6, 1941 People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral NG Kuznetsov. Report back to report that on May 14 will Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, he concluded: "I believe that this information is false, and specially designed for this channel in order to check how it will react to the USSR." ...

Well, again talking about a specific term of attacks - 14 May 1941. Which also did not take place. But not on June 22. Kuznetsov Stalin, so do not put either in a "misleading" in his own words. He expressed his opinion about the war began in mid-May.

But further in the book Suhodeeva shown quite true. Verne's reaction to Stalin's "suggestions" of his generals, marshals, described it in his Memoirs GK Zhukov.

"... June 14 People's Commissar of Defense S. Timoshenko and Chief of General Staff G. Zhukov was Stalin had a report on the situation in the western military districts have offered to bring the troops in full combat readiness. To this, Stalin said:

- You offer to hold the country's mobilization, alerting all the troops and move them to the western frontier? You know what this means war?

Stalin was right: it inevitably would have meant war. Moreover, it is not without reason to believe that troops in the western districts of many. In this he assured Tymoshenko .....»

Stalin was really quite right in this case. Any resounding statement in the army order giving leave to a higher, or full combat readiness, and the more ad "mobilization" (at least for the western districts) will inevitably become known in Germany. The work of the enemy's intelligence does not prohibit and not zablokiruesh at 100%. And this gives occasion to declare Russia aggressor with all its consequences. However, "routine exercise reservists" (as now conducted along the entire perimeter of Russia) called "aggression" can not. That's happened is that specified further in the article. By the way, Marshal Blucher, namely, including, for attempted during the events at Lake Hassan declared in the Far Eastern District of "mobilization", which could be regarded by Japan as a virtual declaration of war by the Soviet Union, and brought to trial, dismissal from the post (apparently Marshal remembered his youth, when in the early 1920's was the minister of war (the Commissioner), the Far Eastern Republic, DDA, decided to "rock the old-fashioned" and make a big war with Japan, "to avenge the intervention 20 x »??).

"... Still, the nomination of troops from the internal military districts, which was begun, was accelerated. It instructed regional commanders to withdraw from 21 to 25 June frontline management at field command posts. It was ordered to mask the airfields, military units, major military installations, paint camouflaged tanks to disperse the air ... "

I can explain again that these activities correspond to activities that are conducted during the Army or parts of a state of full combat readiness. However, they do not pick on and not hold the sponsoring the aggressors in relation to Germany, because they were not on a specific command, or to order - to "bring to full combat readiness", and in accordance with routine exercises ", approved in the early spring, the" summer courses ", including. No one, and never in such cases does not declare the country conducting such "routine" activities "aggressor".

Here goes farther from the authors primitive "falsification of history to the detriment of Russia."

"... June 21, Beria, who had a powerful exploration staff in his department, wrote to Stalin:" ... I insist on the removal or punishment of our ambassador in Berlin Dekanozov, which is still bombards me "dezoy" about the alleged impending attack by Hitler the Soviet Union. He said that this "attack" will begin tomorrow "....»

Actually, it is the Office of Beria and Stalin issued on the table, and from the same border including the exact date of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union - June 22, 1941. I would like to once again put a scoundrel Laurenti Palycha in traditional manner? Think of something else ...

Such a phrase of Stalin in general simply repeating stories Khrushchev: "... In this situation, Stalin could appear confident that soon the war will not start and will keep the peace for the Soviet people, at least for 1941 ...». It was not Stalin's no "confidence" in anything. And the more that he could avoid war with Hitler.

Stalin really expect to be able to "put off" the attack until 1942. He really tried to avoid the attack by Germany in the summer of 41-m. And if Hitler had "suffered" an attack in 1942, the 42-m it generally would not be able to decide on an attack on the USSR. So as soon as the summer of 1941 he had a ghost of a chance of success. But while Stalin had done everything in its power and power to attack in the summer of 41 on June 22, was not so crushing. He did everything in his power the entire 41-th year and the attack on June 22, Stalin did as head of the country all that is necessary in the circumstances. And even more so in terms of ordering the "Enforcement of the western counties in full combat readiness. And it was done a few days before June 22 and in fact this was done the entire May-June 41 th, when Stalin became head of the Soviet government, and as is confirmed by the surviving documents that there had not been told Zhukovs later.

But more and worth investigating - Who then is guilty in the defeat of the summer 41-th? But only the words of Zhukov in this matter as time and be treated with caution. He, as Chief of General Staff and bears legal responsibility for the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens including a couple of the People's Commissar of Defence Tymoshenko. But in these trying his words come off his blame on others ...

"... As for those who for what happened June 22, 1941 trying to clearly lay charges against Stalin, we ought to listen to the felt to Marshal Zhukov. He writes: "In the period of maturing the dangerous military situation, we military, probably did not do everything to convince Stalin of the inevitability of war with Germany as soon as possible and to prove the need for a little bit earlier in the life of urgent activities under the operational-mobilization Plan "...»

You should not have Stalin's convinced of the inevitability of war. " His duties have been simply and honestly perform as expected. And any event they were required to hold and under Stalin's orders, from June 14, when it was accurately known about the exact date of June 22, from the same "Cambridge Five". And then just to check how accurately these orders were carried out in the districts, and especially in the direction of the main attack the Wehrmacht, in Belarus, in the county, where he commanded DG Pavlov, the next "victim of Stalinist repression." That's it. And do not talk bunkum that Stalin "did not perform" their great "recommendations", "provided the operational-mobilization plan."

But more rightly quoted Vasilevsky. Though the measure of "responsibility Marshal" a few "wrong allocate and again repeated tales of Zhukov that Stalin" did not listen to "their smart generals. So what does the historical view Vasilevsky not objectively.

"I believe - believed Marshal Vasilevsky - that Stalin was not alone responsible to the country for a very unfortunate development of the war in its first few months. That responsibility lies with the other. Suppose that in the least, but it shall Commissar of Defence and senior level executives of the General Staff of the time. They are due to its high status and responsibility for the state of the Armed Forces were not entirely agree with Stalin and more firmly defend their views. " The authors believe that the opinion of Marshal Vasilevsky historically objectively ....»

More interesting, too, write comrades. Perhaps the words of the historian Martirosyan of "personal exploration of Stalin liked, although books Martirosyan is just not in the list attached Suhodeeva literature.

"... June 12, 1941 Chief of personal exploration of the Soviet leader, Colonel-General Alexander M. Lavrov told Stalin of Hitler's concentration of troops and their allies on the western borders of the Soviet Union and suggested that immediate mobilization and strengthening of the Red Army. To this, Stalin said: "mobilized, you say?" But this is tantamount to a declaration of war on Germany on our part. That's the dream of an Anglo-American imperialists, who are doing everything to push the Soviet Union with Germany. I think that we received in April, warning Churchill Germanic aggression against us has the same goal: to force us to the threat of Germanic invasions for a general mobilization, and thus engage in a war with Germany. Moreover, such a precedent in the history already was. In 1914, Russia did not declare war on Germany it just announced a general mobilization "(JV Stalin. Op. T. 15, Moscow, 1997, pp. 49 )...»

In this case, Stalin's words perfectly correct. In no case could not be allowed in official documents for references to "bringing in higher and full combat readiness" Red Army, and even more so on the "mobilization" in the Army. But then again in words and verbiage lies with the demagoguery of Zhukov, calculated that the majority of citizens simply do not understand what "bring to full combat, or at least" high alert "and to the extent held until June 22 event in the Army and especially in parts of the western districts correspond to the list of activities during the activation of parts of "high" and "full combat readiness.

The Author

3rd September 2010, 19:24

Part 3, :cool:

"... Particularly severe in its consequences was the delay in bringing into full combat readiness of those compounds in the border military districts and garrisons in the fortified areas, which were to go into battle immediately after the invasion of the enemy. This was largely due to a miscalculation in the estimation of the time of Germany's attack and the fear of provoking the Germans. Only on the night of June 22 border districts was transferred to the Commissariat of Defense directive on the reduction of troops in combat readiness. It was late in the receipt of the troops and was characterized by fuzzy goal-setting. The troops (except for the fleet and connections of the Odessa military district, who took the necessary action initiated by the People's Commissar of the Navy and Commander of the Odessa Military Districts) do not have time to take defensive positions, to change the airfields, aircraft lift into the air and take other necessary actions in that situation ... "

But on "delay," began to speak it Zhukov and other "heroes looters" after Stalin's death. All these years, it was Zhukov and "convince" a country that only the night of June 22 in the western districts, and went about putting in an order to alert parts of these districts, that of course "too late" and eventually became the cause of the tragedy of the summer 41 - First and eviscerated RKKA in 41 th year. Like, did not give Stalin lead the troops in advance - that's "profukali" attack ...

But in reality they are not only prosabotirovali compliance with orders of 15 - 18 June 41 on the actual enforcement of the western districts of high and full combat readiness, but the last order, confirming the earlier orders and telegrams demanding to meet the enemy in full combat readiness (literally : "... troops of the Leningrad, Baltic, Western, Kiev and Odessa Districts are to be fully operational to meet a possible surprise attack by the Germans or their allies ...»), so-called Directive № 1 pm on 21 June 1941 managed to pass both in the district that some of its troops have taken under fire in the early morning on June 22. Send short text important for several hours! But Zhukov and Timoshenko was worried that "Stalin did not give them cause of a full combat readiness"! And when they finally allowed themselves to show - again staged a sabotage fellow generals??

"... One reason for this situation lay in the fact that Stalin, who led the party leadership and the country believed that Germany will not be solved (for now at war with Britain) to break with the Soviet Union concluded a nonaggression pact, and the deployment of its troops on the Soviet border is carried out to political pressure to gain concessions from the Soviet Union. He considers the received data on the preparation of Germanic attacks in June as provocative ....»

Well, Stalin was rightly believed that Hitler would not attack the USSR until the present war with Great Britain. However, by June 41 th special war was not conducted on the Western Front "and Stalin knew very well what" negotiated "Hess Churchill May 10, 1941-th (Stalin knew the essence of the agreements with Hess by the British, that Britain and Germany stop active fighting. Stalin knew the essence of the "honorable peace", after which England had ceased to fight effectively and realistically, allowing Hitler to all parts of the cast against the Soviet Union. And that was enough for him to understand the situation ...). He knew that his hands are untied Hitler in the West and the attack is expected any day. And Stalin is not "consider the received data on the preparation of Germanic attacks in June as provocative ...». Read books Martirosyan.

Then again, the authors repeat the nonsense that "Stalin did not give consent to bring to full combat readiness" of the western counties and at the same time tied as "proof" of the words Meretskov (of the more "general"). But Stalin had just said about his hopes and plans, but not about his "conviction".

"... In an effort to delay an armed clash with Germany in order to use the time to prepare the army and the country's defense, Stalin did not consent to the troops in the border districts of full combat readiness, believing that these measures can be used by rulers Third Reich as a pretext for waging war. Marshal Meretskov recalled that in a conversation with him in early 1941, "Stalin said that staying out of the war until 1943 of course we do not succeed. Mired us willy-nilly. But it is possible that up to 1942 year we will stay out of war! (Meretskov. Serving the people. M., 1968, pp. 202). .. "

"... As Churchill wrote in his memoirs, Stalin in a conversation about the pre-war situation had told him:" I did not need any warnings. I knew that war would begin, but I thought I could win another six months or so " . (Shurshill W. The Sesond World War. Boston, 1950, Vol. III, p. )....» 496

But it is absolutely right when he said Stalin. Oh by anyone, but from Winston Churchill that I slept and saw how Hitler would shove in Russia, waiting for the "aid" and the more "believe" that his confidence and "warnings" can only be abnormal. And to Churchill was only one. Reporting on "dates" (which he most cases never made and no date is not actually reported) Churchill is provoking war and engaged. Yet when Churchill from MI-6 was the exact date of June 12, to communicate it to Stalin, he did not (as Roosevelt did not mention the exact information about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor in December 41 th). She was transferred to Moscow, the office of Beria, K. Philby and his comrades, the same "Cambridge Five". And it was after receiving messages from "kembridzhtsev" and was broadcast on the radio that same "TASS report, the evening of 13 June 1941 and 14 June, it also were published in newspapers. And on June 15 in the district gave the command to nominate part of the first tier to the border.

But the word enemy is always interesting.

"... It is characteristic, and the recognition of the German general Z. Westphal in written in the 50 years on orders from Defense Department article" War is expanding: "Stalin, of course, knew that at its western border to concentrate the German divisions. He knew what it was called, and consequently strengthened its forces. Despite this, Stalin, until the last moment, hoping that before the war will not come. Thus, strategically it was ready to attack the Germans, began at 3 hours and 30 minutes, 22 June 1941, but tactically it caught him off guard "(Fateful decisions. Moscow, 1956, pp. 61). ...

The last statement is not quite true. Keep in mind that "to be caught off guard" was still "profitable" to Stalin. Uva. Being a "victim of aggression" had to be precisely the Soviet Union, not Germany, but tried to show himself to be the beginning of the war Hitler. But while Stalin waited obediently blow Hitler and still do everything necessary to prepare the army and the country to war with Germany, for its attack.

Then again, stupidity mixed with truth, meanness from Khrushchev, Zhukov - Stalin "was far from reality" ... Of all people, but Stalin was a very even "real" person.

"... Stalin saw the inevitability of war against Nazi Germany, but was far from reality, when it was about the timing of its possible start. His tactic was that, in order to avoid worsening relations with Germany, not to give her an excuse to attack, to draw Hitler in negotiations to win time. The course of Stalin on it to avoid what could use Germany as a pretext for unleashing a war, was justified interests of the Soviet Union. But his miscalculation was that he did not see that the limit beyond which such policies are becoming deadly ... "

Then go do stupid of illiterate people who do not understand what they write and what is "accused" of Stalin ...

"... This limit was necessary to move as quickly as possible and bring the Soviet armed forces in full combat readiness, mobilization exercise ...».

What is "mobilization" could be carried out in those conditions and the more formal and more so before June 22? " What do you mean "as quickly as possible to bring the Soviet armed forces in full combat readiness"?? This is not just bawl ugly voice in the morning barracks "Roth LIFT !!!». Such events are processed within a few days at least, and these orders were given, starting from June 15-18, advance to a possible date of the attack were able to somehow get ready. And if in the same Byelorussia they do, not prosabotirovali (both performed very least in the surrounding counties), you would not have had the first captains in the air at 4.15 on 22 June to make Berastie only because it had been lifted not only the ammunition from aircraft but also armed by the team commander of the aircraft Zapovit General Kopets.

By the way, all those times the orders that came out before June 22 for the parts of the western districts, which are preserved today published a research on the beginning of the war, and everywhere are the dates "end" is not prescribed in regulations "by June 22" to finish the same "camouflage airfields, move into areas of concentration, etc. activities, and a little later. That by 25 June, and then by July 1. Why, if Stalin "knew the exact date?? And all can be quite simple. On the one hand, most likely, and possibly that of Stalin at first was deliberately misinformed the Germans. The Germans attacked on June 22, and the USSR work off "routine exercise" to a later date. And this "confirms" that Stalin, June 14-15, "does not know the exact date" and not ready for war, and certainly not going to "attack" on Germany, as Hitler tried to prove in his memorandum, "explaining" their decision to attack the Soviet Union-Russia. It's like a game of cards with a swindler. If I know that the enemy was sharper, but he does not know that I know: he is a loser. But there is another option and it is more probable. Our military, in the districts, that Moscow, having received the command to advance to the places where parts of the second tier on 15 June, set time for ending the output units in place to focus on more recent (22 June) time possible and with the approval of Stalin. However, having received June 18 from Stalin's exact date of the attack - June 22, and the team bring the remaining troops (and even more so of the first echelon at the border) in full combat readiness, they did not give commands to change the "time of arrival" parts, sliding to the boundary, not accelerate the movement of these parts. And part of the second echelon and continued to come in "concentration areas" already occupied by the Germans, and joined the fighting in parts. And some parts of the second tier (as fur body Rokossovskogo) did not receive such instructions. That is, in KOVO, only half performed the instructions from Moscow. But in any case, in reality, the "game" interposed factor frank sabotage and betrayal of the "individual" of Soviet generals the whole district, the Republic of Belarus, which simply substitute their part in the slaughter and do not fulfill their assigned orders.

