Judging Gorshkov despite Soviet readiness limits

How can Gorshkov be considered effective when Soviet ships and submarines spent so long between patrols?

His effectiveness is judged against the infrastructure, personnel and resources available, including the need to preserve a wartime reserve; low peacetime availability alone does not settle that assessment.

Long Soviet deployment gaps need to be weighed against the infrastructure, crews and resources Gorshkov had available. Keeping enough material in reserve for a wartime surge imposed another limit on peacetime operations. His achievement in obtaining and managing the fleet can therefore coexist with poor availability. Rozhestvensky provides the comparison: bringing an unready fleet to Tsushima was itself a substantial command achievement. Its gunnery improved markedly from the Dogger Bank episode, when the Russians largely hit their own ships, even though it still inflicted too little damage on the Japanese to avert defeat. Judged by that achievement, Rozhestvensky is rated above Makarov and the other Russian admirals in the war.