- - - - - - - - -- -- - - - - - - - BDM Federal lne 1501BDMWay Mclean VA 22102 SOVIET INTENTIONS 1965-1985 Volumell Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence AU1HORS John G Hines Senior Author Ellis M Mishulovich John F Shull ' BDM FEDERAL INC September 22 1995 CONTRACf #MDA903-92-C-0147 OSD-NET ASSESSMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS J n -- Comments on Interview s I ANSS ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooo l Marshal Sergei F A khromeev 3 MHshal Sergei F A khromeev - o - S Gen -Lt Gelii Viktorovich Batenin 7 Sergei Blagovolin ' 11 Harold Brown 13 Zbign tew BrzeZinski o o 16 o o 1 o o o o o o o o - o Dmitrii S chereshkin 18 I J J J Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 19 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 20 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 27 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 38 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 54 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 58 Gen -Col Ret AndrianA Danilevich 66 Gen -Maj Vladimir Zinovievich Dvorkin 70 Gen Mak hmut A Gareev 72 Gen Makhmnt A Gareev 74 Fred c lldc 77 Gen -Col Igor' V Dlarionov 79 Gen -Col Igoro V Illarionov 83 A S Kalashnikov 86 A S Kalashnikov 94 Vitalii I eonidovich Kataev 96 Vitalii l eonidovich Kataev 99 Gen -Maj Ret Iurii A Kirshin 102 Gen -M49 Ret Iurii A Kirshin 104 Robert W Komer 105 Gen -Col Ret Varfolomei Vladimirovich Korobushin 106 Gen -Lt Ret Nikolai Vasil'evich Kravets 109 Gen -Col Gregorii Fedorovich Krivosheev 111 Colonel Petr M Lapunov ' 115 l l l l u n 1 I I _j ' Andrew W Marshall 118 Rod McDaniel 120 Iu A Mozzhorin 122 Iu A Mozzhorin 125 Vladimir Rubanov 127 James R Schlesinger 128 Vitalii V Shlykov 131 Boris Aleksandrovich Strogonov 132 Viktor M Suri k ov 134 Dr Vitalii Nikolaevich Tsygichko - 136 Dr Vitalii NikoJa evich Tsygichko 142 Dr Vitalii Nikolaevich Tsygichk o 144 Dr Vitalii Ni kolaevich Tsygichk o 146 Dr Vitalii Nikolaevicb Tsygichko 148 Dr Vitalii Nikolaevich Tsygichko 150 Gen -Col Dmitrii Volkogonov 158 APPENDIX A Partial Ust of Decision Makers and Analysts 159 APPENDIX B Research Questions for Soviet Interview Respondents 161 APPENDIX C Research Questions for U S Interview Respondents 165 APPENDIX D List of Acronyms and Abbreviations 166 APPENDIX E Tsygichko's Kommentarii k interv'iu v 1990-1991 godu 168 Index 178 B m J J J J J I l Interviews and Discussions with Cold-Wip' Era Planners and Analysts -l This volume contains much of the raw material on which this study is based All 'l items in this collection represent the testimony in some form of Soviet and American strategic planners and analysts whose professional careers were largely dominated by the need to understand and respond effectively to the military threat from their Cold War opponents 0 g Most of the item S are structured as records or sillnmaries of interviews conducted on the basis of a specific list of questions In follow-up interviews or interviews with difficult subjects the questions served only as a general guide to research Long narrative responses also often did not address questions in the same format and sequence 1 in which the questions were presented I J J For many reasons items do not follow precisely the sequence and contents of the interview questions Soviet interview subjects often were uncomfortable with the interview situation the questions or the implications of the research the Cold War was over and the West had won As a result the nature of the record of interview or discussion varies from interview to interview Transcripts of taped interviews are the record of choice of course followed by records based on notes and fmally summaries a based on the memory of the intervie er prepared shortly after the interview Many Soviet interview subjects were uncomfortable with tape recorders especially early in the project 1989-1990 when several were far from convinced that the Cold War was indeed over Likewise several of the questions caused discomfort which J J J forced rephrasing and special prompting provocative statements or allusions to other information on the part of the interviewer Some interview subjects responded with almost a stream-of-consciousness flow of information that moved from association to association through an entire series of related issues Stopping such a response to adhere precisely to our questions could result in the loss of valuable insights and information not anticipated by the questioner J J J Cold War Interviews This resulted in incomplete coverage of some questions requiring when possible subsequent supplementary interviews focused on specific issues To compensate when possible we revisited some of the most knowledgeable interview subjects several times over the course of 3 or 4 years We tried when possible to isolate the i terview subject from his colleagues during questioning to avoid mutual intimidation collegial responses and contamination of data and observations We were generally successful in meeting this objective bur J were sometimes forced by those who helped arrange a given interview to involve them in the process When possible we would subsequently isolate the interview subject and revisit one or two key questions to validate the original response The record th t- follows the fore is inconsistent in level of detail and comprehensiveness