Did Stalin read Mahan?
Or is Russia’s present maritime policy the outgrowth of Soviet experience added to long centuries of pre-Soviet history?
In either case, the lessons taught by Mahan are still valid. His sea power concept is unchallenged and our War College today bears out the value of history as a teacher. Historical knowledge is the established prerequisite to understanding of a nation’s foreign policy, and thereby its naval policy.
The purpose of this article, then, is to indicate in a few broad strokes the background of Russia’s maritime history, and to outline the present naval and mercantile marine policies of the Soviet Union.
Historically, the people of Russia have always been water-minded. Before there ever was a Russian nation—even centuries before the Mongol hordes ruled the vast steppes—the Russians were using their great rivers as highways. Commerce and conquest alike followed these roads, mainly on the Volga, Don, Dnieper, and Neva Rivers. The Black Sea, the Baltic, and the Caspian also played important roles in the warfare and trading ventures of pre-fourteenth century times.
Viking seafarers, particularly the Swedes, sailed up the Dvina from the Baltic as early as the sixth century, and they soon dominated the Black Sea, which they reached by navigating the Don. By about 825 a.d. the Swedes had established the first Russian “Kaganate,” considered by many historians to be the beginning of the Russian State as we know it today. In 838 A.D. the (Swedish) Russian Kagan had sent his envoys down the Ranube to Constantinople, and within less than forty years after the Kaganate was formed Russian forces actually attacked the Byzantine capital!
But Russia had to await the coming of Peter the Great before her sea power concept became crystallized. Peter said, “The future of Russia lies at the mouths of the Neva, the Don, and the Amur,” and he worked energetically to implement his ideas. Since Peter’s time the need for free access to the seas through ice-free ports has become a Russian obsession.
A forceful and decisive commander, Czar Peter tried out his theories most promptly. At the battle of Hango in 1714 his newly built and untried Navy destroyed a crack Swedish squadron, giving Russia command of the Baltic. Peter built another fleet at Voronezh, and sailed it down the Don to capture Azov from the Turks. And it was this same monarch who first envisioned a system of commercial and military canals to link the White Sea with the Baltic, the Volga with the Don, the Caspian with the Aral Sea.
Peter the Great also turned his attention to the Pacific. He sent an ambassador to Peking in 1720, and soon afterwards he opened diplomatic relations with Japan. The Kamchatka peninsula had been occupied by Peter’s Cossacks in 1697. When they were well established in the Petropavlovsk area the Czar organized an expedition under Captain Vitus Bering and sent it to find out whether Asia and America were joined by land. In 1732 Fedorov the Seaman, accompanied by a geodetic surveyor named Gvozdev, reached Alaska. Then came the government-sponsored “Great Northern Expedition,” and in 1741 Captain Bering reached the American coast at 58° 28' North Latitude. At about the same time one of Bering’s subordinate commanders in another vessel also sighted the western coast of America about 56° North, but Chirikov’s men were unable to effect a landing on the mainland. Chirikov did touch at some of the Alaskan islands, however, and his crew brought back many valuable furs, including sea otter, which was much in demand in China at the time. This find stimulated the first commerical trading venture to Alaska in 1743, and later the remarkable adventures of A. A. Baranov, “Lord of Alaska.”
Peter the Great also attempted to open a sea route to India. His operations plan called for the taking of Madagascar as a safeguard to Russian command of the western reaches of the Indian Ocean. Though a force actually went to sea to carry out this ambitious plan, it failed.
Peter was the first to implement Russia’s present Black Sea policy, and his ideas have dominated Russian thinking in that regard ever since. Free access to the Mediterranean has many times been the issue in Russia’s wars.
Before the age of steam at sea, Russia logically should have been a great maritime nation. She had the needed timber, flax, copper, and other naval supplies. Far from being self-contained, this vast country has always needed to export grain, lumber, and furs, and to import manufactured goods. From the Russian point of view, Russian bottoms ought to have been the logical carriers for this trade.
