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 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET
NAVY IN THE BALTIC, 1921–1941

This book, based on extensive work in Russian archives, investigates how strategy,
organizational rivalry and cultural factors came to shape naval developments in the
Soviet Union, up to the invasion of 1941.
Focusing on the Baltic Fleet, the author shows how the perceived balance of
power in northern Europe came to have a major influence on Soviet naval policy
during the 1920s and 1930s. The operational environment of a narrow inland-sea
like the Baltic would have required a joint approach to military planning, but the
Soviet navy’s weak position among the armed services made such an approach
hard to attain. The Soviet regime also struggled against the cultural heritage of the
tsarist navy and the book describes how this struggle was overcome. In a special
Appendix dedicated to the purges of 1937–38, surviving party records from the
Baltic Fleet intelligence section are used to illustrate the mechanisms of the Great
Terror at a local level.

Gunnar Åselius PhD, Associate Professor, is a Historian at the Swedish National

Defence College, Stockholm.
 CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY
Series Editor: Geoffrey Till
ISSN 1366–9478

This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the

general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limita-
tions. It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as
well as reprints of classic works.

1. AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN NAVAL POLICY, 1904–1914

Milan N. Vego

2. FAR-FLUNG LINES
Studies in imperial defence in honour of Donald
Mackenzie Schurman
Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy

3. MARITIME STRATEGY AND CONTINENTAL WARS

Rear Admiral Raja Menon

4. THE ROYAL NAVY AND GERMAN NAVAL

DISARMAMENT, 1942–1947
Chris Madsen

5. NAVAL STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS IN

NARROW SEAS
Milan N. Vego

6. THE PEN AND INK SAILOR

Charles Middleton
and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813
John E. Talbott

7. THE ITALIAN NAVY AND FASCIST

EXPANSIONISM, 1935–1940
Robert Mallett
 8. THE MERCHANT MARINE AND INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS, 1850–1950
Edited by Greg Kennedy

9. NAVAL STRATEGY IN NORTHEAST ASIA

Geo-strategic goals, policies and prospects
Duk-Ki Kim

10. NAVAL POLICY AND STRATEGY IN THE

MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Past, present and future
Edited by John B. Hattendorf

11. STALIN’S OCEAN-GOING FLEET

Soviet naval strategy and
shipbuilding programmes, 1935–1953
Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov

12. IMPERIAL DEFENCE, 1868–1887

Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler

13. TECHNOLOGY AND NAVAL COMBAT IN

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND
Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien

14. THE ROYAL NAVY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Richard Moore

15. THE ROYAL NAVY AND THE CAPITAL SHIP IN

THE INTERWAR PERIOD
An operational perspective
Joseph Moretz

16. CHINESE GRAND STRATEGY AND MARITIME

POWER
Thomas M. Kane

17. BRITAIN’S ANTI-SUBMARINE CAPABILITY, 1919–1939

George Franklin

18. BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE NAVAL ARMS TRADE IN

THE BALTIC, 1919–1939
Grand strategy and failure
Donald Stoker
 19. NAVAL MUTINIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
An international perspective
Edited by Christopher Bell and Bruce Elleman

20. THE ROAD TO ORAN

Anglo-French naval relations,
September 1939–July 1940
David Brown

21. THE SECRET WAR AGAINST SWEDEN

US and British submarine deception and
political control in the 1980s
Ola Tunander

22. ROYAL NAVY STRATEGY IN THE FAR EAST, 1919–1939

Planning for a war against Japan
Andrew Field

23. SEAPOWER
A guide for the twenty-first century
Geoffrey Till

24. BRITAIN’S ECONOMIC BLOCKADE OF

GERMANY, 1914–1919
Eric W. Osborne

25. A LIFE OF ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET ANDREW

CUNNINGHAM
A twentieth-century naval leader
Michael Simpson

26. NAVIES IN NORTHERN WATERS, 1721–2000

Edited by Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen

27. GERMAN NAVAL STRATEGY, 1856–1888

Forerunners to tirpitz
David Olivier

28. BRITISH NAVAL STRATEGY EAST OF SUEZ, 1900–2000

Influences and actions
Edited by Greg Kennedy

29. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN

THE BALTIC, 1921–1941
Gunnar Åselius
 THE RISE AND FALL OF
THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE
BALTIC, 1921–1941

Gunnar Åselius
 First published 2005
by Frank Cass, an imprint of Taylor & Francis
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Frank Cass is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2005 Gunnar Åselius

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

The publisher makes no representation, express or implied,

with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in
this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability
for any errors or omissions that may be made.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-49773-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58242-X (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–714–65540–6 (Print Edition)
 CONTENTS

List of illustrations ix
Series editor’s preface x
Acknowledgements xii
List of abbreviations xiii

PART I
Introduction 1

1 Preparing for war in the Baltic 3

2 Strategy 20
3 Organizational rivalry 29
4 Culture 41

PART II
The Old School, 1921–1928 55

5 ‘Mare Clausum’ and the prospects of war 57

6 The meaning of ‘small wars’ 72
7 The navy of the military specialists 92

PART III
The Young School, 1929–1935 115

8 The era of collective security – and of coastal

defense 117

vii
 CONTENTS

9 Support for the Red Army 126

10 The navy of the red commanders 137

PART IV
The Soviet School, 1936–1941 155

11 Toward the great oceanic navy 157

12 Ready for offensive operations? 175
13 The Navy of the Soviet admirals 198
14 The lessons of war and peace 221
Appendix: the Great Terror in the Baltic Fleet 238

Bibliography 249
Index 262

viii
 ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates (between pages 114 and 115)

I Sailors relaxing
II ‘The Sailor and his sailor-comrade’
III Sailors eating soup
IV Navy personnel listening to music
V A soldier – orchestra
VI Komsomol poster supporting the navy
VII The anchor of a Gangut-class battleship
VIII A seminar at the Naval War College
IX Naval officers in the class room
X A party representative addresses the crew of battleship Marat
XI In the coal box
XII Provisions deliveries
XIII Engine personnel under instruction
XIV ‘Political Hour’
XV Fresh recruits
XVI ‘Does our cook deserve a prize?’
XVII ‘The Battleship Marat Working School’

Maps
1 The Baltic region in the inter-war period 24
2 Theater of operations 81
3 Presumed enemy lines of advance, 1940 170
4 Baltic Fleet operations, 1939–1940 187
5 Presumptive Soviet counterstrikes, 1940 189
6 Naval operations in the Baltic, 1941 231

ix
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

One of the main issues for those interested in the former navy of the Soviet Union
was whether it behaved just as any other Navy would have done in its particular
circumstances, or whether it represented a novel and wholly unique maritime
force with a distinct set of beliefs that set it apart from other navies. Protagonists
in this debate would often assume, and sometimes state, that the model for the
conventional, normal Navy was in fact Western [usually in fact an adulterated
version of the American or British navies]. This could lead to the conclusion that
the Soviet Navy was defective, or mistaken, when it departed from the norm – a
navy run by land-lubbers and by a General Staff dominated by the Ground Forces.
This argument could even be extended to the proposition that the Navy’s ‘weird-
ness’ was emblematic, that it did not proceed from the need to defend the nation’s
maritime interests, that it was illegitimate, basically unnatural, offensive – a
threat. According to this perspective the Americans, the British and most
other West Europeans were entitled to large navies because of their many mar-
itime interests and vulnerabilities. The economically autarchic and strategically
self-contained Russians were not.
This constant debate over the past several hundred years provides the context for
Gunnar Åselius’ detailed study of the Soviet Navy during that key part in its devel-
opment in the period between the two World Wars. The Soviet Navy’s Baltic pre-
occupations at this time provide a case study, which admirably demonstrates that
through depth comes breadth. He shows that in its response to circumstances, the
Soviet Navy provides a unique means of exploring the origins of naval conduct.
Geography, climate, the ambitions and preoccupations of Government, the politi-
cal and social system, strategic culture, the technological and industrial state of the
nation all had their part to play. They combined to produce a navy that was indeed
distinctive at times, but which, more to the point, shifted in its orientation as the
various sources of naval conduct themselves shifted. Broadly the pendulum
swung from the ‘traditional’ [modified to suit Russian purposes] to the ‘radical’
and through the Great Patriotic War (and indeed the Cold War) back to the
traditional. But for all that it always remained a navy with a difference.
And as to the central question of whether there was, and is, a central model of the
Navy to which Russia conformed to varying degree, two competing tendencies can

x
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

still be noted at the very end of the period. On the one hand, Admiral Isakov
announces that ‘. . . we are no law-abiding dogmatists of the past, but the creators
of a new way of life’; on the other, Admiral Belli reintroduces the study of Mahan
and Colomb at the Naval Academy.
Gunnar Åselius has admirably situated this topic within the broader scholarly
debate about the sources of, and influences on, military conduct and so provides
us with a fascinating case study of a set of themes that are as broad as they are
deep and that should fascinate anyone interested in the world’s navies.
Geoffrey Till

xi
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I began working on this book in 1995. That it has taken so many years to complete
is due to my work at the Swedish Defense College. Although the teaching of
history to officers has delayed my writing considerably, it has also enriched it.
My daily meetings with Swedish sailors, soldiers and airmen have helped me to
understand better the inner life of military organizations, and the operational
geography of the Baltic Sea. This in turn, has helped me to understand the Soviet
Navy in the 1920s and 1930s.
My work has also profited from discussions with fellow historians at the Defense
College through the years: Gunnar Artéus, Klaus-R. Böhme (now retired), Lars
Ericson, Lennart Samuelson (now Stockholm School of Economics) and Kent
Zetterberg. Professor Bo Huldt took the time to read the manuscript and contribute
valuable criticism, as did Captain (N) Lars Wedin, head of the college’s department
of military history. I am also grateful to members of the ‘Free Seminar’ at the
Department of History at Stockholm University, who took time to discuss some
draft chapters in the fall of 2002.
My research in Russia (which took place during extended stays in 1995, 1997
and 2000) was considerably facilitated through the helpful staff of the Russian
State Archives of the Navy (RGAVMF) in St Petersburg, and through assistance
from Russian colleagues. I would like to mention Vladimir Baryshnikov and
Pavel Petrov at the St Petersburg University and Alexey Komarov and Oleg
Rzheshevsky at the Institute of Universal History at the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Moscow. My fellow countrymen Magnus Haglund – former Swedish
naval attaché in Moscow – and Gunnar Wärnberg – former liasion officer for the
Swedish Police in St Petersburg – supplied me with books and photocopies from
Russia. Alan Crozier reviewed the English text, and it has been copy-edited by
Malcolm Ward. The maps have been drawn by Mark Evans.
My greatest thanks goes to my wife Ebba, who for many years listened to my
complaints about not finding time to write. All the time, she assured me that
I would eventually finish my book. She was right, so I dedicate it to her.

