History UsefulNotes / HistoryOfTheUSSR

* The same source indicated some Hawkishness on the part of the Army and the Luftwaffe in particular, but indicated that the Navy and Hitler himself were cautious about war within the Soviet Union.

* Signals and Human Intelligence (i.e. defectors and leaks in German-allied countries) indicated that German forces were massing on the Soviet-German border and conducting reconnaisance overflights of Soviet territory, but the head of Military Intelligence (Ivan Golikov) opined that these were for a defensive counter-offensive if the Soviets attacked first - or perhaps to attack first if it appeared that the Soviets were about to attack.

Contrary to some popular beliefs, the Finnish army was not exceptionally skilled in the defence of its territory. The main problem was that the Red Army was not ready to go to war with Finland and was badly weakened by its purges. It did not prepare sufficient supplies for a sustained winter campaign, nor did it gather enough data about the local climate and terrain. When combat operations commenced, there were serious issues with information gathering and processing, as reconnaissance of enemy positions was rarely conducted and intelligence officers often failed to relay information to commanders in a timely manner. Lack of communication plagued their forces, with infantry, artillery, and armour failing to coordinate with each other. Deployment was also an issue, with tanks deployed in swampy and forested areas unsuited for their use; similarly, combat engineers were expended as regular infantry, with actual engineering tasks carried out by unskilled labour.

On the 22nd of June 1941, Germany (population 80 million) embarked on a Grand Crusade to interbreed with up to 30 million, enslave at least 90 million, and kill at least 40 million people. This would give Germany the raw materials and workforce she needed to resist the Anglo-Americans (combined population c.200 million) in the short term and the territory she would need to outbreed them in the long term. It would also destroy an Asiatic power which condemned racism and nationalism, and a Judaic power which was helping the scions of Zion control the world from the shadows. In short, declaring war upon the Soviet Union met so many policy goals that Germany could never have resisted attempting if there was the slightest chance of victory. Hitler did ''not'' declare war in July 1940 because the Army believed that German supply and ammunition stockpiles in Poland were too small for them to make any headway. Ironically, Germany had to buy enough aviation fuel and rubber and other rare materials from the Soviet Union over the following 10 months in order for her to actually be capable of waging war upon the Soviet Union in May 1941. Whereupon in May 1941, a late spring thaw/melt and persistent showers forced the war to be pushed back until June, as they could make no headway through the oceans of mud.

[[folder:Winter War]]

Contrary to popular belief, the so-called "Mannerheim Line" hardly played any role at all, nor was the Finnish army itself exceptionally skilled in the defence of its territory. The main problem was that the Red Army was not ready to go to war with Finland and was badly weakened by its purges. It did not prepare sufficient supplies for a sustained winter campaign, nor did it gather enough data about the local climate and terrain. When combat operations commenced, it became clear that there were serious issues with information gathering and processing, as reconnaissance of enemy positions was rarely conducted and intelligence officers often failed to relay information to commanders in a timely manner. Lack of communication plagued their forces, with infantry, artillery, and armour failing to coordinate with each other. Deployment was also an issue, with armour deployed in swampy and forested areas unsuited for their use; similarly, combat engineers were expended as regular infantry, with actual engineering tasks carried out by unskilled labour.

After the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki, with an actual railway line) faltered, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organization and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense and uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces many isolated and overextended columns being cut to ribbons by Finnish hit-and-run raids. At this point even Stalin recognized that Voroshilov wasn't up to the task and allowed him to be replaced by Semyon Timoshenko -- not an inspired commander, but a decent one who commanded the respect of both his peers and Stalin.

Timoshenko worked with the General Staff to identify and began to correct some problems, ordering increased observation and reconnaissance while improving artillery-infantry coordination. This didn't solve the processing issue, but it allowed his forces to finally make some inexorable headway, even if the going was slow. Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian Isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR struck a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies -- the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade.

The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognize that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected assessments of the Red Army's capabilities by the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies East), a military intelligence office tasked with gathering information on Germany's eastern opponents. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 - so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

[[folder:For the Rodina! - The Great Patriotic War Part One]]

Throughout this period Stalin mistakenly believed that the Nazis had a realistic appraisal of their odds in a war against the Soviet Union (optimistically poor, pessimistically suicidal). As we now know, Stalin was wrong for a number of reasons. First, the true strength of the Soviet Union was unknown. It was clear that at least one Front of the Red Army and one of its senior commanders (Leningrad, Voroshilov) were incompetent, but on the other hand another Front and another senior commander (Far East, Zhukov) were clearly competent. It was also clear that the Soviet Union had an equivalent population and industrial strength to Imperial Russia -- much more than Germany possessed -- but it wasn't clear how much of it they could use. Second and most importantly, Stalin miscalculated German assessments of Soviet strength

The German Army lied to Hitler about its chances of victory in a Soviet-German War.[[note]] We can very clearly see this from the contents of each subsequent draft of Operation Barbarossa produced by the planning teams of Marcks and Lossberg, each of which interpreted the outcome with fewer references to known facts and with many optimistic assumptions[[/note]] They told Hitler that a quick and easy victory was assured, when they themselves knew that there were too many unknowns for the outcome to be anything but uncertain.