Well, after all the true liability of the generals have Suhodeeva.

"... Much of the responsibility for the fact that the Red Army was unprepared to repel a sudden invasion of the enemy's lies with the leaders of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff. They failed to make the right conclusions from the existing military-political situation and take urgent action to bring the armed forces on alert ... "

And then again, words Zhukov as the "chief chronicler" BOB lead. Although in this case is not particularly lied Zhukov.

"... In considering the failures of political and military-strategic nature of Stalin on the eve of war there is every reason to take into account the opinion of Marshal Zhukov, who before the war chief of General Staff. He writes: "... Stalin's errors had certainly been, but their causes can not be considered in isolation from the objective historical processes and phenomena, from the full range of economic and political factors ... comparing and analyzing all the conversations that were conducted by Stalin in my presence circle of people close to him, I was convinced that: all his thoughts and actions are imbued with one desire - to escape war or postpone the onset and the certainty that it is he can ."...».

Stalin really tried until recently to avoid war in June 41 th. In 1942, ceased to reform the army and its modernization of the latest models of equipment, and the USSR would be too tough for Hitler. But it was in June 41 on Hitler remained a ghost of a chance for "success". He also knew what "reform" in the Red Army naprovodili Tukhachevskys until 1938. And he knew that after the 38-th only began rearmament program that the tank that the airborne equipment. But the incompleteness of rearmament and incompleteness in the reorganization of the same "30 mechanized corps," which started in the spring of 41 th Zhukov, and even hope for some "revolution" in the USSR and Hitler gave some hope for "Blitzkrieg". And then we can return to the "conversation" with Britain.

"... This is the bitter truth about the mistakes made by Stalin and the Soviet leadership in the assessment of the possible period of Germany's attack on our country. Of course, Stalin had in mind and this tragic blunder when he said after the war, May 24, 1945: "Our government has been quite a few mistakes, we had moments of desperate situation in 1941 - 1942 ..." ....»

The truth is rarely sweet. Music that's why then after the war Stalin began to question the generals on the beginning of the war and the third question was this: "When it received an order to the troops on alert in anticipation of an attack against Nazi Germany in the morning on June 22, what and when were given instructions Implementation of this order and that was done the troops? ".

Answers to these questions, partly published in 1989 on the troubled wave of "restructuring" is still secret, and nobody nobody shows. But the question and just said that orders for the enforcement parts of the western districts and the Red Army took place just a few days before June 22. The question is posed and specifically and quite clearly: "... what and when they were given instructions for the implementation of this order and that was done the troops?". But on the night of June 22, when supposedly, according to Zhukov and his fellow generals had been "ordered to bring them in full combat readiness" (and allegedly "late"), the time for it to raise part of the barracks and sent them to the places with the enemy that attacked, actually I do. "

There are now "Stalinists" books are written. Read and understand you can not - like a good word put in by such tales, or vice versa, regular (or old) the myth of the great "generals" and "Strategy" to support ...

So were, or were not given 15-18 June 41 th in the Western District of orders for the enforcement parts of these districts in "full alert"? Opponents of these "instructions" say it is "logical": not just published these same instructions and orders - meaning, they were not there, and talk about them can not. However, these same comrades, never saw published the same "secret protocols" to the "Molotov-Ribentroppa, believe that these" protocols "were. Apparently the fact that on their "reality" and "authenticity" all talk and it is "well-known fact! The presence of "secret protocols" is not confirmed by indirect instruments, and they have no options in the same international treaties Tel years. And the more their way, no one presented the public and historians. But they "have"!

Instruction is from June 15-18, for bringing parts of western counties in combat readiness is confirmed orders and documents preserved in the same districts. More precisely in those districts where these orders fulfilled. At PribOVO, KOVO PSBs remained inside, the district orders and directives to units and formations of bringing in "combat readiness" to raise an alarm indicating such a division or corps 15-16-17-18 June and send it in such a place , with the arrival of a "concentration area" on a certain date. And it happened in all the western districts, except Zapovit (in Belarus), where there was a frank sabotage orders from Moscow on June 15-18 on bringing into full combat readiness of the district. This fact is also confirmed by the memories of such marshals as IH Baghramyan and other surviving officers of the 41 th (such as Lt. VE Chelombitko), especially if they left their memories even under Stalin, when the lie about "June 22" not yet learned. The fact that part of the western districts had previously received actual instructions on bringing into full combat readiness to deploy (resupply personnel) of their units to wartime levels since May. And the more confirmed delivered after the War before the generals' issue number 2 and number 3 ". And the more confirmed by the answers to these questions after the war, those same generals, and even those individuals "answers" that managed to publish in 1989, "Military-Historical Journal. But these orders, orders from the 15 th and especially on June 18, "there can be no" because they are still "not published" and "no internet"! Here such here ostrich logic ...

Rjevan

4th September 2010, 18:01

Given that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was only the very last resort for the USSR after unsuccessfully warning the "democratic" nations about the threat which Nazi expansionism presented to the whole world and equally unsuccessfully trying to form an alliance of said nations against fascist aggression, given the constant Nazi rhetoric about the goal to conquer "Lebensraum" in the East, to eliminate the "Slavic subhumans" and free the world of the "Judeo-Bolshevik vermin", that the USSR was ready to defend Czechoslovakia as well as Poland against the Nazis while the Allies sacrificed these nations to the Nazis to direct them further eastwards, that the whole world knew about the Anti-Comintern Pact and that the whole Winter War was about getting in a better position to defend Leningrad against an attack from the north (and it were rather the close ties between Germany and Finland, the Wehrmacht officials advising and training the Finnish army as well as the military airports big enough to host the Finnish airforce ten times than the Finnish army itself which was seen as an open threat) and that defence was built up - I really have a hack of a hard time to understand how anybody could get away with claiming that Stalin (even if portrayed as a complete moron and counter-revolutionary who didn't care about communism and the working class) thought he and Hitler could be best buddies and that the Nazis would never ever attack the USSR.

That Stalin wasn't a prophet and therefore didn't know the exact date of the German attack and that he couldn't panic and jump the gun based on rumors about the possible date of the attack (which could have very well been spread by agent provocateurs as it was the case repeatedly in the past) should be obvious but is a different story than "Stalin was completely devastated because his childhood friend Adolf - totally unexpected - declared war on him ".

Adi Shankara

4th September 2010, 18:46

You also got to remember; Stalin is almost always seen as evil in the west, but he really didn't want millions of Russians to die from a Nazi invasion...and thus was the reason it was signed. the high death toll in WWII wasn't because Stalin sent ill-prepared men to their deaths...no, it was more because the Nazis were ruthless and practiced scorch earth policies and ruthless bombing campaigns.

KlÃ©ber

4th September 2010, 19:05

the USSR was ready to defend Czechoslovakia as well as Poland against the Nazis
Yeah because helping the Nazis defeat Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29) is really defending Poland against Nazis.

That Stalin wasn't a prophet and therefore didn't know the exact date of the German attack and that he couldn't panic and jump the gun based on rumors about the possible date of the attack
It's not that simple, the Soviet leadership was ignoring a number of warning signs - troop buildup, repeated warnings from all sorts of espionage channels, provocative probing flights by German reconnaissance aircraft etc, while Stalin was afraid to mobilize troops into defensive positions, let alone defense in depth, for fear of provoking an enemy who was about to attack anyway.

Stalin is almost always seen as evil in the west, but he really didn't want millions of Russians to die from a Nazi invasion...and thus was the reason it was signed.
No, the Pact was signed to divide Eastern Europe between Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg). German armies were not at the border when the Pact was signed, but thanks to the annexations agreed to by both governments, Hitler knocked out the buffer states, secured his Western border by annexing France without any annoyances in the East, and had time to mobilize all the industrial economy of Europe against the Soviet Union.

the high death toll in WWII wasn't because Stalin sent ill-prepared men to their deaths...no, it was more because the Nazis were ruthless and practiced scorch earth policies and ruthless bombing campaigns.
It was more that he refused to give the order to prepare for an attack until the last minute. And the army could not help but be ill-prepared since its officers had recently been massacred in the military purges, while their advanced doctrines of armored warfare and deep operations had been revised in favor of obsolete WWI-style static front and cavalry tactics. Meanwhile the Soviet armies were arrayed in offensive posture, operating on the idiotic notion advanced by Voroshilov (and which Tukhachevsky had criticized) that the war would be "won on the enemy's soil."

The Nazi war machine did not have some kind of supernatural powers, which dictated everything had to go exactly as it did, and thus Stalin was always sagacious and all-knowing. The Wehrmacht could have been defeated much earlier with better tactics and organization. Note that when Barbarossa started, the Red Army had a vast superiority over its opponent in armor and aviation, but Hitler's surprise attack neutralized the advantage and destroyed or captured vast numbers of Soviet weapon systems.

CJCM

4th September 2010, 20:40

Yeah because helping the Nazis defeat Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29) is really defending Poland against Nazis.

No, the Pact was signed to divide Eastern Europe between Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg). German armies were not at the border when the Pact was signed, but thanks to the annexations agreed to by both governments, Hitler knocked out the buffer states, secured his Western border by annexing France without any annoyances in the East, and had time to mobilize all the industrial economy of Europe against the Soviet Union.

Have you even the slightest understanding of what a Non-Agression pact even is?............

Edit

Seriously why does the left still has a weak spot for the so called ''polish government'' of that time?
Don't we find anti semitism and extreme reactionary policy bad things..?

KlÃ©ber

4th September 2010, 21:42

Have you even the slightest understanding of what a Non-Agression pact even is?............
Working together on the invasion of Poland and helping the Nazi Wehrmacht pin down and destroy Polish army units, sounds like more than a simple non-aggression pact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military_parade_in_Brest-Litovsk

Seriously why does the left still has a weak spot for the so called ''polish government'' of that time?
It's not about the character of the Polish government it's about who was attacking it, the overall international situation, and how this demoralizing blow came right after the Popular Front period when Communists of the world had been mobilized against fascism.

Funny how you put "polish government" in quotes though. Yes there was one. The fact that some Polish government officials ran to Romania or something does not justify collaboration with Hitler. Since the Stalinist position is that Poland was a military dictatorship, then the fact that Polish officers were still fighting the Nazis means the Polish state still existed when the Soviet Army helped the Nazis finish them off. Don't forget also that the Marxist definition of a state, as provided by Engels, is a group of armed people enforcing class interests.

Don't we find anti semitism and extreme reactionary policy bad things..?Wouldn't you support Iran, whose government is anti-Semitic and reactionary, against an imperialist invasion..? If the United States invaded Iran, and then the Turkish army showed up 15 days late and helped them mop up the Iranian resistance, I have a feeling you wouldn't give the Turkish gov't the benefit of the doubt..

CJCM

4th September 2010, 22:08

It's not about the character of the Polish government it's about who was attacking it, the overall international situation, and how this demoralizing blow came right after the Popular Front period when Communists of the world had been mobilized against fascism.

Oww for crying out loud, it wás the USSR who was guaranteeing the Checks for all different kinds of reasons, even the Trotskyite movement acknowledge that. I'm not starting this tendency crap cause you cling to some weird logic that everything between 1935-1989 was satanically bad in Eastern Europe.
Even the French general staff stated that war for the checks could ignite a 2nd anti fascist war.
And just give you the creeps i'll give you a non stalinist, stalin bashing source (http://mp3.lpi.org.uk/resistancemp/was-world-war-2-a-war-for-democracy-chris-bambery-41.mp3) for it

Working together on the invasion of Poland and helping the Nazi Wehrmacht pin down and destroy Polish army units, sounds like more than a simple non-aggression pact.

Yeah you do know that that Wikipedia article basses it's claim of Soviet expansionism on Steven J. Zaloga... Extremely convincing, if he only was not a reactionary himself :p

Wouldn't you support Iran, whose government is anti-Semitic and reactionary, against an imperialist invasion..? If the United States invaded Iran, and then the Turkish army showed up 15 days late and helped them mop up the Iranian resistance, I have a feeling you wouldn't give the Turkish gov't the benefit of the doubt..
You do know that Poland of then is in many ways the Iran of today do you?

Rjevan

5th September 2010, 00:35

No, the Pact was signed to divide Eastern Europe between Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg).
Oh no, not this again... instead of pointing out once again that this was to create a better defensive position for a future Nazi attack and to prevent the Nazis enslaving (may it be military or by installing puppet governments) further countries and people, this time I'd like to hear the Trotskyist alternative to the pact.
And please nothing like "With our superior theory and the resulting policies we would have successfully prevented the rise of fascism in Germany, so we wouldn't even be faced with this situation!" but an actual alternative to this very situation.

Trying to get an alliance with the "democratic" nations? We already saw that the USSR tried this and failed misserably because of the total lack of interest on the side of the "democrats". Waiting till the Nazis invade Poland, then fiercely condemning them and appealing to the the Allies to join an anti-Axis alliance now? Probably would have worked just as great as it did before the invasion and before Czechoslovakia, etc. Attacking the Nazis as soon as the set foot into Poland? Sure way not only to get Japan to attack you but to also start the anti-Bolshevik crusade which the Allies where already preparing (see below). Appealing to the German working class to rise up against Hitler which would have surely led to German revolution and the end of the war? Don't think so. Agreed to a non-aggression pact but rejected the option of "dividing Eastern Europe" and let the Nazis have it all? Great idea.

Yeah because helping the Nazis defeat Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29) is really defending Poland against Nazis.
...
I was talking about the situation before the German invasion, to be precisely about the Red Army offering to defend the country and to fight together with the Polish army in case of a German invasion, an offer which was turned down by the Polish government.

...for fear of provoking an enemy who was about to attack anyway.
It was not about being afraid that the enemy might attack, it was sure that the enemy would eventually attack. It was about buying as much time as possible and giving the Nazis as little reason as possible to scream blue murder that the Bolsheviks are displaying aggression against the peace-loving Axis nations. Even today there are historians trying to justify the German invasion by pointing out that there was a worrying amount of Soviet troops at the border, prepared for an offensive and led by über-demon Stalin himself. According to their logic Hitler was just taking a pre-emptive strike which resluted in only half of Europe becoming "communist" instead of whole Europe being flooded by the Red Army and then turned into Bolshevik Europe (the horror!).

Imagine if the Nazis would have been able to portray themselves as victims of an unexpected "Judeo-Bolshevik" backstabbing attack which aims at enslaving Europe. If one knows about the usual reactions of the capitalist countries to conflicts involving the USSR (Invasion of Poland: French airforce gets ready in Lebanon to bomb the oilfields of Baku; Winter War: UK and France send troops, airforce, ammuntion and further support to Finland, despite claiming to be too weak to attack Germany - being in a middle of a war with it - directly, etc.) it's easy to imagine that Stalin probably thought twice before giving the "Western world" any justification to join the Nazis in an anti-Bolshevik crusade. And the Nazis waited for such a justification, as Hess's flight to Scotland suggests.

ComradeOm

5th September 2010, 12:45

Kayser_Soso

5th September 2010, 14:30

In a recent interview with the head of the Russian State Archive Sergey Mironenko, published by Russian Today, the Archive boss proclaims Stalin ignored warnings of the coming invasion and the USSR wasted the time provided by the Molotov-Von Ribbentroppact.

Now I have always believed the Molotov-Von Ribbentroppact was a necessary evil, as I thought it gave time for the Soviet government to relocate the heavy industry to the Ural mountains.

According to Mironenko: "We could have been better prepared for the war. Stalin did not believe Hitler would ever attack the USSR. Recent publications confirm that 100%." This sounds more believable, noting the initial succes of the invading fascist forces.