xii
 ABBREVIATIONS

ASW Anti-submarine warfare

BOS Beregovoy Otryad Soprovozhdeniya (Coastal Support Force)
BU Boevoy Ustav (Naval Fighting Regulation)
Cheka Chrezvychaynaya Kommissiya (Special Commission
[for fighting counter-revolution and sabotage])
EU European Union
FOA Försvarets forskningsanstalt (Swedish Defense Research
Establishment)
GDR German Democratic Republic
GOR Glavny Oboronitelny Rayon (Main Defense Area)
Gosplan Gosudarstvennoe Planovaya Komissiya (State Planning
Commission)
GPU Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (State Political
Directorate)
GRU Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie (Main Directorate for
[military] Intelligence)
GUPP Glavnoe Upravlenie Politicheskoy Propagandy
(Main Directorate for Political Propaganda)
IUR Ikhursky Ukreplenny Rayon (Ikhorsky Fortified Area)
KBF Krasnoznamenny Baltiysky Flot (Red Bannered Baltic Fleet)
Komsomol Kommunistichesky Soyuz Molodezhi (Communist Youth
League)
LVO Leningradsky Voenny Okrug (Leningrad Military District)
MSBM Morskikh Sil Balticheskogo Morya (Naval Forces in
the Baltic Sea)
MTB Motor torpedo boat
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NEP New Economic Policy
NKID Narodny Kommissariat Innostranikh Del (People’s
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs)
NKVD Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat
for Internal Affairs)

xiii
 ABBREVIATIONS

NMO Nastavlenie Morskikh Operatsii (Instruction for Naval

Operations)
OGPU Obyedinyonnoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie
(United State Political Administration)
OLS Otryad Legikh Sil (Group of Light Forces)
OON Otryad Osobennogo Naznacheniya (Special Mission Squadron)
OsoAviaKhim Obshchestvo Oborony, Aviatsii i Khimii (Society for Defense,
Aviation and Chemistry)
OVR Okhrana Vodnoga Rayona (Aquatic Area Defense)
PU Politicheskoe Upravlenie (Political Directorate)
PUR Politicheskoe Upravlenie RKKA (Army Political Directorate)
RGAVMF Rossisky Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota
(State Archives of the Navy)
RGVA Rossisky Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Armii (State Archive of
the Army)
RKKA Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya (Workers’ and
Peasants’ Red Army)
RO KBF Razvedyvatelny otdel Krasnoznamennogo Baltiyskogo Flota
(Intelligence section Baltic Fleet)
RVS Revolutsionny Voenny Soviet (Supreme Revolutionary-Military
Council/Soviet)
RVSR Revolutsionny Voenny Soviet Respubliki (Supreme
Revolutionary-Military Council/Soviet of the Republic)
Shtab RKKF Shtab Raboche-krestiyanskogo Krasnogo Flota (Staff of the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Navy, i.e. Naval Staff)
UMS Upravlenie Morskikh Sil (Directorate for the Naval Forces)
UVMS Upravlenie Morskikh Sil RKKA (Directorate for the Naval
Forces of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army)
UVMUZ Upravlenie Voenno-Morskimi Uchebnimi Zavedeniyami
(Directorate for Naval Educational Institutions)
VMF Voenno-Morsky Flot (Navy)
VVS Voenno-Vozdushnye Sili (Air Force)

xiv
 Part I

INTRODUCTION
 1
PREPARING FOR WAR IN
THE BALTIC

About 22.00 hours on 21 June 1941, in his headquarters in Tallinn, the commander
of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, Rear-Admiral Vladimir Tributs, received a long-expected
telegram from the People’s Commissariat for the Navy in Moscow. During the
preceding weeks, tension had grown along the Soviet–German border with almost
daily incursions by German ships and aircraft into Soviet territory. On the 19th,
combat readiness had been raised to level 2, which meant readiness to go to sea
within 4–6 hours. However, the forces along the frontiers were at the same time
instructed to avoid countermeasures, which could provoke the Germans. Now,
late in the evening on the 21st, Tributs was allowed to regroup his two battleships
from Tallinn to the safer surroundings of Kronstadt, and to withdraw most of his
remaining forces from Riga Bay to Tallinn. On the Latvian coast, only the cruiser
Maxim Gorky and a squadron of destroyers were to remain.1
Shortly before midnight, Tributs was again contacted from Moscow, now by
telephone. This time, the People’s Commissar for the Navy, Admiral Nikolay
Kuznetsov, personally gave the order to enter into full alert (‘operational readiness
level number 1’). The German invasion was to start in a few hours. Later, in his
memoirs, Kuznetsov would complain about Tributs, who, on receiving this order,
had asked if this meant the Baltic Fleet could now open fire against all intruders.
However, when confirming that war could break out the next day, the People’s
Commissar still found it necessary to repeat the need for cautiousness. According
to Kuznetsov, his conversation with Tributs ended at 23.35. The war diaries of the
Naval Staff claim that the order to enter operational readiness level number 1 was
issued two minutes later. Thus, the Baltic Fleet was the first branch of the Soviet
armed forces to be alerted before Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of
Russia). The People’s Commissar’s official order to increase operational readiness
was issued at 23.50.2
Yet, with only a few hours’ warning, the fleet was caught as unprepared by the
German onslaught as the rest of Stalin’s war machine.3 After a disastrous campaign
in 1941, the Baltic Fleet spent most of the remaining war behind mine-barriers
outside Leningrad, supporting the besieged city with artillery fire, occasionally
sending submarines into the Baltic and assisting in flank operations on the
Leningrad and Karelian fronts, where sailors and naval infantry fought side by

3
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

side with the Red Army. Only in the autumn of 1944, after the armistice with
Finland, could the fleet escape from its imprisonment in the Gulf of Finland.
During the following months, Soviet naval forces made a major contribution to
the recapturing of Estonia and Latvia, supporting landing operations against
Tallinn, Riga Bay and the Moonsund archipelago. However, in spite of their
return to the Baltic, they failed to prevent the Germans from evacuating more than
2 million people out of the Kurland pocket during the last months of the war.4
Very little in the Baltic Theater turned out in the way the Soviets had expected.
Notwithstanding the countless examples of individual bravery from officers and
men, the World War II record of the Baltic Fleet was not entirely satisfactory.
Over the years, there has been an intensive debate on whether things would have
turned out differently had the Soviet government reacted earlier in the summer of
1941, issued the call for mobilization in time or even launched a preemptive strike
against the Germans.5 But most campaigns are won and lost before the fighting
starts, and in June 1941 the Baltic Fleet had to make do with the equipment and
training it had acquired during the preceding decades. If it is true that the Soviet
naval forces failed in the Baltic during World War II, studying developments in a
longer perspective seems more fruitful than scrutinizing decision making in the
months immediately prior to the German attack. As David Glantz points out in his
study of the ground campaign in 1941, ‘the most serious Soviet failure was
neither strategic surprise nor tactical surprise, but institutional surprise’.6
As pointed out by Jonathan Shimsoni, a true military entrepreneur is not only
concerned with what the next war will be like, but also asks questions on how
he can ‘engineer’ the next war away from that scenario, ‘so as to maximize my
relative advantages and bypass those of my competitors’.7 What kind of war did
the Soviet Navy men expect to fight in the Baltic before World War II? How did
they prepare for it? These are the fundamental questions of the present study.
The investigation starts in 1921, when the Civil War was over and the sailors’
revolt in Kronstadt had been crushed. For many years, the Bolshevik regime
regarded its naval forces with the utmost suspicion. In the words of naval historian
Donald Mitchell, this period represented the absolute ‘nadir of Russian naval power’.
J. N. Westwood characterizes the 1920s by labeling the chapter in his book on
Russian and Soviet naval construction ‘Picking up the pieces’. A British intelligence
survey from the summer of 1921 describes the Baltic fleet as ‘useless as a fighting
unit, there are no officers, the old experienced soldiers have been sent away…and
under the present conditions the reestablishment of the fleet is out of the question’.8
From this absolute low-point, we follow developments throughout the campaign
of 1941, when the Baltic Fleet finally went to war against a Great-power enemy.

The end of the Cold War and the rewriting of history

There is already quite an extensive literature on the Soviet inter-war navy. Before
the end of the Cold War, the most substantial work to appear in the West was
Robert W. Herrick’s Soviet Naval Theory and Strategy (1988), which analyzed

4
 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

Soviet naval thinking up to the 1950s and used as sources contemporary Soviet
naval literature, such as the maritime journal Morskoy Sbornik.9
Parallel to the Western literature there was a substantial Soviet historiography
as well. The second volume of the official textbook on the history of naval warfare
(1963) deserves mentioning, as do the above–cited memoirs by Admiral Kuznetsov
(naval chief 1939–46, 1950–55). Another influential interpretation of the period
was offered by Kuznetsov’s successor, Admiral Sergey S. Gorshkov, in his writings
on naval strategy during the 1970s.10 Shortly after the appearance of Herrick’s
second book in 1988, the process of Glasnost in the Soviet Union and the open-
ing of archives led to a flood of renewed research. Some of it was conducted by
Russian scholars in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of
the Russian Navy in 1696. Of special importance was a series of articles, mainly
authored by Captain 1st rank Mikhail Monakov, which appeared in Morskoy
Sbornik between 1990 and 1994. Monakov, who studied the discussions on
doctrine and theory in the Soviet Navy between 1922 and 1939, was the first
writer with a wide access to archival documents. Together with the German naval
historian Jürgen Rohwer, Monakov in 2001 also published the volume Stalin’s
Ocean-going Fleet, which focuses on Soviet naval strategy and shipbuilding
programs in the period 1935–53.11
Another officer of the Soviet Navy, Sergey Zonin, published a biography in 1991
on Admiral Lev Michailovich Galler, chief of staff in the Baltic Fleet 1921–27, fleet
commander 1932–37 and chief of the naval staff in Moscow 1938–40. Zonin did
not discuss Soviet naval policy in a wider context, and certain passages in his book
give the impression of literary fiction. Nonetheless, his account is obviously based
on archival documents and on interviews with Galler’s contemporaries (even if the
reader could wish for more detailed references to sources).12
Other important works to appear during the early 1990s were official histories
of the Soviet Naval War College and of the Baltic Fleet during World War II, as
well as V. I. Dotsenko’s maritime biographic dictionary (Morskoy biografichesky
slovar).13 The British historian J. N. Westwood treated the subject of ship con-
struction during the period on the basis of primary sources, as did the Russian
naval officer and ship constructor V. N. Burov.14
Among those who hurried to the newly opened archives in Russia from abroad
were also Finnish historians, eager to study their own country’s dramatic history
in connection with Soviet naval strategy. Ohto Manninen wrote about Finland
between Germany and Soviet Russia in 1939–41, and the Helsinki historian Jari
Leskinen studied Finnish–Estonian military cooperation during the 1930s. In
addition, the British historian Carl Van Dyke studied the Soviet–Finnish War of
1939–40 from a Soviet perspective, giving an overview of naval operations on the
basis of a former classified Soviet study.15 Later, the St Petersburg historian Pavel
V. Petrov added further to the picture through his dissertation on the Baltic Fleet’s
operations during this war.16
Furthermore, in 1992 the Center of Military History of the Soviet General Staff
published the first volume in a series entitled Boevaya letopis voenno-morskogo

5
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

flota (The Combat Chronicle of the Navy). The volume in question deals with the
period 1917–41 and had been compiled by N. Yu. Berezovsky, S. S. Berezhnoy
and Z. V. Nikolayeva. Apart from battle accounts, Boevaya leotopis contains short
notices on organizational changes, appointments, new regulations, maneuvers,
naval visits and other important events in the life of the navy. The term chronicle
in this case should not arouse associations to the well-known medieval literary
genre of historical narrative. If Boevaya letopis is to be defined through medieval
analogies at all, it bears more resemblance to the annalist history writing practiced
in the monasteries. The short entries are organized in chronological order, and
should be regarded as a kind of calendars or document summaries, complete with
meticulous references to original documents in the archives of the Communist
Party, various military agencies and government ministries.17
Finally, some volumes in the series of published documents on the history of
the Great Patriotic War, which was initiated by the Center of Military History in
the mid-1990s under the editorship of Alexander Zolotarev, contain material rele-
vant to naval matters. Of special interest are volume 1 (2), treating the discussions
of the naval high command in the autumn of 1940, and volume 10, containing the
orders of the People’s Commissariat for the Navy from 1941–45.18
In view of the vast amount of literature and document publications, the writing
of yet another book on the inter-war Soviet Baltic Fleet may certainly call for
some justification.
It could of course be argued that the geopolitical conditions in the Baltic region
during the 1920s and 1930s in many ways appear similar to the situation at the
beginning of the twenty-first century. The weakening of Russia after the Cold War,
the reunification of Germany and the resurrection of independence in Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania have to some extent recreated the borders that existed in the
region during the inter-war period. Although Russia today has a foothold in
Kaliningrad (in former German East Prussia), it has again been deprived of most
of its former coast along the Baltic, and sees its military power diminish. At the
same time, its small neighboring states see this state of weakness as temporary
and have tried to strengthen their ties to the West (Poland and the Baltic states
joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] and Sweden and Finland
the European Union [EU]).
Just as it did during the inter-war period, Russia during the 1990s regarded with
some discomfort its neighbors’ efforts at military integration with the West, fearing
that NATO’s extension westwards would mean isolation and eventually a threat to
national security. In recent years, there has also been an intensive discussion on
the navy’s role in national defense–parallel to that of the 1920s and 1930s. Will a
strategic deterrence force in the North Atlantic be enough in the future, or will
ships that can ‘show the flag’ in foreign ports also be needed? If Russia is to
remain a great power in the eyes of the world, must it reinforce its strategic sub-
marine force with ships that can protect shipping and fishing interests at sea, and
participate in international peacekeeping operations around the globe? Where
could the means to create such forces be found?19

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 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

