Air University Review, September-October 1968

The Labyrinthian World
 of Soviet Military Doctrine

Dr. Kenneth R. Whiting

Ever since Engels began to fancy himself as a military theorist a century ago, Marxists have tried to convert the art of preparing for and fighting wars into a science with all the exactitude of physics or chemistry. If all the books and articles on military doctrine produced by Soviet theorists since Frunze’s classic dispute with Trotsky in the early 1920s were enumerated, the list would run into the thousands. Over the years these doctrinal writings have come to resemble the worst products of medieval scholasticism. It would seem that Communists are just not happy unless they have a doctrinal crutch to lean on. In addition to this penchant for doctrine, the well-known Russian psychosis about revealing any concrete military data forces the writer on things military to stick to the vague and abstract, i.e., doctrine. Thus it is not strange that Americans, who on the whole are pragmatic and not inclined toward philosophical speculation, find Soviet military literature a bit hard to get with.

Professor Kintner and Mrs. Scott have now produced a work* which gives those who do not read Russian a chance to see how Soviet military theorists approach the problems of contemporary warfare. The book consists of 27 articles, most of which were published between late 1964 and early 1967. Some are from collections of articles published in book form in the Soviet Union, but most of them are from the military journals, especially the Communist of the Armed Forces (Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil), which (as is stated right above the table of contents in each issue) is the “military-political journal of the Main Political Administration of the Soviet Army and Navy” and thus, it would seem safe to say, is closely controlled by General of the Army A. A. Yepishev, top man in the Main Political Administration. The book is divided into five major sections, each comprised of a number of pertinent articles. The editor-translators explain the significance of each major segment and also preface each article with an explanatory introduction. The translations are well done, and Mrs. Scott is not to be blamed for the heavy, dull, pedantic style that is the hallmark of Soviet military theorists. There is also a Glossary at the end of the book, as well as an Appendix, in which the top Soviet military leaders are listed. All in all, it is a competent piece of work.

There are several main themes that run through most of the articles. The first is the constantly reiterated assertion that the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces are now the elite element of the armed forces. This, of course, has to be so, since there is near unanimity among the Soviet writers that World War III, “if it is unleashed by the imperialists,” will be a nuclear war. Nevertheless, each author, after describing the decisive role of the Strategic Rocket Forces, hastens to add that victory can only be achieved by the combined forces of all the services of the armed forces. The “why” of the necessity for all the services to get into the act in a nuclear exchange is never spelled out. Finally, all the writers agree upon the infallibility of Soviet military doctrine.

Before rushing out to buy the book, the potential reader should be warned that Soviet military writings, especially those dealing with doctrine and strategy, are ponderous, repetitious, and crammed with hoary clichés. Soviet military theorists, in Manichaean style, divide the world into absolute good and absolute evil: all virtue and wisdom belong to the socialist camp, especially to the Soviet Union, and evil and injustice are the monopoly of the “imperialists.” Furthermore, through the use of Marxist-Leninist analysis, the Communist Party leadership can always assess the future accurately, which gives it a tremendous advantage over its imperialist enemies. At this point the Soviet writers have to explain, somewhat awkwardly, that the “cult of the personality,” i.e., Joe Stalin, managed to thwart the Marxist-Leninist foresight of the Party leadership in 1941 and thereby caused the Soviet Armed Forces to get caught flatfooted by the Nazis on 22 June. The “cult of the personality” is also censured for the extermination of some of the best military cadres on the eve of World War II. (See Shtemenko’s article, p. 51.) This is a euphemistic way of saying that Stalin butchered tens of thousands of the top officers of the Red Army in the 1937-40 period, which is naturally a sore point with the present Soviet officer corps. Khrushchev, “the erratic, harebrained” one, to quote from his official Soviet condemnation, was also guilty of obfuscating and perverting the collective wisdom of the Party leadership. But inasmuch as all Soviet policies, including military policy, were controlled by either Stalin or Khrushchev from at least 1929 through 1964, or for 35 out of the Soviet Union’s 50-year lifespan, the advantages of the Marxist-Leninist analytical tool seem somewhat dubious to the uninitiated Western reader. If the reader, however, can suffer a certain amount of boredom and if his adrenalin does not tend to get out of control when his country is described as the incarnation of all evil, then this collection of Soviet articles is worth reading. After all, “to know your enemy” has been a widely accepted maxim for military men for at least a couple of millennia.

In the course of examining the Soviet military literature for the 1960-64 period, the reviewer was struck more by what the Soviet military theorists did not say than with what they did discuss.¹ Nothing seems to have changed in the last three years, judging from what Mrs. Scott’s stable of authors manages not to say. They just skip the tough problems, or skirt them in a gingerly manner. The following are just a few of the evaded issues: Whether World War III will be a short, spasmodic nuclear exchange or a protracted conflict? Just what is the Soviet doctrine on limited war? How do “wars of national liberation” fit into their doctrine? What is their strategy, or lack of it, in the military use of outer space? Do they mean a pre-emptive attack when they refer to “the frustration of a surprise nuclear attack”? These are important contemporary problems and the Soviet military theorists must think about them, but there are no concrete discussions of them in the open literature.

A good example is the continuous refrain that the Soviet Armed Forces can and will “frustrate” a surprise nuclear attack. For instance, Colonel Strokov, on page 223, states that

Soviet military doctrine considers the frustration of a surprise attack of the enemy and carrying to him a crushing blow as the main immediate task of the Armed Forces.

He then goes on to quote Marshal Malinovsky as follows:

The main common mission for all of our Armed Forces, in the course of combat and operational training, is set by us as the studying and working out of ways for the sure repulse of a surprise nuclear attack of an aggressor and also of ways to frustrate his aggressive plans by way of a well-timed carrying out of a crushing blow on him.

