[by whom?]
I do subscribe to this point of view. One needs to look at the actions Stalin took prior to the war. I think Rezun documented it fairly well.
And there is a great impetus to whitewash history - back then and even today.
I do subscribe to this point of view. One needs to look at the actions Stalin took prior to the war. I think Rezun documented it fairly well.
And there is a great impetus to whitewash history - back then and even today.
Note that this hypothesis is almost entirely based on Viktor Suvorov's work, which has problems. From Wikipedia [0] (and also from Glantz, which I have read):
"Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg). Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings have 'virtually no evidentiary base'."
and
> "David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay"
and Beevor shows serious doubts (note that a 41 winter attack is not what the original hypothesis is about):
> "Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..."
There's some support for this theory in the West, but very little. The vast majority of works seem to discount it. It seems to be a fringe theory.
Of course, eventually the Soviet Union and Germany would have been at war, what with Hitler's ideology being anti "Bolshevism" and considering most Slavs to be subhumans to be ethnically cleansed as part of Generalplan Ost.
One other thing. You also wrote:
> Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution.
That doesn't seem to have been Stalin's plan [1], at least initially. It was precisely a point of contention with his political opponents that Stalin favored the "Socialism in one country" position instead of "world revolution".
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv...
The specific claim that's likely false is that the Soviet Union, as early as 1941, planned to conquer Europe (as part of some bid to implement "world communism") and specifically attack Germany, and that Hitler's Barbarossa was some sort of "preemptive/defensive" strike. The first goes against Stalin's philosophy at the time, the latter goes against what we know about Red Army readiness and also what we know about Hitler's racial ideology.