But the Czars who came after Peter did not understand sea power, or its commercial or military uses, and they doomed Russia’s nautical aspirations to failure. With their support and interest Russia could have overcome her handicap of technological backwardness, and the Slavic nation would have been considerably more than a passing annoyance to the growing sea power of England.
From the death of Peter the Great until the middle of the nineteenth century history records but few instances of Russian seaborne commerce or naval force, and these few had but slight effect on the course of human events. It is true that American, British, and Dutch seamen were employed from time to time in sporadic efforts to improve
Russia’s maritime status, but these efforts had no real consequences, even during the reign of Catherine II when America’s John Paul Jones and Britain’s Ephilstone, MacKenzie, and Greig all held important commands in the Russian Navy.
The short-lived zenith of Russian sea power in the Mediterranean appeared after the Slavs defeated the Turks at Chesme in 1770. Before England had Malta, Cyprus, or Suez the Russian Fleet had taken Corfu, and the naval hero Oushakov had marched his sailors into Rome! Russia controlled the eastern Mediterranean for a few short years.
Russian seaborne commerce made a brief appearance on the Pacific, thanks to one man, the same Baranov mentioned above. After the death of Catherine II the Emperor Paul gave the Russian-American Company his patronage and a trading monopoly in the Pacific. Baranov, who was not an aristocrat or an owner but the hired manager of the company, was a man of extraordinary vision and forcefulness. He founded a colony on the Island of Kodiak and made it a commercial success in the face of a revolt and seemingly impossible logistics problems.
Next Baranov turned his attention to southeast Alaska and despite bloody Indian warfare established a post at Sitka which became the capital of Russian-America under the name “New Archangel.” In 1812 this unusual man set up a trading and trapping center in northern California, and he then began to dream of the day when Russian seapower would dominate the Pacific.
Baranov actually undertook negotiations with Kamehameha which might have resulted in Russian dominance of Hawaii, but he could not get sufficient support from the crown so the treaty was never signed.
Thus one man created a vast colonial empire in the name of the Russian Czar. He was so successful that the crown sent major warships to the remote Pacific for the protection of the valuable seaborne commerce he had built.
Alexander Baranov was a rough and uncouth man. He was at a sad disadvantage in dealing with the cultured officers of the Imperial Navy, and his failure to get along with these aristocrats fresh from the court life of St. Petersburg had a great deal to do with the Czar’s attitude toward his projects.
It is indeed a commentary on a successor to Peter the Great that for a petty personal reason the Czar unjustly relieved him of his command in 1818 and let the whole American venture die!
Baranov, a heartbroken old man, was being returned to Russia aboard one of his company’s ships when he died in the Dutch East Indies.
With the coming of steam and ironclad warships, Russia fell far behind the other major nations of the world, and British sea power spelled Russian defeat in the Crimean War.
The victors, naturally, took care to neutralize the Black Sea at the Peace of Paris in 1856. No Russian man of war was allowed to fly the flag of Imperial Russia on the Black Sea until 1871, nor was Russia permitted arsenals or dockyards on the shores of what should have been, in Slavic eyes, a Russian lake.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 is a familiar story to every student of Mahan. The Russians have never forgotten the Battle of Tsushima, or the lesson of sea power it taught. Many great naval minds have dwelt on the fate of Russia’s divided Far Eastern Fleet and the subsequent destruction of Admiral Rozhdestvensky’s command, so it will not be discussed here.
Why was Russia’s Navy in such a condition at the outbreak of hostilities? Once again the answer is lack of Czarist understanding of the meaning of sea power coupled with the corruption and decadent inefficiency of the entire regime.
One of the aftermaths of Russian defeat was the mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea in 1905. This incident was merely one phase of an intense popular reaction against Czarism and all it had come to mean. Nevertheless it impressed the head of the state when it occurred, because the Czar fully realized the significance of a breakdown in military discipline.
