for military supplies. After Stalin’s death (1953) he proved a loyal ally of Nikita Khrushchev, the only member of Stalin’s original Politburo to support him in his confrontation with the Stalinist Anti-Party Group (1957). Mikoyan went on to play a crucial role in the Cuban missile crisis (1962), mediating between Khrushchev, U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he persuaded to accept the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. He was appointed head of government in July 1964, three months before signing the decree dismissing Khrushchev as party first secretary. Under Leonid Brezhnev he gradually relinquished his roles in party and government in favor of writing his memoirs, finally retiring in 1975. See also: ANTI-PARTY GROUP; ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS; LEFT OPPOSITION; PURGES, THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Medvedev, Roy. (1984). All Stalin’s Men. (1984). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Taubman, William; Khrushchev, Sergei; and Gleason, Abbott, eds. (2000). Nikita Khrushchev. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Military art is the theory and practice of preparing and conducting military actions on land, at sea, and within the global aerospace envelope.
Historically, Russian military theorists held that the primary function of military art was attainment of victory over an adversary with the least expenditure of forces, resources, and time. This postulation stressed a well- developed sense of intent that would link the logic of strategy with the purposeful design and execution of complex military actions. By the end of the nineteenth century, Russian military theorists accepted the conviction that military art was an expression of military science, which they viewed as a branch of the social sciences with its own laws and disciplinary integrity. Further, they subscribed to the idea, exemplified by Napoleon, that military art consisted of two primary components, strategy and tactics. Strategy described movements of main military forces within a theater of war, while tactics described what occurred on the battlefield. However, following the Russo- Japanese War of 1904-1905, theorists gradually modified their views to accommodate the conduct of operations in themselves, or operatika, as a logical third component lying between-and linking-strategy and tactics. This proposition further evolved during the 1920s and 1930s, thanks primarily to Alexander Svechin, who lent currency to the term “operational art” (operativnoye iskusstvou) as a replacement for operatika, and to Vladimir Triandafillov, who analyzed the nature of modern military operations on the basis of recent historical precedent. Subsequently, the contributions of other theorists, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Alexander Yegorov, and Georgy Isserson, along with mechanization of the Red Army and the bitter experience of the Great Patriotic War, contributed further to the Soviet understanding of modern military art. However, the theoretical development of strategy languished under Josef Stalin, while the advent of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II called into question the efficacy of operational art. During much of the Nikita Khrushchev era, a nuclear-dominated version of strategy held near- complete sway in the realm of military art. Only in the mid-1960s did Soviet military commentators begin to resurrect their understanding of operational art to correspond with the theoretical necessity for conducting large- scale conventional operations under conditions of nuclear threat. During the 1970s and
MILITARY DOCTRINE
1980s emphasis on new reconnaissance systems and precision-guided weaponry as parts of an ongoing revolution in military affairs further challenged long-held convictions about traditional boundaries and linkages among strategy, operational art, and tactics. Further, U.S. combat experience during the Gulf War in 1990-1991 and again in Afghanistan during 2001 clearly challenged conventional notions about the relationships in contemporary war between time and space, mass and firepower, and offense and defense. Some theorists even began to envision a new era of remotely fought or no-contact war (bezkontaknaya voynau) that would dominate the future development of all facets of military art. See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST- SOVIET
Menning, Bruce W. (1997). “Operational Art’s Origins.” Military Review 76(5):32-47. Svechin, Aleksandr A. (1992). Strategy, ed. Kent D. Lee. Minneapolis: East View Publications.
In late Imperial Russia, a common basis for joint military action; in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, an assertion of military posture and policy.
The Soviet and Russian understanding of military doctrine is often a source of confusion because other societies usually subscribe to a narrower definition. For most Western military and naval establishments, doctrine typically consists of the distilled wisdom that governs the actual employment of armed forces in combat. At its best, this wisdom constitutes a constantly evolving intellectual construct that owes its origins and development to a balanced understanding of the complex interplay among changing technology, structure, theory, and combat experience.
In contrast, doctrine in its Soviet and Russian variants evolved early to reflect a common understanding of the state’s larger defense requirements. The issue first surfaced after 1905, when Russian military intellectuals debated the necessity for a “unified military doctrine” that would impart effective overall structure and direction to war preparations. In a more restrictive perspective, the same doctrine would also define the common intellectual foundations of field service regulations and the terms of cooperation between Imperial Russia’s army and navy. In 1912, Tsar Nicholas II himself silenced discussion, proclaiming, “Military doctrine consists of doing everything that I order.”
A different version of the debate resurfaced soon after the Bolshevik triumph in the civil war. Discussion ostensibly turned on a doctrinal vision for the future of the Soviet military establishment, but positions hardened and quickly assumed political overtones. War Commissar Leon Trotsky held that any understanding of doctrine must flow from future requirements for world revolution. Others, including Mikhail V. Frunze, held that doctrine must flow from the civil war experience, the nature of the new Soviet state, and the needs and character of the Red Army. Frunze essentially envisioned a concept of preparation for future war shaped by class relations, external threat, and the state’s economic development.
Frunze’s victory in the debate laid the foundations for a subsequent definition of Soviet and later Russian military doctrine that has remained relatively constant. Military doctrine came to be understood as “a system of views adopted by a given state at a given time on the goals and nature of possible future war and the preparation of the armed forces and the country for it, and also the methods of waging it.” Because of explicit linkages between politics and war, this version of military doctrine always retained two aspects, the political (or sociopolitical) and the military-technical. Thanks to rapid advances in military technology, the latter aspect sometimes witnessed abrupt change. However, until the advent of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and perestroika, the political aspect, which defined the threat and relations among states, remained relatively static.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a recurring redefinition of the twin doctrinal aspects that emphasized both Russia’s diminished great-power status and the changing nature of the threat. Nuclear war became less imminent, military operations more complex, and the threat both internal and external. Whatever the calculus, the terms of expression and discussion continued to reflect the unique legacy that shaped Imperial Russian and Soviet notions of military doctrine.
MILITARY-ECONOMIC PLANNING
See also: FRUNZE, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST- SOVIET; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH
Frank, Willard C., and Gillette, Phillip S., eds. (1992). Soviet Military Doctrine from Lenin to Gorbachev, 1915- 1991. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Garthoff, Raymond L. (1953). Soviet Military Doctrine. Glencoe, IL: Free Press..
In the world wars of the twentieth century, it was as important to mobilize the economy to supply soldiers’
