Spetsnaz
Viktor
Suvorov
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Translated from the Russian by David Floyd
First published in Great Britain 1987 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd
ISBN 0-241-11961-8
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/Suvorov_book/
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Viktor Suvorov. Spetsnaz.
The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces
To Natasha and Alexander
Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade.
When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to dig a
hole in the ground beside him. In three minutes he will have dug a little
trench 15 centimetres deep, in which he can lie stretched out flat, so that
bullets can whistle harmlessly over his head. The earth he has dug out forms a
breastwork in front and at the side to act as an additional cover. If a tank
drives over such a trench the soldier has a 50% chance that it will do him no
harm. At any moment the soldier may be ordered to advance again and, shouting
at the top of his voice, will rush ahead. If he is not ordered to advance, he
digs in deeper and deeper. At first his trench can be used for firing in the
lying position. Later it becomes a trench from which to fire in the kneeling
position, and later still, when it is 110 centimetres deep, it can be used for
firing in the standing position. The earth that has been dug out protects the
soldier from bullets and fragments. He makes an embrasure in this breastwork
into which he positions the barrel of his gun. In the absence of any further
commands he continues to work on his trench. He camouflages it. He starts to
dig a trench to connect with his comrades to the left of him. He always digs
from right to left, and in a few hours the unit has a trench linking all the
riflemen's trenches together. The unit's trenches are linked with the trenches
of other units. Dug-outs are built and communication trenches are added at the
rear. The trenches are made deeper, covered over, camouflaged and reinforced.
Then, suddenly, the order to advance comes again. The soldier emerges, shouting
and swearing as loudly as he can.
The infantryman uses the same spade for digging graves for his fallen
comrades. If he doesn't have an axe to hand he uses the spade to chop his bread
when it is frozen hard as granite. He uses it as a paddle as he floats across
wide rivers on a telegraph pole under enemy fire. And when he gets the order to
halt, he again builds his impregnable fortress around himself. He knows how to
dig the earth efficiently. He builds his fortress exactly as it should be. The
spade is not just an instrument for digging: it can also be used for measuring.
It is 50 centimetres long. Two spade lengths are a metre. The blade is 15
centimetres wide and 18 centimetres long. With these measurements in mind the
soldier can measure anything he wishes.
The infantry spade does not have a folding handle, and this is a very
important feature. It has to be a single monolithic object. All three of its
edges are as sharp as a knife. It is painted with a green matt paint so as not
to reflect the strong sunlight.
The spade is not only a tool and a measure. It is also a guarantee of
the steadfastness of the infantry in the most difficult situations. If the
infantry have a few hours to dig themselves in, it could take years to get them
out of their holes and trenches, whatever modern weapons are used against them.
___
In this book we are not talking about the infantry but about soldiers
belonging to other units, known as spetsnaz.
These soldiers never dig trenches; in fact they never take up defensive
positions. They either launch a sudden attack on an enemy or, if they meet with
resistance or superior enemy forces, they disappear as quickly as they appeared
and attack the enemy again where and when the enemy least expects them to
appear.
Surprisingly, the spetsnaz
soldiers also carry the little infantry spades. Why do they need them? It is
practically impossible to describe in words how they use their spades. You
really have to see what they do with them. In the hands of a spetsnaz soldier the spade is a terrible
noiseless weapon and every member of spetsnaz
gets much more training in the use of his spade then does the infantryman. The
first thing he has to teach himself is precision: to split little slivers of
wood with the edge of the spade or to cut off the neck of a bottle so that the
bottle remains whole. He has to learn to love his spade and have faith in its
accuracy. To do that he places his hand on the stump of a tree with the fingers
spread out and takes a big swing at the stump with his right hand using the
edge of the spade. Once he has learnt to use the spade well and truly as an axe
he is taught more complicated things. The little spade can be used in
hand-to-hand fighting against blows from a bayonet, a knife, a fist or another
spade. A soldier armed with nothing but the spade is shut in a room without
windows along with a mad dog, which makes for an interesting contest. Finally a
soldier is taught to throw the spade as accurately as he would use a sword or a
battle-axe. It is a wonderful weapon for throwing, a single, well-balanced
object, whose 32-centimetre handle acts as a lever for throwing. As it spins in
flight it gives the spade accuracy and thrust. It becomes a terrifying weapon. If
it lands in a tree it is not so easy to pull out again. Far more serious is it
if it hits someone's skull, although spetsnaz
members usually do not aim at the enemy's face but at his back. He will rarely
see the blade coming, before it lands in the back of his neck or between his
shoulder blades, smashing the bones.
The spetsnaz soldier loves his
spade. He has more faith in its reliability and accuracy than he has in his
Kalashnikov automatic. An interesting psychological detail has been observed in
the kind of hand-to-hand confrontations which are the stock in trade of spetsnaz. If a soldier fires at an enemy
armed with an automatic, the enemy also shoots at him. But if he doesn't fire
at the enemy but throws a spade at him instead, the enemy simply drops his gun
and jumps to one side.
This is a book about people who throw spades and about soldiers who work
with spades more surely and more accurately than they do with spoons at a
table. They do, of course, have other weapons besides their spades.
Chapter
2. Spetsnaz and the GRU
It is impossible to translate the Russian word razvedka precisely into any foreign language. It is usually
rendered as `reconnaissance' or `spying' or `intelligence gathering'. A fuller
explanation of the word is that it describes any means and any actions aimed at
obtaining information about an enemy, analysing it and understanding it
properly.
Every Soviet military headquarters has its own machinery for gathering
and analysing information about the enemy. The information thus collected and
analysed about the enemy is passed on to other headquarters, higher up, lower
down and on the same level, and each headquarters in turn receives information
about the enemy not only from its own sources but also from the other
headquarters.
If some military unit should be defeated in battle through its ignorance
of the enemy, the commanding officer and his chief of staff have no right to
blame the fact that they were not well enough informed about the enemy. The
most important task for every commander and chief of staff is that, without
waiting for information to arrive from elsewhere, they must organise their own
sources of information about the enemy and warn their own forces and their
superior headquarters of any danger that is threatened.
Spetsnaz is
one of the forms of Soviet military razvedka
which occupies a place somewhere between reconnaissance and intelligence.
It is the name given to the shock troops of razvedka in which there are combined elements of espionage,
terrorism and large-scale partisan operations. In personal terms, this covers a
very diverse range of people: secret agents recruited by Soviet military razvedka among foreigners for carrying
out espionage and terrorist operations; professional units composed of the
country's best sportsmen; and units made up of ordinary but carefully selected
and well trained soldiers. The higher the level of a given headquarters is, the
more spetsnaz units it has at its
disposal and the more professionals there are among the spetsnaz troops.
The term spetsnaz is a
composite word made up from spetsialnoye
nazhacheniye, meaning `special purpose'. The name is well chosen. Spetsnaz differs from other forms of razvedka in that it not only seeks and
finds important enemy targets, but in the majority of cases attacks and
destroys them.
Spetsnaz has
a long history, in which there have been periods of success and periods of
decline. After the Second World War spetsnaz
was in the doldrums, but from the mid-1950s a new era in the history of the
organisation began with the West's new deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.
This development created for the Soviet Army, which had always prepared itself,
and still does, only for `liberation' wars on foreign territory, a practically
insuperable barrier. Soviet strategy could continue along the same lines only
if the means could be found to remove Western tactical nuclear weapons from the
path of the Soviet troops, without at the same time turning the enemy's
territory into a nuclear desert.
The destruction of the tactical nuclear weapons which render Soviet
aggression impossible or pointless could be carried out only if the whereabouts
of all, or at least the majority, of the enemy's tactical nuclear weapons were
established. But this in itself presented a tremendous problem. It is very easy
to conceal tactical missiles, aircraft and nuclear artillery and, instead of
deploying real missiles and guns, the enemy can deploy dummies, thus diverting
the attention of Soviet razvedka and
protecting the real tactical nuclear weapons under cover.
The Soviet high command therefore had to devise the sort of means of
detection that could approach very close to the enemy's weapons and in each
case provide a precise answer to the question of whether they were real, or
just well produced dummies. But even if a tremendous number of nuclear
batteries were discovered in good time, that did not solve the problem. In the
time it takes for the transmission of the reports from the reconnaissance units
to the headquarters, for the analysis of the information obtained and the
preparation of the appropriate command for action, the battery can have changed
position several times. So forces had to be created that would be able to seek
out, find and destroy immediately the nuclear weapons discovered in the course
of war or immediately before its outbreak.
Spetsnaz
was, and is, precisely such an instrument, permitting commanding officers at
army level and higher to establish independently the whereabouts of the enemy's
most dangerous weapons and to destroy them on the spot.
Is it possible for spetsnaz to
pinpoint and destroy every single one of the enemy's nuclear weapons? Of course
not. So what is the solution to this problem? It is very simple. Spetsnaz has to make every effort to
find and destroy the enemy's nuclear armament. Nuclear strength represents the
teeth of the state and it has to be knocked out with the first blow, possibly
even before the fighting begins. But if it proves impossible to knock out all
the teeth with the first blow, then a blow has to be struck not just at the
teeth but at the brain and nervous system of the state.
When we speak of the `brain' we mean the country's most important
statesmen and politicians. In this context the leaders of the opposition
parties are regarded as equally important candidates for destruction as the
leaders of the party in power. The opposition is simply the state's reserve
brain, and it would be silly to destroy the main decision-making system without
putting the reserve system out of action. By the same token we mean, for
example, the principal military leaders and police chiefs, the heads of the
Church and trade unions and in general all the people who might at a critical
moment appeal to the nation and who are well known to the nation.
By the `nervous system' of the state we mean the principal centres and
lines of government and military communications, and the commercial
communications companies, including the main radio stations and television
studios.
It would hardly be possible, of course, to destroy the brain, the
nervous system and the teeth at once, but a simultaneous blow at all three of
the most important organs could, in the opinion of the Soviet leaders,
substantially reduce a nation's capacity for action in the event of war,
especially at its initial and most critical stage. Some missiles will be
destroyed and others will not be fired because there will be nobody to give the
appropriate command or because the command will not be passed on in time due to
the breakdown of communications.
Having within its sphere an organisation like spetsnaz, and having tested its potential on numerous exercises,
the Soviet high command came to the conclusion that spetsnaz could be used with success not only against tactical but
also against strategic nuclear installations: submarine bases, weapon
stockpiles, aircraft bases and missile launching sites.
Spetsnaz
could be used too, they realised, against the heart and blood supply of the
state: ie. its source and distribution of energy — power stations,
transformer stations and power lines, as well as oil and gas pipelines and
storage points, pumping station and oil refineries. Putting even a few of the
enemy's more important power stations out of action could present him with a
catastrophic situation. Not only would there be no light: factories would be
brought to a standstill, lifts would cease to work, the refrigeration
installations would be useless, hospitals would find it almost impossible to
function, blood stored in refrigerators would begin to coagulate, traffic
lights, petrol pumps and trains would come to a halt, computers would cease to
operate.
Even this short list must lead to the conclusion that Soviet military razvedka (the GRU) and its integral spetsnaz is something more than the
`eyes and ears of the Soviet Army'. As a special branch of the GRU spetsnaz is intended primarily for
action in time of war and in the very last days and hours before it breaks out.
But spetsnaz is not idle in peacetime
either. I am sometimes asked: if we are talking about terrorism on such a
scale, we must be talking about the KGB. Not so. There are three good reasons
why spetsnaz is a part of the GRU and
not of the KGB. The first is that if the GRU and spetsnaz were to be removed from the Soviet Army and handed over to
the KGB, it would be equivalent to blindfolding a strong man, while plugging
his ears and depriving him of some other important organs, and making him fight
with the information he needs for fighting provided by another person standing
beside him and telling him the moves. The Soviet leaders have tried on more
than one occasion to do this and it has always ended in catastrophe. The
information provided by the secret police was always imprecise, late and
insufficient, and the actions of a blind giant, predictably, were neither
accurate or effective.
Secondly, if the functions of the GRU and spetsnaz were to be handed over to the KGB, then in the event of a
catastrophe (inevitable in such a situation) any Soviet commanding officer or
chief of staff could say that he had not had sufficient information about the
enemy, that for example a vital aerodrome and a missile battery nearby had not
been destroyed by the KGB's forces. These would be perfectly justified
complaints, although it is in any case impossible to destroy every aerodrome,
every missile battery and every command post because the supply of information
in the course of battle is always insufficient. Any commanding officer who
receives information about the enemy can think of a million supplementary questions
to which there is no answer. There is only one way out of the situation, and
that is to make every commanding officer responsible for gathering his own
information about the enemy and to provide him with all the means for defeating
his own enemy. Then, if the information is insufficient or some targets have
not been destroyed, only he and his chief of staff are to blame. They must
themselves organise the collection and interpretation of information about the
enemy, so as to have, if not all the information, at least the most essential
information at the right time. They must organise the operation of their forces
so as to destroy the most important obstacles which the enemy has put in the
way of their advance. This is the only way to ensure victory. The Soviet
political leadership, the KGB and the military leaders have all had every
opportunity to convince themselves that there is no other.
Thirdly, the Soviet secret police, the KGB, carries out different
functions and has other priorities. It has its own terrorist apparatus, which
includes an organisation very similar to spetsnaz,
known as osnaz. The KGB uses osnaz for carrying out a range of tasks
not dissimilar in many cases to those performed by the GRU's spetsnaz. But the Soviet leaders
consider that it is best not to have any monopolies in the field of secret
warfare. Competition, they feel, gives far better results than ration.
Osnaz is
not a subject I propose to deal with in this book. Only a KGB officer directly
connected with osnaz could describe what
it is. My knowledge is very limited. But just as a book about Stalin would not
be complete without some reference to Hitler, osnaz should not be overlooked here.
The term osnaz is usually met
only in secret documents. In unclassified documents the term is written out in
full as osobogo nazhacheniya or else
reduced to the two letters `ON'. In cases where a longer title is abbreviated
the letters ON are run together with the preceding letters. For example, DON
means `division of osnaz', OON means
a `detachment of osnaz».
