jim submits:

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.

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