The Battles of Moscow, Rostov, and Tikhvin in the center, south, and north respectively resulted in crippling German defeat. The followup Soviet counteroffensives tore apart the front and left the Wehrmacht in disarray. But due to a variety of factors, the Wehrmacht was not defeated in the winter of 1941-1942 and survived, if barely, to fight another day. The Soviet Winter Counteroffensive, despite many initial successes, failed. STAVKA, the Soviet high command, refused to accept this and continued to batter German defenses along a broad front in early 1942. While these offensives drained German manpower they failed to achieve decisive results. Hitler, believing that the war could be ended by the seizure of oil fields in the Caucasus, ordered the south reinforced at the expense of the north and center, in preparation for a new summer offensive. This alone represented how quickly the Wehrmacht had declined; it could only launch an offensive on one front rather than three as in 1941. Stalin on the other hand believed at offensive would again be launched at Moscow, and reinforced the center at the expense of other fronts. meanwhile he only worsened the situation by launch a series of offensives at Kerch, Kharkov, and Lyuban, all of which ended in disaster.

[[folder:The War Part Two]]

However Stalingrad was not the only battle taking place. In the center Soviet and German forces struggled for months over the Rzhev salient. In the Caucasus German attempts to seize the oil fields were held back, due to Soviet resistance and poor German logistics. Around Voronezh constant Soviet counterattacks hammered the German 2nd army. By the time Stalingrad reached its climax German forces across the front were already weak, not even close to ready for the Red Army's main blows. STAVKA's plan for the 2nd winter counteroffensive had two parts. The first was Operation Uranus, a massive attack which would encircle most of 6th army around Stalingrad and set the stage for a series of followup attacks along the Don. The second was Operation Mars, an attack designed to collapse the Rzhev salient, destroy the German 9th Army, and then Army Group Center. The first attack was even more succesful than originally planned. The second failed utterly, with half a million losses. But only one victory was necessary.

Operation Uranus encircled the 6th Army inside the Stalingrad region, tearing apart the German southern front. Counterattacks were easily halted, and STVAKA began to expand it's objectives to not only include the reduction of the 6th Army, but the utter annihilation of all German forces in southern Russia. But, as in the First Winter Counteroffensive, it overestimated the strength and relative skill of Soviet forces. Despite mauling several more German armies, they failed to achieve encirclements on the same scale as the Stalingrad Offensive, and by March were rapidly losing momentum. Capitalizing on overextended Soviet forces, the Germans launched a massive counteroffensive which thwarted Soviet plans to collapse the entire front line, and earned them a short respite.

The Soviets liberated Auschwitz and captured Berlin. It also invaded Manchuria in the closing days of the Pacific War, occupying half of Korea, which became North Korea and later providing a base for Mao Zedong.

On November 30 1939, the USSR declared war on Finland citing a supposed Finnish attack on an NKVD border post [[FalseFlagOperation which was actually orchestrated by the NKVD itself]]. The military operations against Finland that proceeded under Stalin's close friend and confidante, the infamously incompetent Field Marshall Kliment Voroshilov, were some of the most incompetently executed in the history of warfare.

In a series of postwar conferences the Red Army itself noted a number of systemic and catastrophic failures demonstrated by Voroshilov's Leningrad Front. These included, but were not limited to,