The two words osoby and spetsialny are close in meaning but
quite different words. In translation it is difficult to find a precise
equivalent for these two words, which is why it is easier to use the terms osnaz and spetsnaz without translating them. Osnaz apparently came into being practically at the same time as
the Communist dictatorship. In the very first moments of the existence of the
Soviet regime we find references to detachments osobogo nazhacheniya — special purpose detachments. Osnaz means military-terrorist units
which came into being as shock troops of the Communist Party whose job was to
defend the party. Osnaz was later
handed over to the secret police, which changed its own name from time to time
as easily as a snake changes its skin: Cheka — VCheka — OGPU —
NKVD — NKGB — MGB — MVD — KGB. Once a snake, however,
always a snake.
It is the fact the spetsnaz
belongs to the army, and osnaz to the
secret police, that accounts for all the differences between them. Spetsnaz operates mainly against
external enemies; osnaz does the same
but mainly in its own territory and against its own citizens. Even if both spetsnaz and osnaz are faced with carrying out one and the same operation the
Soviet leadership is not inclined to rely so much on co-operation between the
army and the secret police as on the strong competitive instincts between them.
Chapter
3. A History of Spetsnaz
In order to grasp the history behind spetsnaz
it is useful to cast our minds back to the British Parliament in the time of
Henry VIII. In 1516 a Member of the Parliament, Thomas More, published an
excellent book entitled Utopia. In it
he showed, simply and persuasively, that it was very easy to create a society
in which universal justice reigned, but that the consequences of doing so would
be terrible. More describes a society in which there is no private property and
in which everything is controlled by the state. The state of Utopia is
completely isolated from the outside world, as completely as the bureaucratic class
rules the population. The supreme ruler is installed for his lifetime. The
country itself, once a peninsula, has after monumental efforts on the part of
the population and the army to build a deep canal dividing it from the rest of
the world, become an island. Slavery has been introduced, but the rest of the
population live no better than slaves. People do not have their own homes, with
the result that anybody can at any time go into any home he wishes, a system
which is worse even than the regulations in the Soviet Army today, in which the
barracks of each company are open only to soldiers of that company.
In fact the system in Utopia begins to look more like that in a Soviet
concentration camp. In Utopia, of course, it is laid down when people are to rise
(at four o'clock in the morning), when they are to go to bed and how many
minutes' rest they may have. Every day starts with public lectures. People must
travel on a group passport, signed by the Mayor, and if they are caught without
a passport outside their own district they are severely punished as deserters.
Everybody keeps a close watch on his neighbour: `Everyone has his eye on you.'
With fine English humour Thomas More describes the ways in which Utopia
wages war. The whole population of Utopia, men and women, are trained to fight.
Utopia wages only just wars in self-defence and, of course, for the liberation
of other peoples. The people of Utopia consider it their right and their duty
to establish a similarly just regime in neighbouring countries. Many of the
surrounding countries have already been liberated and are now ruled, not by
local leaders, but by administators from Utopia. The liberation of the other
peoples is carried out in the name of humanism. But Thomas More does not
explain to us what this `humanism' is. Utopia's allies, in receipt of military
aid from her, turn the populations of the neighbouring states into slaves.
Utopia provokes conflicts and contradictions in the countries which have
not yet been liberated. If someone in such a country speaks out in favour of
capitulating to Utopia he can expect a big reward later. But anyone who calls
upon the people to fight Utopia can expect only slavery or death, with his
property split up and distributed to those who capitulate and collaborate.
On the outbreak of war Utopia's agents in the enemy country post up in
prominent places announcements concerning the reward to be paid to anyone
killing the king. It is a tremendous sum of money. There is also a list of
other people for whose murder large sums of money will be paid.
The direct result of these measures is that universal suspicion reigns
in the enemy country.
Thomas More describes only one of the strategems employed, but it is the
most important:
When the battle is at its height a group of specially selected young
men, who have sworn to stick together, try to knock out the enemy general. They
keep hammering away at him by every possible method — frontal attacks,
ambushes, long-range archery, hand-to-hand combat. They bear down on him in a long,
unbroken wedge-formation, the point of which is constantly renewed as tired men
are replaced by fresh ones. As a result the general is nearly always killed or
taken prisoner — unless he saves his skin by running away.
It is the groups of `specially selected young men' that I want to
discuss in this book.
___
Four hundred years after the appearance of Utopia the frightful
predictions of that wise Englishman became a reality in Russia. A successful
attempt was made to create a society of universal justice. I had read Thomas
More's frightening forecasts when I was still a child and I was amazed at the
staggering realism with which Utopia was described and how strikingly similar
it was to the Soviet Union: a place where all the towns looked like each other,
people knew nothing about what was happening abroad or about fashion in clothes
(everybody being dressed more or less the same), and so forth. More even
described the situation of people `who think differently'. In Utopia, he said,
`It is illegal for any such person to argue in defence of his beliefs.'
The Soviet Union is actually a very mild version of Utopia — a sort
of `Utopia with a human face'. A person can travel in the Soviet Union without
having an internal passport, and Soviet bureaucrats do not yet have such power
over the family as their Utopia counterparts who added up the number of men and
women in each household and, if they exceeded the number permitted, simply
transferred the superfluous members to another house or even another town where
there was a shortage of them.
The Communists genuinely have a great deal left to do before they bring
society down to the level of Utopia. But much has already been done, especially
in the military sphere, and in particular in the creation of `specially selected
groups of young men'.
It is interesting to note that such groups were formed even before the
Red Army existed, before the Red Guard, and even before the Revolution. The
origins of spetsnaz are to be found
in the revolutionary terrorism of the nineteenth century, when numerous groups
of young people were ready to commit murder, or possibly suicide, in the cause
of creating a society in which everything would be divided equally between
everybody. As they went about murdering others or getting killed themselves
they failed to understand one simple truth: that in order to create a just
society you had to create a control mechanism. The juster the society one wants
to build the more complete must be the control over production and consumption.
Many of the first leaders of the Red Army had been terrorists in the
past, before the Revolution. For example, one of the outstanding organisers of
the Red Army, Mikhail Frunze, after whom the principal Soviet military academy
is named, had twice been sentenced to death before the Revolution. At the time
it was by no means easy to get two death sentences. For organising a party
which aimed at the overthrow of the existing regime by force, Lenin received
only three years of deportation in which he lived well and comfortably and
spent his time shooting, fishing and openly preaching revolution. And the woman
terrorist Vera Zasulich, who murdered a provincial governor was acquitted by a
Russian court. The court was independent of the state and reckoned that, if she
had killed for political reasons, it meant that she had been prompted by her
conscience and her beliefs and that her acts could not be regarded as a crime.
In this climate Mikhail Frunze had managed to receive two death sentences.
Neither of them was carried out, naturally. On both occasions the sentence was
commuted to deportation, from which he had no great difficulty in escaping. It
was while he was in exile that Frunze organised a circle of like-minded people
which was called the `Military Academy': a real school for terrorists, which
drew up the first strategy to be followed up by armed detachments of Communists
in the event of an uprising.
The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks demonstrated, primarily to the
revolutionaries themselves, that it was possible to neutralise a vast country
and then to bring it under control simply and quickly. What was needed were
`groups of specially selected young men' capable of putting out of action the
government, the postal services, the telegraph and telephone, and the railway
terminals and bridges in the capital. Paralysis at the centre meant that
counteraction on the outskirts was split up. Outlying areas could be dealt with
later one at a time.
Frunze was undoubtedly a brilliant theoretician and practician of the
art of war, including partisan warfare and terrorism. During the Civil War he
commanded an army and a number of fronts. After Trotsky's dismissal he took
over as People's Commissar for military and naval affairs. During the war he
reorganised the large but badly led partisan formations into regular divisions
and armies which were subordinated to the strict centralised administration. At
the same time, while commanding those formations, he kept sending relatively
small but very reliable mobile units to fight in the enemy's rear.
The Civil War was fought over vast areas, a war of movement without a
continuous stable front and with an enormous number of all sorts of armies,
groups, independent detachments and bands. It was a partisan war in spirit and
in content. Armies developed out of small, scattered detachments, and whenever
they were defeated they were able to disintegrate into a large number of
independent units which carried on the war on a partisan scale.
But we are not concerned here with the partisan war as a whole, only
with the fighting units of the regular Red Army specially created for operating
in the enemy's rear. Such units existed on various fronts and armies. They were
not known as spetsnaz, but this did
not alter their essential nature, and it was not just Frunze who appreciated
the importance of being able to use regular units in the rear of the enemy.
Trotsky, Stalin, Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky, inter
alia, supported the strategy and made extensive use of it.
Revolutionary war against the capitalist powers started immediately
after the Bolsheviks seized power. As the Red Army `liberated' fresh territory
and arrived at the frontiers with other countries the amount of subversion
directed against them increased. The end of the Civil War did not mean the end
of the secret war being waged by the Communists against their neighbours. On
the contrary, it was stepped up, because, once the Civil War war was over,
forces were released for other kinds of warfare.
Germany was the first target for revolution. It is interesting to recall
that, as early as December 1917, a Communist newspaper Die Fackel, was being published in Petrograd with a circulation of
500,000 copies. In January 1918 a Communist group called `Spartak' emerged in
the same place. In April 1918 another newspaper Die Weltrevolution, began to appear. And finally, in August 1919,
the famous paper of the German Communists, Die
Rote Fahne, was founded in Moscow.
At the same time as the first Communist groups appeared, steps were
taken to train terrorist fighting units of German Communists. These units were
used for suppressing the anti-Communist resistance put up by Russian and
Ukrainian peasants. Then, in 1920, all the units of German Communists were
gathered together in the rear of the Red Army on the Western front. That was
when the Red Army was preparing for a breakthrough across Poland and into
Germany. The Red Army's official marching song, `Budenny's March', included
these words: `We're taking Warsaw — Take Berlin too!'
In that year the Bolsheviks did not succeed in organising revolution in
Germany or even in `liberating' Poland. At the time Soviet Russia was
devastated by the First World War and by the far more terrible Civil War.
Famine, typhus and destruction raged across the country. But in 1923 another
attempt was made to provoke a revolution in Germany. Trotsky himself demanded
in September 1923 to be relieved of all his Party and Government posts and to
be sent as an ordinary soldier to the barricades of the German Revolution. The
party did not send Trotsky there, but sent other Soviet Communist leaders,
among them, Iosef Unshlikht. At the time he was deputy chairman of the Cheka
secret police. Now he was appointed deputy head of the `registration
administration', now known as the GRU or military intelligence, and it was in
this position that he was sent illegally to Germany. `Unshlikht was given the
task of organising the detachments which were to carry out the armed uprising
and coup d'état, recruiting them and providing them with weapons. He also had
the job of organising a German Cheka for the extermination of the bourgeoisie
and opponents of the Revolution after the transfer of power.... This was how
the planned Revolution was planned to take place. On the occasion of the
anniversary of the Russian October Revolution the working masses were to come
out on the streets for mass demonstrations. Unshlikht's «Red hundreds» were to
provoke clashes with the police so as to cause bloodshed and more serious
conflicts, to inflame the workers' indignation and carry out a general
working-class uprising.'1
1 B. Bazhanov: `Memoirs of a Secretary to Stalin', pub.
Tretya volna 1980, pp 67-69.
In view of the instability of German Society at that time, the absence
of a powerful army, the widespread discontent and the frequent outbursts of
violence, especially in 1923, the plan might have been realised. Many experts
are inclined to the view that Germany really was close to revolution. Soviet
military intelligence and its terrorist units led by Unshlikht were expected to
do no more than put the spark to the powder keg.
There were many reasons why the plans came to nothing. But there were
two especially important ones: the absence of a common frontier between the
USSR and Germany, and the split in the German Communist Party. The lack of a
common frontier was at the time a serious obstacle to the penetration into
Germany of substantial forces of Soviet subversives. Stalin understood this
very well, and he was always fighting to have Poland crushed so that common
frontiers could be established with Germany. When he succeeded in doing this in
1939, it was a risky step, since a common frontier with Germany meant that
Germany could attack the USSR without warning, as indeed happened two years
later. But without a common frontier Stalin could not get into Europe.
The split in the German Communist Party was an equally serious hindrance
to the carrying out of Soviet plans. One group pursued policy, subservient to
the Comintern and consequently to the Soviet Politburo, while the other pursued
an antagonistic one. Zinoviev was `extremely displeased by this and he raised
the question in the Politburo of presenting Maslov one of the dissenting German Communist leaders with an ultimatum:
either he would take a large sum of money, leave the party and get out of
Germany, or Unshlikht would be given orders to liquidate him.'2
2 Ibid. p. 68
___
At the same time as preparations were being made for revolution in
Germany preparations were also going ahead for revolutions in other countries.
For example, in September 1923, groups of terrorists trained in the USSR (of
both Bulgarian and Soviet nationality) started causing disturbances in Bulgaria
which could very well have developed into a state of general chaos and
bloodletting. But the `revolution' was suppressed and its ringleaders escaped
to the Soviet Union. Eighteen months later, in April 1925, the attempt was
repeated. This time unknown persons caused a tremendous explosion in the main
cathedral in Sofia in the hope of killing the king and the whole government.
Boris III had a miraculous escape, but attempts to destabilise Bulgaria by acts
of terrorism continued until 1944, when the Red Army at last entered Bulgaria.
Another miracle then seemed to take place, because from that moment on nobody
has tried to shoot the Bulgarian rulers and no one has let off any bombs. The
terror did continue, but it was aimed at the population of the country as a
whole rather than the rulers. And then Bulgarian terrorism spread beyond the
frontiers of the country and appeared on the streets of Western Europe.
The campaign of terrorism against Finland is closely linked with the
name of the Finnish Communist Otto Kuusinen who was one of the leaders of the
Communist revolt in Finland in 1918. After the defeat of the `revolution' he
escaped to Moscow and later returned to Finland for underground work. In 1921
he again fled to Moscow to save himself from arrest. From that moment
Kuusinen's career was closely linked with Soviet military intelligence
officers. Kuusinen had an official post and did the same work: preparing for
the overthrow of democracy in Finland and other countries. In his secret career
Kuusinen had some notable successes. In the mid-1930s he rose to be deputy head
of Razvedupr as the GRU was known
then. Under Kuusinen's direction an effective espionage network was organised
in the Scandinavian countries, and at the same time he directed the training of
military units which were to carry out acts of terrorism in those countries. As
early as the summer of 1918 an officer school was founded in Petrograd to train
men for the `Red Army of Finland'. This school later trained officers for other
`Red Armies' and became the International Military School — an institute
of higher education for terrorists.
