45. Voronov, Na sluzhbe voennoi, 175; Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (1960), 138. As Zhukov wrote, “The Soviet Government did everything possible so as not to give any justification for Germany to start a war. This determined everything.” Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 340.
46. As of June 1, 1941, Golikov estimated German divisions arrayed near the joint frontier at 120–2, along with 122–6 arrayed against Britain in the West, Norway, Italy, Crete, and Africa, plus 44–48 of reserves. He noted that in “transferring significant forces from Yugoslavia, Greece, and Bulgaria to Romania, the Germans are to a great degree strengthening their right flank”—in the direction of Ukraine. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 520, 646–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 114–6).
47. These Soviet divisions, to reach full strength, needed more than 1 million reservists to join them. Zolotarev et al., Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i): 7–8, 11, 77, 581; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 359. Another source gives a figure of 3,900 German aircraft, 60 percent of their air force, plus 1,000 planes of Romania and Finland. Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, II: 9.
48. The totalitarian Soviet state, with its vast armed forces, was the only one not fully mobilized, “an absolutely impossible, improbable situation,” as one analyst noted. Mark Solonin, “Tri plana tovarishcha Stalina,” 71. On June 18, the Soviet Union observed the fifth anniversary of Gorky’s death. Pravda, June 18, 1941; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, 474 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1041, l. 8). At the defense commissariat on June 19, Major General Mikhail Kazakov, commander of the staff of the Central Asian military district, who had been summoned to Moscow, and others were shown a German film of the Wehrmacht being greeted warmly in the Balkans by Slavic females bearing wine and flowers. Kazakov would recall that Vasilevsky told him, “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t begin in the next fifteen to twenty days.” Kazakov, Nad kartoi bylykh srazhenii, 69–70; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 188–9.
49. The work was supposed to be completed by July 15, 1941. Zolotarev et al., Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i): 280–2 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 11, d. 62, l. 201–3, 204–5).
50. On the many local measures undertaken to bring Soviet forces to combat readiness, especially the initiatives in the Baltic region, and their countermanding under threat, see Sbornik boevykh dokumentov Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, XXXIV: 7–11 (f. 344, op. 2459ss, d. 11, l. 30–6), 21–4 (f. 221, op. 7833ss, d. 3, l. 17–21); Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 199–200 (Colonel General Kuznetsov); Kuznetsov, “Voenno-Morskoi flot nakanune Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” 72–3; Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 343–4; Voronov, Na sluzhbe voennoi, 175–8; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 386–7; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 82–3; Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina’,” 42. Zhdanov conspicuously departed Leningrad for holiday in Sochi on June 19; this had to be approved by the politburo.
51. Sudoplatov was not to allow “German provocateurs to stage actions like those against Poland in 1939.” He recalled that, at the office on the night of June 21, “I sensed the danger of military provocation or conflict but not the magnitude of the full-scale invasion that followed.” Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 123–5. See also Possony, “Hitlers Unternehmen ‘Barbarossa.’” Soviet intelligence was reporting that Ukrainian schools in German-occupied Poland were teaching the geography of a forthcoming independent Ukraine and that many Ukrainian nationalists, and even some Poles with eyes on Ukraine’s territory, were keen to stage provocations to provoke a German attack on the Soviet Union. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 135–6, 157, 174–6, 268–9, 324–6, 426–7, 462–5, 545–8, 656–8, 681–3; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 172–87 (May 31, 1941).
52. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 266–7; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 383; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 366; Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, III: 254, 335–8.