* The supply services being completely unprepared to sustain the campaign due to the utter lack of prior planning, which forced extensive improvisation and therefore waste and inefficiency. Supply throughput for the troops' needs was insufficient, especially for winter operations.
* The cartographic offices failed to draw up, print, and issue maps in useful scales to most officers.
* Few commanders at any level accounted for the effects of weather or geography when planning operations, resulting in massive delays and chaos when they inevitably affected the actual operations. Intelligence officers often failed to even attempt to gather data on typical seasonal weather or organise basic weather forecasts.
* Aerial, artillery, engineering, and infantry forces did not conduct sufficient observation of the enemy forces and positions. Even when they did, the information they gathered was not processed quickly enough to be useful. This was because Intelligence officers were too few and too inexperienced. Much of the time Soviet commanders knew little of even the basic terrain features of the zones their units operated in either.
* Few units of any kind conducted any "Combat Reconnaissance" (0-5km depth) and "Deep Reconnaissance" (5-20km depth) of the enemy positions. Most of the time, most Soviet commanders had little or no idea where the enemy was or in what strength. Their only way of discovering this was in actual full-scale combat, and even then their Intelligence officers struggled to identify enemy positions and strengths.
* The infantry and artillery forces failed to communicate frankly and plan joint operations, with the consequence that many infantry attacks were conducted with little or no artillery support. This resulted in wave after wave of Soviet troops being mowed down by unsuppressed Finnish machine guns. Poor observation, reconnaissance, and data-processing times for the artillery meant that the bombardments the infantry asked them to conduct during attacks were highly inaccurate, and even when they were accurate they usually took so long to fire upon the enemy that they'd moved position or taken cover within artillery-proof bunkers.
* Infantry and armoured forces generally failed to communicate and work together either, and armoured units were often sent into swampy or deeply forested terrain in which they were virtually or worse than useless. Armoured units were also deployed with few or none of the support units (fueling, maintenance, repair) required to actually sustain them in the field. This lead to heavy tank losses from breakdown, terrain, and enemy action to very little effect.
* Commanders often used Engineers in generic combat roles rather than making use of their technical skills. Instead of using the Engineers to assault enemy fortifications, dismantle enemy minefields and obstacles, and create and repair infrastructure many commanders left those tasks undone or ordered them to be done by amateurs.

When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki, with an actual railway line) failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense and uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces many isolated and overextended columns being cut to ribbons by Finnish hit-and-run raids. At this point even Stalin recognized that Voroshilov isn't up to the task and allowed him to be replaced by Semyon Timoshenko - not an inspired commander, but a decent one who commanded the respect of both his peers and Stalin.

Timoshenko worked with the General Staff to identify and began to correct the problems listed above, ordering increased observation and reconnaissance while improving artillery-infantry coordination. This didn't solve the processing issue, but it allowed his forces to finally make some inexorable headway - even if the going was slow. Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR strikes a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade.

The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognise that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 - so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

To German nationalist intellectuals like Alfred Rosenberg, eastern Europe was fated to be the birthplace of a new and Greater Germany, just as the western part of North America had been fated to be annexed by the USA. The ultimate destiny of the Slavic-Mongoloid-Caucasian people who lived in Germany's new territories was to become as the First Nations of Canada, the Iroquois of the USA's Midwest, or the Eora of Sydney: they were to be evicted to make room for a "real" civilisation. To Rosenberg and his fellows, the only difference between Anglo and Germanic ethnic cleansing and settlement was the time factor: if Germany was to catch up with the English-speaking peoples then she would have to accomplish a similar amount of killing and colonisation in a much shorter timespan. Germany under the Kaiser had been wrong to attempt to colonise overseas, they had argued - Germany's colonies had only ever been mere scraps, economically dubious and geographically disparate and militarily vulnerable to Anglo-American seapower. Germany was a land power, they argued, and her destiny lay to the east.

On the 22nd of June 1941 Germany (population 80 million) embarked on a Grand Crusade to interbreed with up to 30 million, enslave at least 90 million, and kill at least 40 million people. This would give Germany the raw materials and workforce she needed to resist the Anglo-Americans (combined population c.200 million) in the short-term and the territory she would need to outbreed them in the long term. It would also destroy an Asiatic power which condemned racism and nationalism, and a Judaic power which was helping the scions of Zion control the world from the shadows. In short, declaring war upon the Soviet Union met so many policy goals that Germany could never have resisted attempting it if Germany had believed that it had even the slightest chance of winning. Hitler had only ''not'' declared war in July 1940 because the Army believed that - whatever the Red Army's demonstrable inefficiencies - German supply and ammunition stockpiles in Poland were too small for them to make any headway. Ironically, Germany would need to buy enough aviation fuel and rubber and other rare materials from the Soviet Union over the following 10 months in order for her to actually be capable of waging war upon the Soviet Union in May 1941. Whereupon in May 1941, a late Spring Thaw/Melt and persistent showers forced the war to be pushed back until June (as they could make no headway through the oceans of mud).

