History is also becoming a battlefield today. As in any war, the goal of the enemy is the same - to demoralize, destroy or capture. In this case - captured by a new propaganda lie …
Dream in the Kremlin on a June night
It is curious that the haters of the USSR pay disproportionate attention to Soviet history. All other periods of the past, from the ON to the Russian Empire, seemed to have ceased to exist for them. The Soviets, which they hate, are a different matter.
The themes of revolutionary violence, repression and war are priority here. In the false interpretation of the revolution and the "Great Terror" of 1937, which in reality itself was a kind of "counter-revolution", the manipulators have achieved considerable success.
But with the Great Patriotic War, as the mass popular movement on May 9 shows, the matter still has not been able to get off the ground.
Moreover, as if in response to the social and ideological failure of the neoliberal economic project, the sincere, unofficial enthusiasm of people for Victory Day began to clearly grow today. The "Immortal Regiment" march this year is a good example of this.
And this clearly does not suit someone. This means that we need to triple the efforts to defame.
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At the same time, there is no reason to recklessly idealize the Soviet past either. There were enough bureaucratic distortions, and their own gross miscalculations and mistakes - and crimes too. And there was also a mythology of its own.
But this does not exhaust all the enormous significance and achievements of that time for our peoples. All the more so - victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Undoubtedly, the initial period of the war was also tragic. And by the way, the first mythology appeared during the time of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Modern "revisionists" take and strengthen these provisions, altering them in their own way. Today we will consider myth # 1 - “How Stalin slept through the beginning of the war”.
Premonition of a global war
Now everyone knows very well that Soviet intelligence and German anti-fascists literally threw the leadership of the VKP (b) -USSR with information about the impending war, right down to the exact dates. Therefore, in the modern modification, the version "Stalin knew about the attack - but did not believe …" becomes more relevant. He seemed to think that a military clash with Germany could be avoided. In fact, this interpretation of the behavior of Joseph Dzhugashvili before the war appeared in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era.
There is something to criticize Stalin for, but there is no reason to accuse him of stupidity or political naivety. We believe that the General Secretary of the CPSU (b), who, contrary to the imposed stereotypes, ruled the country not at all individually, but collectively - like the entire Soviet leadership, was convinced of the inevitability of an attack by Nazi Germany on the USSR.
This confidence arose immediately after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. This was clearly supported by the extreme anti-communism of the Nazis, who immediately launched an unprecedented mass terror against dissidents. And the urgent need of German corporations for geopolitical and economic revenge, which was strongly reinforced by the racial anti-Slavic doctrine.
To the Soviet leadership, not clouded by any "civilizational theories", the inevitability of war was as clear as twice two or four. All subsequent events - the intervention of the National Socialists in the Spanish civil war, the Anschluss of Austria, the invasion of Czechoslovakia - only reinforced this conviction.
It was impossible to avoid the war between the USSR and Hitler's "Reich" - it was like trying to prevent an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. The main task of the country's leadership was the need to avoid a military clash with the united forces of the entire imperialist West.
And it successfully coped with this strategic task. At the same time, making tactical miscalculations with the determination of the exact date of the attack, the deployment of troops, and so on. But even here it is not so simple …
Ribbentrop-Eden Pact
It is usually said that the order to bring the Soviet troops into combat readiness was not given for a long time because of the fear of "provoking" the Wehrmacht into an early attack.
And who, in fact, was to provoke? Three groups of German armies, in all directions for a long time already prepared for a throw on the USSR? The German side argued that the concentration of shock groups along the entire Soviet border was just a regrouping of the German army from British bombing. But it is unlikely that such awkward muttering of the German Foreign Ministry could mislead the Soviet military intelligence and command.
But the super-cautious actions of the communist leadership on the western border did take place. Was this the position of an ostrich burying its head in the ground at the sight of the armored hordes of Goth and Guderian? Or was this scrupulousness due to more pressing circumstances? For example, the desire not to give Hitler a reason, referring to the threat of "Bolshevik hordes", to conclude an alliance with Great Britain and the United States?
This is not true. The traditional, "hurray-patriotic" understatement of the potential and role of allies is also unjustified.
☞ First, the British aircraft gave Germany a lot of problems.
☞ Secondly, the leadership of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine understood the complexity and even unrealistic nature of the landing operation in the British Isles. This is indirectly evidenced by at least the fact that during the entire war it did not dare to land in England.
☞ Thirdly, a blow to the USSR, inflicted not only in the West, but also in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, through the territories of the British semi-colonies, could immediately become extremely dangerous for the Soviet Union. If not fatal. It was not for nothing that German intelligence worked so actively in Persia and Afghanistan, and already in August 1941, the USSR and England sent their troops to Iran.
☞ Fourthly, the conclusion of an alliance between Germany and "socially and racially" close Britain had more than enough supporters in the leadership of the "Reich". The "Munich Agreement" of 1938 eloquently testifies to this.
