SOVIET MILITARY STRATEGY

A remarkable Russian document, if somewhat self-serving and shady, is the collective work of a group of top-ranking Red Star officers. It surveys Soviet strategic thinking in the post-Stalin era, reflecting various politico-military revisions and rerections, a sort of ""centrist"" compromise of Khrushchev's rocketry reliance and Malinovskii's proposed employment of multi-million-man armies. The authors seek to harmonize the ""radical"" and ""traditional"" viewpoints being batted about, mostly sub rosa, in the Fremlin today; they pinpoint how to conduct successfully a possible nuclear war in the shortest possible time, and also how to deter one through superior strength and streamlined policy-making decisions. Needless to say what's secret is kept that way, but much as discussed: the nature of global war surprise attacks and pre-emptive first strikes, he balances and imbalances of power, bureaucratic contentions and concordant, new weaponry and the resultant need for new combat methodology, the roles of air, naval and civil defense forces, and a sharp assessment of US and NATO capabilities. Throughout, the Soviet performance, its problems and its potentials, is stressed, along with the usual Marxist-leninist mouthwash: ""imperial aggressors"", ""bourgeois ideologists"" and ""class conflicts""; the latter, it is hoped, will insure collapse of US morale early in any engagement. Introducing the book is an excellent reading-between-the-lines analysis from members of the RAND corporation. A reference must.