Customer Reviews

Red Star Rising at Sea

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The series of articles written by Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov and compiled into Red Star Rising at Sea was a great disappointment. I had hoped it would be an objective work on the growth and development of the Soviet Navy, it was not. It is a work of propaganda that extols Communism and V.I. Lenin. The articles cover the development of Russian/Soviet Navies from Peter the Great to 1974. There is some interesting information in there but Gorshkov does not expound on it which is too bad. Gorshkov personally oversaw the growth of the Soviet Navy into what many, in the 1970's, would consider to be the strongest and best in the world, but there is little information on how this was done. What the work does provide is an insight to how important propaganda was in the Soviet Union. As an example, according to Gorshkov the turning point in the War in the Pacific during WWII was not the Battle of Midway, it was the Soviet Victory at Stalingrad. Thats right, Stalingrad was the turning point in the Pacific. He also says that the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan had nothing to do with Japan's surrender. They only surrendered because the Soviet Union had defeated the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Gorshkov omits the fact that Japan agreed to surrender on 14 August 1945 and the Soviets did not finally defeat the Kwantung Army until 20 August 1945. I do not recommend the book.