Mark Solonin, historian? Who is against? Criticism of Solonin by professional historians.

He began to work as a stoker in a boiler room, was one of the organizers of social and political clubs in Kuibyshev during the years of perestroika. He began working on the subject of the Second World War in the mid-1980s. Solonin's books have been published in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, are being prepared for publication in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland

historical works

Comparison of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht

Solonin cites documents showing that there was no multiple numerical superiority of the enemy. The Wehrmacht only slightly outnumbered the Red Army due to its complete mobilization and greater troop density. But this superiority did not last long: by July 1, 5.3 million people were mobilized, which meant a more than twofold increase in the size of the army compared to the beginning of the war. Soviet aviation, in his opinion, roughly corresponded in quality to the Luftwaffe, many times outnumbering German aviation. Soviet tanks had multiple quantitative and qualitative superiority. In terms of equipment with artillery and tractors, the Red Army was also not inferior to the Wehrmacht. The level of equipment of the army with communications was, according to Solonin, quite acceptable. From this, he concludes that the cause of the defeats of 1941 has nothing to do with the difference in weapons technology.

Solonin's version of the development of events in 1941

Solonin subjected to a radical revision of the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army at the beginning of the war. In his opinion, the main reason for the defeats of 1941 was the full-scale collapse of the army, expressed in mass desertion and surrender.

Mass desertion and mass surrender were at the same time the cause and effect, and the main content of the process of turning the Red Army into an uncontrollable crowd.

One of the reasons for this, Solonin calls the sharply negative attitude of the majority of the population towards the Soviet government, which deceived the people by not fulfilling its slogans like “land to the peasants, factories to the workers”, in fact turned the collective farmers into new serfs, staged dispossession and famine. The mass repressions of 37-38 in the army, in his opinion, “turned a significant part of the Red Army command cadres into mortally and life-threatening people,” who were afraid to take any initiative and were only gears between the troops and Stalin. Another reason for the unwillingness of the army to fight, he calls the Soviet foreign policy of 39-41, when at first Hitler was a "warmonger", and then became the closest ally.

Nevertheless, he repeatedly says that one should not reduce everything to simple formulations like “the army refused to fight for Stalin” and that the versions he proposed are not fully exhaustive explanations of the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army.

Let's not simplify. The life of a multi-million human society is infinitely more complicated than any scheme.

He names a number of formations of the Red Army that inflicted serious damage on the enemy in the first days of the war, such as the 99th Infantry Division, which knocked out the Germans from the border Przemysl three times, or the 14th Army of General Frolov, which stopped the enemy in the border zone and prevented the Germans from capturing Murmansk .

He calls the main reasons for the turning point "Hitler's stupid policy", expressed in his rejection of the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a Russian anti-Bolshevik army, the dispersal of national governments, the extremely cruel "new order" and the monstrous attitude towards prisoners. All this, in his opinion, led the population to the idea that it was impossible to live under such power. And the soldiers and officers realized that captivity was not their salvation from death. Then, according to Solonin, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began.

A look at the events of June 22, 1941

Solonin casts doubt on the traditional, for Soviet historical science, point of view that on June 22 the Wehrmacht dealt a sudden and crushing blow to the Red Army. According to the author, tanks and artillery, taking into account the pace of the invasion, could attack targets located no further than a few tens of kilometers deep into the USSR border. Whereas 90% of the Red Army divisions were located outside this zone. Solonin also rejects the possibility of a devastating air strike, citing the low effectiveness of air bombardments of that time. He also casts doubt on the very fact of the suddenness of the strike, citing numerous orders to increase combat readiness in the pre-war days. In addition, the largest defeats - Kyiv, Vyazma, Bryansk did not take place in the first month of the war. He declares the figure of 1,200 aircraft lost on the first day to be completely unfounded and says that aircraft abandoned at airfields were retroactively recorded in it.

The strange behavior of the Soviet leadership, which resulted in repeated demands not to succumb to provocations, as well as such facts as the announcement of a day off on June 22 in the air regiments of the Western Special Military District (after numerous orders to increase combat readiness), the failure to announce mobilization on June 22 (it was announced only on 23 ), Solonin explains that on June 22, Stalin was preparing a provocative staging of the bombing of Soviet cities. After that, mobilization was planned for June 23, and by the beginning of July, a transition to the offensive. Such a hypothesis makes it possible to explain a number of strange episodes immediately before the start of the war, although the author himself directly states that he has no documentary evidence of this assumption.