However, there are also important differences between the post-World War I era
and the post-Cold War era. A more constructive international climate with less
ideological and military confrontation, increased economic integration between
states, a widened definition of national security, etc. are factors that make superfi-
cial comparisons between the two periods truly problematic. Furthermore, modern
military technology has fundamentally changed the strategic conditions in the
Baltic. Already during the latter half of the Cold War, the Baltic belonged to the
rear areas in Soviet naval thinking, and the role of naval forces in controlling
a confined water area like this is likely to become even less significant in the future.
The end of the Cold War is nonetheless a good reason for rewriting the history
of the inter-war period. This is not only due to the increased access to archives,
but also to the fact that much of the earlier literature on the subject is flawed,
having been written in the shadow of the East–West confrontation. Western
research was concerned with understanding Soviet naval developments during the
1970s and 1980s and tried to trace its origins back to the 1920s and 1930s. Soviet
research aimed at pointing out proper historical lessons to justify present naval
doctrine. For obvious reasons, the Baltic did not attract any special attention in any
of this literature, as it was a rear area in Soviet Cold War strategy, a theater where
crews were trained and new equipment was tested but mostly old or second-class
ships were permanently stationed. From the 1960s onwards the Baltic Fleet’s
percentage of the total number of ships steadily decreased, while the main interest
was focused on the Northern Fleet in Murmansk.20
However, during the inter-war period the Baltic’s role was different. During the
1920s, the Baltic and Black Seas were the only theaters where the Soviets had any
naval forces at all, and the Baltic was clearly where these forces were concen-
trated. In 1928, three out of three battleships, two out of four cruisers, 12 out of
17 destroyers and nine out of 14 submarines were stationed here.21 During the
1930s, when new fleets were created in the Pacific and the Arctic and Soviet naval
rearmament began, the Baltic remained a center of gravity. According to the naval
construction program of 1936, the Pacific and Baltic Theaters were to get a third
each of the planned tonnage. The only field in procurement planning in which the
Pacific Fleet was given clear priority was the naval air arm. In 1941, at the time
of the German attack, the Baltic Fleet still kept its leading position among
the four Soviet fleets with two out of three battleships, two out of seven cruisers,
28 out of 54 destroyers, 71 out of 212 submarines and 656 out of 2,429 naval
aircraft. About a third (311 million) of the 944 million rubles that Admiral
Kuznetsov wanted for his budget this year were to be spent on the Baltic Fleet.
The Pacific Fleet was ‘only’ to have some 230 millions.22
Thus, it is reasonable to assume that a reassessment of Soviet naval policy
during the inter-war period from a Baltic perspective would yield new insights,
especially in consideration of newly accessible documents. The pioneer user of
this material, Mikhail Monakov, is indeed more appreciative of the Baltic’s crucial
importance during the period than were his Cold War predecessors. However, he
studied naval policy of the era with the aim of discussing contemporary Russian

7
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

naval policies. In spite of their great scientific value, his articles also belong in
the context of the 1990s Russian defense debate.

Three levels of military doctrine

Apart from ambitions to increase our knowledge of military conditions in a
particular part of the world in a particular historical period, I also want to increase
our understanding of military thinking in general. What are the determining
factors when military organizations formulate their doctrines? Here I see a second
reason for writing this book.
A country’s military doctrine is concerned with how its armed forces should be
used to promote what national leaders identify as the country’s security interests.23
Ultimately, military power equals the capability to fight wars. Thus, a sound
military doctrine should be based on a realistic estimate of what the next war will
be like. Ideally, it should contain both an analysis of the international environment
and possible threats to national security, a prescription of how these threats could
be countered with military means and – at the lowest level – combat instructions to
the country’s military forces.
These three levels of military doctrine could also be labeled strategic, operational
and tactical levels of doctrine. At the strategic level, general problems of national
security are dealt with (What types of military threats face the nation? Who will the
enemy be? How do we know that we have won the war?). The operational level
regulates the organization and use of military forces (How should we compose
our forces to attain our objectives? Where and when shall they be deployed?). The
tactical level deals with the winning of battles (With what kind of weaponry
should we equip our forces? How should we train them in order to be successful
in combat?).24
In this book, I examine Soviet naval doctrine at all these levels. As will be
explained below, some dramatic doctrinal changes occurred in the Soviet Navy
between 1921 and 1941. Obviously, these changes could be explained in various
ways, and I have the ambition to seek a different type of explanation at each level
of doctrine: at the strategic level the balance of power, at the operational level
organizational rivalry within the armed forces, and at the tactical level the role of
cultural factors. The exact line between these different levels of doctrine is difficult
to draw, and to some extent they overlap each other. Also, my investigation of
the influence of cultural factors on Soviet naval tactics deals not so much with the
evolution of tactical regulations – a subject that has already been treated exten-
sively by others – but highlights such factors as training and morale, which are
nonetheless important for the tactical performance of military forces.
It could well be argued that in treating a subject like this, an author should
choose one of two paths. Either he should attempt a detailed reconstruction of the
past and concentrate his energy on archival research. Or the author should devote
his work to a discussion of the theoretical foundations of military doctrine and
regard empirical data as merely instrumental, to be conveniently obtained from

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 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

secondary literature. Traditionally, the difference between these two approaches

corresponds to the disciplinary border between history and political science. For
me as an historian, the choice would seem easy, especially since the existing
literature has only to a limited extent made use of the archives that have become
available in recent years. At the same time, however, it is impossible to reconstruct
the past in a meaningful way without some preliminary assumptions and theoret-
ical preconceptions. To do full justice to the complexities of historical reality,
I have chosen to use rival theories, such as power realism, bureaucratic theory and
cultural constructivism. My aim is not to compare their explanatory power, or to
suggest that one perspective should be regarded as superior to the other. Rather,
I find it hard to believe that we can satisfactorily understand either the inter-war
Soviet Navy, or the foundations of military doctrine, without combining various
perspectives and various types of sources.25

The development of naval doctrine during the inter-war period

It is often said that the inter-war period marked the transition from ‘the age of the
big guns’ to ‘the age of the aircraft carrier’ in naval warfare. To illustrate the
meaning of this, Wayne P. Hughes’s ‘cornerstones of naval tactics’ could be cited:

● Firepower. On a tactical level, the goal of naval warfare is to deliver

successful fire upon the enemy.
● Scouting. To deliver successful fire upon the enemy a capacity to detect and
target him is required.
● Command-and-control. The transformation of firepower and scouting into
successful fire upon the enemy requires an ability to direct your own forces
effectively.
● Attack first. Naval victory is won through ‘simultaneous force-on-force
attrition’. Therefore, victory goes to the side which can attack effectively first.

What happened between the world wars was that superiority with regard to fire-
power could no longer compensate for inferior scouting and command-and-control
functions. This in turn further accentuated the need to attack first. A symbolic
confirmation of that development was the Battle of Midway in the Pacific in 1942
between Americans and Japanese. The Japanese were superior in firepower
(four aircraft carriers with 277 aircraft against three American aircraft carriers
with 233 aircraft). In a game of ‘simultaneous force-on-force attrition’, the
Japanese should really have had the better odds, or at least managed to take most
of the American force down with them. However, the Americans were superior in
intelligence and staff work and managed to attack first. Consequently, the Japanese
force was completely annihilated while the Americans, having failed to locate the
fourth Japanese carrier in their first strike, lost only one of their own carriers.
Since the end of World War II, the role of scouting and command-and-control
functions in naval warfare has grown immensely. In the age of missiles and

9
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

computers, a naval commander has to direct most of his time and assets to
information-processing activities, while the importance of skilful maneuvering or
accurate firing has decreased through precision-guided, long-range weapons.
Today, the main reason for naval ships to operate in large formations is not to
combine their firepower, but to combine their intelligence resources and their
means of warning and protection against incoming missiles.26
At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, ‘the age of the big guns’
had just begun, and concentration of force – superiority in firepower – still seemed
the key to tactical victory. The doctrines of the leading naval powers were strate-
gically offensive, in line with the ideas of the American strategist Alfred T. Mahan
(1840–1914). According to Mahan, throughout history command of the sea
had laid the foundation of all great empires. In keeping with this thesis, it was
argued that the primary task of any Great power navy should be to defeat the
enemy in a decisive battle, or to paralyze him through an effective naval block-
ade. The principal tool to achieve this goal, it seemed, was the battleship, a huge
weapon platform that could deliver as well as receive massive barrages of heavy
shells. In the naval race between the Great powers, the number and caliber of
guns were therefore believed to be crucial factors. Also, a ‘Big Ship’ navy could
serve as an impressive and highly mobile instrument for diplomacy and colonial
expansion.27
There were, however, also defensive notions of sea warfare at the time. Although
American and British admirals saw the battle between heavy artillery ships as the
apogee of naval conflict, admirals in other Great power navies thought differently.
In France, for instance, naval thinking was for a long time dominated by the Jeune
École (Young School), with Admiral Théophile Aube as its most prominent
spokesman. France could not challenge the Royal Navy in battle, but according
to Aube and his followers, a weak naval power could always fight a stronger
enemy by raiding his shipping or coastal areas. Cruisers and torpedo boats would
always be faster than heavy battleships, and those big, costly vessels always ran
the risk of running aground in coastal waters or being sunk by comparatively
cheap weapons, such as torpedoes and mines.28
On the other side of the English Channel, Julian Corbett (who taught history at
the Royal Naval College in Greenwich from 1902) questioned that territorial
control was at all possible to attain at sea. As long as an inferior power had a
single ship left in operational condition, it could always dispute the stronger power’s
command of the sea. Instead, naval strategy must be directed at controlling the
sea-lines of communication. This, Corbett believed, was certainly attainable, ‘for
in maritime warfare the lines of communication of either belligerent tend to run
approximately parallel, if indeed they are not identical’. In contrast, on land the
belligerents’ lines of communication ran in opposite directions, joining only in
the theater of operations. Therefore, to attack and threaten the enemy’s supply
lines in ground warfare always meant exposing one’s own supply lines. At sea,
however, the securing of one’s own communications as a rule meant denying the
enemy the use of his.29

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 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

Just like Carl von Clausewitz before him, Corbett argued that the defensive in
fact represented a stronger form of warfare, as it had the potential for neutralizing
an imbalance in strength. In naval warfare, this was especially true after the intro-
duction of torpedoes and mines. Drawing inspiration from Clausewitz’s distinction
between limited and total wars as well as from his famous definition of war as
a continuation of politics, Corbett also doubted that an encounter between two
Great power battle fleets was likely to be decisive. Blockade warfare, in which the
enemy was engaged at a distance, would be preferred instead, being less risky and
with greater prospects of damaging the enemy’s society as a whole. The main
instrument of blockade warfare, however, would not be the battleship but the fast-
going cruiser/surface raider. From Corbett’s reading of Clausewitz also stemmed
his refusal to see naval strategy in isolation from continental strategy. Apart from
destroying the enemy’s commerce, Corbett argued, one of the main advantages
of controlling the sea was that it allowed for the safe and speedy deployment of
armies. Here, in the projection of power ashore, he saw the principal role of
the battle fleet: escorting troop transports, protecting amphibious landings or – as
a ‘fleet in being’ – deterring the enemy from invading the homeland.30
To some extent, the experience of World War I proved Corbett right, although
it was the submarine, not the surface raider, which came to revolutionize blockade
warfare. Only one major engagement between battle fleets was fought during the
conflict – the Battle of Jutland in 1916 between the British and the Germans – and
it failed to produce a decisive outcome. Instead of fighting each other, navies
made their main contribution during the war by fighting the supply lines of the
enemy. During the inter-war period, Corbett’s ideas were developed further by
the British Admiral Herbert Richmond and the French Admiral Raoul Castex.
German Rear-Admiral Wolfgang Wegener reasoned along similar lines when
he criticized the battle-oriented German naval strategy during the war for having
neglected the role of sea-lines of communications and the need for strategic
bases.31
After World War I, the role of the battleship seemed uncertain, while the sub-
marine and the aircraft carrier appeared as the future rulers of the oceans. The
latter category of ship had been introduced during the final stage of the war,
and in 1921 the US Army Air Force General William Mitchell made a spec-
tacular demonstration of air power at sea against a captured German battleship
(similar demonstrations were later repeated against other scrapped battleships).
Furthermore, international treaties (Washington 1922, London 1930) for many
years limited the number and size of battleships in the Great power navies. By the
mid-1930s, however, when the obligations of the disarmament treaties had ceased
and the naval arms race began with renewed speed, battleship construction was
again prioritized. The defenders of battleships argued that anti-air artillery and
sonar could protect them from dangers from the sky or from under the sea. Because
of their superior size and firepower, battleships would also last longer in combat
than any other type of warship. Only World War II effectively demonstrated that
the battleship era was over.32

