Was the USSR set to attack Germany before Operation Barbarossa??

[DMS]

What?! As matter of state policy absolutely not, where the hell did that red herring come from?

Realy? Then why do you believe in same nonsence about USSR?

Your insightful and detailed posts have convinced me that all 25 years of studying the Soviet Union was a waste of my time. I apparently don't know anything and that means the degree in History I have is worthless. Thanks to you I now know that the Soviet Union was a wonderful place to live in and the millions of people who fled from the Soviet Union to the United states are all liars. My mistake!

That's great info to know!

But I wonder why so many countries that used to be part of the beautiful, loving Soviet Union were so happy to break from it in 1989/1990. And why few of them are in fear of Russia taking over their territory again. I guess it's just one big misunderstanding by the people that lived through the Soviet era?

Steve

I don't want to convince anybody, language barrier, different education, different knowledges. Just can't resist when read something... Surprising, I would say.

Because elite decidied that western way of life is much better then communism. Much better to have a lot of expensive cars and a lot of money in capitalistic state then official "Volga" and lack of inheritance of social status. IMHO.

[LukeFF]

Because elite decided that western way of life is much better then communism. Much better to have a lot of expensive cars and a lot of money in capitalistic state then official "Volga" and lack of inheritance of social status. IMHO.

There were a whole heck of a lot of Germans in the East that were fully fed up with communism by the 80s, and I think it's safe to say they weren't the "elite."

Speaking of which, I've been doing a lot of reading over the last couple of days about East Germany and its economy, the border fortification with the BRD, etc. Man, it's little wonder the whole thing came crashing down.

[Sgt Joch]

Ok, now that everyone has had a chance to show how tough they are, how about actually discussing some history?

1. famine in the U.S.A. This is based on a study by a Russian author that 7 million americans died of starvation during the Great Depression. Although conditions were bad because of the poor harvets, "Dust Bowls" and general economic conditions and no doubt people did die of malnutrition or starvation, most historians think the 7 million figure is an outlier.

2. famine in the Ukraine. Depending on who you read, between 2 and 10 million (more likely 2-4 million) Ukrainians died of starvation in the early 30s. The popular view is that Stalin deliberately caused the famine to break the will of the Ukrainians.

However, the reality is a bit more complicated. It was a result of many factors: 1) Russia put in place collective farms in the late 20s which caused a disruption of agricultural production, some say as high as 30%; 2) the climate in the early 30s caused a series of bad harvests, which again lowered food production. This was the same climate which caused "Dust Bowls" in the USA; and 3) faced with food shortages in the cities which were their main sources of political support, the Communist regime reacted with a hamfisted "requisition" system, basically stealing food from the peasants to feed the urban population.

Now no doubt Stalin knew of the situation and does not appear to have done much to help out, but it does not appear that he actually set out to deliberately starve out the Ukrainians.

[Skwabie]

I'm actually liking this thread. Most forums I visit don't condone politics discussions but this one is somewhat educative for me even.

This brings to mind the classic line by line comparison of Fascism and Communism. When you go through and tick off what each has you wind up with a massively common basis:

1. Strong central authority over the minutia of every day life. Local/regional autonomy in any significant way is not allowed.

2. Suppression of individualism through force, intimidation, or other manipulative means.

3. Brutality towards anybody that opposes restrictions or conditions set in #2 above.

4. Personal and corporate property is inherently the state's. If individuals or corporations are allowed to have title to property it is conditional upon it being in the state's interests to do so.

5. Deliberate and pervasive attempt to get people to equate military strength with national identity.

6. Control over all forms of domestic communication to the extent technically possible. Normal practice is to use this control to distort peoples' view of their state and the world around them. i.e. propaganda/brainwashing.

7. A system of cronyism that keeps those working for the state dependent upon "knowing the right people" to secure and keep their jobs. The state gets to define "the right people". It is a system where people are employed based on who they know instead of what they know as the first criteria. There are exceptions for talented specialists, such as scientists and industrialists, but they are generally one step away from major problems.

