RUSSIA (See Cover)
The flag of the Soviet navy now proudly flies over the oceans of the world. Sooner or later, the U.S. will have to understand that it no longer has mastery of the seas.
—Admiral Sergei Gorshkov
The author of that threatening boast walked up to a snake charmer in the Indian city of Agra last week and, while his aides looked on aghast, seized a thick, six-foot-long python in his strong hands and draped it over his shoulders. Making a ten-day tour of India, the commander of the Russian navy was acting like the traditional sailor on shore leave. He viewed the Taj Mahal by moonlight, visited the Nehru Museum and the site where Mahatma Gandhi's body was cremated, and shopped for souvenirs. But Admiral Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov's trip to India had an entirely serious purpose, as do all his trips these days. He is trying to line up a worldwide system of ports of call and bases for his navy, and he hoped to persuade India, which is about to receive at least three submarines from the Soviet Union, to reciprocate by allowing Soviet men-of-war to fuel and make repairs in Indian ports.
While the attention of the U.S. is fo cused on Viet Nam, the Russians are mounting at sea a new challenge that the U.S. and its allies will have to deal with long after the fighting in Southeast Asia is ended. This may come as a surprise to most laymen—but not to U.S. naval experts. While Russia's stock of intercontinental missiles and its huge land army on Europe's periphery still remain the major military threats to the West, in recent years the Russians have developed a global navy second only to the U.S. in size and weaponry. As a comparison between the two navies shows (see chart), the U.S. remains indisputably the world's greatest sea power. But, in a remarkable turnaround since World War II, Moscow has transformed a relatively insignificant coastal-defense force that seldom ventured far from land into a real blue-water fleet.
If any one man is responsible for this change, it is Admiral Gorshkov, 57, who became the youngest admiral in Soviet history at 31 and has guided the growth of the navy as its chief for the past twelve years. He has totally reshaped the Soviet Union's once conservative naval strategy and transformed the fleet into the most effective and flexible arm of Soviet foreign policy.
Formidable Fleets. Since 1957, Russia has added to its navy virtually all of the ships that now make up its impressive striking power. It has a modern force of 19 cruisers, 170 destroyers, missile frigates and destroyer escorts, and 560 motor torpedo boats. Its 360 submarines, 55 of them nuclear, give Russia the world's largest submarine fleet, far exceeding the U.S. total of 155 subs but falling short of the U.S. fleet of 75 nuclear subs.