Politburo Decree, 13 March 1940, “Military Retraining and Regrading of Party Committee Officials and the Procedure to be Followed on their Mobilization into the RKKA.”
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 52.
Military training of Party personnel proceeded at an accelerated pace. Between May 1940 and February 1941, 99,000 Party workers, including “63,000 senior workers of Party committees,” sat for examinations and appeared before boards. In March 1939, in a statement to the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU, Lev Mekhlis, chief of political administration of the Red Army said:
“… If the edge of the second imperialist war should turn against the first socialist state of the world, we must carry military hostilities into the enemy’s territory, perform our international duty and increase the number of Soviet republics … .”
K. Voroshilov, L. Mekhlis, S. Budyonny, G. Stern, The Red Army Today, Speeches Delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), March 10-21, 1939 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), p. 42.
This is how Red Air Force General Baidukov described future war in Pravda:
“What joy and happiness will shine in the faces of those who will receive here in the Great Kremlin Palace the last republic into the brotherhood of nations of the whole world! I envisage clearly the bomber planes destroying the enemy’s factories, railway junctions, bridges, depots and positions; low-flying assault aircraft attacking columns of troops and artillery positions with a hail of gunfire; and assault landing ships putting their divisions ashore in the heart of the enemy’s dispositions. The powerful and formidable air force of the Land of the Soviets, along with the infantry and tank and artillery troops will do their sacred duty and will help the enslaved peoples to escape from their executioners.”
Pravda, Georgi Baidukov, 18 August 1940.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 352.
On January 1, 1941, Pravda greeted the new year with the slogan:
“Let us increase the number of republics of the Soviet Union!”
“Our country is large; the globe must revolve for nine hours before the whole of our vast Soviet land can enter the new year of our victories. The time will come when not nine hours, but all twenty-four hours on the clock will be needed for this to happen … Who knows where we shall be greeting the new year in five or ten years’ time – in what latitude, on what new Soviet meridian?”
Pravda, 1 January 1941.
As the date of Stalin’s planned attack drew closer, Pravda became more jingoistic:
“Divide our enemies, meet the demand of each of them temporarily and then destroy them one at a time, giving them no opportunity to unite.’
Pravda, 4 March 1941.
On 5 May 1941, Stalin made a speech in the Kremlin honoring the military academy graduates. The speech lasted forty minutes, which for the taciturn Stalin, was tantamount to a filibuster. The speech was not published at that time, but was frequently referenced; more of it was published later.
“At one time or another we have followed a line based on defense.…But now that our army has been reconstructed and we have become strong, it is necessary to shift from defense to offense. While securing defense in our country, we must act in an offensist (nastupatel’nym) way. Our military policy must change from defense (oborona) to waging offensist actions. We need to instill in our indoctrination, our propaganda and agitation, and in our press an offensist spirit. The Red Army is a modern army. It is an army that is offensist.”
A. N. Yakolev, ed., 1941 god. Dokumenty , Moscow: Mezhdunarodniy Fond “Demokratiya”, 1998, p. 162.
Cited by Albert L. Weeks in Stalin’s Other War, Appendix 1, pp. 84, 94, 167.
“J. V. Stalin, the Secretary-General of the CPSU (b), in the course of a speech he made at a reception for the graduates of military academies on 5 May 1941, gave it clearly to be understood that the German Army was the most probable enemy.”
VIZH No. 4 1978, p. 85.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 173.
“…to be ready, on the orders of the High Command, to deliver swift blows utterly to destroy the enemy, to carry out combat operations over his territory and seize important positions.”…“the war with Germany will not begin before 1942.”
V. A. Anfilov, Bessermertnyii povig, Moscow Nauka 1971, p. 171.
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 182-183.
By May and June 1941, it was no longer possible to conceal the massive Soviet troop build-up. But it was possible to conceal the date of the planned attack, which is why Stalin permitted the 1942 date to leak out.
On 8 May 1941, three days after Stalin’s secret speech, TASS broadcast an outraged denial of a Japanese news-agency report of a massive build-up of Red Army forces on the western front:
“Japanese newspapers are publishing reports issued by the Domei Tsusin Agency in which it states that the Soviet Union is concentrating strong military forces on its western frontiers….In this connection, passenger traffic along the Trans-Siberian Railway has been stopped, so that troops from the Far East can be transferred mainly to its western frontiers.” TASS is authorized to state that this suspiciously strident Domei Tsusin report…is the fruit of the sick imagination of its authors….
Suvorov, op. cit., p. 188.
On May 15,1941, the People’s Commissar of Defense, Timoshenko and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Zhukov sent a memorandum to Stalin titled “Consideration of the Plan for the Strategic Deployment of the Armed Forces in Case of War with Germany and Its Allies.” The following are excerpts from the memorandum:
“Taking into account the fact that at the present time Germany can maintain its army in mobilized readiness together with its deployed forces in the rear, it has the capability of preempting us in deploying and mounting a surprise strike.”
“In order to prevent this from happening while destroying the German army, I consider it necessary that in no way should we yield the initiative for starting hostilities to the German command.”
“We should preempt (upridit’) the enemy by deploying and attacking the German Army at the very moment when it has reached the stage of deploying (in order to wage an attack) but has not yet organized itself into a front or concentrated all units of its armed forces along the front….”
“In order that the above may be carried out in the way indicated, it is necessary in timely fashion to take the following measures without which it will not be possible to deliver a surprise strike against the enemy both from the air as well as from the ground.” (There follows a list of measures relating to the locations along the Western Front for deploying Red Army infantry, tank, etc., divisions and the number of days or weeks the various measures will take to execute the Red Army’s “surprise strike.”)
Yakovlev, op. cit., pp. 215-220.
Weeks, op. cit., Appendix 2, pp. 169-170.
A large number of post-World War II official reports document the massive build-up of Soviet forces on the western frontier during this period. On 26 May 1941, the Trans-Baikal Military District and the Far Eastern Front were ordered to send nine divisions, including three tank divisions, to the west. The 16th Army was on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the 22nd and 24th Armies were headed toward it.
General A. Grylev and Professor V. Khvostov, Kommunist,1968, No.2, p.67.
Suvorov, op. cit., p.191.
Marshal Bagramyan wrote: “we had to prepare all the operational documentation needed for moving five rifle and four mechanized corps out of the areas where they were