Air University Review, September-October 1969
For the first time in twelve years the Soviet Air Forces have a new Commander-in-Chief. In March 1969 Marshal of Aviation Pavel Stepanovich Kutakhov replaced Chief Marshal of Aviation Konstantin A. Vershinin as head of the world’s second most powerful air force.
Marshal of Aviation Kutakhov, 54 years old, reached his present position after a meteoric rise during the past three years. In 1966 he was a two-star general-lieutenant, assigned as Commander of Aviation for the Odessa Military District. The next year he was transferred to Moscow—the “center” —to the post of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Forces. In this move he picked up a third star, denoting the rank of a general-colonel.
Not long before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, by one of the strange coincidences that abound in the Soviet Union, Kutakhov was put in the number two aviation role. The then First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Forces, 63-year-old Marshal of Aviation Rudenko, was transferred to a new assignment as head of the Gagarin Air Academy.1 (On the army side, the famed General Shtemenko was made Chief of Staff of the Warsaw Pact Forces two weeks before the invasion.)
Eighteen months after gaining his third star, Kutakhov was again promoted, in February 1969, to become a Marshal of Aviation.2 A month later it was learned that he had moved up to take over as Commander-in-Chief. There was no formal announcement in the Soviet press of Marshal Vershinin’s retirement from that position. Red Star, the official Soviet military newspaper, carried an item on March 19, 1969, that at first glance appeared to be a routine news item. It listed the senior Soviet guests at a reception held at the Mongolian Embassy on the previous evening celebrating the 48th anniversary of the Mongolian People’s Army. Among the guests was “Commander-in-Chief of the Air Forces of the U.S.S.R., Marshal of Aviation P.S. Kutalhov.”3
This is often the way in which the outside world learns of changes in the Soviet political-military structure, through some obscure press announcement that lists a new name in a position previously held by someone else.
Kutakhov’s predecessor, Chief Marshal of Aviation Vershinin, had occupied the Commander-in-Chief position since 1957. In fact Vershinin, now 69, had also served in that position from 1946 to 1949, being moved to a job in National PVO (air defense) when Stalin put Marshal of Aviation Zhigarov in command in anticipation of forthcoming Korean events. Vershinin, one of the world’s senior airmen, has spent a half century in Soviet aviation, beginning his air career during the Civil War of 1919.
Kutakhov has yet to be promoted to Chief Marshal of Aviation, which ranks higher than the four stars of Marshal of Aviation or General of the Army but somewhat below Marshal of the Soviet Union. At the present time there are three Chief Marshals of Aviation in the Soviet Union. One of the most senior is Novikov, head of the Soviet Air Forces during World War II and imprisoned by Stalin after that war. He was “rehabilitated” after Stalin’s death and now is Commandant of the Civil Air Fleet Academy. Another is Chief Marshal of Aviation Golovanov, former head of Soviet Long Range Aviation, whose present position is unknown. As to the position of Chief Marshal of Aviation Vershinin, he will remain on active duty for life, since there is no provision for retirement in the Soviet Armed Forces beyond the 4-star rank.4
Commander-in-Chief Kutalhov is well known in the Soviet Union for his airmanship. In 1966 he, along with 30 other Soviet officers, was awarded the honorary title of Distinguished Military Pilot of the U.S.S.R., and at the same time six navigators were awarded the honorary title of Distinguished Military Navigator of the U.S.S.R. These awards are “for special service in mastering aviation equipment, for a high showing in training and educating flying cadres, and for many years of continuous flying safety records.”5
Kutakhov is a World War II fighter ace, with 13 German aircraft individually confirmed as destroyed and 28 additional assists in destruction.6 During that war—the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call it—he served on the Karelian front, where in 1943 he commanded a squadron in the 19th Guards Regiment of the 7th Air Army.
