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Youngest Admiral. Born in the Ukraine, Gorshkov joined the navy when he was 17, and graduated from Leningrad's Frunze Academy, the Russian equivalent of Annapolis, four years later. When war broke out, he was the commander of a handful of antiquated cruisers and assorted small craft in the Black Sea. As the German invaders rushed toward the oilfields of the Caucasus, Gorshkov became expert at amphibious operations, plucking trapped Soviet troops from the Crimean coasts and landing them farther eastward to fight again.
During those years, Gorshkov also formed the attachment for heavily armed small craft that is reflected today in the Soviet navy's emphasis on Komar and Osa torpedo boats. He welded the turrets from T-34 tanks to motorboats and formed a river fleet that harassed the Germans from Rostov-on-Don to Vienna on the Danube. The young admiral impressed some Red Army officers who were fighting in the area. One was a major general named Leonid Brezhnev, another a lieutenant general named Nikita Khrushchev.
Sitting Ducks. After the war, Stalin started building big warships again, but only 15 cruisers had been completed by the time he died in 1953. The new chief in the Kremlin had no sympathy for Stalin's plans. Nikita Khrushchev fired Stalin's navy chief, Admiral Kuznetsov, and brought in Gorshkov, who by then was naval chief of staff.
The assignment turned out to be a bitter one. Khrushchev believed that missiles had made surface ships "sitting ducks." He derided cruisers as "fit only for traveling on state visits," and scrapped four that were still under construction. He even passed the word to the admirals to stay away from the round of receptions and parties during the 1956 air force day celebrations. Spotting four soldiers rowing a boat on a Moscow pond, Khrushchev joked to one of his American guests: "There is our navy!" He went as far as to contemplate disbanding the navy and transferring its missile-firing submarines to a new unified missile command.
As a party member since 1942, Gorshkov knew better than to openly oppose Khrushchev. But as a skilled politician himself, he knew well how to stall. He subtly resisted the missile enthusiasts in the Kremlin, kept alive the concept of surface ships. Then Khrushchev decided to put missiles in Castro's Cuba—and the whole game changed. The humiliation of their backdown under the guns of the U.S. Navy impressed on the Soviet leaders the value of naval power. Shortly after the crisis, Khrushchev sent an order to the admiral: Create a surface fleet.
Gorshkov's own status reflects the navy's elevation to a place of importance. His fleet ranks in the top troika of Russian weaponry, alongside the ICBM command, a separate service in the Soviet setup, and the air force strategic bombers. In the chain of command, Gorshkov reports directly to the Defense Ministry. He was elected to the Central Committee in 1961, became a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965 and was promoted last year to the exalted five-star rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, only the third to get that honor in the history of the Soviet navy.