Throughout this period Stalin mistakenly believed that the Nazis had a realistic appraisal of their odds in a war against the Soviet Union (optimistically poor, pessimistically suicidal). As we now know, Stalin was wrong for a number of reasons. A basic reason was that the true strength of the Soviet Union was an 'Uknown Unknown'. It was clear that at least one Front of the Red Army and one of its senior commanders (Leningrad, Voroshilov) were incompetent, but on the other hand another Front and another senior commander (Far East, Zhukov) were clearly competent. It was clear that the Soviet Union must at least have as much industrial strength and population as Imperial Russia had, i.e. much more than Germany had even now, but it wasn't clear how much use they could make of it. The most important reason why Stalin was wrong about the Nazis' understanding is that the German Army lied to Hitler about its chances of victory in a Soviet-German War [[note]] We can very clearly see this from the contents of each subsequent draft of Operation Barbarossa produced by the planning teams of Marcks and Lossberg, each of which interprets the outcome with fewer references to the known facts and with more optimistic assumptions [[/note]]: they told Hitler that a quick and easy victory was assured when they themselves knew that there were too many unkowns for the outcome to be anything but highly uncertain.

Stalin's assumption that the Nazis knew the breaks, or at least wouldn't want to gamble on their chances, underpinned all the USSR's country's rearmament and military reforms following the Winter War. These were focused on expanding the army and making most of its units capable of fighting from 1942 onward. Until then, it was embroiled in an extensive and highly disruptive reorganisation and retraining process. Thus despite extensive manpower mobilization in the western military districts, Soviet forces were ill-prepared for war. Many tanks and planes lacked fuel and were still in storage, or required extensive maintenance and unavailable spare parts. Most mobile units (armour, mechanised and motorised infantry) lacked tank-recovery vehicles and repair units and had only part of their truck transport and supply pools. Most frontier raions were awaiting adequate numbers of machine guns and artillery (to be delivered in 1942). And finally, most frontier commanders at all levels - bar those of the Southern/Bessarabian Military District - believed that even attempting basic tactical or operational defensive planning or preparations would show a lack of faith in their forces' ability to launch the planned counter-offensive into Poland.

* Sources within the Luftwaffe's ''Four Year Plan Organisation'' for armaments indicated that German industrial production was focused on expanding U-boot and Medium Bomber production. Small-arms and artillery production, and ammunition production, were being reduced.
* Those same sources indicated some Hawkishness on the part of the Army and the Luftwaffe in particular, but indicated that the Navy and Hitler himself were cautious about war within the Soviet Union.
* Again, these sources confirmed that the ''Luftwaffe'' and German industry were still dependent upon purchases from the Soviet Union.
* Signals and Human Intelligence indicated German forces were clearly massing on the Soviet-German border and conducting reconnaisance overflights of Soviet territory, but the head of Military Intelligence (Ivan Golikov) believed that these were for a defensive counter-offensive if the Soviets attacked first - or perhaps to attack first if it appeared that the Soviets were about to attack.

Throughout this period Stalin mistakenly believed that the Nazis had a realistic appraisal of their odds in a war against the Soviet Union (optimistically poor, pessimistically suicidal). As we now know, Stalin was wrong for a number of reasons. A basic reason was that the true strength of the Soviet Union was an 'Uknown Unknown'. It was clear that at least one Front of the Red Army and one of its senior commanders (Leningrad, Voroshilov) were incompetent, but on the other hand another Front and another senior commander (Far East, Zhukov) were clearly competent. It was clear that the Soviet Union must at least have as much industrial strength and population as Imperial Russia had, i.e. much than Germany had even now, but it wasn't clear how much use they could make of it. The most important reason why Stalin was wrong about the Nazis' understanding is that the German Army lied to Hitler about its chances of victory in a Soviet-German War [[note]] We can very clearly see this from the contents of each subsequent draft of Operation Barbarossa produced by the planning teams of Marcks and Lossberg, each of which interprets the outcome with fewer references to the known facts and with more optimistic assumptions [[/note]]: they told Hitler that a quick and easy victory was assured when they themselves knew that the there were too many unkowns for the outcome to be anything but highly uncertain.

Stalin's assumption that the Nazis knew the breaks, or at least wouldn't want to gamble on their chances, underpinned all the USSR's country's rearmament and military reforms following the Winter War. These were focused on expanding the army and making most of its units capable of fighting from 1942 onward. Until then, it was embroiled in an extensive and highly disruptive reorganisation and retraining process. Thus despite extensive manpower mobilization in the western military districts, Soviet forces were ill-prepared for war. Many tanks and planes lacked fuel and were still in storage, or required extensive maintenance and unavailable spare parts. Most mobile units (armour, mechanised and motorised infantry) lacked tank-recovery vehicles and repair units and hado only part of their truck transport and supply pools. Most frontier raions were awaiting adequate numbers of machine guns and artillery (to be delivered in 1942). And finally, most frontier commanders at all levels - bar those of the Southern/Bessarabian Military District - believed that even attempting basic tactical or operational defensive planning or preparations would show a lack of faith in their forces' ability to launch the planned counter-offensive into Poland.

