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Viktor Suvorov. Spetsnaz. The Inside Story of
the Soviet Special Force |
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Between soldiers and their
officers are the sergeants,
an intermediate rank with its own
internal seniority
of junior sergeants,
full sergeants, senior sergeant and starshina. The training of the sergeants is of critical
importance in spetsnaz where
discipline and competence are
required to an even more
stringent degree than in the everyday life of the armed
forces. In normal circumstances training is carried out by special training divisions. Each of these
has a permanent staff, a general, officers, warrant officers and
sergeants and a limited number of soldiers in
support units. Every six months the division
receives 10,000 recruits
who are distributed among
the regiments and battalions
on a temporary basis. After five
months of harsh
training these young soldiers receive their sergeants’ stripes and
are sent out to regular
divisions. It takes a month to distribute the young sergeants to the regular forces, to
prepare the training base for
the new input and to
receive a fresh contingent. After that the
training programme is repeated. Thus
each training division is
a gigantic incubator producing 20,000 sergeants a year. A training division is organised in
the usual way: three
motorised rifle regiments, a tank regiment, an artillery regiment,
an anti-aircraft regiment, a missile battalion and so forth. Each regiment and battalion trains
specialists in its own field, from infantry sergeants to
land surveyors, topographers and signallers. A training division is a means of mass-producing sergeants for a gigantic army which in peacetime
has in its ranks around
five million men but which in case of war increases considerably in size. There is one shortcoming in this mass production. The selection of sergeants is not carried out by the commanders
of the regular divisions but by local military agencies—the military commissariats and the mobilisation
officers of the military districts. This selection cannot be, and is not, qualitative. When
they receive instructions from their superiors the local authorities simply despatch
several truckloads or trainloads of recruits. Having received its 10,000 recruits, who are no different from any others, the training division has in five months to turn them into commanders and
specialists. A certain number of the new
recruits are sent straight
off to the regular divisions on the
grounds that they are not at
all suitable for being turned into commanders. But the training division
has very strict standards and cannot normally send more than five percent
of its intake to regular divisions. Then, in exchange for those who were sent straight off, others arrive, but they are not much better in quality than those sent
away, so the officers and sergeants of the training division have to exert
all their ability, all their fury and inventiveness, to turn these people into
sergeants. The selection of future sergeants for spetsnaz takes place in a different way which is much more complicated and much more expensive. All the recruits to spetsnaz (after a very careful selection) join fighting
units, where the company commander and platoon commanders put their young
soldiers through a very tough
course. This initial
period of training for new
recruits takes place away
from other soldiers. During
the course the company commander and the platoon commanders very
carefully select (because they
are vitally interested in the matter) those who appear to be born leaders. There
are a lot of very simple devices for doing this. For example, a group
of recruits is given the job
of putting up a tent in a double quick time, but no leader is appointed among them. In a relatively simple operation someone has
to co-ordinate the actions of
the rest. A very short
time is allowed for the work to be carried out and
severe punishment is
promised if the work is badly done or not completed on time. Within five
minutes the group has appointed its own leader. Again, a group may be given the task of getting from one place to another by a very complicated and confused
route without losing a single
man. And again the
group will soon appoint its own leader. Every day, every hour and every minute of the soldier’s time is taken up with hard work, lessons, running, jumping, overcoming obstacles, and
practically all the time
the group is without a commander. In a few days of very intensive training the company
commander and platoon commanders
pick out the most intelligent, most imaginative, strongest, most
brash and energetic in the group. After completing the course the majority of
recruits finish up in sections and platoons of the same company,
but the best of them are sent
thousands of kilometres away to one
of the spetsnaz
training battalions where
they become sergeants. Then they return to the companies they came
from. It is a very long road for the recruit.
