Two men shared primary responsibility for the catastrophe which struck Russia—losif Stalin and his Leningrad lieutenant, the man whom most believed he had chosen as his successor, Andrei Zhdanov. It was Stalin who had held his country on the path of collaboration with Nazi Germany, who had refused to believe on the war’s eve that Hitler would betray him and who was confident down to the last hours that, if Germany was bent on attack, some way out could be found, even if a huge price had to be paid. It was Zhdanov who had been the architect of Stalin’s policy vis-à-vis Germany, the man who had conceived the idea of opening a diplomatic initiative with Germany, the man who had said again and again, after the outbreak of war in 1939, that Germany “cannot and will not fight on two fronts.” Now the Nazi attack sent Stalin into a state of psychic collapse which verged on a nervous breakdown. He was confined to his room, unable or unwilling to participate in affairs of state. And Zhdanov was neither in Leningrad nor in Moscow; he was on vacation in the Crimea.