* Sources on the Imperial Japanese Army indicated that Japan had been approached about the possibility of a German-Japanese declaration of war upon the Soviet Union, though the Japanese had refused.
* Sources within the German Army passed on a strategic overview of the general plan for Operation Barbarossa, starting on the 15th of May 1941.
* Winston Churchill had sent some information about some of the Germans' troops deployments to Poland together with a note saying that the Soviets might find this 'interesting'. [[note]] He later tried to insinuate that he had known that ''Barbarossa'' was coming and given Stalin clear and full warnings that it was about to occur. [[UnreliableNarrator This is classic Winnie]] [[/note]]

A relationship between Communists and Nazis was never going to last, as UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler had stated in ''Mein Kampf'' his intention to destroy the Soviet Union and his belief that as soon as they attacked "the whole rotten structure" (to actually quote Hitler) would collapse straight away. Soviet-German relations began to deteriorate as Stalin became increasingly anxious about expanding his sphere of influence in Turkey and Bulgaria, and finishing off Finland. At the same time however Stalin still felt that war could be avoided and Hitler placated with a series of commercial agreements which gave Nazi Germany access to vital Soviet resources. But in late 1940 Hitler officially decided to invade in late spring or early summer of 1941.

German preparations for invasion were enormous and impossible to hide; recon flights and violations of the Soviet-German border on the ground were frequent. Intelligence provided by the British and the Soviet Union's spies reported that an invasion was inevitable. One GRU agent by the name of Richard Sorge had managed to collect detailed information on the operation, right down to anticipating the exact date on which it was to occur.

However, Stalin ignored these warnings, due to a variety of reasons:

* First, he believed that Germany would not go to war without some sort of ultimatum, giving the Soviet Union several weeks to mobilize. He also felt that making preparations would unnecessarily antagonize them.
* Moreover, he suspected that the British were attempting to provoke a war by feeding him false information, despite being corroborated by Soviet intelligence.
* And finally, he completely dismissed the information he received from his own agents for no reason other than doubting that their reports could be so accurate.

Thus despite extensive mobilization in the western military districts, Soviet forces were ill-prepared for war. Many tanks and planes lacked fuel and were still in storage, or required extensive maintenance before they could be considered operational. The frontier raions lacked machine guns or artillery. To put the final nail in the coffin, frontier commanders were threatened with imprisonment and execution for even attempting basic defensive preparations.

On 22 June 1941, the Axis threat was proven in dramatic style when three and a half million soldiers went into action in "Operation Barbarossa". Within weeks the frontier military districts were overwhelmed and millions of Soviet soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. As they entered the western USSR, the locals, sick of Soviet oppression, welcomed them with open arms. [[VillainBall The Nazis responded with bullets, nooses, or sent them to the concentration camps.]] By July 9th Riga, Pskov, and Minsk had all been captured. But Soviet resistance was already stiffening. In the south a series of failed and uncoordinated counterattacks still managed to stall the Germans. In the center, despite losing millions more to encirclement, the Soviets succesfully pinned German forces down in a months worth of brutal fighting around Smolensk. Hitler decided that Moscow could not be taken immediately; instead, the grain and oil of the Ukraine would be seized first, and the bulging Soviet salient around Kiev eliminated. The resulting campaign led to millions more killed or captured on the Soviet side, but bought some time for the Red Army to reorganize.

The Soviet Union didn't expect to be attacked so soon. Even as reports came in of the invasion, Stalin refused to believe that the Germans would attack the Soviet Union before their business was concluded with the United Kingdom. When it became blatantly obvious that the reports were true, the Red Army fell back on the age-old tactic of "scorched earth": retreat and destroy anything the enemy can use as supplies or for transport. The other favourite tactic of the UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets was the commissar approach- "advance and you might die, run away and you definitely will, since I'll shoot you myself". This was also known as the "not a single step backward" policy. This is also used by Imperial Commissars in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', who are directly inspired by them. During this time, Soviet propaganda slightly shifted to better appeal to its citizenry. The war was no longer about defending Socialism against the imperialist ambitions of Nazism, but rather about defending the Rodina - Russia.

On November 30 1939, the USSR declared war on Finland, claiming an alleged bombardment of a border outpost (actually staged) as a pretext for invasion. In spite of their raw material superiority, the Soviets were utterly unprepared, badly organized, improperly supplied, and ''very'' poorly led. The Red Army did not properly reconnoiter Finnish positions ahead of operations and completely failed to function as a combined arms force. Most egregiously, supply services not only failed to stockpile sufficient fuel and munitions for the campaign, but did not even acquire sufficient cold-weather gear for what would turn out to be a very harsh winter.

