The World - News from June 23, 1988

Soviet historians said their country’s huge losses in World War II were largely due to crimes and errors committed by Kremlin dictator Josef Stalin before and during the conflict. “Stalin’s erroneous views and his criminal actions made practically impossible any serious preparation for battle, particularly in the frontier regions,” Col. Viktor Anfilov wrote in the Defense Ministry newspaper Red Star. In prewar negotiations with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, wrote Alexander Samsonov in Evening Moscow, “Stalin failed as a politician, and that cost us millions of lives. . . . We won the war not thanks to him but largely in spite of him.” The two articles were the latest stage in a rapidly mounting assault on the long-promoted official view that Stalin was a great wartime leader.