Criticism of Solonin by professional historians

A number of professional historians specializing in the Great Patriotic War sharply criticize Solonin, pointing out his numerous logical errors, the documented unconfirmedness of Solonin's theories, and a general, pronounced anti-Soviet bias:

“The point is that what you wrote, Mark Semenovich, in no way reveals the topic of“ the real state and combat capability ”in this case of our Air Force. Moreover, what is written does not reveal or explain anything at all, but rather resembles some kind of indictment at the trial of some witch in the Middle Ages. Instead of a serious analysis of the current situation, you offer some dubious analogies and information, mostly gleaned from sources like “one grandmother said”, in our case “a certain Mr. Borgman from Helsinki wrote ...”

With devastating criticism of Solonin, the famous historian Alexei Isaev speaks. In his work "Antisolonin", he, in particular, writes:

“The problem of folk-historical theories is precisely in the low quality of manufacturing key components. Errors and incorrect conclusions become the basis for conclusions, which makes these conclusions doubtful. That is why such theories are attacked and justly criticized by traditional science. When evaluating this or that theory, it is necessary, first of all, to understand how strong the foundation is, on which the conclusions are based.

Literature

"June 22, or when did the Great Patriotic War begin?" - M .: "Yauza", "Eksmo". 2007. ISBN 5-699-15196-6
“On peacefully sleeping airfields ...” - M .: “Yauza”, “Eksmo”. 2006. ISBN 5-699-15695-X
"June 23:" M Day "" - M .: "Yauza", "Eksmo". 2007 ISBN 978-5-699-22304-6
June 25th. Stupidity or aggression? - M .: "Yauza", "Eksmo". 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-25300-5
"The False History of the Great War" - M .: "Yauza", "Eksmo". 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-28327-9 In October 2008, this book became the winner of the competition "15 Russian Books of the Year"
"22nd of June. Anatomy of a disaster. 2nd ed., revised. and correct."- M .: "Yauza", "Eksmo". 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-30295-6

M. Solonin's articles and excerpts from books are on his personal website www.solonin.org

Criticism

Review by M. Solonin on the review by A. Isaev

M. Solonin's response to A. Kilichenkov's review.

A detailed collection of reviews, anti-reviews, reader reviews is on the personal website of M. Solonin www.solonin.org

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Mark Solonin" is in other dictionaries:

Mark Solonin Occupation: publicist Date of birth: May 29, 1958 (1958 05 29) (54 years old) Place of birth ... Wikipedia

Mark Semyonovich Solonin (b. May 29, 1958, Kuibyshev) Russian historian publicist (an aviation engineer by education); author of a number of books and articles on the Great Patriotic War, primarily its initial period. ... ... Wikipedia

- (b. May 29, 1958, Kuibyshev) Russian publicist historian (by education an aviation engineer designer); author of a number of books and articles on the Great Patriotic War, primarily its initial period. Contents 1 Biography 2 ... ... Wikipedia

Surname. Famous carriers: Solonin, Yuri Nikiforovich philosopher, member of the Federation Council Solonin, Mark Semyonovich Russian writer publicist, author of works on historical topics ... Wikipedia

- ... Wikipedia

Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky V. R. Medin ... Wikipedia

The Great Patriotic War Eastern Front of World War II Politruk A. G. Eremenko raises fighters to counterattack. Summer 1942 Date June 22, 1941 - ... Wikipedia

Books

22nd of June. The final diagnosis, Mark Solonin, The history of the Great Patriotic War is now, as before in the USSR, carefully varnished. There is one official opinion that does not answer many questions, in particular why the war ... Category:

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Mark Solonin was born in 1958 in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara). Like the vast majority of his peers, he grew up in a family for which the Great Patriotic War was not a story from a book, but a personal tragedy: his father was a war veteran, his father's younger brother and sister's husband died at the front; about the loss of all property during the evacuation from Ukraine to Kuibyshev, no one even remembered - it was so natural and usual for that time. My father worked as a technologist at a bearing factory, my mother taught German at a university. Quite a typical "family of the working intelligentsia."

The first book that Mark read at the age of 7 was not children's fairy tales, but Schiller's play "Deceit and Love" (there was a lot of German literature in the house - both in the original language and in translations). Such a non-standard way of first acquaintance with the ideas of good and evil, meanness and nobility bore its dangerous fruits: by the time he graduated from school, Mark already clearly understood that Soviet society had nothing to do with "the realized dream of mankind." The "gold medal" with which he graduated from high school made it possible to apply for admission to almost any university, but the graduate no longer had the illusion that professional activity within the framework of Soviet "historical science" could be combined with an honest and unbiased study of history. Choosing between history and aviation, Mark chose the latter. However, five years of study at the Kuibyshev Aviation Institute and the next 6 years of work as a designer in a closed design bureau were not in vain, as they made it possible to gain invaluable experience in searching, comprehending and systematizing information.

