15 
integration of facilities has been and is encouraged: it is, for example, 
known that Leningrad’s admiralty and Baltic yards have ongoing exten- 
sive shipbuilding programs of both civilian and military character, 
as the city’s Sudomekh complex probably does. 
. It is believed that the day-to-day coordination of military and civilian 
tasks is conducted through special committees within the responsible 
ministries, committees which in the civilian ministries count naval 
representatives among their members, and which rely heavily on the 
automatic control system (ACS) as a conduit both for collation of 
data and for dissemination of decisions. But there is little doubt that 
civilian concerns predominate within these ministries. There must 
therefore be recourse to higher authority in cases where military 
requirements burst the seams of established coordinating procedures.”’ 
(Jacobsen, pp. 258-259.) 
5. How do Soviet interests on ocean affairs influence its policy 
on the law of the sea and its conduct of diplomacy? 
“Ideologically and rhetorically the Soviet spokesmen in the United 
Nations’ law of the sea debate incline towards “the progressive 
development” of international law. Substantively, however, they 
promote the classical law of the sea, guarding the traditional system 
of ocean order more vigilantly than the delegations of the 
‘conservative’ powers, the United States, Great Britain, and France. 
Despite the dilemmas posed by the U.S.S.R.’s commitment to Marxist 
communism, the nature of its maritime interests forces the Soviet 
Union abashedly into a deeply conservative law of the sea position. 
The U.S.S.R. has erected, at great cost, extensive systems of ocean 
use. The Soviet Navy, fishing fleet, merchant marine, oceanological, 
and ocean mineral establishments put the U.S.S.R. into the front rank 
of maritime powers. But no other maritime power relies so greatly 
on access through, and to the waters lying off, the shores of other 
states. The Norwegian Sea, the Baltic and North seas, the Mediterranean, 
and the Sea of Japan ring Soviet waters. Only northeastern Siberia lies 
directly off an ocean. Radical change in the law of the sea could 
drastically curtail Soviet ocean use by cutting off rights of ocean transit 
and exploitation. The combination of massive investment by the U.S.S.R. 
in ocean activities and the poor geographical situation of the country 
explain why the Soviet Union has been obliged to be the staunchest 
defender of the old ocean order, resisting the demands of many Third 
World states in the law of the sea debate. 
Ever since the beginning of the current U.N. sea law debate in 
1967, the U.S.S.R. has been found on the side of the traditional 
freedoms of the high seas. The Soviet Union has opposed limits on 
national maritime activities either by coastal states or by an interna- 
tional ocean regime. 
The inconsistency of the Soviet ideological and substantive positions 
is another sign of increased East-West collaboration and of the emer- 
gence of a North-South split in international relations. The old ideolog- 
ical battle of the cold war is giving way to conflict between the 
developed and underdeveloped countries. As a developed country, 
the U.S.S.R. is finding its interests more in line with the Western 
maritime powers than with the developing Third World states. On 
law of the sea issues, the Soviet Union even finds itself to the right 
of the United States, Great Britain, and France on some questions 
