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if, alone and unaided, it posed the only threat: they could successfully 
meet it by the superior ground forces and nuclear-missile capabilities 
which they have acquired since World War II.® 
- But, China, as a potential enemy, has added another dimension 
to Soviet strategic problems. With the defeat of Japan in 1945 and 
the Communist victory in China in 1949, the Soviets assumed that 
they had permanently solved the two-front threat posed before World 
War II by Germany and Japan. However, since the eruption of the 
bitter dispute in the late 1950’s, the U.S.S.R. must assume a hostile 
China, either alone or in implicit collusion with West Germany or 
others. (The Soviet perception of possible alliances against the 
U.S.S.R. is discussed below, in section IV.) 
Indeed, the major impact of Communist China on Soviet policy 
has been to transform Sino-Soviet relations into a state of armed 
hostility and force the Soviets to view China as an active threat 
to their national security. As a result, the Soviets have built up their 
forces on the China border to some 50 divisions or over one million 
men. 
This buildup has been accompanied by organizational and command 
changes which indicate the Soviet expectations about the permanency 
of the China threat. In 1969, the Soviets established a new Central 
Asiatic Military District with all that this implies in terms of Soviet 
military contingency planning for an integration of forces at an impor- 
tant sector of the Sino-Soviet*border. (This move may be compared 
to the Soviet organization of a special military command in the Far 
East, just prior to the Soviet attack on the Japanese in Manchuria 
at the end of World War II. On that occasion, the Soviets organized 
a special command under Marshal Vasilievsky with three operational 
fronts designed to capture Manchuria from the Japanese. ) 
With regard to command changes, General I. G. Pavlovsky—then 
a relatively junior officer—was promoted in 1967 from Commander 
of the Far East Military District, which he had headed since 1964, 
to Deputy Defense Minister and Commander of the Soviet land forces. 
He was originally sent to the Far East apparently to modernize the 
Soviet forces in the area. It can be surmised that he was subsequently 
brought to Moscow in order to do contingency planning for a possible 
land conflict with China. 
And in 1968, General Tolubko, the Soviet deputy commander of 
the Soviet strategic rocket forces prior to that date, was sent to 
the East to take command of the Far East Military District. It can 
be assumed that he was detached from the central missile command 
in order to use his experience in organizing possible new missions 
for Soviet strategic and tactical missile forces based in the Far East; 
these missions might include possible attack against Chinese nuclear- 
missile facilities, alone or in combination with any landforce operations 
worked out by Pavlovsky. (Subsequently, Tolubko was promoted to 
full general and replaced Marshal Krylov as commander of U.S.S.R.’s 
strategic rocket forces; this meant that the command of the most 
important arm of the Soviet Armed Forces was placed in the hands 
of a man very familiar with the threat in the East.) 
“The Soviet confidence in their ability to handle a German threat without the United States was 
expressed even at a time when Soviet strategic capabilities were far less than they are today. (See 
Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s declaration to the 23d party Congress, Pravda, 30 March 1966.) 