But it has one advantage: the
potential sergeant is not
selected by the local military authority nor even by the training unit, but by a regular officer at a very low level—at platoon or
company level. What is more,
the selection is made on a strictly individual basis and by the very same
officer who will in five
months’ time receive the man he has
selected back again, now equipped with sergeant’s
stripes. It is impossible, of course,
to introduce such a system
into the whole of the
Soviet Armed Forces. It involves transporting millions
of men from one place to another. In all other branches the path of the future sergeant
from where he lives follows this plan: training division -- regular division. In spetsnaz the plan is: regular
unit—training unit—regular unit. There is yet another
difference of principle. If
any other branch of the services needs a sergeant
the military commissariat despatches a recruit to the training division, which has to make him into a sergeant. But if spetsnaz
needs a sergeant the company commander sends three of his best
recruits to the spetsnaz training unit. The spetsnaz training battalion works
on the principle that before you start giving orders, you have to learn to obey them. The whole of the thinking behind the training battalions can be put very simply. They say that if
you make an empty barrel airtight and drag it down below the water and then let it go it
shoots up and out above the
surface of the water. The deeper it is dragged down the faster it rises and the further it jumps out
of the water. This is how the training battalions operate. Their task is to drag their
ever-changing body of men deeper down. Each spetsnaz training
battalion has its permanent
staff of officers,
warrant officers and
sergeants and receives its
intake of 300-400 spetsnaz recruits
who have already been through a recruit’s course in various spetsnaz
units. The regime in the normal Soviet training divisions can only be described as brutal. I experienced it first as a student in a training division. I have already described the conditions within spetsnaz. To appreciate what conditions
are like in a spetsnaz training
battalion, the brutality has
to be multiplied many times over. In the spetsnaz training battalions the empty
barrel is dragged so far down
into the deep that it is in danger of bursting from external
pressure. A man’s dignity is
stripped from him to such an extent that it is kept constantly at the very brink,
beyond which lies suicide or the murder of his officer. The officers and sergeants of
the training battalions are, every one of them,
enthusiasts for their work. Anyone who does like this work will not stand it for so long but goes off
voluntarily to other easier
work in spetsnaz regular
units. The only people who
stay in the training battalions are those who derive great pleasure
from their work. Their work is to
issue orders by
which they make or break the strongest of characters. The commander’s work is constantly
to see before him dozens of men, each of whom has one thought in his head: to
kill himself or to kill his officer? The work for those who enjoy it provides complete moral and physical satisfaction, just
as a stuntman might derive satisfaction from leaping on a motorcycle over nineteen coaches. The difference between the stuntman risking his neck and the
commander of a spetsnaz training unit lies in the fact
that the former experiences
his satisfaction for a matter of a few seconds, while the latter
experiences it all the time. Every soldier taken into a training battalion is given a nickname, almost invariably sarcastic. He might be known as The Count, The Duke, Caesar, Alexander of Macedon, Louis XI, Ambassador, Minister of Foreign Affairs, or any variation on the theme. He is treated with exaggerated respect, not
given orders, but asked for his opinion: ‘Would Your Excellency be of a mind to clean the toilet with his
toothbrush?’ ‘Illustrious Prince, would
you care to throw up in
public what you ate at lunch?’ In spetsnaz units men are fed much better than in any other units of the armed forces, but the
workload is so great that the
men are permanently hungry, even if they do not suffer the unofficial but
very common punishment of being forced to empty their
stomachs: ‘You’re on the heavy side, Count, after
your lunch! Would you care to
stick two fingers down your throat? That’ll make things
easier!’ The more humiliating the forms of punishment a sergeant thinks up
for the men under him, and the more violently he attacks their dignity, the better. The task of the training battalions is to crush and completely destroy the individual, however strong a character he may have possessed,
and to fashion out of that person a type to fit the standards of spetsnaz,
a type who will be filled with an explosive charge of hatred and spite and a craving for
revenge. The main difficulty in
carrying out this act of human engineering is to turn the fury of the young soldier in the right
direction. He has to have been reduced to the
lowest limits of his dignity
and then, at precisely the point
when he can take no
more, he can be given his sergeant’s stripes and sent off to serve
in a regular unit. There he can begin to work off his fury on his own
subordinates, or better still on the enemies of
Communism. The training units of spetsnaz are a place where they tease a recruit like a
dog, working him into a rage
and then letting him off the
leash. It is not
surprising that fights
inside spetsnaz are a common occurrence. Everyone, especially those who have served in a spetsnaz training unit, bears within himself a
colossal charge of malice,
just as a thunder cloud bears its charge of electricity. It is not surprising that for a
spetsnaz private, or even
more so for a sergeant, war is just a beautiful dream, the time when he is
at last allowed to release his full charge of
malice. Apart from the unending succession of humiliations, insults and punishments handed out by the commanders, the man serving in a spetsnaz training unit has continually to wage a no less bitter battle against his own
comrades who are in identical circumstances to his
own. In the first place there
is a silent competition for pride of place, for the leadership in
each group of people. In
spetsnaz, as we
have seen, this struggle has assumed open and very dramatic forms. Apart from this natural battle for
first place there exists an
even more serious incentive.