Interesting is the parallel of the Kronstadt revolt by sailors of the Red Navy in 1921. These sailors had been strong supporters of the revolution of 1917, and their demonstration was a protest against the “War Communism” phase of Soviet government and the political and economic chaos it had produced. Lenin considered the Kronstadt affair so serious that it actually motivated him to introduce the “New Economic Policy.” Under this policy “State Capitalism” was instituted and small privately owned factories and farms were again permitted for a time in order to appease the people of Russia. Thus a really minor naval mutiny brought about Communism’s first definite compromise with reality and forced Lenin’s departure from the “strictly Marxist” line advocated by Trotsky.
The Russian Navy accomplished little in World War I, mainly because the disrupted country had been unable to build a sea force of any consequence between 1905 and 1914. Russia entered the war with less than 400,000 tons of naval vessels afloat, and her peak achievement was about 540,000 tons of effective ships, actually less than little Austria-Hungary.
Soviet Russia’s demands and the concessions she received at the 1924 Naval Conference in Rome quickly demonstrated that the new regime was much more alert to the realities of sea power than the Czar’s government had been. Asking reparations in the form of 490,000 tons of naval shipping, she settled for 280,000, but only after receiving guarantees of treaty protection in such matters as:
- Warships of states not bordering on the Baltic to be forbidden access to that sea by the Sound and the Belt.
- Warships of non-riparian states to be forbidden access to the Black Sea.
- The Straits of Korea to be disarmed.
When the Soviet government found itself firmly in control there was no Russian Navy or merchant marine worthy of mention. So the Soviets had to start from a few antiquated Czarist rust pots and build anew.
In a nation of total centralization, the planned schedule of attainment of the government’s long range objectives was the only possible source of conflict with the Red Navy’s ambitious plans for immediate expansion.
The First Five-Year Plan (1928-1933) was devoted rigidly to the building of Russian heavy industry. Consumer goods were disregarded completely, and the needs of the people were subordinated to the one all important goal of industrialization. Into this first plan fitted the building of modern ship yards, and merchant type vessels were Russia’s primary maritime concern. The Second Five-Year Plan emphasized submarine construction and the modernization of old Czarist naval vessels.
During the Second Five-Year Plan Russia’s attention was also turned toward the North.
All along the northern coast of the continent, from Gol’chika (about 90° East Longitude) to the Bering Sea, there is a wealth of minerals including coal, iron, copper, oil, graphite, tungsten, and peat. Inland these mineral concentrations are heavy along the banks of the great rivers that run into the Arctic Ocean—particularly the Lena River and the Yenisei. The island of Novia Zemlia is particularly rich in copper and iron, and in oil at its northern tip.
Exploration and commercial development in the Arctic logically claimed considerable Soviet attention, and the military and naval aspects of the area were not neglected. By 1932 the Ice Breaker U.S.S.R. Sibiriakov, Captain Voronin, completed the Northeast Passage from Archangel to the Bering Strait in one navigational season, July 28 to October 1. In 1935-1936 the Soviet government increased its attempts to attain “complete economic exploitation of the Soviet Arctic,” and a “Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route” was set up and attached directly to the Council of Peoples’ Commissars.
From that day on the greatest polar zone work ever undertaken by any government was steadily pushed forward, except for a brief holiday of less than thirty months during the “black hours” of World War II. It is still going on, and an article in the October 1946 issue of the French naval journal La Revue Maritime contends that the Northeast Passage from the White Sea to the Bering Strait is now used by the Russians for six months out of the year, April to September!
A breakdown of the “Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route,” showing a few of the departments organized and functioning within it, may serve to indicate its importance in the eyes of the Kremlin.
Separate departments are set up under the following titles:
- Political.
- Administration of Maritime and River Transport. (This department has a “Division in Charge of Shipbuilding” and a “Kara-Lena Exploitation Office,” both functioning as self-supporting economic enterprises.)
- Air Service.
- Polar Stations (including hydro-meteorological and radio services).
- Mining and geology.
- Labor.
