ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the role of militarism in the Soviet system. It seeks to indicate how deeply imbedded militarism is in communist theory and practice and how broad is its scope. Ignorance of Russia places Western statesmen at a great disadvantage vis-a-vis their Soviet counterparts, who, emerging from the background of an international revolutionary movement, have always had a keen interest in Western societies. Russia’s traditional expansionism and the militarism to which it gave rise were primarily caused by economic factors. Space forbids discussion of the role of the military in post-Petrine Russia. In the early 1920s Soviet military specialists concluded that they had to prepare for a “war of machines.” In the Soviet Union, military doctrine is treated with utmost seriousness. To a Westerner, the most striking quality of Soviet military doctrine is its comprehensiveness its tendency to reach far beyond the limits of what in the West is recognized as the proper province of military thought.