After the Civil War was over Kuusinen insisted on carrying on
underground warfare on Finnish territory and keeping the best units of Finnish
Communists in existence. In 1939, after the Red Army invaded Finland, he
proclaimed himself `prime minister and minister of foreign affairs' of the
`Finnish Democratic Republic'. The `government' included Mauri Rosenberg (from
the GRU) as `deputy prime minister', Axel Antila as `minister of defence' and
the NKVD interrogator Tuure Lekhen as `minister of internal affairs'. But the
Finnish people put up such resistance that the Kuusinen government's bid to
turn Finland into a `people's republic' was a failure.
(A curious fact of history must be mentioned here. When the Finnish
Communists formed their government on Soviet territory and started a war
against their own country, voluntary formations of Russians were formed in
Finland which went into battle against both the Soviet and the Finnish
Communists. A notable member of these genuinely voluntary units was Boris
Bazhanov, formerly Stalin's personal secretary, who had fled to the West.)
Otto Kuusinen's unsuccessful attempt to become the ruler of Communist
Finland did not bring his career to an end. He continued it with success, first
in the GRU and later in the Department of Administrative Organs of the Central
Committee of the CPSU — the body that supervises all the espionage and
terrorist institutions in the Soviet Union, as well as the prisons,
concentration camps, courts and so forth. From 1957 until his death in 1964
Kuusinen was one of the most powerful leaders in the Soviet Union, serving
simultaneously as a member of the Politburo and a Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Party. In the Khodynki district of Moscow, where the GRU has
its headquarters, one of the bigger streets is called Otto Kuusinen Street.
In the course of the Civil War and after it, Polish units, too, were
formed and went into action on Soviet territory. One example was the 1st
Revolutionary Regiment, `Red Warsaw', which was used for putting down
anti-Communist revolts in Moscow, Tambov and Yaroslav. For suppressing
anti-Communist revolts by the Russian population the Communists used a Yugoslav
regiment, a Czechoslovak regiment, and many other formations, including
Hungarians, Rumanians, Austrians and others. After the Civil War all these
formations provided a base for the recruitment of spies and for setting up
subversive combat detachments for operating on the territory of capitalist
states. For example, a group of Hungarian Communist terrorists led by Ferenc
Kryug, fought against Russian peasants in the Civil War; in the Second World
War Kryug led a special purpose group operating in Hungary.
Apart from the `internationalist' fighters, i.e. people of foreign
extraction, detachments were organised in the Soviet Union for operating abroad
which were composed entirely, or very largely, of Soviet citizens. A bitter
battle was fought between the army commanders and the secret police for control
of these detachments.
On 2 August 1930 a small detachment of commando troops was dropped in
the region of Voronezh and was supposed during the manoeuvres to carry out
operations in the rear of the `enemy'. Officially this is the date when Soviet
airborne troops came into being. But it is also the date when spetsnaz was born. Airborne troops and spetsnaz troops subsequently went
through a parallel development. At certain points in its history spetsnaz passed out of the control of
military intelligence into the hands of the airborne forces, at others the
airborne troops exercised administrative control while military intelligence
had operational control. But in the end it was reckoned to be more expedient to
hand spetsnaz over entirely to
military intelligence. The progress of spetsnaz
over the following thirty years cannot be studied in isolation from the
development of the airborne forces.
1930 marked the beginning of a serious preoccupation with parachute
troops in the USSR. In 1931 separate detachments of parachutists were made into
battalions and a little later into regiments. In 1933 an osnaz brigade was formed in the Leningrad military district. It
included a battalion of parachutists, a battalion of mechanised infantry, a
battalion of artillery and three squadrons of aircraft. However, it turned out
to be of little use to the Army, because it was not only too large and too
awkward to manage, but also under the authority of the NKVD rather than the
GRU. After a long dispute this brigade and several others created on the same
pattern were reorganised into airborne brigades and handed over entirely to the
Army.
To begin with, the airborne forces or VDV consisted of transport
aircraft, airborne regiments and brigades, squadrons of heavy bombers and
separate reconnaissance units. It is these reconnaissance units that are of
interest to us. How many there were of them and how many men they included is
not known. There is fragmentary information about their tactics and training.
But it is known, for example, that one of the training schools was situated in
Kiev. It was a secret school and operated under the disguise of a parachute
club, while being completely under the control of the Razvedupr (GRU). It included a lot of women. In the course of the
numerous manoeuvres that were held, the reconnaissance units were dropped in
the rear of the `enemy' and made attacks on his command points, headquarters,
centres and lines of communications. It is known that terrorist techniques were
already well advanced. For example, a mine had been developed for blowing up
railway bridges as trains passed over them. However, bridges are always
especially well guarded, so the experts of the Razvedupr and the Engineering Directorate of the Red Army produced
a mine that could be laid on the tracks several kilometres away from the
bridge. A passing train would pick up the mine which would detonate at the very
moment when the train was on the bridge.
To give some idea of the scale of the VDV, on manoeuvres in 1934 900 men
were dropped simultaneously by parachute. At the famous Kiev manoeuvres in 1935
no less than 1188 airborne troops were dropped at once, followed by a normal
landing of 1765 men with light tanks, armoured cars and artillery. In
Belorussia in 1936 there was an air drop of 1800 troops and a landing of 5700
men with heavy weapons. In the Moscow military district in the same year the
whole of the 84th rifle division was transferred from one place to another by
air. Large-scale and well armed airborne attacks were always accompanied by the
dropping in neighbouring districts of commando units which operated both in the
interests of the security of the major force and in the interests of Razvedupr.
In 1938 the Soviet Union had six airborne brigades with a total of
18,000 men. This figure is, however, deceptive, since the strength of the
`separate reconnaissance units' is not known, nor are they included in that
figure. Parachutists were also not trained by the Red Army alone but by
`civilian' clubs. In 1934 these clubs had 400 parachute towers from which
members made up to half a million jumps, adding to their experience by jumps
from planes and balloons. Many Western experts reckon that the Soviet Union
entered the Second World War with a million trained parachutists, who could be
used both as airborne troops and in special units — in the language of
today, in spetsnaz.
___
A continual, hotly contested struggle was going on in the General Staff
of the Red Army. On what territory were the special detachments to
operate — on the enemy's territory, or on Soviet territory when it was
occupied by the enemy?
For a long time the two policies existed side by side. Detachments were
trained to operate both on home territory and enemy territory as part of the
preparations to meet the enemy in the Western regions of the Soviet Union.
These were carried out very seriously. First of all large partisan units were
formed, made up of carefully screened and selected soldiers. The partisans went
on living in the towns and villages, but went through their regular military
training and were ready at any moment to take off into the forests. The units
were only the basis upon which to develop much larger-scale partisan warfare.
In peacetime they were made up largely of leaders and specialists; in the
course of the fighting each unit was expected to expand into a huge formation
consisting of several thousand men. For these formations hiding places were
prepared in secluded locations and stocked with weapons, ammunition, means of
communications and other necessary equipment.
Apart from the partisans who were to take to the forests a vast network
of reconnaissance and commando troops was prepared. The local inhabitants were
trained to carry out reconnaissance and terrorist operations and, if the enemy
arrived, they were supposed to remain in place and pretend to submit to the
enemy, and even work for him. These networks were supposed later to organise a
fierce campaign of terror inside the enemy garrisons. To make it easier for the
partisans and the terrorists to operate, secret communication networks and
supplies were set up in peacetime, along with secret meeting places,
underground hospitals, command posts and even arms factories.
To make it easier for the partisans to operate on their own territory a
`destruction zone' was created, also known as a `death strip'. This was a strip
running the length of the Western frontiers of the Soviet Union between 100 and
250 kilometres wide. Within that strip all
bridges, railway depots, tunnels, water storage tanks and electric power stations
were prepared for destruction by explosive. Also in peacetime major embankments
on railway lines and highways and cuttings through which the roads passed were
made ready for blowing up. Means of communication, telephone lines, even the
permanent way, all were prepared for destruction.
Immediately behind the `death strip' came the `Stalin Line' of
exceptionally well fortified defences. The General Staff's idea was that the
enemy should be exhausted in the `death strip' on the vast minefields and huge
obstacles and then get stuck on the line of fortifications. At the same time
the partisans would be constantly attacking him in the rear.
It was a magnificent defence system. Bearing in mind the vast
territories involved and the poor network of roads, such a system could well
have made the whole of Soviet territory practically impassable for an enemy.
But — in 1939 the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed.
The Pact was the signal for a tremendous expansion of Soviet military
strength. Everything connected with defence was destroyed, while everything
connected with offensive actions was expanded at a great rate, particularly
Soviet sabotage troops and the airborne troops connected with them. In April
1941 five airborne corps were formed. All five were in the first strategic
echelon of the Red Army, three facing Germany and two facing Rumania. The
latter were more dangerous for Germany than the other three, because the
dropping of even one airborne corps in Rumania and the cutting off, even
temporarily, of supplies of oil to Germany meant the end of the war for the
Germans.
Five airborne corps in 1941 was more than there were in all the other
countries of the world together. But this was not enough for Stalin. There was
a plan to create another five airborne corps, and the plan was carried out in
August and September 1941. But in a defensive war Stalin did not, of course,
need either the first five or the second five. Any discussion of Stalin's
`defence plans' must first of all explain how five airborne corps, let alone
ten, could be used in a defensive war.
In a war on one's own territory it is far easier during a temporary
retreat to leave partisan forces or even complete fighting formations hidden on
the ground than it is to drop them in later by parachute. But Stalin had
destroyed such formations, from which one can draw only one conclusion; Stalin
had prepared the airborne corps specifically for dropping on other people's
territory.
At the same time as the rapid expansion of the airborne forces there was
an equally rapid growth of the special reconnaissance units intended for
operations on enemy territory.
The great British strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart, dealing
with this period, speaks of Hitler's fears concerning Stalin's intentions,
referring to `a fatal attack in the back from Russia'.3
And moves by the Soviet Union in June 1940 did evoke particular nervousness in
the German high command. Germany had thrown all her forces against France at
that time, and the Soviet Union rushed troops into the Baltic states and
Bessarabia. The airborne troops especially distinguished themselves. In June
1940 the 214th Soviet airborne brigade was dropped with the idea of seizing a
group of aerodromes in the region of Shaulyai in Lithuania, under a hundred
kilometres from the East Prussian border. In the same month the 201st and 204th
airborne brigades were dropped in Bessarabia to capture the towns of Ismail and
Belgrad-Dnestrovsky. This was close by the Ploesti oilfields. What would Stalin
do if the German Army advanced further into North Africa and the British Isles?
3 Strategy. The
Indirect Approach, p.241.
It is easy to understand why Hitler took the decision in that next
month, July 1940, to prepare for war against the USSR. It was quite impossible
for him to move off the continent of Europe and into the British Isles or
Africa, leaving Stalin with his huge army and terrifying airborne forces which
were of no use to him for anything but a large-scale offensive.
Hitler guessed rightly what Stalin's plans were, as is apparent from his
letter to Mussolini of 21 June 1941.4 Can we
believe Hitler? In this case we probably can. The letter was not intended for
publication and was never published in Hitler's lifetime. It is interesting in
that it repeats the thought that Stalin had voiced at a secret meeting of the
Central Committee. Moreover, in his speech at the 18th Congress of the Soviet
Communist Party Stalin had had this to say about Britain and France; In their policy
of nonintervention can be detected an attempt and a desire not to prevent the
aggressors from doing their dirty work... not to prevent, let us say, Germany
getting bogged down in European affairs and involved in a war... to let all the
participants in the war get stuck deep in the mud of battle, to encourage them
to do this on the quiet, to let them weaken and exhaust each other, and then,
when they are sufficiently weakened, to enter the arena with fresh forces,
acting of course «in the interests of peace», and to dictate their own
conditions to the crippled participants in the war.'5
Once again, he was attributing to others motives which impelled him in his
ambitions. Stalin wanted Europe to exhaust itself. And Hitler understood that.
But he understood too late. He should have understood before the Pact was
signed.
4 `I cannot take responsibility for the waiting any
longer, because I cannot see any way that the danger will disappear.... The
concentration of Soviet force is enormous.... All available Soviet armed forces
are now on our border.... It is quite possible that Russia will try to destroy
the Rumanian oilfields.'
5 Pravda, 11
March 1939.
However, Hitler still managed to upset Stalin's plans by starting the
war first. The huge Soviet forces intended for the `liberation' of Russia's
neighbours were quite unnecessary in the war of defence against Germany. The
airborne corps were used as ordinary infantry against the advancing German
tanks. The many units and groups of airborne troops and commandos were forced
to retreat or to dig trenches to halt the advancing German troops. The airborne
troops trained for operations in the territory of foreign countries were able
to be used in the enemy's rear, but not in his territory so much as in Soviet
territory occupied by the German army.
The reshaping of the whole philosophy of the Red Army, which had been
taught to conduct an offensive war on other people's territory, was very
painful but relatively short. Six months later the Red Army had learnt to
defend itself and in another year it had gone over to offensive operations.
From that moment everything fell into place and the Red Army, created only for
offensive operations, became once again victorious.
The process of reorganising the armed forces for operations on its own
territory affected all branches of the services, including the special forces.
At the beginning of 1942 thirteen guards battalions6
of spetsnaz were organised in the Red
Army for operations in the enemy's rear, as well as one guards engineering
brigade of spetsnaz, consisting of
five battalions. The number of separate battalions corresponded exactly to the
number of fighting fronts. Each front received one such battalion under its
command. A guards brigade of spetsnaz
remained at the disposal of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to be used only
with Stalin's personal permission in the most crucial locations.
6 In the Soviet Army the title of `guards' can be won
only in battle, the only exceptions being certain formations which were awarded
the title when they were being formed. These included spetsnaz detachments.
So as not to reveal the real name of spetsnaz,
the independent guards battalion and the brigade were given the code name of
`guards minelayers'. Only a very limited circle of people knew what the name
concealed.
A special razvedka department
was set up in the Intelligence directorate of each front to direct the work of
the `guards minelayers'. Each department had at its disposal a battalion of spetsnaz. Later the special razvedka departments began recruiting spetsnaz agents in territories occupied
by the enemy. These agents were intended for providing support for the
`minelayers' when they appeared in the enemy rear. Subsequently each special razvedka department was provided with a
reconaissance point of spetsnaz to
recruit agents.