The Red Army advanced across the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki), reaching the so-called "Mannerheim Line", consisting of a series of light fortifications supplemented by natural obstacles. Completely ignoring the lessons of Khalkhin Gol, which was won by maneuver and combined arms tactics, Soviet forces went for poorly-supported frontal assaults on prepared positions, which were bloodily repulsed. When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Mannerheim Line failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense, uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces' isolated and overextended columns being outmaneuvered and annihilated by the more mobile and terrain-savvy Finns.

At this point even Stalin recognized that Voroshilov isn't up to the task and allowed him to be replaced by Semyon Timoshenko -- not an inspired commander, but a decent one who commanded the respect of both his peers and Stalin. Timoshenko worked with the General Staff to identify and began to correct the problems that had plagued the Red Army since the beginning of the conflict, ordering increased observation and reconnaissance while improving artillery-armour-infantry coordination. This didn't solve the processing issue, but it allowed his forces to finally make some inexorable headway, even if the going was slow.

By mid-February of 1940, Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian Isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR struck a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade. The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognize that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 -- so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

The Red Army advanced across the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki), reaching the so-called "Mannerheim Line", consisting of a series of light fortifications supplemented by natural obstacles. Completely ignoring the lessons of Khalkhin Gol, which was won by clever maneuvering and combined arms tactics, Soviet forces went for poorly-supported frontal assaults on prepared positions, which were bloodily repulsed. When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Mannerheim Line failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense, uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces' isolated and overextended columns being outmaneuvered and annihilated by the more mobile and terrain-savvy Finns.

By mid-February, Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian Isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR struck a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade. The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognize that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 -- so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

On November 30 1939, the USSR declared war on Finland, claiming an alleged bombardment of a border outpost (actually staged) as a pretext for invasion. In spite of their raw material superiority, the Soviets were utterly unprepared, badly organized, improperly supplied, and ''very'' poorly led. The Red Army did not properly reconnoiter Finnish positions ahead of operations and completely failed to coordinate their infantry and armour with artillery and aerial support. Most egregiously, supply services not only failed to stockpile sufficient fuel and munitions for the campaign, but did not even acquire sufficient cold-weather gear for what would turn out to be a very harsh winter.

At this point even Stalin recognized that Voroshilov isn't up to the task and allowed him to be replaced by Semyon Timoshenko - not an inspired commander, but a decent one who commanded the respect of both his peers and Stalin. Timoshenko worked with the General Staff to identify and began to correct the problems listed above, ordering increased observation and reconnaissance while improving artillery-infantry coordination. This didn't solve the processing issue, but it allowed his forces to finally make some inexorable headway - even if the going was slow.

Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian Isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR strikes a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade. The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognize that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 -- so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

The Red Army advanced across the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki), reaching the so-called "Mannerheim Line", consisting of a series of light fortifications supplemented by natural obstacles. Completely ignoring the lessons of Khalkhin Gol, which was won by clever maneuvering and combined arms tactics, Soviet forces went for poorly-supported frontal assaults on prepared positions, which were bloodily repulsed. When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Mannerheim Line failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense, uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces' isolated and overextended columns being utterly outmaneuvered and annihilated by the more mobile and terrain-savvy Finns.

On November 30 1939, the USSR declared war on Finland, claiming an alleged bombardment of a border outpost (actually staged) as a pretext for invasion. In spite of their raw material superiority, the Soviets were utterly unprepared, badly organized, improperly supplied, and ''very'' poorly led. The Red Army did not properly reconnoiter Finnish positions ahead of operations and completely failed to function as a combined arms force. Most egregiously, supply services not only failed to stockpile sufficient fuel and munitions for the campaign, but did not even acquire sufficient cold-weather gear for what would turn out to be a very harsh winter.

The Red Army advanced across the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki), reaching the so-called "Mannerheim Line", consisting of a series of light fortifications supplemented by natural obstacles. Completely ignoring the lessons of Khalkhin Gol, Soviet forces went for poorly-supported frontal assaults on prepared positions, which were bloodily repulsed. When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Mannerheim Line failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense and uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces many isolated and overextended columns being utterly outmaneuvered and annihilated by the more mobile and terrain-savvy Finns.

Prior to the outbreak of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Stalin got his foreign minister Vyascheslav Molotov to sign a non-aggression pact with Joachim von Ribbentrop, his German counterpart. As per the terms of the pact, both countries would keep to their respective spheres of influence, which just happened to run adjacent through Poland. So when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, the Soviet Union followed up on the 17th by claiming the territory allotted to them. By that time, the Soviet Union managed to clean up the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, and so were free to turn their attention back to Europe in earnest.

