ABSTRACT
The euphoria in some quarters of the US strategic community following the strategic arms limitations I accords was largely based upon the inference that Soviet acceptance of a virtual antiballistic missile ban signified fundamental agreement on strategic nuclear doctrine. Until 1953, Soviet military thought, like all other significant aspects of Soviet life, was conditioned by a primitive Stalinist orthodoxy. In military thought, this orthodoxy did not extend much beyond the assertion of the decisiveness of Stalin’s so-called permanently operating factors. The Stalinist assertion of the dominance of the permanently operating factors ruled out the possibility that such so-called transitory factors as surprise could be decisive in war. The Soviet search for ‘real world’ solutions to the security dilemma of the nuclear age was inhibited by this Marxist-Leninist doctrinal context.