Divisions of the “headquarters organization” of the “Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route” include Mobilization, Planning, and Economy, and an interesting one entitled “Reindeer Industry.” The Secretariat of the Administration contains a Secret Code Section, a Bureau of Long Range Ice Prognosis, and consultants on trades and industries ranging from hunting, fisheries, and furs to timber, agriculture, and construction.
The Statute of June 1936, and (as far as we now know) every subsequent decree and statute pertaining in any way to the Arctic sets forth a specific “charge of first importance” as follows:
“The Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route is charged with organization of seagoing (icebreakers included) and river craft, as well as supervision over the same; laying out the plans for and actual building of the ports, river banks, wharves, and ship repair (facilities); organization of the maritime and river transportation of goods, and of the icebreaking operations; shipbuilding and the repair of ships; and supervision over the ports.”
It would be interesting to know just what the Soviets have accomplished under this setup. How much submarine experimentation has been carried on in Arctic regions? What of Arctic aviation? We do not know. Even on the commercial side of the picture there is very little information available, and none of it recent. But we do know that as early as 1936 the Russians used 160 ships to take 230,520 tons of cargo out of the Arctic during the short navigation season, and that 14 of these ships negotiated the Northeast passage.
In 1932 Japan threatened Russia’s rail and river access to the Pacific when she moved up to the south bank of the Amur River in Northern Manchuria. In 1934 Japan denounced the Naval Treaty she had signed in Washington in 1922. Nineteen hundred and thirty-six saw Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.
By 1937 both Germany and Japan were engaged in programs of unlimited naval construction, and in the face of this activity by potential enemies, Russia began to speed her own naval building.
Nineteen hundred and thirty-eight brought with it the start of Russia’s Third Five-Year Plan, accompanied by an official Soviet pronouncement that a major part of that plan was “a colossal program of naval construction.” According to Pravda, the First and Second Five-Year Plans had already paved the way for this “major part” of the Third Plan by bringing “shipbuilding to the level of the foremost branches of Soviet Industry.”
Soviet naval construction prior to 1938 had revealed a policy in many ways strikingly similar to that of Germany in World Wars I and II. The extensive submarine program coupled with all else that we know of their scheme of bases and surface ship construction made the Red Navy a defensive force designed to operate in Soviet waters and to wage a “guerre du course" against a superior enemy’s seaborne communications.
But the Third Five-Year Plan ushered in a different and more balanced concept of sea power! Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers began to interest the Russians, and they set out to attain the goal set by Molotov’s famous naval policy pronouncement of January 15, 1938, in which he declared that “ . . . the mighty Soviet Power must possess a sea and ocean Navy adequate for its interests and worthy of our Great Cause.” In July of that same year President Mikhail Kalinin publicly stated that Soviet Russia “must outdo the capitalistic naval powers,” and he specifically named England, the United
States, Japan, Germany, and France.
This new building program produced results. By June of 1941 the best informed non-official opinion placed the strength of the Red Navy at roughly 166% of 1938 level. As far as can be ascertained, the Russians had one CV of 12,000 tons, three modernized Czarist battleships and two new ones under construction, seven Kirov class 8800 ton cruisers and two old cruisers of about 10,000 tons displacement, eighty DD’s, approximately two hundred “large” submarines and about seventy of the Malukta class (200 ton) small subs primarily designed for shallow water work. About fifty minesweepers and possibly one hundred and thirty motor torpedo boats completed the list, except for the icebreakers, about which there seems to be little or no accessible information.
During World War II the Red Navy fought a primarily defensive war in close cooperation with the Red Army and Air Force. By even a conservative estimate, it did a very able job.
The Northern Fleet, operating mostly in the White Sea and the Barents Sea, was very active in the vital protection of the Murmansk convoys. This unit, mainly submarines, aircraft, and small ASW and AA escort types, claims to have sunk 500,000 tons of German shipping.
The Black Sea Fleet saw action before Odessa and Sevastopol as well as along the Caucasus coast, and several times frustrated German attempts at amphibious flanking movements. It also assisted the Red Army in several daring and successful amphibious operations against the Nazis later in the war.
