Page 316 - The Chief Culprit

Stalin’s Panic y 261

Beria, Timoshenko, Mekhlis, Zhukov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Vyshin-
skyi, Kuznetsov, Dimitrov, Manuilsky, Shaposhnikov, Vatutin, Kulik, and others.
e following week was one continuous workday for Stalin, with only brief breaks.
Reception of visitors began at 3:20  (June 23), or at 1  (June 25), and ended the follow-
ing morning. e meetings lasted five, six, twelve hours. Sometimes Stalin’s workday lasted
twenty-four hours, with short breaks. After this initial week of the war, the logbooks have
nothing recorded for two consecutive days, June 29 and 30.
Khrushchev claimed that when the Germans attacked, Stalin got scared and isolated
himself. Today, we know that right after the German invasion Stalin worked seven days in a
row, as much as humanly possible. During the first moments, Stalin simply did not believe
that Hitler had invaded. Stalin had calculated all possible moves, and none of them included
an attack by Hitler. During the first week of the war, Stalin herded his troops into an attack.
He should have been giving orders for defense, but he resisted. Finally, on June 28, he found
out that the Western Front was surrounded, the 4th Army was destroyed, and the 3rd, 10th,
and 13th armies were encircled. Only then did Stalin finally understand that his plans for the
“liberation” of Europe were over. When he arrived at the People’s Commissariat of Defense
on June 29, Stalin learned the true dimensions of the utter failure of the Western Front.
ere, Stalin exploded in anger at Timoshenko and Zhukov, bringing the latter to tears.
Anastas Mikoyan recollected: “Stalin was despondent. After leaving the Commissariat, he
said: ‘Lenin left us a grand legacy, and we, his followers, flushed that legacy down the toilet.’
We were shocked by that statement. Was everything lost for good? In the end, we ascribed
those words to Stalin’s emotionally affected state.” 1
Stalin realized that he could not fix anything. e socialist country was capable of
crushing others, but it couldn’t compete with other countries in peacetime. From June 22,
1941, the Soviet Union was destined for demise. Sooner or later, it was bound to collapse. It
could survive only by consuming everything around it. Otherwise, it was doomed. e Soviet
Union could exist only if the Soviet people would have no opportunities to compare their
lives with the lives of people in surrounding countries. erefore, Stalin’s main idea was to
destroy the capitalism surrounding the Soviet Union. All of Stalin’s plans were simple, logical,
and understandable: complete victory was only possible on a global scale.
Hitler understood this as well: “ e Bolshevized world will be able to hold only if it
encompasses everything.” On June 22, 1941, Hitler delivered a suicidal but lethal attack on
2
Communism. No matter how events unfolded afterward, Stalin could no longer conquer the
whole world, which was the equivalent of his demise. On June 30, 1941, Molotov, Beria,
Malenkov, and others entered Stalin’s room in his dacha. Anastas Mikoyan, a member of
Stalin’s Politburo, left a wonderful description of this episode:

We came to Stalin’s dacha. Found him in the small dining room, sitting in his armchair.
Upon seeing us, he seemed to shrink into the armchair, then look at us questioningly.
en he asked: ‘What did you come for?’ He had a wary, strange look on his face—and
the question he asked was no less strange. As a matter of fact, he should have summoned
us all himself. I had no doubts: he had decided that we had arrived to arrest him. Molotov,
speaking for us all, said that power had to be concentrated if the country were to get back
on its feet, and that a State Committee of Defense had to be created. ‘Who’s in charge?’