despite the planning and good intentions of the researchers Imperfect as they are they nevertheless represent a unique record of information and beliefs of Cold War participants who were able to trust their fanner eriemies sufficiently to share their thoughts and beliefs in some detail before they themselves passed into history For the convenience of the reader a list of acronyms and abbreviations appears in the appendices as well as a selective list of decision makers and analysts cited or referred to in the interview record J J J J J ii 1 RECORD OF INTERVIEW l Subject Gen -Lt Gelli Viktorovich Batenin Position Gen Batenin began his career as an artillery officer and transferred in the 1960s to the Strategic Rocket Forces In the late 1970s and through the mid-1980s General Batenin worked for Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei F Akhromeev in various roles when the latter was chief of the General Staff Main Operations Directorate and then as First Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov Date Friday August 6 1993 Place McLean VA Interviewer 1 J 0 c J J J J John G Hines Language Russian Prepared Based on notes Q Over the past 3 years or so I have interviewed several senior military people a8 well as from military industry and the Central Committee 4 I was able to interview your former chief Marshal Akhromeev twice and met several times with General Danilevich A Danilevich You know he wrote the three-volume work for the General Staff on the Strategy of Deep-Operations or at least he was responsible for the work He directed the effort very actively The book covered everything the entire picture of possible future war It began with the anti-space operation protivo-kosmicheskaia operatsiia against incoming missiles the anti-air operation fprotivo-vozdushnaia operatsiia against your bombers and then the deep operations against NATO to the full depth of the theater Operational-strategic depth referred to the entire 1 200 km depth of the European theater to the beaches at the western edge of the continent The theory of deep operations in Danilevich's work envisioned great depths of military action voennye deistviia because of the range of weapons weapons platforms and the speed of movement of the forces The initial operation was expected to take S to 7 days and to carry the counter-offensive 500 km At that point we expected that we would have lost half of our tanks and that half of the remaining force would have outrun its logistics support Because so much of the force would be exhausted early decisive success over the enemy was very important Q What scenarios for the beginmng of war were assumed in the book on strategic operations A Missile strikes from the U S and the initiation of an offensive by NATO The main objective of initial operations by Soviet Forces and the Warsaw Pact were to break up sorvat' the NATO offensive throughout the depth of NATO's forces and NATO's rear Included in the concept of breaking up and stopping NATO's offensive was the 4 Central Committee will be either spelled out or abbreviated as CC throughout the interviews 7 -1 l neither side would win Even to the General Staff it was clear that nuclear weapons were not really military weapons but were political tools In 1962 the USSR could not respond massively to a U S attack Only in the late 1960s did the USSR acquire the capability to respond which provided some stability Neither side could consider selective nuclear use until the 1970s because technology and control systems before that could not support limited nuclear options LNO l In the early 1970s within the military leadership even the more conservative generals' understanding of nuclear weapons had matured to the point that they believed that nuclear weapons had no real military utility Once a nuclear balance was established then deterrence sderzhivanie putem ustrasheniia was true of both sides Solution of the question of control at the strategic level left unresolved the problem of positive control of nuclear weapons at the tactical level By the late 1970s both sides essentially had solved the question of control of tactical nuclear weapons J 1 ' 0 J 0 Akhromeev Cold War Interviews ' was Nuclear use had to be avoided if at all possible Preemption technically not even possible until very recently In any case the decision would take so long to make that the USSR would be stuck with a responsive strike KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky's revelations about the RlaN Raketno-Iademoe Napadenie 3 crisis of 1983 were self-serving falsifications I'll explain why There is the KGB over here be placed an imaginary box on the table to his right and the General Staff over there be gestured far to his left The CIA is here be gestured to my left and the Joint Chiefs of Staff-The Pentagon-over here on my right The KGB and CIA have more in common and more exchanges than do the General Staff and KGB We in the General Staff probably would not brief a KGB officer on such secrets especially if he was being posted to a Western embassy Gordievsky did not know what the General Staff was doing He told such stories to improve his standing in the West War was not considered imminent SOl really can affect the future of warfare and greatly destabilize strategic relations The side that achieves invulnerability will press this advantage