..."Hence the origins of the German invasion of Russia in 1941 stand once again at the centre of historical debate. A further stage was reached in 1985 when a former Soviet general staff officer of the Brezhnev era, who had defected to the West and who publishes under the name of 'Victor Suvorov', published an article in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institution. The article is part of his doctoral dissertation.17 Proceeding from the question of what had caused Stalin, on 13 June 1941, to dismiss publicly rumours of an imminent German attack as 'enemy propaganda', Suvorov comes to the conclusion that at just about this time the final phase of deploying 183 Soviet divisions on Russia's Western frontier had begun, a deployment which was to be concluded by 10 July 1941. According to Suvorov, this deployment could have served only one purpose, to attack. A deterrent function can be ruled out, because the entire operation was carried out in the strictest secrecy, quite apart from Hitler's and the German general staff's low opinion of the Red Army as a whole. Nor could it have served as a defence, because no defensive preparations had been made. By initiating the final deployment, the decision for attack had been made, because transporting the 183 divisions back into the Russian interior to their home garrisons would not have been possible before the winter, nor were the Russian forces equipped to stay put over the winter. Moreover, Soviet action then fully corresponded with Soviet military doctrine, according to which deployment had to be concluded before formal mobilization, at which point Soviet forces were to cross the frontier to defeat the enemy on his own territory. Thus Stalin's TASS declaration of 13 June was no more than a stratagem.
"This is the essence of Suvorov's argument, supported by an impressive array of primary sources, as well as carefully analysed circumstantial evidence. As has been correctly noted,18 Suvorov only analyses Soviet moves, ignoring the German side completely. Nor does he enter into the controversy as to what influence Russian troop movements in 1940/41 may have had upon the genesis of 'Operation Barbarossa' and Hitler's decision to attack the Soviet Union. That these moves were already cause for concern in 1940 has been demonstrated by this writer in this journal. But Suvorov appears to go to great lengths to avoid the impression that the Soviet deployment had forced Hitler's hand. The indisputable fact remains that once Hitler had played all his diplomatic cards and had failed, once it was obvious that Ribbentrop's plan to integrate the Soviet Union into a Eurasian bloc directed against Britain had miscarried, the war to be conducted was to be an ideological and racial contest aiming at the total destruction of Russia and the reduction of its population to servitude. All this is a matter with which Suvorov does not concern himself.
..."So the historical debate acquired a political dimension, since it was and is the intention of Soviet historiography to prevent under any circumstances the emergence of doubts as to the morality of the Soviet Union's actions. However, the question of Soviet losses during the Second World War is a separate issue. As early as 1946 and as late as 1951 the official Soviet figure for fatal casualties, military as well as civilian, was given as approximately 7 millions. Suddenly in the 1960s the figure of 20 millions was given, which so far has been generally accepted. However, more recently some historians have raised doubts, and on the basis of their own calculations suggested the possibility that the Soviets quietly and subtly included in this figure a large part of the losses sustained under Stalin's reign of terror.25"
