On 25 July Professor Skridlov’s News Talk suddenly took on a sharper edge. The captain had received a Top Secret signal, whose contents he felt entitled to divulge to the Professor, warning him of strained relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Krasnya Krim was to increase speed so as to pass the Dardanelles on 3 August. This would mean going through the Straits of Gibraltar on the night of 30 July. The Soviet Commander-in-Chief Navy also ordered the ship to prepare “unobtrusively” for war and gave her a sitrep on the naval forces of NATO that might be encountered, as well as the positions of Soviet warships and submarines. It appeared that the US Sixth Fleet might well bar the way to the Dardanelles.
The events of the next few days on board the Soviet cruiser are by no means clear. What emerges is that Soviet sailors were prepared to take dramatic steps to show their hostility to a tyrannous regime. At 2107 on 30 July the Krasnya Krim, after duly requesting permission from the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, entered British territorial waters and anchored in the Bay. It appeared that the fuel embarked at Guinea was severely contaminated, and it would not be possible for the cruiser to proceed on her way until the entire fuel system had been cleaned. At least, that was what the Soviet High Command was told. It was not what the cruiser’s captain told the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, when he called on him next morning, in company with the political commissar — and the Professor.
They were convinced that world conflict was now unavoidable and that out of it a new Russia would emerge. The ship’s company had been openly and fully consulted and gave their whole-hearted support to what was now proposed. They wished the ship and all in her to be granted asylum, fighting neither against their own former comrades nor against NATO, until the conflict was over and they could see more clearly what part to play in the shaping of a brighter future.
The request was immediately granted, in the first of what was to become a series of defections.
On 10 August a nuclear missile cruiser, sole survivor of the Fifth Eskadra, or Mediterranean Squadron, of the Soviet Navy also raised the British flag and sailed into harbour at Gibraltar, where she gave the shore battery a twenty-one-gun salute and dropped anchor. The ship’s commander, Captain 1st Rank P. Semenov, appeared before the British Governor in his dress uniform and declared that the missile cruiser was placing itself at the disposal of the British authorities, the entire crew requesting political asylum.
“Including the political commissars and the KGB officers?” enquired the Governor.
“No,” replied the Captain. “We’ve strung them up from the masts. Come and see for yourself.” The invitation was declined, the request for asylum granted.
That same day the Soviet nuclear submarine Robespierre sailed into harbour at Boston, Massachusetts, under the US flag. As the submarine had no masts, there was nowhere to hang the KGB and Party representatives. They had therefore been dropped overboard before entering harbour. The Soviet submarine was disarmed and immobilized, with the crew very comfortably interned.”[16]
We must now look more thoroughly at the war at sea. A convenient, if somewhat informal, point of entry into this important topic is the text of a lecture given at the National Defence College in Washington by Rear Admiral Randolph Maybury of the United States Navy in the summer of 1986. He was introduced by the Commandant.
‘Good morning, gentlemen. As you know, we are continuing today with our study of the military operations which took place between 4 and 20 August 1985. Our course has been structured to provide both an “all-arms” conspectus, region by region, and amplifying accounts of the fighting at sea, on land and in the air. Since last winter, when Admiral Lacey addressed us on the naval operations in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea — particularly the famous Cavalry reinforcement convoy operation — additional data which have come to hand, and much hard work, have made it possible to present a record of the naval (which includes, of course, naval and maritime air) operations which were taking place concurrently in other areas and theatres. Admiral Maybury, here, has not long since completed this work, and we are most fortunate to have him with us to talk about it. As Deputy Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief US Navy Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) in London, from 1984 through 1985, he was well placed to see what went on. No doubt he took a hand in things also! At any rate, we’re glad to see you, Admiral — and now will you kindly step up and tell us about it.’
‘Thank you. It’s good to be back at the National War College. When I was a student here, in 1983, the question was “What would happen, if…? Now, the concern is “What did happen, and why…?” The human race came close to destroying itself. History, as mere hindsight, may be of interest, but it is of little value unless its lessons are learned.
‘I have come to believe that where we went wrong — and by “we” I mean the United States and her NATO allies — was in our failure to incorporate the Moscow dimension into our own perception of the dangers to civilization which were implicit in Soviet attitudes, beliefs and actions. We could read, for example, in the writings of Lenin:
Great questions in the life of a people are decided only by force… once the bayonet really stands as the first order of political business, then constitutional illusions and scholastic exercises in Parliament become nothing but a cover for bourgeois betrayal of the revolution. The truly revolutionary class must then advance the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.[17]
Or the words of one of his disciples in the 1970s:
Our era is the era of the transition from Capitalism to Socialism and Communism, the era of the struggle of the two opposed world systems. The outstanding feature of its current stage is that the forces of Socialism determine the course of historical development, and Imperialism has lost its dominant position in the world arena. The USSR now represents a mighty power in economic and military respects. The scientific-technological revolution currently taking place substantially influences the development of military affairs. In these conditions the military-technological policy of the CPSU is directed towards creating and maintaining military superiority of the Socialist countries over the forces of war and aggression.[18]
‘Reams of such stuff was made available to us, in translation. But still we tended, for practical purposes, to look at the Soviet Union’s problems in the light of our own open, free-ranging understanding, according to which Murphy’s Law rates equally, for truth, with the second law of thermodynamics. A Britisher who came here to talk to us one day tried to make the point this way. It seems that there had been a party at the Soviet Embassy, here in Washington, and that the vodka had flowed freely. Towards the end of the evening the Soviet Ambassador challenged the British Ambassador to a race. The British Ambassador came first. This was duly reported in The Times as “There was a race between the British and the Soviet Ambassadors in Washington yesterday, which the British Ambassador won.” Pravda put it differently: “In a race between ambassadors in Washington last week, the Soviet Ambassador came in second — the British Ambassador was second from last.” ‘
17
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9 p. 3, quoted in Ian Greig, They Mean What They Say (Foreign Affairs Research Institute, London 1981), p. 14.
18
M. Gladkov and B. Ivanov, ‘The Economy and Military Technological Policy’, Communist of the Armed Forces, No. 9, May 1972, quoted in Ian Greig, op, cit., p. 57.