Abstract
Stalin’s death in March 1953 undoubtedly had a liberating effect on Soviet strategic thought. Under Stalin, the military had been permitted little more than the incantation of official dogmas concerning Permanently Operating Factors and the selective study of their own wartime campaigns to find instances of these factors at work. All things that were difficult to explain in the past, which might undermine complacency in the present or lead to loss of confidence in the future, were ignored.
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Notes
- 1.
Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union, pp. 37–45.
- 2.
‘Politics and Doctrinal Difference Among the Soviet Military Elite’, Radio Propaganda Report, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 27 July 1955. Can be accessed at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1955-07-27.pdf.
- 3.
Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union, p. 186.
- 4.
The article was William Lawrence, ‘How Hellish is the H-Bomb’, Look Magazine, 21 April 1953. Malenkov’s comments were reported in Harrison Salisbury, ‘Malenkov says both sides would lose in atomic war’, New York Times, 14 March 1954. Cited in Campbell Craig & Sergey Radchenko, ‘MAD, not Marx: Khrushchev and the nuclear revolution’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 41: 1–2 (2018), 208–23.
- 5.
Vladislav M. Zubok and Hope M. Harrison, ‘The Nuclear Education of Nikita Khrushchev’ in John Lewis Gaddis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg (eds). Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 141–70.
- 6.
Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 1996), p. 164.
- 7.
Anastas Mikoyan’s view, presented on the same day as Malenkov’s speech, reflected the ‘party line’. Cited in Zubok and Harrison, p. 144.
- 8.
Yuri Smirnov and Vladislav Zubok, ‘Nuclear Weapons after Stalin’s Death: Moscow Enters the H-Bomb Age’, Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War International History Project, Issue #4, Fall 1994.
- 9.
Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 339.
- 10.
A number of relevant statements can be found in: ‘Statements Concerning Casualties Resulting from General Nuclear War’, Office of Current Intelligence, CIA, September 23, 1963. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79T00429A001200030023-9.pdf. An additional catalogue and analysis of Khrushchev’s statements on nuclear war can be found in: ‘Khrushchev on Nuclear Strategy’, CAESAR XI-60, CIA, January 19, 1960, and can be located at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1960-01-19.pdf.
- 11.
Zubok and Harrison, p. 145; Zubok and Pleshakov, p. 167, 188. Available at: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/CWIHP_Bulletin_4.pdf.
- 12.
“The ‘Great Debate’: Soviet Views on Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control”, CIA, August 1975. This document can be found at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00608R000700080015-2.pdf.
- 13.
Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union, pp. 186, 187.
- 14.
‘Soviet Strategic Doctrine for the Start of War’, CAESAR XVI-62, Office of Current Intelligence, CIA, 3 July 1962. Available at: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/1700321/1962-07-03.pdf (Accessed May 28, 2015).
- 15.
Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union, pp. 216–20.
- 16.
Cited in Garthoff, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age, pp. 222–3.
- 17.
Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union, pp. 216–20.
- 18.
Jennifer G. Mathers (1998) ‘“A fly in outer space”: Soviet ballistic missile defence during the Khrushchev period’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 21: 2, p. 43.
- 19.
John G. Hines, ‘Interview with Gen.-Col. (Ret.) Adrian A. Danilevich’ in Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985: Vol. II, Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence (McLean, VA: BDM Federal, 22 September 1995), pp. 38–9 Available at: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/vol%20iI%20Danilevich.pdf.
- 20.
Hines, pp. 54–5.
- 21.
See Craig and Radchenko, 215–8.
- 22.
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006).
- 23.
Sergei N. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University 2000), pp. 209–12.
- 24.
Khrushchev Memo to CC CPSU Presidium, 8 December 1959 P. 2909. Can be found in: Vladislav M. Zubok, “Khrushchev’s 1960 Troop Cut: New Russian Evidence,” The Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No. 8–9, Winter 1996/1997, pp. 416–20: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/CWIHP_Bulletin_8-9.pdf.
- 25.
Cited in Zubok and Pleshakov, p. 192.
- 26.
See Arnold Horelick and Myron Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
- 27.
Jeremi Suri, ‘America’s Search for a Technological Solution to the Arms Race: The Surprise Attack Conference of 1958 and a Challenge for “Eisenhower Revisionists”’, Diplomatic History, 21: 3 (Summer 1997).
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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Soviet Strategy After Stalin. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_12
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