It derives from the
fact that for every sergeant’s place in a spetsnaz training battalion there are three candidates being trained at the same time. Only the very best will
be made sergeant at the end of five months. On passing out some are given
the rank of junior sergeant, while others are not given any rank at all and remain as privates in the ranks.
It is a bitter tragedy for a
man to go through all the ordeals of a spetsnaz training battalion and
not to receive any rank but to return to his unit as a private at the end
of it. The decision whether to promote a man to sergeant after he has been through the training course is made by a
commission of GRU officers or
the Intelligence Directorate
of the military district in whose territory the particular battalion
is stationed. The decision is
made on the basis of the result of examinations conducted in the presence of the commission, on the main subjects studied: political training; the tactics of spetsnaz (including knowledge of the probable enemy and the main targets that spetsnaz operates); weapons
training (knowledge of spetsnaz armament, firing from various kinds
of weapons including foreign weapons, and the use of explosives); parachute training; physical training; and weapons of mass destruction and defence
against them. The commission does not distinguish
between the soldiers
according to where they have come from,
but only according to their
degree of
readiness to carry out missions. Consequently, when the men
who have passed out
are returned to their units there may arise a lack of balance among
them.
For example, a spetsnaz company
that sends nine privates to a training battalion in the hope of receiving three sergeants back after five months, could receive one sergeant, one junior sergeant and seven privates, or
five sergeants, three junior sergeants and one private. This system has been introduced quite deliberately. The officer commanding a regular
company, with nine trained men to choose from,
puts only the very best in charge
of his sections. He can put anybody he pleases into the vacancies without reference to his rank.
Privates who have been through the training
battalion can be appointed commanders
of sections. Sergeants and
junior sergeants for whom there are
not enough posts
as commanders will carry out the work of privates despite
their sergeant’s rank. The spetsnaz company
commander may also have,
apart from the freshly trained men, sergeants
and privates who completed their training earlier but were not appointed to positions as commanders. Consequently the company commander can entrust
the work of commanding
sections to any of them, while all the new arrivals from the training
battalion can be used as privates. The private or junior sergeant who is appointed to command a section has to
struggle to show his superiors that he really is worthy of that trust
and that he really is the
best. If he succeeds in doing
so he will in due course be
given the appropriate rank.
If he is unworthy he will be removed. There are always candidates for
his job. This system has two objectives: the first is to have within the spetsnaz regular units a large reserve of commanders at the very lowest level. During a war
spetsnaz will suffer tremendous losses. In every section there are always a minimum of two fully trained men capable of taking command at any moment; the second is to
generate a continual battle between sergeants for the right to be a commander. Every commander of a section or
deputy commander of a
platoon can be removed at any time and replaced by
someone more worthy of the job. The removal of a sergeant from a position
of command is carried out on the authority of the company commander (if it
is a separate spetsnaz company) or on the authority of the battalion
commander or regiment. When he is
removed the former commander is reduced to the status of a private
soldier. He may retain his rank, or his rank may be reduced, or he may
lose the rank of sergeant altogether. The training of officers for spetsnaz often take
place at a special faculty of the Lenin Komsomol Higher Airborne
Command School in Ryazan. Great care is taken over their
selection for the school.
