The Sea Power of the State [Hardcover]

Sergei Georgi Gorshkov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1979 | ISBN-10: 0080219446 | ISBN-13: 978-0080219448 | Edition: 1st

Admiral Gorshkov, the creator of the modern Soviet Navy, is widely acknowledges to be his country's most brilliant naval strategist of this or any period in history. He has made the Soviet Union into a world sea power for the first time. In this book Admiral Gorshkov examines the concept of sea power as it has been understood and put to work by different nations. He then shows how the complex operations of a modern fleet, military or civilian, have their place in the politics and defence of the USSR. --- from book's back cover

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 365 pages
• Publisher: Pergamon Pr; 1st edition (May 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0080219446
• ISBN-13: 978-0080219448
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,005,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Admiral Gorshkov: Russia's Mahan and Rickover?, February 9, 2012

By 

Clifford Brodsky - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The sea power of the state

"Sea Power of the State," written by Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov and published in 1976 during his tenure as the Soviet Navy's Commander-in-Chief, provides a rarely available view into the strategic thinking which guided the development and disposition of Russian Naval forces during the 1960's and 1970's; the first time Russia possessed naval forces capable of conducting sustained operations on the world's oceans--albeit a fleet relying primarily on submarines. A considerable achievement given that when Gorshkov assumed command of the Russian Navy in 1956 it consisted primarily of vessels designed for coastal defense and was incapable of logistically supporting the ocean operation of its few capital ships or its large submarine force.

A former Naval Officer who was assigned during the aforementioned period to ships participating in an ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare) Group which on occasion practiced the art of ASW by chasing Soviet submarines across the Pacific Ocean, as well as having personally participated as an Officer of the Deck (OOD) in sea going Soviet Navy precipitated surface confrontations, I found Gorshkov's writings interesting and most informative. "Sea Power of the State," however, is not an easy read, perhaps due to translation difficulties when proceeding from Russian into English or due to the style in which Gorshkov communicated his thoughts. Further, individual points are to frequently repeated, almost to the point of nuisance. And, of course, the book is replete with "socialist" anti-western verbiage about the evil motivations of the aggressive imperialist nations--especially the United States. Given the Soviet Union's de facto record of Eastern Europe colonization, a reader can only wonder whether Gorskov's expressed political views actually reflect the thinking of the Soviet High Command or were just pro forma boilerplate.

"Sea Power of the State" is divided into several parts and opens with a 25+ page dissertation on the economic significance of ocean floor minerals, etc. giving the impression this geological survey will play a key factor underlying Gorshkov's strategic views, however, the subject area essentially (not totally) disappears from the book thereafter. It is followed by a similarly treated 30 page discussion of the importance of fishing and merchant shipping to the sea power of a state.

The next two chapters contain a 100+ page view of "The History of [Selected] Navies" and a 50+ page treatise on the author's views of the "The Development of Navies after the Second World War." These reviews and their encompassed assessments seem to provide the historical analysis on which Gorshkov based the strategic goals and objecitves he envisioned the Soviet Navy pursuing and the force formations he would configure to affect those goals.

When reviewing the American and British oceanic conflict with opposing German and Japanese fleets, Gorshkov's concentration repeatedly focuses how (he viewed) submarine warfare's influence on the war's outcome, leading him to conclude:

"Submarines become the most important means of battle at sea. And if individual states in the pre-war period underestimated their possibilities, in the course of the war they changed their views on the use of submarine forces. .... Earlier the view was repeatedly expressed that submarines are a weapon of the weakest fleet and that strong fleets have no need of them. However, this view was flatly rebutted by the experience of the war [when] submarines of the strongest American fleet performed [the] most important role ... not only ... against Japanese shipping, but also against surface ships and submarines."

Gorshkov, however, fails to correctly comprehend the strategically decisive role played by Aircraft Carriers and their Air Groups during World War II in the Pacific. He absurdly attributes the Japanese post-Battle of Midway retreat onto the defensive as having occurred due to the Soviet Army's victory at Stalingrad. To Gorshkov the Aircraft Carrier centric surface battles of the Pacific War could have no strategic effect because the force levels involved were so much less then were engaged in the manpower intensive (slaughters) on the Soviet / German Eastern front, perhaps demonstrating a flaw in the strategic thinking of Russian Admirals resulting from their nation's geographically necessitated concentration on large scale ground warfare. Other historical events such as the participation of Russian sailors in their country's 20th Century Civil War and the Soviet Navy's (exaggerated) contributions to the outcome of World War II are discussed in these page, but this commentary adds little to the understanding of the strategic goals Gorshkov envisioned the Soviet Navy pursuing in the post-World War II environment.

Building on this historical analysis Gorshkov concludes that "problems associated with the art of naval warfare" render dominance of the sea an unobtainable strategic result--as versus its possible achievement on land surfaces. His analysis underlying this conclusion is to lengthy to repeat here, but it rests on several observations and assumptions. First, Gorshkov believes that the fluid non-fixed nature of the sea precludes a naval force from firmly establishing itself in a fixed location enforcing that dominance and, second, that modern weapons systems enable fleets to extend the distance over which they could apply their [explosive] force thereby contesting any attempt at fixed dominance of a given sea area.

Clearly Russian strategic thinking did not encompass the need to establish forward bases such as those the U.S. Navy maintains around the world, probably due to the Russian military's demonstrated inability to manage substantial logistics flow over a long distance, precluding their establishing and maintaining distant bases. I personally know a number of intelligent former Russian soldiers who served in Afghanistan and asked them why the combat force the Soviet Army sent into that country was so numerically low. Their response was that their military simply lacked the logistic capabilities to sustain a force greater than 120,000 men that far from home. An acknowledgement that their nation simply lacked the management skills to logistically support a large force such as a Naval Task Group far from home, which Gorshkov must have realized.

However, despite their logistics management shortcomings, the Soviet Union did possess sufficient bright individuals with technical engineering skills and the industrial structure needed to design, produce, and staff a large number of nuclear powered submarines carrying modern weapons systems, communications capabilities, etc. needed for their Navy to maintain a large number of these vessels at sea. A technical and industrial base which Admiral Gorshkov notes necessarily underlies the development of modern navies and without which a nation cannot successfully aspire to be a sea power. Gorshkov's answer, therefore, to his problems was the deployment of a large number of nuclear powered submarines which could steam almost indefinitely at sea, restricted only by their crews need for food. A force that could target the sea communications the "imperialist" western industrial nations needed to support their worldwide "aggressive" interventions, at least in the socialist speak of the Soviet high command.

"Sea Power of the State" is a fascinating look into the mind of the high command of one of this nation's major military opponents. It is a rare treat and makes for a fascinating read, at least for officers of the opposing services and for anyone interested in how high level military officers view problems--especially a military officer as prominent and influential as was Admiral Gorshkov.

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorshkov's world view, September 18, 2010

By 

jb1850 - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Sea Power of the State (Hardcover)

In this book Admiral Gorshkov reveals what had always been his goals for the Soviet Navy even while his government's naval policy went through radically different shapes. There is, of course, the usual Soviet boilerplate [claptrap] but the book is a wonderful piece of history.