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This chapter examines Russian naval strategy. It examines the Soviet inheritance in terms of its primary missions, theatres of military activity, echelonment, and strategic operations. It then turns to examine contemporary Russian military doctrine, strategy, and deterrence concepts, particularly what Moscow calls “Active Defence”. In offering an assessment of maritime goals and naval policy, the chapter then turns to look at the Russian Navy’s missions and operational art.
The chapter provides an overview of the key themes through the book. It traces the evolution of Russian sea power from the 1990s and the sinking of the Kursk through to today, setting out how Moscow seeks to be part of the wider maritime turn in international affairs. The chapter also frames some of the debates and problems inherent in Russian strategy.
This chapter builds on the distinction between seapower and sea powers and traces the key features of Russia’s role as a sea power, including geographical considerations. The chapter traces the historical role of maritime power, and the fluctuations between the state’s support and neglect, and the impact of Soviet rule. The chapter concludes in discussion of the five Russian paths to sea power.
The chapter sets out the differences between seapowers, states for which the sea is culturally, socially, and economically central, and those that are sea powers – essentially land or continental powers with the resources to build substantial navies to project power by sea. The chapter offers examples of each, framing Russia as a sea power, and situates Russia in terms of the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett. The chapter also sets out the importance of history in understanding Russia’s maritime power, especially the centrality of Russia’s economic relationship with the sea.
This chapter examines the economic and industrial underpinnings of Russia’s maritime turn. It offers a detailed assessment of the state funding for the modernisation of the navy and civilian capabilities, including shipbuilding. It argues that by financial investment alone, Russia is already a serious naval power of global import. Problems remain, especially in terms of shipbuilding capacity.
This chapter sets up the questions to be examined in depth in this part. It examines what threats the West faces at sea and the nature of the Russian challenge more specifically in the era of Great Power Competition. It examines the changing nature of the battlespace and the global maritime horizon. The chapter also assesses the challenges the Russian Navy must face with naval strategy and shipbuilding.
The book examines the re-emergence of Russia as a sea power. After years of post-Soviet decline, Moscow has invested substantial resources in establishing Russia as a ‘leading seafaring nation’ of the twenty-first century. The book examines the plans, priorities, and problems in this strategy and why this is important for the West. It describes the historical underpinnings of Russia’s sea power, and then examines both contemporary naval strategy and the economic and industrial underpinnings of the “maritime turn” in Russian strategy.
This chapter explores the dynamic interaction between Western maritime capabilities and navies and Russian power at sea, especially the navy. In assessing the strategic dilemmas Moscow faces, it reflects on the navy’s roles in different stages of conflict, and its wartime tasks. It then examines the problems that the Russian Navy faces both in terms of its own shortfalls and the advantages of Western navies.
This chapter examines views of the 1918–19 Revolution during the transition from Cold War division to German reunification in the late 1980s. It also takes the reader through the 1990s, a decade dominated by debates on the Holocaust rather than the First World War, and into the early years of the twenty-first century, a time of transition. It demonstrates that parts of the intellectual baggage of the Cold War were already being jettisoned in the period before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, while other aspects took until 2009 or even later to cease casting a shadow over scholarly debates. Meanwhile, the peaceful revolutions in the GDR and across the Soviet bloc in 1989 also reshaped the way in which the ‘problem’ of revolution in German history – including in 1918–19 – was categorised, with less emphasis now placed on national narratives and frameworks. The chapter’s last section looks at what remains of other East German classical leftist interpretations from the mid-twentieth century, charting their continuing, albeit far from complete or irreversible, decline in the years since the end of the GDR.
This chapter explores how the German left from the early 1930s through to the late 1940s sought to incorporate interpretations of the 1918–19 Revolution into rival visions of a post-Nazi, anti-Fascist Germany. A vast array of German leftists found themselves scattered across Europe and America as a result of political persecution at home and the outbreak of the Second World War. However, only for a brief moment, in 1943–44, did anything like a joined-up narrative bringing together social democrat, Communist and dissident Marxist views begin to emerge. Ideological tensions had already returned by 1945–46, and grew more intense as a result of political developments in early postwar Germany and Berlin. The chapter ends with a discussion of how the centenary of the 1848 Revolution and the thirtieth anniversary of the 1918–19 revolution were marked on different sides of the East–West divide in 1948.