Both Strokov and Malinovsky must mean either that the nuclear attack will be pre-empted or that the Soviets have an impenetrable antiballistic missile (ABM) defense. But at no time does any Soviet writer spell out in concrete terms what he means. Incidentally, as early as 1955 the Soviets were preaching about their ability to frustrate a surprise nuclear attack; it was already an article of faith, and they certainly did not have an ABM defense then.² This constant chant about the Soviet capability to thwart a nuclear surprise attack is probably a morale builder.

Closely associated with the “frustration of a nuclear attack” thesis is another article of faith, the assumption that the Soviet Union will be victorious in a nuclear war. In this case, however, a few Soviet heretics have from time to time expressed the opinion that such an exchange might end civilization, and as early as 1954 Malenkov was roundly scolded for expressing such a thought. Here, again, one is inclined to see this “optimism” more as an attempt to keep up popular morale than as a genuine conviction. For example, Colonel Ribkin (on p. 113), after asserting that the Soviet Union will be victorious in a nuclear war, becomes somewhat more ambiguous when he says:

However, to maintain that victory in nuclear war is in general impossible would be not only untrue theoretically but dangerous from a political point of view. (Italics mine.)

In their introductory comments to the various articles, Kintner and Scott assert repeatedly the thesis that the Soviets have opted for nuclear war and they are relentlessly driving toward a superiority in both offensive and defensive nuclear missile systems. It would be hard to dispute the fact that the Soviets have increased the tempo of their production of ICBM’s. According to the figures given by former Secretary McNamara in February 1968, the Soviets had increased their arsenal of ICBM’s to 720 by 1 October 1967, almost doubling their capability in that area in a year. The former secretary, however, seemed much less worried about the Soviet capabilities in the ABM field. At the present time, it would seem, the Soviets still have some distance to go before they get to parity, let alone superiority, in the number of nuclear warheads that can be delivered by each side. But even parity might well present problems for the United States in the not too distant future.

It would seem to this reviewer that any attempt to predict Soviet intentions from Soviet military literature is a dubious proposition. For example, during the 1945-54 decade, Soviet military theorists wrote only about Stalin’s five “permanently operating factors for victory,” which called for huge ground forces loaded with artillery and tanks, while at the same time denying the possibility that nuclear weapons plus a surprise attack could influence the course and outcome of a war. Yet it was precisely during that period that they were developing atomic and nuclear weapons, long-range bombers, and doing research on missiles. The doctrine espoused in the open literature had no connection with the weapons development going on at the time. Actually, the doctrine denied the efficacy of the very weapons that the Soviets were developing at such great cost to their economy.

Today, as the articles selected by Kintner and Scott illustrate, the military doctrine indicates that a nuclear war is the only type of war the Soviets have under consideration. But the present composition of their armed forces could indicate otherwise. The Soviet Navy is rapidly becoming a major element in the overall military capability of the nation. It now has a large surface fleet as well as a huge submarine force, and it is now busy playing a role in the Mediterranean. The Soviets are developing their own leathernecks, the naval infantry as they call them, and are equipping them with various types of landing craft. The Soviet merchant marine, which could be used to take care of logistical support if Soviet troops were to engage in operations in distant regions on the globe, is being built up at an ever increasing tempo. That other requirement for worldwide operational activities, special forces with their own airlift capability, is now being rapidly augmented. In the May Day display for 1968, there were more parachute troops with their raspberry-colored berets than had ever participated before.

If an analysis of Soviet intentions were to be made on the basis of the new developments in the direction of a flexible capability in military operations and on the basis of what seems to be Russian foreign policy objectives in the last few years, the conclusion might well be that the Soviets intend their nuclear missile buildup to act as an umbrella over their penetration of the Middle East and their intention to play an active military role on a global basis in support of “wars of national liberation.” In short, when dealing with the theoretical writings of Soviet military men, as much consideration should be given to what they refuse to talk about as to those things they do discuss ad nauseam. What bothers this reviewer about the editorializing of Kintner and Scott is their as sumption that the present Soviet doctrine on nuclear war necessarily represents the real Soviet military intentions. They might well have taken the editing job done by Dinerstein, Gouné, and Wolfe in the RAND edition of Sokolovsky’s Military Strategy as a model and pointed out the inconsistencies and lacunae in the writings of the Soviet military theorists. But for all of the carping of this critic, the book is a valuable addition to the sparse literature on Soviet military affairs that is available in English.

Aerospace Studies Institute

*The Nuclear Revolution in Soviet Military Affairs, translated and edited, with Introduction and Commentary, by William R. Kintner and Harriet Fast Scott (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, $6.95), 420 pp.

Note

1. Kenneth R. Whiting, Soviet Reactions to Changes in American Military Strategy (Maxwell AFB: Air University, 1965).

2. Ibid., p. 30.

Contributor

Dr. Kenneth R. Whiting (Ph.D., Harvard University) is a member of Aerospace Studies Institute and of the faculty, Air University. He formerly taught Russian history at Tufts College. Dr. Whiting is the author of The Soviet Union Today: A Concise Handbook (1962) and of numerous studies and monographs on Russian subjects, including Readings in Soviet Military Theory, Essays on Soviet Problems of Nationality and Industrial Management, Iron Ore Resources of the U.S.S.R., and Materials on the Soviet Petroleum Industry. He also contributed two chapters to Asher Lee’s book, The Soviet Air Force, and an article to Eugene Emme’s book, The Impact of Air Power.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor