Stalin's Role in the Coming of World War 11: 47 Ill) the International Debate Goes on R
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Stiftelsen norsk Okkupasjonshistorie, 2014 112148 VOLUME 159 NUMBER 2 FALL 1996 . Stalin's Role in the Coming of World War 11: 47 ill) The International Debate Goes On R. C. Raack Ukraine's Niche in the U.S. Launch Market: 55 Will Kiev's Hopes Come True? Victor L. Zaborsky Ghana: Lurching Toward Economic Rationality 64 Ho-Won Jeong Will Russia Be Crushed by Its History? 72 Nikolai V. Zlobin America the Beautiful Europe 85 Herb Greer SNO Stiftelsen norsk Okkupasjonshistorie, 2014 Vol. 159 No. 2 FALL 1996 47 "J Stalin's Role in the CODling of World War 11 THE INTERNATIONAL DEBATE GOES ON RV R. C. RAACK R. C. Raack is professor emeritus view of Stalin and his aims-he was most cer of history at California State tainly their author-fit exceptionally well the University, Hayward. 'est un monstre," French Foreign Minister larger picture of Stalin's personality now being C Georges Bidault said of Stalin following rounded out by contemporary Russian writers an overlong session of negotiation and enforced Edvard Radzinsky and Arkady Vaksberg. In ~iety, lasting almost until dawn, in the Krem- books first published in Russian but placed 1 .. 1 in December 1944. The social exchange recently before Western readers in translation centered around a buffet and film seance com (Radzinsky, Stalin; Vaksberg, Stalin and the 3 manded by Stalin. In the course of the evening Jews, Hotel LUx, and Die Verfolgten Stalins ) with Charles DeGaulle and his advisers, Stalin both writers have taken the historical measure had volunteered several times to speed negotia of the long-time Soviet leader whom only the tions to a conclusion by shutting up "boring" French, among his executive-level wartime diplomats with a machine gun-never making Western visitors, caught. Radzinsky and Vaks wholly clear whether he intended to include the berg fix in their pages the figure of evil that Frenchmen present in his proposed massacre. I must inform any assessment of Stalin's war Perhaps Bidault was rendered excessively time, pre-war, and Cold War plans beyond the judgmental by what may have appeared to him borders of the Soviet Union. as a close encounter with le faucheur sovie The breakout this year of the discussion of tique. But he then expressed a view of Stalin Stalin's war goals on a second national front, now almost universally accepted, except by his part of the newly lively international discussion most fanatical devotees-at least when the on the effects of the opening of many former issue becomes the Soviet boss's appalling East Bloc archives to independent researchers, lestic misdeeds. Yet it was a view that, at the may signal a turning point in the history of the time, obviously eluded more naive Westerners, debate. The fact that for several years Stalin's like Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roo adventurous foreign goals have been mainline sevelt, though each spent many more hours than historical discussion in Russia suggests the vast DeGauIle's group in wartime negotiation and amount of new historical information on Stalin )matic society with the Soviet boss. and his successors now emerging from the for Better informed anglophone observers of the merly closed archives. The multiform layers of time were not misled. One was George F. Ken concealment the Soviet boss created are gradu nan, then influential in the U. S. Embassy in ally unfolding-but without the help of, indeed Moscow, if largely ignored in RooseveIt's in the face of, apparently deliberate stonewall White House. He wrote to his Washington col ing by many Western editors and history writ league, Charles Bohlen, in January 1945, ers, not to mention the current Russian govern before the Yalta conference had finished: "SoviSNOment. Among the Westerners, there appears to et political aims in Europe are not ... consistent be a clear unwillingness to accept, or even to with the happiness, prosperity or stability of publicize, what is known. Someone among the international life on the rest of the Continent." former Soviets clearly just doesn't want us to To attain Europe's weakness and disunity, know. The Russian government has closed the "There is no misery, and no evil, I am afraid, most important political archive to independent which they would not be prepared to inflict, if researchers.4 One can only imagine the racks of they could, on the European peoples."2 This skeletons desiccating in that closet. Stiftelsen norsk Okkupasjonshistorie, 2014 48 World Affairs Only last February the intensive interna aggressive plans in Europe in 1941. Recently, tional debate over Stalin's aggressive war the Suvorov thesis was gratuitously described plans broke through the odd indifference in by a Swiss academic as an "unspeakably which most