comes universally respected as a fiercely incorruptible truthtellerrnwhose books get published simply because they are wonderful.rnEqually, the academic who exposes his predecessor’s venalrnfolly, such as his going to work with the Soviet archivesrnunder Brezhnev and being used by the Kremlin in the process,rnboosts his credibilit}’ before accepting Andropov’s invitation tornwork with those same archives, or indeed in order to pen a cautiouslyrnoptimistic, yet thoughtful and balanced, article aboutrnGorbachev in Foreign Affairs.rnI have not the space for names, and anyway to cite more thanrna few would likely upset the pose of emohonal detachmentrnwhich I am at pains to affect here. ill I am asking the reader tornbear in mind when it comes to the truth of histor}’ is that it is alwaysrneasy to laugh at yesterday’s conformism and the day beforernyesterda) ‘s lie while remaining solemnh’ serious with respect tornthe operative myths of the moment, whether these be global,rnsuch as “The Collapse of the Soviet Union” or local, such asrn”The Independence of the American Press.” Yet it is these ver)’rnmyths that, in their turn, are certain to conceal the lies of thernmoment, lies that may be more blatant, more relevant, andrnmore destructive than any of their laughable forerunners.rnThus, those who now firmly believe that Khrushchev exposedrnStalin, that Aleksandr Solzhenitsvn brought down Lenin, orrnthat Walter Laqueur is a good gu’ while Walter Duranty was arnbad guy are no less gullible and, ultimately, no less culpable inrntheir naive conformitj’ than those who, once upon a time, believedrnthat the sun revolves around the Earth and that Oswald,rna lone assassin, shot and killed Kennedy.rnAha, I hear the reader say, so he is a conspiracy nut, and allrnthat talk about the truth of history is just a fancy variant ofrnthe usual barmy single-spacing: The Martians got my daughterrnpregnant, the telephone company is poisoning the wells, thernJews are all in it together. I can only reply that not every minority,rndissident, or unorthodox view of histor)- is not based on a liernjust because it appears to run contrary to one or more of the establishedrnmyths, and that, like the lowliest plahtude-monger,rnthe truth-seeker is obliged to make a case in support of his thesisrnif it is ever to be taken seriousK b anyone other than a memberrnof his own family.rnFor my part, I can think of no myth of modern histor)’ morernpervasive than that of June 1941: Germany’s treacherous invasionrnof the Soviet Union. If all the polihcal lies of the 20th centuryrnhave a central stem, it is the conception of World War II asrna battle of good and evil that grew out of a mortal conflict betweenrntwo wicked regimes, each represented by a wicked, andrnprobably mentally unstable, mustachioed giant. That conceptionrncan be anatomized in the works of at least five generationsrnof historians—beginning, perhaps, with the Nazi leaders notrnhanged at Nuremberg—all cribbing each other’s notes, all eyeingrnone another’s sources, all mouthing the same slogans, allrnbowing and scraping before power.rnTheir books number in the tens of thousands. Their articles,rnboth scholarly and popular, are as the grains of sand in a cursernof some bearded patriarch of the Pentateuch. Their televisionrnand radio programs, with all those gravelly voices and all thatrnarchival footage, are as much a part of our historical consciousnessrnas . . . Since I cannot think of anything equally pervasive, Irnwill have to repeat myself: as the view that the absolutely evilrnand supremely powerfid Hitler attacked the just plain old badrnand militarily unprepared Stalin, whereupon the absolutelyrngood, democratic, and powerful alliance of the free world, ledrnby Churchill and Roosevelt, brought dov’n the more dangerousrntyrant and cut the other down to size.rnIt was onl) ten years ago that there came along a man, writingrnunder the pen name Viktor Suvorov, who began publishingrnbooks that challenged, and with time began to overturn, the establishedrnmyth. In his earlier life, before his defection,rnVladimir Rezun had been an officer in Soviet military intelligence,rnattached to an embassy and engaged in espionage. As arnyoung man, a military-academy cadet, a tank commander, andrnthen a special-forces ace, Rezun discovered the talent which hernwas later able to parlay into becoming the writer Suvorov: Apartrnfrom being blessed with the gift of photographic memory, hernhad an encyclopedic interest in weapons. As the informationrngathered h means of this faculty filled his brain, almost againstrnhis will he became an historian: Far too many technical specificationsrnof far too many items of Soviet weaponry did not seemrnto square with what he had been taught in school about the usesrnto which these items were to ha’e been put. Out of such rarifiedrninconsistencies grew an unorthodox view of Soviet history;rnout of that secretly held view grew a heightened sense of personalrnresponsibility and morality; out of that sense of responsibilit)’rncame the decision to defect to the West and become arnwriter.rnSo far, so good, even taking into account that, after the publicationrnin England of his earliest book, Aquarium, to the firstrndeath sentence on Suvorov’s head already pronounced inrnMoscow (for defection) was added a second, thus making himrnthe only sp) alive to have been condemned to death twice. ThernBritish secret ser’ices were protecting him, and —more importantrn—the new Kremlin leaders were suddenly eager to dissociaternthemselves from all those mad Bulgarians of yesteryear, runningrnaround London with poison umbrellas and shooting thernfirst pope they see. But what Suvorov had not reckoned on, andrnonly gradually began to realize, was that the orthodox Sovietrnview of World War II that he was now writing his monumentalrnIcebreaker trilog)’ to debunk was also, with negligible variations,rnthe orthodox Western view. The first volume oi Icebreaker soldrn800 copies in Britain, despite the insignia of a respectable publisher,rnHamish Hamilton, and my own unrestrainedly compliinentarv-rnreview of the book in the Times. The second and thirdrnvolumes-entitied, respectiyely. Day M and The Last Repubhcrn—did not sell at all, for the simple reason that no publisherrnwas willing to touch them, despite the revelation that, whenrnpublished in Russia as they now ha’e been, Suvorov’s masterworkrnachieved combined sales in excess of five million.rnWorking with the history of Stalin’s and Hitler’s armamentsrnas an anthropologist works with the artifacts of a remote and forgottenrnculture, Suvorov has been able to show in his books thatrnStalin nurtured and eventually created Hitier in 1933 in orderrnto inade Germany in the summer of 1941 and, following arnBhtzkrieg to expropriate what would b’ then have been expropriated,rnto seize all of Europe, including Britain. Hence Stalin’srncode name for Hitier, Icebreaker. The military infrastructurernbuilt up by Stalin in the decade preceding the summer ofrn1941 was the most aggressive v’ar machine ever assembled inrnthe histor)’ of mankind, and it is only by reading Suvorov’s high-rnK’ technical account of its hitherto unimaginable true dimensionsrnthat a Western reader, nurtured on essentially the samernpropaganda as his Soviet counterpart, can appreciate the extentrnto w hich Barbarossa was an act of national suicide for Germany,rnan act later shown to have been consistent with the character ofrnher leader.rn14/CHRONICLE5rnrnrn