207 
detract significantly from the performance of strategic wartime tasks? 
Gorshkov may be giving a hint of the solution later on in this first 
part when he seems to be treating ‘‘deterrence” literally, not as a 
peacetime task, but as a “role in modern war.” This passage is all 
the more arresting in that it is precisely here that he asserts the 
superiority of the SSBN—its ‘‘great survivability” —in comparison with 
ICBM launch facilities, whereas it is his normal practice (in line 
with the practice of other Soviet writers) to acknowledge the primacy 
of the strategic missile troops in “‘peacetime” deterrence. And the 
distinction makes sense in both cases. The much larger number of 
ICBM’s are available along with SLBM’s for peacetime deterrence, 
survivability not being central in a pre-emptive or launch-on-warning 
posture, whereas only SLBMs, precisely because of their “‘great sur- 
vivability,”” would be available for ““deterrence”’ in war.'!” 
In his 1974 Navy Day article, Gorshkov again takes up the national 
oborona theme. The passage is more than ordinarily obscure but since 
Gorshkov repeats it again almost word for word in a more recent 
work, we can assume that he means what he says and, if elliptical, 
he is deliberately so. Let me quote the relevant passage and see 
if we can make sense out of it. 
Our navy has always had two main tasks—combat against the 
enemy fleet and operations against the shore. For long centuries 
the first of these tasks had priority. But, beginning with World 
War II, the situation began to change. Now, if we are to judge 
by the developmental tendencies of navies and their weapons, 
the main fleet mission is coming to be operations against targets 
on land. 
Therefore, national oborona against an attack from the sea 
is acquiring for our armed forces an even more important sig- 
nificance. This is again the result of the development of sub- 
marines, which in a series of navies are now coming forward 
as the main platform for strategic nuclear-missile weapons. 
Of course, the task of combating the enemy fleet is also still 
with us... . If required, Soviet navymen know how to solve 
both these tasks successfully.1!8 
First, Gorshkov tells us that conducting operations against the shore 
is edging out operations against the enemy fleet as the main naval 
task. ‘‘Therefore,” he says, national oborona against an attack from 
the sea is acquiring greater importance, due to SSBN development 
in a “series of navies,’ which may or may not include the U.S.S.R. 
but in any event includes countries other than the U.S.S.R. It would 
be logical to assume from this that national oborona might be a 
strategic-defensive task against SLBM platforms but, no, this cannot 
be, first because the strategic-defensive task would come under the 
rubric of combating the enemy fleet and he has already told us that 
this mission has been downgraded rather than elevated, and second 
because he then immediately informs us for good measure that the 
task of combating the enemy fleet ‘‘also”’ remains, ruling out any 
possibility that national oborona against an attack from the sea in- 
volves combating enemy SSBNs. 
"7 Gorshkov, ‘‘Soviet National Sea Power,” Pravda, July 28, 1974; Gorshkov, *“The Navy of the 
Soviet Union,” Soviet Military Review, No. 6, 1975, p. 5. 
118 Sokolovskiy (ed.), Voennaya strategiya (3rd ed.), 78, 247, 359; Strokov in Strokov (ed.), op. 
cit., 595; Dudin and Listvinov in Kulish, Solodovnik et al., op. cit. 98. 
