Did the Soviet Union ever seriously contemplate world extermination?

Factual Questions
1

It’s a paranoid scenerio from the Cold War: the leaders of the Soviet Union, presumably motivated by fanatical ideology, use nuclear or biological weapons to erase human life from the Earth’s surface. An elite core survives in shelters, to recolonize the Earth and create a “pure” communist world.

It seems unlikely for two reasons: first, it sort of conflates Communist fanaticism with Nazi fanaticism (who were the real extermination nuts), and second, by the time the USSR could have truly contemplated doing this (1960-on), the leadership of the USSR had become bureaucrats more interested in geopolitical power than Communist doctrine.

On the other hand, the USSR maintained robust germ warfare research, and it apparently took “nuclear warfighting”, with emphasis on survival and victory, seriously. Not to mention Mao Zedong’s infamous claim that it wouldn’t matter if nuclear war killed half the human race if all the survivors were Communist.

2

Not sure how much data there is to back this article, but WIRED says that the USSR did create and is still maintaining a doomsday device:

3

Why confine the question to communist philosophy on world destruction.

The USA had adherents to the same idea. Common expression at the time was “Better dead than Red”.

4

Is this a serious question?

That is fucking ridiculous. If the communists wanted the world to all become socialist, it was so that everyone could enjoy the supposed fuits. Why the hell would they want to kill everyone?

5

Very serious question.

For background to the mindset that brought the situation about, check Wikipedia “Mutually Assured Destruction”. Also Wiki “Doomsday Bomb”.

6

In both cases, though, the goal wasn’t to exterminate the world population, the goal was to discourage a US nuclear strike by threatening an apocalyptic nuclear retaliation in response. The US also subscribed to MAD and had similar procedures in place to ensure a nuclear retaliation if command and control were knocked out (though I don’t think they had/have a fully automated system like the doomsday device).

7

Certainly some rabid Cold Warriors in the west thought the Soviet Union might do this, or at least it was the sort of thing that western propaganda painted the Soviet Union as capable of. In 20/20 hindsight we know that the USSR was motivated far less by ideological purity as it was cynical realpoltik, but outdated views in the West still regarded the Soviet Union as being more or less what it had been since Lenin. In addition, it was useful to portray Soviet Communism as simply one particular flavor of something called “totalitarianism”, of which the batshit insane Nazi, Stalinist and Maoist regimes were held up as examples. Imagine Pol Pot with a cobalt Doomsday device, or with a 99+% mortality rate superbug. That’s what some people genuinely believed we were up against.

8

There were people in the Pentagon in the late 40s and early 50s who actually considered nuclear warfare as just a vamped of version of conventional warfare.

9

The late 40’s and early 50’s atom bombs where not big enough or numerious enough to deter a full on conventional attack. It was the H bomb and ICBM’s that created MAD (Mutualy Assured Distruction).

10

I would argue that the size and diversity of their biological weapons program, in blatant violation of their treaty obligations, was good evidence that they were willing to destroy the world. Their biological weapons could have destroyed the human race, unlike their nuclear arsenal, which would have had more limited effects.

11

you are confused by your (very common in the West, especially among leftists) belief that the use of WMD in a world war is the “end of the world”. The Russians never thought that way. They thought (and still think - I read their newspapers regularly) that nuclear war, epidemics etc can kill plenty of people, maybe 9 digits worth of people, but the world wouldn’t end because of that.

Destroyed cities will be rebuilt, industry restored, new people born and so forth. Casualties will be heavy, but nothing catastrophic , let’s say 50% of the population, not 99.99% as you are suggesting. Cities will be evacuated beforehand by the (back then) excellent Soviet civil defense organization, and there will be (they did in fact make sure to do this) enough food stockpiled to kept everybody fed for a year or more. FYI in WW2 Germany lost 12% (mostly young men) and no problem, they are still there on the map. Postwar Russia with a smaller population but higher birthrate (birthrate usually improves after wars) can be no different.

Destroyed industry can be rebuilt quickly - again, just like destroyed German industry was rebuilt. People will move from radioactive areas to clean ones, just like they moved from Chernobyl area. There is plenty of clean land on the planet that will be up for grabs for the victor, e.g. entire South America, Australia and Africa, among others, and Russia itself, mind you, is huge and thinly populated. Also, radioactive poisoning of the land is not forever - the intensity will greatly decline within several decades. And even if people have to live on some of the bad land, they will just have higher rate of cancer and 10 years less average life expectancy - so big deal. The Party officials and the generals themselves will live elsewhere, you understand.

Incidentally, note that the highly centralized command economy like that of the Soviet Union (or to lesser extent modern China) is inherently better suited to the chaos of nuclear war than American free enterprise. That’s why the military itself is not free enterprise but a classical centralized command economy. Well, the Russian military strategists knew that. American government also knew that long time ago, that’s why e.g. during WW2 America had a command economy with heavy state management of investment and production by the nominally private enterprises.

