620 
This achievement is even more impressive when one compares cur- 
rent marine capabilities with those of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. 
The Soviet Union lost heavily during the Second World War. At 
the end of that war,: Russian naval forces were only a fraction of 
the size of American naval forces. They were generally older, smaller, 
and less technologically advanced. The U.S.S.R. had only one choice 
initially: focus on coastal defense and interdiction. The merchant 
marine was one-twentieth as large and it included about 500,000 
deadweight tons of U.S. vessels on loan under land-lease regulations. 
The fishing fleet was small, unimpressive by any standards, and con- 
fined to coastal and inland waters. The Soviet Union had made no 
notable contributions to marine science and technology; it had neither 
the manpower nor the physical plant necessary to conduct oceanic 
research on a large scale. 
Today, less than 25 years later, the Soviet Union has largely 
reversed the situation. Today, it has the most modern distant-water 
fishing fleet in the world. It should soon surpass Japan as the No. 
1 fishing nation in the world. Its merchant marine tonnage is 9th 
or 10th, and carries about 70 percent of all Soviet trade. U.S. ships 
carry 5.1 percent of U.S. trade. The Soviet merchant marine has 
become a truly international merchant marine. It operates in all areas 
of the globe. Its scientific manpower and physical facilities for oceanic 
research at sea may be the largest in the world. Its oceanography 
is first rate. The U.S.S.R. cannot match Western World preeminence 
in offshore oil and natural gas drilling and production technology, 
nor can it yet mine manganese nodules from the deep seabed. It 
is, however, developing technology for deep seabed mining, and its 
conservative position at the Law of the Sea Conference indicates 
that it wants that option. The Soviet Union buys offshore oil and 
gas drilling equipment from the West and is negotiating technology 
transfer contracts with various Western oil companies. 
To protect its interests overseas and to deny sea control to the 
United States, the Soviet Union has built a supernavy in every sense 
of the term: Quantity, quality of forces, and operations.'*% 
While the statistics are impressive, they do not tell the entire 
story. Although the administration of the Soviet merchant marine, 
fishing and oceanographic fleets, nonmilitary, is not subject to the 
Soviet Navy, all are closely allied with the naval command. They 
can be readily and directly militarized and mobilized under naval 
direction. Naval officers regularly serve with the non-naval fleet; all 
military cargo goes by Soviet-flag vessel; merchant tankers refuel war- 
ships as a matter of course; the Ministry of Shipbuilding is responsible 
for the construction of both naval and merchant marine vessels and 
configures many merchant marine vessels for ready use as naval aux- 
iliaries; distant water fishing vessels gather information for the Navy; 
and all oceanic research is ultimately controlled by the Naval Hydro- 
graphic Service. 
The Soviet Union considers its merchant marine, fishing fleet, 
oceanographic, and ocean mining capability, as well as its Navy and 
part of its air force, integral parts of Soviet seapower. For the Soviet 
Union, each element of seapower must interact with every other such 
element. No one element can be allowed to develop without regard 
for the impact that development will have on the other elements. '** 
'83 Polmar, Soviet Naval Challenge for the 1970's, op. cit., p. 105. 
84See: Ocean Policy Making in the Soviet Union by Teresa Sulikouski, and: Chapter on Reorganiz- 
ing U.S. Ocean Activities by Herman T. Franssen. 
