Background For War: How Strong Is Russia?

The unavoidable and awesome fact confronting the world today is that before the decade or even the year is out, the U.S. and Russia may be at war. On the U.S. estimate of Russian power depends—or should depend—the extent to which the U.S. will build up its own strength.

Russian strength is a question mark, but not as mysterious a question mark as is often assumed. Some of Russia's most important assets have always been obvious: the vastness of its land, the large numbers and great tenacity of its people. These assets are as good a defense against the atom bomb as they were against Napoleon's infantry or Hitler's Panzers. The other, and decisive, components of Russian power are far less obvious, i.e., the size and quality of its armed forces and its industrial potential.

No modern industrial state, no matter how tyrannically secretive, can altogether hide its industrial plant and its military establishment from outside view. In recent years, the West has learned a great deal about Russia, not necessarily through cloak & dagger methods, but through patient, painstaking analysis of mountains of Soviet publications, official reports, government directives and statistics. These are often distorted, but they are not completely fantastic; they usually contain enough facts to enable Russia's own managers to go on managing their economy. Independent scholars as well as U.S. Government economists and intelligence analysts have laboriously constructed a picture of Russia's present strength.

There are at least 200 million people in the Soviet Union. Of them, 140 million live in Russia's western tip, the area inside the arc that runs through Leningrad and along the Volga to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. In other words, 70% of the U.S.S.R.'s people are concentrated in about 13% of the nation's area. (In the U.S., 70% of the population is concentrated in 32% of its area.)

Some 65 million Russians—as against 40 million Americans—are under 15 years old, i.e., they will soon be able to bear arms or to work in factories and on farms. In the 15-to-25 age group, the Russian advantage is almost as great. But in the 24-55 age bracket, World War II losses have cut Russia down to equality with the U.S. Some observers believe that this temporary Russian disadvantage is a powerful factor in persuading the Kremlin to postpone war for five or ten years. Others doubt the conclusion since, in any case, the U.S.S.R. will have as much manpower as it can feed and supply.

Entirely aside from such factors as courage and morale, the Russian pool of military manpower is lower in quality than that of the U.S. because the level of Russian education is lower, and the run of Russians have had less experience in handling mechanical devices, including modern mass-production machinery. The qualitative difference in manpower is even more striking on the economic front. A Soviet farmer (more than half of all Russians work in agriculture) turns out a quarter of a U.S. farmer's output, a Soviet factory worker less than a quarter of a U.S. worker's output.

What Will They Fight With?