Read/view the interview here: http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-09-01/russian-archives-stalin-mironenko.html

He's a lying sack of shit to claim that Stalin never expected Hitler to attack. He has no idea what he's talking about. Typical Kremlin shill doing his part to destroy the history of the USSR. They don't like putting on celebration's of victory of the Red Army- they'd much rather go all-out with Russian nationalism, Vlassov flag, etc. But it's going to take a while for enough veterans to die off and enough young people to be raised in total ignorance about the USSR.

Kayser_Soso

5th September 2010, 14:34

The obvious (and hardly Trot) alternative was simply not to sign

Hitler would have been entirely unable to launch an invasion of the West without the security provided by the Non-Aggression Pact (NAP). If he had done so anyway then it would have left the Eastern Border practically undefended. If he invaded Poland without the NAP then he would have risked war with the USSR while leaving the West practically undefended. This was the strategic dilemma that Hitler was so desperate to avoid. Its doubtful that he could have carried the military establishment with him on such a risky venture had it not been for the NAP

The fault for this lies with the west, who diddled around for years ignoring Stalin's plea for collective security and hoping Hitler would go east.

More to the point, any way that this alternative scenario pans out is to be considered preferable to the fiasco that saw the bulk of the Red Army wiped out within a matter of weeks. Its really hard to imagine a scenario in which the USSR performs worse. So not only were those losses were entirely avoidable but this doesn't even require the USSR to enter the war. A position of 'armed neutrality' would have been enough to scupper Nazi plans

This is a superficial understanding of Barbarossa. It is worth noting that this operation ultimately failed, which is why a whole new operation to take Moscow was necessary. Accounts of Barbarossa often ignore the staggering losses the Wehrmacht suffered, as well as many local victories on behalf of the Red Army.

Incidentally, how did that "better defensive position for a future Nazi attack" turn out in reality?

Uh let's see, what would have happened if the pre-1939 borders were in place in 1941? Stalin's strategy, while it had flaws in hindsight, ultimately worked. Perhaps some losses were avoidable but it is folly to think that the Red Army in that state could have stood up to history's largest land invasion without sustaining frightening losses.

This is just another example of 20/20 hindsight.

CJCM

5th September 2010, 14:37

If he invaded Poland without the NAP then he would have risked war with the USSR while leaving the West practically undefended.
No he wouldn't, the western forces of Britain and France were in a phase of appeasement. Even with the invasion of Poland there was no dramatic invasion by France and Britain into Germany.
Hitler always stated that he wanted to colonize the east, for Stalin the non aggression pact was a heavy bargain for more time.
Seeing the political situation of that time it is far more likely that France and Britain would sent troops in support of Germany to quell down the only socialist menace in Europe.

ComradeOm

5th September 2010, 15:09

The fault for this lies with the west, who diddled around for years ignoring Stalin's plea for collective security and hoping Hitler would go eastAnd I am not absolving the West of blame for failing to respond to Soviet collective security efforts. This does not however excuse the signing of the NAP. The dichotomy presented above (Western alliance or Nazi alliance) is false. Soviet refusal to sign the NAP would have presented a massive challenge to Nazi ambitions regardless of the negotiations with the Western powers. A state of 'armed neutrality' would have left Germany to somehow conquer France without a secure eastern border or Soviet material aid. This would, at least, allow the USSR to pick its own date of entry into the war

This is a superficial understanding of Barbarossa. It is worth noting that this operation ultimately failed, which is why a whole new operation to take Moscow was necessary. Accounts of Barbarossa often ignore the staggering losses the Wehrmacht suffered, as well as many local victories on behalf of the Red ArmyI have argued at length in past threads that the contributions of the Red Army are often grossly underestimated in the West. Again, this does not excuse overlooking the disastrous material and manpower losses suffered by the Soviets in the opening weeks of the war. Over three million casualties (killed, wounded, or captured) and tens of thousands of valuable planes, tanks, and guns lost. This was a defeat on a colossal scale. What saved the Soviet state was its ability to, gradually, recover from these losses that were by no means inevitable

We are not talking about "frightening losses" here but the fact that almost every Red Army unit present on the front was wiped out. The Germans achieved the complete destruction of the opposing forces. What saved the USSR was the mammoth effort to raise fresh divisions even as the initial standing army was being encircled and destroyed en masse Success? Hardly. The Soviet Union survived despite "Stalin's strategy" not because of it

What makes all this so tragic is that it was very avoidable. The Wehrmacht was not the army of superhumans that they are so often portrayed as in the West. Conversely, the Red Army was a far, far more potent force than it is often given credit for. Its doctrine was modern, its weapons were modern, and its soldiers ready. Training and support equipment were not up to German standards but even its oft-criticised leadership, decimated by the purges, contained some brilliant, if inexperienced, minds

What undermined the Red Army (aside from the above noted purges) was the disastrous deployment along the border and botched reforms post-Finland. This was a force intended for aggressive counterattacking - it should not have been stationed in forward positions like border guards ripe for the picking. Or if it were to be positioned so then it was imperative that it attack first into German territory. Instead when the Nazi invasion came almost the entire European Soviet army was in the worst possible positions; unable to react, unable to counterattack, unable to do anything but be destroyed. This could've and should've been avoided

This is just another example of 20/20 hindsight.Except that its not. Many Soviet officers and officials perceived the danger and warned Stalin. They were ignored (along with German reconnaissance flights :glare:). Even if more officers had had the freedom of Admiral Kuznetzov, who disobeyed directives to bring the Soviet Navy to combat readiness on the morning of the invasion, then even the story of Barbarossa, terrible deployments and all, could have been very different

So there are two myths here - the first that the NAP was a necessity, and the second that Stalin's war strategy was driven by necessity. Essentially the one - there was no other choice. This is false. At every juncture there were alternatives to the course pursued by the Soviet government. Would they have been better? Its impossible to know for sure but its hard to see how they could have been worse

No he wouldn't, the western forces of Britain and France were in a phase of appeasement. Even with the invasion of Poland there was no dramatic invasion by France and Britain into Germany.Appeasement had ended with the outbreak of war. Anglo-French plans envisaged a repeat of WWI as a 'long war' in which their economic superiority would prove decisive. However if Germany became entangled in a lengthy conflict in the East, taking years, then its impossible to imagine them not intervening in some form

More to the point, this is not a gamble that the German General Staff would have taken. Leaving a skeleton force in the West for a month, while the French and English slowly mobilised, was one thing but it would have been suicidal to do this for any period of time. And they knew it

Kayser_Soso

5th September 2010, 15:52

And I am not absolving the West of blame for failing to respond to Soviet collective security efforts. This does not however excuse the signing of the NAP. The dichotomy presented above (Western alliance or Nazi alliance) is false. Soviet refusal to sign the NAP would have presented a massive challenge to Nazi ambitions regardless of the negotiations with the Western powers. A state of 'armed neutrality' would have left Germany to somehow conquer France without a secure eastern border or Soviet material aid. This would, at least, allow the USSR to pick its own date of entry into the war

Again, was that known at the time?

I have argued at length in past threads that the contributions of the Red Army are often grossly underestimated in the West. Again, this does not excuse overlooking the disastrous material and manpower losses suffered by the Soviets in the opening weeks of the war. Over three million casualties (killed, wounded, or captured) and tens of thousands of valuable planes, tanks, and guns lost. This was a defeat on a colossal scale. What saved the Soviet state was its ability to, gradually, recover from these losses that were by no means inevitable

We are not talking about "frightening losses" here but the fact that almost every Red Army unit present on the front was wiped out. The Germans achieved the complete destruction of the opposing forces. What saved the USSR was the mammoth effort to raise fresh divisions even as the initial standing army was being encircled and destroyed en masse Success? Hardly. The Soviet Union survived despite "Stalin's strategy" not because of it[

What makes all this so tragic is that it was very avoidable. The Wehrmacht was not the army of superhumans that they are so often portrayed as in the West. Conversely, the Red Army was a far, far more potent force than it is often given credit for. Its doctrine was modern, its weapons were modern, and its soldiers ready. Training and support equipment were not up to German standards but even its oft-criticised leadership, decimated by the purges, contained some brilliant, if inexperienced, minds

Very interesting as it is incorrect. David M. Glantz, Chris Bellamy, and many other recognized historians contradict your claims here.

Except that its not. Many Soviet officers and officials perceived the danger and warned Stalin. They were ignored (along with German reconnaissance flights :glare:). Even if more officers had had the freedom of Admiral Kuznetzov, who disobeyed directives to bring the Soviet Navy to combat readiness on the morning of the invasion, then even the story of Barbarossa, terrible deployments and all, could have been very different

Many Generals warned about many things. The problem of Barbarossa was little different than that of Pearl Harbor. Too much information. We now look at the eerie warnings with great significance, but only because we now know them to be right. At the time these warnings were like grains of sand amongst many others.

pranabjyoti

5th September 2010, 16:11

Actually, problems of such criticism of Stalin is based on the events after the agreement. This can only be true if Stalin had some kind of supernatural foresight to see the events in advance, but I guess he hadn't. Therefore, such armchair criticism is basically baseless today. Those critics just forgot that he was in charge in those troubled days, not they. Now, when everything is history, then criticizing him based on later events is the easiest job.
Actually, such criticisms remind me an old proverb. Once, hair shouted to both the legs and arms that "they make too much mistakes". The arms and legs just smiled and replied "we work, that's why we make mistakes". In short, those who just criticize, can never make any mistake. I am curious to see, if they has been sent back to USSR of that time as advisers of Stalin, how much they can contribute in such a scenario. I can guess they just demand a trip back to the present.

ComradeOm

5th September 2010, 18:22

Again, was that known at the time?Of course. Unless the Soviet leadership was entirely incompetent and unable to make any sort of analysis as to the geopolitical situation. Certainly it was promptly recognised in London and Paris where the immediate importance of the agreement in the East was that it proved Hitler with a free hand in the West

Very interesting as it is incorrect. David M. Glantz, Chris Bellamy, and many other recognized historians contradict your claims hereFunny because those are the very historians that I'm drawing from. In fact Glantz can be credited for popularising, in the West, the thesis that the Red Army was in fact a highly capable and sophisticated military machine that happened to be (through a combination of badly timed reforms and poor political direction) in an operational trough at the time of the German invasion. Bellamy (in his Absolute War) largely builds on this assessment, albeit while paying a bit more attention to Soviet plans for a pre-emptive offensive

So no, you'll have to do a bit more than namecheck authors I've already read :glare:

Many Generals warned about many things. The problem of Barbarossa was little different than that of Pearl Harbor. Too much information. We now look at the eerie warnings with great significance, but only because we now know them to be right. At the time these warnings were like grains of sand amongst many others.Again, this is not my criticism. Stalin got the call wrong but its human to err. What is unacceptable is that his insistence that he was correct prior to the invasion, thus leaving no room for contingency measures and effectively shut down the Red Army's ability to respond to the emerging threat. In fact the repeated directives that forbid responses (even passive) to 'provocations' was an implicit denial that there even was a threat. So the problem is not that Stalin failed to guess (or read the reports which detailed) the invasion date but that his insistence on a forward passive defence, and constraining directives to this effect, placed the Red Army in an impossible position when the invasion did begin

The Red Army was designed as a counterattacking force - it should have been either at the border with freedom to strike first or sitting deep and ready to aggressively meet and destroy the invading Wehrmacht formations. In reality it fell between the two stools (ie, at the border in a reactive stance) and this is something that Soviet generals, who had compiled this modern doctrinal base, were perfectly aware of

Actually, problems of such criticism of Stalin is based on the events after the agreement. This can only be true if Stalin had some kind of supernatural foresight to see the events in advance, but I guess he hadn't. Therefore, such armchair criticism is basically baseless todayExcept that, as I've noted, everything above was available and known to the Soviet leadership at the time

For example, the inevitable failure of a forward defence in the face of a mobile foe was well known to the Soviet General Staff - it was they who had developed (well, before Stalin put the brakes on in the late 1930s) one of the most advanced templates for mobile warfare in the world at the time. Indeed, I'm always reminded of Napoleon's supposed remark when his generals presented him with a deployment plan that equally placed French armies along its borders - "Gentlemen, do you intend to defend France or catch smugglers?" :lol:

Die Neue Zeit

5th September 2010, 18:49

ComradeOm

5th September 2010, 19:17

That sounds like the crackpot musings of Viktor Suvorov. :huh:It is increasingly accepted (again drawing from Glantz and Bellamy) that Soviet plans were tabled for spoiling attacks across the border to disrupt any imminent German invasion. The degree that these - a variant of the 'aggressive defence' that the Red Army was conditioned to employ in order to fight a mobile war - were accepted remains a matter of debate. Nonetheless, this is not what Suvorov describes (ie, a massive Soviet invasion of Central Europe that forced the Nazis to attack first) and I suggest that you read him again if you think that anything in my above posts bears a resemblance to his theories

Die Neue Zeit

5th September 2010, 19:28

It is increasingly accepted (again drawing from Glantz and Bellamy) that Soviet plans were tabled for spoiling attacks across the border to disrupt any imminent German invasion. The degree that these - a variant of the 'aggressive defence' that the Red Army was conditioned to employ in order to fight a mobile war - were accepted remains a matter of debate.

That's enough of a slippery slope. I know that such plans were tabled (you have to plan as many plans in as many scenarios as you can), but I just don't think that was the main one. Launching deep operations in immediate response to an invasion from the West (whether the "border guards" repelled the invasion or otherwise) was the norm. Basically, it's two groups of salients against each other to see who would go further and who would be decimated.

ComradeOm

5th September 2010, 19:31

That's enough of a slippery slopeOnly if you fail to distinguish between strategic and operational planning

Die Neue Zeit

5th September 2010, 21:43

You're accusing someone who's all into revolutionary strategy and suggesting appropriate center tactics here and there as someone who fails to distinguish between strategic, tactical, and operational planning, and the blurry line that is the strategic tactic (i.e., alternative culture, no coalitions or mass strikes for "all power to the soviets" garbage, etc.)? ;)

Kayser_Soso

6th September 2010, 09:56

It is increasingly accepted (again drawing from Glantz and Bellamy) that Soviet plans were tabled for spoiling attacks across the border to disrupt any imminent German invasion. The degree that these - a variant of the 'aggressive defence' that the Red Army was conditioned to employ in order to fight a mobile war - were accepted remains a matter of debate. Nonetheless, this is not what Suvorov describes (ie, a massive Soviet invasion of Central Europe that forced the Nazis to attack first) and I suggest that you read him again if you think that anything in my above posts bears a resemblance to his theories

Bellamy also stated that the Red Army's "offensive only" strategy was a problem when the invasion did come, because the did not know how to properly retreat. They didn't do this well until Operation Blau in Summer of 1942 when they managed to prevent encirclement in the Don Bend.

And where would that border be in 1941 had it not been for the M-R pact? Again, you are using too much hind sight.

KlÃ©ber

7th September 2010, 05:49

Oh no, not this again... instead of pointing out once again that this was to create a better defensive position for a future Nazi attack and to prevent the Nazis enslaving (may it be military or by installing puppet governments) further countries and people, this time I'd like to hear the Trotskyist alternative to the pact.
Actually, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gave the Nazis the green light to enslave a number of countries and peoples. The Soviet Union went along with it until the surprise attack; in Moscow, the embassies-in-exile of countries conquered by the Wehrmacht were expelled by Stalin's government as their nations fell to Hitler's armies.

Also, let's dwell on this point of "enslaving people" for a while. The most disgusting element of Nazi savagery was their concentration camps. But during the Pact years, Stalin's regime showed complicity with that same murderous camp system by conducting a prisoner exchange under which innocent people like Margarete Buber-Neumann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarete_Buber-Neumann) were handed over to the Gestapo torturers, while some loyal KPD members in Nazi camps were temporarily let out under house arrest, work release, or ransomed off to the USSR. Most importantly, the KPD under Walter Ulbricht in Die Welt in February 1940 advocated handing over antifascists to the Gestapo, ostensibly to strengthen the Pact against the threat of British imperialism.

