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Soviet Union [USSR] THE PARTY AND MILITARY DOCTRINE AND POLICY
Marxist-Leninist teaching on war and the armed forces defined
the essence of wars, their origins, and the laws governing the
conduct of war. In developing Soviet military doctrine and policy,
the CPSU relied on this teaching and on its forecasts of the nature
of future wars, as well as on the concepts and weapons proposals
formulated by Soviet military science. Military doctrine was the
party line on military affairs. It defined the potential
adversaries, the nature of future wars, the force requirements, the
general direction of military development, the preparation of the
country for war, and even the type of weapons needed to fight a
war. The party's military policy defined the political aims of the
Soviet state and proposed concrete measures for developing and
strengthening the state's military might by improving the
organization and the armaments of the armed forces.
Soviet military theorists asserted that military doctrine had
a military-political and a military-technical component and that
doctrine overlapped with military science and strategy. MarxistLeninist teaching shaped the political aspect of doctrine, which
defined the party's overriding military-political goals and was by
far the more important of the two components. The technical
dimension of military doctrine dealt with available means and
capabilities, as well as with future technologies, and drew on the
findings of Soviet military science. In its concern with
capabilities, the technical aspect of doctrine also overlapped with
the technical component of military policy and with military
strategy. The latter coordinated technical means and methods with
military concepts for the attainment of political goals.
Soviet leaders maintained that Soviet military doctrine always
had been defensive, yet because it favored an offensive strategy
and stressed the need to achieve victory, Western analysts have
often termed Soviet military doctrine offensive. The acquisition of
nuclear weapons by the Soviet armed forces not only caused
disagreement over whether nuclear war could be a continuation of
politics by violent means but also introduced divergence into
Soviet views on the role nuclear weapons could play in deterring or
fighting a war. Soviet military strategists appeared to endorse
both nuclear deterrence and
nuclear war-fighting (see Glossary) but
placed a greater stress on war-fighting. Even the adoption of
conventional options and the downgrading of the military utility of
nuclear weapons by some military leaders in the 1980s did not
remove the doctrinal requirement to fight and prevail in a nuclear
war.
Data as of May 1989
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