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OCR for page 42
TERMS AND CONCEPTS
Evolution of the Concept of "Victory"
in Soviet Military-Political Thought
After the Second World War
ANDREY A. KOKOSHIN, VIKTOR M. SERGEEV,
AND VA-DIM L. TSYMBURSKY
The notion of "victory" as "the achievement of an established goal
in military conflict against the opposition of the other side," is one of
the oldest concepts in military-political thought. The semantic structure of
the concept can be illustrated as two intersecting axes: one axis reflects a
conception of a final point, at which it is necessary to finish the war in a
manner considered "victorious"; the second axis symbolizes the notion of
what must be done in order to achieve superiority over the enemy. The
choice running the length of the first axis is marked as one of opposites:
"the unconditional surrender of the enemy" versus "the readiness of the
enemy to make concessions." The choice symbolized by the second axis
is also a unification of opposites: "the maximum application of one's own
forces and capabilities in battles" versus `'the maximum exploitation of the
enemy's vulnerabilities." The first axis describes the goal-oriented aspect of
the concept of victory; the second is concerned with the technical aspect.
Correspondingly, the "phraseology of victory" must be embodied in the
context, reflecting some representation of the status of the victor and the
defeated, as well as the sources of superiority and weakness of the two
sides when they were fighting.
At the same time, the phraseology of victory, as we have used it, has
always carried a pragmatic orientation: victory has been "predicted," it
has been "promised," and so on. Authors analyzing the evolution of this
concept in Soviet military-political thought are coming to the conclusion
that there is a pragmatic transformation in its use which can be linked to
changes in the relationship between the two more profound concepts of
"superiority" and "rightness."
Thus, after the Second World War, victory was interpreted in Soviet
military doctrine in terms of the Soviet experience in that war, based as it
42
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TERMS AND CONCEPTS
43
was on the full destruction of the opposition, the achievement of maximum
destruction of its actual forces and capabilities, and the eventual capitulation
of the opposition. The pragmatic nature of this concept underwent some
cardinal changes from the middle 1940s through the end of the 1980s, which
has contributed to a change in the meaning of the concept. The successive
phases of this evolution in meaning are examined below.
The first stage primarily encompasses 1945-1955, when the phraseology
of victory in the USSR was formulated on the basis of Stalin's so-called
"permanently operating factors of war." In the first decade -of confrontation
with the United States, which possessed superiority in nuclear weapons,
foremost among these factors were the stability of the rear and the spirit
of morale as determined by the Soviet regime, the patriotism of Soviet
citizens, and the organizational work of the Party; other factors, such as the
quality of the divisions, the value of the full use of weapons, and the art
of organization within the armed forces, also held positions of importance.
The certainty of the United States's use of atomic weapons in any future
war, along the lines of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was
examined as a variation of the blitzkrieg strategy, emphasizing the short-
term advantages of surprise attack. According to Stalin, if the aggressor
began to win as a result of this transitory advantage, that advantage would
be liquidated in the course of the war by virtue of the permanently operating
factors and the manifestation of the historical advantage of socialism and
the inevitability of its victory, such as the victory over Nazi Germany.
During the second stage, which stretched from 1955 through 1967,
the sharp growth of atomic potential on both sides, and especially the
achievements of the USSR in missile technology, prompted a serious re-
examination of the significance of the surprise factor. The initial stage of
war, during which this factor operates, was turning out to be the primary
stage, determining the outcome of the war and denying any possibility of
the manifestation of the permanently operating factors. During this time
it was believed, as before, that victory in war would result in the complete
annihilation of imperialism, although victory was now conditional not on
the action of immutable laws of history in and of themselves, but upon
the superiority of the USSR in a different sense, as based upon nuclear
weaponry. In the place of predictable victory, which was based on the ad-
vantages of socialism and the "laws of history," there now came the promise
of victory, assured in the eyes of commanders and military servicemen by
the technical and geostrategic advantages of the USSR, which granted the
feasibility of victory even in a total nuclear war. This particular stage in the
evolution of the Soviet concept of victory is illustrated in the speeches and
publications of the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Rodion Malinovsky,
and Military Strategy, under the editorship of Marshal V.D. Sokolovsky. The
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44
SOV7ET-AMERICAN DIALOGUE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
foundation of this new phraseology was the practical formula, "our histori-
cal right combines successfully with our material superiority." At the same
time, such a formula, illuminating the causal connections between right
and superiority, established the first step on the path to their conceptual
differentiation.
