Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

This change of July 23, 1957, was Khrushchev’s most smashing personal victory and the most significant event in Russia’s internal history after the death of Stalin. It led Khrushchev to a position of political power more complete (except for the ambiguous position of the army) than Stalin’s had been, although it was clear that Khrushchev would never be allowed to abuse his power the way Stalin had done.

Khrushchev did not rest on his oars. During the summer of 1957 he made notable concessions to the peasants (especially the ending of compulsory deliveries from the products of their personal plots), slammed down the lid on freedom of writers and artists with a strict cultural directive of August 28th, pushed vigorously both the “virgin lands” scheme and the decentralization of industry, and worked to curtail the growing autonomy of the armed forces. On October 27th, while Zhukov was in Albania, he was removed from the Ministry of Defense and, at the same time, was dropped from the Central Committee because of unsatisfactory cooperation with the party’s political work in the army. The next few months saw a twofold advance of party influence, on a lesser scale into the army and on a greater scale, both directly and through the intermediary of the revived trade unions, into the new regional economic councils.

The final cap of Khrushchev’s rise to power came in the spring of 1958. Following the elections and assembly of the new Supreme Soviet on March 28th, Bulganin resigned as premier and was replaced by Khrushchev. In the autumn, Bulganin, who had cooperated so well with the new autocrat’s rise to power, was expelled from the Presidium and condemned as an enemy of the party. This left Khrushchev as complete ruler of the Soviet Union, head of both state and party, as Stalin had been, but resting his power more on the latter than on the former.

In the five years following Stalin’s death, military strategy in the Soviet Union underwent a major debate almost as confused as the simultaneous debate going on in the United States during Eisenhower’s Presidency. On the whole, the range of theories of war, both strategic and tactical, was much less in the Soviet Union than in the United States, and changes have been much slower. But the basic issues were the same.

The orthodox military ideas of the Russians, like everything else, had been stated by Stalin and were not allowed to change, under the impact of new ideas or of new weapons, until after his death. Thus Stalin orthodoxy regarded wa as a struggle between whole societies, each with its distinctive way of life, and judged that the outcome would be determined by what was called the “permanently operating factors.” These factors emphasized the characteristics of the society, such as industrial strength, morale, level of training, and reserve forces. Other, “accidental,” factors, such as weather, surprise, ability of individual commanders (even Napoleon), or the outcome of single battles, were regarded as of little significance. Accordingly, the Russians had no faith in lightning wars or strategic bombing or in new or, above all, “absolute” weapons. To them, victory was achieved by destruction of the enemy’s armed forces by a series of blows and conflicts over a long time, during which the permanent factors, especially the forces of industrial strength and national morale, would be decisive. They regarded attacks on the enemy’s population, cities, or industry as wasted effort, except where these could be directly linked to a battle. And each battle would be determined by a balance of forces from all branches of the defense services persistently concentrating on the enemy forces over extensive time and space.

In this outlook there was no place for the nuclear bomb, for strategic air attack, or for twenty-four-hour wars, and, accordingly, the American possession of the A-bomb was largely ignored. Protests against its use, and the desire to outlaw it, were undoubtedly based on the fact that it was an American monopoly, but the Russian objection to city-bombing or to strategic terror of the V-2 kind as ineffective and a waste of resources was undoubtedly sincere.

Soviet efforts to get the A-bomb and the H-bomb and to build up a fleet of TU-4’s were partly a desire to possess what the enemy had, partly based on a desire to deter our use of SAC against Russia, and partly derived from Stalin’s astonishment at the damage our strategic bombers had inflicted on Berlin. But none of these had much influence on Soviet military thinking.

A change in strategic thinking arose in 1954 as a consequence of a debate among Soviet military leaders over the role of surprise in military victory. The possibility of a sudden American nuclear attack on Russia from the air had to be examined. As a consequence of this dispute, the role of surprise was considerably increased, although there was no general feeling that it could be decisive or even that wars might be shortened as a result of nuclear weapons. To this day the Soviet leaders still believe that victory will go to their country after a long war of mass forces using a balance of all arms and weapons. But they now include in this balance of weapons nuclear arms at all stages and ranges. However, they do not believe, as many Americans do, that strategic bombing can be decisive. It is simply an additional arm added on to the older arsenal, and will be used in war against military objectives primarily because wars are fought with the military sectors of a society.

As a consequence of these views, the Soviet Union has no idea of being able to achieve military victory over the United States, simply because they have no method of occupying the territory of the United States at any stage in a war. They hope to defeat the United States as a society by nonviolent means: propaganda, subversion, economic collapse, and diplomatic isolation. If the rivalry with the United States comes to the violent stage, they have every hope that the Soviet Union itself will not be directly involved, but can wear the United States down by fighting through third parties, as in Korea. The Russians generally reject the idea of mutual annihilation or the total destruction of all civilization in war, and insist that any war, however severe, will leave some remnant of the Soviet Union surviving as victor on the field. They accept the possibility of limited war, in a geographical sense, but have little hope of any war limited to nonnuclear weapons, because this would be, they feel, to their advantage and, accordingly, not acceptable to us. Thus they are unlikely to use nuclear weapons first , although fully prepared to resort to them once they are used by an enemy.

One confusing consequence of the Soviet discussion of the role of surprise in war was an effort to distinguish between “preventive” and “preemptive” war. Because the generals, planners, and staff theorists were convinced that the West must be aggressive because of the “contradictions” of the capitalist economic system, they were convinced that they were in danger of a surprise attack by SAC. Their weakness in this aspect of war made it unlikely that their retaliatory strike would be of decisive significance, so they developed a theory of preemptive strike; this said that they would countersurprise our surprise attack by beating us to the punch with a nuclear attack of their own. Such a “preemptive strike” would be justified only on the basis of conclusive evidence that we were about to launch a surprise attack, since our retaliatory strike after their preemptive strike would still be very damaging to them. The problem arises, however, as to how they can ever be sure that we are about to attack them, and, failing that, how does such a “preemptive” war differ from a “preventive” war, which the Soviet abjures because it is unnecessary to them?