The Sacred Cause: Civil-Military Conflict over Soviet National Security, 1917-1992

by Thomas M. Nichols

To the officers of the USSR Armed Forces, the defense of the Soviet Union was, in the words of a Soviet general, a "sacred cause." What was the nature of Soviet civil-military relations, and what have the new militaries inherited from the Soviet experience? In this book Thomas M. Nichols examines the struggles over national security policy between military officers and political leaders in the USSR, and shows that the Soviet civil-military relationship has a long history of conflict rather than cooperation. Nichols disputes the longstanding Western belief in Party-Army amity. He argues that Party control over the Soviet armed forces has been tenuous since Stalin's death; the relationship was inherently unstable and conflictual, growing in intensity because of Gorbachev and his approach to domestic and foreign policy reforms. The source of this instability lay in the creation of the Soviet Armed Forces as a Marxist military, and Nichols maintains that this privileged and highly ideological institution found itself in frequent conflict with a Party that had of necessity to take an increasingly pragmatic approach to international politics. Movement toward a politically isolated and professionalized military, he shows, was continuously subverted by civilian leaders who sought to control military issues through political intrusions into doctrine and strategy. He concludes that the new leaders of the post-Soviet republics have inherited a group of military organizations that continue to resist the abandonment both of their ideological foundations and of their cohesion as a multinational military - a situation he believes may prove to be one of the greatest threats to the emerging post-Soviet democracies.

259 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Dr. Thomas M. Nichols is a professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an adjunct professor in the Harvard Extension School. He also taught at Dartmouth College, Georgetown University (where he earned his PhD), and other schools and lecture programs.

He is currently a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University.

He has also been a Fellow of the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In his Washington days, Professor Nichols was a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a consultant to the U.S. government, and a research analyst for private industry. Later, he served as personal staff for foreign and defense affairs to the late U.S. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania

Reviews

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nichols surveys Soviet civil-military relations, concluding that the Communists' efforts to ensure that the Party controlled the military led to an officer corps so indoctrinated with Marxism-Leninism that the officers challenged the Party when they perceived that the Party was modifying or abandoning the doctrine to which they had pledged their loyalty. This led to challenges to Khrushchev, an uneasy compromise with Brezhnev, and a coup against Gorbachev, and does not bode well for the successor Russian armed forces. Constitutionalism seems the only solution, but Putin's authority limits that option.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazone

Means by which government attempted to control military

I thought this book offered a combination of some fuzzy discussion of Soviet 'military doctrine' and also some fascinating insights into the means by which the Soviet government and the Communist Party (CPSU) attempted to control the Soviet military.

A major part of the problem was that, unlike the US and most western political systems, there never was a clear legal or constitutional separation between the civilian government, the dominant political party or parties, and the military.

A Soviet general or admiral could be simultaneously a leader of the military, a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, a member of the Supreme Soviet, and a member of the Communist Party Central Committee.

As summarized on page 6 “… a situation developed in which the Soviet Union had a technically advanced First World military organization and a Third World system of military control.”

Stalin solved the problem in the 1930s – early 1950s by imposing himself as the leader of the military organization and dismissing or executing anybody who posed a threat to his position. By the late 1950s this was no longer an accepted method of running the military or the government in general.

By the 1970s – mid 1980s the Party leadership had become more or less passive in its control over the military.

Military leaders could and did deny information to the civilian government leaders and on occasion simply defied Party leaders on issues they thought they were entitled to control such as international arms negotiations.

The book also discusses some of the key military personalities and their influence on political and military issues of the 1960s - 1980s: Grechko, Ustinov, Ogarkov, Yakov, Akhromeev, Sokolov, Kulikov, the establishment of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF or RVSN in the USSR), and the 'Golden Age' of the Soviet military in the 1970s when they got everything they wanted in the way of budget, industrial capacity, and weapons procurement.

The last two chapters discuss Gorbachev’s efforts to impose government and Party control over the military, military policy, and especially the military budget. The book was published in 1993 so the eventual solution or consequence of the break-up of the USSR is not quite discussed.

Bayard