great men. Gorshkov single-handedly transformed the Russian navy from a marginally effective coastal force into a genuine threat to American and Western naval superiority. Much like Imperial Germany’s Großadmiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Gorshkov combined an advanced understanding of politics with a keen mind for naval strategy. He managed to remain in command of the Soviet navy under five general secretaries, a feat that no other individual of similar standing accomplished in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). While the U.S. Navy had eight chiefs of naval operations during the same time, Gorshkov’s unified vision directed the growth of the Soviet navy for more than a quarter century.1
During the 1930s, multiple purges cut Soviet naval ambitions short. World War II did not help. The USSR’s greatest adversary, Nazi Germany, abandoned its ambition of a powerful surface fleet after Karl Doenitz replaced Erich Raeder as chief of the Kriegsmarine. Thus, the Soviets had little reason to create naval forces beyond those needed to protect allied convoys that carried war matériel to the northern port of Archangel. The “Red Navy” received only 6.6 percent of the military budget in 1944, and more than 400,000 Soviet sailors were sent into battle on the Eastern Front as infantrymen.2
Immediately after the war ended, the USSR captured a number of German U-boat engineers, who helped chart a course toward a major increase in the quality of Soviet submarines. Nevertheless, the renamed Soviet navy was placed behind the army, strategic missile forces, air force, and air defense forces in service seniority rankings. Gorshkov began a decades-long campaign to convince the Politburo that naval forces were necessary for the country’s future. Drawing upon the successes of the Russian navy in the early 1700s, he argued that the new Soviet fleet would be used predominantly to support the Red Army.
The United States’s 1962 naval quarantine during the Cuban Missile Crisis helped convince Soviet leaders of the need for a stronger navy. The Soviet Union had little flexibility in responding to the U.S. blockade, a fact that narrowed its options during the crisis and forced Nikita Khrushchev into a high-risk game of nuclear brinksmanship with President Kennedy. Gorshkov used the groundwork he had laid over the previous six years as admiral of the fleet to secure greater funding for the Soviet navy. He began to create a major blue-water force.
Gorshkov addressed the difficulties of cold northern environments by developing the world’s largest and most advanced icebreaker fleet to facilitate year-round operations. The Soviet navy was also faced with multiple choke points, such as the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap and the Dardanelles, which the Western powers routinely patrolled. Geography constrained the movement of ships into the open ocean. Resupplying these ships on major patrols was no less a challenge. Unlike the U.S. Navy, the Soviet Union did not have an extensive network of bases abroad. Diplomacy, threats, luck, and an increasing presence prevailed. By the mid-1970s, the Soviet navy routinely deployed to Cuba, Africa, and the Indian Ocean.
Soviet naval strategy centered on area denial. Gorshkov wanted to prevent the United States and its allies from moving large numbers of troops and supplies to Europe to support a prolonged ground campaign. To accomplish this, Gorshkov built a fleet centered on submarines, which were supplemented with various surface combatants that carried anti-air and anti-ship missiles.3
Kynda- and Kresta-class guided-missile cruisers, launched in the mid-1960s, were both comparable to American air-defense cruisers at the time and carried a wide variety of anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine warfare combat systems. Nimble Soviet destroyers and frigates such as the Kashin- and Krivak-class surface combatants bristled with long-range anti-ship missiles and anti-submarine mines and torpedoes. By the late 1970s, the Soviets had begun work on a very short takeoff and landing aircraft carrier, similar to the United Kingdom’s Invincible-class anti-submarine warfare carriers, but with a heavier surface-to-surface armament.4
Still, Gorshkov’s pride was his submarines. According to Soviet naval doctrine, surface ships would engage air threats while undersea forces would shoulder the bulk of offensive action. By the late 1970s, the Soviet navy operated close to two hundred attack submarines, the majority of which were diesel electric.5 The Alfa-class—NATO’s designation—nuclear-powered submarine was the fastest in the world at the time of its construction in 1977. The Soviets also developed more than a dozen Charlie-class nuclear-powered submarines that carry cruise missiles, designed to stay at sea on extended patrols and attack NATO ships with their long-range missiles. The Soviet Oscar-class submarines, under construction at the end of the 1970s, were long-range, high-endurance guided-missile boats comparable to America’s.
By the early 1980s, the Soviet navy operated around 260 attack, cruiser, and guided-missile submarines, a fleet larger than the American submarine force at that time.6 Gorshkov’s navy supplemented its surface and subsurface fleet with substantial land-based naval aviation. A modified version of the Tu-95 Bear bomber was used for long-range reconnaissance. Strike aircraft included the Tu-22M Backfire bomber and Il-38 May anti-submarine warfare aircraft.7
In addition, Soviet strategic naval forces at that time included seventy ballistic-missile nuclear submarines (SSBNs) of varying types, the most advanced of which could slip undetected through the narrow passage between the Kola Peninsula and the main Russian land mass. The Yankee- and Delta-class SSBNs formed the backbone of the USSR’s sea-based deterrent force. Gorshkov assigned these boats to targets in North America, reserving European targets for the less-advanced Hotel- and Golf-class submarines.8 This choice eliminated the need for older, louder boats to transit the GIUK gap and increased the Soviet nuclear arsenal’s efficiency. The Soviet construction program of ten submarines per year between 1968 and 1977 facilitated this rapid increase in subsurface forces.
Amphibious capabilities were the one area that the Soviet navy neglected during the 1970s. Power projection was never the goal of Soviet sea control strategy; creating an extensive amphibious fleet would have been counterproductive. Nevertheless, Gorshkov initiated some modernization of amphibious capabilities, constructing three Ivan Rogov–class amphibious ships.9 These vessels could operate offshore, dispatching assault troops from a well deck, or discharge tanks and armored personnel carriers directly onto a beach in an opposed landing. Each ship could carry 520 marines and twenty-five tanks, or a maximum of fifty-three tanks and eighty armored personnel carriers. Even in amphibious capabilities, the Soviets were slowly catching up to the United States.
Gorshkov’s Soviet navy could not execute the same range of missions that Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s U.S. Navy could during the 1970s, even before the Reagan buildup. However, the Soviet navy was more than capable of challenging the free use of critical sea-lanes by U.S. forces for transport and combat. At the same time, the U.S. Navy was shrinking as World War II ships were decommissioned, with the expectation that the administration and Congress would support replacing them with modern combatants.
1972–1980—THE USSR IN AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA
As U.S. military power declined during the 1970s, America’s rivals became bolder, taking advantage of increasing volatility in the Middle East, Africa, and, later, Latin America. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and its ensuing global reset had not decreased the range of its commitments, but it had emboldened its adversaries. A resurgent Soviet navy with a true global reach allowed the USSR to exert its influence on several continents. It helped shape Soviet foreign policy throughout the last two decades of the USSR’s existence, reinforcing Moscow’s stock in the Third World and its position as a global power.
Nixon’s presidency initiated the period of rapprochement with the USSR known as détente. This policy represented a shift toward a traditional balance-of-power diplomacy, with the goal of creating a tense but stable international environment. American military power would prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its dominance into Western Europe. But the Soviets would refrain from undue provocations globally in return for a relaxation of the West’s economic barrier against the Eastern Bloc. Simultaneously, Nixon