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 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

It was against this international backdrop that Soviet naval doctrine developed
during the inter-war period. Indeed, parallel positions to those of Mahan, the
Jeune École and Corbett could also be found in the Soviet debate.
The years before World War I had seen the predominance of Mahanian ideals in
Russia. Although the country had no colonies overseas and most of its navy had
been destroyed during the Russo-Japanese War, in 1912 the Duma approved a
naval construction program which in 18 years would produce a navy of 24 battle-
ships, 12 battle cruisers, 24 light cruisers, 108 destroyers and 36 big submarines.33
When the Bolsheviks came to power, they thus inherited the uncompleted
remnants of an ocean-going fleet to be. Consequently, the early Soviet period
(1920–28) was dominated by the Mahanian concepts of the Tsarist era, with
dreams of a ‘Big Ship’ navy and command of the sea. Its opponents labeled this
strand of thinking the ‘Old School’. However, the severe losses of ships and
competent people, the massive industrial devastation suffered during the period of
war and internal turmoil (1914–21), as well as the reduction of Russia’s coastline
through the dissolution of the Tsarist Empire, made the idea of an ocean-going
navy seem unrealistic. Although tradition continued to rule at the Naval War
College in Leningrad, where most of the teachers had been educated in the tsarist
navy, these ideals were gradually called into question. Open criticism of the ‘Old
School’ began in 1927–28. By 1930, the struggle had been more or less won, when
a new Naval Fighting Regulation (BU-30 ⫽ Boevoy Ustav) was issued.34
Now, the ideals of a light navy instead came to dominate – the ‘Young School’,
not so different from its French predecessor Jeune École. The Young School
completely redefined the notion of naval warfare, criticizing traditional Mahanian
concepts of command of the sea and preaching the ‘death of the battleship’.
In future wars, it was argued, the airplane and the submarine would make sea
control impossible. Consequently, the Soviet Navy should be designed for coastal
defense, using submarines, torpedo ships, mines, coastal artillery and shore-based
aircraft. Also, the importance of joint operations and unity of command was
strongly emphasized. To some extent, the Young School could draw on Russia’s
own experience in World War I, when the Baltic Fleet had waged a successful
defensive struggle against the Germans from the protection of minefields and
coastal batteries in the Gulf of Finland.
However, the ideals of an oceanic navy suddenly returned with the gigantic
naval rearmament program of June 1936, according to which a fleet of 1.36 million
tons was to be created in ten years time. Over 53 percent of this enormous
tonnage would consist of battleships, 24 units in all. At the same time, the Royal
Navy counted 1.22 million tons, the US Navy 1.1 million tons and the Japanese
Navy 0.8 million tons. Thus, the Soviet Union was to become one of the world’s
leading naval powers. This naval program was revised repeatedly in 1937–39,
and in the final version the tonnage had grown to almost another million tons.
Only in October 1940, when war with Germany appeared imminent, was the
scheme canceled and production resources redirected to the construction of lighter
vessels.35

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 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

New tactical regulations were also issued. In Soviet literature, the Naval
Fighting Regulation of 1937 (BU-37) was generally described as a more mature
version of the Naval Fighting Regulation of 1930 (BU-30), signifying a further
elaboration of inter-service cooperation, specially designed task forces and of
operations against enemy sea lanes of communications. BU-37 also emphasized
the navy’s role as an offensive weapon, stressing the importance of incessantly
attacking the enemy. In June 1939, a special chapter was added to BU-37, dedi-
cated to the problems of ‘operations at sea.’ The new operational guidelines were
further developed in the temporary regulation for the conduct of naval operations
(NMO-40 ⫽ Nastavlenie Morskikh Operatsii [Instruction for Naval Operations]),
which was issued in the autumn of 1940.36
According to Robert W. Herrick, it is doubtful whether Stalin’s naval policy
really signified a turn toward genuine navalist thinking. Instead, what happened
was that traditional Mahanian concepts of ‘command of the sea’ were fused with
the operational principles of the Young School. Herrick labeled the new creed the
‘Soviet School’, and according to him, it came to dominate naval thinking in the
Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.
The Soviet School maintained that the navy’s task was still predominantly
defensive, but that this did not exclude offensive operations in a local or regional
context, in cooperation with the ground forces. Submarines and aircraft were the
main weapon systems, but there was also need for major surface combatants to
support them. Command of the sea according to Soviet School thinking did not
imply command of the oceans, but control of a limited theater. The aim was not
to achieve global domination, but domination over seas adjacent to the Soviet
Union’s own borders, in areas where the operations of Soviet ground forces could
be actively supported. Thus, the Soviet School was more in tune with Corbett than
with Mahan or, as Herrick argues, with the views of the French naval theorist
Admiral Raoul Castex.37
In their recent study, Mikhail Monakov and Jürgen Rohwer come to a different
conclusion. The decision in October 1940 merely signified a temporary halt in
Stalin’s grandiose scheme to challenge the maritime supremacy of the Western
powers. After the war the gigantic construction program was again resumed.
If there was a continuity between Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s navy, it was above all
in the appreciation of an ocean-going fleet as a potent symbol of Great power
status.38

Military doctrines
Thus, the evolution of naval doctrine during the twentieth century was characterized
by a growing role for information-processing functions (scouting, command and
control), while the relative weight of firepower gradually diminished. The ability
to attack first appeared to be a greater advantage than superiority in weapon load
or ship size. World War II formed a turning point in this development. However,
during the period under study here, 1921–41, this outcome had not yet been

13
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

decided. Whether the battleship, the airplane or the submarine was the main
weapon system at sea was still open to debate.
In the same era, naval doctrine in the Soviet Union underwent dramatic change.
The cult of big artillery ships (the Old School) was replaced by the concept of
a light, coastal defense fleet, emphasizing the role of submarines, air power and
joint operations (the Young School). In the final years of the period, big ships
again became fashionable. According to some interpreters, what finally emerged
was really an entirely new understanding of naval power (the Soviet School),
adapted to Soviet needs, containing elements from both the previous strands of
thinking. Others maintain that Stalin did desire an ocean-going fleet that could
challenge Western global domination.
How then, should these developments best be explained?
A way of characterizing military doctrines is to see them as either offensive,
defensive or deterrent. According to the definitions used by Barry R. Posen,
an offensive doctrine aims at disarming an enemy and destroying his military
forces. A defensive doctrine aims at denying the enemy the object he seeks,
while a deterrent doctrine aims at punishing an aggressor – raising his costs for
attacking – without regard for one’s own losses. Classical examples of offensive
ground warfare doctrines could be found among the European Great powers in
1914, in Nazi Germany as well as in modern Israel. A well-known example of
an unsuccessful defensive doctrine is the French Maginot Line of the 1930s.
Deterrent doctrines could be illustrated by the strategies of second-class nuclear
powers like China and France, as well as by the territorial militia defense concept
embraced by small, mountainous, non-aligned countries like Switzerland or
Titoist Yugoslavia.39
One could argue that the Old School of the Soviet Navy was an offensive
doctrine and the Young School was a defensive one. The Soviet School could
either be seen as an offensive doctrine or as mixture between offense and defense.
As we will see, however, such labels really contain gross simplifications. Seemingly,
both the Old School and the Soviet School existed in offensive and defensive
versions, while the Young School might very well be described as a deterrent
doctrine. In reality, no military doctrine displays purely offensive or defensive
elements. As Julian Corbett pointed out, every offensive requires a concentration
of force at a decisive point, which implies assuming a defensive posture in other,
less important directions. Similarly, the reason for assuming the defensive is to
win time to prepare for a counterattack, once the enemy has exhausted himself.
With regard to deterrent doctrines, they must contain both offensive and defensive
elements.40

The structure of this book

What then, determines a country’s choice of military doctrine, the choice between
offense, defense and deterrence? The existing literature on the subject suggests at
least three types of explanations: strategy (or balance of power), organizational

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rivalry and culture. The implications of these different perspectives will be explored
in Chapters 2–4. Chapters 5–7 discusses the period of the Old School (1921–28),
Chapters 8–10 the period of the Young School (1928–36) and Chapters 11–13 the
period of the Soviet School (1936–40). In Chapters 5, 8 and 11 it is the strategic
aspects of Soviet naval doctrine, which comes to the fore, while Chapters 6, 9 and
12 focus on the role of organizational rivalry and pertain to the influence of
operational planning. Finally, Chapters 7, 10 and 13 discuss the role of national
culture and identity, covering indirectly the tactical dimensions of naval doctrine
by discussing such questions as training and morale. In sum, this book will tell
the story of the rise and fall of the Soviet navy in the Baltic between the world
wars from three different angles. In Chapter 14, we conclude by studying the
1941 naval campaign and how the Baltic Fleet developed after World War II.
There is also an appendix, which examines how the Great Terror of 1937–38
affected the Baltic Fleet.

A note on archival records and the institutions

that produced them
From the Russian State Archive of the Army (RGVA ⫽ Rossisky Gosudarstvenny
Arkhiv Armii) in Moscow I have used material from the fond 33988, which
contains documents from the RVS. The full name of this institution –
Revolutsionny Voenny Soviet – is often translated into English as the ‘Supreme
Revolutionary-Military Council/Soviet of the Republic’ (from 1923
‘Supreme Revolutionary-Military Council/Soviet of the USSR’). Already in June
1918, the Bolsheviks had formed this decisional body, which, during the Civil
War, replaced the Ministry (or People’s Commissariat) for War and continued to
serve as the supreme organ for supervision of the armed forces until 1934.
Although a regular People’s Military and Naval Commissariat was recreated in
1923, this ministry merely came to serve as an executive branch of the RVS. As a
rule, the People’s Commissar for War presided as chairman during RVS meetings.
Other members were top military commanders and prominent party leaders. The
RVS both formulated defense policy and collectively exercised the functions of
a commander in chief.
An institution akin to the RVS was the Baltic Fleet Soviet, which played a
similar role at the regional level. Such military soviets could be found in each of
the armed services as well as in the various military districts, fronts, fleets, armies
and air wings which made up the Soviet armed forces. As a rule, the Baltic Fleet
Soviet consisted of the fleet commander, the commander of the fleet’s political
directorate and some figurehead of the Leningrad branch of the Communist
Party.
Apart from the files of the RVA, Most of the archival records that I have used
are to be found in the Russian State Archive of the Navy (RGAVMF ⫽ Rossisky
Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota) in Saint Petersburg. Some of
them stem from the various state organs in Moscow, which – subordinated to

15
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

the RVS – exercised central command of the Soviet naval forces. From 1920 to
1926, this function was chiefly upheld by the Staff of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Naval Forces (Shtab Raboche-Krestiyanskogo Krasnogo Flota ⫽ Shtab RKKF),
which will be referred to in the text as the Naval Staff. Its archive can be found
in fond r-1.
After 1926, when the navy was incorporated into the Workers’ and Peasants’
Red Army (Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya ⫽ RKKA) the functions of
the abolished Naval Staff were divided between the Directorate of the Naval
Forces of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (Upravlenie Morskikh Sil RKKA,
or UVMS) in the People’s Military and Naval Commissariat and the naval
department of the RKKA General Staff. The records of these institutions are
to be found in the fonds r-1483 and r-2041 respectively. Also originating from the
same period are the documents in fond r-1543 used in this study, containing
records of the voluntary Society for Defense, Aviation and Chemistry (Obshchestvo
Oborony, Aviatsii i Khimii ⫽ OsoAviaKhim), which organized preparatory military
training for navy recruits from 1929 onwards.
At the turn of 1937–38, the Naval Staff (Glavny Shtab Voenno-Morskogo Flota
or Glavny Shtab VMF ) and the People’s Commissariat for the Navy (Narodny
Kommissariat VMF ) were recreated (VMF ⫽ Voenno-Morsky Flot [Navy]). The
records of those agencies can be found in fonds r-1678 and r-1877 respectively.
At the same time, an independent Political Directorate for the Navy was also
established (Politicheskoe Upravlenie – or PUR – VMF ), the records of which are
preserved in fond r-1549.
To study events at the regional level, I have used the archives of the Baltic
Fleet. For the sake of simplicity, I use the term Baltic Fleet to describe the Soviet
naval forces in the Baltic Sea throughout the period, although they included
air and coastal defense units as well, and from 1921 to 1935 bore the official
name ‘the Naval Forces in the Baltic Sea’ (Morskikh Sil Balticheskogo Morya
or MSBM). Some material from the pre-revolutionary period has been used
( fond 479 – the files of the commander of the Baltic Fleet), but most documents
stem from the fleet political directorate ( fond r-34), the fleet staff ( fond r-92), the
intelligence section ( fond r-1883) and the personnel section ( fond r-2185).
Finally, I have also used the personal archive of a prominent Soviet naval
theoretician of the period, Vladimir Belli, whose unpublished memoirs are
preserved in fond r-2224.
Although some references are made in the text to Soviet naval literature and
journals from the period, I have made no systematic study of this category of
sources. Since it has already been thoroughly analyzed by other authors, there
seems to be little to gain from such an undertaking. As has been indicated above,
the main forum of Soviet naval debate was Morskoy Sbornik, a journal which has
been published since 1848. It is one of the oldest naval journals in the world,
surpassed only by the Royal Swedish Academy of Naval Sciences’ Tidskrift i
Sjöväsendet, which has appeared since 1836.

16
 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

Notes
1 D. M. Vasiliev, ‘Pervy boevoy pokhod Otryada legkikh sil’, Gangut, vol. 9 (1995),
pp. 50–1; N. G. Kuznetsov, Nakanune (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1966), p. 327.
2 Kuznetsov, Nakanune, p. 329; V. I. Dotsenko, Flot–Voyna–Pobeda, 1941–1945
(St Petersburg: Sudostroenie, 1995), p. 64; A. I. Barsukov and V. A. Zolotarev (eds),
Russky arkhiv: Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna. Prikazy i direktivy narodnogo komis-
sara VMF v gody Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny, vol. X (Moscow: Terra, 1996), p. 12.
3 Dotsenko, Flot, pp. 64–74.
4 Apart from Dotsenko, Flot, a recent Russian study is I. V. Kasatonov et al. (eds),
Krasnoznamenny baltisky flot v Velikoy Otechestvennoy Voyny sovetskogo naroda
1941–1945 gg., 5 vols (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1990–92); authoritative German studies
are Jürg Meister, Der Seekrieg in den osteuropepäischen Gewässern 1941–1945
(Munich: Lehmanns, 1958); Friedrich Ruge, The Soviets as Naval Opponents,
1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1979).
5 See Gerd R. Ueberschär and Lev A. Bezymensky (eds), Der Deutsche Angriff auf die
Sowjetunion 1941: Die Kontroverse um die Präventivskriegsthese (Darmstadt: Primus
Verlag, 1998).
6 David M. Glantz, Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941 (Stroud: Tempus,
2001), pp. 31–2.
7 Jonathan Shimsoni, ‘Technology, Military Advantage and World War I: A Case of
Military Entrepreneurship’, International Security, vol.15(3) (Winter 1990–91), p. 199.
8 Donald W. Mitchell, A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power (London: André
Deutsch, 1974), p. 355; J. N. Westwood, Russian Naval Construction, 1905–1945
(London: Macmillan Press, 1993), chapter 5; Gunnar Åselius, ‘ “The Unskilled Fencer”:
Swedish Assessments of the Soviet Navy, 1921–1928’, Militärhistorisk tidskrift, vol. 11
(1991), pp. 161–2.
9 Robert W. Herrick, Soviet Naval Theory and Strategy: Gorshkov’s Inheritance
(Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1988); he had treated the subject 20 years
earlier in Soviet Naval Strategy: Fifty Years of Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD:
US Naval Institute Press, 1968).
10 K. A. Stalbo (ed.), Istoriya voenno-morskogo iskusstva: Sovetskoe voenno-morskoe
iskusstvo v grazhdanskoy voyne i v period postroeniya sotsialisma v SSSR (1917–1941
gg.), vol. II (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963); Kuznetsov, Nakanune; an uncensored appen-
dix to Kuznetsov’s memoirs appeared in 1995, Krutye povoroty: Is zapisok admirala
(Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1995); in 1969–70, Gorshkov published a series of
articles in Morskoy Sbornik, some of which were translated into English and published
in US Naval Institute’s Proceedings 1974, later published in Herbert R. Preston (ed.),
Red Star Rising at Sea, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1974); Gorshkov’s
interpretation of the inter-war period Soviet Navy in these articles can also be found in
his famous book Morskaya moshch gosudarstva (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1976, 1979) –
English translation The Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979).
11 Monakov’s articles appeared in Morskoy Sbornik in a series of ten articles labeled
‘Sudba doktrin i teory’ (The fate of doctrines and theories). The publishers made a mis-
take with the numbering of the last two episodes in the series and the correct numbers
appear in square brackets. Monakov’s contributions to the series were: ‘1: “Kakoy
RSFR nuzhen flot?” 1922 g.’, vol. 143(11) (1990); ‘2: “Kakoy RSFR nuzhen
flot?” 1923–1925 gg.’, vol. 143(12) (1990); together with N. Yu. Berezovsky, ‘4:
“Flot dolzhen byt aktivnym”. 1925–1928 gg.’, vol. 144(3) (1991); ‘5: K istorii
voprosa o “maloy voyne”. 1927–1928 gg.’, vol. 144(4) (1991); ‘6: Tanki ili korabli?
1928–1930 gg.’, vol. 145(3) (1992); ‘7: Razgrom staroy shkoli, 1930–1931 gg.’,
vol. 145(7) (1992), ‘8: K bolshomu morskomu i okeanskomu flotu (1936–1939 gg.)’,

17
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

vol. 147(5) (1994); ‘8 [9]: flot dlya “maloy royny” ’, vol. 147(3) (1994); together with
V. Gribovsky, ‘9[10]: Na poroge bolshoy voyny’, vol. 147(12) (1994). The third article
of the series was A. Yemelin’s ‘Voennaya reforma, 1924–1928 gg.’, vol. 144(2) (1991).
See also Jürgen Rowher and Mikhail Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet
Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953 (London: Frank Cass,
2001).
12 S. A. Zonin, Admiral L. M. Galler: Zhizn i flotovodcheskaya deyatelnost (Moscow:
Voenizdat, 1991).
13 V. N. Ponimarovsky et al. (eds), Voenno-morskaya akademiya (kratkaya istoriya)
(Leningrad: [TsKF VMF], 1991); Kasatonov et al. (eds), Krasnoznamenny baltisky
flot; V. D. Dotsenko, Morskoy biografichesky slovar (St Petersburg: Logos, 1995).
14 Westwood, Russian Naval Construction; V. N. Burev, Otetchestvennoe voennoe
korablostroenie v tretiem stolety svoey istorii (St Petersburg: Sudostroenie, 1995).
15 Ohto Manninen, Molotovin cocktail – Hitlerin sateenvarjo: Toisen mailmansodan
historian uudelleenkirjoitusta (Helsinki: Painatuskeskus, 1994); Jari Leskinen, Vaiettu
Suomen Silta: Suomen ja Viron salainen sotilaainen yhtestoiminta Neuvostoliiton
varalta vuosina 1930–1939 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997); Carl Van
Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland, 1939–40 (London: Frank Cass, 1997).
16 Pavel Vladimirovich Petrov, ‘Krasnoznamenny baltisky flot v sovetsko-finlanskoy
voyne 1939–1940 gg.’, ‘unpublished dissertation, St Petersburg State University,
Department of Russian History, spring term 2000’.
17 N. Yu. Berezovsky, S. S. Berezhnoy and Z. V. Nikolayeva, Boevaya letopis sovetskogo
voenno-morskogo flota 1917–1941 (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1993).
18 A. I. Barsukov and V. A. Zolotarev (eds), vol. X; Russky arkhiv: Velikaya Otechestvennaya
Voyna, nakanune voyny: Materialy soveshchany vyshego rukovodyashchyego sostava
VMF SSSR v kontse 1940 goda, vol. I.2 (Moscow: Terra, 1997).
19 See the discussion on the Russian Navy of the 1990s in a report from the Swedish
Defense Research Establishment – Försvarets forskningsanstalt, Rysk militär förmåga
i ett tioårsperspektiv (FOA-R – 99-01151-170 – SE, May 1999), pp. 167–89.
20 John Skogan, ‘The Evolution of the Four Soviet Fleets, 1968–1987’, in John Skogan
and Arne Brundtland (eds), Soviet Sea Power in Northern Waters (London: Macmillan,
1990); Göran Andolf and Bertil Johansson, ‘The Baltic – a Sea of Peace? Swedish
Views of Soviet Naval Policy in the Baltic’, in Göran Rystad, Klaus R. Böhme and
Wilhelm M. Carlgren (eds), In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power
Politics, 1500–1990, vol. II, 1890–1990 (Stockholm: Probus, 1995); Geoffrey Till, ‘The
Great Powers and the Baltic’, in ibid.; Wilhelm Agrell, ‘Strategisk förändring och
svensk–sovjetiska konflikter i Östersjöområdet efter 1945’, Scandia, vol. 51 (1985);
Michael MccGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution, 1987), p. 137 n. 8; Bryan Ranft and Geoffrey Till, The Sea in
Soviet Strategy (London: Macmillan, 1983).
21 Berezovsky et al., Boevaya letopis, p. 562.
22 The strength of the Baltic Fleet in 1941 according to Dotsenko, Flot, p. 238, and
Berezovsky et al., Boevaya letopis, p. 675 – these figures include ships commissioned
after 22 June; Kuznetsov’s budget proposal, 28 December 1940, f. r-1678, o. 1, d. 162,
list 955.
23 The definition is taken from Barry R. Posen, Explaining Military Doctrine: France, Britain
and Germany between the Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 13.
24 See Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the
Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 27; Wilhelm Agrell,
Allianspolitik och atombomber: Kontinuitet och förändring i den svenska försvarsdok-
trinen 1945–1982 (Lund: Liber, 1985), pp. 19–26; Anders Berge, Sakkunskap och poli-
tisk rationalitet: Den svenska flottan och pansarfartygsfrågan 1918–1939 (Stockholm:
Almquist and Wiksell International, 1987), pp. 13–15.

18
 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE BALTIC

25 A similar approach was used many years ago by Graham T. Allison in his work Essence
of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crises (New York: HarperCollins, 1971).
26 Wayne P. Hughes, Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: US Naval
Institute Press, 1986); idem, ‘The Strategy–Tactics Relationship’, in Colin S. Gray and
Roger W. Barnett (eds), Seapower and Strategy (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute
Press, 1989).
27 Mahan’s central work is The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660–1793 (1890);
a modern edition with selected texts is Mahan on Naval Strategy, John B. Hattendorf
(ed.), (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1991).
28 See Volkmar Bueb, Die ‘Junge Schule’ der fransözösischen Marine: Strategie und
Politik, 1875–1900 (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1971).
29 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Eric J. Grove (ed.),
(Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 1988 [1911]), p. 322.
30 Corbett, Some Principles; for a useful introduction, comparing Mahan and Corbett, see
John Gooch, ‘Maritime Command: Mahan and Corbett’, in Colin S. Gray and Roger
W. Barnett (eds), Seapower and Strategy (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press,
1989).
31 James Goldrick and John B. Hattendorf (eds), Mahan Is Not Enough: The Proceedings
of a Conference on the Works of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond
(Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1993); a selection of Castex’s writings in
English translation in Raoul Castex, Strategic Theories, Eugenia C. Kiesling (ed.),
(Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1994); on Wegener see Carl-Axel Gemzell,
Conflict, Organization and Innovation: A Study of German Naval Strategic Planning,
1888–1940 (Lund: Scandinavian University Books, 1973), pp. 215–22, 266–71,
332–55.
32 Bernhard Ireland, Jane’s Battleships of the 20th Century (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
33 Westwood, Russian Naval Construction, pp. 73–5; Mitchell, A History of Russian and
Soviet Sea Power, p. 274.
34 Mitchell, A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power, pp. 370–2; Jürgen Rohwer,
‘Russian and Soviet Naval Strategy’, in John Skogan and Arne Brundtland (eds), Soviet
Sea Power in Northern Waters, pp. 6–7; Herrick, Soviet Naval Strategy, pp. 19–27;
John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918–1941
(London: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 165, 353–5.
35 Monakov, ‘Sudba doktrin i teory, 8’, pp. 39–42; V. Yu. Gribovsky, ‘Na puti k
“bolshomu morskomu i okeanskomu flotu” ’, Gangut, no. 9 (1995), pp. 12–13; cf.
Mitchell, A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power, pp. 373–6; Rohwer, ‘Russian and
Soviet Naval Strategy’, pp. 7–9; Herrick, Soviet Naval Theory and Strategy, pp. 28–46;
Ranft and Till, The Sea in Soviet Strategy, p. 87; Erickson, The Soviet High Command,
p. 475; the decree from 19 October 1940 on the revised naval plan has been published
in English translation by E. Mawdsley, ‘The Fate of Stalin’s Naval Program’, Warship
International, vol. 27 (1990), pp. 402–4.
36 K. A. Stalbo (ed.), Istoriya voenno-morskogo isskusstva, pp. 148–151; V. I. Achkasov
et al., Boevoy put sovetskogo voenno-morskogo flota (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1988),
p. 140; Ponikarovsky et al. (eds), Voenno-morskaya akademiya, p. 86; Monakov and
Gribovsky, ‘Sudba doktrin i teory, 9 [10, see n. 11]’, p. 31.
37 Herrick, Soviet Naval Theory and Strategy, pp. 59, 63–4 n. 53, 83, 86–140; some 20 years
earlier, Herrick had seen things differently, cf. idem, Soviet Naval Strategy, pp. 41–6.
38 Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet.
39 Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, pp. 14–15.
40 Corbett, Some Principles, pp. 310–11.

