Drawing on a host of internal Soviet Politburo discussions, memoranda and speeches, this book shows that the Soviet Union was a heavily militarized state that incessantly planned to unleash a great, ideologically motivated war.

While the myth of Soviet benevolence has now largely been discredited, the idea that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a peaceful power that sought to prevent the war through all kinds of means – including an ill-fated non-aggression treaty with Hitler – remains popular to this day. Indeed, this narrative is not only promoted by Putin's propaganda but also by a host of Western intellectuals and even historians who take public declarations at face value.

Drawing on a host of internal Soviet Politburo discussions, memoranda and speeches, this book shows that the Soviet Union was a heavily militarized state that incessantly planned to unleash a great, ideologically motivated war against the rest of the world. In fact, its entire political life revolved around the question of war, especially following the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, which convinced Soviet leaders of the imminent collapse of the capitalist system abroad. Thus, both the collectivization as well as the terror that followed in its wake were done with the coming war in mind – even though there was no tangible danger of war. Slowed down by countless devastating setbacks, Stalin was nevertheless able to amass a gigantic army by the late 1930s. When Hitler approached Stalin in 1939 asking for Soviet neutrality in his planned invasion of Poland, Stalin sensed a golden opportunity: by supporting Hitler, he could turn the European powers against each another, allowing him to intervene once they were sufficiently weakened. However, Stalin miscalculated: Hitler beat both Poland and France in less than a year and then turned against Moscow in 1941, long before Stalin was ready for his own attack.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Maps
• Part I: Great Hopes and Great Setbacks
  • Chapter 1 The October Revolution in Russia: The Beginning of the Bolshevik World Revolution
  • Chapter 2 The Polish-Soviet War of 1920 – The Breakthrough into Europe Fails
  • Chapter 3 The Imperative of Economic Recovery
  • Chapter 4 Anti-Communist Resistance in the First Years after the Russian Civil War
  • Chapter 5 The Stabilization of Soviet Rule
  • Chapter 6 The Red Army After 1920
  • Chapter 7 The German Red October of 1923 and the Bolsheviks
  • Chapter 8 Poland – The Testing Ground of Revolutionary Irredentism
  • Chapter 9 The Social, Economic and Ethnic Crisis of the Soviet Union in the Mid-1920s
  • Chapter 10 “Socialism in One Country” – The New Path to World Revolution
  • Chapter 11 Preparing for the Revolutionary War: The Committee for Defense
  • Chapter 12 Strengthening the Hinterland: The Hunt for Wreckers, Saboteurs, Spies and Counterrevolutionary Elements
  • Chapter 13 The “Pacification” of the Village and Financing War Preparations
• Part II: Stalin Prepares for Total War
  • Chapter 14 The Great Depression and Its Consequences
  • Chapter 15 The Creation of a Modern Soviet Armaments Industry and the Reorganization of the Red Army, 1930-1941
  • Chapter 16 The Great Purge – The Hunt for Scapegoats
  • Chapter 17 Europe in the 1930s and Stalin’s War Preparations
  • Chapter 18 1938/39 – The Turning Point
  • Chapter 19 The Hitler-Stalin Pact
  • Chapter 20 Stalin Triumphant
  • Chapter 21 The Attack on Finland – The Moment of Truth
  • Chapter 22 The Ideology of the Revolutionary War
  • Chapter 23 Hitler’s Victory in the West – Stalin’s Dilemma
  • Chapter 24 Preparing for the Attack on Germany
  • Chapter 24 A Pre-Emptive War?
• Final Remarks
• Appendix
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Archival Sources
  • Selected Bibliography
• Plates