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The Soviets strongly emphasize the human element of the military equation, maintaining that the best weaponry is useless without personnel trained to the highest level of Proficiency. The Soviet Navy’s methods of training and its personnel practices and Policies, however, contrast sharply with those employed by the U. S. Navy and most other navies outside the communist bloc.
Soviet Naval Personnel: The Soviet Navy is a conscript navy. Approximately 75% of its estimated strength of 440,000 are conscripts serving two- or three-year terms. Less than 10% are estimated to be career enlisted personnel—most holding the recently created rank of warrant officer—and about 15% are officers and possibly 1% to 2%
are officer candidates.
The conscript mass of the Soviet Navy exists under conditions of abysmally low pay (even by Soviet standards); generally poor food, sanitation, and living conditions; remote duty stations; strict discipline; incessant and inescapable training demands (particularly on the long deployments so highly favored by the Soviet naval hierarchy); and total deprivation of privacy and free time. The typical conscript has a secondary school diploma and has been exposed to general, and possibly specialized, premilitary training.
The Soviets' joint-service conscription system, conducted by the Soviet military districts, is enormous, inefficient, and generally capable of only the most rudimentary sorting of personnel based on knowledge and skills. The Soviet Navy does not view formal education or intellectual capacity as a prime selection criterion in any case; rather, physical condition and political reliability are paramount.
The navy’s conscript quality control is limited by the inefficient conscription program and the competing demands of other high technology services (e.g., the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet Air Forces). There is no solid support for claims that the navy may enjoy some kind of priority in selection. Other services also have very substantial requirements for technically capable personnel.
Despite a wide range of inducements, including the possibility of promotion to warrant officer rank, conscript retention is estimated at only a few percent. The overall conditions of navy life are apparently too unattractive to be overcome by rubles, uniforms, and ranks. Most conscripts who do extend apparently enter the warrant officer program. The number of such volunteers is very small, however; the navy has, therefore, been forced to recruit candidates with no prior service directly from basic training. Although the warrant officer may be relatively skilled, Soviet Navy career petty officers do not represent the backbone of the navy as in Western navies. They are generally those who wished to extend but could not qualify for the warrant officer program. This is indicative of their low military and civilian potential.
In marked contrast to the conscript and career
enlisted groups, the small, elite Soviet Navy officer corps receives relatively high pay, good benefits and privileges, and extensive and intensive training. Most naval officers serving afloat are trained in one of the 11 five-year higher naval schools (U. S. Naval Academy equivalents). Officers for other branches of the navy (e.g., Soviet Naval Infantry, Soviet Naval Aviation, Rear Area and Supply) are trained in analogous joint-service higher military schools.
The terms and conditions of officer service in the Soviet Navy are so attractive that admission to the higher naval schools is intensely competitive, with four to six applicants competing for each opening. Service prestige is also clearly a significant factor. Despite the Soviet Navy’s traditional “step-child” position in the Soviet military hierarchy and its lackluster performance in World War 11, it enjoys high status among its sister services.
The heavy conscript reliance limits the flexibility of the Soviet Navy in designing unit manning tables and making personnel assignments. The relatively small number of career officers and enlisted personnel must be very carefully distributed. For example, high technology systems or platforms that might require large numbers of career officers and enlisted personnel will immediately exert strains elsewhere on the navy personnel system.
The semiannual conscription cycle produces a regular turnover of about 15% of the total navy strength every six months. This impacts directly on overall combat readiness since conscripts are found throughout the shore and seagoing establishments.
In order to restore combat readiness levels, conscript personnel reporting to the fleet from basic and specialist schools or directly from conscription reception points must be rapidly integrated into their units. This has been facilitated by dividing the training year into two six-month cycles, synchronized with conscription call-ups. The training syllabus for each six-month cycle is identical, beginning with individual indoctrination and familiarization and progressing through successive levels of shipboard organization to culminate in navy competitions and possibly national exercises. The need to accomplish all this in a six-month period places a finite limitation on what can be expected of the crews of most vessels and dictates that exercises be largely canned rote evaluations that can be mastered in a relatively short time.