The USSR proceeded to annex what would later become the states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova, all of which were formerly part of the Russian Empire. These states would then become buffer states against a potential invasion from the West, whether it came from Germany or some place else. Part of their plan to expand their defensive buffer involved taking control of some Finnish territory. After being rebuffed in negotiations, the Soviet high command decided to take want they wanted by force. Thinking that conquering a small country with almost no tanks or aircraft to speak of would be easy, they quickly made preparations for war with Finland.

On November 30 1939, the USSR declared war on Finland citing a supposed Finnish attack on an NKVD border post. The Red Army came to see the failed operations which followed as damning indictments of its capabilities:

* The supply services were completely unprepared to sustain the campaign due to the utter lack of prior planning, forcing extensive improvisation and therefore waste and inefficiency. Moreover, supply throughput for the troops' needs was insufficient, especially for winter operations.
* Maps were not drawn up, printed, and issued in the required scales and numbers.
* Weather and geography were rarely anticipated or accounted for, resulting in delays and chaos when they inevitably affected the actual conduct of operations.
* Aerial, artillery, engineering, and infantry observation were not adequately conducted. Even when sufficient data was collected, it was not processed competently or in a timely fashion. The locations of enemy fixed defenses and troop concentrations were largely unknown.
* Combat Reconnaissance and Deep Reconnaissance were not conducted, leading to a total inability to identify defensive positions, troop concentrations, and artillery concentrations in the enemy rear areas outside full-scale combat.
* Infantry and artillery forces failed to communicate frankly and plan joint operations. Consequently many infantry attacks were conducted with little or no artillery support. Poor observation, reconnaissance, and data-processing times meant poor accuracy in bombardments requested during attacks and a near-total inability to target and suppress enemy artillery in a timely fashion.
* Similarly, armour was often misused, being employed in areas unsuitable for their use as well as without support.
* Engineers were often used in generic combat roles with no regard to their proper use in assaulting enemy fortifications, dismantling enemy minefields and obstacles, and creating and repairing infrastructure in the rear areas.

When the Leningrad Military District's assaults on the Karelian Isthmus (the most direct path from Leningrad to Helsinki, with an actual railway line) failed, the ineffectual General Meretskov was replaced by the utterly incompetent Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's old Civil War buddy. Voroshilov decided that, rather than identifying or fixing any of the problems with his force's organisation and deployment, he'd simply have them flank the isthmus through 200km of dense and uncharted swamps and forests. This worked out about as well as one might expect, with his forces many isolated and overextended columns being cut to ribbons by Finnish hit-and-run raids. At this point even Stalin recognized that Voroshilov isn't up to the task and allowed him to be replaced by Semyon Timoshenko - not an inspired commander, but a decent one who commanded the respect of both his peers and Stalin. Timoshenko worked with the General Staff to identify and began to correct the problems listed above, ordering increased observation and reconnaissance while improving artillery-infantry coordination. This didn't solve the processing issue, but it allowed his forces to finally make some inexorable headway - even if the going was slow.

Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR strikes a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch an expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade. The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognise that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 - so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

The Soviet leadership wasn't all too thrilled at this turn of events, as the Nazis' rhetoric made it clear that the two wouldn't be bosom buddies. However, the USSR didn't get involved as they were a bit preoccupied by border clashes with Imperial Japan near the Mongolian border. It was probably around this time that Stalin probably began to realize that his purges might have removed too many competent military officers from their posts, and that there were a lot more wolves outside than there were in his house. Much like every other country at the time, the USSR wasn't really all that ready for war.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of its archives, Social-Psychological Historians of the 1990s became baffled at just how contented - if not outright ''happy'' - most people seemed to have been living under Stalin despite how incredibly difficult life was for them. By the late 2000s they recognised that they had made the mistake of assuming that the Soviet 'man in the street' had always possessed the cynicism and disillusionment which he had demonstrated during the USSR's twilight years and ultimate suicide. Today it is accepted that in fact, the early years of the Soviet Experiment were marked by strong popular belief that they could create a man-made heaven on earth - and that they were willing to endure incredible hardships to bequeath it to their children. [[spoiler: Because if they didn't they'd be carted of to the TheGulag (or executed), and have everyone they know be put in danger]]

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of its archives, Social-Psychological Historians of the 1990s became baffled at just how contented - if not outright ''happy'' - most people seemed to have been living under Stalin despite how incredibly difficult life was for them. By the late 2000s they recognised that they had made the mistake of assuming that the Soviet 'man in the street' had always possessed the cynicism and disillusionment which he had demonstrated during the USSR's twilight years and ultimate suicide. Today it is accepted that in fact, the early years of the Soviet Experiment were marked by strong popular belief that they could create a man-made heaven on earth - and that they were willing to endure incredible hardships to bequeath it to their children.