The guards brigade of spetsnaz
was headed by one of the outstanding Soviet practitioners of fighting in the
rear of the enemy — Colonel (later Lieutenant-General) Moshe Ioffe.
The number of spetsnaz
increased very quickly. In unclassified Soviet writings we come across
references to the 16th and the 33rd engineering brigade of spetsnaz. Apart from detachments operating behind the enemy's
lines, other spetsnaz units were
formed for different purposes: for example, radio battalions for destroying the
enemy's radio links, spreading disinformation and tracing the whereabouts of
enemy headquarters and communication centres so as to facilitate the work of
the spetsnaz terrorist formations. It
is known that from 1942 there existed the 130th, 131st, 132nd and 226th
independent radio battalions of spetsnaz.
The operations carried out by the `minelayers' were distinguished by
their daring character and their effectiveness. They usually turned up behind
the enemy's lines in small groups. Sometimes they operated independently, at
others they combined their operations with the partisans. These joint
operations always benefited both the partisans and spetsnaz. The minelayers taught the partisans the most difficult
aspects of minelaying, the most complicated technology and the most advanced
tactics. When they were with the partisans they had a reliable hiding place,
protection while they carried out their operation, and medical and other aid in
case of need. The partisans knew the area well and could serve as guides. It
was an excellent combination: the local partisans who knew every tree in the
forest, and the first-class technical equipment for the use of explosives
demonstrated by real experts.
The `guards minelayers' usually came on the scene for a short while, did
their work swiftly and well and then returned whence they had come. The
principal way of transporting them behind the enemy's lines was to drop them by
parachute. Their return was carried out by aircraft using secret partisan
airfields, or they made their way by foot across the enemy's front line.
The high point in the partisan war against Germany consisted of two
operations carried out in 1943. By that time, as a result of action by osnaz, order had been introduced into
the partisan movement; it had been `purged' and brought under rigid central
control. As a result of spetsnaz work
the partisan movement had been taught the latest methods of warfare and the
most advanced techniques of sabotage.
The operation known as the `War of the Rails' was carried out over six
weeks from August to September 1943. It was a very fortunate time to have
chosen. It was at that moment when the Soviet forces, having exhausted the
German army in defensive battles at Kursk, themselves suddenly went over to the
offensive. To support the advance a huge operation was undertaken in the rear
of the enemy with the object of paralysing his supply routes, preventing him
from bringing up ammunition and fuel for the troops, and making it impossible
for him to move his reserves around. The operation involved the participation
of 167 partisan units with a total strength of 100,000 men. All the units of spetsnaz were sent behind the enemy
lines to help the partisans. More than 150 tons of explosives, more than 150
kilometres of wire and over half a million detonators were transported to the
partisan units by air. The spetsnaz
units were instructed to maintain a strict watch over the fulfilment of their tasks.
Most of them operated independently in the most dangerous and important places,
and they also appointed men from their units to instruct the partisan units in
the use of explosives.
Operation `War of the Rails' was carried out simultaneously in a territory
with a front more than 1000 kilometres wide and more than 500 kilometres in
depth. On the first night of the operation 42,000 explosions took place on the
railway lines, and the partisan activity increased with every night that
passed. The German high command threw in tremendous forces to defend their
lines of communication, so that every night could be heard not only the sound
of bridges and railway lines being blown up but also the sounds of battle with
the German forces as the partisans fought their way through to whatever they
had to destroy. Altogether, in the course of the operation 215,000 rails, 836
complete trains, 184 rail and 556 road bridges were blown up. A vast quantity
of enemy equipment and ammunition was also destroyed.
Having won the enormous battle at Kursk, the Red Army sped towards the
river Dnieper and crossed it in several places. A second large-scale operation
in support of the advancing troops was carried out in the enemy's rear under
the name of `Concert', which was in concept and spirit a continuation of the
`War of the Rails'. In the final stage of that operation all the spetsnaz units were taken off to new
areas and were enabled to rest along with the partisan formations which had not
taken part in it. Now their time had come. Operation `Concert' began on 19
September 1943. That night in Belorussia alone 19,903 rails were blown up. On
the night of 25 September 15,809 rails were destroyed. All the spetsnaz units and 193 partisan units
took part in the operation `Concert'. The total number of participants in the
operation exceeded 120,000. In the course of the whole operation, which went on
until the end of October, 148,557 rails were destroyed, several hundred trains
with troops, weapons and ammunition were derailed, and hundreds of bridges were
blown up. Despite a shortage of explosives and other material needed for such
work, on the eve of the operation only eighty tons of explosives could be sent
to the partisan. Nevertheless `Concert' was a tremendous success.
After the Red Army moved into the territory of neighbouring states spetsnaz went through a radical
reorganisation. The independent reconnaissance units, the reconnaissance posts
which recruited agents for terrorist actions, and the independent radio
battalions for conducting disinformation, were all retained in their entirety.
There are plenty of references in the Soviet military press to operations by
special intelligence units in the final stages of the war. For example, in the
course of an operation in the Vistula-Oder area special groups from the
Intelligence directorate of the headquarters of the 1st Ukrainian Front
established the scope of the network of aerodromes and the exact position of
the enemy's air bases, found the headquarters of the 4th Tank Army and the 17th
Army, the 48th Tank Corps and the 42nd Army Corps, and also gathered a great
deal of other very necessary information.
The detachments of `guards minelayers' of spetsnaz were reformed, however, into regular guards sapper
detachments and were used in that form until the end of the war. Only a
relatively small number of `guards minelayers' were kept in being and used
behind the enemy lines in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Such a
decision was absolutely right for the times. The maintargets for spetsnaz operations had been the enemy's
lines of communication. But that had been before the Red Army had started to
advance at great speed. When that happened, there was no longer any need to
blow up bridges. They needed to be captured and preserved, not destroyed. For
this work the Red Army had separate shock brigades of motorised guards
engineering troops which, operating jointly with the forward units, would
capture especially important buildings and other objects, clear them of mines
and defend them until the main force arrived. The guards formations of spetsnaz were used mainly for
strengthening these special engineering brigades. Some of the surviving guards
battalions of spetsnaz were
transferred to the Far East where, in August 1945, they were used against the
Japanese Army.
The use of spetsnaz in the
Manchurian offensive of 1945 is of special interest, because it provides the
best illustration of what was supposed to happen to Germany if she had not
attacked the USSR.
Japan had a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. But Japan had gone to
war with other states and had exhausted her military, economic and other
resources. Japan had seized vast territories inhabited by hundreds of millions
of people who wanted to be liberated and were ready to welcome and support any
liberator who came along. Japan was in exactly the situation in which Stalin
had wanted to see Germany: exhausted by war with other countries, and with
troops scattered over expansive territories the populations of which hated the
sight of them.
Thus, in the interests naturally of peace and humanity Stalin struck a
sudden crushing blow at the armed forces of Japan in Manchuria and China,
violating the treaty signed four years earlier. The operation took place over
vast areas. In terms of the distances covered and the speed at which it moved,
this operation has no equal in world history. Soviet troops operated over
territories 5000 kilometres in width and 600-800 kilometres in depth. More than
a million and a half soldiers took part in the operation, with over 5000 tanks
and nearly 4000 aircraft. It really was a lightning operation, in the course of
which 84,000 Japanese officers and men were killed and 593,000 taken prisoner.
A tremendous quantity of arms, ammunition and other equipment was seized.
It may be objected that Japan was already on the brink of catastrophe.
That is true. But therein lies Soviet strategy: to remain neutral until such
time as the enemy exhausts himself in battle against someone else, and then to
strike a sudden blow. That is precisely how the war against Germany was planned
and that was why the partisan units, the barriers and defensive installations
were all dispensed with, and why the ten airborne corps were created in 1941.
In the Manchurian offensive the spetsnaz
detachments put up their best performance. Twenty airborne landings were made
not by airborne troops, but by special reconnaissance troops. Spetsnaz units of the Pacific Fleet were
landed from submarines and surface boats. Some spetsnaz units crossed the frontier by foot, captured Japanese cars
and used them for their operations. Worried about the railway tunnels on a
strip of the 1st Far Eastern front, the Soviet high command created special
units for capturing the tunnels. The groups crossed the frontier secretly, cut
the throats of the guards, severed the wires connected to the explosive
charges, and put the detonators out of action. They then held the tunnels until
their own forces arrived.
In the course of the offensive a new and very risky type of operation
was employed by spetsnaz. Senior GRU
officers, with the rank of colonel or even major-general, were put in charge of
small groups. Such a group would suddenly land on an airfield close to an
important Japanese headquarters. The appearance of a Soviet colonel or general
deep in the Japanese rear never failed to provoke astonished reactions from
both the Japanese high command and the Japanese troops, as well as from the
local population. The transport planes carrying these were escorted by Soviet
fighter aircraft, but the fighters were soon obliged to return to their bases,
leaving the Soviet transport undefended until it landed. Even after it landed
it had at best only one high-ranking officer, the crew and no more than a
platoon of soldiers to guard over the plane. The Soviet officer would demand
and usually obtain a meeting with a Japanese general, at which he would demand
the surrender of the Japanese garrison. He and his group really had nothing to
back them up: Soviet troops were still hundreds of kilometres away and it was
still weeks to the end of the war. But the local Japanese military leaders (and
the Soviet officers too, for that matter) naturally did not realise this.
Perhaps the Emperor had decided to fight on to the last man....
In several recorded instances, senior Japanese military leaders decided
independently to surrender without having permission to do so from their
superiors. The improvement in the morale and position of the Soviet troops can
be imagined.
___
After the end of the Second World War spetsnaz practically ceased to exist for several years. Its
reorganisation was eventually carried out under the direction of several
generals who were fanatically devoted to the idea of spetsnaz. One of them was Viktor Kondratevich Kharchenko, who is
quite rightly regarded as the `father' of the modern spetsnaz. Kharchenko was an outstanding sportsman and expert in the
theory and practice of the use of explosives. In 1938 he graduated from the
military electrotechnical academy which, apart from training specialists in
communications, at that time also produced experts in the business of applying
the most complicated way of blowing up buildings and other objectives. During
the war he was chief of staff of the directorate of special works on the Western
front. From May 1942 he was chief of staff on the independent guards spetsnaz brigade, and from June he was
deputy commander of that brigade. In July 1944 his brigade was reorganised into
an independent guards motorised engineering brigade.
Kharchenko was working in the General Staff after the war when he wrote
a letter to Stalin, the basic point of which was: `If before the outbreak of
war our sportsmen who made up the spetsnaz
units spent some time in Germany, Finland, Poland and other countries, they
could be used in wartime in enemy territory with greater likelihood of
success.' Many specialists in the Soviet Union now believe that Stalin put an
end to the Soviet Union's self-imposed isolation in sport partly because of the
effect Kharchenko's letter had on him.
In 1948 Kharchenko completed his studies at the Academy of the General
Staff. From 1951 he headed the scientific research institute of the engineering
troops. Under his direction major researches and experiments were carried out
in an effort to develop new engineering equipment and armaments, especially for
small detachments of saboteurs operating behind the enemy's lines.
In the immediate postwar years Kharchenko strove to demonstrate at the
very highest level the necessity for reconstructing spetsnaz on a new technical level. He had a great many opponents.
So then he decided not to argue any more. He selected a group of sportsmen from
among the students at the engineering academy, succeeded in interesting them in
his idea, and trained them personally for carrying out very difficult tasks.
During manoeuvres held at the Totskyie camps, when on Marshal Zhukov's
instructions a real nuclear explosion was carried out, and then the behaviour
of the troops in conditions extremely close to real warfare was studied,
Kharchenko decided to deploy his own group of men at his own risk.
The discussions that took place after the manoeuvres were, the senior
officers all agreed, instructive — all except General Kharchenko. He
pointed out that in circumstances of actual warfare nothing of what they had
been discussing would have taken place because, he said, a small group of
trained people had been close to where the nuclear charges had been stored and
had had every opportunity to destroy the transport when the charges were being
moved from the store to the airfield. Moreover, he said, the officers who took
the decision to use nuclear weapons could easily have been killed before they
took the decision. Kharchenko produced proof in support of his statements. When
this produced no magic results, Kharchenko repeated his `act' at other major
manoeuvres until his persistence paid off. Eventually he obtained permission to
form a battalion for operations in the enemy's rear directed at his nuclear
weapons and his command posts.
The battalion operated very successfully, and that was the beginning of
the resurrection of spetsnaz. All the
contemporary formations of spetsnaz
have been created anew. That is why, unlike those which existed during the war,
they are not honoured with the title of `guards' units.7
7 Kharchenko himself moved steadily up the promotion
ladder. From 1961 he was deputy to the Chief of Engineering troops and from
February 1965 he was head of the same service. In 1972 he was promoted Marshal
of engineering troops. Having attained such heights, however, Kharchenko did
not forget his creation, and he was a frequent guest in the `Olympic Village',
the main spetsnaz training centre
near Kirovograd. When he was killed in 1975 during the testing of a new weapon,
his citations used the highest peacetime formula `killed in the course of
carrying out his official duties', which is very seldom met with in reference
to this senior category of Soviet officers.
Chapter
4. The Fighting Units of Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz is
made up of three distinct elements: the fighting units, the units of
professional sportsmen and the network of secret agents. In numerical terms the
fighting units of spetsnaz are the
largest. They are composed of soldiers from the ranks, out of those who are
especially strong, especially tough and especially loyal.
A factor that facilitates the selection process is that within the
Soviet Army there exists a hidden system for the selection of soldiers. Long
before they put on a military uniform, the millions of recruits are carefully
screened and divided into categories in acordance with their political
reliability, their physical and mental development, the extent of their
political involvement, and the `cleanliness' (from the Communist point of view)
of their personal and family record. The Soviet soldier does not know to which
category he belongs, and in fact he knows nothing about the existence of the
various categories. If a soldier is included in a higher category than his
comrades that does not necessarily mean that he is fortunate. On the contrary,
the best thing for a soldier is to be put into the lowest category and to
perform his two years of military service in some remote and God-forsaken
pioneer battalion in which there is neither discipline nor supervision, or in
units of which the officers have long since drunk away all the authority they
had. The higher the category the soldier is put into the more difficult his
military service will be.