Interest in the history of the Second World War, formed back in school years, nevertheless remained. Books were read by almost all Western authors, whose works were then available in the USSR: "War Diary" by F. Halder, "History of WWII" by K. Tippelskirch, works by Butler, Liddell Garth ... And then the first small "miracle" happened - Mark managed to get access to ... newspapers. Yes, today it is already hard to believe, but the central Soviet newspapers of the pre-war and war times were withdrawn from open access in the Soviet Union. It was 1983, the year Brezhnev died and Andropov, head of the KGB, came to power. Another "tightening of the screws" began in the country, and in front of the future historian lay the yellowed pages of the Pravda newspaper with the text of the "joint communiqué of the Soviet and German commands", with a huge map of Poland, on which the "line of demarcation of the state interests of Germany and the USSR" was plotted, with photographs of smiling Molotov and Ribbentrop, with agreements on the creation in Moscow of a puppet "people's government of Finland" ... Everything that was carefully forgotten in the USSR was erased from memory, about which it was impossible to find even the slightest mention in the writings of Soviet "historians".

In 1984-1985, the first, of course, handwritten "historical work" was written - a thick general notebook with an analysis of the events of 1939-1940. One can hardly speak of its scientific value - for world historical science, the division of Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin has long become a textbook known fact - but at Art. 190 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ("dissemination of deliberately false fabrications discrediting the Soviet state system"), this notebook could well qualify. Most likely, that would have ended the matter, but the "Soviet state system" ended a little earlier.

In April 1985, Gorbachev came to power, the words "glasnost" and perestroika were uttered from high rostrums. "In August 1987, Solonin became a participant in one of the very first all-Union conferences of independent socio-political organizations in Moscow. It was impossible, and besides, work connected with military-technical secrets made it possible at any moment to fabricate a criminal case on a much more serious article about espionage.Then, in June 1987, these fears did not seem exaggerated at all, and work at the drawing board in the design Bureau Mark trades for a shovel stoker coal stoker.By a strange irony of fate, on the eve of the country's transition to a market economy, Solonin heated the Institute of Soviet Trade, housed in a dilapidated building of the 19th century.This work, with a meager salary, left a lot of free time (they had to work only in winter, only 50 daily shifts a year).However, this did not help to hide from the "organs", and I In January 1988, an attempt was made to plant a bag of "white powder" into the boiler room. Fortunately, provocateurs in police uniforms worked so carelessly that they made a mistake with the schedule and did not arrive on the day Solonin was on duty. The Soviet state system, indeed, was falling apart before our eyes ...

In May 1988, Solonin organized the first socio-political club "Perspective" in Samara. This summer Samara was rocked by two grand rallies - the most numerous in the provincial cities of Russia in all the years of Gorbachev's "perestroika". The handwritten notebook begins to turn into a series of articles about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the regional youth newspaper Volzhsky Komsomolets. A discussion club is being created at the Faculty of History of Samara State University, at the meetings of which topics that were previously impossible are discussed.

1991, 1992, 1993. Streams of documents and facts begin to break out of the hiding places of the Soviet military archives. Precisely "brooks" - Yeltsin did not dare to go for the full and honest opening of all the archives of the communist regime. The flow of completely new information, stunning in scale and significance, required time to comprehend. In the late 90s, the contours of the hypothesis began to take shape - the one that formed the basis of all subsequent books by Solonin.

Now it is difficult to say what exactly was the impetus that made it possible to look at the tragedy of 1941 from a completely new perspective. Probably a solid statistical study "Secrecy removed", prepared by the military-historical department of the General Staff of the Russian army. There, for the first time, detailed information was given on the structure of the losses of the Red Army by years, months, fronts and operations. The compilers of the collection, pupils of the traditional Soviet military-historical school, did not have the slightest desire to "defame the Soviet state system." But the reader, who carefully, with a calculator in his hands, sorted out this huge pile of numbers, could not help but notice one very strange thing: in the summer of 41, the number of prisoners and deserters was several times higher than the number of those killed and wounded. In the zone of the South-Western Front, there were 10 times more "missing" than those killed in battle, on the Central Front - 11 times. Can the proportions of the losses of the belligerent army be like this? The impartial figures of the statistical collection reported that the Red Army lost 6,290,000 small arms in the second half of 1941. What happened to Mosin's most reliable Russian "three-rulers"? Are they broken? In the amount of 6 million units? Or were millions of rifles, tens of thousands of tanks and guns abandoned by panicked crowds of former Red Army soldiers?