The ones who join the faculty are among the very best. The four
years of gruelling training
are also four years of
continual testing and selection to establish whether the students are capable of becoming spetsnaz officers or not. When they have
completed their studies at the special faculty some of them are posted to
the airborne troops or the air assault troops. Only the very
best are posted to spetsnaz,
and even then a young officer
can at any moment be sent off into the airborne forces. Only those who
are absolutely suitable remain in
spetsnaz. Other
officers are appointed
from among the men passing
out from other command schools who have never previously heard of
spetsnaz. The heads of the GRU
consider that special
training is necessary for every function, except that of leader. A leader
cannot be produced by even the best training scheme. A leader is born a
leader and nobody can help
him or advise him how to manage people. In this case advice offered by professors does not help; it only hinders. A professor is a man who has never been a leader and never
will be, and nobody ever taught
Hitler how to lead a
nation. Stalin
was thrown out of his
theological seminary. Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the outstanding military
leader of the Second World
War, had a
million men, and often several million, under his direct command practically throughout the war. Of all the generals and marshals at his level he was the only one
who did not suffer a single
defeat in battle. Yet he had
no real military education. He did not graduate from a military school to become a junior officer; he did not graduate from a military academy
to become a senior officer; and he did not graduate from the Academy
of General Staff to become a
general and later a marshal. But he became one just the same. There was
Khalkhin-Gol, Yelnya, the
counter-offensive before The headquarters of every military district has a Directorate for Personnel, which
does a tremendous amount
of work on officers’ records
and on the studying, selecting and posting of officers. On instructions
from the chief of staff of the
military district the
Directorate for
Personnel of each
district will do a search
for officers who come up to the spetsnaz
standard. The criteria which the Intelligence directorate sends to the Directorate of Personnel
are top secret. But one can
easily tell by looking at the officers of spetsnaz the qualities which
they certainly possess. The first and most important
of them are of course a
strong, unbending character
and the marks of a born leader. Every year
thousands of young officers
with all kinds of specialities—from the missile forces, the tank
troops, the infantry, the engineers and signallers pass through the Personnel directorate of each
military district. Each officer is preceded by his dossier in which a great deal is written down. But that is not the decisive factor. When he
arrives in the Directorate for Personnel the young officer is interviewed by several experienced officers specialising in personnel matters. It is in the
course of these
interviews that a man of really remarkable
personality stands out, with
dazzling clarity, from the mass of thousands of other strong-willed
and physically powerful men.
When the personnel officers discover him, the interviewing is taken over
by other officers of the Intelligence directorate and it is they who will very probably offer him a suitable
job. But officers for spetsnaz
are occasionally not selected when they pass through the Personnel directorate. They pass through the interviewing process without
distinguishing themselves in any way, and are given jobs as
commanders. Then stories may begin to circulate through the regiment, division, army and district to the effect that such and such a young commander is a brute, ready
to attack anyone, but holds his own, performs miracles, has
turned a backward platoon into a model unit, and so forth. The man is rapidly promoted and can be sure of being appointed to a penal battalion—not to be punished, but to take charge of the offenders. At this point the Intelligence directorate takes a hand in the
matter. If the officer is in
command of a penal platoon or
company and he is tough enough to
handle really difficult
men without being scared of
them or fearing to use his own strength, he will be weighed up very
carefully for a job. There is one other way in
which officers are chosen. Every officer with his unit has to mount guard for the garrison and patrol the
streets and railway stations
in search of offenders. The military commandant of the town and the officer commanding the
garrison (the senior military
man in town) see these
officers every day. Day after day they take over the duty from another officer, perform it for twenty-four hours and then hand over to another officer. The
system has existed for decades and all serving officers carry out these
duties several times a year. It is the right moment to study their
characters. Say a drunken private is hauled into the guardroom. One officer
will say, ‘Pour ice-cold water over him and throw him in a cell!’ Another
officer will behave differently. When he sees the drunken soldier, his
reaction will be along the lines of:
‘Just bring him in here! Shut the door and cover him with a wet
blanket (so as not to leave
any marks). I’ll teach him a lesson!
Kick him in the guts!
That’ll teach him not to
drink next time. Now lads,
beat him up as best you can. Go on! I’d do the same to you, my
boys! Now wipe him off with snow.’ It needs little imagination to see
which of the officers is regarded more favourably by his superiors. The Intelligence directorate doesn’t
need very many people—just the best. The second most important
quality is physical endurance. An officer who is offered a post is likely to be a runner, swimmer, skier or
athlete in some form of sport
demanding long and very concentrated physical effort. And a third factor
is the physical dimensions of the man. Best of all is that he should be
an enormous hulk with vast shoulders and huge fists. But this factor can be
ignored if a man appears of small build and no broad shoulders but
with a really strong character and a great capacity for physical endurance. Such a person
is taken in, of course. The long history of mankind indicates that strong
characters are met with no less frequently among short people than among
giants. Any young officer can be invited to
join spetsnaz irrespective of
his previous speciality in the armed forces. If he possesses the required qualities of an iron will, an air of
unquestionable authority, ruthlessness and an independent way of taking decisions and
acting, if he is by nature a gambler
who is not afraid to take a chance with anything, including his own
life, then he will eventually be invited to the headquarters of the
military district. He will be
led along the endless corridors to a little office where he will be interviewed by a general and some senior officers. The young
officer will not of course know that the general is head of the Intelligence directorate
of the military district or
that the colonel next to him
is head of the third department (spetsnaz) of the
directorate. The atmosphere of the interview is relaxed,
with smiles and jokes on both sides. ‘Tell us about yourself, lieutenant.
