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The Soviet Military System: Doctrine, Technology and ‘Style’

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Soviet Military Power and Performance

Abstract

Present excitements over the ‘Soviet military build-up’ are considerable, to say the least, though the recognition of this phenomenon has been astonishingly tardy. The historian of Soviet military policy would insist quite properly that Soviet society had long ago embarked on a permanent military build-up, signalled by the introduction in 1928 of the first Five Year Plan: nor do Soviet accounts shy away from affirming this rationale. As for mass, the same historian would point to that traditional Russian predilection for quantitative solutions to military problems, not to mention the proclivity towards over-insurance — though the irony is that both the Imperial Russian and the Soviet military systems have over-insured against the wrong things. Nor is the business of elucidation helped by those caprices of selectivity which abound in the western press and which are designed to serve a variety of causes, be they budgetary, political or emotive: a persuasive example is the reaction of the Western press to Soviet naval programmes, whereby much of Admiral Gorshkov’s work has been done for him by our own journalistic hyperbole.

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Authors
  1. John Erickson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK

    John Erickson (Research Fellow) (Research Fellow)

  2. University of Southampton, UK

    E. J. Feuchtwanger (Reader in History) (Reader in History)

Copyright information

© 1979 John Erickson

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Cite this chapter

Erickson, J. (1979). The Soviet Military System: Doctrine, Technology and ‘Style’. In: Erickson, J., Feuchtwanger, E.J. (eds) Soviet Military Power and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03437-6_2

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