Thus the hypothesis was born. It was followed by many years of work to find real documentary information about the course of hostilities in the summer of 1941. Ultimately, the hypothesis turned into a firm conclusion, confirmed by documents and facts: the main cause of the military catastrophe of 1941 lies outside the sphere of problems of operational art or weapons technology. Everything was much simpler and more terrible: after the very first shots, the Red Army turned into an uncontrollable crowd of armed people, rapidly turning into endless columns of unarmed prisoners of war. Such a conclusion not only contradicted all the previous theses of Soviet historiography. He ruthlessly destroyed the heroic legend of "unprecedented patriotic upsurge", "unparalleled mass heroism", "monolithic unity of Soviet society". Two generations were brought up on this legend; the heroic myth of the Great Patriotic War was (and still is) based on Stalin's apology - yes, a cruel tyrant, yes, he killed many innocent people, but "without Stalin we would not have won the war ..."

After the publication and multiple reprints of Solonin’s books, the well-known Russian journalist L. Radzikhovsky wrote: “How is June 22 imagined in the cinema? Our fighter with a rifle and a Molotov cocktail throws himself under the tracks of a German tank and the steel monster blazes. The Germans have a mechanical force technology, we have the power of an immortal spirit. The most terrible conclusion of this Solonin (damn him, with his conclusions!): Everything was completely different. More precisely, almost the other way around ... "

After the hypothesis has acquired the features of a fully formed scientific theory, it remains only to write it down on paper. After a long search and debate, the title of the future book was born: "Barrel and hoops". The barrel is held by the tension of steel hoops tightly tightening the wooden planks. But one has only to knock down the hoops - the barrel irreversibly falls apart and all the contents, to the last drop, pour out to the ground. The Stalinist empire and its huge army, bound by "hoops" of fear and lies, were just such a "barrel" - indestructible at first glance, and at the same time doomed to complete collapse after a strong blow from outside.

The book was written in four years of hard work. In April 2003, the last point was made. It was out of the question to turn with such a text to the "masters" of official Russian historical science. The book could be published only outside the framework of any state participation, funding, support. Correspondence with publishers began. One, second, third, tenth, twentieth… 32 Russian publishing houses refused. But there is another country where books are read and published in Russian - Ukraine. Negotiations with one Ukrainian publishing house, with another, third ... 14 publishing houses of Ukraine refused. Fifteenth in a row was a small publishing house "Vozrozhdenie" from the city of Drohobych (western Ukraine). The director and editor-in-chief of the publishing house (as it turned out later, Solonin's colleague in the aerospace industry) I.M. Babik said: "Yes. We will do it." The publishing house took a big risk by undertaking to release a book by an unknown author at its own expense, but the book was published on excellent paper, with color illustrations, and a considerable, by the modern scale of the Ukrainian book market, with a circulation of 6,000 copies.

It was a breakthrough. With the finished "Barrel" one could try once again to turn to Russian publishers. In the summer of 2004, director of the Yauza publishing house (a subsidiary of Russia's largest publishing giant EKSMO) P.M. Bystrov read (according to him, in one night) Solonin's 500-page book and decided to start publishing it. A noteworthy fact: P. Bystrov, like I. Babik, graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University - the main forge of Soviet rocket science personnel. Thus, a book that reveals the truth about the war became available to the general reader thanks to the work and determination of three aeronautical engineers ...

To date, "Yauza" has republished the book (albeit under the name "June 22" changed at the request of the marketing department) more than 10 times. The total circulation exceeded 70 thousand copies. Despite the absolute, deathly silence of the "big press" and the official military-historical science, the book was talked about in the few surviving opposition media, it became a constant object of furious discussions on Internet forums. Shocked by what he read, Viktor Suvorov said in one of his interviews: “Let me use this opportunity to express my gratitude to Mark Solonin, take off my hat and bow to the ground in front of this man ... When I read Mark Solonin’s book, I understood Salieri’s feelings, but tears flowed to me ... It seems to me that Solonin accomplished a scientific feat, and what he writes is a golden brick in the foundation of the history of the war that will someday be written ... "

The undoubted success of the first book allowed Solonin to continue his research work. In 2006-2007 the following two books were published, actually developing and detailing the basic concept: "On peacefully sleeping airfields" and "June 23: M-day". The theme of the beginning of the 2nd Soviet-Finnish War (1941-1944) outlined in "Barrel" has turned - using archival documents first introduced into scientific circulation - into a full-fledged monographic study, which is entitled "June 25: Stupidity or aggression" was published in January 2008. Finally, in July 2008, "Brain Name" went to a meeting with the reader - a simple and accessible book written, with a certain amount of "black humor" exposing both the old communist and the latest falsifications of the tragic history Great War. In 2008-2009, new versions of the first two books (under the titles "June 22. Anatomy of a disaster" and "The defeat of 1941. At peacefully sleeping airfields") were published, significantly revised and supplemented with new factual material.

