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The Soviet Policy Towards the Baltic States in 1939–41

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The Soviet Policy Towards the Baltic States in 1939–41 THE SOVIET POLICY TOWARDS THE BALTIC STATES IN 1939–41 Boris Vadimovich Sokolov Editors’ Initial Remarks This chapter provides a deliberately provocative alternative evaluation of Soviet strategy in the two years prior to the German attack in late June 1941. Due to the still extremely limited and fragmented accessibility of sources, it is built on new use of what is available. The character of the Soviet regime and the current official Russian unwillingness to challenge the traditional narrative of the start of the Great Patriotic War makes it impossible to conclusively prove the author’s thesis with quotes and foot- notes. However, accepting Stalin’s now known combination of ideological motives, fundamental opportunism and lack of moral constraints, it becomes both relevant and legitimate to challenge the traditional narra- tive, if a logical alternative framework can be established. There is, furthermore, one very important reason why Boris Sokolov’s interpretation should be taken seriously. From the outset, the framework of all military preparations and all strategic visions of the future war was that the fundamentally offensive character of state class war ideology should be mirrored in war planning. It was one central element in the uni- fied military doctrine promoted by Mikhail Frunze, who outmanoeuvred the professionally far more pragmatic Leonid Trotsky in the struggle over the character of the Red Army. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, over the next years, implemented Frunze’s concept in force development and doctrine for use by the army. Any war fought by the Soviet Union should be fought with massive, deep offensives on enemy soil. The balancing between offensive and defence strategy and capabilities recommended by Alexander Svechin, the leading military theorist until demoted by Tukhachevsky, was dropped and replaced by dogma. The final basic doctrinal document, the “Field Regulations” from 1936, emphasised that victory should be won by violent, deep offensive operations. Tactical defence might be used for a limited time, locally, in emergencies, but it was not the Soviet way of warfare. The 1937–38 purges that killed both Tukhachevsky and Svechin, and most of the other Soviet military intellectuals, did not change the gen- eral character of the force development and strategic proclivity of war <UN> 76 boris vadimovich sokolov planning, they only castrated the ability to implement and command the planned operations, something painfully demonstrated in East Poland and especially in Finland in 1939.1 The effectiveness of massive military organisations depends on agreed visions of how to fight. In the case of the 1939–41 Red Army, that vision was a dogmatic military doctrine of massive offensive operations. The political leadership might choose to accept that the enemy fired the first shot or even crossed the border, but immediately thereafter the massive jugger- naut would be launched as planned. In the summer of 1941 the Soviet Union paid dearly for its strategic offensive-only war preparations and army doctrine. Introduction: Until the End of the Finnish War Soviet policy towards the Baltic region just before and during the Second World War was fundamentally imperialistic in character. In 1939–41 the Kremlin considered occupation and re-annexation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as one of the main aims in the region. The second aim was the occupation and similar annexation of Finland, but the control of the Baltic States was more immediately important for Moscow owing to the strategic requirements in the context of a future Soviet-German war. The basing of Soviet troops in Lithuania only became possible after 28 September 1939, when, in a secret protocol to the Soviet-German treaty of friendship, Germany accepted that the borders of that country fell within the Soviet sphere of interests. A forward deployed force was a nec- essary pre-condition for any Soviet offensive operations into East Prussia. The control of both Latvian and Estonian ports was necessary for prevent- ing their use by the German fleet in its operations against Leningrad and Kronstadt in the same way the British Royal Navy had used them twenty years earlier. The occupation of Finland, which, like Latvia and Estonia, became a part of the Soviet sphere of interest under a secret protocol of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, was to remove the threat to Leningrad and provide a 1 The best, unchallenged, short description of the doctrinal development can be found in David M. Glantz: Soviet Military Operational Art. In Pursuit of Deep Battle (London 1991), pp. 64–98. The key role of tanks in the doctrine are best covered by Mary R. Habeck: Storm of Steel. The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939 (Ithaca 2003). The details of Tukhachevsky’s development and vision can be found in Lawrence X. Clifford’s rather hagiographic Tukhachevsky and Blitzkrieg (Boston 2004). <UN> <UN>.
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