Suvorov has written several books about his Soviet Army experiences and also joined the team led by the British General Sir John Hackett in writing the book
The Third World War: The Untold Story . Published in 1982, this book was the sequel to the 1978 original
The Third World War, in which Hackett and his team had speculated about the possible course of a Soviet/NATO war in Germany.
Suvorov is best known for his books about Stalin's times written in a polemic, popular-science style. In some countries, particularly in Russia, Germany and Israel, Suvorov's most controversial theses have jumped the bounds of academic discourse and captured the public imagination. The first work was
Icebreaker. Later books on this subject were
Day "M",
Suicide,
Last Republic, and
The Chief Culprit. Suvorov used hundreds of Soviet-era memoirs and other publicly accessible sources to justify the following points.
1. The Soviet Union was intrinsically unstable, as any other communist regime must be. It had to expand to survive. According to the permanent revolution theory the communist system must expand and occupy the entire world to survive. Otherwise, it will fail in a peaceful and/or military struggle with surrounding “capitalist” countries. Stalin and other Soviet leaders had always understood this. It was publicly declared by Stalin that
"the ultimate victory of socialism... can only be achieved on an international scale". Therefore, Soviet leaders started preparations for a massive war of aggression. However, to mislead the West, they officially declared an adherence to a more peaceful theory of Socialism in One Country, according to which Socialism can win in a single country, without being immediately overthrown by hostile "capitalist" neighbors. This leading country would then help revolutionary movements in other countries. Either way, the Soviet pre-war doctrine was based on Marxism-Leninism theory that capitalism will be overthrown through Communist revolution.
2. The Soviet Union made extensive preparations for the future war of aggression during the 1920s and 30s. Suvorov provides an extensive analysis of Stalin's preparation for war. Stalin, the leader of the Communist party officially announced three phases that should lead to the final preparation for the war: three Five Year Plan phases, with the first one focused on collectivization, the second focused on industrialization, and the third phase emphasized the militarization of the country.
3. Stalin escalated tensions in Europe by providing a combination of economic and military support to Hitler. (see Soviet-German relations before 1941). Stalin's plan and vision was that Hitler's predictability and his violent reactionary ideas made him a candidate to the role of "icebreaker" for the Communist revolution. By starting wars with European countries, Hitler would warrant the USSR joining World War II by attacking Nazi Germany and "liberating" and Sovietizing all of Europe. It is generally accepted that "from the early 1920s until 1933, the Soviet Union was engaged in secret collaboration with the German military to enable it to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty", which prohibited Germany's military production. Moscow allowed the Germans to produce and test their weapons on Soviet territory, while some Red Army officers attended general-staff courses in Germany. In 1932-1933, "Stalin helped Hitler come to power, by forbidding German Communists to make common cause with the Social Democrats against the Nazis in parliamentary elections". When concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, Stalin "clearly counted on the repetition of the 1914-1918 war of attrition, which would leave the "capitalist" countries so exhausted that the USSR could sweep into Europe virtually unopposed" (see also Stalin's speech on August 19, 1939).Stalin always planned to exploit the military conflict between the "capitalist" countries to his advantage. He said as early as in 1925 that
- "Struggles, conflicts and wars among our enemies are...our great ally...and the greatest supporter of our government and our revolution" and "If a war does break out, we will not sit with folded arms - we will have to take the field, but we will be last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive load on the scale"
4. World War II was initiated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany which became allies after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The essence of this pact was in the secret protocols which divided Europe into zones of influence, and removed the Polish buffer between Germany and the USSR. Some countries that fell into the Soviet zone of influence, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were occupied. The difference between these smaller nations, occupied and annexed by the USSR, and Poland initially attacked by Germany was that Poland had military assistance guarantees from Great Britain and France.
5. Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany from the rear in July 1941, only a few weeks after the date on which the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union took place. According to Suvorov, the Red Army had been already redeployed from a defensive to an offensive position. As described in Suvorov's books, Stalin had made no major defensive preparations. On the contrary, the Stalin line fortifications through Belarus-Ukraine were dismantled, and the new Molotov line was all but finished by the time of Nazi invasion.
5. Hitler's intelligence identified USSR's preparations to attack Germany. Therefore, the Wehrmacht had drafted a preemptive war plan based on Hitler's orders as early as mid-1940, soon after the Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. On June 22, 1941 Hitler began an assault on the USSR.