Mark Solonin is among the new generation of Russian historians who are not significantly burdened by the experiences of the times when the so-called partisanship of history was the most important aspect of a historian's work. At the same time, during the 1990s, he had the opportunity to study mass declassified files in Russian military archives, focusing on the period of spring and summer 1941. The materials he obtained were transformed into several publications in which he attempts to provide an unskewed view of the actions of the Red Army during June to August 1941, shortly before and especially after the German invasion of the country. Although he is labeled by his opponents (more ideological than scientific) as the "Russian successor of Rezun-Suvorov," he fundamentally differs from this publicist in his approach to examining the entire issue. Thanks to his study of archival materials, he can base his conclusions on indisputable facts. The fact that many of his conclusions are closer to those of Rezun-Suvorov than to the ideologizing presentations of the recently past eras speaks to the professional malaise of Soviet military historiography. Thanks to the work of Mark Solonin and other young historians, the term "The Great Deceitful War" has currently emerged to describe the Soviet-German war.
