Stalin wanted carriers, battleships, and large cruisers partly because the Soviet Union needed visible status as well as weapons for war. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a broad audience understood the meaning of a large gun and an imposing hull more readily than the destructive power of missiles. Peacetime presence depended on observers recognizing the power being displayed. One counterfactual proposes a modified Stalingrad-class battlecruiser combining guns with anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles as an unusually effective diplomatic symbol. Such a ship could create the impression that an opponent needed a carrier group to answer it without defeating that group by itself. Navies in a political contest therefore need power that is credible, visible, and understandable.
Notable Point · 57:05-1:02:17
Big guns remained legible tools of Cold War presence
A missile-armed capital ship could have translated Soviet military power into a form that foreign publics and governments immediately understood.