Mark Solonin

Životopis - Mark Solonin:

Solonin's studies focus on the opening weeks of the Soviet-German War, known as the Great Patriotic War, with the goal of finding a reason why Stalin's empire, after years of preparation for the Big War, having reinforced his army with the best up-to-date weaponry and, finally, having amassed the biggest army size in the world, suffered a crushing defeat in the summer of 1941. The author-proposed answer is that the reason for the catastrophe lies beyond the sphere of tactics, strategy or German's notorious "first strike". The Soviet Union and its military were unprepared for the war in terms of morale and organization - after the first shots were fired, the Red Army became an ungovernable mob of armed people, which swiftly abandoned their weapons and turned into endless columns of unarmed prisoners-of-war. This conclusion ("sensational and scandalous" as the Russian editor put it) is proved by a thorough hour-by-hour analysis of military operations of the first days of the war.

In the Soviet offensive plans controversy he belongs to the camp close to Viktor Suvorov. He supports the view that Soviet Union prepared and planned for an offensive war against Nazi Germany before Operation Barbarossa was initiated.

Solonin has written seven books that have been sold over 270 000 copies in Russia. Every book contains hundreds of source references (both from Soviet/Russian and Germany military archives), comparative tables on planning, weaponry and armor, author-drawn schemes of military operations. His works have been translated into Polish, Germany, Czech, Estonian, Lithuanian and Romanian.

Solonin criticized the new Russian culture minister and revisionist historian Vladimir Medinsky as "a propagandist of the shameless Goebbels variety" (Založil/a: Gallienus)