| Summary/Abstract |
The article is devoted to critical analysis of the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army at the beginning of WWII in the pages of university textbooks. It is one of the most complicated and painful problems in Russian historiography. This problem presently gives rise to endless discussions in the historical literature and on the Internet. During the study of this theme, materials from 20 modern textbooks were used by the method of content-analysis. The statistical results are represented in two tables, including 16 reasons for the defeat of the Red Army in summer 1941. At the same time we must emphasize that there are no textbooks that give a full list of reasons. Most of the textbooks continue to repeat the myths of old Soviet historiography about Stalin’s mistakes and his repression against the command staff of the Red Army in 1937–1939 and the sudden attack of the Wehrmacht in June 1941 as the main reasons for the military catastrophe that came down on the USSR in the first months of the Great War. In addition, the textbooks have contradictory data on Soviet and German military forces and weaponry, the numbers of losses, and the economic and human potential on opposite sides. All this casts doubt on the reliability of the data of modern textbooks.
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