ANALYSIS

Analysis on the Soviet Union

S - Z

Schroeder, Gertrude. "Reflections on Economic Sovietology." Post-Soviet Affairs 11 (1995): 197-234.

Schroeder, Gertrude. "Soviet Reality Sans Potemkin." Studies in Intelligence 12, no. 2 (Spring 1968): 43-51. In Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992, ed. H. Bradford Westerfield, 41-48. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

This article concerns the experiences of a CIA economic analyst during a four-month (June-September 1967) assignment at the American Embassy in Moscow. Schroeder, with excellent language skills, made a concerted effort to shed her "obvious foreignness and 'go native.'" Her conclusion from her close observation of Russian street life was that "our measurements of the position of Soviet consumers in relation to those of the United States (and Western Europe) favor the USSR to a much greater extent than I had thought."

Schweitzer, Carl-Christoph, ed. The Changing Western Analysis of the Soviet Threat. London: Pinter, 1990.

Herman, I&NS 6.2, notes that this book "compares Western threat perceptions in the 1950s and 1980s in NATO, US, UK, French, Dutch, and FRG circles.... But it is less an account ... of 'Western analysis' than of what politicians and other leaders said and thought about the Russians, and how it affected their dealings with them.... [T]here is not much insight here into the intelligence influence.... Above all, the book ducks round the question whether the Western picture of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1980s was true or false."

Shryock, Richard W. "For an Eclectic Sovietology." Studies in Intelligence 8, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 57-64.

In official Washington, there are a number of identifiable schools of Sovietology, "each holding the others in disdain.... [There is] precious little exchange of helpful ideas." The author offers some thoughts about how to overcome this dissonance.

In response, John Whitman, "Better an Office of Sovietology," Studies in Intelligence 8, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 65-66, argues that while "all schools are needed,... they will continue to work at cross purposes so long as they remain in different bureaucracies." They need to be united "in a single organizational framework devoted to exploiting all methodologies for a single aim -- the analysis of Soviet politics as a research problem."

Smith, Clarence E. "Analysis of Soviet Science and Technology." In Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union, eds. Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2003.

From "Introduction": "Smith asserts ... that a revolution in technical intelligence collection capabilities at CIA during the Cold War led to the development of new analytic techniques as well. These advances ultimately brought significant successes in discerning Soviet scientific and technical capabilities, especially with respect to advanced offensive and defensive weapons.... While stressing CIA's role, Smith credits the entire Intelligence Community for contributing to the technological breakthroughs. In his view the new collection systems enabled US policymakers to become increasingly confident in their ability to discern Soviet military capabilities and to provide warnings of possible Soviet attack."

Steiner, Barry H. "American Intelligence and the Soviet ICBM Build-up: Another Look." Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 2 (Apr. 1993): 172-198.

Steury, Donald P. "Dissecting Soviet Analysis, 1946-50: How the CIA Missed Stalin's Bomb." Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 1 (2005), 19-26.

The CIA's Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE) "was responsible for producing the Intelligence Community's best judgment on when the Soviet Union would first produce an atomic bomb.... In retrospect, it seems that ORE's failure to accurately predict the advent of the Soviet atomic bomb was due less to any particular shortcoming than a general failure to piece everything together."

Steury, Donald P. "Origins of CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union." In Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union, eds. Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2003.

From "Introduction": "Steury's paper focuses on the evolution of an independent, analytical capability" at the CIA during the early years of the Cold War. He traces the development of the CIA "from the creation of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in 1946 through the tenure of Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in 1950-51. It was during this period that the nucleus of the Agency's future analytic organization -- the DI and a Board of National Estimates (BNE) -- was formed."

Steury, Donald P., ed. CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991. Washington, DC: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001.

Steury, Donald P., ed. Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950-1983. Washington, DC: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996.

This is a selection of 41 National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Soviet strategic capabilities and intentions from the 1950s to 1983. Only the shorter NIEs have been reproduced in their entirety; for the longer Estimates, the "Summaries" and "Key Judgments," along with extracts from their other sections, are included.

