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fully understood this, that the victors of every major war in the era 
of imperialism sought to impose peace conditions which would insure 
their continued naval superiority (72/5/22/7: 49/1/1). He points to 
the naval provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which stripped Ger- 
many of its fleet and placed severe restrictions on future naval con- 
struction; he had earlier mentioned the banning of a Russian fleet 
in the Black Sea after the Crimean War. He returns to this question 
in chapter XIII, which concentrates on the role of navies as an instru- 
ment of imperialism in peacetime. In an extended discussion he refers 
to the various peace conferences between 1856 and 1945 and how 
in each case the victors divided up the enemy’s fleet and imposed 
restrictions on the vanquished’s future naval strength, thus “confirming 
the special significance of navies to states as an instrument of policy 
in peacetime” (72/12/17/6: 116/1/4). 
Of greater interest is Gorshkov’s treatment of the interwar naval 
conferences which he describes as “the war of the diplomats for 
supremacy at sea” (72/8/14/3: 65/2/2). In an earlier chapter he 
pointed out how the effects of the First World War had forced Britain 
to abandon her ‘“‘two-power standard”? (72/5/23/2: 49/1/3), and he 
goes on to say that as the result of prolonged struggle at these con- 
ferences between 1922 and 1936, ‘“‘the United States achieved interna- 
tional recognition of the ‘parity’ of its naval forces with the British 
fleet, which meant that the United States and England emerged with 
equal rights in this area.”’ Gorshkov returns to this question in chapter 
XIII, but he clearly separates his discussion of the naval conferences, 
which represented ‘“‘repeated efforts to limit and regulate the construc- 
tion of warships” (72/12/18/4: 117/2/4), from his discussion of 
Britain’s replacement by the United States as ‘‘Mistress of the Seas”’ 
(72/12/18/5—7: 117/2/1-3). 
In the former context he comments that it is interesting that until 
recently, arms limitations only applied to naval forces, and that even 
today, when arms control had become a reality, it only applied to, 
strategic weapons. In the latter context, although Gorshkov comments 
that “‘the Americans succeeded without a war in achieving what Ger- 
many did not achieve in two world wars’, he does point out that 
it was the wars which brought about the change. However, he at- 
tributes the decline of British seapower to “‘the law of nonuniformity 
of the development of capitalist countries” and to “‘the revolutionary 
and national freedom movements embracing the whole world”’. 
Gorshkov is therefore talking about three different things: the im- 
position of naval arms limitations at the end of a war, by victor 
on vanquished; peacetime efforts to limit naval arms racing, which 
will include attempts to freeze/change existing relative strengths; and 
the waxing and waning of national naval power. He claims that all 
three demonstrate the special significance of navies as instruments 
of state policy in peacetime. 
Two other elements must be introduced. First, Gorshkov makes 
no reference to Brezhnev’s 1971 proposal that there should be mutual 
restrictions on distant naval operations, not to earlier proposals that 
the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean should be designated as non- 
nuclear zones; he does however speak favorably of the seabed arms 
control agreement. And secondly, publication of the Gorshkov series 
overlapped the SALT negotiations. In May 1971, agreement was 