A simple history of the world's first Communist country, with humour where appropriate.

->''"I am the man who arranges the blocks that descend upon me from up above..."''
-->--'''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8 Complete History of the Soviet Union To The Melody of Tetris]]'''

The history of the world's first Communist nation, in simple terms, with humour where appropriate.

->''I am the man who arranges the blocks that descend upon me from up above...''

[[folder:Tanks for the Communism - The August 1991 coup attempt and the end of the USSR]]

In 1964, the other Commies had had enough of the guy. Possibly just because he was planning to set fixed limits to the office terms of higher party officials. Nikita ended up being thrown out. In the words of the narrator of ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'', "If he had given any utterance to his thoughts, and they were prophetic, they would have been these: Before I came around, these things were settled with a bullet in the back of the head. I, and everyone after me will get to spend some time with their families on a nice {{Dacha}}."

On 18 August 1991, Gorbachev was in his Dacha, when he was essentially taken prisoner by hardliners, who declared a "state of emergency" and proceeded to shut down anti-communist newspapers. The people of Moscow rose up against this coup and blockaded the White House (the location of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic's parliament). Much of the military refused to obey orders, UsefulNotes/BorisYeltsin stood on a tank and the coup failed.

Preceding Chernobyl, there was the Mayak disaster; an accident at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in 1957. Dreary and nasty, but funny in a sick way..

Soviet forces were poised to clear the Karelian isthmus and break into the open country when the USSR strikes a peace deal with the Finnish government, wanting to avoid open hostilities with the Allies - the invasion had provoked such widespread international condemnation that Britain and France were poised to dispatch and expeditionary force to assist the Finns, which would have meant open war and an end to the USSR's foreign trade. The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see. This forced Stalin to recognise that the Red Army had to be reformed. Perhaps more importantly it affected the Fremde Heeres Ost (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's assessments of the Red Army's capabilities. To their detriment, the German Army would assume that the entire Red Army would be just as incompetent in mid-1941 as it was in the winter of 1939-40 - so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.

Preceding Chernobyl, there was the Mayak disaster; an accident at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in 1957. Dreary and nasty, but funny in a sick way, especially the ethnically Tatar village that they didn't evacuate for the purpose of using the residents of the village as human guinea pigs in some sick experiment. This troper has seen pictures of monstrosities in formaldehyde at a clinic, there; well, quite a few such monstrosities, and there's no other way to describe them. Following the disaster, around 1957-58, they used teenage schoolchildren, generally without adequate protection from radiation or inhalation of nasty crap, as liquidators. Quite dramatic and nasty, needless to say.

On Christmas Day, 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation as President. The hammer and sickle was lowered from the Kremlin and the Soviet Union was finished. The [[TheNewRussia Russian Federation]] had begun, with Yeltsin's first act to declare Russia to be the successor state to the USSR, thus allowing it to assume the USSR's place on the UN Security Council.

So the "facts" were altered. Other Bolshevik leaders were "erased" from history and removed, rather expertly, from photos. New textbooks were issued to schoolchildren. As his former cronies were still being purged as quickly as they fell out of favour, new pages were given for pupils to paste over. Conversely, he also had photos altered so that any particularly notable instance (such as a meeting with Lenin) would show him as being there when he really wasn't. Other photos that actually showed his face were sometimes retouched to show him in a more favourable light --for an example of what this entails, compare the famous image of UsefulNotes/CheGuevara on a shirt to the original photograph. Most photographs of him actually edited out the many blemishes and pockmarks on his face.

So the "facts" were altered. Other Bolshevik leaders were "erased" from history and removed, rather expertly, from photos. New textbooks were issued to schoolchildren. As his former cronies were still being purged as quickly as they fell out of favour, new pages were given for pupils to paste over. Conversely, he also had photos altered so that any particularly notable instance (such as a meeting with Lenin) would show him as being there when he really wasn't. Other photos that actually showed his face were sometimes retouched to show him in a more favourable light --for an example of what this entails, compare the famous image of UsefulNotes/CheGuevara on a shirt to the original photograph.

Many people were either shot, sent to TheGulag or deported internally. Precisely how many people died as a result of "dekulakisation" and the resulting famine is subject to [[http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin historical debate]] --the number could be as low as 3.5 million or as high as 30 million. The problem is that it's not as if anyone signed death warrants or shot every single person that died; the majority of deaths were caused by the conditions that resulted from the famine. Nutrition disorders were not as well understood as they are now, and anyone who died of such illnesses or starvation would be put down as having died of natural causes. So estimating the number of victims requires estimating how many deaths by natural causes can be blamed on the policies of Stalin's government. Good luck with that...