8. A large scale security apparatus for spying, prosecuting, and imprisoning anybody the state deems to be a threat. The more people viewed as a threat, the bigger and more invasive the security apparatus is.

9. The legal system is designed to protect the state, not keep it in check.

10. An enemy to focus the population's attention on so as to distract them from thoughts of opposing the state. It can be a social class, ethnicity, religion, national identity, or anything else for that matter.

11. A single figurehead for the people to "worship".

12. Obviously no true form of democratic governance. When voting is allowed it is rigged in some way or another.

The list goes on and on.

the notion that there is no free enterprise in Communist governments is also purely imaginary. It's usually limited to mom-and-pop operations, but it is allowed to some degree. Larger industrial concerns can also semi-independent of the state, even if they are ultimately answerable to the powers that be. Because if you do something the Communist authorities aren't happy with, they can arbitrarily arrest you and/or take full control at any time.

I know Steve is mostly referring to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany but surprisingly it's not much different from the place where i'm at...

Realy? Then why do you believe in same nonsence about USSR?

I don't want to convince anybody, language barrier, different education, different knowledges. Just can't resist when read something... Surprising, I would say.

Because elite decidied that western way of life is much better then communism. Much better to have a lot of expensive cars and a lot of money in capitalistic state then official "Volga" and lack of inheritance of social status. IMHO.

I think... you're only seeing "capitalism is money" as an outsider. From my understanding, at its core it encourages individualism, or what I'd like to call "subconsciously everyone likes to play god". Yes, maybe humans are flawed like that, and therefore you need a political system to cater to that flaw, and so capitalism allows that. With talent and hard work each man is allowed to build a little kingdom for himself, which comes with expensive cars, nice houses etc like you say. And the authorities won't come and take them away. In this process not only did you build a nice life for yourself, but also contributed to society. I say that is great.

Also, because it acknowledges individualism, it in turn encourages different ppl to respect and coexist with each other, ppl with different backgrounds, culture, ethnics, religion and preferences. Therefore you have a more colorful society and you have more freedom to openly express yourself. I say that is great too.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect political system. There's always the ones that don't have any significant talent to begin with, or the ones that got played a back hand by fate. They could be the underprivileged group... But if you look at US or any democratic western nation, the bulk of society consists of middle classes. They're the ones that made it under this system and enjoys a quality life. Compare that to the mass poverty and greyed out society that was the Soviet Union or any that is still under totalitarian rule nowadays.

[sburke]

Realy? Then why do you believe in same nonsence about USSR?

Let me get this straight,you come up with a red herring with absolutely no foundation in fact and then equate that with very well historically documented behavior by the Soviet Union and ask why I believe one and not the other. Simple, I am not an idiot. I am a semi intelligent thinking person with a love of historical study. Mass deportations at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives to break popular will is not at all uncommon practice by Russia and the Soviet state. Hey you don't need to rely on western propaganda for this. Exercise your google-fu and it isn't hard to find - from Wikipedia

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting as a joke that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Chechnya and the Baltic republics.

Some peoples were deported after Stalin's death: in 1959, Chechen returnees were supplanted from the mountains to the Chechen plain. The mountaineers of Tajikistan, such as the Yaghnobi people, were forcibly settled to the plain deserts in the 1970s.

[dsf]

The famine in the Ukraine during the 1930s is still very controversial. It became highly politicized in the years that followed, largely due to the work of Ukrainian expatriates who still exploit it ruthless in their anti-Soviet propaganda. Stalin, somehow, gets credit for the drought and resulting collapse of Soviet agriculture in 1932 and 1933 that led to so many deaths by starvation.

What is forgotten, or skipped over, is that during 1932 and 1933 there was a global weather event that caused drought worldwide, and the resulting collapse of agriculture on a global basis. These are the years of the Dust Bowl in North America. If Stalin is to be blamed for the mass starvation of Ukrainians in those years, then the hundreds of thousands of Okies who fled to California to escape starvation must be collateral damage, eh?

