modern russian historians, trying to shed a fresh light on GPW

I just finished reading the new book of Mark Solonin on 22 of June 1941.Unfortunately ,is available,for the time beeing just in russian bu i'm sure an english translation will follow.The purpose of this posting is to draw attention of fellow members on an important russian historian of the new generation.More about him,here
http://www.solonin.org/en/biography

This post has been edited by guina on August 27, 2010 10:14 pm

So what's new in this book, compared to other books on the same subject? Could you tell us in a couple of words what new theories does Mr. Solonin have? Please...

OK,I promise,give me a couple of days.
BTW did you read this
http://www.solonin.org/en/book_airfields ?

This post has been edited by guina on August 29, 2010 05:17 pm

No, I will read it tonight / tomorrow! Thanks!

I would be most interested in reading this book on air forces, in English.

The author's page has a note on the top:
"Сhapters, available for download, you will find on the bottom of that page."
However, I cannot find any downloadable links. Do I understand the sentence correctly?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on August 30, 2010 05:56 am

I think it's just an error in the translation, some chapters ( or parts of them ) are indeed there but not for download, they are accesible via normal html links.

http://www.solonin.org/en/book_airfields/21
That's at the bottom of the page - not downloadable, but "select-copy-paste" works if necessary! Better than nothing, I guess...

General,
For now,the book which apeared in 2007,is translated only in polish,lithuanian and estonian.I understood from mister V.Dimarski,that the english translation is completed and the book will apear in UK next year.A german version is suposed to be aveilable from october(my source,on this ,is not reliable).One can find his works,for sale in his original site
http://www.solonin.org/ (russian version ) which,BTW,is much richer than the english version.

Triple M.
I'll keep my word,but i think you got an idea of what is all about.

This post has been edited by guina on August 30, 2010 12:44 pm

Well, yes, I did! Didn't read ALL the excerpts, but it's nice to know there is a good historian with new approaches; historian, not spy-turned-historian, like Mr. Rezun/Suvorov!

Well,3 M,this is the main theory of mr. Solonin:

1.The myth promotet by soviet historians after the XX congres of the SCP and Hruschevs speech during the same event,puting all the defeats of RKKA on account of material inferiority,surprise,lack of competent oficers due to the purges of 37-39,units being withdrawn from the borders,is jut that-a myth.In reality,Red Army was fully prepared for the war,being far superior to the enemy.Only tanks and planes,they had more that ALL European countries all toghether.They were not surprised either,starting 12 of june units from interior military circles were put on alert and started their deployment towards the western borders.And so on.
Why then the catastrofic events that followed ?

2.Because the weapons do not fight by themselvs and the human factor in decisive.
Soldiers,oficers,armies either
-did not Know how to fight,or
-did not WANT to fight,or both.
I'll cite only one fact,in the first six weeks of war,Red Army lost 6,2 milion rifles and 70 % of mortars BUT only 28% of its cars and trucks (Krivosheev memoirs )A car can easily break,but a mortar,a steel tube ?

Yeah, that's what I also understood from the materials posted on his site. I hope he'll soon edit an English version. He makes way more sense than Suvorov/Rezun and doesn't seem that passionate; maybe because he's a historian!
Also, if one looks carefully on the site, one finds some .doc files for downloading!
LE: thanks, guina! Great book!

This post has been edited by MMM on September 06, 2010 02:46 pm

You wellcome,
I want to draw your attention to another new wave russian historian,which,among others wrote a book called "Antisuvorov " and you'll love it.
http://lib.himoza.org/bin/lat/HISTORY/ISAEW_A/antisuv.txt
Actually he is a very good historian,specialized in Jukov and Jukovs battles and some of his books can be bought on Amazon.Oh,his name is Alexei Isaev and its worth mentioning one of his last books "The Zeelow hights".
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51760

I just received a mail from Mr. Solonin, in response to something I wrote him on the site. He says that - even if it sounds funny - he has no offers from Western editors for his books, leading him to the belief that Stalin's, Brejnev's, Jukov's versions are prefered!
I hope that maybe after the end of the world crisis (yeah, like that's gonna be in the near future for us in Romania ) things would change.

Did he at least try to contact some of these "Western" Publishers? Did he submit a synopsis of his work, including samples? Or he is just waiting to be contacted...

I am pretty sure there is market for such English language books, and therefore there are publishers who are interested in printing them.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on October 17, 2010 09:35 am

Well, that's what I thought, too! Here's the message sent to me - so figure out for yourself...

Perhaps he did try, because he edited some of his books in Latvia, Poland or something like that - so why wouldn't he want to enter the "serious", Western market?!

PS: feel free to contact him on the site, as he answered to me in less than 48 hours - from Friday at noon until Saturday evening!

This post has been edited by MMM on October 17, 2010 11:06 am