began, Germany made peace proposals to France and Britain, while the Soviet Union openly supported these German peace proposals, for it considered, and continues to consider, that only as early end to the war as possible can bring relief in a fundamental way to the condition of all countries and all peoples;
c) the ruling circles in Britain and France rejected out of hand both the German peace proposals and the Soviet Union’s efforts to end the war as quickly as possible.
Such are the facts. What can the nightclub politicians of the Havas agency provide to counter these facts?’
J. STALIN, Pravda, 30 November 1939.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 43.
During a 1940 meeting with Party agitators in Dnepropetrovsk, Leonid Breshnev was questioned about the Nazi - Soviet Non - Aggression Pact:
“Comrade Breshnev, we have to interpret non - aggression and say that it has to be taken seriously, and that anyone who does not believe in it is talking provocation. But people have little faith in it. So what are we to do? Do we go on interpreting it or not?
Breshnev: “You have to go on interpreting it; and we shall go on interpreting it until not one stone of Nazi Germany remains upon another.”
Leonid Breshnev, Malaya Zemlya, Moscow, 1978, p. 16.
Suvorov, op. cit., pp. 34, 35.
On March 13, 1940, the Politburo ordered the People’s Commissariat for Defense to classify and grade the entire nomenklatura (the ruling elite) of the CPSU, and give them appropriate military ranks in the Red Army and Red Navy. Overnight the Party was converted into a para - military organization.
“Officials of Party committees would be obliged systematically to undergo military retraining so that, whenever they might be called into the RKKA (Rabache - Krest’ yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya - the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) or the RKKF (Rabache - Krest’ yanskii Krasny Flot - the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Navy), they would be able to devote themselves to the duties appropriate to their qualifications.”
Politburo Decree, 13 March 1940, “Military Retraining and Regrading of Party Committee Officials and the Procedure to be Followed on their Mobilization into the RKKA.”
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 52.
Military training of Party personnel proceeded at an accelerated pace. Between May 1940 and February 1941, 99,000 Party workers, including “63,000 senior workers of Party committees,” sat for examinations and appeared before boards. In March 1939, in a statement to the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU, Lev Mekhlis, chief of political administration of the Red Army said:
“… If the edge of the second imperialist war should turn against the first socialist state of the world, we must carry military hostilities into the enemy’s territory, perform our international duty and increase the number of Soviet republics … .”
K. Voroshilov, L. Mekhlis, S. Budyonny, G. Stern, The Red Army Today, Speeches Delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), March 10-21, 1939 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), p. 42.
This is how Red Air Force General Baidukov described future war in Pravda:
“What joy and happiness will shine in the faces of those who will receive here in the Great Kremlin Palace the last republic into the brotherhood of nations of the whole world! I envisage clearly the bomber planes destroying the enemy’s factories, railway junctions, bridges, depots and positions; low-flying assault aircraft attacking columns of troops and artillery positions with a hail of gunfire; and assault landing ships putting their divisions ashore in the heart of the enemy’s dispositions. The powerful and formidable air force of the Land of the Soviets, along with the infantry and tank and artillery troops will do their sacred duty and will help the enslaved peoples to escape from their executioners.”
Pravda, Georgi Baidukov, 18 August 1940.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 352.
On January 1, 1941, Pravda greeted the new year with the slogan:
“Let us increase the number of republics of the Soviet Union!”
“Our country is large; the globe must revolve for nine hours before the whole of our vast Soviet land can enter the new year of our victories. The time will come when not nine hours, but all twenty-four hours on the clock will be needed for this to happen … Who knows where we shall be greeting the new year in five or ten years’ time – in what latitude, on what new Soviet meridian?”
Pravda, 1 January 1941.
As the date of Stalin’s planned attack drew closer, Pravda became more jingoistic:
“Divide our enemies, meet the demand of each of them temporarily and then destroy them one at a time, giving them no opportunity to unite.’
Pravda, 4 March 1941.
On 5 May 1941, Stalin made a speech in the Kremlin honoring the military academy graduates. The speech lasted forty minutes, which for the taciturn Stalin, was tantamount to a filibuster. The speech was not published at that time, but was frequently referenced; more of it was published later.
“At one time or another we have followed a line based on defense.…But now that our army has been reconstructed and we have become strong, it is necessary to shift from defense to offense. While securing defense in our country, we must act in an offensist (nastupatel’nym) way. Our military policy must change from defense (oborona) to waging offensist actions. We need to instill in our indoctrination, our propaganda and agitation, and in our press an offensist spirit. The Red Army is a modern army. It is an army that is offensist.”
A. N. Yakolev, ed., 1941 god. Dokumenty , Moscow: Mezhdunarodniy Fond “Demokratiya”, 1998, p. 162.
Cited by Albert L. Weeks in Stalin’s Other War, Appendix 1, pp. 84, 94, 167.
“J. V. Stalin, the Secretary-General of the CPSU (b), in the course of a speech he made at a reception for the graduates of military academies on 5 May 1941, gave it clearly to be understood that the German Army was the most probable enemy.”
VIZH No. 4 1978, p. 85.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 173.
“…to be ready, on the orders of the High Command, to deliver swift blows utterly to destroy the enemy, to carry out combat operations over his territory and seize important positions.”…“the war with Germany will not begin before 1942.”
V. A. Anfilov, Bessermertnyii povig, Moscow Nauka 1971, p. 171.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 182-183.
By May and June 1941, it was no longer possible to conceal the massive Soviet troop build-up. But it was possible to conceal the date of the planned attack, which is why Stalin permitted the 1942 date to leak out.
On 8 May 1941, three days after Stalin’s secret speech, TASS broadcast an outraged denial of a Japanese news-agency report of a massive build-up of Red Army forces on the western front:
“Japanese newspapers are publishing reports issued by the Domei Tsusin Agency in which it states that the Soviet Union is concentrating strong military forces on its