I mean how is Khrushchev a bad man for talking about "peaceful coexistence" while pursuing a strategy of tension against US imperialism, when he didn't exchange political prisoners with the US, nor did the CPUSA instruct American Communists to hand over opponents of "peaceful coexistence" to the FBI to "strengthen the bonds of Russian and American workers."

The revolutionary alternative was neither the revisionist Popular Front nor the treacherous Pact with Hitler, but to continue throughout the Leninist program of proletarian internationalism, a key component of which was no secret military alliances with bourgeois powers.

And please nothing like "With our superior theory and the resulting policies we would have successfully prevented the rise of fascism in Germany, so we wouldn't even be faced with this situation!" but an actual alternative to this very situation.Yeah, because A) If you can't just stick a Trotskyist in charge of the Soviet Union at any historical date and everything would be fine and have world revolution in 1-2 weeks, Trotskyists must be wrong therefore their suppression is justified. And B) Your "Marxist-Leninist Anti-Revisionist" critique of the post-1956 USSR is practically devoid of content aside from saying "With its superior orthodox M-L theory and non-revisionist policies a Hoxhaist leadership could have led the USSR to build real socialism" etc.

But in concrete terms, the alternative in the very situation, even assuming the Pact had already been signed when the Nazis invaded Poland, would have been to side with the Allies once they had declared war on Germany, and attack the German units in Poland, rallying the Polish people to resist the invader.

Trying to get an alliance with the "democratic" nations? We already saw that the USSR tried this and failed misserably because of the total lack of interest on the side of the "democrats". Waiting till the Nazis invade Poland, then fiercely condemning them and appealing to the the Allies to join an anti-Axis alliance now? Probably would have worked just as great as it did before the invasion and before Czechoslovakia, etc.Except that the Allies went to war with Germany over Poland. That was not the case during the occupation of Czechoslovakia. So it would, in fact, be easier to appeal to the Allies to declare war on the Axis given that they had already done that.

Attacking the Nazis as soon as the set foot into Poland? Sure way not only to get Japan to attack you but to also start the anti-Bolshevik crusade which the Allies where already preparing (see below). Apparently you have completely forgotten about the working class in the Allied countries which, if the USSR had maintained an antifascist foreign policy up to the invasion of Poland, would never have permitted their governments to make peace with Hitler and participate in a Nazi-led "crusade" against the USSR. Workers' strikes and protests are what prevented British and French imperialists from directly assisting the Confederacy in the American Civil War, and sabotaged the imperialist offensive against the USSR in the Russian Civil War.

Appealing to the German working class to rise up against Hitler which would have surely led to German revolution and the end of the war? Don't think so.That would have been better than what really happened, with the KPD advising collaboration with the Nazi regime.

Agreed to a non-aggression pact but rejected the option of "dividing Eastern Europe" and let the Nazis have it all? Great idea. And Hitler took all this land once he tore up the alliance, so a lot of good it did the USSR to carve up Europe with Nazis.

...
I was talking about the situation before the German invasion, to be precisely about the Red Army offering to defend the country and to fight together with the Polish army in case of a German invasion, an offer which was turned down by the Polish government.The fact that the Allies were uninterested in the time justifies internationalism but not military or political cooperation with fascist powers.

It was not about being afraid that the enemy might attack, it was sure that the enemy would eventually attack. It was about buying as much time as possible and giving the Nazis as little reason as possible to scream blue murder that the Bolsheviks are displaying aggression against the peace-loving Axis nations. Even today there are historians trying to justify the German invasion by pointing out that there was a worrying amount of Soviet troops at the border, prepared for an offensive and led by über-demon Stalin himself. According to their logic Hitler was just taking a pre-emptive strike which resluted in only half of Europe becoming "communist" instead of whole Europe being flooded by the Red Army and then turned into Bolshevik Europe (the horror!).That is a straw man if there ever was one. Because some right-wing historian supports Hitler's invasion, therefore the British and French governments must have been plotting to switch sides the minute the USSR joined their side in the war? Actually I believe most historians would say it was the opposite, Western governments grew all the more hostile to the Soviet Union (like in the Winter War) and masses of people worldwide were disenchanted with the Soviet state because it did a complete 180-degree turn from anti-fascist policy (1934-39) to pro-German policy (1939-41).

Imagine if the Nazis would have been able to portray themselves as victims of an unexpected "Judeo-Bolshevik" backstabbing attack which aims at enslaving Europe.Once again, the Allies were already at war with Germany, so by joining in the fight and completing the program of the Popular Front, the Soviet Union would more likely have won a great propaganda victory in the West, and silenced the claims of reactionaries that the USSR was allied with Nazism. Instead, the fact that the Soviet army helped Hitler's army defeat the Polish army gave the opposite impression and seriously demoralized progressives in the West, contributing to the fall of France.

If one knows about the usual reactions of the capitalist countries to conflicts involving the USSR (Invasion of Poland: French airforce gets ready in Lebanon to bomb the oilfields of Baku; Winter War: UK and France send troops, airforce, ammuntion and further support to Finland, despite claiming to be too weak to attack Germany - being in a middle of a war with it - directly, etc.) it's easy to imagine that Stalin probably thought twice before giving the "Western world" any justification to join the Nazis in an anti-Bolshevik crusade.Once again, after Germany invaded Poland we are talking about a period when the "Western world" had already declared war on fascism and most progressive-minded people were confused or angry that the Soviets were not joining in (or rather spearheading) the anti-fascist crusade.

And the Nazis waited for such a justification, as Hess's flight to Scotland suggests.Hess' treatment by the British authorities suggests they had little interest in his offer.

And where would that border be in 1941 had it not been for the M-R pact? Again, you are using too much hind sight.
That border would not have been much different (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg) and the lobotomized Soviet army was unable to hold any of that territory despite an overwhelming superiority in armor and aviation due to its vulnerable positioning and unpreparedness for a German attack. The Soviet Union could have been much better defended without the purge of officers, without revision of the doctrine of deep operations, and by establishing defense in depth, than if it had taken over all the territory intended in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreements but still made all the preventable, politically-related blunders of Stalin's leadership. At any rate, Hitler got far more out of the arrangement in 1939-41 by gaining the chance to secure his Western border. Even after the Pact had been signed, the USSR could have torn it up and joined the Allies in declaring war on Germany.

Kayser_Soso

7th September 2010, 06:14

Actually, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gave the Nazis the green light to enslave a number of countries and peoples. The Soviet Union went along with it until the surprise attack; in Moscow, the embassies-in-exile of countries conquered by the Wehrmacht were expelled by Stalin's government as their nations fell to Hitler's armies.

Geez this could have been written by Robert Conquest. Oh, that poor Polish government in exile, the one demanding return of Western Belarus and Galicia. What gave the "green light" to Hilter was years of appeasement by the west. It is also worth noting that the Nazis originally planned to go to war by 1943 or 1944. Going to war in 1939 turned out to be a disaster for them because their re-armament was not complete. Their ME-262 jet fighter, for example, was on the drawing board in 1939, yet it didn't become reality until 1945. You can read all about his in The Road to War by Richard Overy.

Oh but OF COURSE Hitler would not have gone to war with an open Eastern flank!! Because Hitler never made irrational decisions in war! You know, like going to war with major powers with an army that was only 10% mechanized.

Also, let's dwell on this point of "enslaving people" for a while. The most disgusting element of Nazi savagery was their concentration camps. But during the Pact years, Stalin's regime showed complicity with that same murderous camp system by conducting a prisoner exchange under which innocent people like Margarete Buber-Neumann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarete_Buber-Neumann) were handed over to the Gestapo torturers. Most importantly, the KPD under Walter Ulbricht in Die Welt in February 1940 advocated handing over antifascists to the Gestapo, ostensibly to strengthen the Pact against the threat of British imperialism.

The claims of NKVD/Gestapo collaboration are disputed even by the anti-Stalinist historians of the organization Memorial.

I mean how is Khrushchev a bad man for talking about "peaceful coexistence" while pursuing a strategy of tension against US imperialism, when he didn't exchange political prisoners with the US, nor did the CPUSA instruct American Communists to hand over opponents of "peaceful coexistence" to the FBI to "strengthen the bonds of Russian and American workers."

The US wasn't exactly poised to invade the USSR either.

The revolutionary alternative was neither the revisionist Popular Front nor the treacherous Pact with Hitler, but to continue throughout the Leninist program of proletarian internationalism, a key component of which was no secret military alliances with bourgeois powers.

Yes, because it's easy to say now it must have been easy then!

Yeah, because A) If you can't just stick a Trotskyist in charge of the Soviet Union at any historical date and everything would be fine and have world revolution in 1-2 weeks, Trotskyists must be wrong therefore their suppression is justified.

It is the burden of Trotskyists to present there program in detail. Permanent Revolution and "put the working class in charge" aren't actual programs. They should lay out their claims and then we should decide how feasible they were based on what was known at that time, not afterward.

And B) Your "Marxist-Leninist Anti-Revisionist" critique of the post-1956 USSR is practically devoid of content aside from saying "With its superior orthodox M-L theory and non-revisionist policies a Hoxhaist leadership could have led the USSR to build real socialism" etc.

This is not the argument of anti-revisionists. Anti-revisionists criticize moves of Stalin and even Hoxha. On the other hand we do not accept that the alternatives were always clear at the time, nor do we accept that some other guy doing something else would have automatically fixed everything.

But in concrete terms, the alternative in the very situation, even assuming the Pact had already been signed when the Nazis invaded Poland, would have been to side with the Allies once they had declared war on Germany, and attack the German units in Poland, rallying the Polish people to resist the invader.

If we step out of fantasy land for a second, the "Allies" were more or less divided in their goals even before the war; France and Britain had little trust for each other, and Belgium didn't trust either of them. More importantly, the British had no intention of making good on their declaration of war. The Germans actually began raiding British shipping while the British refused to bomb German factories under the excuse that they were private property. Meanwhile in short order the Germans actually had reached Poland's colonial territories, including Lvov. The Red Army was sent in with the orders to prevent Germany from occupying these territories.

Except that the Allies went to war with Germany over Poland. That was not the case during the occupation of Czechoslovakia. So it would, in fact, be easier to appeal to the Allies to declare war on the Axis given that they had already done that.

Gee, I can't understand why those evil Stalinists say us Trotskyites are traitors and reformists!! All we do is defend Britain and France and their collaboration and repeat their modern historical narratives without question. If you listen to the British declaration of war on 3 September, ask yourself what would have happened if the Germans had heeded their request to pull their military forces out of Poland and return to diplomacy. The answer- another Munich most likely.

Apparently you have completely forgotten about the working class in the Allied countries which, if the USSR had maintained an antifascist foreign policy up to the invasion of Poland, would never have permitted their governments to make peace with Hitler and participate in a Nazi-led "crusade" against the USSR. Workers' strikes and protests are what prevented British and French imperialists from directly assisting the Confederacy in the American Civil War, and sabotaged the imperialist offensive against the USSR in the Russian Civil War.

In case you didn't notice, a great deal of working class people allowed their entire nations to go over to fascism in Central and Eastern Europe. And since when did the working class have the power to "permit" their governments to go to war.

This is all idle speculation.

And Hitler took all this land once he tore up the alliance, so a lot of good it did the USSR to carve up Europe with Nazis.

Look at the pre-1939 borders of Europe. Then look at the 1941 borders. Do you understand the concept of trading space for time? Do you realize what a difference it would make if the Axis started with their armies already in the Baltic, just a small skip from Leningrad, and deep into Ukraine in Galicia? Do you also realize that during all this time the Soviet general staff was planning an offensive against Germany to take place in 1942? And do you also realize that in 1941, the Germans would have had to have been delayed only a few more months before the end of an ideal campaign season, until which point they would have to wait until the new season in 1942, at a time when the Red Army had planned an offensive?

That is a straw man if there ever was one. Because some right-wing historian supports Hitler's invasion, therefore the British and French governments must have been plotting to switch sides the minute the USSR joined their side in the war? Actually I believe most historians would say it was the opposite, Western governments grew all the more hostile to the Soviet Union (like in the Winter War) and masses of people worldwide were disenchanted with the Soviet state because it did a complete 180-degree turn from anti-fascist policy (1934-39) to pro-German policy (1939-41).

Leave it to the Trots to champion whatever bourgeois nonsense supports their theories. There were many in Britain and France who wanted to go to war on the USSR. Hitler made no secret about wanting an alliance with Britain and he was convinced for years that they would finally wake up and make peace. The flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland also lent support to the idea of an English agreement with Germany. Remember that on 3 September they were essentially trying to intimidate Germany into making some kind of agreement.

Once again, the Allies were already at war with Germany, so by joining in the fight and completing the program of the Popular Front, the Soviet Union would more likely have won a great propaganda victory in the West, and silenced the claims of reactionaries that the USSR was allied with Nazism. Instead, the fact that the Soviet army helped Hitler's army defeat the Polish army gave the opposite impression and seriously demoralized progressives in the West, contributing to the fall of France.

This is hilarious, blaming the USSR for the fall of France. Some crazy individuals thought it had more to do with deficiencies in the French military, weaknesses of command and coordination with the British, and the troubles with Belgium regarding the Maginot line- but no, it was because of the USSR. How many other disasters can you pin on them?

Once again, after Germany invaded Poland we are talking about a period when the "Western world" had already declared war on fascism and most progressive-minded people were confused or angry that the Soviets were not joining in (or rather spearheading) the anti-fascist crusade.

No, they were demonstrating their weak resolve as usual, and the world saw this. It was well known all over the world that France and England would not go to war over Poland. They went to war only because Germany forced them to.

Hess' treatment by the British authorities suggests they had little interest in his offer.

Stalin must have known EXACTLY what went on in their interrogations!!!

That border would not have been much different (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg) and the lobotomized Soviet army was unable to hold any of that territory despite an overwhelming superiority in armor and aviation due to its vulnerable positioning and unpreparedness for a German attack. The Soviet Union could have been much better defended without the purge of officers, without revision of the doctrine of deep operations, and by establishing defense in depth, than if it had taken over all the territory intended in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreements but still made all the preventable, politically-related blunders of Stalin's leadership.

Again, hindsight, and again, they only had to delay the Germans by a couple months, maybe less. The Germans were arrogant about how much time they would need to conquer Moscow, but all of the commanders and Hitler knew the risks of fighting in Winter and they also knew about the problems in the autumn as well.

At any rate, Hitler got far more out of the arrangement in 1939-41 by gaining the chance to secure his Western border. Even after the Pact had been signed, the USSR could have torn it up and joined the Allies in declaring war on Germany.

Yes, because everything would work out exactly how you decided.

KlÃ©ber

7th September 2010, 07:21

The claims of NKVD/Gestapo collaboration are disputed even by the anti-Stalinist historians of the organization Memorial.
Are you suggesting Buber-Neumann's story is a lie, and Walter Ulbricht did not actually write that article saying the KPD would inform on opponents of the Pact?

Oh but OF COURSE Hitler would not have gone to war with an open Eastern flank!! Because Hitler never made irrational decisions in war! You know, like going to war with major powers with an army that was only 10% mechanized.The Nazi war machine was afraid of being outpaced by Soviet industry, gambled on an early victory and lost. But the Wehrmacht would not have been able to concentrate its strength against France without worrying about the East, then be able to turn against the USSR while utilizing the captured industries of Western Europe, had it not been for Molotov-Ribbentrop.

The US wasn't exactly poised to invade the USSR either.Totally avoids my point (like a lot of what you wrote).

It is the burden of Trotskyists to present there program in detail. Permanent Revolution and "put the working class in charge" aren't actual programs. They should lay out their claims and then we should decide how feasible they were based on what was known at that time, not afterward.Trotskyists and non-Stalinist communists did exist at the time, they did have alternative political positions, and the Stalinist bureaucracy was actively murdering them and assassinating them for proposing such alternatives, so your line here is ridiculous. Virtually everything I have suggested as an alternative to Stalin's disastrous policies was suggested at the time, on the ground, etc. by people who had been leaders of the Red Army like Trotsky and Tukhachevsky.