As always, the truth lies between the extremes. Collectivization was a ruthless policy that forced many from their homes, not just in the Ukraine, but all over the USSR. The consolidation of agricultural lands and introduction of mechanization began in earnest in 1930, when the regime started to forcibly expropriate grain from rural areas to feed the cities, which were mushrooming in size. Nearly two million 'kulaks' were sent into exile, including most of the successful farmers. The peasants pushed back, naturally, which led to widespread hoarding, an increase in the level of violence, a decrease in grain production, and general chaos in the agricultural sector. Many peasants simply refused to plant crops. This is the background to the 'Holodomor'.

When the drought came 1932, agriculture collapsed completely. This was the start of the wave of famines that killed so many people throughout the USSR. It is wrong to think this affected only Ukrainians — that, again, is another part of Ukrainian propaganda. The famine affected everybody, including those in the cities, who had their rations reduced to a minimum. It is also wrong to think that the regime did nothing to alleviate the situation. In May 1932 there were 116.2 million tons of grain sent to the Ukraine, along with 700 tractors. There is another Wiki here on the Causes of the Holodomor where that is mentioned.

Some observations:

Stalin saw industrialization as the key to the USSR's future. There was no Soviet industry when Stalin gained power in 1928. Through the Five Year Plans, the USSR was dragged kicking and screaming into the Industrial Age, well enough, at least, to be able to repel Hitler by 1945. This is why the urban areas were of first importance in the decision-making process.

On the face of it, Collectivization made sense. The land was distributed among many small holdings, discontinuous parcels of land that made the use of machinery impossibly expensive and inefficient. By consolidating holdings, it would be possible to use machinery and institute "industrial farming". This fit in well with another Soviet icon, the tractor. The USSR had finally started building tractors in 1930, and they wanted to use them.

That said, the implementation of Collectivization was brutal and ruthless, criminal, for lack of a better word. It was typical of Stalin, who was always cold and calculating and scrupulous. That's on him, certainly.

And that was what set the stage for the mass famines in 1932 and 1933, the years of drought. That's where the controversy lies. It is easy to indict Stalin for uprooting, exiling, and sometimes shooting the Kulaks. That's what set the stage by destroying the existing agricultural regime. It is more difficult to accuse him of "slaughtering millions" when the famine itself was the result of the same drought that hit Oklahoma. I think we must assume that the weather was beyond Stalin's control, which suggests that the scale of the disaster, thousands versus millions, was not within his control and hence, could not be part of his plan. In criminal law, the argument goes to intent and premeditation. You be the judge.

As I said, there is still lots of controversy. Stalin will always be controversial.

Regards

Scott Fraser

[dsf]

As a merchant mariner I worked with officers from the eastern block from 1996 to 2003 in Europe. Most (not all, especially Russians living in Ukraine) from the former soviet states (Poles, Ukrainians, Rumanians) were aware that their education in history was very different than what their eyes told them when they saw the rest of the world. They tended to be very reflective with politics and history and tried to learn as much as they could, even if they did not agree. In my experience, however, a least half of the ones from Russia stuck to the line that USA bad, USSR good. It was an interesting to see how effective education of a people really is.

I worked aboard deep-water Soviet trawlers between 1984 and 1989. The crew came from all over the Soyuz and there were a few who had experienced the war. Chernenko was GenSec at first, then Andropov briefly, then Gorbachev. There was a Commissar aboard, a political animal, not a fisherman, who watched over things and said his job was "morale". After Gorbachev, there was still a Commissar, but now he was a fisherman, not KGB, someone who could actually function as second in command. It was a very interesting period to observe.

Regards

Scott Fraser

[Battlefront.com]

This shows how easily a point can become submerged in minutia arguments. The point I made is that there isn't a lot of difference between Fascist and Communist states. Someone picked one point on my list and dismissed the others. The counter point is that Communism doesn't have the track record of murder and brutality that Fascism does. I made ONE reference to ONE of MANY instances of mass murder within the Soviet Union. There's a laundry list of other examples, including plenty that aren't from the Soviet Union (I mentioned Pol Pot in passing). The brutality of Communist regimes is so blatant and well documented I'm baffled as to why there even needs to be a discussion about it. Likewise if someone was to challenge the notion that Fascists are brutal towards their own people and others.