Now the total circulation of Solonin's books in Russia is approaching the mark of 200 thousand copies, they are constantly on the lists of leaders in sales of the capital's bookstores. The first foreign publication was "June 22", published by the Polish publishing house "REBIS" (Poznan) in 2007. Subsequently, "REBIS" published "June 23" and "On peacefully sleeping airfields"; is preparing for the release of "June 25". In the autumn of 2009 "June 22. Anatomy of a disaster" was published in Estonia and Slovakia. The Lithuanian "Barrel" is being prepared for publication. An agreement was signed with the Czech publishing house "Nashe troika" for the publication of three books, the first of which ("June 23") should go to bookstores in December 2009. The publication of the article "USSR-Finland. From a peace treaty to war" can be considered a serious success. in German (in the collection "Invasion of Europe. Was the USSR preparing an offensive war?", Pour le Merite, 2009)

Today we will talk about who Mark Solonin is. The author's books, as well as his biography, will be discussed below. He was born in 1958, May 29, in Kuibyshev. We are talking about a Russian writer, publicist, author of articles and books that belong to the genre of historical revisionism. His works are devoted to the Great Patriotic War, in particular, its initial period. By education, the writer is an aviation design engineer. Currently, Solonin's work is not often cited in scientific publications. Opinions of academic historians regarding his work range from positive to strongly negative. The latter sometimes include outright accusations of falsification and lying.

Biography

Mark Solonin finished school in 1975. He received a gold medal. He entered the local aviation institute named after S.P. Korolev. After graduation, he worked in the OKB. In 1987, he began to work as a stoker in a boiler room. He was the organizer of social and political clubs in Kuibyshev during Perestroika. Since the mid-1980s, he began to work in the direction of the theme of the Great Patriotic War. The author's books have been published in Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. In 2010, he signed the appeal of the opposition of the Russian Federation "Putin must go." In 2011, he took part as a co-author of the script and a character in the documentary television film "June 22" by A. Pivovarov. The writer repeatedly participated in the broadcast of the program "The Price of Victory". At the radio station "Freedom" he published 5 long interviews. Constantly published on the pages of the weekly "Military-Industrial Courier". In 2009, he was denied access to the archives of the Foreign Ministry. From 2009 to 2010 he was invited to scientific and historical conferences in Vilnius and Tallinn. He delivered special lectures at the universities of these cities, as well as in Washington, Boston, Bratislava and Kaunas. However, nothing is known about the reviews devoted to the writer's works on the pages of scientific journals in the USA and Europe.

historical works

Mark Solonin claims that the quality of Soviet aviation corresponded to the quality of the Luftwaffe and outnumbered the enemy forces many times over. Tanks of the USSR, according to him, had multiple qualitative and quantitative superiority. The writer claims that the Red Army was not inferior to the enemy in terms of equipment with tractors and artillery.

Version of the development of events in 1941

Mark Solonin reconsidered the reasons for the failures of the Red Army at the first stage of the war. The writer expresses the opinion that the whole point is in the full-scale collapse of the armed forces, which was expressed in the mass surrender of soldiers into captivity and desertion. The author speaks about the sharp negative attitude of the main part of the country's population towards the new Soviet government, because it deceived the people and did not fulfill the slogans. Collective farmers were turned into a new kind of serfs. Holodomor and dispossession were arranged. According to the author, the mass repressions in 1937-1938 turned most of the command personnel into lifelong and mortally frightened people. They were afraid to show any initiative, becoming gears in the chain between Stalin and the troops.

The writer considers the inconsistent foreign policy of the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941 to be the next reason for the reluctance to fight. After all, Hitler was both the closest ally and a "warmonger". At the same time, the author argues that everything should not be reduced to elementary formulations. The writer cites a number of formations in the Red Army that inflicted significant damage on the enemy in the first few days of the war. The author calls the main reasons for the turning point Hitler's policy, which was expressed in the rejection of the idea of an anti-Bolshevik Russian army. In addition, the terrible attitude towards the prisoners played a role.