of the Western popular media, (unsaglich) pseudo-revisionist argument. .. and the overwhelming mass of academic [that] receives the treatment it deserves"-in a media, had heretofore clothed it. This book of over a thousand pages by an American occurred directly on the German-language historian. That book the reviewer lauds as front-Austrians, Swiss, and Germans, "more than just a future standard work on the eighty or so million comparatively well edu history of the Second World War."8 cated Europeans-where the debate had ear Some of these comments obviously go far lier been conducted at considerably less than beyond the usual cautious razor cuts employed front-page level. by academic reviewers, I think the reader will To put this key bit of publishing history in agree. But they clearly are comments redolent context, one need only recall the vehement of strongly held passions, as well as of convic objections of some of those who have tions that are far more widespread than those opposed the controversial Suvorov "the few examples can convey. Three well-known sis"-the argument of the Russian exile German public figures on the Left-one quite author, Viktor Suvorov, first produced in far, to be sure-told visiting Russian television book form as The Icebreaker in 1989. He interviewers in an off-camera discussion that argued that Stalin planned an attack to the even if the Suvorov thesis were correct, his west against Nazi Germany and German story should not be told since it disencumbered occupied Europe in July 1941. The Soviet Hitler (and, by implication, the Germans who drive was planned to anticipate Hitler's followed him) of some of the guilt for bringing attack on the Soviet Union, which the Krem on the war. Years back, Dr. Goebblels shocked lin master had no doubt was in the works. the civilized world by publicly burning books The Red army was not, however, to march in on the Opemplatz in Berlin. Now there are dis a preventive strike, but to carry out a full tinguished members of the German Left who, if fledged assault to the west.5 Those reporters not obviously as rabid as some professors, pro and historians on an international front who pose to ban history books for political purpos did not originally wholly ignore Suvorov's es-and not a genuine Bolshevik, nor, I'm sure, astonishing thesis (and they made up the a sincere devotee of Stalin, among them!9 vast majority) epitomized in their responses Giinter Gillessen was one German writer to his book both outrage and hostiIity.6 Yet who had skepticalIy, but not negatively, by now his history, some of it originally reviewed Viktor Suvorov's first book, The Ice rather speculative, has been taken up in sig breaker, in 1989 (in the Frankfurter Allgemeine nificant measure by other historians and also Zeitung).lO The German edition had just considerably enhanced, amplified, and fur appeared. Other reviewers had drawn similar ther documented.7 A whole new set of cen skeptical conclusions. But, a year later, the trally important sources have been found, in English-language editions went almost unno spite of the archival blockade erected in ticed in both popular journals of opinion and Moscow, to underpin much of what he professional journals. 11 By 1995-long after wrote. Some will be reported below for the the discussion of Suvorov's argument that Stal first time to English-language readers. in had planned to attack Hitler, had Hitler not The reader of my earlier article on this attacked the Soviet Union first, had become a subject will remember some of the respons first-page story in Russia and Suvorov's readers es to Suvorov. After his book appeared in had climbed into the millions-several other English, two professors from different sides German writers had taken up the argument. of the globe jumped in to call the argument They relied for their proof mainly on Suvorov that Stalin planned a war of assault against and the late Aleksandr Nekrich. Nekrich, a Nazi Germany,SNO Suvorov's story, "absurd." Russian emigre scholar attached to the Harvard Not long after that, Suvorov and a number Russian Research Institute, had early found his of others who had written on the subject way into the newly opened Soviet archives. (including, by implication, the writer of this There he found convincing evidence, from the article) were cast beyond the pale of profes mouths of Stalin's closest cronies, of a general sional respectability, characterized as "crass plan to unleash the Red army westward, first outsiders" for suggesting that Stalin had against its immediate western neighbors, Stiftelsen norsk Okkupasjonshistorie, 2014 Vol. 159 No. 2 FALL 1996 49 Hitler's Germany and its subjected peoples. 12 In fact, the discussion is international. But Suvorov, the reader may recall, had actually set Augstein perhaps calculated that if he made the date for that attack as early July 1941.