203 
In this respect the year 1966 was apparently a watershed. It is 
at this time, we will remember, that Gorshkov announced the develop- 
ment of “‘united views”? on the navy’s wartime tasks, “proceeding 
from the tenets of Soviet military doctrine.’ In this connection we 
have to keep in mind, too, the “practical” orientation of doctrine; 
it exists for “‘the present and very near future,’’ and the very near 
future would see the initial deployment of the Yankee-class SSBN 
with the long-range SS-N-6 ballistic missile, which would bring the 
operational SLBM inventory up from circa 125 in 1966 to 440 in 
1971.% “The special role of strategic missiles in national oborona 
and their enormous combat potential” had long been recognized,%” 
and this is understandable since, as Colonel Kulish explains, nuclear- 
missile forces ‘“‘are a most powerful strategic instrument and have 
a direct influence on international relations.’ °* The enhanced military- 
political and military-strategic prestige of the navy was announced 
by Marshal Malinovskiy at the XXIII Party Congress in a special 
formula: the Strategic Missile Troops and the navy’s SSBN’s were 
now “‘main instruments for deterring the aggressor and decisively de- 
feating him in war.’’% 
With this formula the Central Committee had apparently (as Ad- 
miral Kasatonov put it in 1967) ‘‘defined its (the navy’s) place in 
national oborona (military-political strophe) and indicated the path 
for developing a modern ocean-going nuclear-missile fleet, capable 
of accomplishing strategic tasks of an offensive type in modern war 
(military-strategic antistrophe).’1°° There can be no doubt of the na- 
ture of these latter tasks. According to one author, the acquisition 
of SSBNs “permits posing before the fleet the strategic tasks of 
destroying important military and economic targets of the enemy in 
the depths of his territory.”” But he equally emphasized that ‘‘a funda- 
mental task of our navy in a future war will be that of combating 
enemy naval forces at sea and in their bases, and primarily his sub- 
marine and surface missile-carriers and attack carrier task forces.” 
And he added that “the fight against submarines remains one of 
the most important tasks of the navy.’’!°! To fully appreciate the 
contrast with today, one must go to the literature of that period 
to see its stress on the navy’s role as ‘‘a most important instrument 
of strategy,” “‘a most important instrument of the Supreme High Com- 
mand,” “‘a most important instrument of Soviet state zashchita,’’ and 
on the navy’s “‘readiness for the Motherland’s zashchita”’ and its ability 
to accomplish “‘complex tasks for the zashchita of the Socialist coun- 
tries from sea and ocean axes.” ' And this was not just a parochial 
navy position; the Fleet’s enhanced strategic importance generally per- 
vades the military literature. 
*6 Derevyanko in Derevyanko (ed.), op. cit., 103-104. 
*7 Kulish in Kulish, Solodovnik et al., op. cit., 44. 
*8 Speech of Comrade R. Ya. Malinovskiy, XXIII s‘‘ezd Komm. Partii Sov. Soyuza, I, 411. 
*9 Kasatonov in KZ, July 30, 1967, p. 1. 
100 Capt. 2nd Rank A. V. Basov in Piterskiy (ed.), op. cit., 544-545, 552. 
'Gorshkov in Pravda, July 31, 1966; Gorshkov in MS, No. 5, 1966, p. 13 and No. 2, 1967, p. 20; 
Egorov in Sovetskaya Rossiya, July 30, 1967, p. 3; Fleet Adm. V. Kasatonov, ‘““Ocean Guard of the 
Motherland,’ KZ, July 28, 1968; KZ correspondent, ‘“‘A Grand Meeting in Moscow,” ibid.; Gorsh- 
kov, “On Ocean Frontiers,” Pravda, July 28, 1968; Gorshkov, ‘‘The Fatherland’s Ocean Guard,” 
Pravda, July 27, 1969; Rear-Adm. K. A. Stalbo in Zakharov (ed.), Istoriya voenno-morskogo iskusst- 
va, 531, 565, 567; Grechko Order of Day, Pravda, July 26, 1970; Editorial, ““The Motherland’s 
Ocean Guard,’ KZ, July 26, 1970; Egorov, ‘“‘The Motherland’s Ocean Outpost,” Sel ‘skaya zhizn’, 
July 26, 1970. 
‘The last reference I have to a front-rank strategic role for the navy appears in a work signed 
Over to the press in March 1971; Azovtsev, V. I. Lenin i Sovetskaya voennaya nauka, 286, 297. 
