Raymond L. Garthoff

… “The possibility of an effective international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons must be recognized as very remote. But under the circumstances of nuclear stalemate through mutual deterrence, the United States might forego use of nuclear retaliation if the (Russian) provocation were clearly to involve less than a directly mortal threat. ...

...The (Russians) recognize the value of exploiting this situation. The first objective presumably is the isolation of (those countries) from ”
(any present or future) strategic alliance (with) the United States....

...The (Russian) objective is expansion of power and influence, but only by ways in which (Russia) itself is not risked as the stake in an 'adventure.' ...(I)f nuclear weapons create a recognized stalemate, this stalemate would serve as a shield behind which …

...(Russian) conventional military power could,, through threat and possibly in actual limited wars, be used to expand (Russian) control at much reduced risk (to itself). …

... (T)here are cogent reasons for believing that (Russia) believes its greatest advantage would be served by avoiding thermonuclear war and using her growing nuclear striking power to stalemate American deterrent power, and then to take advantage of this neutralization for purposes of gradual and probable indirect aggrandizement. …

... (T)he possibility of a major non-nuclear war in Europe remains strong enough—and may increase in likelihood—so that the question of preparation for waging such a war should concern all great powers. The (Russians) realize this and plan accordingly. …

... (T)here is one (potential) case of a major, though not world, war under which the (Russians) may attempt to place the West in a position where we will not use nuclear weapons: a major (Russian) challenge which they deem insufficient to provoke us to all-out massive retaliation under prevailing circumstances of mutual strategic deterrence. Thus, at some time, the (Russians) might launch a non-nuclear attack on (Germany), or on Western Europe in general, if they had been led to judge mutual deterrence to be so strong a restraint on American action that we would withhold our nuclear fire in response to such a major (italic emph.) _conventional_ attack in which neither major protagonist was directly threatened. This might at the least present us—and the people of the area involved—with a most difficult choice, and conceivably lead us, in line with (Russian) expectations, to forego our relative advantage in the use of nuclear weapons and to fight a major non-nuclear war. …

(The Russians) might well anticipate enormous gains in Europe and other areas on the Eurasian periphery. And, (italic emph.) _so long as the mutual deterrence was maintained,_ these gains could be made at assumable—indeed minimum—risks.”
(end of excerpt)

You'd be forgiven if you assumed that the foregoing was taken from some recent specialist analysis of Russian-U.S. relations. Rather, it's from a work written between 1955 and 1958 and published in that year, "Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age" (Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., New York) by Raymond L. Garthoff. I'd replaced all Garthoff's uses of "Soviet" with "Russia" or "Russian(s)" to highlight its enduring accuracy.

Who, today, should guess that these next excerpts, from the same work,

..."the term 'military target' applies to munitions plants, to naval bases, and to railway junctions, all of which are so often situated within the limits of densely populated cities. So it is obvious that the use of tactical nuclear weapons against such targets must inevitably result in immense loss of life among civilians." ... (1)

and

..."In modern war, hostilities extend over huge areas. The zone of combat operations, and, consequently, of the use of armaments, includes a front line running for hundreds and thousands of miles and extending to a depth of at least 300 to 400 miles on both sides of the front, from the line of direct contact of the troops. The aggressive elements who are preparing atomic war do not intend to wage it in the deserts of Arabia, the pampas of Argentina, or even in our Siberian taiga. They are preaparing to carry it out in Europe with its dense population, which in some areas reaches two hundred and even more people per square mile. Can it be imagined that in these conditions war and atomic attacks would ne limited only to the zone of operations of the troops and would not affect the civilian population? In present conditions, the density of the troops, at least in the case of defense, will frequently be much less than the density of the population in the same area adjacent to the field of battle, and the victims among the civilians would be incalculable just as the destruction would be inevitably immense. ... (ital. emphas.) there is no difference in the tactical and strategic use of atomic weapons, nor could there be any.
And, what is more important, from the standpoint of the population subjected to atomic attack, there would hardly be any difference whether it is killed by a tactical or a strategic bomb. Both the strategic and the tactical means of atomic attack are equally barbarous weapons of mass destruction which would spell death to millions of people." (2)

(and)

"It is to be recalled that both world wars started as limited military action, i.e., in their beginning both were local wars. In our time rapid development of military technology it will be even an more difficult task to put any limits on an armed conflict it this conflict starts in any single region." (3)

were authored & published statements fromSoviet Generals, circa 1950s?

The authors are, respectively,

(1) Major General Konstantin Dmitriyevich Orlov (Константин Дмитриевич Орлов), ("Tactical Atomic Warfare Talk Abroad" (“Тактические разговоры об атомной войне за рубежом”) Radio Moscow, 13 April 1955 (Радио Мо­сквы 13 апреля 1955));

(2) Nikolai Talensky (Николай Таленский), (USSR Major-General, USSR General Staff. Doctor of History Science; ­Professor; Voroshilov Higher Military Academy ) in International Affairs, No. 1, January 1955.

(3) Premier Nikita Khrushchev, letter to the British Labour Party, October 1957, quoted in The New York Times, 16 October, 1957.… (mehr)