19
 2
STRATEGY

Chapters 5, 7 and 11 address the strategic dimension of Soviet naval doctrine.

A study along similar lines is Barry R. Posen’s book on the developments of
French, British and German military doctrines between the world wars. Posen
investigates how such factors as the distribution of power in the international
system, technological progress, geography or the organizational interests of the
military shape the formulation of doctrine. As a key factor when a state decides
what mission to give to its armed forces, Posen emphasizes the (perceived) balance
of power in relation to possible adversaries. States with revisionist and expan-
sionist foreign policy aims, like Nazi Germany, are likely to develop offensive
military doctrines. States seeking to preserve the status quo in the international
system – like France and Britain before World War II – tend to adopt defensive or
deterrent doctrines. As a rule, a feeling of temporary superiority also seems to
inspire an offensive doctrine.
Historically, countries that chose offensive doctrines have had in common their
desire for a short war. For various reasons (diminishing resources in relation to
adversaries in the case of Nazi Germany, domestic instability in the case of most
European Great powers in 1914, a vulnerable geopolitical situation in the case of
Israel) they were uncertain of their ability to sustain a protracted struggle. If they
had to invest all their resources in a single battle, they at least wanted to decide
when and where it was to be fought. Correspondingly, states perceiving themselves
as comparatively weak tend to prefer defensive and deterrent doctrines. States
needing to husband resources or to await the intervention of allies often adopt
defensive doctrines. A state whose ‘capabilities fall short of its aims or needs, may
throw its “political” will into the balance’, and resort to a deterrent doctrine.1
Factors such as technology and geography, although exerting important influ-
ence, are not in the same way independent factors, according to Posen. Rather, a
state’s need to enhance its security, its wish to improve the balance of power, tend
to inspire the development of new military technology. Furthermore, technology
can neither be offensive or defensive in itself. It can only be applied in offensive
and defensive ways. In 1940, France and Britain possessed more modern tanks
and aircraft than did the Germans, but they used them in a less effective way and
consequently suffered defeat.

20
 STRATEGY

Of course, the influence of geography is less susceptible to engineering.

Therefore, Posen chooses to integrate geography together with the balance of
power as a systemic element into a state’s security environment. However, he
observes, various actors’ appreciation of geography’s role is often influenced
by their perception of the geopolitical balance.2 Also, one is tempted to add,
geography’s influence can in some ways be neutralized by technology (fortifica-
tions, improved communications, long-range weapons systems).
If we are to follow Posen, the preparations for war in the Baltic formed a rational
response to a perceived threat. Soviet decision makers weighed external threats
against technical possibilities and economic resources, and then elected the
doctrine they found to be most effective. Of course, this does not mean that they
were necessarily right. They may have ignored serious threats to national security,
misinterpreted technological developments or been too slow in implementing their
insights. Nonetheless, in Chapters 5, 8 and 11 we will regard the needs of national
security as the main vehicle of Soviet naval doctrinal developments.

Soviet grand strategy

After their triumph in the Civil War, just like the Russian rulers before and after
them, the Bolsheviks were confronted with their country’s awkward maritime
geography. Although Russia had the longest coastline in the world, its access
to the high seas was limited and Russian ships could nowhere reach the oceans
without passing through sounds and archipelagos controlled by other powers. Nor
were the vast distances that separated the maritime theaters in the Baltic, the
Black Sea, the Arctic and the Pacific easy to overcome.
The Pacific Theater was definitely out of reach from the maritime theaters in
Europe. Although the sea lane along the Arctic coast could be used for redeploy-
ments from the Northern Theater, the distance to cover was gigantic and the aid
of icebreakers would always be needed. Only in 1936 did the first voyage of
Soviet warships through the Arctic Sea occur. It took the two destroyers Voykov
and Stalin more than three months to cover the distance from Kronstadt to
Vladivostok, needing continuous support from icebreakers, supply ships and recon-
naissance aircraft. Moreover, parts of the crew did not travel aboard the ships but
were sent by railroad through Siberia. Nonetheless, this passage was celebrated
as an extraordinary achievement, with plenty of decorations bestowed upon the
participants. Although the Communist Party in its congratulatory telegram
assured the expedition that its ‘victory in the Arctic’ would be of great importance
to the country’s defense, it was hard to see how this long and cumbersome route
could play a vital strategic role in the future.3
Thus, if naval operations were to be coordinated between different maritime
theaters, that coordination had to be limited to European waters. In 1922, the peace
treaty in Lausanne between the victors of World War I and Turkey reopened the
Dardanelles to the traffic of naval ships, prohibited since the end of the Crimean
War in 1856. The only remaining restriction was that no single ship entering the

21
 RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET NAVY IN THE BALTIC

Black Sea was to be larger than those already stationed in the area. When Mikhail
Petrov argued for the role of Soviet naval forces in a debate with Mikhail
Tukhachevsky in the RVS in May 1928, he made the existence of the Lausanne
Treaty a special point. Now, the Soviet Union could start developing a global naval
strategy, with the Baltic and Black Sea fleets cooperating as a joint force. Among
Petrov’s audience, however, there was little support for this optimistic view.4
Already in the following year, the practical problems of transferring forces
between the two theaters were ostentatiously demonstrated. When Turkey decided
to modernize the old battle cruiser Yakuz Sultan Selim (formerly the German
Goeben), the Soviet government saw an excuse to redeploy one battleship and one
cruiser – Parizhkaya Kommuna and Profintern – from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Although their journey did not meet with much diplomatic protest, it still took
almost two months to complete. There were not many ports along the route
where the Soviet ships were allowed to bunker, and the stormy Bay of Biscay put
the crews to hard tests. Later, the voyage of the Parizhkaya Kommuna and
the Profintern, just like that of the Voykov and the Stalin in the Arctic, was to be
commemorated as one of the most remarkable feats of Soviet seamanship during
the inter-war era. If the redeployment of ships between the Baltic and Black Sea
seemed an extraordinary achievement in peacetime, it was unlikely to be easily
repeated during times of war or crisis.5
During his appearance before the RVS in 1928, Petrov also mentioned the
possibility of using Russia’s inner waterways as routes for strategic redeployment.
If a canal was dug between the Don and the Volga (this project was realized only in
1952), this link could be used to transfer light forces between the maritime theaters
in the north and south. As late as December 1940, the People’s Commissar for
the Navy, Kuznetsov, would urge the political leadership to begin the works on the
Volga–Don Canal. Kuznetsov was then prepared to budge from the required depth
of 5 meters, as 3.65 meters would be enough to satisfy the navy’s most urgent needs.
An alternative solution would be to link the Baltic and the Black Sea through a
canal between the rivers Dnepr and Dvina, but that stretch would run dangerously
close to the western border and also be too shallow for the passage of destroyers.6
At least, the inner waterways were extended northwards in 1933 when the
White Sea Canal (‘the Stalin Canal’) was completed and the Baltic Theater linked
to the Northern Theater. However, because the White Sea Canal was shallow,
narrow and blocked by ice for six months a year, communications remained
problematic.7 When the Soviets founded a naval flotilla in the north in 1932,
the first units were transferred there from the Baltic Fleet. Two destroyers, two
submarines and two patrol craft went up from Kronstadt to Murmansk, partly dis-
mantled and towed by barges, needing more than three months to get there via the
canal.8 In the autumn of 1937, the submarine Dekabrist set a record in reaching
Murmansk from Kronstadt in three weeks.9 The poor navigability of the canal was
further demonstrated during the war against Finland in 1939–40. As a result, in
January 1940 the People’s Commissariat for River Transports was ordered to
prepare for complementary excavation works.10

22
 STRATEGY

Although there were many solemn declarations on the role of naval forces in
protecting Soviet commerce and supporting the world revolutionary movement
during the inter-war period,11 there was thus no global Soviet naval strategy, nor
any concrete plans for how fleets in different theaters were to support each other
in the event of a general conflict.

The role of the Baltic

In reality, strategic focus came to be concentrated to the Baltic. The Northern
Theater, although important, was too remote to become a decisive area of operations.
In the Black Sea and Caspian Theaters, where the position of the imperialists was
deemed insecure, the Soviets could easily gain local supremacy and then take a
defensive posture. Although the threat of Japanese aggression in the Pacific seemed
grave, Anglo-American influence for a long time acted as a deterring factor.12
What then, was the role of the Baltic? As the Swedish historian Alf
W. Johansson has pointed out, the Baltic is at the same time a bay of the Atlantic
and a secluded inland sea, and this fact is of fundamental importance when the
region’s geopolitical role is to be analyzed.13 Traditionally, the dominating power
in the Baltic has always argued that as an inland sea, this should be regarded
a secluded ‘mare clausum’ to the navies of nonlittoral states. Erik of Pomerania,
ruler of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, who introduced a Sound Toll in 1429
(which remained in force until 1857), first formulated this principle. In the
seventeenth century, the ‘mare clausum’ idea was taken over by Sweden.14
In the late eighteenth century, when Russia had succeeded Sweden as the leading
power in the region, the court in Saint Petersburg organized the states around the
Baltic Sea into ‘neutrality leagues’ to prevent the incursion of foreign navies. By
advocating the Baltic’s status as confined inland water, this predominantly land-
locked power saw a way to counter the threat of invasion. As we will see, the same
historical pattern was discernible during the inter-war period, when Soviet Russia
was challenged by some of the most powerful navies in the world and the exclusion
of nonlittoral powers became a fundamental task for Soviet diplomats and naval
strategists in the region. Later, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union would for
similar reasons launch diplomatic campaigns to make the Baltic a ‘Sea of Peace’
or Scandinavia a ‘nuclear-free zone.’15
Throughout history, however, the leading naval powers in northern Europe have
just as stubbornly challenged the claims of the regional hegemonic powers in
the Baltic, asserting their right of free access to the area and claiming this sea to
be a ‘mare liberum’ and a continuation of the oceans. In 1658–60, Dutch navies
prevented Swedish domination, and during the Napoleonic wars threatening
Russian domination made the British intervene repeatedly (with Copenhagen as an
unfortunate stop on the way – both in 1801 and 1807). A relatively late example
of this behavior by Western sea powers was the Baltic tour of the US battleship
Iowa in the autumn of 1985, intended to demonstrate the meaning of the Reagan
administration’s ‘forward maritime strategy’.16

