The Soviet Military Potential for Surprise Attack: Surprise, Superiority and Time

Abstract

Irreverent though it may seem, perhaps the most purposeful way to embark upon this investigation is through a conundrum all too reminiscent of juvenile party games: when is a surprise not a surprise?¹ Such whimsy, however, speedily gives way to a reality which is surpassing grim, precisely because this is a matter of life and death for the Soviet Union (and ourselves, for that matter). Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the spectre of ‘surprise attack’ haunts the Soviet mind, having dominated Soviet thinking for more than three decades, and shows little sign of abating with the passage of time. Much, though not all, can be explained by the massive trauma brought on by the devastating German surprise attack loosed upon the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, an attack which brought the Soviet system to the brink of catastrophe and from which recovery was agonising almost beyond belief; delineating this brush with extinction, apportioning blame and lauding recovery, furnishing alibis — even to the point of insisting that this ‘surprise’ was no ‘surprise’ — has occupied many years and produced some involved commentaries, as we shall see shortly. Meanwhile, by way of recent elaboration on this theme, Army General (now Marshal) V. Kulikov, writing at the time in his capacity as Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces, insisted that ‘the most important consideration’ in relation to any future conflict was to ‘oppose an attempted enemy surprise attack’ not merely by defensive mechanisms but by utilising the combat readiness of the Soviet forces to parry an attack under any conditions and to encompass the decisive defeat of the enemy.