In 1939, secret negotiations were held between Germany and certain British circles for a military alliance against the USSR. And on May 10, 1941, less than a month and a half before the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler's closest associate, Rudolf Hess, flew to England. Its goals were to end the war between the two "fraternal Aryan peoples" and a new war against "Asian-Bolshevik Russia."
It is officially believed that this was a personal initiative of Hess, but all the documents in this case have not yet been declassified. In any case, an Anglo-German alliance was quite possible until the very last day.
☞ Fifth. A pact between Lord Eden and von Ribbentrop would radically change the very configuration of World War II. The United States would then indeed remain neutral. Best case scenario. Moreover, Japan would have additional arguments to direct its predatory aspirations not against Britain and America, but against the Soviet Far East and Siberia. It was this triple blow that the Soviet leadership should have feared most of all.
In March 1941, a pro-British government came to power in Yugoslavia as a result of a coup. Germany attacked and defeated Yugoslavia. Incidentally, this made it possible to delay the start of the war with the USSR for several months.
But the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the Kremlin's view, could have had other consequences as well - the loss of the last ally on the European continent did not add to the pep in London. So, it could also push to the search for an armistice and an alliance with Germany.
True, the contradictions between the defeated World War I Germany and the British Empire and the United States, their disputes over the colonies and the redistribution of spheres of influence, were extremely strong. That ultimately did not allow this coalition to take shape. But it is precisely the "Bolshevik threat to the values of the Western world" that could become the decisive argument for their union.
The fact that Stalin feared such a nightmare scenario most of all is also evidenced by the experience of a kind of rehearsal of World War II - the Spanish Civil War …
Morocco as an indivisible part of Spain
This position on the integrity of the Spanish Empire was then adhered to not only by the monarchists or the republican government, but even by the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Western Europeans began to subjugate Morocco in the 19th century. In 1912, most of the country went to the French Empire, less to the Kingdom of Spain. The Arabs and Berbers repeatedly raised uprisings against the European colonialists and even created their own Rif Republic. At the same time, the colonial war in Morocco was far from always successful for the Spanish army.
But it was the units recruited from the Moroccans that became the basis of the nationalist troops after the outbreak of the rebellion in July 1936.
The former regular army was effectively split between the rebels and the Republicans, although the majority of the officer corps supported Franco. Before the approach of the Italian expeditionary corps and the German legion "Condor", it was the Moroccan cavalry and the detachments of the monarchist "Carlist" "Reketos" that were the most combat-ready units of the Francoist army.
The Moroccan mercenaries committed unheard-of atrocities. However, the autonomous government of republican Catalonia managed to establish contacts with representatives of the national liberation movement of this North African country. Its leaders declared: their legionaries will leave Spain if the republican government recognizes the independence of Morocco.
Antonov-Ovseenko, the Soviet consul in Barcelona, was also a supporter of this decision. However, the Kremlin opposed Morocco's sovereignty. Madrid refused to recognize the independence of the African colony, and wild thugs from the deserts continued to advance on it in the forefront of the fascist army. As a result, the Spanish Republic fell.
Why was Morocco denied the right to self-determination in Moscow? Stalin then refused Soviet support for the anti-imperialist struggle for one reason - he did not want to irritate the colonial powers of Britain and France.
Formally, they held neutrality in relation to the Spanish Republic and the USSR. The precedent with the liberation of the colony could have pushed them towards an alliance with Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. Moreover, since 1939, the activities of the Comintern have also been gradually curtailed.
In 1938, on the eve of the invasion of the German army into Czechoslovakia, the USSR also offered military assistance to its government. However, Poland, itself preparing for an attack on the Czechs, refused to let the Red Army through. And the British and French ambassadors in Prague warned the Czechoslovakians that their military alliance with the Russians would lead to a crusade against Bolshevism, in which Britain and France would take part.
For obvious social reasons, British conservatives and French liberals made a choice between the communist USSR and nationalist Germany in favor of the Nazis.
At the same time, according to German own calculations, if the USSR had struck a preemptive strike in 1938, the Wehrmacht would have been defeated. It must be assumed that the GRU of the Red Army understood this also clearly.
However, no preventive Soviet offensive followed. Why? For humanitarian reasons?
Whatever Suvorov-Rezun wrote, the Soviet leadership understood perfectly well that if it dealt such a blow to Germany even after Britain entered the war with it, London and Washington would most likely still perceive this blow as an act of "Bolshevik aggression". This is supported by the initially unsuccessful Soviet negotiations with the allied missions.
Thus, the political and military leadership of the USSR on the eve of the Great Patriotic War managed to avoid the main thing - the formation of a common anti-Soviet front of all Western powers, led by Germany.
But against this background, fears intensified to give the Nazi Reich a reason to talk about the Soviet threat to the entire West. This led to the late bringing of Soviet troops to combat readiness and was one of the reasons for the heavy defeats in the summer and autumn of 1941.
However, it was during this period that the Red Army still managed to slow down and then stop the offensive of the Wehrmacht, the crushing blows of which no state in the world could withstand before …
Yuri Glushakov