23
Map 1 The Baltic region in the inter-war period.
 STRATEGY

At least since the Napoleonic wars, when the imbalance between Russia and its
northwestern neighbors became truly apparent, Western power projection in the
region has been facilitated by the fact that the minor countries have supported the
principle of the Baltic as a ‘mare liberum,’ welcoming the presence of nonlittoral
fleets.17
Parallel to the wish to keep nonlittoral powers out of the Baltic, during the
inter-war period the Soviets also wished to move their own frontiers in the region
further west to protect the city of Leningrad. Apart from their ideological motives
for defending the home of the Great October Revolution, they saw Leningrad as
a major military industrial center – the capital of Russian ship construction and a
vital supplier to the Red Army’s mechanized forces. In July 1925, the People’s
Commissar for Defense, Mikhail Frunze, published a famous article in the
commissariat’s paper, Krasnaya Zvesda, entitled ‘We need a powerful Baltic Fleet’.
Although naval forces would always be of secondary importance to a land power
like the Soviet Union, Frunze wrote, the country would always need a strong fleet
in the Baltic to protect Leningrad and its factories.18
In 1925, before the five-year plans shifted Russia’s economic geography east-
wards, Leningrad housed 56 percent of the Soviet Union’s rubber production and
48 percent of the country’s electromechanical industry. The leading Soviet strategist
during the 1920s, Alexander Svechin, compared the city’s role in a future war to that
of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. According to Svechin, it would have been
more advantageous to the Russians in 1854 to give up this fortress and take up the
fight further inland. However, as Sevastopol was also the main base of the Black
Sea Fleet, the tsarist army had been forced to engage the enemy ‘at the water’s
edge, under the most advantageous circumstances to the enemy’s communications
and under maximally disadvantageous circumstances to us’. Logistic conditions
here were superior to those along the thinly populated border with Poland, as the
sea-lanes of communications and the density of major population centers west of
Leningrad would greatly facilitate the enemy’s concentration.19
Through the outcome of World War I, Russia’s coastal zone in the Baltic had
shrunk to some 170 miles in the inner part of the Gulf of Finland. The main naval
base remained in Kronstadt on the island of Kotlin, about 20 miles outside
Petrograd. According to plans by General F. I. Todtleben, a circle of armored forts
and battery positions had been erected in the late nineteenth century on the many
islets and skerries surrounding Kotlin Island. Even before these fortifications
were built, Kronstadt’s position in the inner part of the Gulf of Finland had
appeared safe and secluded (Peter the Great contemplated building Saint Petersburg
here). However, the independence of Finland in 1917 suddenly relocated Kotlin
strategically, situating it less than 13 miles from foreign territory and within range
of hostile artillery. In the years 1919–20, when the Royal Navy held a squadron
in the Baltic to support Balts and Finns in their struggle for independence, the
dangers of this new environment were forcefully demonstrated. From bases on
Finnish territory, Kronstadt was repeatedly bombarded from the air. One dark

