Stephen McLaughlin

This book is a reissue, not a revision of a book originally published in 2003. The original volume is difficult to find and expensive to buy when it is, so this re-release by the Naval Institute Press is most welcome. The author makes it quite clear that he found his information mostly in secondary sources, most of which can only be found in the Russian language. That being said, Stephen McLaughlin gives his reader much to chew on.

The book is rich in detail, as exemplified by its 496 pages. After beginning with a preface, acknowledgements page, and a needed section on abbreviations, acronyms, and specialized terms (a must for most military and naval history texts), McLaughlin provides a whopping 49 chapters. The content of these chapters varies from descriptions of individual ships and ship classes to discussions of various periods in Russian and Soviet naval history and from presentations of Russian and Soviet naval policy to the lessons learned from Russia's various conflicts in the twentieth century. The book finishes with an appendix detailed the career and alterations of captured Russian battleships in Imperial Japanese Navy service, endnotes, a bibliography, and the index. While the author's original intent in writing this volume was to cover all Russian/Soviet big gun ships, McLaughlin limited himself to ships whose place in action was the line of battle. Battlecruisers, coast defense ships, and other big gun platforms are not included in this book. McLaughlin begins his discussion of specific ships with what is considered the first modern battleship in the Tsar's navy, the Petr Velikii.

One of the author's singular contributions to naval history through his writing of this book is the debunking of decades' old innuendo about the poor state of pre-revolutionary Russia warship design and construction. Though evidence presented throughout the book and nicely summarized in Chapter 49 (Conclusion: Myths and Realities), McLaughlin ably makes the case that, taken as a whole, Russian warship design and construction was no better and no worse than that found in contemporary navies. In fact, the author points out areas in which the Tsarist navy was downright innovative. My feeling is that the bum rap tarring these Russian ships over the years is due to their association with a poorly-operated navy with deep personnel, organizational, political, and doctrinal issues.

Sometimes success in projects of any kind depend on uncanny timing. Researching this book, even with secondary sources, was impossible before 1989, and just about the same could be said about the period after 2006. So the author timed this project perfectly in terms of gaining access to the materials necessary to make this book a reading success. In terms of sources, I would be disappointed by the complete lack of primary sources. However, I can certainly understand how intimidating it would be accessing Russian archival sources, especially for a researcher who is not a native Russian speaker. And as a former archivist I cannot imagine the state of Russian government archives after surviving two world wars and numerous regime changes over the past century. So for McLaughlin to hammer together an account as readable as this is a real accomplishment. This book is a welcome addition to my library alongside the volumes by Friedman and Jordan.… (mais)