The Baltic Fleet played a major role in the defense of Leningrad, and it dominated the Hango area of the Finnish coast. Toward the end of the war it supported and assisted the Red Army’s drive to the Baltic, very forcibly in the East Prussia operation and at Tallinn, Estonia. Never once did the Red Navy allow enemy landings behind the Russian lines in the Baltic.
The Red Pacific Fleet played little part in the war, but it was in the North Pacific that freighters flying the Red Flag seemed to be “all over the place” to those of us who operated in the Aleutians. Their number was considerable, and they made many runs between American ports and Siberia.
The over-all accomplishments of the Russian merchant marine do not seem to be available at this time, but it probably carried out its mission in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific.
What of the future? Let us first speculate a little on the Russian merchant marine.
In the Mediterranean area Russia would like to extend her seaborne mercantile operations to take over trade that used to move in Italian bottoms. She would like to build up her own export trade out of the Black Sea in order to fulfill a balanced shipping program and avoid ballast hauls as much as possible.
In the Pacific there is need for ships to take over the former Japanese merchant trade, and Russia’s low operating costs and strike-free schedules make her a strong contender. A Viet-Nam victory in Indo China would give the Soviets access to that trade, and the Russians hope to enter the Indian market as soon as the British pull out. How that will affect the Dutch in the East Indies no man knows, but the Indonesian Republic might be disposed to deal with Moscow.
The White Sea-Baltic canal and the Volga- Don junction are probably only the beginning of a great internal network of waterways, much of which can be made navigable for ocean-going vessels. Volga and Caspian Sea tankers are already in extensive operation both into the Black Sea area and to the northward.
Baltic trade shows no reason to decline. The Baltic has always been the route of the bulk of Soviet imports just as the Black Sea is an export area.
And continued Soviet exploitation of the Northeast Passage must be expected.
Russia’s immediate merchant marine needs, from her own viewpoint, are given emphasis by the present situation with regard to the 95 Lend-Lease freighters she refuses to discuss diplomatically.
The Soviet goal for the end of the present Five-Year Plan is set at a merchant marine of twice pre-war size. That means about 3,000,000 gross tons of Russian merchant shipping on the high seas by 1950.
The future of the Red Navy is also interesting material for speculation. There is no doubt that they will have a greater Navy than ever before. On July 22, 1945, Marshal Stalin said, “The Soviet peoples wish to see their Navy still stronger and mightier. Our people will create new fighting ships and new bases for the Navy.”
There are now eleven Red Navy Colleges, distributed rather interestingly at Leningrad, Vladivostok, Baku-Zykh, Taganrog, and Viborg. More are planned.
Besides Soviet new construction, the addition of such units as the Archengelsk (ex-H.M.S. Royal Sovereign), the Murmansk (ex-U.S.S. Milwaukee), and the Admiral Makharov (ex-German cruiser Number g), not to mention nine of the newer German U-boats, has already added considerably to the strength of the Red Navy.
Russian naval forces will, of course, be distributed to the four fleets prescribed by geography. These are the Northern, Baltic, Black Sea, and Pacific. The Kremlin will determine their relative strengths and make appropriate ship assignments in accordance with its estimates of the security requirements of Russian seaborne commerce and the importance of Russian maritime interests in each of these geographical areas. It will also give considerable weight to “attempts at capitalistic encirclement and imperialistic pressure” in each of these areas.
The Black Sea is virtually a Russian lake, Turkey being her only riparian rival. And Turkey’s naval strength is minute indeed. The largest fleet of the New Red Navy will doubtless base in the Black Sea, and Russia once again bids strongly for control of the Dardenelles. This “lifeline” of export and sea power is as vital from the Russian viewpoint as Suez or Gibraltar is from the British.
The present Greek friction is no more than a contest for dominance of a flanking position that controls the Aegean exit from the Black Sea.