This is not the argument of anti-revisionists. Anti-revisionists criticize moves of Stalin and even Hoxha. On the other hand we do not accept that the alternatives were always clear at the time, nor do we accept that some other guy doing something else would have automatically fixed everything. So what you are trying to say is, capitalism was restored accidentally or what? Trotsky predicted the eventual restoration of capitalism by the bureaucracy at a time when Stalin was saying only foreign imperialist armies could do that.

The Red Army was sent in with the orders to prevent Germany from occupying these territories. The Soviet army openly collaborated with the Nazi army in battles against Polish units.

Gee, I can't understand why those evil Stalinists say us Trotskyites are traitors and reformists!! All we do is defend Britain and France and their collaboration and repeat their modern historical narratives without question. If you listen to the British declaration of war on 3 September, ask yourself what would have happened if the Germans had heeded their request to pull their military forces out of Poland and return to diplomacy. The answer- another Munich most likely. Not sure what you are trying to say in this contrived spurt of rage. Trotskyists are not the ones who openly supported British and French imperialism and used the logic of the Popular Front to deny colonized African and Asian peoples the right to rebel, and even disgracefully dissolved the Third International to appease the Western imperialists.

In case you didn't notice, a great deal of working class people allowed their entire nations to go over to fascism in Central and Eastern Europe. And since when did the working class have the power to "permit" their governments to go to war.There are countless examples, some of which I provided, of workers sabotaging the imperialism of their own governments. The most successful of which of course was the October Revolution of 1917. Apparently you have a severe lack of confidence, if any, of the revolutionary power of the proletariat, which makes you an ill fit for the 21st Century when your beloved Stalinist militaries have ceased to exist or become the servants of capitalism.

Look at the pre-1939 borders of Europe. Then look at the 1941 borders.Yes, a bunch of land that the Soviet army lost very quickly due to the failures of Stalin's leadership.

Do you understand the concept of trading space for time?Do you understand the effect of the Stalin's military policy on Soviet arms up to the absolute disaster of the surprise attack?

And do you also realize that in 1941, the Germans would have had to have been delayed only a few more months before the end of an ideal campaign season, until which point they would have to wait until the new season in 1942, at a time when the Red Army had planned an offensive? Wait what? So what is your "real actual based on actual facts at the time" counter-proposal here? Give Hitler a flu or a cold at some strategic date so he sits in bed for a couple months and doesn't attack the Soviet Union before the Suvorov hypothesis could come true?

Leave it to the Trots to champion whatever bourgeois nonsense supports their theories. There were many in Britain and France who wanted to go to war on the USSR. Hitler made no secret about wanting an alliance with Britain and he was convinced for years that they would finally wake up and make peace. The flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland also lent support to the idea of an English agreement with Germany. I answered all these points earlier..

Remember that on 3 September they were essentially trying to intimidate Germany into making some kind of agreement. Oh yes, agreements with Nazi Germany, aren't those terrible..

This is hilarious, blaming the USSR for the fall of France. Some crazy individuals thought it had more to do with deficiencies in the French military, weaknesses of command and coordination with the British, and the troubles with Belgium regarding the Maginot line- but no, it was because of the USSR. How many other disasters can you pin on them?The demoralization of French Communists and opportunist defeatism that included joint actions with ultra-right French groups, being the result of Comintern policy, was also partly to blame. No, there was no one cause in a materialist analysis of the fall of France, as opposed to say the Stalinist excuses for the Spanish Civil War, which blame every defeat and setback on "nests of POUM and anarchist 5th-column spies."

No, they were demonstrating their weak resolve as usual, and the world saw this. It was well known all over the world that France and England would not go to war over Poland. They went to war only because Germany forced them to. Yes, they went to war, and once they were at war, the official excuse for Molotov-Ribbentrop (France and England wouldn't fight against fascism) was bunk.

Stalin must have known EXACTLY what went on in their interrogations!!!Wow talk about totally unrelated. It's funny though how you seem enraptured by this insistence that nobody is allowed to materially analyze any historical period without having actually been there and knowing every single thought that went through the minds of people involved. Sounds like postmodern obfuscation almost.

Yes, because everything would work out exactly how you decided.Yes because if you can't stick a Trotskyist in charge of the Soviet Union, "in Stalin's shoes" at any given date, and have them instantly produce a world revolution, Trotskyists have nothing valid to say whatsoever and they were obviously fascist agents deserved to die in 1937.

Kayser_Soso

7th September 2010, 07:45

The Nazi war machine was afraid of being outpaced by Soviet industry, gambled on an early victory and lost. But the Wehrmacht would not have been able to concentrate its strength against France without worrying about the East, then be able to turn against the USSR while utilizing the captured industries of Western Europe, had it not been for Molotov-Ribbentrop.

Right, the Wehrmacht and Hitler never made risky gambles, which is why the Nazis won WWII and I am posting this from an underground partisan camp.

Trotskyists and non-Stalinist communists did exist at the time, they did have alternative political positions, and the Stalinist bureaucracy was actively murdering them and assassinating them for proposing such alternatives, so your line here is ridiculous. Virtually everything I have suggested as an alternative to Stalin's disastrous policies was suggested at the time, on the ground, etc. by people who had been leaders of the Red Army like Trotsky and Tukhachevsky.

No, no you don't. You just throw out simplistic alternatives with the benefit of hindsight and insist they would have worked.

So what you are trying to say is, capitalism was restored accidentally or what? Trotsky predicted the eventual restoration of capitalism by the bureaucracy at a time when Stalin was saying only foreign imperialist armies could do that.

Incorrect. Trotsky once claimed, during the purges, that only a bloody civil war or imperialist intervention could restore capitalism in the USSR. Obviously this wasn't the case.

The Soviet army openly collaborated with the Nazi army in battles against Polish units.

That's interesting because the Polish army was instructed by Rydz-Smigly NOT to fight the Soviets but to continue resistance against the Germans. On several occasions Soviet and German units exchanged fire, and got into numerous disputes when Soviet units blocked railways and roads further into Western Ukraine.

Not sure what you are trying to say in this contrived spurt of rage. Trotskyists are not the ones who openly supported British and French imperialism and used the logic of the Popular Front to deny colonized African and Asian peoples the right to rebel, and even disgracefully dissolved the Third International to appease the Western imperialists.

You support anti-Communism by repeating anti-Communist propaganda and even going further. And you think that somehow this is going to lead to revolution. There is no bourgeois claim that a Trot won't embrace, and add to. Whatever is necessary to tear down "Stalinism". This is why there hasn't been a Trot revolution anywhere in history, and there never will be.

There are countless examples, some of which I provided, of workers sabotaging the imperialism of their own governments. The most successful of which of course was the October Revolution of 1917. Apparently you have a severe lack of confidence, if any, of the revolutionary power of the proletariat, which makes you an ill fit for the 21st Century when your beloved Stalinist militaries have ceased to exist or become the servants of capitalism.

No, I have a better sense of history than you. You attribute things to single factors.

Yes, a bunch of land that the Soviet army lost very quickly due to the failures of Stalin's leadership.

Of course EVERYONE KNEW that was going to happen at the time right?

Do you understand the effect of the Stalin's military policy on Soviet arms up to the absolute disaster of the surprise attack?

Do you realize there were also flaws in Soviet doctrine at the time which also led to this disaster?

Wait what? So what is your "real actual based on actual facts at the time" counter-proposal here? Give Hitler a flu or a cold at some strategic date so he sits in bed for a couple months and doesn't attack the Soviet Union before the Suvorov hypothesis could come true?

Why would Hitler need the flu? Remember the Nazis didn't want to go to war at all until 1943, they were still in a war with England. Apparently only Stalin isn't allowed to make the mistake of believing Hitler to be rational enough not to want a two-front war. Even the Nazis knew this was a gamble, because they intended for the entire military to be fed from captured stores in Russia.

Oh yes, agreements with Nazi Germany, aren't those terrible..

Only when the USSR does it, after years of Western collaboration with Nazi Germany actually made it a possibility. Not to mention the USSR did not just happily jump into the pact. At the time they were hoping the mere knowledge of such a suggestion would cause the British and French to pull their heads from their asses.

The demoralization of French Communists and opportunist defeatism that included joint actions with ultra-right French groups, being the result of Comintern policy, was also partly to blame.

According to whom?

Yes, they went to war, and once they were at war, the official excuse for Molotov-Ribbentrop (France and England wouldn't fight against fascism) was bunk.

No, they did not go to war.

Wow talk about totally unrelated. It's funny though how you seem enraptured by this insistence that nobody is allowed to materially analyze any historical period without having actually been there and knowing every single thought that went through the minds of people involved. Sounds like postmodern obfuscation almost.

But you don't analyze, you over-simplify and pretend your alternatives would have definitely worked.

Yes because if you can't stick a Trotskyist in charge of the Soviet Union, "in Stalin's shoes" at any given date, and have them instantly produce a world revolution, Trotskyists have nothing valid to say whatsoever and they were obviously fascist agents deserved to die in 1937.

Strawman. What is your argument other than basically sticking Trotskyite policies in here and there and claiming they would have worked based on previous, dubious historical claims?

KlÃ©ber

7th September 2010, 07:57

Right, the Wehrmacht and Hitler never made risky gambles, which is why the Nazis won WWII and I am posting this from an underground partisan camp.
Apparently you have totally misunderstood my point or have no interest in a rational discussion.

No, no you don't. You just throw out simplistic alternatives with the benefit of hindsight and insist they would have worked.Answered this one. There were alternatives to Stalinism at the time we're talking about and the bureaucracy was actively murdering and assassinating the people proposing them.

Incorrect. Trotsky once claimed, during the purges, that only a bloody civil war or imperialist intervention could restore capitalism in the USSR. Obviously this wasn't the case.So you are accusing Trotsky of overconfidence in the revolutionary power of the proletariat to overcome the revisionism of the Soviet bureaucracy and resist restoration. I'll count that as a mark in his favor. Such a counter-revolutionary bloodletting did occur during the Stalinist purges of 1936-41, not in some imaginary holocaust of orthodox Stalinist-Hoxhaists in 1956.

That's interesting because the Polish army was instructed by Rydz-Smigly NOT to fight the Soviets but to continue resistance against the Germans. On several occasions Soviet and German units exchanged fire, and got into numerous disputes when Soviet units blocked railways and roads further into Western Ukraine. I'm sure there were similar imperial scuffles during the feudal partitions of Poland in the 18th Century.

This is why there hasn't been a Trot revolution anywhere in history, and there never will be. Leon Trotsky commanded the Petrograd Red Guards when they took the power on 25 November 1917, and served as Commissar of War who organized the Red Army that defeated the interventionists and White armies.

No, I have a better sense of history than you. You attribute things to single factors.The Hoxhaist "blame Khrushchev" explanation of the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union is the biggest example of a single factor analysis.

Of course EVERYONE KNEW that was going to happen at the time right? Tukhachevsky did. Trotsky did.

Do you realize there were also flaws in Soviet doctrine at the time which also led to this disaster?After the military purge it was more like no doctrine at all until they brought back disgraced generals from the Tukhachevsky "deep battle" school, namely Zhukov and Rokossovsky, whose leadership won the war.

Why would Hitler need the flu? Remember the Nazis didn't want to go to war at all until 1943, they were still in a war with England. I remember disctinctly the Nazis went to war with USSR in 1941.

Apparently only Stalin isn't allowed to make the mistake of believing Hitler to be rational enough not to want a two-front war.Apparently Stalin was wrong.

According to whom?I have read about it in a few places but the only one I remember is Shirer in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich where he wrote about witnessing (and being upset by) the joint actions between the PCF and Action Française while he was working as a journalist in Paris during the "phony war." Since Comintern parties had previously engaged in collaboration with far-right groups during the Third Period I see no reason to doubt it.

Only when the USSR does it, after years of Western collaboration with Nazi Germany actually made it a possibility. Not to mention the USSR did not just happily jump into the pact. At the time they were hoping the mere knowledge of such a suggestion would cause the British and French to pull their heads from their asses.So once their heads were out of their asses, it was Stalin's turn to stick his head up his own ass is what you're saying?

No, they did not go to war.Uh yes they did, and Hitler was able to concentrate German forces on France without worrying about Germany's Eastern border.

ComradeOm

8th September 2010, 12:31

Bellamy also stated that the Red Army's "offensive only" strategy was a problem when the invasion did come, because the did not know how to properly retreat. They didn't do this well until Operation Blau in Summer of 1942 when they managed to prevent encirclement in the Don BendNaturally; Red Army operational doctrine was based on modern concepts of aggressive mobile warfare. The problem is not that Red Army units were aggressively counterattacking (as they'd been taught) but that they were doing so in isolation and against hopeless local odds. The doctrine was sound but completely inapplicable to the situation that the Red Army found itself in during the border battles. It almost goes without saying that such critical factors (ie, how the army is prepared to fight) should heavily influence, if not determine, such strategic decisions as where to deploy the army...

Which brings me back to my basic point - the Red Army should not have been in that situation. They should have been readying themselves to make aggressive spoiling attacks on German positions from the outset (which would have included crossing the border) or deployed in a withdrawn position from which they could launch concerted and coordinated counterattacks en masse. Instead, as I've said, Stalin's policies put the Red Army in a hopeless position where it was effectively wiped out along the border

As for making strategic withdrawals, a pretty sensible idea given the mess that the soldiers did find themselves in, well let's just say that the messages coming from the top (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Order_No._227_by_the_People%27s_Commissar_of_Defen ce_of_the_USSR) did not exactly encourage this. The best thing that can be said about Stalin's conduct during the war, and compared to other nations this is actually pretty good, is that he learned enough from his mistakes to leave the fighting to the generals in the later stages of the conflict

And where would that border be in 1941 had it not been for the M-R pact? Again, you are using too much hind sight.Probably where it had been in 1939...

Again, nothing I've said here involves any real hindsight (although its always nice to have). On the NAP, Red Army deployments, and failure to recognise the coming invasion, there were contemporaries making these exact same criticisms. There were always other options available but Stalin failed (or rather chose) not to take advantage of them

Rjevan

9th September 2010, 16:41

Most importantly, the KPD under Walter Ulbricht in Die Welt in February 1940 advocated handing over antifascists to the Gestapo, ostensibly to strengthen the Pact against the threat of British imperialism.
Good god, because Ulbricht suggested this, Stalin must have surely done it!
You certainly won't find me defending Ulbricht as courageous Marxist-Leninist! :lol:

Except that the Allies went to war with Germany over Poland. That was not the case during the occupation of Czechoslovakia. So it would, in fact, be easier to appeal to the Allies to declare war on the Axis given that they had already done that.
[...]
Once again, after Germany invaded Poland we are talking about a period when the "Western world" had already declared war on fascism
Yes, indeed. They declared war on Germany. And what did they do? Nothing.
Oh, wait a sec, they actually did do something! They really weren't just passively standing there and waiting for Hitler to finish the job in Poland, instead of attacking/bombing Germany they planned to attack and bomb the USSR! I already gave examples about tons of military aid were shipped to Finland and an active intervention was planned while at the same time declaring that they are too weak to attack Germany directly (one should think that being "too weak" asks for keeping your forces together and concentrating on the enemy you're actually at war) and the French airforce preparing to bomb the oilfields of Baku. But I'm sure if only the USSR would have declared war on Germany then the Allies would have not hesitated to finally agree to an alliance and actually go to war with Germany after their declaration of war, instead of preparing for war with a nation they didn't declare war to.

You're also claiming that Hitler wouldn't have dared to attack Poland if the USSR would have declared neutrality (assisting Poland was not welcome, as we saw). Why? The Allies had also theoretically guaranteed Czechoslovak independence and we all know what that meant in practice. Hitler knew, too. And we also saw what effects the allied declaration of war had in practice during Hitler's invasion of Poland. None. So why do you think that Hitler would have had to be afraid to be attacked from the west if he marched further eastwards? If the UK and France didn't come to help their ally Poland why would they have suddenly started to invade Germany if Hitler attacked their old arch-enemy, the USSR, the nation they prepared to go to war with, too?

