Gabriel Gorodetsky. Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. xvi + 408 pp. Maps, photos, endnotes, bibliography, index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-300-07792-0; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0-300-08459-5.
Reviewed by Kenneth Slepyan, Transylvania University. Published by H-Russia (June, 2003)
Icebreaker or Titanic? Stalin's Foreign Policy, 1939-1941
In the summer of 1995, while doing research in Moscow, I lived with an elderly Russian intelligent couple. Aleksandr Mikhailovich, an aviation engineer, was widely read in Russian literature and history, and seemed quite interested in my own research on the Soviet Union in World War II. In the midst of one of our many conversations, he surprised me with the assertion that Stalin was, of course, responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler, and in addition, that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union to prevent a Soviet offensive against Germany. When pressed for evidence he pointed to Viktor Suvorov's book Ledokol' (Icebreaker), which claimed that Stalin was planning on attacking Hitler but that the Nazi leader surprised him with a pre-emptive strike.
The arguments forwarded by Icebreaker, whose author is a defector from Soviet military intelligence, have gained quite a following in the former Soviet Union among ordinary citizens and historians alike.[1] Indeed, one could hardly walk by a book kiosk or table in Moscow during that summer without passing either Icebreaker or Suvorov's follow-up work, Den'-M.[2] Gabriel Gorodetsky's The Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia was written, in part, to respond to Suvorov's claims. But Gorodetsky has higher aspirations than merely refuting what is essentially a mendacious and unsubstantiated argument based on preconceived notions of what Stalin and Soviet communism were about. Rather, Gorodetsky's primary goal is to present "a coherent analysis of Stalin's policies which not only challenges the standard interpretations but produces a completely new narrative" (p. xii).
Gorodetsky can make this claim, in part, because of his unprecedented access to previously unavailable material, including records from the Soviet foreign ministry, Soviet military intelligence, the NKVD, the Red Army's General Staff, the Presidential Archive (to which access is now restricted), and the personal files of important players such as Viacheslav Molotov, Andrei Vyshinsky, Ivan Maisky, and V. G. Dekazanov. Archival materials from Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Germany, and Britain supplement and contextualize this already impressive source base.
Gorodetsky's substantial research easily refutes Suvorov's thesis: there is no indication that Stalin was planning to go to war against Germany in the summer of 1941. On the contrary, Gorodetsky's Stalin was a cautious and increasingly timid leader, trying to protect the Soviet Union's national security interests while desperately hoping to delay a war with Germany, until at least 1942 or preferably even 1943 when Stalin believed the Red Army would be truly capable of dealing with the Wehrmacht. These twin considerations dominated his foreign policy to the exclusion of all other concerns. Unfortunately for Stalin, these goals became increasingly incompatible and eventually untenable as they conflicted with changing German interests. The tragedy for the Soviet Union and its citizens was that, despite growing warnings, Stalin deluded himself into thinking that his policy was working, until the actual German invasion told him otherwise.
Gorodetsky argues that Stalin consistently followed a "balance of power" policy even before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. To Stalin, the Pact was purely defensive. Rather than viewing the coming war as an opportunity to spread world revolution, he hoped to keep the militarily unprepared Soviet Union out of the conflict. To that end, he followed a policy of strict neutrality, and feared that both Germany and Britain might attempt to draw the Soviet Union into the war. If Stalin saw the war as a chance for the Allies and Germany to bleed themselves white and let the Soviets move in and pick up the pieces, as others have argued, then it is not evident in the documents.[3] In this light, the Soviet territorial acquisitions of 1939-40 were not part of any pre-conceived plans for expansion but instead were made in response to German gains, necessary to help the Soviets secure their position in Europe (i.e. the annexation of Eastern Poland came following the German conquest of Western Poland, the annexations of the Baltic States and the seizure of Romanian lands occurred in the context of the fall of France and the Low Countries). While Gorodetsky may be right about the timing of these actions, many historians might still question his portrayal of Stalin's motives in these cases as being primarily defensive.
While Stalin sought to avoid war, he nonetheless was determined to protect Soviet national security interests. The Balkans became the key arena in which the Nazis and Soviets vied for influence, and Gorodetsky exhaustively tracks the feverish diplomatic activity of all the players. Hitler viewed the Balkans as critical to safeguarding his rear in Europe against British encroachments, while other German officials saw the area as a fundamental component of a German-organized "Continental bloc" directed at the British. Stalin regarded the Balkans, particularly Bulgaria, as critical to protecting both the Turkish straits and Ukraine from attack. Gorodetsky contends that although Hitler eventually triumphed in the diplomatic maneuvering, bringing Rumania and Bulgaria into the Axis camp by the winter of 1941, the collision of German and Soviet interests in the Balkans ultimately led him to opt for war against the Soviet Union. According to Gorodetsky, the timing of the issuance of the Barbarossa Directive indicates that Hitler's motivation for war emerged from geopolitical, and not ideological, considerations. Failed German efforts to convince Molotov, during his visit to Berlin in November 1940, that the USSR's true interests lay towards Asia and the possessions of the British Empire helped to convince Hitler that it was impossible to come to a mutual understanding with the Soviets in the Balkans. The straw that finally broke the camel's back, as far as Hitler was concerned, was the collapse of the Danube Conference negotiations over the issue of control of the Danube's delta. The Soviets proposed that they and the Rumanians should establish exclusive joint control of the delta, which would effectively cut off the Germans from the Black Sea. This occurred on 17 December 1940. The next day Hitler issued the order to begin planning for Operation Barbarossa. <SNIP> http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=141721057558202