The Last Republic: Why the Soviet Union Lost WWII?

Viktor Suvorov

Sofia: Fakel Express, 1996; Pages: 332

The third part of THE ICEBREAKER trilogy, in which Suvorov continues his polemic with just about every historian, general, and specialist on the Second World War. He begins with the question why it was Zhukov, not Stalin, who accepted the Victory Parade in 1945; and why the end of the war was not an official holiday in the USSR until the Brezhnev era. His answer---because there was nothing to celebrate, because the Soviet Union did not win the war despite the red flag over Berlin, because the failure to destroy the advanced capitalist states of Europe meant the end of communism everywhere.

Why? Going back to Marx and Lenin, Suvorov traces the logic of the proposition that the survival of communism had one necessary condition: the lack of capitalist states with which to make comparisons. Lenin was right, it was either capitalism or communism, peaceful coexistence was impossible. When the state takes over every productive resource, when the agricultural land is collectivized, when the peasants are starved, deported, or simply killed by the thousands so that industrial workers could be fed for nothing, when private initiative is stifled by bureaucracy and terror, the people leave the country. Bureaucracy is also inimical to innovation, which is why the USSR had to buy most of its technology. Even if the monstrous concentration of resources could produce the largest and best-equipped army in the world, it was at a price which meant the destruction of the state unless all its enemies were destroyed first. The last republic would have to be the last free state on the planet. Communism, expansive by nature, was also expansive of necessity. It was a doctrine of conquest for survival. This is what Stalin, as a dedicated Leninist, was preparing.

The Winter War in 1939, when everyone though the USSR lost against the tiny Finland was, according to Suvorov, an unqualified success, and it was the idiocy of the German generals that they did not take into account its real meaning. When the Red Army tore through the theoretically invincible Mannerheim Line in -41 degree (Celsius) winter with 1.5 meters of snow over treacherous bogs, stopping short of Helsinki is not failure, it is making the impossible (even theoretically) happen. And when the Red Army learned from its experience there, it was even more formidable an adversary in winter conditions, something for which the Germans were deplorably unprepared.

Suvorov then talks about the topographical maps (of German territories) and the pocket dictionaries (Russo-German) prepared by the millions for the use of the Red Army. Surely not for a defensive war. He also takes pains to dispel the legends about the flammable Russian tanks (they did not run on gas but on oil), the 40-150 hour usable tank life (against the German 20-40), the lack of heavy tanks in the Wehrmacht (until late 1942) with which to oppose the Russian IS, and the "miraculous" appearance of elite Russian divisions in decisive moments of the war. Suvorov also takes pains to show how the Kremlin historians got away with publishing false data---by lumping together separate categories and using totals to hide the numbers within each. Unfortunately, they still do that, as evidenced by my copy of "The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945" published by the Russian Academy of Science in 1999. Same figures, same lack of distinction there.

October 19, 2000. BLS

@BOOK{suvorov-96:republic,
    TITLE     = {Poslednata republika: zashto Suvetskia Suyuz zagubi Vtorata Svetovna Voina?},
    AUTHOR    = {Viktor Suvorov},
    YEAR      = {1996},
    PUBLISHER = {Fakel Express},
    ADDRESS   = {Sofia},
    ISBN      = {954-90106-3-5},
    NOTE      = {Pp. 332}
}