Soldiers of the highest category make up the Kremlin guard, the troops
protecting the government communications, the frontier troops of the KGB and spetsnaz. Being included in the highest
category does not necessarily mean being posted to the Kremlin, to a spetsnaz brigade or to a government
communications centre. The highest-category men selected by the local military
authorities simply represent the best human material which is offered to the
`customer' for him to choose from. The `customer' selects only what suits his
need. All those who do not appeal to the customers move down to a lower level
and are offered to representatives of the next echelon, that of the strategic
missile troops, the airborne forces and crews of nuclear submarines.
The young soldier does not realise, of course, what is going on. He is
simply summoned to a room where people he doesn't know ask him a lot of
questions. A few days later he is called to the room again and finds a
different set of strangers there who also ask him questions.
This system of sorting out recruits reminds one of the system of closed
shops for leading comrades. The highest official has the first choice. Then his
deputy can go to the shop and choose something from what remains. Then lower
ranking officials are allowed into the shop, then their deputies, and so on. In
this system spetsnaz rank as the very
highest category.
The soldiers who have been picked out by spetsnaz officers are gathered together into groups and are
convoyed by officers and sergeants to fighting units of spetsnaz, where they are formed into groups and go through an
intensive course of training lasting several weeks. At the end of the course
the soldier fires shots from his Kalashnikov automatic rifle for the first time
and is then made to take the military oath. The best out of the group of young
soldiers are then sent to a spetsnaz
training unit from which they return six months later with the rank of
sergeant, while the rest are posted to fighting units.
In spetsnaz, as throughout the
Soviet Army, they observe the `cult of the old soldier'. All soldiers are
divided into stariki (`old men') and salagi (`small fry'). A real salaga is a soldier who has only just
started his service. A really `old man' (some twenty years' old) is one who is
about to complete his service in a few months. A man who is neither a real starik nor a real salaga falls between the two, a starik
being compared to anyone who has done less time than he has, and a salaga to anyone who has served in the
army a few months longer than he.
Having been recruited into spetsnaz,
the soldier has to sign an undertaking not to disclose secret information. He
has no right ever to tell anyone where he has served or what his service
consisted of. At most he has the right to say he served with the airborne
corps. Disclosure of the secrets of spetsnaz
is treated as high treason, punishable by death according to article 64 of the
Soviet criminal code.
Once he has completed his two years' service in spetsnaz a soldier has three choices. He can become an officer, in
which case he is offered special terms for entering the higher school for
officers of the airborne forces in Ryazan. He can become a regular soldier in spetsnaz, for which he has to go through
a number of supplementary courses. Or he has the option to join the reserve. If
he chooses the last course he is regarded as being a member of the spetsnaz reserve and is with it for the
next five years. Then, up to the age of 30, he is part of the airborne reserve.
After that he is considered to belong to the ordinary infantry reserve until he
is fifty. Like any other reserve force, the existence of a spetsnaz reserve makes it possible at a time of mobilisation to
multiply the size of the spetsnaz
fighting units with reservists if necessary.
___
Mud, nothing but mud all round, and it was pouring with rain. It had
been raining throughout the summer, so that everything was wet and hanging
limp. Everything was stuck in the mud. Every soldier's boot carried kilograms
of it. But their bodies were covered in mud as well, and their hands and faces
up to their ears and further. It was clear that the sergeant had not taken pity
on the young spetsnaz recruits that
day. They had been called up only a month before. They had been formed up into
a provisional group and been put through a month's course for young soldiers
which every one of them would remember all his life in his worst nightmare.
That morning they had been divided up into companies and platoons.
Before letting them back into their mud-covered, sodden tent at the end of the
day each sergeant had time to show his platoon the extent of his authority.
`Get inside!'
There were ten young men crowding around the entrance to a huge tent, as
big as a prison barracks.
`Get inside, damn you!' The sergeant urged them on.
The first soldier thrust aside the heavy wet tarpaulin which served as a
door and was about to enter when something stopped him. On the muddy, much
trampled ground just inside the entrance a dazzlingly white towel had been laid
down in place of a doormat. The soldier hesitated. But behind him the sergeant
was pushing and shouting: `Go on in, damn you!'
The soldier was not inclined to step on the towel. At the same time he
couldn't make up his mind to jump over it, because the mud from his boots would
inevitably land on the towel. Eventually he jumped, and the others jumped
across the towel after him. For some reason no one dared to take the towel
away. Everyone could see that there was some reason why it had been put there
right in the entrance. A beautiful clean towel. With mud all around it. What
was it doing there?
A whole platoon lived in one huge tent. The men slept in two-tier metal
bunks. The top bunks were occupied by the stariki —
the `old men' of nineteen or even nineteen and a half, who had already served a
year or even eighteen months in spetsnaz.
The salagi slept on the bottom bunks.
They had served only six months. By comparison with those who were now jumping
over the towel they were of course stariki
too. They had all in their day jumped awkwardly across the towel. Now they were
watching silently, patiently and attentively to see how the new men behaved in
that situation.
The new men behaved as anybody would in their situation. Some pushed
from behind, and there was the towel in front. So they jumped, and clustered together
in the centre of the tent, not knowing where to put their hands or where to
look. It was strange. They seemed to want to look at the ground. All the young
men behaved in exactly the same way: a jump, into the crowd and eyes down. But
no — the last soldier behaved quite differently. He burst into the tent,
helped by a kick from the sergeant. On seeing the white towel he pulled himself
up sharply, stood on it in his dirty boots and proceeded to wipe them as if he
really were standing on a doormat. Having wiped his feet he didn't join the
crowd but marched to the far corner of the tent where he had seen a spare bed.
`Is this mine?'
`It's yours,' the platoon shouted approvingly. `Come here, mate, there's
a better place here! Do you want to eat?'
That night all the young recruits would get beaten. And they would be
beaten on the following nights. They would be driven out into the mud barefoot,
and they would be made to sleep in the lavatories (standing up or lying down,
as you wish). They would be beaten with belts, with slippers and with spoons,
with anything suitable for causing pain. The stariki would use the salagi
on which to ride horseback in battles with their friends. The salagi would clean the `old men''s
weapons and do their dirty jobs for them. There would be the same goings-on as
in the rest of the Soviet Army. Stariki
everywhere play the same kind of tricks on the recruits. The rituals and the
rules are the same everywhere. The spetsnaz
differs from the other branches only in that they place the dazzlingly clean
towel at the entrance to the tent for the recruits to walk over. The sense of
this particular ritual is clear and simple: We are nice people. We welcome you,
young man, cordially into our friendly collective. Our work is very hard, the hardest
in the whole army, but we do not let it harden our hearts. Gome into our house,
young man, and make yourself at home. We respect you and will spare nothing for
you. You see — we have even put the towel with which we wipe our faces for
you to walk on in your dirty feet. So that's it, is it — you don't accept
our welcome? You reject our modest gift? You don't even wish to wipe your boots
on what we wipe our faces with! What sort of people do you take us for? You may
certainly not respect us, but why did you come into our house with dirty boots?
Only one of the salagi, the
one who wiped his feet on the towel, will be able to sleep undisturbed. He will
receive his full ration of food and will clean only his own weapon; and perhaps
the stariki will give instructions
that he should not do even that. There are many others in the platoon to do it.
Where on earth could a young eighteen-year-old soldier have learnt about
the spetsnaz tradition? Where could
he have heard about the white towel? Spetsnaz
is a secret organisation which treasures its traditions and keeps them to
itself. A former spetsnaz soldier
must never tell tales: he'll lose his tongue if he does. In any case he is
unlikely to tell anyone about the towel trick, especially someone who has yet
to be called up. I was beaten up, so let him be beaten up as well, he reasons.
There are only three possible ways the young soldier could have found
out about the towel. Either he simply guessed what was happening himself. The
towel had been laid down at the entrance, so it must be to wipe his feet on.
What else could it be for? Or perhaps his elder brother had been through the spetsnaz. He had, of course, never
called it by that name or said what it was for, but he might have said about
the towel: `Watch out, brother, there are some units that have very strange
customs.... But just take care — if you let on I'll knock your head off.
And I can.' Or his elder brother might have spent some time in a penal
battalion. Perhaps he had been in spetsnaz
and in a penal battalion. For the custom of laying out a towel in the entrance
before the arrival of recruits did not originate in spetsnaz but in the penal battalions. It is possible that it was
handed on to the present-day penal battalions from the prisons of the past.
The links between spetsnaz and
the penal battalions are invisible, but they are many and very strong.
In the first place, service in spetsnaz
is the toughest form of service in the Soviet Army. The physical and
psychological demands are not only increased deliberately to the very highest
point that a man can bear; they are frequently, and also deliberately, taken
beyond any permissible limits. It is quite understandable that a spetsnaz soldier should find he cannot
withstand these extreme demands and breaks down. The breakdown may take many
different forms: suicide, severe depression, hysteria, madness or desertion. As
I was leaving an intelligence unit of a military district on promotion to
Moscow I suddenly came across, on a little railway station, a spetsnaz officer I knew being escorted
by two armed soldiers.
`What on earth are you doing here?' I exclaimed. `You don't see people
on this station more than once in a month!'
`One of my men ran away!'
`A new recruit?'
`That's the trouble, he's a starik.
Only another month to go.'
`Did he take his weapon?'
`No, he went without it.'
I expressed my surprise, wished the lieutenant luck and went on my way.
How the search ended I do not know. At the very next station soldiers of the
Interior Ministry's troops were searching the carriages. The alarm had gone out
all over the district.
Men run away from spetsnaz
more often than from other branches of the services. But it is usually a case
of a new recruit who has been stretched to the limit and who usually takes a
rifle with him. A man like that will kill anyone who gets in his path. But he
is usually quickly run down and killed. But in this case it was a starik who had run off, and without a
rifle. Where had he gone, and why? I didn't know. Did they find him? I didn't
know that either. Of course they found him. They are good at that. If he wasn't
carrying a rifle he would not have been killed. They don't kill people without
reason. So what could he expect? Two years in a penal battalion and then the
month in spetsnaz that he had not
completed.
Spetsnaz has
no distinguishing badge or insignia — officially, at any rate. But
unofficially the spetsnaz badge is a
wolf, or rather a pack of wolves. The wolf is a strong, proud animal which is
remarkable for its quite incredible powers of endurance. A wolf can run for
hours through deep snow at great speed, and then, when he scents his prey, put
on another astonishing burst of speed. Sometimes he will chase his prey for
days, reducing it to a state of exhaustion. Exploiting their great capacity for
endurance, wolves first exhaust and then attack animals noted for their
tremendous strength, such as the elk. People say rightly that the `wolf lives
on its legs'. Wolves will bring down a huge elk, not so much by the strength of
their teeth as by the strength of their legs.
The wolf also has a powerful intellect. He is proud and independent. You
can tame and domesticate a squirrel, a fox or even a great elk with bloodshot
eyes. And there are many animals that can be trained to perform. A performing
bear can do really miraculous things. But you cannot tame a wolf or train it to
perform. The wolf lives in a pack, a closely knit and well organised fighting
unit of frightful predators. The tactics of a wolf pack are the very embodiment
of flexibility and daring. The wolves' tactics are an enormous collection of
various tricks and combinations, a mixture of cunning and strength, confusing
manoeuvres and sudden attacks.
No other animal in the world could better serve as a symbol of the spetsnaz. And there is good reason why
the training of a spetsnaz soldier
starts with the training of his legs. A man is as strong and young as his legs
are strong and young. If a man has a sloppy way of walking and if he drags his
feet along the ground, that means he himself is weak. On the other hand, a
dancing, springy gait is a sure sign of physical and metal health. Spetsnaz soldiers are often dressed up
in the uniform of other branches of the services and stationed in the same
military camps as other especially secret units, usually with communications
troops. But one doesn't need any special experience to pick out the spetsnaz man from the crowd. You can
tell him by the way he walks. I shall never forget one soldier who was known as
`The Spring'. He was not very tall, slightly stooping and round-shouldered. But
his feet were never still. He kept dancing about the whole time. He gave the
impression of being restrained only by some invisible string, and if the string
were cut the soldier would go on jumping, running and dancing and never stop.
The military commissariat whose job it was to select the young soldiers and
sort them out paid no attention to him and he fetched up in an army missile
brigade. He had served almost a year there when the brigade had to take part in
manoeuvres in which a spetsnaz
company was used against them. When the exercise was over the spetsnaz company was fed there in the
forest next to the missile troops. The officer commanding the spetsnaz company noticed the soldier in
the missile unit who kept dancing about all the time he was standing in the
queue for his soup.
`Come over here, soldier.' The officer drew a line on the ground. `Now
jump.'
The soldier stood on the line and jumped from there, without any run-up.
The company commander did not have anything with him to measure the length of
the jump, but there was no need. The officer was experienced in such things and
knew what was good and what was excellent.
`Get into my car!'
`I cannot, comrade major, without my officer's permission.'
`Get in and don't worry, you'll be all right with me. I will speak up
for you and tell the right people where you have been.'
The company commander made the soldier get into his car and an hour
later presented him to the chief of army intelligence, saying:
`Comrade colonel, look what I've found among the missile troops.'
`Now then, young man, let's see you jump.'
The soldier jumped from the spot. This time there was a tape measure
handy and it showed he had jumped 241 centimetres.
`Take the soldier into your lot and find him the right sort of cap,' the
colonel said.
The commander of the spetsnaz
company took off his own blue beret and gave it to the soldier. The chief of
intelligence immediately phoned the chief of staff of the army, who gave the
appropriate order to the missile brigade — forget you ever had such a man.
The dancing soldier was given the nickname `The Spring' on account of
his flexibility. He had never previously taken a serious interest in sport, but
he was a born athlete. Under the direction of experienced trainers his talents
were revealed and he immediately performed brilliantly. A year later, when he
completed his military service, he was already clearing 2 metres 90
centimetres. He was invited to join the professional athletic service of spetsnaz, and he agreed.
The long jump with no run has been undeservedly forgotten and is no
longer included in the programme of official competitions. When it was included
in the Olympic Games the record set in 1908, was 3 metres 33 centimetres. As an
athletic skill the long jump without a run is the most reliable indication of
the strength of a person's legs. And the strength of his legs is a reliable
indicator of the whole physical condition of a soldier. Practically half a
person's muscles are to be found in his legs. Spetsnaz devotes colossal attention to developing the legs of its
men, using many simple but very effective exercises: running upstairs, jumping
with ankles tied together up a few steps and down again, running up steep sandy
slopes, jumping down from a great height, leaping from moving cars and trains,
knee-bending with a barbell on the shoulders, and of course the jump from a
spot. At the end of the 1970s the spetsnaz
record in this exercise, which has not been recognised by the official sports
authorities, was 3 metres 51 centimetres.
