War, Politics and Memory: Russian Historians Reevaluate the Origins of World War II
The myth of the Great Patriotic War, including the role of the USSR in the origins of World War II, continues to be a key element in the national identity of the Russian people. Previously, Soviet authorities mandated a narrative depicting the Soviet Union sincerely and unambiguously working for peace and against Nazi expansionism in the prewar years. This interpretation criticized the Western Powers for their alleged complicity in Hitler's aggression. After the collapse of the USSR, several competing views have appeared. The Putin and Medvedev administrations, as well as the popular "national-patriotic" school, maintain much of the former Soviet interpretation. Other Russian historians, many of them politically liberal, indict Stalin for mishandling the prewar crisis or even for promoting the onset of war for imperialistic or revolutionary purposes.
The Future of the Soviet Past
In the years of Brezhnev and Andropov most Soviet historians were tamed and silenced by the orthodoxy imposed by the party. With few exceptions, they remained quite passive in 1987, when writers and journalists were already calling for a profound reassessment of the Soviet past. But in 1988 they became leading actors in the drama of rival ideas. In the autumn Pravda published an important series of articles by Danilov, Lel’chuk, V. A. Kozlov and others, based on their work for the never-to-be-completed party history. Throughout the next three years substantial articles by historians about the Soviet past appeared in periodicals and newspapers. The most prominent historians frequently appeared on TV.
French Plans for Allied Attacks on the Caucasus Oil Fields January-April, 1940
On January 19, 1940, Premier fdouard Daladier of France issued an order which read in part: "General Gamelin and Admiral Darlan are to be requested to prepare a memorandum concerning eventual intervention for the destruction of the Russian oil fields."' That France early in 1940 should be contemplating a major military operation against the Soviet Union is more than likely to startle the present-day reader. By this time France had been at war with Germany for four months without taking any significant military action, on land or in the air, which might have disturbed the tranquil stalemate prevailing on the Western Front. Even when the bulk of German land and air forces were engaged in crushing Poland in September 1939, France refrained either from attacking the lightly defended Siegfried line or from bombing targets in Germany. If the French government felt itself capable of nothing more than a purely defensive war against Germany, why would it contemplate a very difficult and hazardous operation likely to bring the Soviet Union into the war as Germany's ally? In retrospect the scheme looks suicidal, yet the French political and military leadership seriously considered it and ordered preparations to carry it out. To explain what led many Frenchmen and some Englishmen to contemplate without alarm an action which would force the Soviet Union to become a fully committed adversary it must be recognized