Along the Karelian front the Soviet Union shared a border with Norway. One can conjecture that during that time Kutakhov was attempting to protect American ships carrying supplies into the Soviet port of Murmansk. This was a primary route for supplies sent to the Soviet Union by her two main allies, the United States and Great Britain. The huge convoys, assembled in Britain, were escorted through the North Sea by British and Canadian naval forces, since the greater part of the United States Navy was engaged with the Japanese in the Pacific. These convoys were under attack by wolf packs of German submarines as well as by surface raiders as the ships neared German-occupied Norway. After that, the convoys came under attack by German land-based aircraft until they got within range of Soviet fighter protection in the Murmansk area. Between March and July 1942, over one-fourth of all U.S. ships sent to Murmansk were sunk before reaching their destination.
Kutakhov made good both as a commander and as a fighter pilot. By May 1943 he had received the award “Hero of the Soviet Union,” one of the first Soviet Air Force officers to be singled out for this decoration in World War II.7’ Also he was transferred to become commander of the Red Banner Guard’s Fighter Regiment of the 7th Air Army.
Kutakhov’s regiment was engaged in flying fighter cover, in Yaks and LaGGs, for the lower- and slower-flying Sturmoviks. During the first day of their counteroffensive against German positions, in October 1944, the regiment’s pilots flew as many as a dozen individual sorties. According to Soviet accounts, during the first escort mission of the day the Sturmoviks were jumped by 18 Me-109s. Kutakhov was leading the Soviet fighter escort of 8 aircraft, which pressed the attack against the Messerschmitts. The German attack was broken, Kutakhov claiming one Me-109 and his flight four others.8
From the Yaks and LaGGs that Kutakhov flew in World War II, the Soviet Air Forces have progressed to entirely different air weapon Systems. In August 1968, on the occasion of Soviet “Air Force Day,” Kutakhov described the Soviet Air Forces as follows:
Owing to the equipment with new armaments, including nuclear weapons, the firepower of each combat plane was increased. That which in the years of the Second World War was beyond the power of large aviation formations, in our day can be resolved by a group of a few airplanes. Our long range aviation, in cooperation with the Strategic Rocket Troops and the Navy, can carry out effective strikes on important enemy objectives both on land and on the ocean expanses which are located quite far from our borders. This kind of aviation has every possibility for waging combat actions on a global scale.
The aircraft in frontal aviation can successfully destroy small-sized objectives and, in cooperation with surface-to-air missile units, protect troops from strikes from the air. Modern military transport aviation can transfer troops and different combat equipments, including artillery weapons, rockets, armored transports and tanks, by air, over enormous distances and at great speed.
Aviation rocket equipments are constantly improving. Modern new kinds of guided aviation rocket projectiles and winged rockets have been created. Supersonic rocket-carriers can carry out nuclear rocket strikes on objectives from a great distance without entering the air defense zone of the enemy. Modern radar systems of rocket guidance, intercept stations and radiotechnical systems allowing the release of rockets and the dropping of bombs from great heights as well as from extremely low altitudes, at maximum speeds, day or night, in ordinary or in bad weather conditions, are found in the armaments of aviation.9
An officer does not become Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Forces on the basis of his military abilities alone. His political promotions must parallel his military promotions. Although little is known about Kutakhov’s participation in the affairs of the Communist Party, he was a delegate to both the XXII and the XXIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),10 and it can be assumed that he has served at various levels in Party activities within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, for example. His predecessor, Marshal Vershinin is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a political position almost inherent to the military position that he occupied. As for Marshal Kutakhov’s political beliefs as a member of the Communist Party, his article in the December 1968 issue of Aviation and Cosmonautics should be carefully studied. At that time the future Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Forces, echoing the Party line, wrote:
We live in a complicated and strenuous time, a time of great social achievements and of high tension in the class struggle on a worldwide scale. The dirty war of the U.S.A. in Vietnam, the middle-eastern adventure of Israel, the sinister military-political union of the U.S.A. and the Federal Republic of Germany in Europe—these are the most striking examples of the aggressive intrigues of imperialism in different parts of the world.
