Soviet naval logistics loses its experienced organisers

The Soviet Navy had been developing a potentially useful logistics organisation in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly for Baltic and Black Sea operations. The northern and Pacific fleets were harder to support, but the organisation was still expanding when the purges broke its continuity. Experienced officers were removed, while skilled logistics personnel were pulled into ship commands without trained successors to coordinate the wider system. Later officers had to recreate systems whose original designers had become politically dangerous to acknowledge, turning an equipment problem into a loss of institutional knowledge. Paper strength could not yield deterrence on its own. A properly maintained, based, and sustained Gangut might have forced Germany to keep major capital ships available in the Baltic as a deterrent.