197 
examples may give us hints of this but only after impressionistic 
weighting and inconclusive inference on our part. We have to go 
to his final, one-page summary to attempt to extract an answer, no 
man writes a book without putting his conclusions in the summary, 
and we cannot claim to have discharged our obligations without 
analyzing it. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done; it gets us 
into the semantics of Soviet military discourse, which we think we 
know because it is so familiar, familiarity breeding indifference if 
not contempt. 
MILITARY POLICY, MILITARY STRATEGY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE 
We can tell what Gorshkov thinks is important by observing what 
he singles out in his final one-page summary, when space is at a 
premium and only the essentials are treated. He begins by saying: 
In order to insure national defense (oborona strany) and accom- 
plish military-political tasks, states have always aspired to have 
armed forces, including navies, appropriate to these goals and 
to maintain them at a modern level. As a part of the national 
armed strength, navies fulfill the important role of one of the 
instruments of state policy in peacetime and constitute a mighty 
instrument for attaining the political goals of the armed struggle 
in war. 
Toward the end he states: 
Soviet navymen consider it their very first duty to maintain 
all naval forces constantly in a high state of readiness in order 
to accomplish tasks of state defense (oborona) from sea axes 
and in every way to raise their skill in employing combat equip- 
ment in any climate and weather state . . ..° 
This is consistent with his statement earlier in the series that “‘national 
defense (oborona strany) against attacks by the aggressor from ocean 
axes” is, in fact, the Navy’s “‘main task.”’ ® 
I cannot help but think this unusual, to say the least—the emphasis 
on accomplishing military-political tasks (as against military-strategic 
tasks), on the attainment of political goals in war (as against strategic 
goals), and on the navyman’s very first duty (main task) of maintaining 
readiness for national defense (oborona strany) rather than national 
defense (zashchita strany)). In other words, the Soviets have two 
terms for national defense—national oborona and national zashchita.® 
Never before have I collected a single reference to the “‘readiness”’ 
of the armed forces—or any of its branches—for national oborona, 
much less this being their main task. 
We have to note the systematic and consistent character of the 
terminology used with respect to the two systems—the “‘system of 
§7Ibid., No. 12, 1972, pp. 20-21. 
®8 To avoid objections based on semantics of the law courts, etc., let me stress that the comparisons 
we are discussing have to do only with national defense, in whatever form this might take—state 
defense, defense of the U.S.S.R., defense of the motherland, et cetera Oborona and zashchita are of 
course used in a great many other military and nonmilitary contexts, each of which has its own rules 
of usage or lack of rules. (I should also note my impression that there is no verb “to defend” used in 
connection with the armed forces in the system of national oborona; there is only the noun oborona 
and its adjectival derivative oboronnyy. In other words, when we encounter the verb 
oboronyat'/oboronit’ in connection with the armed forces, it carries the same connotations as 
zashchishchat’/zashchitit’. ) 
®9See, for example, Cols. V. Serebryannikov and M. Yasyukov, ‘‘Peaceful Co-existence and 
Defense of the Socialist Fatherland,” KVS, No. 16, 1972, pp. 10-11, 15: Zakharov (ed.), 50 let 
Vooruzhennykh Sil SSSR, 556; Grechko in KVS, No. 8, 1973, p. 13; Pankratov in Zheltov (ed.), V. 
I. Lenin i Sovetskie Vooruzhennye Sily, 33. Incidentally, | have never encountered references to na- 
tional military capabilities or national defense readiness. 
