The Soviet Navy

Since Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov was appointed to the office of commander in chief of the Soviet Navy in 1956, the Soviet Union has made a massive investment in naval construction, training, and operations. As a result, the Soviet Navy has grown from a coastal defense force to one of the world's two strongest navies. This book offers a detailed assessment of every major aspect of the Soviet Navy, from fleet structure and training facilities to command and control procedures and warfare and intelligence collection capabilities.

Provides a detailed analysis of the U.S. Navy and gives the history, specifications, and tactical role of naval ships and aircraft.

This book, based on extensive work in Russian archives, investigates how strategy, organisational rivalry and cultural factors came to shape naval developments in the Soviet Union, up to the invasion of 1941.

Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov was the product of a tradition unlike those of his Western contemporaries. He had a unique background of revolution, civil war, world wars, and the forceful implementation of an all-controlling communist dictatorship. Out of this background of violence and overwhelming transformation came a man with a vivid appreciation of the role and value of navies, but with his own unique ideas about the kind of navy that the Soviet Union required and the role that navy should play in Soviet military and national strategy. Western naval observers have persisted in attempting to define Admiral Gorshkov in Western naval terms. Many of these observers have been baffled when they found that the man and his actions simply did not fit conventional narratives. This book lays out the tradition, background, experiences, and thinking of the man as they relate to the development of the Soviet Navy that Gorshkov commanded for almost three decades and that was able to directly challenge the maritime dominance of the United States—a traditional sea power. His influence persists to this day, as the Russian Navy that is at sea in the twenty-first century is, to a significant degree, based on the fleet that Admiral Gorshkov built.

The book describes in detail the discussions about the naval strategy and the shipbuilding progams in the Soviet political and military leadership from 1922 to the death of Stalin in 1953.