Simultaneously, the ideology of deterrence was being formed in the
publications of Nikita Khrushchev and Malinovsky. The nature of thinking
about victory quickly split onto a second plane, in which preparation for
total war was thinkable more than anything else as a means of preventing
war in general.
The third stage in the evolution of the phraseology of victory, from
the end of the 1960s through the middle of the 1980s, was characterized
by action that turned away from the concept of "material-technical (and
geostrategic) superiority as such." At the beginning of this stage, Minister
Andrey ~ Grechko returned to a discussion of the qualities inherent
in socialism that served as a constant source of strength for the Soviet
Army. However, the phrasing this time was different: instead of predicting
inevitable victory, it took a moralistic tone, introducing a striving for victory,
placing victory as the duty of military servicemen, both commander and
soldier. In the overwhelming majority of contexts in the third stage, victory
was discussed not on the strategic level, but on the tactical and operational
levels, directly and simply understandable by the ordinary serviceman. For
these lower levels of military service, the slogan "moral right as a guarantee
of superiority of battle" was reestablished.
As far as the strategic level is concerned, from the mid-1970s through
the mid-1980s two different approaches were inevitable. On the one hand,
the publications of the Chief of the General Staff of the Supreme Soviet
of the USSR, Nikolai Ogarkov, launched ideas that began a discussion of
the USSR's lack of military superiority (and any aspiration to it) and of the
advantages flowing from the nature of socialism that might ensure victory
in war. But insofar as the idea of superiority in any sense was associated
with the concept of victory, there arose a practical contradiction between
the denial of superiority and the guaranteed advantages of socialism in war;
this developed into a contradiction in meaning between lack of superiority
and victory.
Another set of phrases was used by Minister of Defense Dmitri F. Usti-
nov, who consistently proclaimed both the USSR's lack of superiority and
any aim for victory. On the other side of such calculations, he attributed to
the United States not only a striving for superiority, but also the possibility
of aggressive action against the USSR. Such ideas were formulated in the
unique slogan, "our right is in our denial of superiority and victory." This
brought forth a new contradiction, between the "refusal to achieve victory"
OCR for page 45
TERMS AND CONCEPTS
45
on the strategic level, and the "moral orientation of war towards victory"
on the operational and tactical levels.
These serious contradictions were neutralized by the concepts of "crip-
pling" or "decisive" strikes, which since the mid-1970s have gained con-
siderable popularity in military texts and in the 1980s replaced both the
general understanding of victory and various other cliches, such as "decisive
defeat" and "crushing rout." The "secret" of the success of the formula
of "rebuff" was that these cliches treated the results of war in a basically
technical manner. They did not indicate the unconditional surrender of
the loser or the importance of securing concessions from him; instead, they
considered two variations of response: either the opposition would carry
out a significant strike in return (called a "crippling strike") or that "we
would apply all possible force for resistance" (a "decisive striker. Ulti-
mately, all of these formulas implied a solely reflexive response to the use
of force, and excluded any examination of Soviet action in a goal-oriented
sense. The strike-repulse formula placed all responsibility for the deliberate
advancement of goals in war on the other side: "They desire victory; and
all things considered, we give only a response."
By the middle of the 1980s, the phrase "the moral orientation of the
military towards victory" was basically transformed into the phraseology
"preparation to retaliate decisively against the aggressor." In practical
military terms, the purely technical formulas of "repulsion" indicated a base
line but no goals in military action comparable to the goals that existed
in politics, such as "the deterrence of the aggressor" or "the opposition's
nonachievement of superiority." This situation created disunity between
the technical and the goal-oriented aspects of victory, insofar as each
correlates with one of two conditions in the "ideology of deterrence":
namely, deterrence itself or an act of retribution if deterrence fails. It is
precisely because of this disunity that the military doctrine of the members
of the Warsaw Pact proclaims the unusual military goal of "the banning
or the nonassumption of war." This goal does not preclude carrying out
an act of retribution in the event of military action; retribution lies on
a completely different, "goal-less" plane. More than anything else, the
reign of technical definitions in military phraseology, of "the acceptance of
particular concessions" versus "unconditional surrender," has made military
thought receptive to the idea of localized military success of the type based
on a "nonaggressive defense."
So this is how the phraseology of victory has evolved from the di-
rect derivation of superiority from the notion of right to the proclaimed
inappropriateness of this conception, ultimately undermining the semantic
structure of the concept of victory itself, and placing in doubt all of its
aspects that reflect the idea of superiority over the opposition. It is in-
teresting that, although this change is related to the technical axis of the
OCR for page 46
46
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
permanently operating
