According to Gorodetsky's version Stalin saw Hitler as his own mirror reflection, committed to realpolitik and eager to improve the Soviet Union's national status which it had lost as a result of the disasters which were inflicted on her during the First World War and the Russian Revolution.
In 2015, Gorodetsky edited an annotated publication for Yale University Press of the unique and extraordinary diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London from 1932-1943.