So that basically should answer your question. Soviet Union thought that if worst comes to worst, they can at the very least conquer Europe, at best maybe even America. Would a lot of people die, economy get ruined, and environment poisoned? Sure. But look at the bright side - the triumph of world socialism, the motherland saved from the evil machinations and threats of American imperialists and so forth. All the leading generals given shiny medals for conquering the world. Plus, whatever happens in the uncertain future, RIGHT NOW the generals in charge get bigger budget to play with - and you can always find interesting ways to spend the cash as long as the government keeps handing it out.

Also, the “better dead than red” slogan you are referring to does not necessarily mean that the world should be destroyed to stop communism. It’s just a restatement of “libery or death” slogan, sort of like what the Cuban regime writes on its murals. What it means is that (according to people who agree with it) Americans should fight and suffer heavy casualties rather than surrender to the Communists (Russians). This is in direct opposition to the counter-slogan of the times “better red than dead” pushed by leftists who argued that since nuclear war is so scary and Soviet Union so determined, we might just as well unilaterally disarm in the face of this threat - sort of “relax and enjoy” when faced with inevitable rape.

Now, you are free to disagree with Russian theories explained above. Some people say that nuclear war will kill everybody. Some others at various times said that AIDS will kill everybody, or that everybody will die an agonizing death because of the ongoing catastrophic loss of endangered species. Different people have different opinions about what the future may entail. I am just trying to explain to you the opinions that underlie the military strategy of Russia, China (look back to Mao’s quote about China surviving the war) and to some extent America, at least at certain points of its history.

You are of course free to call this “evil stupid rightwing propaganda” but there are plenty of people in Russia and elsewhere who consider this a reasonable analysis. A lot more reasonable than the “OMG, nukes! the horror!!” screams that pass for argument in some sections of Western discourse on the matter.

12

It is stupid rightwing propaganda. There is a big difference to having a plan on the books and actually implementing it, the US has several nutty plans as well. The USSR suffered circa 27 MILLION killed on WWII, they did not want to suffer more.

13

My opinion of the Soviet Union was that it was Russian first, Communist second - in other words, that one should look at it not as a great Socialist experiment but rather as the Tsarist Empire under new management. By this logic, global communism was not an end as to itself but merely a means of defending the Motherland and increasing its power, and thus destroying the world would be counterproductive at best.

14

Are we forgetting about MAD? (Mutually Assured Destruction).

Don’t know about the Doomsday Device in Russia, but it’s my opinion that it isn’t the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans (well maybe them - that sonofabitch is just crazy enough) or Japanese we need to fear, but the Islamic Jihadists. They’re the ones who think they have nothing to lose, and wouldn’t give a rat’s ass who remains on the planet, as long as they ascend to paradise.

Q

15

No, that demonstrates their idea of acceptable losses is an order of magnitude or more higher than ours. Their scorched earth policy is further evidence of that fact. Their willingness to cover up pre-Chernobyl nuclear accidents is still more evidence. (Chernobyl was notable for being the first accident they reported to the outside world while it was still hot. It also happened near a named town that appeared on maps. The Soviet Union in the 1980s was a very different place from the Soviet Union in the 1960s.)

16

Nice to see that Cold Warriors are still around. The USSR had little choice but to accept such casualties. The Nazi campaign in the USSR was based on extermination of the slavs as a people. If the Nazis invaded the US, massacred most of the people in the Great Lakes area, shelled NYC mercilessly for 900 days and were just driven from Washington, the US would accept 27 million deaths as well.

17

Look at Soviet military tactics during the war: The last-man defense of Stalingrad (whose strategic importance paled in comparison to its political value), the practice of throwing recaptured Soviet POWs into the gulags, and sending soldiers in dark uniforms to fight the Finns in the middle of winter. Stalin wanted to be the last intelligent person in the USSR and it showed: He wasn’t smart enough to fight a war without major blunders, and, by the 1930s, neither were any of the un-purged generals.

You also haven’t responded to their horrible record regarding nuclear safety.

18

I tend to agree with that.

19

“Early 50s”?

Nuclear weapons were the NATO warfare of choice well into the 60s. It was our side that built them first and built them fastest and planned to use them in response to a conventional attack.

20

It’s a bit difficult to make blanket assessments about Soviet views on anything because the personalities of Premiers that came and went were so different.

Stalin: ideologue, Kruschev: realist, etc.

To some among the Soviet leadership, a first strike probably was a reasonable military tactic. To others, it was a last resort.

All we really learned from the Cold War, though, is that the nuclear weapon is a useless deterrent against anything other than the other side’s nuclear weapons.

I think he’s referring to the Popular Science and related rags’ view of nuclear weapons as the guns of the future- people thought that the Soldier of Tomorrow would carry a rifle loaded with nuclear cartridges; tanks would fire nuclear shells, etc.