WHEN DAWN CAME, THEY... WEREN’T SLEEPING. “THE SOVIET PREEMPTIVE STRIKE” AND THE GERMAN REPLY OF JUNE 22, 1941 (I)
WHEN DAWN CAME, THEY... WEREN’T SLEEPING. “THE SOVIET PREEMPTIVE STRIKE” AND THE GERMAN REPLY OF JUNE 22, 1941 (I)

Summary/Abstract: Despite the internal turmoil meant to strengthen the social, economicand political regime lay down in October 1917, after the end of the Civil War,the USSR continued to establish itself externally as a great center of power inthe international relations arena, harboring immense geopolitical ambitions.The Moscow regime would gradually normalise international relations, after1922, but without settling the debts of the Czarist state and withoutrelinquishing its lead as a world revolution hub. On the one hand, the USSR willcontinue to maintain “normal” diplomatic and commercial relations with otherpowers and will also control the activity of communist parties in other countriesvia the Comintern, the ultimate goal of such parties being to destabilize theexisting governments with which the USSR maintained “normal” relations. Thepinnacle of this policy of “peaceful coexistence”, inaugurated by the Peace ofBrest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918), was reached on August 23, 1939, through theMolotov-Ribbentrop Pact. National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Unionengaged until June 22, 1941 in a race against time in order to consolidate theirpolitical, economic and military positions in areas of peak strategic andgeopolitical interest. Has June 22, 1941 sparked the early confrontation betweenthe two geopolitical options that marked European and world evolutionthroughout the twentieth century? The answer to this question continues tobreed numerous and fierce historiographical controversies

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