185 
from the Central Committee as well as the Soviet Government,’ and 
the policy of the party and the government ‘permeates the entire 
content” of doctrine.° ; 
Second, doctrine is not a lower-level preliminary to policy;® actually, 
the ‘‘military policy of the state’’ is said to find its ‘‘practical embodi- 
ment” in military doctrine,’ the latter constituting 
the political line of the Party and Soviet state in the military 
sphere. It is an expression of state military policy and a directive 
of political strategy. . . . It expresses the essence of military pol- 
icy. 
Indeed, the connection between military policy and military doctrine 
is so intimate that the latter is referred to, though rarely, as ‘‘military- 
policy doctrine”’ (literally ‘“‘military-political doctrine’’).° 
Third, Soviet sources almost invariably attribute the formulation 
of doctrine to either the ‘“‘political and military leadership of the 
state” or simply the ‘‘political leadership of the state.’’? Actually 
there is no difference between these expressions. To the Soviets the 
two functions are ‘“‘inseparable”’;!! the state political leadership is the 
state political and military leadership. The error that has to be 
avoided, though understandable, is the conclusion that the ‘‘state mili- 
tary leadership”’ in this formula refers to the senior military profes- 
sionals (the voenachal’niki of the armed forces).!” 
4Bol’shaya Sovetskaya entsiklopediya (3rd ed., Moscow, 1970--). V, 205; R. Ya. Malinovskiy, 
Bditel ‘no stoyat’ na strazhe mira (Moscow, 1962), 17. 
5Col. A. A. Strokov in A. A. Strokov (ed.), Istoriya voennogo iskusstva (Moscow, 1966), 599. 
6 For a different view, see Matthew P. Gallagher, “The Military Role in Soviet Decision-Making,” 
in Michael MccGwire, Ken Booth and John McDonnell (eds.), Soviet Naval Policy: Objectives and 
Constraints (N.Y., Wash., London, 1975), 55-56. 
7S. N. Kozlov in Gen.-Col. A. S. Zheltov, Lt.-Col. T. R. Kondratkov and Col. E. A. Khomenko 
(eds.), Metodologicheskie problemy voennoy teorii i praktiki (2nd ed., Moscow, 1969), 284, 289. 
8Col. P. A. Sidorov, “Marxist-Leninist Military Theory,” in Gen.-Maj. S. N. Kozlov (compiler), 
Spravochnik ofitsera (Moscow, 1971), 75-76. 
® Georgi Arbatov, ““‘The War of Ideas in Contemporary International Relations’’ (Moscow, 1973), 
58. 
1Gen.-Lts. S. N. Krasil’‘nikov and A. E. Yakovlev, Slovar’ osnovnykh voennykh terminov 
(Moscow, 1965), 41; Gen.-Maj. N. Ya. Sushko and Lt.-Col. T. R. Kondratkov, Metodologicheskie 
problemy voennoy teorii i praktiki (Moscow, 1966), 85; Strokov, op. cit., 598, Gen.-Lt. I. Zav'yalov, 
“On Soviet Military Doctrine,’ KZ, Mar. 30, 1967; S. N. Kozlov in Zheltov, Kondratkov and 
Khomenko (eds.), op. cit., 284; Malinovskiy, op. cit., 16; Col. L. Belousov, ‘‘A Conference on Soviet 
Military Doctrine,” Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnala (hereafter cited as VIZ), No. 10, 1963, 122, Gen.- 
Col. N. A. Lomov, Sovetskaya voennaya doctrine (Moscow, 1963), 5; S. N. Kozlov, M. V. Smirnov, 
I. S. Baz’ and P. A. Sidorov, O sovetskoy voennoy nauke (2nd ed., Moscow, 1964), 379F Vib 
Sokolovskiy (ed.), Voennaya strategiya (3rd ed., Moscow, 1968), 55; Sidorov in Kozlov (compiler), 
Spravochnik ofitsera, 74; Bol’shaya Sovetskaya entsiklopediya (3rd ed.), V, 205; A. Grechko, “The 
CPSU and the Armed Forces,’ Kommunist, No. 4,1971, p. 52. 
Col. A. A. Strokov in Gen.-Col. A. S. Zheltov (ed.), V. I. Lenin i Sovetskie Vooruzhennye Sily 
(Moscow, 1967), 207. 
'2 The error seems to be primarily responsible for the theory that military doctrine is actually some 
kind of ‘tcharter” for the military, a lower-level point of departure for the bargaining process 
between the political and the military establishments that will eventually issue in military policy but Is 
not in itself an authoritative guide to policy. Doctrine cannot be decisive in the scheme of things, ac- 
cording to this theory, mainly because it is the joint product of the political leadership and the senior 
military professionals, who would not be allowed to participate in the actual formulation of policy. 
The reasoning here seems impeccable, only the initial premises being at fault. It is ironic that a 
theory which ends by concluding a wide divergence between Soviet and Western concepts of military 
doctrine should have begun with the assumption of an identity in Anglo-Saxon and Russian expres- 
sion. 
The theory is also grounded on an alleged “permissiveness” of Soviet military doctrine, as con- 
trasted with the necessary precision and definiteness that would be required of military policy. I must 
confess being taken aback by the charge of “‘permissiveness.”’ Ordinarily, when we encounter doc- 
trinal tenets that say a war can be short or long, conventional or nuclear, we speak of this as a 
“flexible response” rather than a “‘permissive™ doctrine. In other words, such a doctrine implies that 
“everything goes” rather than “anything goes.” I say this without prejudice to the question of 
whether Soviet doctrinal tenets are precisely as stated in the initial postulates of the theory. In my 
opinion, the Soviets do not have a flexible-response doctrine in the Western sense, but that would 
have to be the subject of a separate discussion. Certainly I see no convincing evidence from the 
Gorshkov series itself that the Soviets have committed themselves to protracted conventional wars at 
sea between the great powers; Gorshkov seems to deal only with general nuclear wars and “local 
wars” in defense of ‘‘state interests.” In large-scale conflicts, the only limitations appear to be within 
the framework of general nuclear war itself (the withholding strategy for SSBNs). 
