If anyone had questions about the recent spike of historical interest in Josef Stalin, the answer was surely provided by the goose-stepping hoopla in Red Square on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. The Cold War may indeed be over, but the war of ideas is, as always, at full throttle. For this reason, history’s assessment of “Uncle Joe” is absolutely central to the debate that is shaping the historical record and political future of Russia, its relationship with its neighbors, and the rest of the world.

This might come as something of a surprise to most Americans, who are used to hearing Stalin classified with Hitler as a murderous, and possibly mad, despot. But to many Russians – nostalgic for their lost empire and the consoling safety net of “real” socialism – Stalin is at worst an ambiguous figure. On a good day, he is the victorious, if flawed, leader of the Great Patriotic War.

Stalin’s link to the defeat of Nazism and the preservation of the nation has given his reputation a kind of half-life. And it has prevented his successors, from Khrushchev to Putin, from making a totally clean break with the nightmarish past that haunts Russia. Hitler committed suicide in a bunker, having brought defeat and destruction to the German people. Stalin died in his bed, the absolute ruler of the world’s last great imperium. This was both a distinction and a fateful difference.

All this makes David Murphy’s examination of Stalin’s military leadership timely and important. Much of the material in “What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa” (Yale University Press, 340 pages, $30) is familiar, especially Stalin’s stubborn refusal to prepare for Hitler’s inevitable attack, but Mr. Murphy has drawn on extensive Soviet archival material to document the dictator’s stunning failures in judgment in the period before the Nazi invasion.

The material dealing with the infamous Non-Aggression Pact signed by Hitler and Stalin in 1939 may be the most interesting. This treaty stunned the world, including many American Communists and Fellow Travelers who subsequently renounced their faith in the “socialist future.” Historians have portrayed the deal as advantageous to the Soviets: They gained both time and huge stretches of territory previously lost as result of World War I.

As Mr. Murphy points out, however, moving the Soviet borders westward did not improve the Soviet defensive posture; it merely absorbed hostile Baltic and Slavic populations who would aid the Nazis when they later invaded. Moreover, against the recommendations of his generals, Stalin insisted on fortifying the new borders at the expense of the existing fortifications on the older borders. This catastrophic mistake left the Soviet heartland unprotected and contributed to the deaths of 20 million of Stalin’s fellow citizens.

Much of Mr. Murphy’s book is devoted to archival reporting on the military intelligence transmitted to Moscow from Soviet embassies throughout Central and Western Europe. The cumulative weight of this reporting, compiled by Soviet agents and foreigners contracted to spy for Moscow, was staggering. From the fall of France in 1940 until June 22, 1941, when Hitler finally invaded, Stalin had been repeatedly assured that the Soviet Union was next. Yet he continued to insist Hitler would not invade the Soviet Union before he conquered England.

When pressed for his reasons, Stalin claimed “other sources” of information. Mr. Murphy speculates that these “other sources” may have been private assurances from Hitler, who clearly wanted Moscow to feel secure. What is certain, in any case, is that Stalin ignored hundreds of warnings and punished many of the messengers. This eventually had a chilling effect on the reporting; among the most astounding aspects of this period is that some key Soviet agents risked death by continuing to report the truth.

One famous Soviet agent, Dr. Richard Sorge, was stationed in Tokyo. After the war, Stalin referred to him as being worth “a corps or even a whole army.” But when he was reporting Hitler’s impending invasion, Stalin referred to him as “a little s– who has set himself up with some small factories and brothels in Japan.” Dr. Sorge’s most famous coup was determining that the Japanese would not attack the Soviet Far East until it was clear Hitler had conquered the Soviet heartland. This information permitted the transfer of several Soviet divisions from the Far East to the Western Front and contributed mightily to the Soviet victory.

When Dr. Sorge was subsequently arrested and sentenced to death, however, Stalin refused a Japanese offer to repatriate him in a prisoner exchange. “Richard Sorge?” Stalin reportedly said. “I don’t know a person by that name.” By that point Stalin was chiefly concerned about witnesses to his many judgment failures. As Mr. Murphy notes, “Much of his concern, as the Red Army suffered its tragic losses on the battlefields, would be to ensure that others, then in prison, who knew or suspected the truth of his culpability would never live to testify against him.”

Mr. Murphy is not a particularly effective storyteller. His characters seldom come alive, and he only episodically places his intelligence theme in the context of Stalin’s Great Terror and catastrophic economic policies. But by placing the blame for the tragic World War II losses on Josef Stalin, the author has made a solid contribution to Soviet scholarship. Only more such books will produce the necessary exorcism of this particular evil spirit.

Mr. Willcox last wrote in these pages on Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic.’