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Soviet Union [USSR] Evolution of Military Doctrine
Soviet military theorists first formulated a uniform military
doctrine in the l920s under the influence of both Lenin's teachings
on the defense of the socialist homeland and the
writings of Mikhail V. Frunze, a prominent
Bolshevik (see Glossary)
commander in the Civil War (1918-21) and a military theoretician.
Frunze considered the basic conditions for the vitality of doctrine
to be, first, its uniformity, i.e., doctrine should be the same for
all services of the armed forces, and, second, "its conformity with
the state's objectives and the resources at its disposal."
Since Frunze, Soviet doctrinal views on the nature and
likelihood of future war have evolved as Soviet theorists have
attempted to adapt doctrine to the changing nature of future war,
to the shifting alignment of forces in the world, and to changes in
the domestic economy and in the combat potential of the Soviet
armed forces.
The most important changes in Soviet views on the nature of war
came after World War II. At that time, Stalin added the concept of
the "two camps"--two mutually irreconcilable coalitions--and their
impending worldwide clash to the traditional Soviet concepts of
capitalist encirclement (see Glossary) and inevitability of
capitalist attack. In February l956, the Twentieth Party Congress
modified the idea of inevitability when Khrushchev declared that a
world war with capitalism was no longer "fatalistically
inevitable."
Doctrinal views on the methods of fighting a future world war
also have changed significantly since the end of World War II.
Stalin, who for most of his rule did not have a nuclear arsenal,
envisioned future war as a fierce combined arms struggle in Europe.
As both the United States and the Soviet armed forces in Europe
acquired nuclear weapons in the 1950s, Stalin's views gradually
changed. In l960 and 196l, Khrushchev tried to impose the concept
of nuclear deterrence on the military. Nuclear deterrence holds
that the reason for having nuclear weapons is to discourage their
use by a potential enemy. With each side deterred from war because
of the threat of its escalation into a nuclear conflict, Khrushchev
believed,
"peaceful coexistence" (see Glossary) with capitalism
would become permanent and allow the inherent superiority of
socialism to emerge in economic and cultural competition with the
West.
Khrushchev hoped that exclusive reliance on the nuclear
firepower of the newly created Strategic Rocket Forces would remove
the need for increased defense expenditures
(see Soviet Union USSR - Strategic Rocket Forces
, ch. l8). He also sought to use nuclear deterrence to
justify his massive troop cuts; his downgrading of the Ground
Forces, traditionally the "fighting arm" of the Soviet armed
forces; and his plans to replace bombers with missiles and the
surface fleet with nuclear missile submarines.
Khrushchev's attempt to introduce a nuclear doctrine limited to
deterrence into Soviet military thought misfired. Discussion of
nuclear war in the first authoritative Soviet monograph on strategy
since the l920s, Marshal Vasilii D. Sokolovskii's Military
Strategy (published in 1962, 1963, and 1968) and in the l968
edition of Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army, focused
upon the use of nuclear weapons for fighting rather than for
deterring a war. Should such a war break out, both sides would
pursue the most decisive aims with the most forceful means and
methods. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and aircraft would
deliver massed nuclear strikes on the enemy's military and civilian
objectives. The war would assume an unprecedented geographical
scope, but Soviet military writers argued that the use of nuclear
weapons in the initial period of the war would decide the course
and outcome of the war as a whole. Both in doctrine and in
strategy, the nuclear weapon reigned supreme.
After Khrushchev's ouster in l964, Soviet doctrine began to
consider the new United States concept of "flexible response,"
i.e., a graduated response to aggression on several levels,
beginning with conventional arms. In the mid-1960s, Soviet military
thinkers allowed for the possibility of a phase of conventional
warfare preceding a general nuclear war. Another adjustment also
occurred in the mid-1960s, as doctrine evolved to maintain that a
world war need not inevitably escalate to an intercontinental
nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Soviet doctrine allowed for the possibility of avoiding such an
exchange altogether and limiting nuclear strikes to specific
theaters of war. Soviet military strategists held that nuclear war
could be fought in and confined to Western and Central Europe and
that both United States and Soviet territory might escape nuclear
devastation. Finally, after l967, when the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) officially adopted the "flexible response"
concept and began to structure its forces accordingly, Soviet
doctrine began to consider the possibility of fighting an entire
war with conventional arms. It did, however, allow for the
likelihood of the adversary's escalating to the use of nuclear
weapons.
Data as of May 1989
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