Books

Mark Solonin in 2004 wrote the work "Barrel and Hoops". In 2006, the book "On peacefully sleeping airfields" was published. In 2007, the work "June 22" appears. A sequel was published in 2007. In 2008, the next part of "June 25" is published. In the same year, the work "Brain Name" appeared. In 2009, the book "The Defeat of 1941" was published. The work "USSR - Finland" appears next. A collection of articles entitled "No Good in War" was published in 2010. In 2011, the work “Three Plans of Comrade Stalin” appears. The next book to be published is A New Chronology of the Catastrophe. After it, a sequel is published. In 2012, the work "Datura Grass" was published. In 2013, the book “June 41st. Final Diagnosis.

Plots

In the book "June 22" the author expresses his views on the beginning of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. The writer refutes the established idea about the reasons for the failures of the Red Army. Expresses his interpretation of military events. The writer pays primary attention to the "human factor". Now we will discuss in more detail another book, which was also written by Mark Solonin. "The Final Diagnosis" is a work that tells about the author's view of the scale of the catastrophe that occurred in 1941. The writer expresses his opinion on the ratio of losses between the Soviet German soldiers.

Author of books and articles on the history of the Great Patriotic War, in the first place - its initial period. Solonin's writings on this topic are attributed by a number of critics to the genre of historical revisionism:40.

The opinions of Russian-speaking academic historians about his work vary from positive to negative, up to accusations of falsification.

Solonin, Mark Semyonovich:

Biography

Mark Semyonovich Solonin was born on May 29, 1958 in Kuibyshev. My father worked as a technologist at a bearing factory, my mother taught German at the institute. In 1975 he graduated from school with a gold medal and entered, after which he worked in a closed design bureau.

He began working on the theme of the Great Patriotic War in the mid-1980s. Solonin's books have been published in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria.

In March 2010, he signed the appeal of the Russian opposition "Putin must go".

In 2011, he took part as a co-author of the script and a character in the work on the documentary television film by Alexei Pivovarov “June 22. Fatal Decisions.

Solonin was repeatedly invited to air the program "The Price of Victory" on the radio station "Echo of Moscow" (9 broadcasts went on the air), Radio Liberty (five long interviews went out), he is constantly published in the weekly "Military Industrial Courier" (since 2010 this edition provided Solonin with more than 20 pages).

In 2009-2010 he was invited to participate in scientific and historical conferences in Tallinn and Vilnius, gave lectures at the universities of Tallinn, Vilnius, Kaunas , Bratislava , Boston(Harvard) and Washington

May 18, 2018 was admitted to the Russian Free Historical Society.

Studies on the history of the Great Patriotic War

Comparison of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht

Solonin cites documents indicating, in his opinion, that there was no multiple numerical superiority of the enemy. Wehrmacht only slightly outnumbered the Red Army due to full mobilization and higher troop density. But this superiority did not last long either: by July 1, 5.3 million people were mobilized in the USSR, which meant a more than twofold increase in the size of the army compared to the beginning of the war. Soviet aviation, in his opinion, in terms of the quality of the material part, approximately corresponded to Luftwaffe, many times outnumbering the German aviation. Soviet tanks had multiple quantitative and qualitative superiority. In terms of equipment with artillery and tractors, the Red Army was also not inferior to the Wehrmacht. The level of equipment of the army with communications was, according to Solonin, quite acceptable. From this, he concludes that the cause of the defeats of 1941 has nothing to do with the difference in equipment and weapons [ ] .

Version of the development of events in 1941

Solonin subjected to a radical revision of the reasons for the defeat Red Army at the beginning of the war. In his opinion, the main reason for the defeats of 1941 was the full-scale collapse of the army, expressed in mass desertion and surrender, quote: "Mass desertion and mass surrender were both the cause and effect, and the main content of the process of turning the Red Army into an uncontrollable crowd" [ ] .

One of the reasons for this, Solonin calls the sharply negative attitude of the majority of the population towards the Soviet government, which deceived the people by not fulfilling its slogans like “land to the peasants, factories to the workers”, in fact turned the collective farmers into new serfs, organized dispossession and famine. The mass repressions of 1937-1938 in the army, in his opinion, "turned a significant part of the Red Army command cadres into mortally and life-threatening people" who were afraid to take any initiative and were only gears between the troops and Stalin. Another reason for the unwillingness of the army to fight, he calls the inconsistent Soviet foreign policy of 1939-1941, when at first Hitler was a "warmonger", and then became the closest ally [ ] .

