Dear Comrade Stalin. My nerves fail me. I can not act like a Bolshevik; I especially feel the pain of my words in our personal conversation. I offere… - Lev Mekhlis

Our war with the capitalist world will be a just and progressive war. The Red Army will act decisively, seeking complete defeat and destruction of the enemy, transferring combat operations to the territory of the enemy.

Military history, especially Russian, is being studied poorly. We have a lot of unfair ridiculing of the old army despite the fact that we had such notable tsarist army generals as Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bagration who will always remain in the minds of the people as great Russian military leaders and who are revered in the Red Army as a legacy of the finest military traditions of the Russian soldier. There exists a harmful cult of Civil War heroes, while previous Russian military achievements are ignored. All of this leads to the ignoring of concrete historical experience despite the fact that history is the best teacher.

If a second imperialist war turns its cutting edge against the world's first socialist state, then it will be necessary for the Soviet Union to extend hostilities to the adversary's territory, fulfill its international responsibilities and increase the number of Soviet republics.