There's apologists for any extreme group. We have neo-Nazis defending the 3rd Reich, we have neo-Soviets defending the record of the Soviet Union. So I'll add another point to my list of commonality between Fascism and Communism... they both produce generations of people who willfully ignore basic truth in order to defend their ideology that the most likely never lived through themselves.

Steve

[H1nd]

It is also relatively easy for apologists to "turn the table" agains any country, especially USA with arbitary sense of proportions since every country has pretty dark history with acts that are ethically unthinkable today but in the past they might have been "bussiness as usual". In a sense there really are no good guys in history, only different degrees of evil and exploitation, so it is very easy to get stuck on ideas like "stalin was not that bad after all" look at everything everyone else has done! But to say that one must close eyes on the sheer industrial scale of human slaughter and torture that both nazis and communists managed to pul off. Not that i'm huge fan of modern way of things either. The world is a damn nasty place.

[76mm]

I worked aboard deep-water Soviet trawlers between 1984 and 1989.

Sounds like there is a very interesting story there...

[Michael Emrys]

Sounds like there is a very interesting story there...

Yes, and one that I would like to read in another thread, perhaps in the GF. Might even bring that largely moribund forum back to life.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Steve,

It was once explained to me that, as you note, that Fascism and Communism are indeed the same creature, when you get right down to it. Instead, I was told the truth is that there is a continuum, starting with being naked and devoid of anything--absolute freedom--and being totally protected against all threats (assuming the guards and their leaders don't kill you)--maximum security prison. In solitary. For life. After that, you theoretically can describe any governmental system based on where it falls on that sliding scale. I thought it was a pretty good model and helped get me out of that concept we got from the French Assembly seating circa 1870s. The notion of the Left and the Right. As Robert Ringer noted in his no punch spared bestseller Restoring the American Dream, what we have here may seem separate, but both embrace the same approach to dealing with the citizenry, and it's not good for same. Different product positioning, if you will, but same end result.

dsf,

The point of collectivization had far less to do with industrial scale production of food but in breaking the rural basis of free enterprise (farmers harbored dangerous capitalist thoughts, as seen by Lenin) and paving the way for the State to do as it willed; of creating an excuse for yet more terror. By destroying the entire agricultural system, drought or no drought, Stalin, in my estimation and that of scholars, guaranteed a famine would come. If you kill the people whose labor feeds the people; if you kill the people who know the land the way we know our own families, then it's wholly to be expected that people will die. Lots and lots of them. You may also be interested to know that on the small private plots still allowed to exist during the Cold War, these produced, with tiny amounts of land, a big chunk of total Russian agricultural yield.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Soviet_Union

"Hedrick Smith wrote in The Russians (1976) that, according to Soviet statistics, one fourth of the value of agricultural production in 1973 was produced on the private plots peasants were allowed (2% of the whole arable land).[18] In the 1980s, 3% of the land was in private plots which produced more than a quarter of the total agricultural output.[19] i.e. private plots produced somewhere around 1600% and 1100% as much as common ownership plots in 1973 and 1980. Soviet figures claimed that the Soviets produced 20–25% as much as the U.S. per farmer in the 1980s.[20]"

I submit this annihilates the argument that collectivization was more efficient than family farms. A big reason for the disparity is that this food is the family's outright; which doesn't have to be obtained via long queues for product almost never seen and still harder to get if seen. Some of it can be bartered or sold to get other critters and things needed. There is a direct vital stake in making that plot produce, and people are happy to do so because their labors directly and materially benefit them first and foremost. This is here. This is real. It isn't some abstract notion of building Russia. It's feeding family and self. I put up a link in one of the Stalin attack Hitler threads in which survivors of the collectivization are interviewed on camera. Here's what happened when the State's representatives showed up at one farm. Says it all. "They took everything. They took everything and left us nothing." What more need be said?