What are your interests? What games do you play? You hold the divisional record on skis over ten kilometres? Very good.
How did your men do in the
last rifle-shooting test? How
do you get along with your
deputy? Is he a difficult chap? Uncontrolled character? Our information is
that you tamed him. How did you manage it?’ The interview moves
gradually on to the subject
of the armed forces of the probable enemy and takes the form of a gentle
examination. ‘You have an American division facing your division on the front.
The American division has “Lance” missiles. A nasty
thing?’ ‘Of course, comrade
general.’ ‘Just supposing, lieutenant,
that you were chief of staff of the Soviet division, how would you
destroy the enemy’s missiles?’ ‘With our own 9K21
missiles.’ ‘Very good, lieutenant, but the location
of the American missiles is not
known.’ ‘I would ask the air force
to locate them and possibly bomb them.’ ‘But there’s bad weather, lieutenant, and the anti-aircraft
defences are
strong.’ ‘Then I would send forward from our division a deep reconnaissance company to
find the missiles, cut the
throats of the missile crew
and blow up the missiles.’ ‘Not a bad idea. Very good, in fact. Have you ever
heard, lieutenant, that there are units in the American Army known as the
“Green Berets”?’ ‘Yes, I have
heard.’ ‘What do you think of
them?’ ‘I look at the question from two points of view -- the political
and the
military.’ ‘Tell us both of them,
please.’ ‘They are mercenary cutthroats of American capitalism, looters, murderers and rapists. They
burn down villages and massacre the inhabitants, women, children and old
people.’ ‘Enough. Your second point
of view?’ ‘They are marvellously well-trained units for operating behind the enemy’s lines. Their job is to paralyse the enemy’s system of
command and control. They are
a very powerful and effective
instrument in the hands of commanders....’ ‘Very well. So what would
you think, lieutenant, if we were to organise something similar in our
army?’ ‘I think, comrade general,
that it would be a correct decision. I am sure, comrade general, that
that is our army’s tomorrow.’ ‘It’s the army’s today, lieutenant. What
would you say if we were to offer you the chance to become
an officer in these troops? The discipline is like iron. Your authority as
a commander would be almost absolute. You would be the one taking the
decisions, not your superiors for you.’ ‘If I were to be offered
such an opportunity, comrade
general, I would accept.’ ‘All right, lieutenant, now you can go back to
your regiment. Perhaps you
will receive an offer. Continue your service and forget this conversation took place. You realise, of course, what will
happen to you if anybody gets to know about what we have
discussed?’ ‘I understand, comrade
general.’ ‘We have informed your commanding officers, including the
regimental commander, that you came
before us as a candidate for posting to the Chinese frontier—to Mongolia,
Afghanistan, the islands of the Arctic Ocean— that sort of thing. Goodbye
for now, lieutenant.’ ‘Goodbye, comrade
general.’ An officer who joins
spetsnaz from another branch
of the armed forces does not
have to go through any additional training course. He is posted straight to a regular unit
and is given command of a platoon. I
was present many times
at exercises where a
young officer who had taken over a platoon knew a lot less
about spetsnaz than many of his men and certainly his sergeants. But a
young commander learns quickly, along with the privates. There is nothing to be ashamed of in
learning. The officer could
not know anything about the
technique and tactics of spetsnaz. It is not unusual for a
young officer in these circumstances to begin a lesson, announce the subject and purpose of it, and then order the senior sergeant to
conduct the lesson while he takes up position in the ranks along with the
young privates. His
platoon will already have a sense of the firmness of the commander’s character. The men
will already know that the commander is the leader of the
platoon, the one unquestionable leader. There are questions he cannot yet
answer and equipment he
cannot yet handle. But they all know that, if it is a question of running
ten kilometres, their new commander will be among the first home, and if it is a question of firing from a weapon
their commander will of course be the best. In a few weeks the young
officer will make his first
parachute jump along with the youngest privates. He will be given the chance to jump as often as he likes. The company commander and the
other officers will help him to understand what he did not know before. At
night he will read his top secret instructions and a month later he will
be ready to challenge any of his sergeants to a contest. A few months later he will be the best in all matters and will
teach his platoon by simply
giving them the most
confident of all
commands: ‘Do as I do!’ An officer who gets posted to spetsnaz from other branches of the forces without having had any special training is of course an unusual person. The officers commanding spetsnaz seek out such people and trust them. Experience shows that
