Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

Stalin assiduously cultivated his own image as a military leader. On Red Army Day, February 23, 1946, he published a letter in which he belittled Lenin’s authority in military affairs (“Lenin did not consider himself a military expert”); argued that German military ideology, represented by Clausewitz, had not withstood the test of history (“it is ridiculous now to take lessons from Clausewitz”); and portrayed himself as a latter-day Kutuzov, whose retreat in the face of the German attack was patterned on the Russian withdrawal before Napoleon’s armies in 1812.5 Stalin presented the early retreats and disasters of the war as part of a planned strategy of active defense. In Order No. 55, issued on February 23, 1942, he had referred to the “permanently operating factors” which determine the outcome of war: the stability of the rear, the morale of the Army, the quantity and quality of divisions, the armament of the Army, and the organizing ability of the command personnel. He had contrasted these factors with the “transitory” element of surprise, thereby playing down the reverses of the first months of the war.6