If an international control of the Dardenelles and the Bosporus is finally established, Russian troops, ships, and planes will certainly play a large part in its administration and “protection.” Russia wants “freedom of the Straits at all times for warships of the Black Sea Powers. Warships of the non-Black Sea Powers (would be) denied passage through the Straits except for limited tonnage in peace time.”
World War II gave Russia vastly improved access to the Baltic, and the Red Navy now dominates that entire sea.
Thus the Bear faces the Lion where the Baltic meets the North Sea, and similar vital interests clash in the Aegean. .
In the Pacific area Russia now has a landlocked sea (Okhotsk) bounded by Sakhalin Island, Siberia, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Russian Kuriles, and impotent Japan. She hopes to have Port Arthur once again, together with a “long term lease” on Dairen. Russia’s mercantile ambitions in the Pacific and the planned growth of Siberian fisheries and the Petropavlovsk terminal of the Northeast Passage, must be added to the other factors calling for naval expansion in the Pacific. The second largest fleet of the new Red Navy will be based in the Port Arthur-Vladivostok-Petropavlovsk area.
The Soviet Northern Fleet will never need any more justification than the memory of World War II and the “Murmansk Run.” The Kremlin will keep sufficient northern naval strength to allow control of those seas, because the experience of near loss of that line of seaborne communications was a terrifying one for Russia.
In support of this view of Russia’s desire for control of Arctic waters above the Scandinavian Peninsula, one may cite the interesting Soviet proposal to Norway that they “jointly defend” Spitzbergen and Bear Island. A polar map reveals that, beyond affording command of the northern approaches to Russia, Spitzbergen is only seven hours from London and twelve hours from New York by air, and enjoys open water throughout the year.
Thus we must conclude that the Soviets will become a seafaring nation. Their mercantile marine plans and prospects place them in the forefront of the maritime powers, and with a centrally controlled economy and system of production at their command it is entirely possible that the Red Navy may some day rival our own in size.
What does all this mean?
The Soviets are determined to take full advantage of Russia’s experience in two World Wars. In World War I she was cut off from her allies, and costly efforts to establish contact came to naught. In World War II she learned that a stronger Navy and easier access to the seas would have made victory much quicker and cheaper.
Psychologically, Russia is in the peculiar position of having existed for twenty years (1921-1941) in constant fear of aggression. Whether the idea was justified or not, the rulers of Russia believed that their country was continually in danger of attack by capitalistic nations which could not afford to allow the success of the socialistic state because such a success would destroy capitalism.
So today the objective of Soviet diplomacy is the maintenance of Russia’s security through a combination of internal strength, military-naval strength, and a ring of satellite buffer states.
Further, the Kremlin believes that there can be no such thing as a “localized war” in the future. Once a war gets underway it will soon embroil all the nations of the world, according to the Soviet viewpoint. Therefore Russia feels that she, as a first class power, has a right to supervise happenings all over the world in order to detect and destroy any incipient conflagration.
Because of these beliefs, the United States must face the prospect of a great Soviet sea power in the future.
This article neither attempts to point out the fallacies in Russian reasoning, nor to justify nor condemn Russia’s current maritime policy. It merely relates certain aspects of Russia’s maritime history as a background, and further delineates present plans and tries to forecast future trends.
The author acknowledges that this attempt to predict Russian naval and mercantile marine developments may be branded as presumptuous by many. Russia is a controversial subject. The author does not consider himself an expert on Russia; he is merely a junior officer who has had the good fortune to do considerable reading and studying in the last few months. His observations are offered in the hope that they will prove interesting and thought provoking.
Born in Java, Lieutenant Rairden enlisted as an apprentice seaman in 1941, and was serving on the Liscome Bay when it was sunk. Commissioned in 1944, he was in command of the LSM 318 when it was sunk by a Kamikaze at Ormoc Bay. After duty in the office of Public Information, Twelfth Naval District, and as aide to the Deputy Commander, Western Sea Frontier, he is now at Oregon State College under the Navy’s “Five Term Program.”