Document created: 1 June 03
Air & Space Power Journal - Summer 2003

The Military History of the Soviet Union edited by Robin Higham and Frederick W. Kagan. Palgrave Macmillan (http://www.palgrave-usa.com), 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, 2002, 328 pages, $59.95.

Once a mystery to Western audiences, the military history of the Soviet Union has aroused great attention in recent years. Robin Higham and Frederick W. Kagan, leading experts on the Russian and Soviet armed forces, have taken a crack at synthesizing this new understanding in a handy one-volume military history of the Soviet Union that will delight enthusiasts and assist instructors. Companion to The Military History of Tsarist Russia, compiled by the same authors, this collection of 17 essays by leading experts constitutes a comprehensive military history of the Soviet Union- as opposed to a history of the Red Army, national-security policy, or civil-military relations. The authors have cast a broad net, considering politics, strategy, institutions, and campaigns from the military aspects of the Russian Civil War to the immediate post-Soviet period. Coming in for particular attention is the operational art, the subject of some of the book’s best chapters. Two penetrating chapters contributed by Kagan effectively survey a burgeoning literature to offer some sensible thoughts on the rise of modern warfare doctrines in the 1920s and the subsequent atrophy of the military art on the eve of the Second World War. A particular theme is the outsized and baleful role of ideology, which significantly figured in the demise of prewar doctrines of maneuver warfare. Despite the terrible lesson of the Second World War, in which the operational art had to be relearned at great cost, the influence of ideology remained important. Scott McMichael cogently argues that political ideology hampered the Red Army in its development of a counterinsurgency doctrine for use in Afghanistan. This debilitating war left the development of Soviet doctrine and forces further crabbed, in that the lessons learned from Afghanistan were not regarded as an advanced course in small wars, but as instruction on dealing with internal threats. Chapters on the Cold War have real relevance for today’s world and effectively cast a long shadow over a post-Soviet military already burdened, as widely reported in the press, by aging equipment as well as weak socioeconomic support.

In keeping with its character as a military history of the Soviet Union, the book could have profitably devoted a separate part entirely to the Second World War in addition to those parts dedicated to the formation of the Red Army and Cold War. Many arguments favor singling out this central experience. The monumental nature of the undertaking, the significance of the Red victory, and, not the least of which, the recent outpouring of scholarship on the subject all warrant separate treatment. As it is, one has to be satisfied with two short surveys of operations. As well executed as they may be by the late John Erickson and Kagan, they omit the great battles of 1944 and 1945, when the Red Army fully came into its own. Air Force professionals will appreciate the fact that the book singles out airpower and strategic rocket forces for separate attention, although it gives the Cold War air arm short shrift in favor of strategic rocket forces. Stephen J. Zaloga’s chapter on strategic nuclear forces, mostly a chronology of weapons, is somewhat weak although this might reflect an analogous development to the trend in the United States during the missile age, when nuclear thought and strategy largely migrated to other quarters. (In contrast, the Cold War years saw heated debate over strategy within the upper ranks of the navy overlapping into the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.) One can forgive these lacunas, if only for the superior analysis and uniformly high quality of writing. The editors are to be congratulated for an error-free, genuinely erudite text. Each chapter includes a helpful note on areas for further research as well as a listing of key English sources. Despite its hefty price tag, this book will find its way onto the shelves of many enthusiasts and teachers who seek a single reference volume on the Soviet military experience.

Dr. Matthew R. Schwonek
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

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.