p Speaking before a group of historians who had gathered for an international conference at Sandhurst a few years ago, one of the American participants asked the Soviet representatives whether they agreed with his American colleagues who maintained that the extraordinary heroism and staunchness of the Red Army, displayed in the trying year of 1941, were accounted for by the natural qualities of the Russian soldier who had always selflessly defended his hearth and home from foreign invaders. Replying, a Soviet historian at the conference said, "The Red Army soldier during foreign military intervention in 1918-1920, and the Great Patriotic War, just like Russian soldiers in the past, selflessly defended their hearth and home, their family and their native land against foreign invaders. But there is a very important difference between the soldiers of the tsarist army and the soldiers of the Soviet army. The Soviet soldiers also defend their priceless gain-their own Soviet socialist system of government which, as they know from their own experience, has brought them and their families a happy life; this awareness generates unprecedented mass heroism and devotion to their martial duty, which distinguishes the army of the socialist state from the armies of any other country in the world.”

p The sources of the victory of the Soviet Union in the war against the Nazi aggressors is one of the most topical and at the same time the most wantonly interpreted subjects in the Western literature. This applies to both the substance of the matter and the method of its treatment by bourgeois authors.

p The victory or defeat in war of a country depends on the strength of its social and state system, on the correlation of the class forces inside the country and in the international arena, the level of its economic development, moral strength and military might, the ability of the ruling classes and parties to lead the masses which are the main driving force of history, the Great Patriotic War being a case in point.

p The outcome of the unprecedented struggle between the Soviet Armv and the Hitler Wehrmacht was determined by a number of circumstances, the most important of these being the advantages of the economic and political organisation of socialist society, and its advanced revolutionary ideology. During the Great Patriotic War the socialist system ensured the indestructible unity of Soviet society, the power and unprecedented mobility of its economy, the high level of development of military science, and produced many outstanding generals and military leaders.

p Of the bourgeois researchers who are in possession of the ample proof of the economic, political and militarystrategic superiority of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany, very few actually speak about the merits of the centralised planned economic system of the Soviet Union, the strength of the multi-national socialist state, the heroism of the Soviet people. However, even such authors fail or refuse to notice the sources of the permanent factors of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, and ignore the close relationship between these factors and the advantages of socialism over capitalism. Nevertheless, the assessments made by those Western historians are important in so far as they stand in contrast to a certain extent to the malicious fabrications of the rabid enemies of socialism and of the Soviet Union.

p It has been proved with abundant clarity that when wars are waged by highly developed states or by coalitions of states, their outcome is not determined by some accidental and unforeseen circumstance or even by mistakes of military leaders, however grave the consequences may be, and also that the ultimate winner is the country 172 or the coalition of states with a sum total of advantages in the economic, political and military organisation of society over those of its adversary. In spite of these obvious facts, the conception of the "accidental nature" of the victory of the Soviet Union, md of "missed victories" of Nazi Germany is still at the centre of attention of many bourgeois historians. Actually, there is nothing intricate about this line of reasoning. They say, for instance, that since the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War was the result of accidental circumstances, it cannot in any way testify to the strength and stability of the socialist system. In this way they try to cultivate the idea that it is possible to overpower socialism, that in the historical confrontation between socialism and capitalism the latter still has a chance of military victory. Arguments of this sort are widely used to brainwash the population and the military personnel of capitalist countries.

p Western historians stand on shaky ground also when they try to explain the reasons for the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies. They say, for example, that Nazi Germany’s collapse was brought about by the mistakes of its political and military leaders, by the shortage of manpower and material resources, by the conditions of fighting in Russia that the Germans were not used to, and by other circumstances among which the efforts of the Soviet people to rout the Nazis are relegated to the background.

The victory of the Soviet Union and the’ defeat of Nazi Germany are two dialectically interconnected sides of one and the same phenomenon. The superiority of one of the belligerents rendered the realisation by the other of its goals impossible. Let us now dwell in more detail on the main factors behind the victory of the Soviet Union.