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CRS-8
Soviet Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War
Strategy and Doctrine. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union also
considered nuclear weapons to be instrumental to its military strategy.9 Although the
Soviet Union had pledged that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons, most
Western observers doubted that it would actually observe this pledge in a conflict.
Instead, analysts argue that the Soviet Union had integrated nuclear weapons into its
warfighting plans to a much greater degree than the United States. Soviet analysts
stressed that these weapons would be useful for both surprise attack and preemptive
attack. According to one Russian analyst, the Soviet Union would have used
nonstrategic nuclear weapons to conduct strategic operations in the theater of war and
to reinforce conventional units in large scale land and sea operations.'0 This would
have helped the Soviet Union achieve success in these theaters of war and would
have diverted forces of the enemy from Soviet territory.
The Soviet Union reportedly began to reduce its emphasis on nuclear
warfighting strategies in the mid-1980s, under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
He reportedly believed that the use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.
Nevertheless, they remained a key tool of deterring and fighting a large-scale conflict
with the United States and NATO.
Force Structure. The Soviet Union produced and deployed a wide range of
delivery vehicles for nonstrategic nuclear weapons. At different times during the
period, it deployed "suitcase bombs," nuclear mines, shells for artillery, short-,
medium, and intermediate ballistic missiles, short-range air-delivered missiles, and
gravity bombs. The Soviet Union deployed these weapons at nearly 600 bases, with
some located in Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe, some in the non-Russian
republics on the western and southern perimeter of the nation and throughout Russia.
Estimates vary, but many analysts believe that, in 1991, the Soviet Union had more
than 20,000 of these weapons. The numbers may have been higher, in the range of
25,000 weapons in earlier years, before the collapse of the Warsaw Pact."8 (...continued)
Disarmament Activities: A Catalog ofRecent Events, CRS Report RL30033, Amy F. Woolf,
coordinator.
9 For a more detailed review of Soviet and Russian nuclear strategy see Russia's Nuclear
Forces: Doctrine and Force Structure Issues, CRS Report 97-586F, by Amy F. Woolf and
Kara Wilson (Out-of-print. For copies, contact Amy Woolf at 202-707-2379.)
10 Ivan Safranchuk, "Tactical Nuclear Weapons in the Modern World: A Russian
Perspective," in Alexander, Brian and Alistair Millar, editors, Tactical Nuclear Weapons,
(Washington D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2003), p. 53.
" Joshua Handler, "The 1991-1992 PNIs and the Elimination, Storage and Security of
Tactical Nuclear Weapons," in Alexander, Brian and Alistair Millar, editors, Tactical
Nuclear Weapons, (Washington D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2003), p. 31.
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Woolf, Amy F. Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, report, September 9, 2004; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs6104/m1/11/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.