Regards,

John Kettler

[dsf]

The point of collectivization had far less to do with industrial scale production of food but in breaking the rural basis of free enterprise...

Note that I prefaced my remarks with "On the face of it..." At some levels, Collectivization made sense. That's not to say it was a good policy.

Stalin was unabashedly against free enterprise. In the NEP, Lenin had relinquished the ban on private land holdings in belated recognition that without the profit incentive, productivity collapsed. One of the first things Stalin did was remove the ability of individuals to own land or small businesses. People who did so were labelled 'wreckers', 'saboteurs' and 'enemies of the State' and were persecuted ruthlessly. Stalin may have seen them as a threat to Soviet authority, since that was his typical response to threats, but either way, Stalin removed the limited opportunities for private enterprise that the NEP allowed. State capitalism became the norm.

As for the famine, certainly Stalin did great damage to existing agriculture by persecuting the Kulaks, driving them from their land and amalgamating their holdings into vast Sovkhoz and Kolkhoz. The point I was trying to make is that the drought of 1932 and 1933 arrived in the immediate aftermath of this dislocation and destruction, and that it was the drought itself that made everything so much worse, driving the death toll into the millions. Stalin could not have anticipated that, despite the fervent belief by some that Stalin was the Devil incarnate and capable of anything — including, it would seem, controlling the weather.

For that reason, I find it somewhat disingenuous to accuse Stalin of "deliberately murdering millions of Ukrainians". That rhetoric fits in well with the perceptions of the devout anti-Communists, but it is not an accurate description of events. Millions died, yes, but they died from a famine that was caused by a natural catastrophe, a global drought. The fact that this came on the heels of Collectivization made it many times worse, definitely, but the scale of the catastrophe was beyond anyone's ability to predict or to control. With that in mind, I don't think it accurate to accuse Stalin of "deliberately" murdering "millions" of Ukrainians.

Make no mistake — I am not a "fan" of Stalin nor do I endorse much of what he did. Stalin will forever be an enigma, bit some things are still very clear. Stalin was a sociopath, ruthless and brutal, without a shred of compassion or mercy. He ruled with an iron fist, remote from others, in an atmosphere of paranoia where it was as dangerous to be his "friend" as it was his enemy. As great as his deeds may have been, his misdeeds were even greater, and history will remember him as one of the most vile tyrants of the last century. That much needs to be said.

Regards

Scott Fraser

[JonS]

The point I was trying to make is that the drought of 1932 and 1933 arrived in the immediate aftermath of this dislocation and destruction, and that it was the drought itself that made everything so much worse, driving the death toll into the millions. Stalin could not have anticipated that, despite the fervent belief by some that Stalin was the Devil incarnate and capable of anything — including, it would seem, controlling the weather.

A bad man-made situation made immeasurably worse by a natural disaster. Fair enough.

For that reason, I find it somewhat disingenuous to accuse Stalin of "deliberately murdering millions of Ukrainians".

That's fair enough too ... except, what did Stalin do to mitigate the effects of the natural disaster that his policies had made worse? If he did nothing, or pressed ahead with the reforms (or sent some known incompetent muppet like Mike Brown to put things right), then I think it's fair to describe it as deliberate murder. Not the initial catastrophe, but for withholding the assets that only a state can bring to bear when something really bad happens.

This is exactly why the British, for example, get some stick over the Bengal famine in 1943. They didn't cause the famine, but they didn't much about it either.

[dsf]

... except, what did Stalin do to mitigate the effects of the natural disaster that his policies had made worse? If he did nothing, or pressed ahead with the reforms (or sent some known incompetent muppet like Mike Brown to put things right), then I think it's fair to describe it as deliberate murder. Not the initial catastrophe, but for withholding the assets that only a state can bring to bear when something really bad happens.

I posted this above:

... It is also wrong to think that the regime did nothing to alleviate the situation. In May 1932 there were 116.2 million tons of grain sent to the Ukraine, along with 700 tractors. There is another Wiki here on the Causes of the Holodomor where that is mentioned...

