American Warship Construction for Stalin's Navy Prior to World War II

The peacetime sale of sophisticated weaponry to foreign nations often has presented a serious dilemma for American policymakers. On the one hand, these sales can provide a valuable boost to the domestic economy. Balanced against this consideration is an understandable reluctance to reveal, even to friendly powers, the most recent fruits of American technological research. In the worst case, planners must weigh the possibility that the armaments might reach hostile hands, particularly in a period of rapidly shifting alliances. Such quandaries, faced by American administrations in the 1970s, were also confronted by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his second term in office. In the mid-1930s, Joseph Stalin decided to build a Russian battle fleet including ships of all classes and of the highest technical level. Big-gun capital ships were to provide the backbone for this force, and Stalin demanded vessels at least equal to the most powerful extant. Such ambition verged on megalomania since Soviet naval technology lagged far behind that of the West. The last battleship completed in Russian yards had been commissioned under the Tsarist flag. Soviet industry, despite the advances under the Five-Year Plans, still did not have the expensive, specialized facilities necessary to turn out either the guns or the armor for the great ships contemplated.1

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