these officers without special
training produce much better results than those who have graduated from the special faculty at the Higher
Airborne Command school. There is nothing surprising or paradoxical about this. If Mikhail Koshkin had had special training in designing tanks he would never have created the T-34
tank, the best in the world. Similarly, if someone had decided to teach
Mikhail Kalashnikov how to design
a
sub-machine-gun
the
teaching might easily have ruined a self-educated
genius. The officers commanding the
GRU believe that strong and independent people must be found and told what to do, leaving them with the right to choose which way to carry out the task given them. That is why the instructions for
spetsnaz tactics are so
short. All Soviet regulations
are in general much shorter than those in Western armies, and a Soviet
commander is guided by them less frequently than his opposite member in
the West. The officer of powerful build is only one type of spetsnaz
officer. There is another type, whose
build, width of shoulder and
so forth are not taken into account, although the man
must be no less strong
of character. This type might be called the
‘intelligentsia’ of spetsnaz,
and it includes officers who are not directly involved with the men in the ranks and who work with their
heads far more than with their hands. There is, of course, no
precise line drawn between the two types. Take, for example, the officer-interpreters who would seem to belong to the ‘intelligentsia’ of spetsnaz.
There is an officer-interpreter, with a fluent knowledge of at least two
foreign languages, in every spetsnaz company. His contact with the men in the company exists mainly
because he teaches them
foreign languages. But, as
we know, this is not a
subject that takes much time
for the spetsnaz soldier. The interpreter is constantly at the company commander’s side,
acting as his unofficial adjutant. At first glance he is an ‘intellectual’.
But that is just the first
impression. The fact is that
the interpreter jumps along with
the company and spends
many days with it plodding
across marshes and mountains, sand and snow. The interpreter is the first
to drive nails into the heads of enemy prisoners to get the necessary information out of
them. That is his work: to drag out finger-nails, cut
tongues in half (known as ‘making a snake’) and stuff hot coals into prisoners’ mouths. Military interpreters for the Soviet armed forces are trained at the Military
Institute. Among the students at the
Institute there are those who
are physically strong and tough, with strong nerves and characters of granite. These are the ones invited to join
spetsnaz. Consequently, although the interpreter is sometimes regarded as a representative of the ‘intelligentsia’, it is difficult to distinguish him by appearance from the platoon commanders of the
company in which he serves.
His job is not simply to ask
questions and wait for an answer. His job to get the right answer. Upon that
depends the success of the
mission and the lives of an enormous number of people. He has to force the
prisoner to talk if he does not want to, and having received an
answer the interpreter must
extract from the prisoner
confirmation that it is
the only right answer. That is why he has to apply not very ‘intellectual’ methods to his
prisoner. With that in
mind the interpreters in
spetsnaz can be seen as neither commanders nor intellectuals, but a link
between the two classes. Pure representatives of
spetsnaz ‘intelligentsia’ are
found among the officers of
the spetsnaz intelligence posts. They are selected from various branches, and their
physical development is not a key factor. They are officers who have already been through the
military schools and have served for not less than two years. After posting to the third faculty of the Military-Diplomatic
Academy, they work in intelligence posts (RPs) and centres (RZs). Their job is to
look for opportunities for recruitment and to direct the agent network.
Some of them work with the agent-informer network, some with the spetsnaz
network. An officer working with the spetsnaz agent network is a spetsnaz officer in the full
sense. But he is not dropped by parachute and he does not have to run,
fight, shoot or cut people’s
throats. His job is to study
the progress of thousands of people and discover among
them individuals suitable for
spetsnaz; to seek a way of approaching them and getting to know them; to establish and develop relations with them; and then to recruit them. These officers wear civilian clothes most of the time, and if they have to wear military uniform they wear
the uniform of the branch in which they previously served: artillery,
engineering troops, the
medical service. Or they wear the uniform of the unit within which
the secret intelligence unit of spetsnaz is
concealed. The senior command of
spetsnaz consists of colonels and generals of the GRU who have graduated from one of the main faculties of the Military-Diplomatic
Academy—that is, the
first or second faculties,
and have worked for many years in the central apparat of the GRU and in its
rezidenturas abroad.