The link goes to an interesting article discussing the famine in detail. In one paragraph, it lists the amount of grain sent by the central authority to various regions of the Ukraine. Down the page, it states:

Documents from Soviet archives indicate that the aid distribution was made selectively to the most affected areas, and during the spring months, such assistance was the goal of the relief effort. A special resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine for the Kiev Oblast, from March 31, 1933, ordered peasants to be hospitalized with either ailing or recovering patients. The resolution ordered improved nutrition within the limits of available resources so that they could be sent out into the fields to sow the new crop as soon as possible.[41] The food was dispensed according to special resolutions from government bodies, and additional food was given in the field where the laborers worked.

Wiki is usually reliable, but everything on the internet must be taken with a grain of salt. However, if such documents exist, they would put things in a different light. In any case, the famines will always be controversial.

Regards

Scott Fraser

[DMS]

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting as a joke that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Chechnya and the Baltic republics.

Some peoples were deported after Stalin's death: in 1959, Chechen returnees were supplanted from the mountains to the Chechen plain. The mountaineers of Tajikistan, such as the Yaghnobi people, were forcibly settled to the plain deserts in the 1970s.

You don't know the interior political situatuion. Khrushchev's political opponents were Beria, (who was killed soon) Malenkow, Molotov - Stalin's comrades. Attacking Stalin he attacked stalinist "old guard". Finaly they all were retired. In reality, Khrushchev prepared shot lists in 30's by himself. And asked for increasing the limits.

What about deportations, they were common in that time. Germans from Czechoslovakia, Japanese in USA. German collaborators were strongly disliked by locals, deportations were to avoid lynching. Brutal decision, but in ruined country you can't keep NKVD unit in each town, when after war criminality raised a lot.

Seriously, you may know much, but you don't know all circumstances, imagine I would tell you, Americans, about brutal general Sherman. You would laugh at me, and would be right.

[wadepm]

The Japanese were not deported, they were interned for the duration...

[Sgt Joch]

That's fair enough too ... except, what did Stalin do to mitigate the effects of the natural disaster that his policies had made worse? If he did nothing, or pressed ahead with the reforms (or sent some known incompetent muppet like Mike Brown to put things right), then I think it's fair to describe it as deliberate murder. Not the initial catastrophe, but for withholding the assets that only a state can bring to bear when something really bad happens.

This is exactly why the British, for example, get some stick over the Bengal famine in 1943. They didn't cause the famine, but they didn't much about it either.

So by that standard, Winston Churchill is guilty of the "deliberate murder" of 3 million Bengalis?

Stalin was guilty of enough "deliberate murders", i.e. the purges, Gulags, etc., without coming up with some arbitrary yardstick to increase the total.

It's not a question of defending Communism, but of dispelling historical misconceptions, the myth that Stalin deliberately caused the Ukraine famine is one, the myth that Stalin deliberately stopped the Soviet Army in front of Warsaw in 1944 to allow the Nazis to crush the Polish uprisng is another.

Of course, die hard anti-communists have no interest in historical facts if it ruins a good story.

[JonS]

I posted this above:

Ah, thanks

J

[Bastables]

Maybe we're arguing about semantics here, I don't disagree with what you say above, although I would still call its pre-emptive attack.

Let's face it, most of the German tanks in 1941 crap--but my point is that if they were trying to develop tanks to match the Germans, they'd probably have come up with something like the T-70, which presumably was cheaper to build than a T34. I guess they built the T34 simply because it was the best design they came up, regardless of what the Germans were doing.

Not so sure about the latter. I'm sure that the whole point of designing the T34 was in reaction to experience in the Spanish civil war onwards: that thinly and high hardness armoured 30era tanketts do very poorly verses the small 3,7/4,5cm anti tank guns. The T 34 armour thickness and angling was expressly designed to make enemy anti tank guns that Soviet tanks had faced in the 30's irrelevant.