However, the imperialist aggression is suffering one failure after another. In our day the indestructible world socialist system has become the decisive force of social development. Imperialist forces, and first of all the imperialists of the U.S.A., are losing hope of stopping the powerful march of socialism by military means, so they are more and more banking on ideological diversion. The whole enormous apparatus of anticommunist propaganda is directed now toward weakening the unity of socialist countries, the international communist and workers’ movement, setting off one socialist state against another and tearing them away from the Soviet Union.
How dangerous the ideological diversion of imperialism is was clearly shown by the development of events in Czechoslovakia. The counterrevolutionary and right-wing forces in this country, under the flag of fighting for “democracy,” unleashed a furious campaign against the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and its leading role, against the basis of the socialist government in Czechoslovakia. Seizing means of mass propaganda, they used these means for unbridled antisocialist demagogy, for undermining friendship with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Over Czechoslovakia hung the real threat of losing socialist gains. And only the fraternal aid of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries saved the Czechoslovakian people from this threat.
Events in Czechoslovakia once again have shown that the ideological struggle is an acute class struggle where there is not and cannot be neutrality. V. I. Lenin wrote that “this is the only question: bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course…” And here the conclusion was made: “Therefore any belittling of socialist ideology, any moving away from it thus means strengthening bourgeois ideology.” Our answer to the subversive activities and intrigues of the imperialists, in addition to the further raising of the vigilance and combat readiness, must be uncompromising struggle with enemy ideology in all its manifestations.11
But what of China? Interestingly enough, this major threat that Kutakhov’s fighters and bombers may face during the next decade is not mentioned in his article. Soviet political-military spokesmen explain the fighting along the Sino-Soviet borders as the work of a Chinese military dictatorship and the personality cult of Mao Tse-tung. Communist doctrine does not recognize conflicts between “fraternal socialist countries.”
Marshal of Aviation Kutakhov has taken command of the Soviet Air Forces at a very critical time in Soviet history. Well-known World War II leaders have been retiring for several years, and this change has now begun to affect the highest levels of the military hierarchy. What effect this will have on the future posture of the Soviet Air Forces is yet to be seen.
McLean, Virginia
Notes
1. V. Yezhakov, Colonel, and v, Cheremnykh, “The Anniversary of the Great Victory,” Military History Journal, No. 10, 1968, p. 87.
2. Red Star, February 23, 1969.
3. Red Star, March 19, 1969.
4. A. A. Grechko, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Minister of Defense, U.S.S.R., “About the Projected Law on General Military Obligation.” Pravda, October 13, 1967.
5. Aviation and Cosmonautics, No. 10, 1966, p. 2.
6. Collected authors, Across the Fiords (Moscow: Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense, U.S.S.R., 1964), p. 109.
7. S. A. Krasovsky, Marshal of Aviation, editor, Aviation and Cosmonautics U.S.S.R. (Moscow: Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense, U.S.S.R., 1968), p. 541.
8. Across the Fiords, p. 109.
9. P. S. Kutakhov, General-Colonel of Aviation, “Guard of the Peaceful Sky,” Izvestia, August 18, 1968.
10. XXII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and XXIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Political Literature Publishing House, 1961 and 1966), list of delegates.
11. P. S. Kutakhov, General-Colonel of Aviation, “To Imitate Those Who Are Moving Ahead,” Aviation and Cosmonautics, No.12, 1968, p. 2.
Harriet Fast Scott lived and traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union as the wife of Colonel William F. Scott, U.S. Air Attaché, 1962-64. Her fluency in the Russian language and her familiarity with Russian military writings have been reflected in articles in Military Review and Air University Review and in selections and translations from the Soviet military press appearing in the Pentagon’s Current News and The Friday Review of Defense Literature. Mrs. Scott is coauthor, with Dr. William R. Kintner, of The Nuclear Revolution in Soviet Military Affairs (1968).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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