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By Captain William H. J. Manthorpe, U.S. Navy (Retired)
^plaining the Threat
As the Soviet military restructures its capabilities and redefines its strategy to comply with the new defensive doctrine ln a time of economic stringency, one of its biggest problems is redefining the threat and explaining the need for armed forces to skeptics. This difficulty is illustrated in the two April issues of New Times magazine which published a long, "'ide-ranging interview conducted by Several antagonistic journalists with Mar- foal of the Soviet Union, Sergey F. Akhromeyev, former Chief of the General Staff and currently a senior military advisor to the Soviet political leadership, fo the face of hard, probing, often disingenuous questions and in response to fong statements of opposing positions by foe journalists, Marshal Akhromeyev was required to make the official Soviet view °f the threat quite clear.
The interviewer began by declaring: “It seems to me that the main thing is to answer the question: Does a military threat exist for the Soviet Union today? If yes, then from where does it originate? What is the size, nature, and direction of the threat? All remaining questions and answers, including military structural development are derivative.”
Marshal Akhromeyev responded:
“Today a military threat does exist for the Soviet Union. It primarily originates from the United States and NATO. But, today, this threat is different and is not the same one that it used to be. Three or four years ago this was a direct threat of war. Today, there is none. The military threat and tension have diminished significantly. Normal relations are being established between countries. But today you could not call United States policy with regard to the Soviet Union simple. It interweaves the aspiration to find mutual understanding and to even establish cooperation with the Soviet Union with pressure on us using various techniques, including military force. That is the threat.”
Marshal Akhromeyev then described four reasons why the Soviet Union needs armed forces:
- “The NATO bloc military organization has survived.”
- “The United States has multiple superiority over us in naval forces and does not want to reduce them.”
- “Having surrounded the Soviet Union 40 years ago with its military and naval bases, the United States still maintains those bases now.”
- “The U.S.S.R. has state interests which do not coincide with the interests of other countries.”
Another interviewer asked: “What can present a military threat for a nuclear superpower like the Soviet Union? As long as nuclear weapons exist and the United States can destroy the Soviet Union in 30 minutes and vice versa, the military threat will be deterred.”
Marshal Akhromeyev pointed out that: “But today nuclear weapons do not create a reliable guarantee of protection from possible aggression or protection of state interests. . . . Under certain conditions nuclear weapons have turned out to be useless. Conventional armed forces and conventional weapons have to be employed.”
Unsatisfied or uncomprehending, the interviewers persisted: “Still, how are they applying pressure against the Soviet Union? Is it possible to cite an example for the sake of clarity?”
To this Marshal Akhromeyev retorted: “I have cited specific examples of pressure. Why should I repeat them? . . . For some reason you constantly leave out naval forces. This is a fact. No one wants to talk demonstratively with us about a reduction. ... In your opinion is this not pressure?”
The interviewer cleverly, but naively, asked:
“Say that they have 10, 20, or 30 aircraft carriers. How have those aircraft carriers compelled us to sell land to peasants? Or to implement the privatization of industry? Or forced us to become involved in the stupidist war with the green snake [alcoholism]? What is the link here?”
Marshal Akhromeyev responded:
“With regard to U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, I can say: They are the most dangerous weapon for the Soviet Union that is in the hands of the United States.”
“As for the link of those aircraft carriers with possible actions [such as you have cited]... I cannot establish a link using my certainly limited imagination. The matter is simpler. Aircraft carriers are the U.S. military force that can arrive off the coast of the Soviet Union and create a military threat for us six to eight days after the order has been given.”
There, the questioning about the threat and the need for armed forces ended. Aircraft carriers were decisive in the war of words, just as Marshal Akhromeyev fears they may be in a real war.
Other Threats from the Sea and Beyond
It is not only the possibility of carrier battle groups striking from seaward that alarms the Soviet military. The military press has long reflected a paranoia over massive attacks by sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs).
“. . . Tactical exercises destined to go down in the modern history of the Air Defense Forces. From the coast, where antiaircraft units are permanently stationed, a screen was erected against a massive strike being inflicted at low altitudes by sea- launched cruise missiles. The Air Defense Force Units were deliberately placed under extremely complex conditions .... the targets were being launched from submarines. The sur-
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face of the water created a natural background for cruise missiles and active use was made of radioelectronic jamming and other means to reduce the targets’ vulnerability to a minimum.”
Cutting short the description of the exercise, the author changed topics:
“Today, you frequently hear it said of people in uniform that it is too costly for our impoverished state to maintain them and that they take an inordinately great deal of the overall pie. Having seen lots of pictures of the war in the Persian Gulf, some of our fellow citizens started grieving and lamenting about how far we are behind the level of U.S. professionals with their Patriot miracle complexes and other high-tech weapons.”
“But here is a curious thing. U.S. military specialists themselves do not seem to think this and are not seduced by easy victory over Scuds. Otherwise, why would they have sent several [U.S. Navy P-3] Orion reconnaissance aircraft to the region of these exercises. Some [of them] were so eager we had to call up our aircraft [in response]. However, this time we did not particularly hide from them but merely observed precautionary measures. See how the S-300 Soviet mobile antiaircraft missile [known in the West as the SA-10] works against cruise missiles!”