... the working class in the Allied countries which, if the USSR had maintained an antifascist foreign policy up to the invasion of Poland, would never have permitted their governments to make peace with Hitler and participate in a Nazi-led "crusade" against the USSR.
It's good to see that you don't go with the religious "I believe..." but instead know what would have happened with an absolute certainity which leaves no doubts.
That the working class of the capitalist countries was bombarded by pro-German propaganda, outlining the "glories" of Mussolini's and Hitler's rule, next to anti-Bolshevik propaganda for decades, which did its very best to portray the USSR as hell on earth (one has to mention that Trotsky's works - assuming that he had major influence within the working class - on this subject didn't exactly help to convince the working class that defending the "Stalinist" USSR was in their best interest, either), that pro-German fascists tried to blind and win over the working class and that the bourgeoisie would have had all excuses during war time to force the workers in line can all be ignored. If the USSR would have only refused to sign the Pact the forces of world fascism would have been lost and the German working class probably would "never have permitted" Hitler to go to war with the USSR, too.

Leon Trotsky commanded the Petrograd Red Guards when they took the power on 25 November 1917, and served as Commissar of War who organized the Red Army that defeated the interventionists and White armies.
Because of Trotsky's brilliant leadership, while Lenin, Stalin and all the other haters in Petrograd and in the Red Army were busy being idle. And if you want to suggest that the October Revolution was a Trotskyist revolution just because Trotsky commanded the Petrograd Red Guards, then this is doing justice to Trotsky's high self-esteem but not to historical facts.

The Hoxhaist "blame Khrushchev" explanation of the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union is the biggest example of a single factor analysis.
If you'd bother to read Hoxhaist works then you'd know that the explanation for the restoration of capitalism is not just "Lol, Khrushchev came and BAM - capitalism."

Tukhachevsky did. Trotsky did.

I wouldn't say that "constant defeatism" equals "know".

KlÃ©ber

12th September 2010, 01:51

Good god, because Ulbricht suggested this, Stalin must have surely done it!
Ah yes, the typical Stalinist cop-out answer.

First of all this discussion is not about Stalin as a person. Second, even if Hoxhaists could establish plausible deniability, alibis and scapegoats for all of the crimes of the bureaucratic regime which Stalin presided over, this raises the question of what is there worth upholding in Stalin at all? The same logic that blames the purges on his subordinates can be used, with much more accuracy, to attribute the industrialization and WWII victories to workers, farmers and soldiers irrespective or in spite of Stalin. So if as Bill Bland argued he was just a powerless figurehead too afraid to challenge "revisionism," who didn't really do anything at all except maintain a silly moustache, why not just erase him from discussion and history altogether?

Since Die Welt was published in Sweden under the aegis of Comintern, it seems certain that Ulbricht was not "going rogue" here. His career after WWII definitely speaks otherwise.

You certainly won't find me defending Ulbricht as courageous Marxist-Leninist! :lol: So you deny that he was Stalin's man in Germany?

Here we have documentary evidence of Ulbricht supporting collaboration with fascism, and nobody denies it, and then this man was put in charge of a "socialist" country.. but that's something to be joked about. Yet when thousands of working class revolutionaries were shot on made-up charges of spying during the purges, let's give the security services the doubt and assume they had it coming (as long as it was before 1953).

Yes, indeed. They declared war on Germany. And what did they do? Nothing.
Oh, wait a sec, they actually did do something! They really weren't just passively standing there and waiting for Hitler to finish the job in Poland, instead of attacking/bombing Germany they planned to attack and bomb the USSR!They did do something: get stomped by the German army. Actually, their main grievance against the USSR was that it cooperated with Nazi Germany from 1939-41, when Soviet resources were used to supply the Nazi armies as they invaded France and bombed Britain.

I already gave examples about tons of military aid were shipped to Finland and an active intervention was planned while at the same time declaring that they are too weak to attack Germany directly (one should think that being "too weak" asks for keeping your forces together and concentrating on the enemy you're actually at war) and the French airforce preparing to bomb the oilfields of Baku.Obviously the Winter War was a fiasco and miscalculation by Soviet leadership, that it could make Napoleonic gains with a decapitated army by joining up with Hitler; but I'm afraid there is no glorious Nazi-Soviet struggle against Anglo-French imperialism in 1939-41 to be defended.

But I'm sure if only the USSR would have declared war on Germany then the Allies would have not hesitated to finally agree to an alliance and actually go to war with Germany after their declaration of war, instead of preparing for war with a nation they didn't declare war to. If getting overrun by German invasions with the aid of Soviet resources, and seeing Soviet and German units cooperating in Poland, didn't make them declare war on the USSR, I really doubt the USSR actually helping them against Germany would make them do it!

You're also claiming that Hitler wouldn't have dared to attack Poland if the USSR would have declared neutrality (assisting Poland was not welcome, as we saw).No I'm not - straw man. My point was that the USSR should have been opposed to the fascist onslaught rather than aiding it - not that opposing the Pact was some kind of magical elixir to create instant world revolution.

Why? The Allies had also theoretically guaranteed Czechoslovak independence and we all know what that meant in practice. Hitler knew, too. And we also saw what effects the allied declaration of war had in practice during Hitler's invasion of Poland. None. And how does that logically justify a complete turnaround to military, economic and political collaboration with fascism in its conquest of countries and subjugation of workers and peoples? Not at all.

So why do you think that Hitler would have had to be afraid to be attacked from the west if he marched further eastwards?The Soviet Union won the war largely on its own, in case you forgot, and Hitler didn't have the resources to invade Russia in 1939; that was made possible by the economic bounty of occupied Western Europe and two more years of buildup while the Soviet Union sat waiting to be attacked.

If the UK and France didn't come to help their ally Poland why would they have suddenly started to invade Germany if Hitler attacked their old arch-enemy, the USSR, the nation they prepared to go to war with, too? Yeah, it's not like that is what actually happened or anything.

Unless you think that they only permitted Russia to join the Allies because it was almost destroyed by Nazism.. in which case you are saying that Stalin was in fact a genius for allowing the USSR to be betrayed, smashed, brought to the brink of absolute destruction?

It's good to see that you don't go with the religious "I believe..." but instead know what would have happened with an absolute certainity which leaves no doubts. I am merely noting the historical role of the working class which was ignored by the discarded Comintern and is ignored in the Stalinist view in favor of a "geopolitical" analysis limited to the number of steel mills and tank divisions. Sadly, none of those exist anymore, so the revolutionary perspective which holds that workers, not Soviet tanks, can make revolution, is the only valid analysis in a post-restoration world where there is no longer a Stalinist army to annex and sovietize new territory.

That the working class of the capitalist countries was bombarded by pro-German propaganda, outlining the "glories" of Mussolini's and Hitler's rule, next to anti-Bolshevik propaganda for decades, which did its very best to portray the USSR as hell on earthThe working class are not mute sheep, they did not simply believe what the government programmed them to. Otherwise workers could not have resisted the war aims of British and French imperialism in the US Civil War, nor could Russian and German workers have defeated their own imperialism in WWI, nor US workers fight against their own imperialism in the Russian Civil War and the Vietnam War. You are throwing out the political role of workers throughout history in favor of the worship of some stale, dead Bonapartist militarism. Like it or not, there was massive support for the Soviet Union and the anti-fascist struggle around the world, something the parties once took credit for, before the demoralizing treachery of Molotov-Ribbentrop.

(one has to mention that Trotsky's works - assuming that he had major influence within the working class - on this subject didn't exactly help to convince the working class that defending the "Stalinist" USSR was in their best interest, either), False. Trotsky repeatedly and consistently argued for unconditional military defense of the USSR and he was against strikes in the war industries of countries allied with the USSR or China in the event of those countries coming under attack by fascist powers.

that pro-German fascists tried to blind and win over the working class and that the bourgeoisie would have had all excuses during war time to force the workers in line can all be ignored. The best thing those pro-German fascists could have asked for was to get support and friendship from the Communist Parties which had positioned themselves as the vanguard of anti-fascism from 1934-39. But that's just what they got during the Pact, and the blow to working-class morale, especially in France, contributed to the Nazi scourge.

If the USSR would have only refused to sign the Pact the forces of world fascism would have been lost and the German working class probably would "never have permitted" Hitler to go to war with the USSR, too. Straw man again, I didn't say unicorns and rainbows would fall from the sky if Stalin didn't sign the Pact. Way to defend snitches who justified collaboration with the Gestapo though. I guess it was okay to support the Nazi regime since there was nothing the German workers could do anyway but wait for Stalin's tanks to save the day.

Because of Trotsky's brilliant leadership, while Lenin, Stalin and all the other haters in Petrograd and in the Red Army were busy being idle. Actually Stalin and Kamenev were in favor of conciliation with the Mensheviks and the Provisional Gov't until Lenin and Trotsky showed up.

And if you want to suggest that the October Revolution was a Trotskyist revolution just because Trotsky commanded the Petrograd Red Guards, then this is doing justice to Trotsky's high self-esteem but not to historical facts. I was responding to the standard "Where is your Trot revolution" with the fact that Trotsky himself commanded the greatest revolutionary seizure of power by the working class in history.

The October Revolution was an example of the theory of Permanent Revolution because the workers did not wait for a revolution in the advanced countries, they combined the tasks of the national-democratic revolution (which had been unfulfilled by the bourgeois state) with the international proletarian revolution. They set up a proletarian dictatorship aiming to export revolution, not a stagnant "People's Republic" committed to an accord with the bourgeoisie.

If you'd bother to read Hoxhaist works then you'd know that the explanation for the restoration of capitalism is not just "Lol, Khrushchev came and BAM - capitalism." It is not much better than that, since capitalism is viewed as being restored due to ideological factors rather than the economic interests of the bureaucracy (which had been enfeoffed to a great degree under Stalin in the 1930's), and restoration is viewed as happening almost without a fight by decree of the Khrushchev clique - whereas the mass murder of Communists in 1936-41 is viewed as a clerical error. Although there is also the straw-pulling "Stalin was helpless and surrounded by a rising tide of revisionism" analysis, which puts into serious doubt Stalin's "anti-revisionist" credentials since he was apparently content to preside over all of this.

I wouldn't say that "constant defeatism" equals "know".Neither were defeatist, that's absolutely false. Both of them did warn of the danger of a disastrous German attack, while the official Stalin/Voroshilov doctrine relied on the fantasy of "winning the war on the enemy's soil."

Rjevan

13th September 2010, 23:59

The same logic that blames the purges on his subordinates can be used, with much more accuracy, to attribute the industrialization and WWII victories to workers, farmers and soldiers irrespective or in spite of Stalin.
You mean like the "anti-Stalinists" do?

Second, even if Hoxhaists could establish plausible deniability, alibis and scapegoats for all of the crimes of the bureaucratic regime which Stalin presided over, this raises the question of what is there worth upholding in Stalin at all?
That's the old problem again: In contrary to the enemies of "Stalinism" we never suggested that Stalin was a super-human being. We neither claim that everything good which happened in the USSR during Stalin's time is solely his personal achievement while the rest of the country had a good nap, nor do we claim that Stalin was flawless and everything bad which happened goes back to anybody but him. The average "anti-Stalinist", on the other hand, portrays everything good as being achieved in spite of Stalin and everything bad as a direct result from Stalin's reactionary personality and policies.

We praise Stalin for being a consistent Marxist-Leninist who successfully led the peoples of the USSR in their struggle to build up socialism during a very difficult time and under worst circumstances, who did what he had to do to ensure the survival of the USSR, who made valuable contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory but we also acknowledge that Stalin, like any other human being, wasn't perfect, erred sometimes, made mistakes and depended on others who might have misinformed and manipulated him.

Here we have documentary evidence of Ulbricht supporting collaboration with fascism, and nobody denies it, and then this man was put in charge of a "socialist" country.. but that's something to be joked about. Yet when thousands of working class revolutionaries were shot on made-up charges of spying during the purges, let's give the security services the doubt and assume they had it coming (as long as it was before 1953).
If we consider for a second that maybe these charges weren't all made up it should be clear that actually spying and/or sabotaging is worse and much more harmful than suggesting shitty and back-stabbing policies. Ulbricht was a pathetic opportunist but this doesn't mean that he was Stalin's mind- and soulless medium whose every word directly came out of the mouth of his "master". There's no reason to believe that this suggestion mirrors Stalin's personal believes or were the official line of the Comintern. In contrast to most anti-communists you know that democratic centralism doesn't mean totalitarian Führer cult.

Putting Ulbricht in charge of the GDR (which wasn't a ready-made socialist country but had to build socialism like any other country and soon took the revisionist path) was indeed a mistake for various reasons.

They did do something: get stomped by the German army. Actually, their main grievance against the USSR was that it cooperated with Nazi Germany from 1939-41, when Soviet resources were used to supply the Nazi armies as they invaded France and bombed Britain.
That's the official explanation; people ask "Why don't we ally with the USSR?", the government replies: "It's not our fault, we wanted an alliance but the evil commies went for their natural allies, the fascists, and turned against us!"

True, they got stomped by the Wehrmacht, but I wasn't talking about the invasion of France or the bombing of the UK but about the time between the invasion of Poland and the invasion of France. And during this time they did nothing and if that's because they were really too weak/scared then maybe they should have considered to stop aiding Finland, working on intervention plans for the Winter War and preparing to bomb Baku and instead concentrate their forces on their real enemy. Might have helped.

Obviously the Winter War was a fiasco and miscalculation by Soviet leadership, that it could make Napoleonic gains with a decapitated army by joining up with Hitler; but I'm afraid there is no glorious Nazi-Soviet struggle against Anglo-French imperialism in 1939-41 to be defended.
Sigh, another popular anti-Bolshevik claim: "The Soviet imperialist aggressors wanted to conquer neutral and defenseless Finland just like the Nazis did with Poland! They are no better than the fascists!"

Seems like all I said about the Wehrmacht and the Finnish army being best friends, about the military airports and the war preparations on the Finnish side was listed in vain. All arguments that the USSR saw a German attack coming and therefore wanted to secure Leningrad, that the USSR offered to pay Finland and give them much more territory than it asked for in exchange, that Finland refused and carried on to welcome German experts to help them to prepare for war – totally useless because "everybody" (= all anti-Bolsheviks) knows that these are all "Stalinist lies" in order to justify the "red fascist Soviet imperialism". No evidence needed for this position because it's "common knowledge", i.e. all the bourgeois historians repeat it again and again; all evidence for the opposite view is, well, Stalinist evidence (and if it's based on bourgeois historians we have yet another proof that the Stalinists are the best friends of the bourgeoisie which is interested in defending their best allies!!!) and thus can be completely ignored.

And in the very next discussion us "Stalinists" will face accusations of being one-sided, denying obvious and acknowledged facts and only accepting sources which mirror our point of view. "Aren't we all Stalinists deep inside? ;)" is all I can say to this.

Where you get the idea that I defend a "Nazi-Soviet struggle against Anglo-French imperialism" is a miracle to me, please quote where I said this. I thought I made it pretty clear that the USSR agreed to the M-R Pact as the very last option available in order to win time to prepare for an inevitable fascist invasion, not to ally against imperialism with the "best friends" of all oppressed peoples – the Nazis…

If getting overrun by German invasions with the aid of Soviet resources, and seeing Soviet and German units cooperating in Poland, didn't make them declare war on the USSR, I really doubt the USSR actually helping them against Germany would make them do it!
You seem to think that the Allies would have been interested in an alliance with the USSR and were just scared off because of the Pact. But the Allies were only interested in such an alliance (and even then there were voices that this war is wrong and that the USA/UK should ally with Germany against the Bolsheviks) when it was already too late and they finally realized that Hitler is a serious threat for their own interests.