The Ideological Basis of Navy Combat Training: Training in the Soviet Navy—as in all the Soviet armed forces—is permeated with political ideology- The doctrine governing naval operational art is derived from Soviet military science, which is, in turn, based on Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Marxist- Leninist thought recognizes immutable “laws” of society as well as immutable “laws” of warfare, developed from basic ideological writings, analyses of current and historical operational experience (particularly from World War II), and the results of tests, exercises, and studies.
An essential part of Soviet naval training is intensive political indoctrination for all ranks. For conscripts and career enlisted, the indoctrination mainly involves patriotic lectures on World War 11. emphasizing points relevant to current tactical training; current events in a Marxist perspective; and updates on Party activities. For officers, however, this indoctrination is intended to teach the application of Marxist-Leninist methods of military-scientific cognition to the analysis, categorization, and development of standard school solutions for any given combat situation. This direct relationship between military science and political ideology provides the basis for the unity of views that is so much a concern of the Soviet military hierarchy. Given a specific tactical, operational, or strategic situation, a group of Soviet officers should theoretically be expected to analyze it in the same fashion and arrive at the same solutions independently.
Such a unified view, if based on objective analysis and not carried to the extreme, can facilitate planning and coordination, particularly in actual combat situations in which communications with friendly forces may be reduced. On the other hand, when such a comprehensive, detailed (and obviously artificial) political world view is allowed to determine the nature and scope of military thinking, desirable innovations or signs of initiative will be ruthlessly suppressed.
The importance of political considerations ex-
tends far beyond the belief in immutable laws of Warfare derived from Marxist-Leninisl philosophy and the influence of such beliefs upon military de- dsion-making. It is clearly reflected in the organization for political administration, which extends from the Main Political Administration for the army and navy at the Ministry of Defense level, through Main Political Directorate of the navy and poetical directorates at fleet and formation levels, to Political officers in individual units. This organiza- hon plays an important role in shipboard organization, personnel control mechanisms, and training faothods.
Military-Political Control Mechanisms: The So- V|et Navy employs a system of personnel control c°nsisting of a military structure and multiple redundant political organizational structures, with the Political structures assuming many prerogatives of t^e military.
Examining the military hierarchy first, it is important to reemphasize the role of formation commanders and their staffs in personally training their subordinate ship commanders and ship department heads. The average Soviet commanding officer (CO) is often young and may lack many critical skills (e.g., navigation). Reporting on board his first command. which is likely a ship on which he has already served, he begins a lengthy scries of qualification steps to prepare him for independent command. These steps include passing tests and making voyages of increasing length and complexity under the direct observation of embarked formation COs, senior officers on board, staff specialists, or under the supervision of a CO of an accompanying unit. Even when qualified for totally independent command, a Soviet CO remains under tight control from shore; he is never free from the constraints of his orders, the "controlling documents," and the requirement to clear all decisions with his executive (XO) and political officers.
Formation flag or staff specialists, specializing in the various shipboard departments and services embark on board individual units to personally train
Soccer is obviously a favorite pastime among these seamen, below; but even in sports, the Soviets must measure up to perfontmnee standards. Soviet women are active, too, in their country’s tmvy. Shown here are radiotelegraphists.
Far right, their training is much different from ours, as are their policies and procedures; which may explain why they seem as fascinated by us as we are by them.
department/service heads, directly evaluating operations and personnel and making changes on their own cognizance without the formality of obtaining the CO’s approval. Staff specialists also train and test ship COs and XOs at the various steps in the qualification ladder for independent command. A staff specialist has great power: his refusal to approve a department's functioning can result in postponement of a sailing date.
A Soviet ship's company is organized according to the combat department/technical service scheme set forth in Soviet Navy shipboard regulations (see Table 1). The departments are further subdivided
into divisions (for engineering and gunnery only), groups (turrets or batteries), teams, and squads. This organizational structure is the basis for a minutely detailed description of the duties of every personnel billet in the ship's company from CO to conscript. The billet system is overtly expressed by three-part numbers stamped on cloth tapes which are worn by all enlisted personnel on the left breast of theirjump- ers. These numbers give: (1) the departmental identification of the wearer, (2) identification of his battle station, and (3) identification of his watch. This system permits an officer to determine instantly whether a given enlisted man is in his proper place at any given time.