Each one of them has a first-class knowledge of a country or group of countries
because of working abroad for a
long time. If there is
a possibility of continuing to work abroad he will do so. But circumstances may mean that further trips abroad are impossible. In that case he
continues to serve in the central apparat of the GRU or in an Intelligence directorate of
a military district,
fleet or group of
forces. He then has control of all the instruments of intelligence, including
spetsnaz. I frequently came across people of this class.
In every case they were men who
were silent and unsociable. They have elegant exteriors, good command of foreign
languages and refined manners. They hold tremendous power in their hands
and know how to handle authority. Some however, are men who have never attended the Academy and have never been in countries
regarded as potential enemies. They have advanced upwards thanks
to their inborn qualities, to useful contacts which they know how to arrange and support, to their own striving for power,
and to their continual and successful struggle for power which is full of cunning tricks
and tremendous risks. They are intoxicated by power and the struggle for power. It is their only aim in life and they go at it, scrambling
over the slippery slopes and summits. One of the elements of success
in their life’s struggle is of course the state of the units entrusted to
them and their readiness at
any moment to carry out any
mission set by the higher command.
No senior official in spetsnaz can be held up by considerations
of a moral, juridical or any other
kind. His upward
flight or descent depends entirely on how a mission is carried out. You
may be sure that any mission will be carried out at
any cost and by any means. I often hear it said that the Soviet soldier is a very bad soldier because he serves for only two years in the army. Some Western experts
consider it impossible to produce a good soldier in such a short
time. It is true that the Soviet soldier is a conscript, but it must be remembered that he is conscript in a totally militarised country. It is sufficient to remember that even the leaders of the
party in power in the Those children who show a
special interest in military service join the Voluntary Society for
Co-operation with the Army, Air Force and Fleet, known by its Russian initial letters as DOSAAF. DOSAAF is a para-military organisation with 15
million members who have regular training in military
trades and engage in sports with a military application. DOSAAF not only
trains young people for military service; it also helps reservists to maintain their qualifications after they have completed their service. DOSAAF has a colossal budget, a
widespread network of airfields and training centres and clubs of
various sizes and uses which carry out
elementary and advanced
training of military
specialists of every possible kind, from snipers to radio
operators, from fighter pilots to underwater swimmers, from glider
pilots to astronauts, and
from tank drivers to the
people who train military doctors. Many outstanding Soviet airmen, the majority of the astronauts (starting with Yuri Gagarin), famous generals and European and world champions in military types
of sport began their careers in DOSAAF, often at the age of
fourteen. The men in charge of DOSAAF
locally are retired officers,
generals and admirals, but the
men in charge at the top of DOSAAF are generals and marshals on active service.
Among the best-known leaders of the society were Army-General A. L. Getman, Marshal of the Air Force A. I. Pokryshkin, Army-General D. D. Lelyushenko and Admiral of the Fleet G. Yegorov. Traditionally the top
leadership of DOSAAF includes
leaders of the GRU and
spetsnaz. At the present time (1986), for example, the first deputy
chairman of DOSAAF is Colonel-General A. Odintsev. As long ago as 1941 he
was serving in a spetsnaz
detachment on the Western Front. The detachment was under the
command of Artur Sprogis.
Throughout his life
Odintsev has been directly connected with the
GRU and terrorism. At the present time his main job is to train young people of both sexes for the
ordeal of fighting a war. The most promising of them are later sent to
serve in spetsnaz. When we speak about the
Soviet conscript soldiers, and especially those who were taken into
spetsnaz, we must remember that each one of them has already been through
three or four years of intensive military training, has already made
parachute jumps, fired a sub-machine gun and been on a survival
course. He has already developed stamina, strength, drive and the determination to conquer. The
difference between him and
a regular soldier in the West lies in the fact that the regular soldier is paid for his efforts. Our young man gets no
money. He is a fanatic and an
enthusiast. He has to pay himself (though only a nominal sum) for being
taught how to use a knife, a silenced pistol, a spade and
explosives. After completing his service in spetsnaz the soldier
either becomes a regular soldier
or he returns to ‘peaceful’ work and in his spare time attends one
of the many DOSAAF clubs. Here is a typical example: Sergei Chizhik was born in 1965. While still at school he
joined the DOSAAF club.
He made 120 parachute jumps. Then he
was called into the Army and served with special troops in
DOSAAF is a very useful organisation for spetsnaz in many ways. The |