devastating Polish counter-offensive. Ideological enthusiasm had blinded the
military and political leadership to operational limits of the force committed.
Poland was likely to be the launching point of an operation against the Soviet
Union, and so the study of that campaign became a persistent theme in his writing.
The Soviet Union should be prepared for a long war with maximum mobiliza-
tion of society and economy. Defence industries should be moved deep within
Soviet territory to avoid their loss in the initial enemy offensive. Soviet forces
would rely upon mass mobilization of men, material, and technology to defeat
the enemy. To harass the enemy’s rear while it conducted an active defence and
counter-attacks, the Soviet Union would embrace ‘people’s war’. The final defeat
of the enemy would come about through the organization of limited operations
by particular fronts and groups of fronts. Coordinating them was the province of
operational art and should be carried out by the Stavka.
Given his vision of the probable opponent, Svechin expected that Soviet forces
would have to conduct breakthrough operations on the model of Brusilov and
would need to find the appropriate instrument to exploit success. The practical
depth of penetration that would be achieved in these operations depended
heavily upon the logistical support which the attacking forces would enjoy. In a
memo to Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the Red Army’s Main Staff (RKKA),
Svechin said that since Soviet industry remained undeveloped, it was doubtful
whether the Soviet Union was able to achieve qualitative or quantitative parity
with the advanced capitalist powers. He was even more worried about the young
Red commanders’ enthusiasm for revolutionary warfare and preventive war. 17
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, expressing one’s view was never without danger to life
and limb. In the spring of 1930, a dispute over the primary direction of the enemy
threat emerged, pitting Svechin against two of those commanders, Mikhail
Tukhachevsky and V. K. Triandafillov. Svechin pointed to south and south-western
borders and the risk of Anglo-French support for Romania. Tukhachevsky and
Triandafillov for their part looked to the threat from Poland. Shaposhnikov sided
with the two Red commanders and also rejected Svechin’s concerns about the
ability of the USSR to create a modern military force on a par with those of the
encircling capitalist powers. 18 In late September 1930, Shaposhnikov,voenspets
and graduate of the tsarist General Staff Academy, put in his request to join the
Communist Party. By that time, othervoenspetsy, including Svechin, were already
under arrest by the Unified State Political Administration (OGPU).
TUKHACHEVSKY, MECHANIZATION, DEEP OPERATIONS,
AND THE BATTLE OF ANNIHILATIONWithin the RKKA Military Academy, the Faculty of Operational Art, which was
established in 1924, steadily developed its curriculum and engaged in research
relating to the form and content of operational art. N. Varfolomeev pioneered the
The Tsarist and Soviet Operational Art, 1853–1991 69