But military hierarchy is not the only command and control apparatus on board a Soviet warship: command and control in the Soviet military is political as well as military. The ship's political officer, though technically surbordinate to the CO, reports independently through the Main Political Administration of the navy to the Ministry of Defense Main Political Administration. The political officer controls three mass political organizations, paralleling the military organization at every level. These include: the shipboard Communist Party, People's Control Committee, and Komsomol (Young Communist) organizations. In addition, the State Security Committee (KGB) maintains covert representation on board all vessels and may be overtly represented on some. The political organizations are so important that provision is made for specified numbers of Komsomol and/or Party members at each battle station when the manning structure for a new ship class is initially drawn up at the Main Political Directorate of the Navy. These organizations have assumed a large number of the command, discipline, security, motivation, and morale functions and prerogatives of officers and petty officers in Western navies. Disciplinary or motivational problems, ineptitude. or any unusual behavior will be taken in hand by the Komsomol or Party organization, initially in a friendly, but later in a "frank, objective” (i.e., hostile) tone if the problem persists. Activities deemed to be criminal under Soviet law and navy regulations are nominally the specific concern of the People's
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Control Committees, although the KGB is obviously involved in security problems. A large element of leadership, as defined by the Soviet Navy, involves accommodating the requirements of the parallel mil- ttary and political structures.
This all -pervasive political organization permits fine-grained surveillance of the entire ship’s comPany; provides for faster and more complete personnel mobilization for any task: provides a check °n commanders who might value military skills above Political indoctrination; and provides a direct line tor transmitting the will of the Party down to the lowest conscript on board. Finally, it welds the crew lr|to that hallowed entity of communist ideology: a collective, i.e., an organization in which associates based on personal friendship or common tech- n'cal interests are totally subordinated to enforced associations based on political and military labor organization.
Methods and Goals of Training: Many terms characterize Soviet naval training, some following di- 1 ectly from aspects already discussed.
► Specialization: Enlisted and officer training in the Soviet Navy is much more specialized than that of Western navies. Conscripts learn a limited set of rudimentary operations with one or a few related pieces of equipment. Officers begin specialization at the end of their second year in commissioning school. Unless they attain command, they will remain in the specialty assigned at the precommissioning stage until they retire. Enlisted cross-training is neither common nor extensive, particularly on high technology units where specialties are numerous and may not be closely related. Officers, however, must learn to perform the tasks of their enlisted subordinates, since they personally conduct much of the training and maintenance on the equipment for which they are responsible.
Whether ashore or at sea, Soviet naval personnel are required to focus very narrowly on their specialty by the very content and nature of their training and by the corpus of “controlling documents.”
► Automated responses: Soviet naval training essentially produces automatic behavior. Ivan P. Pavlov, the Soviet physiologist whose work on conditioned responses won him world renown, was one of the two main figures of Soviet educational psychology. As a result, the Soviet national approach to education and training (both military and civilian) emphasizes developing automatic responses, devoting less attention to developing intellectual comprehension of the reasons for such responses. Thus, an officer is trained to observe military situations, categorize them according to an internalized classification scheme, and instinctively produce a correct solution. For the conscript, the task as set forth by Soviet Navy regulations is even simpler: He must “study naval affairs assiduously and his specialty conscientiously, memorize everything taught him by
Table I Combat Departments and Technical Services of a Soviet Ship's Company Combat Departments Duties
Navigation | Navigation, navigation sensors |
Missiles/Gunnery | Weapons, munitions, launchers, no associated sensors |
Mine/Torpedo | Weapons, handling and launch mechanisms, no associated sensors |
Communications | Internal and external communications |
Engineering | Propulsion, damage control, watch setting |
Aviation | Communications and logistic support for aviation, no flying or main- |
| tenance personnel |
Command and Control | Fighting the ship |
Technical Services | Doties |
Radiotechnical | Sensors, electronic support measures, and electronic countermeasures |
Chemical | Chemical-biological-radiological defense and probably offense |
Supply | Self-explanatory |
Medical | Self-explanatory |
his superiors assiduously and firmly and assiduously perform the military movements shown him, in an exemplary fashion.” In other words, he must be able to regurgitate memorized information and imitate all physical actions involved in the performance of his job.