Preparing for the Tercentenary
Throughout 1990, as the Soviet Navy began to reemphasize its history and traditions as a replacement for political indoctrination to build morale and motivate its personnel (see Proceedings, May 1991, “The Soviet View—Changing in 1990,” pages 187-190), there were numerous mentions of the anticipated 300th anniversary of the Soviet Navy. No specific date was given, however. It was as if the date were either so well known that it did not need to be stated, or it had not yet been chosen. Indeed, there were many events in the early days of the reign of Tsar Peter the Great in the early to mid-1690s that could be considered to mark the birth of a Russian Navy.
As early as 1691, Peter had contracted for a number of Dutch shipwrights and put them to work at Peroslavl on Lake Pleshev, north of Moscow, building two small 30-gun frigates and a number of other boats. By the summer of 1692, Peter had a flotilla of 12 small ships which he used to conduct exercises on the lake.
In the summer of 1693 Peter went to Archangel, then Russia’s only seaport, some 30 miles upstream of the mouth of the Dvina River on the White Sea. There, Russia’s first seagoing warship, the 12- gun yacht St. Peter, which Peter had ordered the year before, awaited him. That summer Peter studied seamanship, sailed to the Arctic Ocean, laid the keel for a second armed yacht, and ordered a Dutch-built frigate. Clearly, the development of a Russian Navy had begun.
In the summer of 1694, Peter returned to Archangel. He launched the second armed yacht and christened her the St. Paid; he accepted the Dutch-built 44-gun frigate named the Golden Prophecy; he bestowed the ranks of admiral and vice admiral to two of his old Russian friends; and he appointed the long-time Tsarist general, the Scot Patrick Gordon, to rear admiral. Now the fleet had three ships and three admirals. To round out the needs of a navy, Peter adopted an ensign of white, red, and blue bars by shifting the order of the colors in the Dutch ensign flown by the Golden Prophecy. That banner ultimately became the flag of Russia, as distinct from the double-headed eagle standard of the Tsar.
In early 1695, Peter decided to renew Russia’s war against the Turks and their Tatar Khan allies. His purposes were to expand his empire into the fertile south Ukraine, protect his subjects from the marauding Tartars, and, equally important, gain access to the Sea of Azov and, thence, to the Black Sea. Peter’s seige of the Turk city and fort of Azov, in the estuary of the Don River above its entry into the Sea of Azov, was a failure. That was, at least in part, because he did not have a fleet in the Sea of Azov to cut off Turkish resupply of the port from the sea.
Thus, in early 1696, Peter ordered the construction of 25 armed galleys and selected Voronezh, on the Don River 300 miles south of Moscow and 500 miles north of Azov, as the shipyard site. Ships were not only built there, but in Archangel, Pereslavl, and Holland and shipped in parts to Voronezh for assembly. Peter worked at the yards himself, building the galley Principium.
In the early summer 1696, Peter and his army arrived north of Azov. His cossacks surprised the Turkish fleet beached and anchored in the river supplying the fort. Their attack forced the fleet to withdraw downstream to the safety of their seaward anchorages. That gave Peter the opportunity to move his armada of 29 ships downstream past the fort, cutting off the Turk’s resupply route and giving his force access to the sea. With their hope of reinforcement and resupply cut off, the Turks soon surrendered. Thus, the embryonic Russian Navy participated in its first victorious campaign. Some past Soviet naval writers have used these events to mark the beginning of the Soviet Navy’s “heroic traditions.”
Peter permitted the Turks to board their ships and move well south in the Sea of Azov. At that point, controlling the Don estuary and the north coast of the Sea ot Azov, Peter needed a port for his fleet. After several days of cruising, he selected a point of land called Taganrog for a fob and the leeward side of it for a harbor to shelter his ships, establishing the fit81 Russian naval base.
After his return to Moscow in October 1696, Peter began issuing decrees for the colonization of Azov, the construction ot a port at Taganrog, and the expansion ot the shipyards at Voronezh. He was determined to build a seagoing navy capable of defeating the Turkish Azov flotilla' forcing the Kerch Straits, and sailing the Black Sea.
It is, apparently, from those decrees ot Peter that the Soviet Navy has decided to mark its birth. On 13 June, in a Red StOr article entitled, “Bringing It to Our Contemporaries and Preserving It for Our Decendents: Approaching the 300th Anniversary of the Navy,” Admiral ot Fleet, Ivan M. Kapitanets, First Deputy Commander in Chief of the Soviet Navy clarified that:
“The date 30 October 1996 is acknowledged by most researchers to be the 300th anniversary of the fatherland’s Navy. Without resorting to numerous historical illustrations, 1 will say that ... the acme of naval policy, its turning point, was, without a doubt, the efforts of Peter the Great to bring the state back to the shores of the Baltic and Black Seas.”
The admiral announced that:
“On 18 November 1989, by order of the Commander in Chief of the Navy, a jubilee commission was set up to prepare for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the fatherland’s fleet. I was instructed to lead it. Similar structures were set up in 1990 m the various fleets. ...”
“By the jubilee date, it is proposed to have in good order the existing monuments and to establish new monuments and memorial tokens in honor of outstanding events and historical individuals, to reconstruct or restore individual monuments . . . tidy up
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