Soviet Military Operational Art

In Pursuit of Deep Battle

Colonel David M. Glantz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136288302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

David Glantz examines the Soviet study of war, the re-emergence of the operation level and its connection with deep battle, the evolution of the Soviet theory of operations in depth before 1941, and its refinement and application in the European theatre and the Far East between 1941 and 1945.

CHAPTER ONE
THE SOVIET STUDY OF WAR

HISTORY AND WAR

The Soviets view history as a process of development in nature and society. As a discipline, history is a science which:

studies the development of human society in all of its concreteness and diversity; it is studied with the goal of understanding the present and the prospects for the future. Marxist-Leninist historical science studies the development of human society as ‘a single natural process, regular in all its great variety and contradictions’.¹

The process often produces war. War, in its turn, is a socio-political phenomenon, characterized as a continuation of politics by violent means. Thus, “armed forces are used as the chief and decisive means for the achievement of political aims, as well as economic, diplomatic, ideological, and other means of struggle.”²

Although a natural phenomenon, war can either accelerate or retard the march toward world socialism. Given the importance of war and its potentially damaging effects in the light of recent technological changes, the Soviets approach the study of war scientifically. They strive to understand war’s operating laws and through this understanding develop operational and tactical techniques to assure Soviet victory. The Soviets study war within the framework of “military science,” one of many sciences which helps explain the historical process. By examining war within an overall scientific framework, the Soviets treat armed conflict as a violent and crucial part of their total concept of war. In brief, the Soviets study war within the context of the entire range of human activity.

From their scientific approach to military science and war the Soviets have been able to articulate and assert the validity of such theoretical precepts as “inevitable victory,” “moral superiority,” and the classification of “just and unjust wars.” These theoretical precepts offer unifying themes to the Soviet political apparatus as well as to the Soviet military and Soviet allies. More important, beneath theory and surface rhetoric there exists a toughminded, practical, and comprehensive analytical process for understanding and exploiting the dynamics of war.

By its very nature Soviet military science differs significantly from what the U.S. construes as military science. The U.S. has neither a well developed and focused body of military knowledge nor an analytical process that compares with Soviet military science. The U.S. does not systematically study and critique its past military experiences and the past military experiences of other nations. U.S. military theorists and doctrine developers tend to consider war outside the context of all other human activities. An understanding of the Soviet approach to the study of war can provide a vehicle for comparison and for analysis and critique of our own study of war.

System informs the development of Soviet military thought as well as military practice. The Soviets have created a hierarchy of terms associated with the complex range of issues extending from overall military doctrine to precise battlefield tactics (see table 1). The entire hierarchy, beginning with military doctrine, originates from, reflects, and receives official sanction from Communist Party dogma and decisions. Military science must accord with politically correct doctrine. Each term in the hierarchy has a distinct meaning, unlike in the U.S., where such terms are often used interchangeably. In addition, these meanings differ significantly from U.S. definitions. Hence, what the Soviets call doctrine is at a far higher level than what U.S. military theorists consider doctrine to be. What U.S. observers consider as doctrine the Soviets call strategy, operational art, and tactics.

TABLE 1
HIERARCHY OF TERMS

MILITARY DOCTRINE

The Soviets define military doctrine as “a nation’s officially accepted system of scientifically founded views on the nature of modem wars and the use of the armed forces in them, and also on the requirements arising from these views regarding the country and its armed forces being made ready for war.”³ Military doctrine has two aspects: social-political and military-technical. Consequently, the scope of military doctrine is consistent with the broad Soviet treatment of war in general. Doctrine, so defined, incorporates the “scientifically founded views” of military science with official party sanction, in so doing uniting the objective findings of military analysis with the objective political truths of socialism.

At the same time that the definition articulates a sound theoretical basis for doctrine, it also focuses on the practical “requirements – regarding the country and its armed forces.” This demand that theory be transformed into action highlights the utilitarian aspect of Soviet military thought as a guide for the nation in defending the homeland and socialism and, if necessary, in preparing for and conducting war. Such an emphasis on usefulness and practicality extends into the realm of military science, strategy, operational art, and tactics, and is manifested in Soviet concern for testing, evaluating and practicing precise techniques suited to each level, both in a contemporary and in an historical context. It also imparts an air of candor to Soviet analysis of the past, driven, in part, by the necessity for being scientific (truthful) and, in part, by the need to educate the Soviet officer correctly.

Soviet concern that the armed forces be “ready for war” results not only from the Soviet theoretical view concerning the place of war in man’s development, but also from the sobering remembrance of a harsh time when the Soviet Union was not ready for war. The price the Soviets paid for unpreparedness in 1941 indelibly affects Soviet resolve never again to be unprepared for conflict. That shattering experience, reinforced by conclusions reached in subsequent Soviet study on “the initial period of war” and by the Soviet belief in laws of war themselves, dictates that war must be prepared for by:

– insuring the Soviet Union has superior forces at the start of the war;

– insuring that the potential war capabilities of the homefront are always maximized for the support of war;

– insuring that the Communist Party maintains complete political control;

– insuring the Soviet people express views consistent with Party political and military policies.