A spetsnaz soldier knows that
he is invincible. This may be a matter of opinion, but other people's opinions
do not interest the soldier. He knows himself that he is invincible and that's
enough for him. The idea is instilled into him carefully, delicately, not too
insistently, but continually and effectively. The process of psychological
training is inseparably linked to the physical toughening. The development of a
spirit of self-confidence and of independence and of a feeling of superiority
over any opponent is carried out at the same time as the development of the
heart, the muscles and the lungs. The most important element in training a spetsnaz soldier is to make him believe
in his own strength.
A man's potential is unlimited, the reasoning goes. A man can reach any
heights in life in any sphere of activity. But in order to defeat his opponents
a man must first overcome himself, combat his own fears, his lack of confidence
and laziness. The path upwards is one of continual battle with oneself. A man
must force himself to rise sooner than the others and go to bed later. He must
exclude from his life everything that prevents him from achieving his
objective. He must subordinate the whole of his existence to the strictest
regime. He must give up taking days off. He must use his time to the best
possible advantage and fit in even more than was thought possible. A man aiming
for a particular target can succeed only if he uses every minute of his life to
the maximum advantage for carrying out his plan. A man should find four hours'
sleep quite sufficient, and the rest of his time can be used for concentrating
on the achievement of his objective.
I imagine that to instil this psychology into a mass army formed by
means of compulsory mobilisation would be impossible and probably unnecessary.
But in separate units carefully composed of the best human material such a
philosophy is entirely acceptable.
In numbers spetsnaz amounts to
less than one per cent of all the Soviet armed forces in peacetime. Spetsnaz is the best, carefully selected
part of the armed forces, and the philosophy of each man's unlimited potential
has been adopted in its entirety by every member of the organisation. It is a
philosophy which cannot be put into words. The soldier grasps it not with his
head, but with his feet, his shoulders and his sweat. He soon becomes convinced
that the path to victory and self-perfection is a battle with himself, with his
own mental and physical weakness. Training of any kind makes sense only if it
brings a man to the very brink of his physical and mental powers. To begin
with, he must know precisely the limits of his capabilities. For example: he
can do 40 press-ups. He must know this figure precisely and that it really is
the limit of his capacity. No matter how he strains he can do no more. But
every training session is a cruel battle to beat his previous record. As he
starts a training session a soldier has to promise himself that he will beat
his own record today or die in the attempt.
The only people who become champions are those who go into each training
session as if they are going to their death or to their last battle in which
they will either win or die. The victor is the one for whom victory is more
important than life. The victor is the one who dives a centimetre deeper than
his maximum depth, knowing that his lungs will not hold out and that death lies
beyond his limit. And once he has overcome the fear of death, the next time he
will dive even deeper! Spetsnaz
senior lieutenant Vladimir Salnikov, world champion and Olympic champion
swimmer, repeats the slogan every day: conquer yourself, and that was why he
defeated everyone at the Olympic Games.
An excellent place to get to know and to overcome oneself is the
`Devil's Ditch' which has been dug at the spetsnaz
central training centre near Kirovograd. It is a ditch with metal spikes stuck
into the bottom. The narrowest width is three metres. From there it gets wider
and wider.
Nobody is forced to jump the ditch. But if someone wants to test
himself, to conquer himself and to overcome his own cowardice, let him go and
jump. It can be a standing jump or a running jump, in running shoes and a track
suit, with heavy boots and a big rucksack on your back, or carrying a weapon.
It is up to you. You start jumping at the narrow part and gradually move
outwards. If you make a mistake, trip on something or don't reach the other
side you land with your side on the spikes.
There are not many who wanted to risk their guts at the Devil's Ditch,
until a strict warning was put up: `Only for real spetsnaz fighters!' Now nobody has to be invited to try it. There
are always plenty of people there and always somebody jumping, summer and
winter, on slippery mud and snow, in gas-masks and without them, carrying an
ammunition box, hand-in-hand, with hands tied together, and even with someone
on the back. The man who jumps the Devil's Ditch has confidence in himself,
considers himself invincible, and has grounds for doing so.
The relations within spetsnaz
units are very similar to those within the wolf pack. We do not know everything
about the habits and the ways of wolves. But I have heard Soviet zoologists
talk about the life and behaviour of wolves and, listening to them, I have been
reminded of spetsnaz. They say the
wolf has not only a very developed brain but is also the noblest of all the
living things inhabiting our planet. The mental capacity of the wolf is
reckoned to be far greater than the dog's. What I have heard from experts who
have spent their whole lives in the taiga of the Ussuri, coming across wolves
every day, is sharply at odds with what people say about them who have seen
them only in zoos.
The experts say that the she-wolf never kills her sickly wolf-cubs. She
makes her other cubs do it. The she-wolf herself gives the cubs the first
lesson in hunting in a group. And the cubs' first victim is their weaker
brother. But once the weaker ones are disposed of, the she-wolf protects the
rest. In case of danger she would rather sacrifice herself than let anyone harm
them. By destroying the weaker cubs the she-wolf preserves the purity and
strength of her offspring, permitting only the strong to live. This is very
close to the process of selection within spetsnaz.
At the outset the weaker soldier is naturally not killed but thrown out of spetsnaz into a more restful service.
When a unit is carrying out a serious operation behind enemy lines, however,
the wolf-cubs of spetsnaz will kill
their comrade without a second thought if he appears to weaken. The killing of
the weak is not the result of a court decision but of lynch law. It may appear
to be an act of barbarism, but it is only by doing so that the wolves have
retained their strength for millions of years and remained masters of the
forests until such a time as an even more frightful predator — man —
started to destroy them on a massive scale.
But the she-wolf has also another reputation, and it is no accident that
the Romans for centuries had a she-wolf as the symbol of their empire. A
strong, wise, cruel and at the same time caring and affectionate she-wolf
reared two human cubs: could there be a more striking symbol of love and
strength?
Within their pack the wolves conduct a running battle to gain a higher
place in the hierarchy. And I never saw anything inside spetsnaz that could be described as soldier's friendship, at least
nothing like what I had seen among the tank troops and the infantry. Within spetsnaz a bitter battle goes on for a
place in the pack, closer to the leader and even in the leader's place. In the
course of this bitter battle for a place in the pack the spetsnaz soldier is sometimes capable of displaying such strength
of character as I have never seen elsewhere.
The beating up of the young recruits who are just starting their service
is an effort on the part of the stariki
to preserve their dominating position in the section, platoon or company. But
among the recruits too there is right from the beginning a no less bitter
battle going on for priority. This struggle takes the form of continual
fighting between groups and individuals. Even among the stariki not everyone is not on the same level: they also have their
various levels of seniority. The more senior levels strive to keep the inferior
ones under their control. The inferior ones try to extract themselves from that
control. It is very difficult, because if a young soldier tries to oppose
someone who has served half a year more than he has, the longer-serving man
will be supported not only by the whole of his class but also by the other
senior classes: the salaga is not
only offending a soldier senior to himself (never mind who he is and what the
older ones think of him) but is also undermining the whole tradition
established over the decades in spetsnaz
and the rest of the Soviet Army. In spite of all this, attempts at protest by
the inferior classes occur regularly and are sometimes successful.
I recall a soldier of enormous physique and brutal features known as
`The Demon' who, after serving for half a year, got together a group of
soldiers from all the classes and lorded it over not just his own platoon but
the whole company. He was good at sensing the mood of a company. He and his
group never attacked stariki in
normal circumstances. They would wait patiently until one of the stariki did something which by spetsnaz standards is considered a
disgrace, like stealing. Only then would they set about him, usually at night.
The Demon was skilful at making use of provocation. For example, having stolen
a bottle of aftershave from a soldier, he would slip it to one of his enemies.
There is no theft in spetsnaz. The
thief is, then, always discovered very quickly and punished mercilessly. And
The Demon was, of course, in charge of the punitive action.
But seniority in spetsnaz
units is not determined only by means of fists. In The Demon's group there was
a soldier known as `The Squint', a man of medium height and build. I do not
know how it came about, but it soon became apparent that, although The Demon
was lording it over the whole company, he never opposed The Squint. One day The
Squint made fun of him in public, drawing attention to his ugly nostrils. There
was some mild laughter in the company and The Demon was clearly humiliated, but
for some reason he did not choose to exercise his strength. The Squint soon
came to dominate the whole company, but it never occurred to him to fight
anyone or to order anybody about. He simply told The Demon out loud what he
wanted, and The Demon used his strength to influence the whole company. This
went on for about three months. How the system worked and why, was not for us
officers to know. We watched what was going on from the sidelines, neither
interfering nor trying to look too closely into it.
But then there was a revolution. Someone caught The Demon out in a
provocation. The Demon again stole something and slipped it to one of his stariki, and he was found out. The Demon
and The Squint and their closest friends were beaten all night until the duty
officer intervened. The Demon and The Squint were locked up temporarily in a
store where they kept barrels of petrol. They kept them there for several days
because the likelihood of a bloody settling of accounts was considerable.
Meanwhile the whole affair was reported to the chief of Intelligence for the
district. Knowing the way things were done in spetsnaz, he decided that both men should be tried by a military
tribunal. The result was a foregone conclusion. As usual the tribunal did not
hear the true causes of the affair. The officer commanding the company simply
put together a number of minor offences: being late on parade, late for
inspection, found in a drunken state, and so forth. The whole company confirmed
everything in their evidence, and the accused made no attempt to deny the
charges. Yet there was some rough justice in the process, because they probably
both deserved their sentences of eighteen months in a penal battalion.
___
The silent majority can put up with anything for a long time. But
sometimes a spark lands in the powder keg and there is a frightful explosion.
Often in spetsnaz a group of
especially strong and bullying soldiers will dominate the scene for a certain
time, until suddenly a terrible counter blow is struck, whereupon the group is
broken up into pieces and its members, scorned and disliked, have to give way
to another group.
In every company there are a few soldiers who do not try to dominate the
rest, who do not voice their opinions and who do not try to achieve great
influence. At the same time everyone is aware of some enormous hidden strength
in them, and no one dares to touch them. This kind of soldier is usually found
somewhere near the top of the platoon's hierarchy, rarely at the very top.
I remember a soldier known as `The Machine'. He always kept himself to
himself. He probably experienced no great emotions, and by spetsnaz standards he was probably too kind and placid a person. He
did his job properly and seemed never to experience in his work either
enthusiasm or resentment. Nobody, not even The Demon, dared touch The Machine.
On one occasion, when The Demon was beating up one of the young soldiers, The
Machine went up to him and said, `That's enough of that.' The Demon did not
argue, but stopped what he was doing and moved away. The Machine reverted to
silence.
It was clear to everyone that The Machine's dislike of The Demon had not
been given its full expression. And so it was. On the night when the whole
company beat up The Demon and The Squint, The Machine lay on his bed and took
no part in the beating. Finally his patience gave out, he went to the toilet
where the sentence was being carried out, pushed the crowd aside with his
enormous hands and said, `Let me give him a punch.'
He gave The Demon a blow in the stomach with his mighty fist. Everyone
thought he had killed the man, who bent double and collapsed in a heap like a
wooden puppet with string instead of joints. They poured water over him and for
half an hour afterwards did not strike him. They were afraid of finishing it
off, afraid they would be tried for murder. Then they saw that The Demon had
survived and they continued to beat him. Quite aloof from the squabble for top
position in the company, The Machine had gone straight back to bed.
In the same company there was a soldier known as `The Otter'; slim, well
built, handsome. He was not very big and appeared to have little strength. But
he was like a sprung steel plate. His strength seemed to be explosive. He had
amazing reactions. When, as a recruit, he first jumped over the towel, he was
subjected to the usual treatment by the stariki. `Drop your pants and lie
down,' they said. He took hold of his belt as though he was ready to carry out
their orders. They dropped their guard, and at that moment The Otter struck one
of them in the mouth with such a blow that his victim fell to the ground and
was knocked senseless. While he was falling The Otter struck another one in the
teeth. A third backed out of the way.
That night, when he was asleep, they bound him in a blanket and beat him
up brutally. They beat him the second night, and the third, and again and
again. But he was a very unusual person even by spetsnaz standards. He possessed rather unusual muscles. When they
were relaxed they looked like wet rags. He suffered a lot of beatings, but one
had the impression that when he was relaxed he felt no pain. Perhaps there were
qualities in his character that put him above the standards we were used to.
When The Otter slept he was then in the power of the stariki and they did not spare him. They attacked him in the dark,
so that he should not recognise his attackers. But he knew all of them
instinctively. He never quarrelled with them and he always avoided groups of
them. If they attacked him in the daylight he made no great effort to resist. But
if he came across a stariki on his
own he would punch him in the teeth. If he came across him again he would do
the same again. He could knock a man's teeth out. He would strike suddenly and
like lightning. He would be standing relaxed, his arms hanging down, looking at
the ground. Then suddenly there would be a frightful, shattering blow. On
several occasions he punched stariki
in the presence of the whole company and sometimes even with officers present.
How beautifully he punched them! If there were officers present the company
commander would admire The Otter and indicate his approval with a smile on his
face — then sentence him to three days in the guard room, because they
were not allowed to hit each other.
This went on for a long time, until the stariki became tired of it all and left him alone. Nobody touched
him any more. Six months later they offered him a place at the very top. He
refused, still keeping his silence. He never got involved in the affairs of the
platoon and had no desire and no claim to be a leader. When the whole company
was beating up The Demon The Otter did not join in. Some years later I met a spetsnaz man I knew and learnt that The
Machine had been offered a job with the professional athletic service. He had
refused and had gone back to some remote Siberian village where his home was.
But The Otter had accepted the offer and is now serving in one of the best spetsnaz formations, training for the
ultimate job of assassinating key political and military figures on the enemy's
side.