If the U S pursues SDI the USSR can find cheap ways of countering the defenses but this would undermine stability If SDI is not included in START then the USSR will announce unilaterally that Soviet agreement on START n will be conditional on the U S renouncing development ofBMD -Though the U S has precision weapons technological countermeaSures will be developed e g to make tanks invisible In the Persian Gulf Iraq had no electronic countermeasures but after 5 000 U S sorties it still had l OOOs of tanks intact The U S may be overestimating the effectiveness of precision weapons because they are being used in the Gulf War without opposition A technologically sophisticated opponent will develop ways to counter this U S capability ' J J J J 3 RlaN was all acronym that the Soviets used to describe a special period of tension between 1980 and 1984 when they reported greatly heightened expectations of a nuclear attack from the U S See Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky KGB The Inside Story London Hodder and Stougbton 1990 pp 501-507 6 ' Cold War Intimliews l l l n n I Batenin preemptive destruction of as many launch systems and aircraft as possible as well as associated control systems Q Was the preemption to be with the use of conventional or nuclear weapons A That would depend We expected NATO to launch nuclear strikes at some point If we did not detect preparation on the part of NATO to launch nuclear weapons immediately we would attack launch platforms and storage using conventional weapons If we detected preparation by NATO to launch nuclear strikes and we believed we would know when this was happening we would want to strike NATO's launch and control systems with nuclear strikes of our own We had confidence in our knowledge of when NATO was preparing for nuclear launch We would detect mating of warheads to missiles and uploading of nuclear bombs and artillery We listened to the hourly circuit verification signal on your nuclear release communications systems and believed we would recognize a release order Under these conditions when we detected NATO actually preparing to launch we would want to preempt your launch with our own nuclear strikes Did the General Staff onsider selective use of nuclear weapons fvyboroch ye under these conditions especially if it was clear that NATO would be attacking with only a few say ten nuclear weapons Q ud ry A This would be very difficult to execute It would be difficult just to launch on time against NATO preparation even with a strike against all or most of your nuclear capable systems and it is doubtful that we would attempt to restrict the strike under those conditions More important Ogarkov was very much opposed to the idea of limited nuclear war ogranichennaia iadernaia voina in any form because he believed it would benefit NATO Q How A By making nuclear strikes more likely by making NATO believe that the Soviet Union might fight a limited nuclear war A limited nuclear war was more likely to occur than an unlimited nuclear war And Ogarkov believed that once begun limited nuclear use would almost certainly escalate to massive use He tried to maintain therefore the posture that in the event of war massive use of nuclear weapons was both undesirable but unavoidable once any nuclear weapons were used Akhromeev by the way was more open to at least considering situations where selected strikes might be made Q J Where did this grand coneept of the strategy of deep operations come from A I believe the SS-20 made it possible that the SS-20 created the environment in which strategists could think about war on such a large scale The SS-20 had a very low vulnerability high accuracy and a great range not only over all of Europe but ov r the Middle and Near East and much of the Mediterranean Under the roof of the SS-20 it was possible to think about deep operations There was a certain irony in that by 1987 many in the General Staff thought that all of the components necessary for conducting deep operations were in place at last that we were ready that spring We conducted games and exercises At the same time in December of that year we signed the INF Treaty Gorbachev had his agenda and the General Staff its agenda Oorbachev had seen General Danilevich's three-volume book on strategy He even had a copy but he never read it He was moving in another direction eliminating the weapons that were the basis for executing such a strategy J J 8 Cold War Interviews ' Batenin Q When did these various elements orne together th t is the capabilities ofthe SS20 and the development of the strategy of deep operations A The late 1970s it began to take shape in the late 1970s The SS-20 was being deployed and D evich and others in his collective were developing concepts J 0 Q Ogarkov took over in 1977 A Yes this was important Ogarkov fostered this kind of thinking very actively Q Relations between Ogarkov and U stinov Marshal Akhromeev wrote in his book Through The Eyes of a Marshal and a Diplomat that by 1982 relations were so bad that it was difficult for the General Staff to function effectively A Yes relations by 1982 were extremely strained A major issue was PVO protivovozdushnaia oborona-Air-Defense Ogarkov wanted to eliminate the PVO as a service put the air element in the Air Forces and subordinate ground elements to the Ground Forces He believed Ground Forces