The broad Soviet definition of doctrine differs sharply from the U.S. definition of a doctrine enunciated in Joint Chiefs of Staff Publications, No.1, which describes it as “fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their action in support of national objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgement in application.” A U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command definition comes closer to actual U.S. usage of the term by stating that doctrine is:

what is written, approved by appropriate authority, and published concerning the conduct of military affairs. Doctrine generally describes how the army fights tactically, thus, what we call doctrine falls into the Soviet categories of operational art and tactics.

MILITARY SCIENCE

Within the context of military doctrine, the Soviets define military science as “a system of knowledge concerning the nature and laws of war; the preparation of the armed forces and nation for war, and the means of conducting war.” Specifically,

military science investigates the laws of war, which reflect the dependence of the course and outcome of war on the politics, economics, and the correlation of morale-political, scientific technical, and military capabilities of the warring sides, as well as the main processes of preparing and conducting war, depending on its scale, the composition of the participants and the means of armed conflict … The basic subject of the investigation is armed conflict in war.⁴

Thus, military science is a comprehensive field embracing, in addition to the preparation and conduct of war, such peacetime activities as: organization; military education and training; development of a military economy; and the study of military experience (history). This definition clearly distinguishes between war (voina), which includes economic, diplomatic, ideological, scientific-technical and other forms of struggle, and armed conflict (vooruzhennaia bor’ba), which is struggle on the battlefield. The political leadership of the state manages war while the military leadership plays a more significant role in the conduct of armed conflict.

Just as certain scientifically derived laws apply to the conduct of war, so also do laws govern the course and outcome of armed conflict. These laws derive from objective analysis of experience (military history) and, although they tend to transcend time, they evolve in consonance with changing political, morale, economic and technological conditions. While the general laws of war have changed only slightly in the past twenty years, technological changes have made the laws of armed conflict more volatile and less certain. Earlier Soviet works cite among the laws of armed conflict such dictums as:

• – methods and forms of armed conflict depend on the material basis of the battle and operations;

– any battle or operation at a given moment of its development takes shape in favor of that opposing side whose troops possess the greater combat power in comparison with the enemy.⁵

Although these laws probably remain valid, more recent authoritative Soviet works hesitate to articulate distinct laws of armed conflict and instead refer to the more general laws of war, which they cite as follows:

– the dependence of war on its political aims;

– the dependence of the course and outcome of war on the correlation of economic forces of the struggling states (coalitions);

– the dependence of the course and outcome of war on the correlation of the scientific potential of opposing sides;

– the dependence of the course and outcome of war on the correlation of moral-political forces and capabilities of the struggling states (coalitions);

– the dependence of the course and outcome of war on the correlation of military forces (potentials) of the contending sides.⁶

These laws serve several important purposes. As laws, they must be foremost in the commander’s mind when he formulates plans and evaluates operational alternatives. In addition, they provide general guidance throughout the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war, thus providing a focus and unity of thought and practice absent in western military thought. Finally, adherence to objective laws of war produces concrete requirements for force structuring and armament development. These requirements, justified by the materialist aspect of Marxist philosophy and by objective analysis, are absolute and must be met, lest the scientific basis of the system itself be challenged. This imperative manifests itself in the size and complexity of the Soviet force structure and in the seemingly endless process of weapons procurement and fielding.

MILITARY ART

Military art as the main component of military science is concerned with “die theory and practice of preparing and conducting military operations on the land, at sea, and in the air.”⁷ The growing complexity of war in the twentieth century has dictated the necessity for further refinement of terminology describing the levels and scope of military art. Thus, the Soviets maintain that military art includes the closely interrelated fields of strategy, operational art, and tactics. Each field describes a distinct level of warfare measured against such standards as mission, scale, scope, and duration.

The basic initial tenets of military art:

are expressed in its principles which apply in common to strategic-, operational-, and tactical-scale military operations, inasmuch as within them is found an expression of the practical use of the objective laws of war.

Moreover, “the state of military art depends on the levels of the development of production and the means of armed conflict, as well as the nature of the social structure.” Finally, “the historical and national characteristics of a country, its geographical conditions and other factors influence the development of military art.”⁸ Military historical experience provides a context for military art by generalizing past military experience and by serving as another source for the development of military science.

A central feature of Soviet military art embraces basic principles which the Soviets define as “the basic tenets, reflecting the objective existing normality of armed conflict. The preparation and conduct of wars, operations, and battles conform to them.” Soviet military science, assisted by the dialectic, discovers the nature of these principles, confirms their scientific basis, and shows how they relate to the laws of war. Confirming the evolutionary nature of the principles, the Soviets maintain they “have a historical nature; some of them lose their importance, others operate over a long period and take on new meanings, while still other new principles of military ...