___
There are other ways in which a spetsnaz
soldier can defend his position in the hierarchy, apart from punching people in
the face. Spetsnaz respects people
who take risks, who have strength and display courage. A man who will jump
further than others on a motorcycle, or one who will wait longer than others to
open his parachute, or one who hammers nails into a plank with the palm of his
hand — such people are assured of respect. A man who goes on running in
spite of tiredness when all the others are collapsing, who can go longer than
others without food and drink, who can shoot better than the others — such
people are also well thought of. But when everybody is thought highly of, there
is still a struggle among the best. And if there is no other way for a man to
show that he is better than another, physical violence will break out.
Two soldiers in leading positions may fight each other secretly without
anyone else being present: they go off into the forest and fight it out. A
conflict may begin with a sudden, treacherous attack by one man on another.
There are also open, legal encounters. Sport is particularly admired by spetsnaz. The whole company is brought
together, and they fight each other without rules, using all the tricks that spetsnaz has taught them — boxing,
sambo, karate. Some fights go on until the first blood is drawn. Others go on
until one person is humiliated and admits he is defeated.
Among the various ways of finding leaders a very effective one is the
fight with whips. It is an old gypsy way of establishing a relationship. The
leather-plaited whip several metres long is a weapon only rarely met with in spetsnaz. But if a soldier (usually a
Kalmik, a Mongolian or a gypsy) shows that he can handle the weapon with real
skill he is allowed to carry a whip with him as a weapon. When two experts with
the whip meet up and each claims to be the better one, the argument is resolved
in a frightful contest.
___
When we speak about the customs observed within spetsnaz we must of course take into account the simple fact that spetsnaz has its own standards and its
own understanding of the words `bad' and `good'. Let us not be too strict in
our judgement of the spetsnaz
soldiers for their cruel ways, their bloodthirstiness and their lack of
humanity. Spetsnaz is a closed
society of people living permanently at the extreme limits of human existence.
They are people who even in peacetime are risking their lives. Their existence
bears no relation at all to the way the majority of the inhabitants of our planet
live. In spetsnaz a man can be
admired for qualities of which the average man may have no idea.
The typical spetsnaz soldier
is a sceptic, a cynic and a pessimist. He believes profoundly in the depravity
of human nature and knows (from his own experience) that in extreme conditions
a man becomes a beast. There are situations where a man will save the lives of
others at the expense of his own life. But in the opinion of the spetsnaz men this happens only in a
sudden emergency: for example, a man may throw himself in front of a train to
push another man aside and save his life. But when an emergency situation, such
as a terrible famine, lasts for months or even years, the spetsnaz view is that it is every man for himself. If a man helps
another in need it means that the need is not extreme. If a man shares his
bread with another in time of famine it means the famine is not extreme.
In the spetsnaz soldier's
opinion the most dangerous thing he can do is put faith in his comrade, who may
at the most critical moment turn out to be a beast. It is much simpler for him
not to trust his comrade (or anybody else), so that in a critical situation
there will be no shattered illusions. Better that he regards all his fellow
human beings as beasts from the outset than to make that discovery in an
utterly hopeless situation.
The soldier's credo can be stated in a triple formula: Don't trust,
don't beg, don't fear. It is a formula which did not originate in spetsnaz, but in prisons many centuries
ago. In it can be seen the whole outlook of the spetsnaz soldier: his practically superhuman contempt for death,
and a similar contempt for everybody around him. He does not believe in
justice, goodness or humanity. He does not even believe in force until it has
been demonstrated by means of a fist, a whip or the teeth of a dog. When it is
demonstrated his natural reflex is to challenge it immediately.
Sometimes in the life of a spetsnaz
soldier he has a sort of revelation, a sense of complete freedom and happiness.
In this mental state he fears nobody at all, trusts no one at all, and would
not ask anybody for anything, even for mercy. This state comes about in a
combination of circumstances in which a soldier would go voluntarily to his
death, completely contemptuous of it. At that moment the soldier's mind
triumphs completely over cowardice, the vileness and meanness around him. Once
he has experienced this sensation of liberation, the soldier is capable of any
act of heroism, even sacrificing his life to save a comrade. But his act has
nothing in common with ordinary soldiers' friendship. The motive behind such an
act is to show, at the cost of his own life, his superiority over all around
him, including the comrade he saves.
In order for such a moment of revelation to come on some occasion, the
soldier goes through a long and careful training. All the beatings, all the
insults and humiliations that he has suffered, are steps on the path to a
brilliant suicidal feat of heroism. The well-fed, self-satisfied, egoistic
soldier will never perform any acts of heroism. Only someone who has been
driven barefoot into the mud and snow, who has had even his bread taken away
from him and has proved every day with his fists his right to existence —
only this kind of man is capable of showing one day that he really is the best.
Although the vast majority of spetsnaz
is made up of Slavonic personnel, there are some exceptions.
At first glance you would say he is a gypsy. Tall, well-built, athletic
in his movements, handsome, with a hooked nose and flashing eyes. The captain
plays the guitar so well that passers-by stop and do not go away until he stops
playing. He dances as very few know how. His officer's uniform fits him as if
it were on a dummy in the window of the main military clothing shop on the
Arbat.
The officer has had a typical career. He was born in 1952 in Ivanovo,
where he went to school. Then he attended the higher school for airborne troops
in Ryazan, and he wears the uniform of the airborne forces. He commands a
company in the Siberian military district. All very typical and familiar. At
first glance. But he is Captain Roberto Rueda-Maestro — not a very usual
name for a Soviet officer.
There is a mistake: the captain is not a gypsy. And if we study him more
carefully we notice some other peculiarities. He is wearing the uniform of the
airborne troops. But there are no airborne troops in the Siberian military
district where he is stationed. Even stranger is the fact that after finishing
school Roberto spent some time in Spain as a tourist. That was in 1969. Can we
imagine a tourist from the Soviet Union being in Spain under Franco's rule, at
a time when the Soviet Union maintained no diplomatic relations with Spain?
Roberto Rueda-Maestro was in Spain at
that time and has some idea of the country. But the strangest aspect of this
story is that, after spending some time in a capitalist country, the young man
was able to enter a Soviet military school. And not any school, but the Ryazan
higher school for airborne troops.
These facts are clues. The full set of clues gives us the right answer,
without fear of contradiction. The captain is a spetsnaz officer.
___
During the Civil War in Spain thousands of Spanish children were
evacuated to the Soviet Union. The exact number of children evacuated is not
known. The figures given about this are very contradictory. But there were
enough of them for several full-length films to be made and for books and
articles to be written about them in the Soviet Union.
As young men they soon became cadets at Soviet military schools. A
well-known example is Ruben Ruis Ibarruri, son of Dolores Ibarruri, general
secretary of the Communist Party of Spain. Even at this time the Spaniards were
put into the airborne troops. Ruben Ibarruri, for example, found himself in the
8th airborne corps. It is true that in a war of defence those formations
intended for aggressive advancing operations were found to be unnecessary, and
they were reorganised into guard rifle divisions and used in defensive battles
at Stalingrad. Lieutenant Ibarruri was killed while serving in the 35th guard
rifle division which had been formed out of the 8th airborne corps. It was a
typical fate for young men at that time. But then they were evacuated to the
Urals and Siberia, where the Spanish Communist Party (under Stalin's control)
organised special schools for them. From then on references to Spanish children
appeared very rarely in the Soviet press.
___
One of the special schools was situated in the town of Ivanovo and was
known as the E. D. Stasova International School. Some graduates of this school
later turned up in Fidel Castro's personal bodyguard, some became leading
figures in the Cuban intelligence service — the most aggressive in the
world, exceeding its teachers in the GRU and KGB in both cruelty and cunning.
Some of the school's graduates were used as `illegals' by the GRU and KGB.
It has to be said, however, that the majority of the first generation of
Spanish children remained in the Soviet Union with no possibility of leaving
it. But then in the 1950s and 1960s a new generation of Soviet Spaniards was
born, differing from the first generation in that it had no parents in the
USSR. This is very important if a young man is being sent abroad on a risky mission,
for the Communists then have the man's parents as hostages.
The second generation of Spaniards is used by the Soviet Government in
many ways for operations abroad. One very effective device is to send some
young Soviet Spaniards to Cuba, give them time to get used to the country and
acclimatise themselves, and then send them to Africa and Central America as
Cubans to fight against `American Imperialism'. The majority of Cuban troops
serving abroad are certainly Cubans. But among them is a certain percentage of
men who were born in the Soviet Union and who have Russian wives and children
and a military rank in the armed forces of the USSR.
For some reason Captain Roberto Rueda-Maestro is serving in the Urals
military district. I must emphasise that we are still talking about the usual spetsnaz units, and we haven't started
to discuss `agents'. An agent is a citizen of a foreign country recruited into
the Soviet intelligence service. Roberto is a citizen of the Soviet Union. He
does not have and has never had in his life any other citizenship. He has a
Russian wife and children born on the territory of the USSR, as he was himself.
That is why the captain is serving in a normal spetsnaz unit, as an ordinary Soviet officer.
Spetsnaz
seeks out and finds — it is easy to do in the Soviet Union — people
born in the Soviet Union but of obviously foreign origin. With a name like
Ruedo-Maestro it is very difficult to make a career in any branch of the Soviet
armed forces. The only exception is spetsnaz,
where such a name is no obstacle but a passport to promotion.
___
In spetsnaz I have met people
with German names such as Stolz, Schwarz, Weiss and so forth. The story of
these Soviet Germans is also connected with the war. According to 1979 figures
there were 1,846,000 Germans living in the Soviet Union. But most of those
Germans came to Russia two hundred years ago and are of no use to spetsnaz. Different Germans are
required, and they also exist in the Soviet Union.
During the war, and especially in its final stages, the Red Army took a
tremendous number of German soldiers prisoner. The prisoners were held in
utterly inhuman conditions, and it was not surprising that some of them did
things that they would not have done in any other situation. They were people driven
to extremes by the brutal Gulag regime, who committed crimes against their
fellow prisoners, sometimes even murdering their comrades, or forcing them to
suicide. Many of those who survived, once released from the prison camp, were
afraid to return to Germany and settled in the Soviet Union. Though the
percentage of such people was small it still meant quite a lot of people, all
of whom were of course on the records of the Soviet secret services and were
used by them. The Soviet special services helped many of them to settle down
and have a family. There were plenty of German women from among the Germans
long settled in Russia. So now the Soviet Union has a second generation of
Soviet Germans, born in the Soviet Union of fathers who have committed crimes against
the German people. This is the kind of young German who can be met with in many
spetsnaz units.
___
Very rarely one comes across young Soviet Italians, too, with the same
background as the Spaniards and Germans. And spetsnaz contains Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Koreans, Mongolians, Finns
and people of other nationalities. How they came to be there I do not know. But
it can be taken for granted that every one of them has a much-loved family in
the Soviet Union. Spetsnaz trusts its
soldiers, but still prefers to have hostages for each of its men.
The result is that the percentage of spetsnaz
soldiers who were born in the Soviet Union to parents of genuine foreign
extraction is quite high. With the mixture of Soviet nationalities, mainly
Russian, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Georgians and Uzbeks,
the units are a very motley company indeed. You may even, suddenly, come across
a real Chinese. Such people, citizens of the USSR but of foreign extraction,
are known as `the other people'. I don't know where the name came from, but the
foreigners accept it and are not offended. In my view it is used without any
tinge of racism, in a spirit rather of friendship and good humour, to
differentiate people who are on the one hand Soviet people born in the Soviet
Union of Soviet parents, and who on the other hand differ sharply from the main
body of spetsnaz soldiers in their
appearance, speech, habits and manners.
I have never heard of there being purely national formations within spetsnaz — a German platoon or a
Spanish company. It is perfectly possible that they would be created in case of
necessity, and perhaps there are some permanent spetsnaz groups chosen on a purely national basis. But I cannot
confirm this.
In the Soviet Union sport has been nationalised. That means to say that
it does not serve the interests of individuals but of society as a whole. The
interests of the individual and the interests of society are sometimes very
different. The state defends the interests of society against individuals, not
just in sport but in all other spheres.
Some individuals want to be strong, handsome and attractive. That is why
`body-building' is so popular in the West. It is an occupation for individuals.
In the Soviet Union it scarcely exists, because such an occupation brings no
benefit to the state. Why should the state spend the nation's resources so that
someone can be strong and beautiful? Consequently the state does not spend a
single kopek on such things, does not
organise athletic competitions, does not reward the victors with prizes and
does not advertise achievements in that field. There are some individuals who
engage in body-building, but they have no resources and no rights to organise
their own societies and associations.
The same applies to billiards, golf and some other forms of which the
only purpose is relaxation and amusement. What benefits would it bring the
state if it spent money on such forms of sport? For the same reason the Soviet
Union has done nothing about sport for invalids. Why should it? To make the
invalids happy?
But that same state devotes colossal resources to sport which does bring
benefit to the state. In the Soviet Union any sport is encouraged which:
demonstrates the superiority of the Soviet system over any other system;
provides the ordinary people with something to take their minds off their
everyday worries; helps to strengthen the state, military and police apparatus.
The Soviet Union is ready to encourage any sport in which achievement is
measured in minutes, seconds, metres, kilometres, centimetres, kilograms or
grams. If an athlete shows some promise that he may run a distance a tenth of a
second quicker than an American or may jump half a centimetre higher than his
rival across the ocean, the state will create for such an athlete whatever
conditions he needs: it will build him a personal training centre, get together
a personal group of trainers, doctors, managers or scientific consultants. The
state is rich enough to spend money on self-advertisement. These `amateur'
sportsmen earn large sums of money, though exactly how much is a secret. The
question has irritated some Soviets because it would not be a secret if the
amount were small. Even the Literaturnaya
Gazeta, on 6 August, 1986, raised the question with some indignation.
The Soviet Union encourages any striking spectator sport which can
attract millions of people, make them drop what they are doing and admire the
Soviet gymnasts, figure-skaters or acrobats. It also encourages all team games.
Basketball, volleyball, water polo are all popular. The most aggressive of the
team games, ice-hockey, is perhaps more of a national religion than is
Communist ideology. Finally, it encourages any sport directly connected with
the development of military skills: shooting, flying, gliding, parachute
jumping, boxing, sambo, karate, the biathlon, the military triathlon, and so
forth.