The Soviet Union won the war largely on its own, in case you forgot, and Hitler didn't have the resources to invade Russia in 1939; that was made possible by the economic bounty of occupied Western Europe and two more years of buildup while the Soviet Union sat waiting to be attacked.
It's easy to state this today but a) could people back then know for sure that Hitler wouldn't attack the USSR? He did crazy things before and after September 1939 and b) contrary to what you seem to think there might have been the (very likely) possibility that the capitalist countries would have supported Hitler massively if he only declared war on the USSR. It's also quite funny to say that Germany used the two years to buildup while the USSR just "sat waiting to be attacked".

Unless you think that they only permitted Russia to join the Allies because it was almost destroyed by Nazism.. in which case you are saying that Stalin was in fact a genius for allowing the USSR to be betrayed, smashed, brought to the brink of absolute destruction?
No, as simple as I said before: the Allies finally realized that Hitler is not their best buddy in the war against communism, threatens their interests and that they have no chance against the Nazis on their own. They needed the USSR in order to survive. This is confirmed by e.g. congratulatory notes to the USSR after WW2 where Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill state that the USSR was the main force in defeating fascism and that the coming generations have to thank the Soviets for their freedom. Of course this was soon changed to "The USSR would have collapsed any second if mighty USA wouldn't have saved them and the whole world!" with the beginning of the Cold War.

I am merely noting the historical role of the working class which was ignored by the discarded Comintern and is ignored in the Stalinist view in favor of a "geopolitical" analysis limited to the number of steel mills and tank divisions. Sadly, none of those exist anymore, so the revolutionary perspective which holds that workers, not Soviet tanks, can make revolution, is the only valid analysis in a post-restoration world where there is no longer a Stalinist army to annex and sovietize new territory.
Nice try, but maybe you'll be surprised to hear that much attacked Hoxhaism upholds that revolution can't be exported or forced upon people by exterior means but has to be carried out by the people of a country themselves in order to create a genuine medium for socialism. This is one of the reasons why e.g. Albania – which was liberated by its own people – succeeded in building socialism while the majority of the other countries of Warsaw Pact had no own revolution, were satellites of the USSR and easily turned to revisionism.

The working class are not mute sheep, they did not simply believe what the government programmed them to. Otherwise workers could not have resisted the war aims of British and French imperialism in the US Civil War, nor could Russian and German workers have defeated their own imperialism in WWI, nor US workers fight against their own imperialism in the Russian Civil War and the Vietnam War.
All the wars you list took place. Sure, there was considerable resistance against the Vietnam War in America. Did that stop the USA to devastate Vietnam for many years? No. Did the German workers ignore the social chauvinist positions in the SPD and did those workers who unconditionally upheld anti-imperialism prevent WW1, did the Russian workers get the Tsar or Kerensky to end the war with all their protests and strikes? No. Don't get me wrong, all this resistance is truly great, admirable, inspiring, but it never prevented a war (except for the American Civil War but although the European powers favoured the Confederates the Union wasn't exactly a socialist state which offered nothing but horror to the bourgeoisie).

You say that the workers in the capitalist country would have never permitted their governments to go to war with the USSR. I say that they would have striked and sabotaged in favour of the USSR but that the imperialists would have still gone to war exactly as they did in WW1, the Russian Civil War, the Vietnam War. Sure, war with Germany was inevitable for the USSR and it survived it thanks to the industrialization, war preparations, the heroic spirit of the peoples of the USSR, etc. But would they have survived a combined Axis-Allies attack long enough to ensure that the workers force the Western governments to make peace or would they even have had enough time to wait and specualte for a revolution starting in the imperialist countries like it happened in Russia 1917? This is all speculation, no one can say, but I dare say that both is to be doubted.

False. Trotsky repeatedly and consistently argued for unconditional military defense of the USSR and he was against strikes in the war industries of countries allied with the USSR or China in the event of those countries coming under attack by fascist powers.
While he screamed around that the Red Army is almost non-existent and will be crushed completely in case of an attack and insisted that the working class has to rise up against the "Stalinist bureaucracy" if it wants to truly "defend" the USSR. It's only paying demagogic lip-service to unconditional military defense if you call for a civil war (and that's what it would have been since the "Stalinist regime", contrary to Trotskyist propaganda, wasn't hated and despised by the Soviet peoples) at the same time when the Wehrmacht marches towards Moscow. Somebody who was so well-versed in questions of warfare, as you portray Trotsky to be, should have clearly know that; especially after the Brest-Litovsk experience.

The October Revolution was an example of the theory of Permanent Revolution because the workers did not wait for a revolution in the advanced countries...
I know, that's the Trotskyist claim; yet they insist that building socialism in the USSR is/was impossible without the help of said advanced countries and that it's a "Stalinist" tactic to export revolution… much has been written and said about this and turning this discussion into the next "Lenin supported our theory and line and condemned yours"-discussion won't help anybody so let's leave this as it is for this thread.

Neither were defeatist, that's absolutely false. Both of them did warn of the danger of a disastrous German attack, while the official Stalin/Voroshilov doctrine relied on the fantasy of "winning the war on the enemy's soil."
Yes, but they – especially Trotsky – did "warn" about a good many things, sometimes these warnings turned out to be justified, many times they turned out to be pure propaganda. According to Trotsky the USSR under Stalin was almost always close to a complete catastrophe and should have perished any second according to other articles.

KlÃ©ber

29th September 2010, 02:46

That's the old problem again: In contrary to the enemies of "Stalinism" we never suggested that Stalin was a super-human being. We neither claim that everything good which happened in the USSR during Stalin's time is solely his personal achievement while the rest of the country had a good nap, nor do we claim that Stalin was flawless and everything bad which happened goes back to anybody but him. The average "anti-Stalinist", on the other hand, portrays everything good as being achieved in spite of Stalin and everything bad as a direct result from Stalin's reactionary personality and policies.Stalin's reactionary personality and policies? Uh no. Stalin did not come out of nowhere and force policies down the throat of people around him like the Hoxhaist narrative for the "Khrushchev coup" or whatever. He was the representative of the caste of party officials who had interests distinct from the masses, and it was these elements, not a nonexistent capitalist class under Khrushchev, which restored capitalism from the highest ranks of the Party.

We praise Stalin for being a consistent Marxist-Leninist who successfully led the peoples of the USSR in their struggle to build up socialism during a very difficult time and under worst circumstances, who did what he had to do to ensure the survival of the USSR, who made valuable contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory but we also acknowledge that Stalin, like any other human being, wasn't perfect, erred sometimes, made mistakes and depended on others who might have misinformed and manipulated him.So in other words you defend Stalin's distortions of Leninism, the lie that the USSR was ever socialist, and blame outright betrayals of the working class and revisions of Leninist principles on bad employees or bad judgment.

If we consider for a second that maybe these charges weren't all made up it should be clear that actually spying and/or sabotaging is worse and much more harmful than suggesting shitty and back-stabbing policies. Ulbricht was a pathetic opportunist but this doesn't mean that he was Stalin's mind- and soulless medium whose every word directly came out of the mouth of his "master". There's no reason to believe that this suggestion mirrors Stalin's personal believes or were the official line of the Comintern.Cautious collaboration with Nazism was indeed pursued by the Comintern and the Soviet state. Are you denying that the NKVD and Gestapo had joint security conferences for dealing with Polish nationalists, and even a short-lived prisoner exchange program?

In contrast to most anti-communists you know that democratic centralism doesn't mean totalitarian Führer cult. In contrast to most Stalinists you know the CPSU had ceased to be a democratic centralist organization since the ban on factions was used to strangle party democracy.

Putting Ulbricht in charge of the GDR (which wasn't a ready-made socialist country but had to build socialism like any other country and soon took the revisionist path) was indeed a mistake for various reasons.Take the revisionist path? Who was building socialism here in the first place? And if you admit that the working class had already been removed from power, why uphold the man who oversaw the process of political-economic bureaucratization and ideological revisionism?

That's the official explanation; people ask "Why don't we ally with the USSR?", the government replies: "It's not our fault, we wanted an alliance but the evil commies went for their natural allies, the fascists, and turned against us!"Yes, and this argument was so prevalent because it undid everything the Popular Front had done to win support for Communism, primarily on the basis of anti-fascism.

True, they got stomped by the Wehrmacht, but I wasn't talking about the invasion of France or the bombing of the UK but about the time between the invasion of Poland and the invasion of France. And during this time they did nothing and if that's because they were really too weak/scared then maybe they should have considered to stop aiding Finland, working on intervention plans for the Winter War and preparing to bomb Baku and instead concentrate their forces on their real enemy. Might have helped.Again, I doubt they would have been so anti-Soviet had the USSR not have signed what looked suspiciously like a secret military alliance with Nazi Germany.
And let's be honest, if Stalin had died the day before it started, you'd refer to the war with Finland in accordance with the secret protocols of the Pact, and probably the Baltic annexations too, as a revisionist social-imperialist misadventure.. or didn't you say something about "revolution can't be exported or forced upon people by exterior means?"

And in the very next discussion us "Stalinists" will face accusations of being one-sided, denying obvious and acknowledged facts and only accepting sources which mirror our point of view. "Aren't we all Stalinists deep inside? " is all I can say to this.While I admire your brand of existential Stalinism, I must ask - are you denying that in the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Nazi regime gave the USSR the green light to invade Finland?

Where you get the idea that I defend a "Nazi-Soviet struggle against Anglo-French imperialism" is a miracle to me, please quote where I said this. I thought I made it pretty clear that the USSR agreed to the M-R Pact as the very last option available in order to win time to prepare for an inevitable fascist invasion, not to ally against imperialism with the "best friends" of all oppressed peoples – the Nazis…And I thought I made it pretty clear that the best justification for the Nazi-Soviet Pact was that the English and French would never turn against Germany, and this ceased to be the case after the invasion of Poland. The fact that it was a "phony war" until the Blitzkrieg hit Western Europe does not mean that the USSR would have been defeated if it had engaged the Wehrmacht in Poland, nor that the Allies would have switched sides as soon as the USSR joined them. Also, it was hardly a last-minute decision, it was the Pact that gave Germany and the USSR a border with one another, not border tensions which led to a Pact; also, the USSR had begun to shy away from the Popular Front even before the end of the Spanish Civil War.
Apparently you are seriously doubtful of the combat ability of the Red Army, which under the correct leadership had been triumphed in even greater odds against all imperialist powers in the Russian Civil War. Even after the military purges, the Red Army retained some offensive capacity; to assert that it would have been incapable of performing better than it did in real life plays into Western bourgeois anti-Soviet propaganda. The initial defeats of 1941 were due primarily to the Red Army's unpreparedness for an enemy attack, Soviet forces being arrayed in offensive positions which made them vulnerable to encirclement. Had the USSR gone into the war prepared, fully mobilized and taking advantage of its own strength, a military embarrassment of German forces may well have stunted the Nazi war aims and led to an early removal of the fascist regime. The KPD would have been much more effective as an anti-fascist organization as well had it not disgraced itself by collaborating during Molotov-Ribbentrop.

You seem to think that the Allies would have been interested in an alliance with the USSR and were just scared off because of the Pact. But the Allies were only interested in such an alliance (and even then there were voices that this war is wrong and that the USA/UK should ally with Germany against the Bolsheviks) when it was already too late and they finally realized that Hitler is a serious threat for their own interests.So it seems it is true, you believe that Stalin was a genius for letting Hitler conquer most of Europe and almost win the war.

It's easy to state this today but a) could people back then know for sure that Hitler wouldn't attack the USSR? He did crazy things before and after September 1939 and b) contrary to what you seem to think there might have been the (very likely) possibility that the capitalist countries would have supported Hitler massively if he only declared war on the USSR. It's also quite funny to say that Germany used the two years to buildup while the USSR just "sat waiting to be attacked". The USSR built up its forces in that time but despite overwhelming armor and aviation superiority, half the Red Army's weapon systems were practically handed over to Hitler thanks to Stalin's intransigent obsequious attitude to the Nazi menace, even as they massed troops on the border, aggressively probed Soviet airspace, and word of their attack plans was repeatedly picked up by Soviet intelligence.

Nice try, but maybe you'll be surprised to hear that much attacked Hoxhaism upholds that revolution can't be exported or forced upon people by exterior means but has to be carried out by the people of a country themselves in order to create a genuine medium for socialism. This is one of the reasons why e.g. Albania – which was liberated by its own people – succeeded in building socialism while the majority of the other countries of Warsaw Pact had no own revolution, were satellites of the USSR and easily turned to revisionism.Stalin's creations turned to revisionism? This reminds me of Christian sunday school teachings; it is illogical and makes me doubt the God-figure for the same reason. I guess the answer is that Stalin gave us the free will to choose between revisionism and anti-revisionism and our choice will determine whether we go to shop at the big Gastronom in the sky or burn in the fiery Gulags of hell.
So what you are saying is, Stalin set up bourgeois states, staffed by social-democratic position-seekers and ex-Comintern hacks, which exploited the workers and were politically and economically dependent upon the USSR, relations which became imperialist one cloudy day in 1956 or something? And what is so great about Stalin again?

All the wars you list took place. Sure, there was considerable resistance against the Vietnam War in America. Did that stop the USA to devastate Vietnam for many years? No. The resistance of working-class US soldiers in Vietnam itself was a major contributor to the imperialist decision to pull out.

Did the German workers ignore the social chauvinist positions in the SPD and did those workers who unconditionally upheld anti-imperialism prevent WW1, did the Russian workers get the Tsar or Kerensky to end the war with all their protests and strikes? Perhaps you have forgotten the 1917 Revolution in which the working class did away with Kerensky, Tsar, and imperialist war. As the revolution spread to Germany, the imperialist powers agreed to a ceasefire so as to join forces against the USSR.

No. Don't get me wrong, all this resistance is truly great, admirable, inspiring, but it never prevented a warAnd emperor-worshippers love a good war don't they. The truth is, workers could have stopped WWI had it not been for the revisionism of the Second International, some left-wing leaders of which like Jaurès nevertheless tried to organize workers of all countries to resist the war.

(except for the American Civil War but although the European powers favoured the Confederates the Union wasn't exactly a socialist state which offered nothing but horror to the bourgeoisie). The USA was trying to abolish slavery and complete the American bourgeois revolution while international capitalism had become reactionary and favored the preservation of the slave system.

You say that the workers in the capitalist country would have never permitted their governments to go to war with the USSR. I say that they would have striked and sabotaged in favour of the USSR but that the imperialists would have still gone to war exactly as they did in WW1, the Russian Civil War, the Vietnam War. Sure, war with Germany was inevitable for the USSR and it survived it thanks to the industrialization, war preparations, the heroic spirit of the peoples of the USSR, etc. But would they have survived a combined Axis-Allies attack long enough to ensure that the workers force the Western governments to make peace or would they even have had enough time to wait and specualte for a revolution starting in the imperialist countries like it happened in Russia 1917? This is all speculation, no one can say, but I dare say that both is to be doubted.I still don't believe the Allies, evil as they were, would have repaid the USSR for joining them against Nazi Germany by suddenly making peace with Germany and declaring war on the USSR. It remains the case that under correct leadership, Soviet forces had defeated all imperialist powers in the revolutionary period, and could have used the imperialist conflict to spread revolution instead of setting up a red Napoleonic empire.

While he screamed around that the Red Army is almost non-existent and will be crushed completely in case of an attack and insisted that the working class has to rise up against the "Stalinist bureaucracy" if it wants to truly "defend" the USSR. It's only paying demagogic lip-service to unconditional military defense if you call for a civil war (and that's what it would have been since the "Stalinist regime", contrary to Trotskyist propaganda, wasn't hated and despised by the Soviet peoples) at the same time when the Wehrmacht marches towards Moscow. Somebody who was so well-versed in questions of warfare, as you portray Trotsky to be, should have clearly know that; especially after the Brest-Litovsk experience.Compare this hackneyed attempt at a baseless frame-up of Trotskyism to the ugly truth of Maoism/Hoxhaism which openly declared a jihad on Moscow at the same time as a vast nuclear arsenal was pointed at the Soviet Union.