Cohen, FA 75.5, sees this compendium as "an indispensable window into one of the central issues confronting the American national security establishment."

Prados, JAH 83.4, finds that "a good selection of the relevant material" has been made. While this is "a useful contribution,... it has major drawbacks." These include the fact that much of information is "culled" from longer documents, giving the materials a fragmentary nature. Deletions for security reasons is a continuing problem. And the CIA "has failed adequately to identify the originals, which are given titles but not dated."

Taylor, Jack H. "Wohlstetter, Soviet Strategic Forces, and National Intelligence Estimates." Studies in Intelligence 19, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 1-8.

Westerfield: "Here is evidence that CIA, in house, very quickly agreed that Wohlstetter's breakthrough claim (1974) was essentially correct, namely, that the United States had for years been underestimating the pace of Soviet arms racing."

Townsend, Robert E. "Deception and Irony: Soviet Arms and Arms Control." American Intelligence Journal 14, nos. 2 /3 (Spring/Summer 1993): 47-53.

"A strong case can be made that for twenty years the Soviet Union was able to encourage in the minds of key US decision makers the spiral model of international relations and denigrate the deterrence model.... Clouseau ... will perhaps become the metaphor for US central intelligence during the Cold War."

Twining, David T. "Soviet Strategic Culture: The Missing Dimension." Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1989): 169-187.

Although perhaps a little "political sciency" for some tastes, this article makes some interesting points. It is presented as a "review article" of Tom Gervasi, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), but goes well beyond that limit. The author examines "the methodological and epistemological attributes of Soviet strategic culture as a critical means for improving intelligence analysis....Strategic culture is those attitudes, values and beliefs relating to the preparation for and conduct of war.... Western analyses of the Soviet threat ... have given scant attention to the requirement to assess Soviet strategic developments as perceived through Moscow's own lens."

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Estimating the Size and Growth of the Soviet Economy. Hearings, 101st Cong., 2d sess., 1990. Committee print.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Intelligence and the ABM. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence. The Soviet Oil Situation: An Evaluation of CIA Analysis of Soviet Oil Production. Committee Print. 95th Cong., 2d sess. Washington, DC: GPO, 1978.

U.S. General Accounting Office. Soviet Economy: Assessment of How Well the CIA Has Estimated the Size of the Economy. Washington, DC: GPO, 1991. [GAO/NSIAD-91-274]

Whitman, John. "Better an Office of Sovietology." Studies in Intelligence 8, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 65-66.

Responding to Richard W. Shryock, "For an Eclectic Sovietology," Studies in Intelligence 8, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 57-64., the author argues that while "all schools are needed,... they will continue to work at cross purposes so long as they remain in different bureaucracies." They need to be united "in a single organizational framework devoted to exploiting all methodologies for a single aim -- the analysis of Soviet politics as a research problem."

Ziegler, Charles A. "Intelligence Assessments of Soviet Atomic Capability, 1945-1949: Myths, Monopolies and Maskirovka." Intelligence and National Security 12, no. 4 (Oct. 1997): 1-24.

The author makes an interesting, if not totally substantiated, argument that the belief among top U.S. policymakers that the atomic monopoly would last longer than it did was based less on "character flaws" and more "on the failure of US intelligence." That failure lay initially in not accounting for all the high-grade uranium remaining in Europe and, then, in not compensating for that mistake "by obtaining reliable information on Soviet atomic progress."

Ziegler, David W. "Yellow Rain: An Analysis That Went Awry?" International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 2, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 91-113.

From Editors' Comment: A "50-page article appears in the spring 1987 issue of International Security, 'Sverdlovsk and Yellow Rain: Two Cases of Soviet Noncompliance?' by Elisa D. Harris.... Ms. Harris shares Professor Ziegler's skepticism and criticism of the U.S. Government's charge that the Soviet Union engaged in chemical warfare in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan."

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