I searched this sub for answers, but the ones I found on the topic were relatively short or focusing on the inexperienced command structure after the purge.
I had an argument with another redditor on the question if Stalin was actually preparing an attack on Germany (he proclaimed, Stalin was planning one). He argued, that the soviet army wasn't good at defending because they were actually preparing for an attack, told me to look at some maps, the USSR was already manufacturing a lot of war material and after I told him, the red army wasn't ready to attack anything because they were lacking trained and experienced officers, he just declared the red army would have been ready if Stalin declared it so. (If anyone is interested in the discourse, it was one of my recent posts.)
I am not looking to get "payback" or anything, but as this isn't my focus in history and he actually got me thinking. How valid is it, that Stalin planned an attack? Maybe not around the years of '39 to '41, but maybe after?
Sorry if you feel, this has been answered before, but consulting the FAQ and searching didn't really answer my question, as the main argument by most (the purge) would be negated if you just looked at Stalin as more or less not caring about his officers being really prepared.
We studied this in detail in one of my courses. I'll keep it as simple as I can.
The USSR under Stalin found itself very isolated from the rest of the world, in particular from the rest of the Great Powers. Stalin's mindset (for what I personally believe was not paranoid but actually quite realistic), that the other Great Powers would effectively attack the USSR, or allow one of them to attack the USSR, and it was only a matter of time. The end of the Great War, meant that few countries were willing to go through this again in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution (on top of that, it was uncertain whether or not it would last). That was then followed by the Great Depression in the West, which bought him more time. Come the late 30s though, he felt his options running out.
So Staliln effectively decided to do whatever he could do split the Great Powers amongst themselves, how to do this? A Non-Aggression Pact with the Germans. He started negotiations in April of 1939, and finalized it (shocking the world) in August, with what is known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, splitting Poland.
The idea he had was that the Soviet Union was not ready for war, he needed to bide his time, let the other Great Powers fight it out, while he built the industrial capacity (specifically military industrial capacity) farther from the USSR - GER border (in the Urals). So he made a pact with the nation that was next most likely (after the USSR) to go to war with the other Great Powers.
He did not have plans for invasion, but there was a steady build up of his military forces as he knew this was only temporary, and that sooner or later the German hammer would come crashing down (which it obviously did '41).
Side note: Why I feel Stalin was not paranoid (at that point of time that is lol). Had the Soviet Union carried out annexations like the Third Reich did, there would have been no appeasement whatsoever, not with the contemporary political climate. But then again, that's a what if. The Winter War, mind you, was after the West was already dealing with the Germans.
I thought I had seen this question come up a few times before, but the only substantial thread I could find via the search was: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25qe60/was_the_ussr_preparing_to_attack_germany_or_was/
The forward deployment of divisions in 1941 isn't really enough to show the Soviets had a plan to attack Germany. The big problem with it is there is an absence of specific evidence for an offensive plan - Survorov, Meltyukhov etc. all rely heavily on interpretation of indirect items like broad ideological comments by Soviet leaders and so forth. Stalin might not have really cared if his officers were adequetely prepared or not, he still would have needed a plan (there was a plan to attack Finland, it was just not particularly good...). Preparing to move something as big as the Red Army couldn't have been done in secret - there would have been train timetables to sort out, materials to stockpile and so on. Also consider that the Soviet leadership had directed a significant reorganisation of Red Army formations prior to the German invasion - ordering a messy reorganisation, then ordering an offensive before it is complete doesn't make sense. Even if there were some secret plan that has been concealed after all these years, the outward preparations can't have been so apparently absent as they were prior to Barbarossa.
One innovation Meltyukhov's work introduced to the 'soviet offensive plans' debate was to suggest that Nazi Germany appears to have put together their own offensive plan without serious regard to a Soviet attack. This is relevant because the Soviet offensive plan is typically raised to portray the Nazi invasion as rational or even justified. Something I would suggest, and it surprises me this concept doesn't get much attention, is that the Soviets may have been planning military action without having a plan to invade Europe. In fact, the Soviets might have only been making preparations in response to the situation in Europe, so reactive rather than taking the initiative. Soviet military doctrine placed less emphasis on defence, but it did acknowledge the role of pre-emptive action to defeat and disrupt an enemy. So it isn't impossible that what movements were apparent were the groundwork for a potential response to an imminent threat, rather than part of a master plan to invade all of Europe.
Another consideration is that some of the troops deployed to the border area would have been there because it was recently annexed territory. Given Soviet heavy-handed tactics towards 'suspect' populations it isn't that far out to think the troops were there to quell any threat of rebellion etc.
The Meltyukhov book I mention a few times is "Stalin's Missed Chance" by Mikhail Meltyukhov. You can find the whole thing on the web, but will need to run it through a translator (and using some mental gymnastics to parse some of the resulting word salad...). I think Meltyukhov gets it wrong but as a more nuanced and better take on the concept, it beats Victor Suvorov/Vladimir Rezun's Icebreaker and subsequent books. For the anti-plans school the David Glantz books referenced in the thread I linked cover it nicely.