Isaac Deutscher 1956
Source: The Reporter, 3 October 1957. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
In an interview with Marshal KA Vershinin, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force, the 8 September issue of Pravda contains the most important elements of a revision in strategic thinking that the Soviet high command seems to have carried out, and the outline of what may be described as the new Soviet strategic doctrine.
The interview is the first outward sign of an official recognition by the Soviet military leadership of the supremacy of aviation over all other armed forces. This recognition, it should be remarked, goes against the grain of Russia’s traditional military thought, which has been determined primarily by Russia’s position as a land power. Until quite recently Russian military thought was dominated by the idea of the unshaken pre-eminence of land forces and of the decisive importance of infantry that, mechanised and modernised, was still supposed to remain ‘the queen of arms’. This line of thought, sustained by the experience of the last war, remained prevalent and was, so it seems, virtually unchallenged until two or three years ago. Only the latest developments in war technology appear to have brought about a definite readjustment in strategic conceptions.
Views, Aspirations and Claims: It is unlikely that Marshal Vershinin should have voiced only the views and aspirations of the Soviet Air Force and its leaders. The Soviet government would hardly permit a controversy over the relative importance of various arms comparable to that which has been going on in the United States for years to be conducted or even alluded to in public. Nor would it allow the spokesmen of the various forces to stake out their sectional and competitive claims in this way. No doubt the Soviet high command has had its share of conflicts of views and claims. But Marshal Vershinin’s statement probably represents the main elements of an agreed and ‘integrated’ doctrine on which the unified command of the Soviet armed forces now bases itself.
The paradox of the recognition by the USSR of the supremacy of aviation is that the recognition comes at a time when, according to Marshal Vershinin, the traditional air force has entered into a period of eclipse. One can speak of its supremacy only conditionally; that is, only if one considers the new developments in ballistic technology as belonging to the domain of the air force. Marshal Vershinin has in fact drawn up an interim balance of these developments and of their effects on the relative positions of the great powers and the military blocs.
It is significant that the marshal is not inclined to overstate and overdramatise the importance of the intercontinental rocket, which, according to an official announcement, has been successfully tested in the USSR. He may even appear to underplay it. He does not claim that the intercontinental rocket by itself has shattered the strategic structure of NATO but he does claim that this structure has been crumbling under the impact of a much wider revolution in military technology, a revolution of which the invention and manufacturing of the intercontinental rocket is only one instance. He sees the development of the ‘ordinary’ atomic and hydrogen rockets as the decisive phase of that revolution, radically altering the whole aspect of modern war.
Marshal Vershinin holds that by means of those ‘ordinary’ missiles Russia is in a position to put out of action or destroy all NATO bases in Europe and the Middle East at the very outset of war. These NATO outposts appear to him as relics of an epoch in which the United States could still rely on the decisive superiority of its striking power and could plan to unleash that power from a concentric chain of bases situated near Russia’s vital centres and yet remain relatively immune from Russian retaliation. ‘One can only be surprised’, the marshal says, ‘by the short-sightedness of those who make no allowance for the fact that if their bases are close to us, then they are also not far from us.’ Eight or even five years ago the NATO bases may indeed have been close to Russia and yet in a sense far away, but today they are not.
Even the ‘ordinary’ guided missile, Marshal Vershinin argues, has changed the relative importance and the functions and uses of such older weapons as the submarine, the strategic bomber and the aircraft carrier. Hitherto the submarine has been employed mainly in the disruption of maritime communication lines and occasionally in short-range coastal bombardment. It can now be used for long-range atomic and hydrogen bombardment of enemy territory. The submarine can thus assume the functions of the aircraft carrier and, being less vulnerable, can supersede it.
From the Russian viewpoint this is all the more important because geographic and economic reasons have kept Russia far behind the United States in the production of aircraft carriers while at the same time Russia has greatly developed its submarine fleet. The transformation of the submarine into a carrier of atomic and hydrogen missiles has relieved Russia from the effects of its geographic and economic handicaps vis-à-vis the United States. Indeed, when Marshal Vershinin speaks of the United States’ new vulnerability and describes the assortment of weapons that can be deployed against the vital centres of the American continent, he places at least as much emphasis on the submarine as on the intercontinental rocket.
Bombers and Rockets: It is in this context that he also speaks of the virtual eclipse of the strategic bomber. But he does it in a tone suggesting that the Soviet high command may still regard this as an open question. He makes a case for the rocket as against the bomber on the basis that the striking power of the rocket is far more reliable and that in the present state of technology there is no effective defence against it. However, when he lists the weapons that may be deployed against, say, New York and Chicago, he still finds use for the bomber alongside the submarine and the guided missile.
It is against this background that the chief of Soviet military aviation views the intercontinental rocket. He refrains, of course, from disclosing details, but he is definite and even emphatic about two points: that the rocket can reach ‘the most remote regions of any continent on the globe’ and that it carries a hydrogen bomb. There is, in my view, no grounds for supposing that in saying this Marshal Vershinin was engaging only in advance publicity for a technological feat that Russia has still to achieve.
Has the Soviet high command come to accept the view that in a future war the strategic decision can be obtained by means of a series of simultaneously staged atomic-cum-hydrogen Pearl Harbor attacks? On this point Marshal Vershinin is rather obscure and self-contradictory. He begins his argument by deriding Hitler’s blitzkrieg illusions and the views of those in the West who appear to be believers in ‘the first knockout blows’. But then the whole trend of his reasoning points to the conclusion that the blitzkrieg idea may be, after all, no longer fantastic. Moreover, he intimates that if any power has a chance of waging a successful blitzkrieg then it is the USSR rather than the United States, because the USSR enjoys the advantages of a far greater dispersal of its vital centres over a much vaster territory. Thus even in the atomic Armageddon, space would still remain Russia’s ally.
But the marshal does not dwell on this advantage too much. He emphasises the destruction and desolation to which Russia, too, would be exposed, and when he says that a single hydrogen bomb would suffice ‘to make life temporarily impossible in the whole of the Ruhr area’, no Russian can fail to deduce that the effect of such a bomb on the Donets Basin would be the same. It is only fair to add that throughout the interview, Marshal Vershinin is extremely careful to avoid bluster and threat and that he speaks of the destructive force and the long range of the new weapons in Russia’s armoury in a tone of foreboding. But however circumspect his tone, it cannot soften the grimness of the dangers he describes.
Marshal Vershinin’s words are a commentary on the deadlock reached in the London disarmament negotiations, and they may have been prompted also by recent international tension over Syria. They appear to address to the NATO powers, or rather to the United States, the following propositions: first, that the new weapons in Russia’s armoury have made the whole military structure of the Western alliance obsolete (but only on condition that Russia retains and continues to develop these weapons); second, that as long as the NATO structure remains in being Russia has no interest in reducing its armoury and allowing any Western inspection; and, finally, that the United States, in view of its present vulnerability, has a new and vital interest in revising its strategy, withdrawing from European and Middle Eastern perimeters and seeking direct agreement with Russia.
The Soviet military leaders can hardly believe that these propositions will be eagerly listened to beyond the Atlantic. Marshal Vershinin’s statement sounds therefore like a signal for the continuation of the arms race in the new strategic situation. It is perhaps not a matter of chance that the signal has come from a military leader and not from Khrushchev.