Before Icebreaker : Iosif Bromberg’s Unpublished Study of Soviet War Planning (1972–1976)

We introduce an unpublished manuscript written in the Soviet Union between 1972 and 1976 by Iosif Lazarevich Bromberg (1903–1978), a non-professional historian writing under the pseudonym D. Antonov. Based on open Soviet sources, it develops an interpretation of Stalin’s strategic intentions in the early phase of the Second World War. Its central arguments anticipate key elements of the later revisionist debate, including the primacy of offensive planning and the strategic logic of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while differing from the more categorical formulation advanced by Viktor Suvorov in Icebreaker (1989). Bromberg’s analysis combines revisionist conclusions with analytical caution more characteristic of subsequent archival scholarship and sheds light on both the origins and reception of the revisionist thesis.