I know, that's the Trotskyist claim; yet they insist that building socialism in the USSR is/was impossible without the help of said advanced countries and that it's a "Stalinist" tactic to export revolution… The possibility of building socialism was nil because capitalist production relations could not be skipped, especially in an isolated economy. Still the point is not so much that it was absolutely impossible as that the Soviet declaration of having "constructed socialism" in 1934 was a blatant lie.

much has been written and said about this and turning this discussion into the next "Lenin supported our theory and line and condemned yours"-discussion won't help anybody so let's leave this as it is for this thread.I'm afraid that Trotskyists will win the Lenin quote war on world revolution vs. socialism in one country 20:2, but if you don't want to go there I understand ;P.

Yes, but they – especially Trotsky – did "warn" about a good many things, sometimes these warnings turned out to be justified, many times they turned out to be pure propaganda. According to Trotsky the USSR under Stalin was almost always close to a complete catastrophe and should have perished any second according to other articles.And according to you Stalin was a genius for letting the USSR fall to the brink of a complete catastrophe, creating the only possible circumstances under which the Allies would not have made peace with Germany and attacked the USSR, and in fact a complete catastrophe did happen: the death of Stalin.

Rjevan

30th September 2010, 01:17

Stalin's reactionary personality and policies? Uh no. Stalin did not come out of nowhere and force policies down the throat of people around him like the Hoxhaist narrative for the "Khrushchev coup" or whatever.
You mean the Trotskyist narrative, Hoxhaists don't claim that Krushchev came "out of nowhere". As you don't seem to consider my advice to read some "Hoxhaist works" I'll have to quote this:

I am of the opinion that even before the war but especially after the war, signs of a deplorable apathy appeared in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This party had a great reputation and had achieved colossal successes in the course of its work, but at the same time it had started to lose the revolutionary spirit and was becoming infected by bureaucracy and routine. The Leninist norms, the teachings of Lenin and Stalin had been transformed by the apparatchiki into stale platitudes and hackneyed slogans devoid of operative worth.
[...]
In such conditions bureaucratic administrative measures began to predominate over revolutionary measures. Vigilance was no longer operative because it was no longer revolutionary, regardless of all the boasting about it. From a vigilance of the party and the masses, it was being turned into a vigilance of bureaucratic apparatus and transformed, in fact, if not completely from the formal viewpoint, into a vigilance of the state security organs and the courts.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1976/khruschevites/03.htm

But yeah, agreed, it's easier to say that Hoxhaists are fanatic weirdos who say everything in Stalin's USSR was paradise but all of a sudden the snake entered in Khrushchev's person and overnight everything went bad.

Cautious collaboration with Nazism was indeed pursued by the Comintern and the Soviet state. Are you denying that the NKVD and Gestapo had joint security conferences for dealing with Polish nationalists, and even a short-lived prisoner exchange program?
One second ago we were speaking about the NKVD allegedly handing over communists to the Gestapo since the M-R Pact, now we are already down on Polish nationalists and "short-lived" prisoner exchange programs... I think Kayser_Soso has already answered re:NKVD-Gestapo collaboration claim.

Take the revisionist path? Who was building socialism here in the first place? And if you admit that the working class had already been removed from power, why uphold the man who oversaw the process of political-economic bureaucratization and ideological revisionism?
The working class, the majority of the people, were building socialism. The SED rulers soon took the revisionist path. Before you start with "The working class would have never permitted the SED to become revisionist" I'd like to remind you about Berlin 1953.
And it's you who claims that Stalin "oversaw the process of political-economic bureaucratization and ideological revisionism", not me.

Yes, and this argument was so prevalent because it undid everything the Popular Front had done to win support for Communism, primarily on the basis of anti-fascism.
Back at the start again... I still hold that the M-R Pact wasn't done for fun but as the last resort. You say that if the USSR wouldn't have signed it everything would have turned out better for the USSR because of the Western nations (forced to) supporting it against a possible Nazi attack. I say it is to be doubted.

Again, I doubt they would have been so anti-Soviet had the USSR not have signed what looked suspiciously like a secret military alliance with Nazi Germany.
They were the same anti-Soviet long before the Pact. I recommend "The Great Conspiracy against Russia" by Sayers and Kahn on this, it does a fine job listing the anti-Soviet activities of the West from the moment of Lenin's arrival at Petrograd.

And let's be honest, if Stalin had died the day before it started, you'd refer to the war with Finland in accordance with the secret protocols of the Pact, and probably the Baltic annexations too, as a revisionist social-imperialist misadventure.. or didn't you say something about "revolution can't be exported or forced upon people by exterior means?"
Geez, contrary to what you think I don't automatically refer to everything which happened during Stalin's lifetime as awesome ML action and to everything after his death as revisionist and social-imperialist. There's a reason for these judgements and believe me, I would be more than happy if history allowed me to call Khrushchev a great Marxist-Leninist.

In this case (as I already said at least twice, but well...) the reason for defending the Soviet invasion of Finland is that it wasn't a social-imperialist action to make Finland into a Soviet puppet which would then be expolited but once again the last resort after failed (and more than fair on the Soviet side) negotiations to secure Leningrad against a more than obvious attack soon to come from Finland. Same goes for the Baltics, thinking that Hitler would indeed have been satisfied taking just Memel from Lithuania and would have left the Baltics alone and that the fascist rulers (who could have easily been overthrown by the 5th Column, anyway) would have stayed neutral in case of a German invasion of the USSR is pretty naive.

While I admire your brand of existential Stalinism, I must ask - are you denying that in the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Nazi regime gave the USSR the green light to invade Finland?
I am denying that Finland was neutral or even pro-Soviet, did outline that the Wehrmacht was more than active in Finland and that the USSR in no way invaded Finland without a warning or any reason but only after it failed with generous offers to get a few pieces of Finnish soil to defend Leningrad.

Now you might counter why the Nazis would sacrifice Finland if they really intended to use it as a giant base to attack the USSR from the north. The Nazis were a) megalomaniacs, I don't think they really felt like they depended on Finland to start a successful attack, b) speculating that the West would intervene on the anti-Soviet side (which it did, not only the aid but a British landing in Norway to move troops to Finland was planned) c) that the USSR would look like an imperialist aggressor against poor little Finland and lose more sympathy and d) hoping to see the Red Army in action which resulted in a premature triumph because now they felt assured that the USSR would be completely unable to defend itself against the Wehrmacht. The Nazis had nothing to lose but much to win from this.

Also, it was hardly a last-minute decision, it was the Pact that gave Germany and the USSR a border with one another, not border tensions which led to a Pact
The USSR already spoke about the West leading Germany eastwards during the Anschluss and the annexion of Czechoslovakia, everybody knew "Mein Kampf", everybody knew that the USSR was seen as "natural enemy" of the Nazis and that Hitler wouldn't stop with Poland. Allowing Hitler to take all of Poland is de facto begging for border tensions at a much less advantegeous position and date. And that's what it would have been, The Allies weren't exactly working like mad to defend Poland, as we saw. And if the USSR would have declared war on Germany in case of invading Poland to defend the latter (which, once again, did not wish to be defended by the USSR which offered to do so) it's not really absurd to assume that the bombers in Lebanon aiming at Baku and the British troops planning to land would have been there anyway, with or without the Pact.

Apparently you are seriously doubtful of the combat ability of the Red Army, which under the correct leadership had been triumphed in even greater odds against all imperialist powers in the Russian Civil War. Even after the military purges, the Red Army retained some offensive capacity; to assert that it would have been incapable of performing better than it did in real life plays into Western bourgeois anti-Soviet propaganda.
Seems like at least here you break with Trotsky's view, who, well, "played into Western bourgeois [,fascist and] anti-Soviet propaganda." :p

The initial defeats of 1941 were due primarily to the Red Army's unpreparedness for an enemy attack, Soviet forces being arrayed in offensive positions which made them vulnerable to encirclement. Had the USSR gone into the war prepared, fully mobilized and taking advantage of its own strength, a military embarrassment of German forces may well have stunted the Nazi war aims and led to an early removal of the fascist regime.
The last part is pure speculation, unlikely speculation given the situation in the Reich till its very end. You still think that the situation of the USSR in 1939 can be compared to the situation in 1941, that the time between 1939 and 1941 wasn't used for preparations but completely wasted, and that it would have been totally unthinkable that the Allies might join the Nazis in fighting off the "red flood" in case of the USSR attacking Germany. I still disagree.

So it seems it is true, you believe that Stalin was a genius for letting Hitler conquer most of Europe and almost win the war.
Yes, if you don't read my posts it might seem so. If you read them it's clear that I say "The allies had absolutely no interest allying/defending the USSR prior to or in 1939. Stalin knew that and was proven right during the negotiations for a mutual defence pact with the Allies. Thus he saw only one chance to buy the USSR a little more time to prepare for a German attack sure to come: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In 1941 the Allies finally realized that the USSR fighting off (or at least keeping busy) the Wehrmacht is in their best interest and pretty much their only hope, while Hitler isn't their best buddy in the crusade against communism but rather presents a threat to their interests. Thus they allied with the USSR untill the danger was over and Chruchill could safely decided that 'we slaughtered the wrong pig' (should maybe tell us something about the general Allied stance on the USSR)." Where the "Stalin let Germany attack and conquer half the USSR on purpose, so that he might finally realize his dream and join the totally trendy club of the allied losers"-part you see in my posts comes in, is a mystery to me.

The USSR built up its forces in that time but despite overwhelming armor and aviation superiority, half the Red Army's weapon systems were practically handed over to Hitler thanks to Stalin's intransigent obsequious attitude to the Nazi menace, even as they massed troops on the border, aggressively probed Soviet airspace, and word of their attack plans was repeatedly picked up by Soviet intelligence.
Yes, repeatedly... a bit too repeatedly. There's a tactic: provide the enemy with false information and this way lure him into a trap. Might have just been that, if the Red Army started everytime somebody claimed Germany is going to attack the date of the beginning of the "Great Patriotic War" might have been very different, just as the result.

Stalin's creations turned to revisionism? This reminds me of Christian sunday school teachings; it is illogical and makes me doubt the God-figure for the same reason. I guess the answer is that Stalin gave us the free will to choose between revisionism and anti-revisionism and our choice will determine whether we go to shop at the big Gastronom in the sky or burn in the fiery Gulags of hell.
Um, I thought the Trotskyists were the ones who claim that Lenin and Trotsky were actually best friends and Stalin "ursurped the throne", destroyed the gains of the (essentially Trotskyist) October Revolution and turned the USSR into a bureaucratic degenerated workers state. So when "poor Trotsky gets deprived of his birthright by Lenin's putschist successor" it's this explanation, when Stalin's putschist successor is accused of similar crimes against the working class this suddenly get ridiculous and Stalin just must have been the one who is responsible for everything? Here we go, my "existential Stalinism" alarm bells are ringing again...

The resistance of working-class US soldiers in Vietnam itself was a major contributor to the imperialist decision to pull out.
Contributor, yes. But not the single reason. Again, what would have chances been for the USSR to fight off a possible Axis-Allies joint attack long enough to get this contributor working?

Perhaps you have forgotten the 1917 Revolution in which the working class did away with Kerensky, Tsar, and imperialist war. As the revolution spread to Germany, the imperialist powers agreed to a ceasefire so as to join forces against the USSR.
Exactly, the revolution did away with Kerensky, the Tsar, and imperialist war! Not the working class protests alone. You say the protests would have sufficed to end a possible imperialist aggression like they did in Vietnam. So unless we are assuming that an imperialist attack on the USSR would have started revolutions in Germany, France and Britain - which is really pure speculation - I still hold that protests might have not been enough to save the USSR. I'm aware that this is nothing but speculation on both sides but I think judging from the history of the Allied-Soviet relationship till 1939 that there were good chances for an Axis-Allies block if the USSR attacked Germany in 1939 and little chances for the USSR to survive this is still more realistic than speculating that either the Allies in 1939 suddenly make up their mind and ally with the USSR or that an Axis-Allies attack would have never taken place becuase of protests and possible outbreaks of revolutions.

And emperor-worshippers love a good war don't they. The truth is, workers could have stopped WWI had it not been for the revisionism of the Second International, some left-wing leaders of which like Jaurès nevertheless tried to organize workers of all countries to resist the war.
Sure, they could have prevented the war, had it not been for... but it had been for. What makes you think that the only thing in the whole world which caused the war and prevented revolution was Stalin? If there would have been no Stalin there would still have been had-it-not-been-fors if Trotsky (or whoever you want to see in charge of the USSR) wasn't like you accuse us seing Stalin: a divine and perfect being, controlling each and everything and making no mistakes at all.

I still don't believe the Allies, evil as they were, would have repaid the USSR for joining them against Nazi Germany by suddenly making peace with Germany and declaring war on the USSR.
You know that there were strong voices arguing for just this before the war, they were during the war and they were after the war (cf. Chruchill quote). You also know the "democratic" praise Hitler received for "getting rid of communism in Germany", being the "bulwark against the Bolshevik threat", etc. and you know what happened to Czechoslovakia (which the Soviets were the only one ready to defend) and the Treaty of Versailles - what makes you think the Poland wouldn't have become a second Czechoslovakia and even more in case our favourite bulwark would have had to fight against the "Bolshevik threat"? It's not like the Allies had a good relationship with the USSR prior to 1939 or any interest in defending it, on the contrary we see them kissing Hitler's ass all the years long and doing nothing to actively help Poland.

Compare this hackneyed attempt at a baseless frame-up of Trotskyism to the ugly truth of Maoism/Hoxhaism which openly declared a jihad on Moscow at the same time as a vast nuclear arsenal was pointed at the Soviet Union.
Er, do you deny that Trotsky repeatedly stated that the USSR is on the edge of collapse, the Red Army unable to hold off an attack, that the only way to get rid of the "Stalinist bureaucracy" is violent struggle, that he made extremely helpful statements like these:

I consider the main source of danger to the USSR in the present international situation to be Stalin and the oligarchy headed by him. An open struggle against them […] is inseparably connected for me with the defense of the USSR
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Only the overthrow of the Bonapartist Kremlin clique can make possible the regeneration of the military strength of the USSR [...] Whoever defends Stalinism directly or indirectly, whoever keeps silent about its betrayals or exaggerates its military strength is the worst enemy of the revolution, or socialism, of the oppressed peoples.
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Fascism is winning victory after victory and its best ally, the one that is clearing its path throughout the world, is Stalinism
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Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist.

And what's that talk about "jihad on Moscow"? Do you mean the infamous "Theory of the Three Worlds", which says that Soviet social-imperialism is the main threat to the world proletariat (and therefore this theory was consequently condemned by Hoxha)? True, Hoxha called for revolution in the USSR (as well as in the Warsaw Pact and China) but he also called for revolution in the West and never made statements like "I consider Brezhnev to be the main danger to the working class". And most importantly, Khrushchev and his successors advocated peaceful coexistance, so that both the USA and the USSR were out to avoid a war, trying to keep their imperialist interests in a balance of power. A war between Germany and the USSR was inevitable as we all agree. The situation of Hoxha criticizing revisionism and social-imperialism during the Cold War can't really be compared to Trotsky assuring the world that the isolated USSR will inevitably be doomed, that it's army sucks and that in case of an attack only an uprising against the "Stalinists" can save the country. That's like Hoxha calling the Vietnamese to rise against Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, except he never did such a thing.

I'm afraid that Trotskyists will win the Lenin quote war on world revolution vs. socialism in one country 20:2, but if you don't want to go there I understand ;P.
If you have to, bring it on. Just saying - Lenin: "Trotsky [...] now proclaiming his absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory." and "Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone." It's pretty absurd anyway to assume that Lenin did all he did though he knew the USSR was doomed. And it's even more absurd to see SIOC as some Nazbol theory as if it didn't explicitely state that world revolution is desired and necessary and every gain made in the USSR is threatened as long as the capitalist encriclement continues. The usual Lenin quotes Trotskyists bring up are along the line of "A revolution in the west would be an immense help" and "without revolutions in the West our revolution and its achievements are in danger". Sure, who ever denied that?