Igor Bunich

Who is Igor Bunich?

Igor Bunich was a Russian historian known for offering a number of revisionist interpretations of Russian history. He is most famous for claiming that Joseph Stalin was actively preparing to invade western Europe in 1941 before any suggestion of the German eastward assault in Operation Barbarossa.

Bunich published three volumes with the title "Operatsia Groza" — "Operation Thunderstorm" — the first one in 1994, the last one posthumously in 2004.In these books he communicates a plan of Stalin for an invasion of whole western Europe: "Operation Thunderstorm". It can be found in the so-called "Osobaya Papka", a file which contains about 100,000 Top Secret documents. In this file it is document Nr.103202/06. The paper is signed by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and the chief of the General Staff at that time Merezkov. It is dated 18 September 1940, three months before the German "Operation Barbarossa" was signed. After Georgy Zhukov became chief of the general staff in February 1941, the plan was called MP 41. Bunic points to the Russian military archives, where it can be found. This document contains information about the Soviet military power in June 1941: 300 divisions, 8 million soldiers, 27,500 tanks, 32,628 airplanes. The total number of the German warplanes at that time was only about 6,000 although the majority of the Soviet aircraft was obsolete.