Is there any research explicitly contradicting facts in Suvorov's “Icebreaker” book series claiming that Stalin intended to attack Hitler in 1941?

Question

Viktor Suvorov is a somewhat famous ex-GRU spy who defected and wrote a series of books.

The most (in)famous and sensational were a series of books on World War II, starting with "Icebreaker", which alleged - with supporting historical facts and documents - that Stalin was planning to attack Nazi Germany in 1941, with the end goal of rolling over entire Europe.

Having read the book in Russian, the logic seemed fairly sound, and the cited facts sounded legit - at least to a teenager who had a decent knowledge of history for an average person but not more.

However, in stud-of-history context, it seems that Suvorov's books and theories are viewed between "disputed" and "outright scientific fraud". A lot of discussions are summarized on the Wiki: Soviet Offensive Plans Controversy, but the point of view was even expressed right here on History SE in Wladimir Palant's answer to Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting Britain? :

I'm not aware of any serious historians favoring this theory, and Suvorov unfortunately isn't one - he seems to be willingly omit or even falsificate facts in his books by misquoting and quoting out of context.

My question is, are there specific examples of Suvorov omitting proven historical facts that majorly contradict his theories/logic, or especially falsify proven historical facts?

Answer 1

I was referring to Alexei Isaev's book Antisuvorov (Russian). He lists a bunch of falsifications in the preface of his book. First example is Suvorov's quoting of colonel S. Hvalei's book (approximate translation):

It happened that the division was immediately behind the frontier posts at the start of the war, meaning right next to the state border.

Isaev explains (and the online version of the book proves him right) that Hvalei doesn't actually say that. Instead, he says that his division met Germans after they passed the frontier posts and defeated another division. And Hvalei even mentions where it was: Kelmė, Lithuania. If I read the map correctly, this is around 70 km from the state border (the area around Kaliningrad which is Russia now belonged to Germany back then, this should be the direction from where the German forces attacked Kelmė).

The book mentions lots of similar cases. You have to consider that Icebreaker was first published in 1987 and verifying the sources was a lot harder back then. So Suvorov had no problem to adjust citations to better fit his idea.

Isaev's book also goes into more general issues. For example, one of Suvorov's core points was that the Soviet Union didn't have any defense plans - only attack plans. Isaev notes that this statement is useless if one doesn't compare to other countries. As it turns out, neither Poland nor France had defense plans - attacking the enemy regardless of who starts the war was apparently the dominating war theory at the time (and likely still is).

Isaev also explains how merely comparing the number of tanks and their technical parameters is useless. After all, all these tanks didn't help the Soviet Union at the start of the war. He notes how the Soviets didn't have proper tactics of using tanks at the beginning of the war, unlike Germans who already had lots of experience using them.

Isaev discredits a bunch of Suvorov's myths about Soviet tanks, airplanes, lines of defense and many more, his arguments are easy to verify thanks to the internet. But I cannot translate it all - it is probably easier if you ask questions about specific claims Suvorov made.

Answer 2

I'm new to this topic so not a lot to offer. However, from what I've read it's the western historians who seem to dispute this theory of Hitler beating Stalin to the punch with the most verve. Some Russian historians do support Suvorov's hypothesis. In any revisionist look at WWII one must consider the political motivations of even allegedly unbiased historians. It is my view that the West would never let it's version of WWII history be disputed by something as volatile as Suvorov's thesis which some could certainly interpret as Hitler's Germany fighting to preserve Europe from Communism.
It strikes me as unusually heated the way some western historians so easily cast Suvorov's thesis off as nonsense. They seem to hold it to a far higher standard than they do other historical events. For example, many western historians main point of contention with Suvorov's claim is that there is little evidentiary support for it. However, how about the Soviet invasion of Finland in winter '39? There is also very little evidentiary support of the planning for that operation, yet it certainly took place...and not very well apparently given the nasty shock the Finns gave the Soviets.
Anyway, interesting topic but I doubt the passions involved would allow the "established" version of WWII on the eastern front to ever be challenged.