Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:02:15.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Problems of Soviet Defense Policy Under the New Regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Thomas W. Wolfe
Thomas W. Wolfe*
Affiliation:
The RAND Corporation, Washington, D.C.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

After Khrushchev was deposed in October 1964, it soon became apparent that his successors were in no hurry to dismantle his handiwork in the field of defense policy or to introduce major military policy innovations of their own. One may surmise that this tendency to mark time was the natural product of succession politics within the new collective leadership arrangement. As in most other major policy areas, Brezhnev and Kosygin no doubt felt the need for a breathing spell while in the process of consolidating their new regime.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , June 1965 , pp. 175 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Oct. 20, 1964.

2 , Oct. 2, 1964.

3 Ibid., Dec. 10, 1964. The announced Soviet figure for projected 1965 military expenditure was 12.8 billion rubles, compared with 13.3 billion for 1964.

4 See Godaire, J. G., “The Claim of the Soviet Military Establishment, ” in Dimensions of Soviet Economic Power, Hearings of Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 36–46 Google Scholar. The Soviet contention that the USSR “spends significantly less”for defense than the United States, as “ demonstrated“ by Soviet military budget figures, has sometimes invited awkward questions as to how the Soviet Union then manages to attain greater military strength, as also claimed. This question was recently dealt with in a Soviet military journal. The writer noted the contradiction between the two sets of claims but argued that such factors as the “planned Soviet economy” and Soviet “concentration of scientific-technical thought on the most fruitful areas of military problems” make it possible for the Soviet Union to “attain military superiority over imperialism with smaller military budgets.” No. 18 (Sept.), 1964, p. 44.

5 Dec. 10, 1964.

6 Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, March 2, 1965, in March 4, 1965. See also The New York Times, March 4, 1965.

7 For a fuller discussion of this debate and the issues involved, see my Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads (Cambridge, Mass.), 1964.

8 , Ibid., April 25, 1964. See also Wolfe, Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads, pp. 168-72.

9 , Jan. 21, 1965. Another interesting shift from a doctrinal position on war associated with Khrushchev occurred some weeks later when Marshal V. I. Chuikov reasserted the view that, if nuclear war should occur, the Communist system would emerge triumphant (Moscow Radio broadcast, March 16, 1965). Khrushchev had often argued, although not entirely consistently, that a nuclear war would be so mutually destructive that it would be futile to expect a new Communist order to arise from its ruins.

10 Speech at Moscow rally for Soviet Armed Forčes Day (Moscow Radio broadcast, Feb. 22, 1965).

11 , No. 6 (Jan. 31—Feb. 6), 1965. (Nedelia is a weekly supplement to the newspaper Izvestiia).

12 See, for example, , Aug. 28, 1964.

13 , Ibid., March 18, 1965. Larionov, a well-known writer of modernist bent, took a middle-of-the-road position on this issue, but his comments suggested that the issue was still a matter of contention. On the one hand, he criticized those who neglected the importance of preparing for a short, decisive war because they mistakenly believed that “a nonaggressive country like the USSR” need not concern itself with lightning war. On the other hand, he was also critical of those who believed a lightning war could be won by a single strategic strike without use of other forčes. According to Larionov, the USSR must prepare for both a long and a short war.

14 Differing accounts by Soviet media in themselves suggested internal sensitivity to the troop-reduction issue. Western observers at the Sokolovsky interview, however, understood him to mean that the 2.4 million level had already been reached.

15 One sign that Sokolovsky was not in tune with other military leaders was conspicuous avoidance of the troop-reduction theme in the many Armed Forčes Day speeches at this time. Another curious sign of internal disagreement was an apparent attempt in the military press to discredit Sokolovsky's professional judgment. Several days after Sokolovsky's press conference, Marshal Bagramian wrote an article on the World War II Briansk- Orel operation in which he was pointedly critical of the front commander to whom he was then subordinate. The burden of his criticism was that the front commander failed to exercise independent judgment and did not allot sufficient forčes to ensure sucčess against a powerful enemy. The front commander, who was left unnamed in the article, happens to have been Sokolovsky; see , Feb. 21, 1965. Interestingly enough, the Armed Forčes Day speech by Marshal Malinovsky, the minister of defense, also contained a warning that “we military men know there is generally nothing more dangerous than underestimating the opposing forčes.“

16 Marshals Sokolovsky and Rotmistrov are among those who have expressed their opinion that under some conditions the possibility of nonnuclear warfare may be on the increase. See , No. 10 (May), 1963, pp. 11-12.

17 Suggestions of this showed up in professional military utterance. In early 1964, for example, the late Marshal Biriuzov, speaking of the need for technological superiority, noted that victory in modern war would go to the side that “not only masters the new weapons technology but takes the lead in producing missiles” , No. 4 [Feb.], 1964, pp. 18-19.) This view, along with reminders by other Soviet military spokesmen of Stalin's sins of military unpreparedness, would suggest a measure of discontent with Khrushchev's tendency to rest his case on missile forčes of “sufficient” rather than superior numbers.

18 International Affairs, No. 10 (Oct.), 1964, pp. 15-19.

19 See Wolfe, Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads, pp. 118-29.

20 Soviet military literature since Khrushchev's fall has continued to give a fair amount of attention to local war problems, although, as in Khrushchev's time, the question of direct Soviet participation in such wars has generally been skirted. One new note in a recent issue of a Soviet military journal was the assertion that all local wars since World War II turned out badly for Western “imperialism, ” which might be interpreted as a hint that the Soviet Union should give fresh thought to the possible advantages of such wars. See , No. 2 (Feb.), 1965, p. 43. Late in March 1965 a reference by Brezhnev to “applications from Soviet citizens … to take part in the struggle of the Vietnamese people” suggested that the use of Soviet “volunteers“ might be contemplated as an intermediate method of intervention still short of direct, formal Soviet participation in local war situations. , March 24, 1965.

21 For fuller discussion of this subject, see my “Trends in Soviet Thinking on Theater Warfare, Conventional Operations, and Limited War, ” RM-4305-PR, The RAND Corporation, Dec. 1964, pp. 95-105.