The T-34 was developed to over match German and Japanese antitank guns and was a direct reaction to the effectiveness in Spain of the later much derided Pak 36 and Italian 47mm infantry guns.

Read about the Tank offensive in the Brunete sector to relive Madrid ( Includes stories of a PaK 36 in a church steeple knocking out 13 T26's). Soviet post battle reports note what was at the the time high numbers of guns per km: 26.6 guns per kilometer compared to an average of 13.8 guns per kilometer on the front as a whole.

The same issue of 37mm guns of even low velocity popping soviet armour during the battles with Japan in Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol resulted in the A-20 prototype receiving Sloped 32mm armour resulting in the A-32, they further up armoured and up gunned it resulting in the T 34 production variant.

So yeah they were developing the T34 to match the Germans/Japanese/Italians specifically the 3,7cm and 4,7cm guns that were used against the T26's and Bt's. The T-34 did exactly what it said on the tin (proof against anti tank guns) until the increasing employment of overmatching 7,5cm high velocity guns. The idea that the Soviets came up with weapon designs in a vacuum is a bit odd, and not at all what happened.

[76mm]

So yeah they were developing the T34 to match the Germans/Japanese/Italians specifically the 3,7cm and 4,7cm guns that were used against the T26's and Bt's. The T-34 did exactly what it said on the tin (proof against anti tank guns) until the increasing employment of overmatching 7,5cm high velocity guns. The idea that the Soviets came up with weapon designs in a vacuum is a bit odd, and not at all what happened.

I don't recall ever saying that weapons are developed in a vacuum, and the previous discussion was specifically about whether the T34 was developed to "match" (ie, equal) German tanks.

We could be arguing about the meaning of the word "match", which in my dictionary means "to produce or procure an equal to". Therefore, I don't understand how the T34 can be said to have been developed to "match" the PAK 36 when in fact the T34 completely and totally "over-matched" it, to the point that the PAK 36 could do little more than scratch its paint. It's like saying that Lamborghinis are designed to "match" the Yugo...

If you want to say that the T34 was developed to totally outclass then-existing anti-tank weapons in reaction to the ineffectiveness of other Soviet tank designs, I'd agree with that, although I wouldn't call the purpose of that exercise to "match" anything.

[Bastables]

I don't recall ever saying that weapons are developed in a vacuum, and the previous discussion was specifically about whether the T34 was developed to "match" (ie, equal) German tanks.

We could be arguing about the meaning of the word "match", which in my dictionary means "to produce or procure an equal to". Therefore, I don't understand how the T34 can be said to have been developed to "match" the PAK 36 when in fact the T34 completely and totally "over-matched" it, to the point that the PAK 36 could do little more than scratch its paint. It's like saying that Lamborghinis are designed to "match" the Yugo...

If you want to say that the T34 was developed to totally outclass then-existing anti-tank weapons in reaction to the ineffectiveness of other Soviet tank designs, I'd agree with that, although I wouldn't call the purpose of that exercise to "match" anything.

Really, you're going to disassemble away from "I guess they built the T34 simply because it was the best design they came up, regardless of what the Germans were doing." While skittering around the definitions of match . . .

More power to you I guess.

[76mm]

Really, you're going to disassemble away from "I guess they built the T34 simply because it was the best design they came up, regardless of what the Germans were doing." While skittering around the definitions of match . . .

huh?? I'm not dissembling ("disassembling away"?), but its hard to have an intelligent conversation when people don't use words precisely.

As I mentioned, my previous comment was in the context of the T34 being developed to match German tanks. While I'm no expert in the history of tank design, the fact is that Russians took a very different approach to tank design (and use) than the Germans and it is hard to see any German tanks serving as the inspiration for the T34's revolutionary design.

If you are somehow reading this as "the Soviets came up with weapon designs in a vacuum", more power to you I guess.

[Grisha]

Maybe this could be the new Peng Challenge?

[Jargotn]

Thanks for the interesting read. In the end it does seem as if sometimes, if the right conditions are met, humans can argue with each other without shouting insults.