PVO PVO sukhoputnykh voisk was an effective arrangement that provided reliable air defense of forces under an integrated command He wanted to broaden that principle He also believed he could thereby eliminate an entire service headquarters apparatus - Ustinov wanted to retain that old structure Q Was this the only disagreement l A No There were broader differences Ogarkov believed that the types and numbers of weapons produced should be determined by the military customers zakazchiki and Ustinov believed that such decisions were the business of the Communist Party s Defense Council and the Military Industrial Commission VPK that is the industri3 1ists J Q D 0 J J J Was the General Staff-MoD deadlock as bad as was described by Akhromeev A Absolutely Things got done in fact because Ustinov treated Akbromeev as the de facto Chief of Staff After 1982 he acted in effect as the Second Chief of the General Staff rather than as the First Deputy Ustinov would communicate with Akhromeev rather than with Ogarkov Akhromeev tried to keep Ogarkov informed at first and then told him less and less because it caused more problems than it solved I was with Akbromeev in his office once when Ogarkov called to ask about some decision he had heard about from another source It related to a change in organization in the GSFG Group of Soviet Forces Germany as I recall Ak hromeev who was involved in the decision by Ustinov was very uncomfortable I heard him confirming the decision and explaining why he had not informed Ogarkov that he had intended to brief him but other events had intervened etc This was a very difficult situation Q There have been various reports the most well known from formet KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky and published openly in England that there was a period of great tension in the Soviet Government in the early 1980s Specifically between about 1981 and 1984 the MoD KGB and others believed that there was a high probability that the U S and NATO were preparing to attack the Warsaw Pact and the USSR including with J J 5 Communist Party of the Soviet Union will be either spelled out or abbreviated as CPSU throughout the interviews 9 J ' l l Cold War Interviews Batenin nuclear w apons The whole problem of increased threat was identified u der the acronym RiaN Raketno-Iademoe Napadenie 6 Yes I am very familiar with RiaN There was a great deal of tension in the General Staff at that time and we worked long hours longer than usual I don't recall a period more tense since the Caribbean Crisis in 1962 A J lid n I ro 0 rn GBPJ - J J J J J J 6 RlaN was an acronym that the Soviets used to describe a special period of tension between 1980 and 1984 when reported greatly heightened expectations of a nuclear attack from the U S See Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky KGB 1M Inside Story London Hodder and Stoughton 1990 pp 501-507 10 tbeY l J SUM MARY OF INTERVIEW Subject Sergei Blagovolin Position Head of Department for Military-Economic and Military-Political Research Institute of the World Economy and International Relations Russian acronym IMEMO Dateffime May 7 1991 10 30 a m Location Office at IMEMO Interviewer John G Hines Language Russian Prepared Based on notes ''Industrial Mobilization Rlght after urrlversity around 1971 Blago olin worked on a project analyzed the industrial mobilization potential of the United States and estimated that the U S could produce 50 nuclear submarines and 50 000 tanks per year within a few months of starting mobilization fuat l J 0 D J He believes the USSR is living with the results of that estimate In the 1970s and 1980s this threat assessment was used to justify Soviet force building programs After Iakovlev returned from Canada in 1982 and Blagovolin as chairman of the Institute's Party Committee Partkom worked closely with him as Director of the Regional Party Committee Obkom to reevaluate U S mobilization capacity and the effect of the arms race on the USSR The conclusion was that the Soviet Union had created its own set of enemies by building such a monstrous production machine in all sectors including submarines and had thereby helped to drive the Soviet economy to ruin Blagovolin is publishing a book on this subject in English expected out in Summer 1991 7 The Russian version for a Russian audience is more important than the English The Agreement of April 23 states that the Treaty of the Union TOU will be signed soon probably after the special 12 June Presidential elections in the RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic Not less than 6 months after the signing of the TOO a new constitution will be issu_ed and not less than 6 weeks after the new constitution there would be new direct elections at all levels At the Party Central Committee Plenum of April 20 Gorbachev threatened to resign after many of the delegates criticized his weakness and ineffectiveness regarding the Union and the economy During the break Volskii circulated a petition with the support of Bakatin and Nazarbaev 72 signed 35 - 40 more promised to sign After the break Volskii got up and said that if Gorbachev' s resignation were accepted then the signatories of the petition would leave the Communist Party not as individuals but as a J J 7 Book not published in either language 11 This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu