In the beginning of the Cold War, there was a common perception that the Soviet Union was fundamentally a land power with a huge army, but that the sea was ruled completely by the United States and its allies. Yet, from the end of the 1960’s, Western naval analysts observed that the Soviet Navy was beginning to build powerful surface warships. This came as a real shock for the West.
The man who stood behind the radical modernisation of the Soviet Navy was Admiral Sergei Gorshkov. This was the largest peacetime accumulation of warships to date. In this video, we look at the life, the career, and the naval thinking of Admiral Gorshkov, the builder of the Red Fleet. This is a story of how a single individual can have an enormous impact on history through cunning, willpower, and some degree of luck.
References (all books available digitally on Amazon):
Admiral Gorshkov - The Man who Challenged the US Navy, by Norman Polmar, Thomas Brooks, and George Fedoroff
21st Century Gorshkov: The Challenge of Seapower in the Modern Era, edited by Kevin Rowlands
www.globalsecurity.org/milita...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_...
www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/ob...