►Norms: Norms refer to centrally developed performance standards—performance in sports, education, training, or labor of any type. Norms dominate Soviet life; they are the yardstick against which most military or civilian behavior is measured. In some of the ubiquitous “controlling documents” of the Soviet Navy, for example, there are norms for undressing and dressing, coming to battle stations, donning chemical-biological-radiological suits and submarine escape devices, loading and firing all weapons, detecting and classifying targets on all sensors, and for engaging targets. Flight norms for naval aviators are extremely exacting. Open literature refers constantly to the need for absolutely undeviating adherence to flight procedures and standards. Norms are developed for both day and night situations; a common training goal is to achieve daytime norms under conditions of darkness. Although sacred, norms are not immutable: they are subject to revision at any time. Suggestions for revision originating from lower level units are referred for approval to staff specialists at higher echelons.
► Socialist competition: Norms are directly linked to socialist competition, the prime official motivational device for achievement in Soviet society. Each training year is initiated by individual pledges of “socialist obligation” (personal promises to make specific quantities of fuel or scrap metal, etc.). These pledges are then combined at succeeding levels of ship or unit organizations so that each level of shipboard or unit organization and each ship or unit have collective obligations for the training year. Battle stations, teams, watches, and ships or units then compete against each other for the honors of being the first to achieve obligations, to surpass them, or to surpass them by a given amount. The political officer plays the dominant role in organizing and directing the competition and disseminating the results. Socialist competition is a useful device for ensuring maximum crew effort. No achievement need ever be considered satisfactory, because other battle stations, groups, or ships are always threatening to surpass the norms that one's own battle station, group, or ship has attained. Thus, constant demands for improvement can be made. Although there are units that fail to achieve their obligations as well as those that find ways to “gundeck" to avoid them, socialist competition is clearly a powerful device for training and morale, particularly in ships on deployment, where it aids in reducing boredom. On the other hand, it could be devestating to unit morale and effectiveness if improperly employed.
Conclusions: The Soviet Navy has been cleverly organized by military and political means to permit an almost inhuman degree of control over its personnel, the majority of whom are conscripts serving under conditions that are marginal even by Soviet standards. These control mechanisms are continually exercised and honed in repetitious semiannual and annual training cycles linked to the conscription cycle. The Soviet Navy is a service in which the lines between naval professionalism and communism are blurred. Political considerations permeate the entire naval hierarchy.
The information available indicates that the Soviet Navy considers itself an elite service, despite conscript hardships, and will fight quite ably and bravely. Given its incessant training and numerical strength, its organization and use of massed firepower, and the typical Soviet predilections for planning, it should be considered a spoiler, with the capability of bleeding white an opposing naval force lacking in depth.
On the other hand, there are disadvantages to the Soviet approach. For example, inordinate specialization may be a serious weakness; personnel casualties could seriously reduce the effectiveness of a unit, as could the lack of on-board repair capability. The emphasis on by-the-book, politically influenced tactical and specialist training produces personnel with a reduced capability for creativity in the solution of military problems. This inability to cope with the unexpected or innovative was noted by the Germans in World War II and perseveres in the present, if Swedish accounts of the chaotic response to the 1975 Storozhevoy mutiny are correct. Finally, the extraordinary degree of centralized control combined with by-the-book tendencies will undoubtedly have an impact on the actions of Soviet naval commanders in combat situations where the accustomed constant contact with higher echelons is interrupted and enemy behavior does not follow the Soviet “laws of war.” These weaknesses are serious; they are products of the Soviet communist system and cannot be changed without requiring the most basic changes in that system, a solution which no Soviet regime could seriously contemplate. A numerically strong U. S. Navy employing the most up-to-date technology in truly creative fashion would certainly be more than equal to the Soviet challenge.
Dr. Suggs was an enlisted marine during the Korean War and subsequently received a direct Naval Reserve commission. He completed undergraduate and graduate school at Columbia University. receiving his Ph.D. in 1959. He has held a variety of research and management posts in government, military, and private defense research and development organizations and is currently an analyst in the Naval Intelligence Command.