ABSTRACT
Almost unnoticed by Western observers, an enormous military-educational complex is emerging in the Soviet Union today. It holds a commanding position in graduate education as well as in undergraduate training; it permeates the civil secondary-school system and ties up more than one-fourth of the population in voluntary work in support of military skill training; and it touches every Soviet citizen by entangling him in a nationwide civil defense structure. Before investigating this phenomenon, it may be useful to reflect on some of the reasons why a development of such significance has not drawn more attention. Ethnocentrism may be an even more important source of misconception of Soviet military policy than confusion about the programmatic implications of Soviet socialism. The number of officer-training schools, according to one Soviet source, commenced to grow not long after the addition of a military pedagogical faculty to the Lenin Military-Political Academy in 1959.
