A secret speech was allegedly given by Joseph Stalin, on 19 August 1939, to members of the Politburo, wherein he justified the Soviet strategy to promote military conflict in Europe, which would be beneficial for the future territorial expansion of the Communist system.
The first version of this speech was published partially on 28 November 1939, in the Paris newspaper Le Temps by the news agency Havas despatch from Geneva.
[2] Sergey Sluch questions its authenticity remarking that the document was in French and stored in the "Trophies Funds" of the Archive, and that the text mostly matches the one from Havas, but Bushueva skipped some dubious passages.
According to Viktor Suvorov's book Icebreaker, Soviet historians laid special emphasis on claiming that no Politburo meeting took place on 19 August 1939, but the Russian military historian Dmitri Volkogonov has found the evidence that a meeting really took place on that day.
However the only military issue in the agenda of the meeting, according to Volkogonov, was the deferment from conscription of the construction workers of the Akmolinsk–Kartaly railway.