25
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
to trades or industry. This general Act did not apply to Belfast, but as
soon as it became law the Belfast Charitable Society took into
consideration the desirabihty of incorporating the Society and basing
it on the
 The Belfast Charitable Society. 169 Act in question.* The
result was that in the following session (1773-74) an Act was passed
to amend in some respects the previous Act. The new Act, after
providing for purposes connected with the Corporation of Dubhn,
stated that the town of Belfast was a populous and wealthy town,
containing as many inhabitants as several of the cities or counties of
towns in the kingdom, but, not being a county within itself, could not
have the benefit of the general Act in as ample and full a manner as
was found necessary ; that the inhabitants of the said town and
parish had by voluntary subscriptions and contributions raised a fund
of money for the support of the poor within the town and parish,
and, for the better answering that laudable intention, had erected a
poor house and infirmary for the reception of the poor and of sick
persons on grounds adjoining the town, which had been granted by
the Earl of Donegall to certain trustees ; and that the said
inhabitants were desirous that a body corporate should be formed,
and to continue for ever, for the carrying into execution, under
proper regalations, the charitable and humane design of maintaining
the poor of the town and parish. The Act then stipulated that from
and after the 1st of June, 1774, the Earl of Donegall, James Lewis,
Sovereign, and his successors for the time being ; Henry Skefhngton
and George Hamilton, representatives in Parhament for the town ;
and the representatives in Parliament for the time being ; the then
vicar and churchwardens and their successors ; James Makay,
Wilham Laird, and James Crumby, and such persons as should
contribute to the Charity, as provided therein, should for ever be in
name and fact one body corporate in law with perpetual succession,
for the charitable purposes mentioned, under the name of the
president and assistants of the Belfast Charitable Society. It was also
provided that Arthur Earl of Donegall should be president for life,
and that every person who should contribute the sum of one guinea
to the Society should be a member for the space of one entire year.
The Society was authorized to make reasonable rules, orders and
regulations for the management of the poorhouse and infirmary, and
to exercise such and hke powers with respect to the poor and all idle
and sturdy beggars within the town and parish of Belfast as the
Corporations *Acts of Parliament of the Belfast Charitable Society,
&c., compiled by E. W. Pirn. 1899.
 170 History of Belfast : created by virtue of the general Act
of the previous session within counties at large and counties of
towns and cities were enabled to do. Immediately after the passing
of this Act the Society set itself to work, the first consideration being
the raising of subscriptions. Seven beds were fitted up for the
reception of the sick, and rules and regulations were made for
reUeving the poor. This public advertisement was issued in
November, 1774 : — " Wanted, for the use of the Poorhouse and
Infirmar3^ a Steward, a Housekeeper, and a person to act as Porter
and Beadle. " The Steward must be a person of known fidehty and
diligence and capable of keeping the Accounts of the House. The
Housekeeper, a woman of approved discretion and experience. The
Beadle, a hale, stout, active man, of a good character for honesty
and sobriety. Each of the above servants must be single. " The
following are the highest salaries that will be given: — To the
Steward, ;flO ; to the Housekeeper, ;^6 ; to, the Beadle, £5 per
annum — Diet and lodging in the House for each. " Persons who
choose to offer themselves as candidates for the above offices are
desired to apply at the Poorhouse on Wednesday, the 6th instant, at
11 o'clock. " N.B. — No one need apply without proper certificates to
the above descriptions." A committee for the government of the
poorhouse was appointed, consisting of the Rev. WilUam Bristow, Mr.
Patterson, Mr. R. Joy, Mr. Smith, Mr. Callwell, Mr. IMattear, Mr. Laird,
Mr. Bryson, and Mr. Crombie. By March of the following year the
house was ready for the reception of inmates, and six women,
principally widows, were admitted. The Society continued its good
work, and by the end of the year 1777 it was reported that the
number of poor boarded in the house numbered ninety- five in all,
consisting of tfiirty-eight old women, twenty-three old men, three
infirmary patients, and thirty-one children. An indication of another
side of the activities of the Society is found in the fact that in 1776 it
was decided to have a proper place fitted up as a black hole for
confining delinquents and vagrants. Some years later it was ordered
" that the black hole be instantly prepared for the reception of such
strolling beggars as are sent up
 The Belfast Charitable Society. 171 by the sovereign."
Another resolution authorized the Sovereign, accompanied by
members of the committee, to go occasionally through the streets of
the town for the purpose of banishing all stroUing beggars. The
functions of the committee apparently extended to lunatics, who
were to be taken into the lower cells if such a course were thought
fit, and we find directions given that a cart and an ass were to patrol
the town twice a week, attended by the beadle and two of the ablest
men in the house, who were to have staves and cloaks, and were to
take up and confine all vagrants in a dark closet. The Society
received a very great measure of support from the town, and its
activities were great and good, even if at times its methods were
drastic. It is recorded that a woman was confined for two weeks and
fed on bread and water for the crime of leaving the house without
permission, and vagrants were often imprisoned for various offences.
The graveyard called the " New Burying Ground " was formed by the
Society, and plots sold to the inhabitants, many well-known people
being afterwards buried there. We have akeady noticed in the
previous chapter how industrial pursuits were followed in the
poorhouse, and how cotton spinning was started there ; but when a
proposal was made to the Society that it should extend its scope by
cleaning the streets of the town, the committee regarded this as
going beyond its legitimate functions, and passed a resolution " that
it does not appear to us an ehgible plan for the Society to establish
any cart or carts for cleansing the streets of the town at present."
About this time, however, the energies of the Chfritable Society
came to be directed in a pecuHar direction — that of supplying the
town with water. The reason for this was no doubt that the Society
saw a means of obtaining further funds for the carrying on of its
work. The first attempt to provide Belfast with a water supply, as
mentioned in Chapter VHI, was made by George Macartney in the
year 1678. In 1733 a lease was granted at the nominal rent of
twenty shiUings a year to \\'iniam Johnston, of Newforge, of " all
waters, rivers, brooks, wells and water streams adjacent and
contiguous to the town of Belfast," except such as had been granted
to George M'Cartney. Johnston, who became known as " Pipcwater
Johnston," provided water for the town through wooden pipes made
from the hollowed-out trunks of trees, but the
 172 History of Belfast : works were acquired in 1762 by
James Hall, who, on account of the revenue not covering the
expenses, had to increase the charges. Some years afterwards it
was stated that there were few, even of the most insignificant,
\nllagcs so ill supplied witli water as Belfast, and that, owing to frost
and the rottenness of the pipes, the poor were obliged in crowds to
desert their miserable dwellings in search of water in different parts
of the neiglibourhood. Many of the rich were in a similar plight, all
drawing water from the country. Water was even carried in and sold
at eight gallons for a penny. The directors of tlie CJiaritable Society
saw their opportunity, and in 1795 obtained from Lord Donegall a
lease of certain springs. They took steps to bring under control the
water supply that already existed, and for the next forty-five years
the management of the water remained in the hands of an annually
elected committee of the Society under the name of the " Spring
Water Commissioners." The supply consisted of springs near
Fountainville, the principal one being the " Bellows Spring "(so called
from its shape), whicli later became a disused pond, and which was
on the Lisburn Road opposite Wilmont Terrace. The w^ater was
conveyed by conduit to a reservoir in the town and distributed by
wooden pipss. Additional supplies were obtained from springs
situated near the foot of the present Deramore Park, where the
remains still exist. This water course ran from there through the site
of the Botanic Gardens and Plains to a basin near the present
Ormeau Avenue. ' ■ " -,■,.-•^1 Old Waterworks, StranmilHs. Some
little time was occupied in arranging the water supply. In 1797 we
find that, at a meeting of the General Board of the
 The Belfast Charitable Society. 173 Charitable Society, the
Water Committee ha\dng laid the accounts and state of the funds
before the Board, the following resolution was passed : — ■ " That it
appears upon examination of the same, that the're venue now
arising from the nesv supply (exclusive of the produce of the two
water carts), even in this early stage of the business, is more than
sufficient to defray the interest of the money expended and
borrowed, and that they have every reason to believe it will, in the
end, prove a valuable and permanent fund for the support of the
poor." A John Sloan was appointed as clerk to the Water Works at a
salary of ^{50 per annum, his duties being specified " To collect all
publick subscriptions for the Poorhouse ; to receive the annual sums
paid for water, as hkewise every evening the money collected at the
reservoirs ; pay the labourers for laying pipes and any other work
connected with the business of furnishing and distributing water ;
make weekly and monthly returns of all such houses as may be
supplied, with water, and report to :he Committee." This gentleman,
however, considered that the remuneration offered was inadequate,
and he refused to accept the appointment unless he received a
salary of ;£50 and twenty guineas. The Society did not see its way
clear to rise to such figures, and a Mr. John Smyhe was appointed
instead. The Society must have experienced difficulty in carrying on
the water supply, largely on account of the fact that it had no
authority to make a compulsory water rate. Application was made to
Parliament for further powers in relation to the water supply, and in
connection with several other matters pertaining to town
management. In 1800 an Act was obtained which, so far as water
was concerned, recited that, whereas the late Marquis of Donegall
did, in the year 1795, grant a lease to the Belfast Charitable Society
for the term of sixty-one years, of certain springs and fountains of
water contiguous to the town for the purpose of supplying the
inhabitants with pure wholesome water, in consequence whereof the
said Society had expended a large sum of money in conveying water
from such springs and fountains into the town and in erecting a
reservoir or basin for containing the same and other works, and
introducing main pipes into some of the. principal streets from which
water might be conveyed
 174 History of Belfast. by lesser pipes or branc]ies into the
dwelling-houses, wliich greatly conduced to the health and
convenience of the inhabitants and to the security and safety of the
town ; and whereas no provision was or could be made in the said
lease for compeUing the inhabitants or occupiers of houses to pay
for the use of such water, by means whereof the said Society was
prevented from raising that revenue therefrom which was intended
by the said Marquis of Donegall for the support of the poor, and also
from erecting pubhc fountains for the use of the poor, it was enacted
that from and after the passing of the Act, and for and during the
continuance of the said lease and of all and every renewal to be had
or gotten thereof, every owner or occupier of every dwelUng-house
in the town of Belfast, which was so situated that it might receive
the benefit of such water, if such occupier should think proper to do
so, and which dweUing-house should be valued at the annual rent or
sum of five pounds or upwards, should pay to the Society a certain
annual rent for such water, proportioned to the annual value of such
dwelling-house, provided that the same should not exceed the sum
of forty shillings by the year. The assessment was to be made by
twelve persons, to be chosen as " pipe-water applotters " annually
by the inhabitants of the parish assembled in vestry, and the Act
contained provisions for higher charges to manufacturers and others
who had an extraordinary consumption of water for their businesses.
Such was the condition of the water supply of Belfast at the close of
the eighteenth century, and in the last year of that century the
financial position of the water works was reported to the Charitable
Society as :— Expenditure, £6,719 17s. IJd. ; the debt due, £4,634
8s 5^1. ; the gross income, £822 15s. lOd., out of which was paid
for interest and salaries £386, leaving a net income of £436 15s.
lOd. for carrying on the works.
 CHAPTER XVI. 1701—1800. Municipal and Educational
affairs during the Eighteenth Century. The old Town Book, to which
reference has akeady been made, contains very few entries relating
to matters concerning the government of the town during the
eighteenth century. In January, 1714, we find Robert Lebyrtt elected
to occupy the position of Town Clerk, with the usual stipulation
"during his honest carrying and upright behaviour." Two years later
the by-law which was adopted on the 24th June, 1660, and which
prohibited any Burgess, after being elected and sworn as Sovereign,
from seUing " in his house any wine, beer, ale, aqua vitae or other
strong waters, or keep entertainment in his house during the time of
his being Sovereign" on forfeiture of one hundred pounds, came
under discussion. It was found that the by-law was " useless and
inconvenient " and it was, accordingly, to quote the words of the
resolution, " repealed, annulled and made void to aU intents and
purposes whatsoever," a form of wording which certainly left no
ambiguity in anybody's mind as to the fate of the old by-law. James
Gurner was the Sovereign at the time, and he was succeeded by
Henry EUis, but there is nothing to show that either of these
gentlemen was engaged in the sale of strong drink. The oath to be
taken by the Sovereign about this period is set out in the Town Book
and reads : — " The Oath of the Sovereigne. You shall sweare that
you shall well and truly serve our Sovereigne Lord the King by the
space of one whole year now next ensuing as Sovereigne of the
Burrough of BeUfast & untill a successor be sworne vv^^ yo"^ best
endea^r according to the power given unto you by his Matie^ Lres
Pattents and you shall according to the best of yo"^ knowledge
discrecion doe equall justice as well to the poore as the rich and
 176 History of Belfast: truly fairly and gently intrcate the
people of this Barroiigh You shall use your best endcav''^ to uph(;ld
maintayne the rights Libties jurisdiccions and LavvfuU ordinances of
this Towne and Burrough correccion of victualls breade winebeare
Ale f&sh and fleshe you shall trnly and tenderly see or cause to bee
scene unto craftsmen Labourers and Artificers. You shall truly
enquire of and those that shall be found guilty faulty and
trespassinge therin you shall justly correct and duly reforme,
widdows and orphans you shall succoiu" and Defend And finally in all
otlier tliinges that shall or may concerne yo'' office you shall therein
faithfully and uprightly demeane yorself for the most quiet benefitt
worshipp honestly credit & advancem' of this yo*" Burrough and the
Inhabitants thereof. Soe help yo' God in Jesus Christ."* The duties of
the Sovereign appear not to have diminished with the passage of
time, and in October, 1768, the novel spectacle was witnessed of the
Sovereign in person shooting two swine in the streets ot the town.
This was his method of enforcing a public notice that the swine
which infested the streets to the discredit of the town would ba
destroyed if houses were not provided for them within five days. At
this period Belfast was rapidly outgrowing the system of municipal
government then in force. The general power given by the Charter
for the Sovereign and Burgesses to make statutes, ordinances and
by-laws, for the good ruling and sound governing of the borough
and the inhabitants, was apparently wide enough for all practical
purposes, but as the election to the office of Burgess in the event of
a vacancy was in the hands of the Sovereign and remaining
Bargesses, there was nothing in the natiue ot direct pubhc control in
the management of the affairs of the town. In addition, nothing
could be done without the approval of the Lord of the Castle. A
striking aspect of the place is contained in a letter which appeared in
the " Belfast News Letter " of the 19th December, 1780, and of
which the following is a copy :— "To George Macartney Portis, Esq.
Sir, In my way from this city to Scotland (in my entrance into Belfast)
I was vastly surprized and hurt to see a long string of falling cabbins
and tattered houses, all tumbling *"Town Book," edited by R. M.
Young, p. 219.
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 Municipal and Educational Affairs. 177 down, wth an horrid
aspect, and the seeming prelude to a pitiful village, which was my
idea of Belfast, until I got pretty far into the town, when I found my
error, for indeed with some trifling improvements it might be made
to vie with any town in Ireland, save Dubhn and Cork. 'Twas about
eleven o'clock on Sunday morning when I stopped at the Donegall
Arms, and, as I meant going no fartlier that day, I strutted about the
town ; but Oh, cleanliness, celestial maid, what was my surprize at
beholding piles of dunghills made up through the middle of the
whole town, from one end to the other. I enquired the reason of this
outre appearance, this ville d'engraisser and that on a day when it
should be the cleanest, and was informed that 'twas always the case
on Sundays ; for that Friday being the marketday the town was
constantly swept on Saturdays, and that dunghills built up (if I may
be allowed the expression) in the manner before represented as
sweet savoured nosegays to regale the inhabitants on every
Sabbath, when, if dry, every creature is recreating, in walking from
one place to another. Surely this evil might be easily remedied by
having carts ready to remove the nuisances when swept up together
every Saturday but 'tis sometliing hke the hinge of Mr. Shandy's
parlour door, which a leather and a drop of oil would have remedied,
and yet was suffered to grate upon the feeUngs of him and poor
Uncle Toby for many years. I also observed, particularly in the main
street, which is a very handsome one, that the pavements before
the doors were indifferent and not by any means calculated to throw
off the dirt, having no descent or obhquity from the houses to the
channel ; and here immediately the new pavements of Dublin
occurred to me, where a footway is raised at the side of the streets
and bound together with a narrow curbing of hard mountain
freestone. I would recommend such a mode • of paving to your
consideration; it answers full well as flagging and will be less
expensive to the inhabitants chan the nasty pavements you've at
present ; as when once well done it will last almost for ever. You'll no
doubt be surprised at my addressing this letter to you ; but know,
Sir, that 'tis from your character I do it. I was told that you were one
of the most principal men in the town, that you were agent to Lord
D — 11 and that your chisf happiness consisted in promoting the
trade and interest of Belfast and in rectifying every grievance which
was pointed out to you; all this information I had from James, one of
the waiters at the inn, with whom I'd occasionally a good deal of
conversation as he waited on me at dinner. M
 178 History OF Belfast : I request then, Sir, you'Jl have the
old houses at the entrance of the town pulled down or rebuilt, for
nothing looks worse than an ugly entrance into any place ; it
prepossesses you immediately against both the town and the
people; it's a bad index ; also suffer no dunghills to remain in youi"
streets on Sundays, and mind your pavements, which will effectually
serve the town of Belfast, and prove that the waiter was not
cramming Sir. Your obedient humble servant and well-wisher (tho'
unknown) Proprete." This semi-humorous effusion may have
received due consideration, and the inhabitants, no doubt,
appreciated the writer's remark that Belfast might be made to \'ie
with any town in Ireland save Dublin and Cork. Such was a
stranger's estimate of the place — at best a more or less second-
rate town. It was, however, marching quickly on the road of
progress. Its statistics of population* give the best idea of this. Early
part of seventeenth century ... ... 500 (about) 1685 ... ... ... ... 2,000
1757 ... ... ... ... 8,549 1782 ... ... ... ... 13,105 1791 ... ... ... ...
18,320 It was not until the very end of the century that a new
system came into operation for dealing with the cleansing, Hghting
and watching of the town. This was effected by an Act passed in the
year 1800, entitled " An Act for paving, cleansing and hghting, and
improving the several streets, squares, lanes and passages within
the town of Belfast, in the County of Antrim, and for removing and
preventing all encroachments, obstructions, and annoyances therein,
and also for estabHshing and maintaining a nightly watch
throughout the said Town and Prccin;ts thereof, and for other
purposes." The preamble of the Act set forth that Belfast was a very
populous market town and borough, and had of late years greatly
increased in buildings, and was yearly increasing in number of
inhabitants, commerce and wealth; that the several streets, squares,
lanes and passages within the town were extremely ill paved and ill
hghted, and passengers much incommoded by encroachments,
obstructions and annoyances ; and that it would tend greatly to
promote the trade of the town and the general ♦See Note 55.
 Municipal and Educational Affairs. 179 prosperity,
convenience, health, comfort and security of all ths inhabitants and
other persons resorting thereto, if the streets, squares, lanes and
passages were well paved, cleansed and lighted, and so kep: ; and
all encroachments, obstructions, nuisances and annoyances removed
and prevented, and a well-regulated nightly watch estabhshed and
maintained. The Act appointed the Sovereign and Burgesses for the
time being, together with Hugh Montgomery, William Sinclair,
Valentine Jones* the younger, Thomas Ludford Stewart, Robert
Bradshaw, Narcissus Batt, William Clarke, Hugh Crawford, George
Joy, John Houston, Edward M'Cormick and John Turnley, all of
Belfast, and their successors from time to time elected in the
manner provided for in the Act, to be Commissioners for the purpose
of carrying the Act into execution. In the case of the death, refusal
or resignation of any of the Commissioners, the Sovereign was
required to give fourteen days' pubhc notice in writing, posted on
the market house, to such inhabitants as should stand assessed to
the parish rates at the sum of twenty shilhngs, to meet at a certain
hour aad place, for the purpose of electing a successor or
successors. No person was ehgible for election as a Commissioner
who was not resident within the town of Belfast or its precincts. A
committee of twentyone persons (known as the Police Committee)
was to be elected at a vestry meeting, by persons assessed to the
amount already mentioned, to assist the Commissioners in carrying
out the provisions of the Act, and to certify such bills and other
allowances for payment as they should find fair and just. Another
necessary qualification for a Commissioner was the possession of
;^100 clear yearly rent, or tha possession of a personal estate to the
value of £2,000, or the fact of his being a Member of Parliament or
heirapparent of a Pesr or Lord of Parliament. No person could be a
Committee man unless he held real or personal estate of the value
of £1,000. The Act authorized the paving, lighting, cleansing and
watching of the town, and the infliction of penalties on persons
found guilty of breaking and steahng street lamps, of exercising
horses within the streets, of causing nuisances, annoyances,
obstructions and encroachments in the streets, or of slaughtering
animals in or contiguous to thoroughfares. The Commissioners were
also em*See Note 56.
 180 History of Belfast: powered to regulate signs and sign
posts ; to cause the names of tlie streets to be put up and the
houses to be numbered ; to regulate the rates and fares of cars,
drays and carts ; and to provide a fire-engine. The right of property
in all the streets, pavements and lamps was vested in the
Commissioners, who were empowered to borrow money and to levy
rates on the inhabitants of premises. The Act also, as mentioned in
the preceding chapter, contained provisions relating to the Belfast
Charitable Society, in connection with the water supply to the town.
In fact it was a very comprehensive measure and well calculated to
place some of the affairs of the town upon a better basis than had
previously been the case. The expenses incurred in obtaining the Act
amounted to ;^1,260, a large sum for those days, but the money
was well spent. The Act left the old Town Corporation in existence,
and what it really did was to set up another body to attend to the
various matters specified — matters which, of course, should have
come within the province of the Municipal Corporation. The
Commissioners immediately proceeded to exercise their functions,
and in the pubhc press of September of the same year notice was
given that the PoUce Committee were prepared to receive proposals
in writing from persons wilUng to contract for erecting and keeping
in repair, supplying with oil and other materials, and hghting, 400
lamps in the town for the following winter ; also that the Committee
were open to receive tenders from persons wishing to contract for a
temporary repair of the following streets and lanes, viz : — High
Street, Castle Street, Mill Street^ North Street, Donegal) Street,
Waring Street, Ann Street, Church Lane, Hercides Lane, Skipper's
Lane, Bridge Street, Prince's Street, Rosemary Lane, and Factory
Row. Tiie Committee further intimated that they were ready to
receive offers from painters for numbering all the houses in the town
and for affixing the names of all the streets and lanes on the corners
thereof. These very necessary works were duly carried out, and they
resulted in a marked improvement in the comfort of the
townspeople. While the citizens were engaged in such material
matters as the physical improvement of the town, and were at the
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