Valeri Danilov

Who is Valeri Danilov?

Valeri Danilov is a Russian military historian and a retired officer. Danilov has Candidate of History Sciences degree and is a professor at the Academy of Military Science.

In 1993, Yuri Gorkov and Valeri Danilov published a previously classified document, called Considerations to the plan of the strategic development of the armed forces of the Soviet Union, which proposed a strike on Germany. Allegedly, it was composed by Georgy Zhukov and Semyon Timoshenko and presented to Joseph Stalin. The publishing of this plan initiated a longer discussion among the Russian historian over Stalin's actual strategy in 1941.

Contrary to many historians both within Russia and the West, Valeri Danilov has argued that - taking into account the concentration of power to Stalin's hand - it is highly implausible, that the Soviet defense commissar and the chief of staff could have prepared such a document without Stalin's authorization. Considering the 1937 purges of the higher officers, it is hardly possible that staff officers would have risked antagonised official Soviet policy. Danilov suggests - and he is supported by Mikhail Meltyukhov, Vladimir Nevezhin and others - that this draft by Zhukov was actually basis for Soviet military planning in 1941.