Nevertheless, he repeatedly says that one should not reduce everything to simple formulations like “the army refused to fight for Stalin"And that the reasons for the low level of motivation and qualifications of the fighters and commanders of the Red Army are very diverse and have deep roots in Russian history, quote:" Let's not simplify. The life of a multi-million human society is infinitely more complicated than any scheme" [ ] .

He names a number of formations of the Red Army that inflicted serious damage on the enemy already in the first days of the war, such as the 99th Infantry Division of General Vlasov, which knocked the Germans out of the border Przemysl three times, or the 14th Army of General Frolov, which stopped the enemy in the border zone and did not give the Germans to capture Murmansk.

He calls the main reasons for the turning point "Hitler's stupid policy", expressed in his rejection of the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a Russian anti-Bolshevik army, the dispersal of national governments, the extremely cruel "new order" and the monstrous attitude towards prisoners. All this, in his opinion, led the population to the idea that it was impossible to live under such a new government. And the soldiers and officers realized that captivity was not their salvation from death. Then, according to Solonin, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began [ ] .

A look at the events of June 22, 1941

On April 16, 2011, on the air of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Mark Solonin apologized to his readers for the number of sorties of Soviet aviation in the first three months of the war indicated in his book “On peacefully sleeping airfields ...” - 250 thousand. He took this number from the collection "1941 - Lessons and Conclusions", written by a team of authors under the guidance of Doctor of Military Sciences, Major General V.P. Nelasov, and it turned out to be erroneous. After reviewing archival documents, Solonin indicated that approximately the same number of sorties refers to the period from June 22, 1941 to June 22, 1942.

Since November 2011, Solonin's personal website has been publishing translations of the original documents of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe, stored in the Federal Military Archive of Germany, in which the events of the first weeks of the war are recorded [ ] .

Work evaluation

Positive

S. Gedroits (Samuil Lurie), a columnist for the literary magazine Zvezda, spoke highly of Solonin's "attempt to debunk the "special military lies" that had accumulated over half a century." In his opinion, “corned beef is especially hated. Because he writes brightly, with the intonations of a living person, and at the same time, irrefutable to the point of tediousness.

“The work of a real historian” called Solonin’s books an employee, a specialist in the Middle Ages Igor Dubrovsky (Pushkin magazine, No. 1, 2008). However, researcher Sergei Ermolaev called Dubrovsky's positive review "absurd", giving a detailed analysis of Solonin's conclusions.

negative

Solonin was criticized by the candidate of historical sciences Aleksey Isaev. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of National History of the Modern Times, Institute of History and Archives RSUH A. A. Kilichenkov scornfully assessed Solonin's book as "another commercial project, a product of the" commercialization of history "" . Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Baryshnikov notes that Solonin's writings demonstrate ignorance, stupidity, superficial judgments and incompetence of the author.

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor D. V. Gavrilov stated that Solonin's writings "are aimed at justifying fascist aggression against the USSR, discrediting, and even refuting the victory of the Soviet Union." Marshal Dmitry Yazov assesses Solonin's constructions extremely negatively, in his opinion, Solonin is driven by the desire to "denigrate the victory" and "belittle the feat of the people".

Senior researcher at the Center for Humanitarian Research, Candidate of Historical Sciences D. A. Maltsev ranked M. Solonin among the "detractors" of the history of the Great Patriotic War and called some of M. Solonin's statements "spreading gossip".

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Economic History and Information Technologies of Moscow State University named after N. P. Ogarev V. A. Grigorkin considers Solonin, along with Viktor Suvorov, Boris Sokolov and Vladimir Beshanov, to be among the “main leaders” of the revisionists, “tuned to a complete revision not only the results of the Great Patriotic War, but also its very course, an assessment of many operations (if not all) and the role of the Soviet command. In his opinion, this group of authors has a common view that: the Great Patriotic War was a "battle of two aggressors"; Stalin brought Hitler to power and bears full responsibility for the latter's attack on the USSR, since "he was going to attack, and the Germans almost defended themselves"; in the course of hostilities against Nazi Germany, the USSR bombed residential areas of Soviet cities, and not military facilities; should be "halved between Hitler and Stalin" all civilians who died during the war, including those who were deliberately killed by the Germans; while in Germany, Soviet servicemen engaged in brutal murders of civilians; the victory of the USSR went in spite of Stalin and the efforts of the people around him, but only with the help of lend-lease. In addition, pointing out that “this part of the authors is the most dangerous in ideological terms,” Grigorkin, using the example of the book Brain-Having, notes that, deliberately trying to choose the “simplest” of all reasons, “M. Solonin in his books stubbornly defended the thesis of the mass desertion of Soviet troops in the summer of 1941, who did not want to fight for the bloody tyrant Stalin.

Books

2004 - Barrel and hoops, or when did the Great Patriotic War begin?- Drogobych: Vydavnicha firm "Renaissance", 2004. - 448 p., ill. ISBN 966-538-147-4

2006 - "At peacefully sleeping airfields..."- M.: Yauza, Eksmo , 2006. ISBN 5-699-15695-X

2007 - June 22, or when did the Great Patriotic War begin?- M. : Yauza, Eksmo, 2007. ISBN 5-699-15196-6

2007 - June 23: ""Day M"- M.: Yauza, Eksmo. 2007 ISBN 978-5-699-22304-6

2008 - June 25th. Stupidity or aggression?- M. : Yauza, Eksmo, 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-25300-5

2008 - Brainstorming. Fake History of the Great War- M. : Yauza, Eksmo, 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-28327-9

2008 - 22nd of June. Anatomy of a disaster . 2nd ed., revised. and correct.- M.: Yauza, Eksmo. 2008. ISBN 978-5-699-30295-6

2009 - Defeat 1941. On peacefully sleeping airfields, ed. 2, revised. and add. (M): Yauza-EKSMO, 2009. ISBN 978-5-699-37348-2

2009 - USSR-Finland: from peace treaty to war. In the collection „Überfall auf Europa. Plante die Sowjetunion 1941 einen Angriffskrieg?“, Pour le Merite, 2009, ISBN 978-3-932381-53-9

2010 - There is no good in war". Collection of articles - M.: Yauza-Press, 2010. ISBN 978-5-9955-0169-5

2011 - " Three plans of Comrade Stalin". In the collection "Die Rote Walze", Pour le Merite, 2011, ISBN 978-3-932381-60-7

2011 - New chronology of the disaster- M.: Yauza, Eksmo, 2011. ISBN 978-5-699-45022-0

2011 - Another chronology of the disaster- M .: Yauza, Eksmo, 2011. 384 p., Ill., Series "The Great Patriotic War: Unknown War", 4,000 copies, ISBN 978-5-699-51036-8

2012 - " Datura grass". In the collection Anti-Medinsky: Pseudo-history of World War II: New Myths of the Kremlin. - M.: Yauza-press, 2012.

2013 - June 41st. Final Diagnosis. - M.: Yauza, Eksmo, 2013. 574 p. ISBN 978-5-699-67335-3

see also

Notes for "Solonin, Mark Semyonovich"

Izonov V.V. On some questions of the history of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. // Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University. Ser. 2. 2016. Issue. 2, p. 37-52

Dmitry Verkhoturov. Why was Viktor Suvorov so popular? . How falsifiers of history contributed to their own exposure // Century. Information and analytical publication of the Historical Perspective Foundation, 10/23/2015

Maltsev D. A. Revision of Russian history in the works of Russian publicists (on the example of A. M. Burovsky's books) // Problems of National Strategy No. 6 (21) 2013, p. 223-229

A. Yu. Platov. Ladoga navigation in 1941. Fantasies and reality // Proceedings of the annual International Scientific and Industrial Forum "Great Rivers", Publishing House of the Volga State University of Water Transport, 2014, p. 194-196

Larionov A. E. The image of the Great Patriotic War in the minds of modern students // Electronic journal "Vestnik MGOU". - 2014. - No. 1

Dubrovsky I. The work of a true historian. Review of books: M. S. Solonin. June 22, or When the Great Patriotic War began; M. S. Solonin. On peacefully sleeping airfields...: June 22, 1941; M. S. Solonin. June 23: "M Day" 55 // Pushkin. - 2008. - No. 1. - pp. 55-58. Archived from the original on October 20, 2012.

Vasilenko V. O. History of World War II: between the Scylla of revisionism and the Charybdis of stereotypes, in captivity of relevance // Journal of Humanities. - 2011. - No. 3-4. - pp. 111-131.

Gavrilov D.V. Anatomy of "brainwashing" // Military History Journal. - 2010. - No. 7.

Kilichenkov A. A. Solonin M.S. June 22, or When the Great Patriotic War began. // New historical bulletin. - 2007. - No. 1 (15).

Joseph Telman. "Discoveries" Mark Solonin (indefinite) . Retrieved 14 May 2013.

Isaev A.V. "Antisolonin-1" - on fearfully abandoned airfields (indefinite) . Current history. Retrieved May 14, 2013. Archived from the original on May 15, 2013.

Great Patriotic War: figures and facts against myths (indefinite) .