The most successful, richest and largest society in the Soviet Union
concerned with sport is the Central Army Sports Club (ZSKA). Members of the
club have included 850 European champions, 625 world champions and 182 Olympic
champions. They have set up 341 European and 430 world records.1
1 All figures as of 1 January, 1979.
Such results do not indicate that the Soviet Army is the best at
training top-class athletes. This was admitted even by Pravda.2 The secret of success
lies in the enormous resources of the Soviet Army. Pravda describes what happens: `It is sufficient for some even
slightly promising boxer to come on the scene and he is immediately lured
across to the ZSKA.' As a result, out of the twelve best boxers in the Soviet
Union ten are from the Army Club, one from Dinamo
(the sports organisation run by the KGB), and one from the Trud sports club. But of those ten army boxers, not one was the
original product of the Army club. They had all been lured away from other
clubs — the Trudoviye reservy,
the Spartak or the Burevestnik. The same thing happens in
ice-hockey, parachute jumping, swimming and many other sports.
2 2 September, 1985.
How does the army club manage to attract athletes to it? Firstly be
giving them military rank. Any athlete who joins the ZSKA is given the rank of
sergeant, sergeant-major, warrant officer or officer, depending on what level
he is at. The better his results as an athlete the higher the rank. Once he has
a military rank an athlete is able to devote as much time to sport as he wishes
and at the same time be regarded as an amateur, because professionally he is a
soldier. Any Soviet `amateur' athlete who performs slightly better than the
average receives extra pay in various forms — `for additional
nourishment', `for sports clothing', `for travelling', and so forth. The
`amateur' receives for indulging in his sport much more than a doctor or a
skilled engineer, so long as he achieves European standards. But the Soviet
Army also pays him, and not badly, for his military rank and service.
The ZSKA is very attractive for an athlete in that, when he can no
longer engage in his sport at international level, he can still retain his
military rank and pay. In most other clubs he would be finished altogether.
What has this policy produced? At the 14th winter Olympic Games, Soviet
military athletes won seventeen gold medals. If one counts also the number of
silver and bronze winners, the number of athletes with military rank is greatly
increased. And if one were to draw up a similar list of military athletes at
the summer Games it would take up many pages. Is there a single army in the
world that comes near the Soviet Army in this achievement?
___
Now for another question: why is the Soviet Army so ready to hand out
military ranks to athletes, to pay them a salary and provide them with the
accommodation and privileges of army officers?
The answer is that the ZSKA and its numerous branches provide a base
that spetsnaz uses for recruiting its
best fighters. Naturally not every member of the ZSKA is a spetsnaz soldier. But the best athletes in ZSKA almost always are.
Spetsnaz is
a mixture of sport, politics, espionage and armed terrorism. It is difficult to
determine what takes precedence and what is subordinate to what, everything is
so closely linked together.
In the first place the Soviet Union seeks international prestige in the
form of gold medals at the Olympics. To achieve that it needs an organisation
with the strictest discipline and rules, capable of squeezing every ounce of
strength out of the athletes without ever letting them slack off.
In the second place the Soviet Army needs an enormous number of people
with exceptional athletic ability at Olympic level to carry out special
missions behind the enemy's lines. It is desirable that these people should be
able to visit foreign countries in peace time. Sport makes that possible. As
far as the athletes are concerned, they are grateful for a very rich club which
can pay them well, provide them with cars and apartments, and arrange trips
abroad for them. Moreover, they need the sort of club in which they can be
regarded as amateurs, though they will work nowhere else but in the club.
Spetsnaz is
the point where the interests of the state, the Soviet Army and military
intelligence coincide with the interests of some individuals who want to devote
their whole lives to sport.
___
After the Second World War, as a result of the experience gained, sports
battalions were created by the headquarters of every military district, group
of forces and fleet; at army and flotilla HQ level sports companies were
formed. These huge sports formations were directly under the control of the
Ministry of Defence. They provided the means of bringing together the best
athletes whose job was to defend the sporting honour of the particular army,
flotilla, district, group or fleet in which they served. Some of the athletes
were people called up for their military service, who left the Army once they
had completed their service. But the majority remained in the military sports
organisation for a long time with the rank of sergeant and higher. Soviet
military intelligence chose its best men from the members of the sports units.
At the end of the 1960s it was recognised that a sports company or a
sports battalion was too much of a contradiction in terms. It could arouse
unnecessary attention from outsiders. So the sports units were disbanded and in
their place came the sports teams. The change was purely cosmetic. The sports
teams of the military districts, groups, fleets and so forth exist as
independent units. The soldiers, sergeants, praporshiki
and officers who belong to them are not serving in army regiments, brigades or
divisions. Their service is in the sports team under the control of the
district's headquarters. The majority of these sportsmen are carefully screened
and recruited for spetsnaz training
to carry out the most risky missions behind the enemy's lines. Usually they are
all obliged to take part in parachute jumping, sambo, rifle-shooting, running
and swimming, apart from their own basic sport.
A person looking at the teams of the military districts, groups and so
forth with an untrained eye will notice nothing unusual. It is as though spetsnaz is a completely separate
entity. Every athlete and every small group have their own individual tasks and
get on with them: running, swimming, jumping and shooting. But later, in the
evenings, in closed, well-guarded premises, they study topography, radio
communications, engineering and other special subjects. They are regularly
taken off secretly in ones and twos or groups, or even regiments to remote
parts where they take part in exercises. Companies and regiments of
professional athletes in spetsnaz
exist only temporarily during the exercises and alerts, and they then quietly
disperse, becoming again innocent sections and teams able at the right moment
to turn into formidable fighting units.
According to Colonel-General Shatilov, the athlete is more energetic and
braver in battle, has more confidence in his strength, is difficult to catch
unawares, reacts quickly to changes of circumstance and is less liable to tire.
There is no disputing this. A first-class athlete is primarily a person who
possesses great strength of will, who has defeated his own laziness and
cowardice, who has forced himself to run every day till he drops and has trained
his muscles to a state of complete exhaustion. An athlete is a man infected by
the spirit of competition and who desires victory in a competition or battle
more than the average man.
___
In the sports sections and teams of the military districts, groups,
armies, fleets, flotillas there is a very high percentage of women also engaged
in sport and who defend the honour of their district, group and so forth. Like
the men, the women are given military rank and, like the men, are recruited
into spetsnaz.
There are no women in the usual spetsnaz
units. But in the professional sports units of spetsnaz women constitute about half the numbers. They engage in
various kinds of sport: parachute jumping, gliding, flying, shooting, running,
swimming, motocross, and so on. Every woman who joins spetsnaz has to engage in some associated forms of sport apart from
her own basic sport, and among these are some that are obligatory, such as
sambo, shooting and a few others. The woman have to take part in exercises
along with the men and have to study the full syllabus of subjects necessary
for operating behind the enemy's lines.
That there should be such a high percentage of women in the professional
sports formations of spetsnaz is a
matter of psychology and strategy: if in the course of a war a group of tall,
broadshouldered young men were to appear behind the lines this might give rise
to bewilderment, since all the men are supposed to be at the front. But if in
the same situation people were to see a group of athletic-looking girls there
would be little likelihood of any alarm or surprise.
___
To be successful in war you have to have a very good knowledge of the
natural conditions in the area in which you are to be operating: the terrain
and the climate. You must have a good idea of the habits of the local
population, the language and the possibilities of concealment; the forests,
undergrowth, mountains, caves, and the obstacles to be overcome; the rivers,
ravines and gullies. You must know the whereabouts of the enemy's military
units and police, the tactics they employ and so forth.
A private in the average spetsnaz
unit cannot, of course, visit the places where he is likely to have to fight in
the event of war. But a top-class professional athlete does have the opportunity.
The Soviet Army takes advantage of such opportunities.
For example, in 1984 the 12th world parachuting championship took place
in France. There were altogether twenty-six gold medals to be competed for, and
the Soviet team won twenty-two of them. The `Soviet team' was in fact a team
belonging to the armed forces of the USSR. It consisted of five men and five
women: a captain, a senior praporshik,
three praporshiki, a senior sergeant
and four sergeants. The team's trainer, its doctor and the whole of the
technical personnel were Soviet officers. The Soviet reporter accompanying the
team was a colonel. This group of `sportsmen' spent time in Paris and in the
south of France. A very interesting and very useful trip, and there were other
Soviet officers besides — for example a colonel who was the trainer of the
Cuban team.
Now let us suppose a war has broken out. The Soviet Army must neutralise
the French nuclear capability. France is the only country in Europe, apart from
the Soviet Union itself, that stores strategic nuclear missiles in underground
silos. The silos are an extremely important target, possibly the most important
in Europe. The force that will put them out of action will be a spetsnaz force. And who will the Soviet
high command send to carry out the mission? The answer is that, after the world
parachuting championship, they have a tailor-made team.
It is often claimed that sport improves relations between countries.
This is a strange argument. If it is the case, why did it not occur to anyone before
the Second World War to invite German SS parachutists to their country to
improve relations with the Nazis?
At the present time every country has good grounds for not receiving any
Soviet military athletes on its own territory. The USSR should not be judged on
its record. To take three cases: the Soviet Government sent troops into
Czechoslovakia temporarily. We of
course trust the statements made by the Soviet Government and know that after a
certain time the Soviet troops will be withdrawn from Czechoslovakia. But until
that happens there are sufficient grounds for `temporarily' not allowing the
Soviet Army into any free country.
Secondly, the Soviet Union introduced a `limited' contingent of its
troops into Afghanistan. The Soviet leaders' idea was that the word `limited'
would serve to reassure everyone — there would be grounds for concern if
there were an `unlimited' contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. But so
long as the `limited' contingent of Soviet troops is still in Afghanistan it
would not be a bad idea to limit the number of Soviet colonels, majors,
captains and sergeants in the countries of the West, especially those wearing
blue berets and little gilt parachute badges on their lapels. It is those
people in the blue berets who are killing children, women and old men in
Afghanistan in the most brutal and ruthless way.
Thirdly, a Soviet pilot shot down a passenger plane with hundreds of
people in it. After that, is there any sense in meeting Soviet airmen at
international competitions and finding out who is better and who is worse?
Surely the answer is clear, without any competition.
Sport is politics, and big-time sport is big-time politics. At the end
of the last war the Soviet Union seized the three Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania and the West has never recognised the Soviet Union's right
to those territories. All right, said the Soviet leaders, if you won't
recognise it de jure, recognise it de facto. A great deal has been done,
some of it with the help of sport. During the Moscow Olympic Games some of the
competitions took place in Moscow and some of them in the occupied territories
of the Baltic states. At that time I talked to a number of Western politicians
and sportsmen. I asked them: if the Soviet Union had occupied Sweden, would
they have gone to the Olympic Games in Moscow? With one indignant voice they
replied, `No!' But if parts of the Games had taken place in Moscow and part in
Stockholm would they have gone to occupied Stockholm? Here there was no limit
to their indignation. They considered themselves people of character and they
would never have gone to occupied countries. Then why, I asked, did they go to
an Olympic Games, part of which took place in the occupied territory of the
Baltic states? To that question I received no answer.
___
The units made up of professional athletes in spetsnaz are an elite within an elite. They are made up of far
better human material (some of Olympic standard), enjoy incomparably better
living conditions and many more privileges than other spetsnaz units.
In carrying out their missions the professional athletes have the right
to make contact with spetsnaz agents
on enemy territory and obtain help from them. They are in effect the advance
guard for all the other spetsnaz
formations. They are the first to be issued with latest weapons and equipment
and the first to try out the newly devised and most risky kinds of operation.
It is only after experiments have been carried out by the units of athletes
that new weapons, equipment and ways of operating are adopted by regular spetsnaz units. Here is an example:
In my book Aquarium, first
published in July 1985, I described the period of my life when I served as an
officer of the Intelligence directorate of a military district and often had to
act as the personal representative of the district's chief of intelligence with
the spetsnaz groups. The period I
described was identified: it was after my return from `liberated'
Czechoslovakia and before I entered the Military-Diplomatic Academy in the
summer of 1970.
I described the ordinary spetsnaz
units that I had to deal with. One group carried out a parachute jump from 100
metres. Each man had just one parachute: in that situation a spare one was
pointless. The jump took place over snow. Throughout the book I refer only to
one type of parachute: the D-1-8. Four months later, in the magazine Sovetsky Voin for November 1985, a
Lieutenant-General Lisov published what might be called the pre-history of
group parachute jumps by spetsnaz
units from critically low levels. The General describes a group jump from a
height of 100 metres in which each man had only one parachute, and he explains
that a spare one is not needed. The jump takes place over snow. The article
refers to only one type of parachute — the D-1-8.
General Lisov was describing trials which were carried out from October
1967 to March 1968. The General did not, of course, say why the trials were
carried out and the word spetsnaz was
not, of course, used. But he underlined the fact that the trial was not
conducted because it had any connection with sport. On the contrary, according
to the rules laid down by the international sports bodies at that time, anyone
who during a contest opened his parachute less than 400 metres from the ground
was disqualified.
General Lisov conducted the trial contrary to all rules of the sport and
not to demonstrate sporting prowess. The military athletes left the aircraft at
a height of 100 metres, so their parachutes must have opened even lower down.
The group jump took place simultaneously from several aircraft, with the
parachutists leaving their plane at about one-second intervals. Each of them
was in the air for between 9.5 and 13 seconds. General Lisov summed it up like
this: 100 metres, 50 men, 23 seconds. An amazing result by any standards.
The fifty men symbolised the fifty years of the Soviet Army. It was
planned to carry out the jump of 23 February, 1968, on the Army's anniversary,
but because of the weather it was postponed till 1 March.
I could not have known at that time about General Lisov's trials. But it
is now clear to me that the tactic that was being developed in the spetsnaz fighting units in 1969-70 had
been initiated by professional military athletes a year before.
This dangerous stunt was carried out in my ordinary spetsnaz unit in rather simpler conditions: we jumped in a group of
thirteen men from the wide rear door of an Antonov-12 aircraft. The
professionals described by General Lisov jumped from the narrow side doors of
an Antonov-2, which is more awkward and dangerous. The professionals made the
jump in a much bigger group, more closely together and with greater accuracy.
In spite of the fact that the ordinary spetsnaz units did not succeed and will never succeed in achieving
results comparable with those of the professional athletes, nevertheless the
idea of the group jump from a height of a hundred metres provided the fighting
units with an exceptionally valuable technique. The special troops are on the
ground before the planes have vanished over the horizon, and they are ready for
action before the enemy has had time to grasp what is happening. They need this
technique to be able to attack the enemy without any warning at all. That is
the reason for taking such a risk.
During a war the fighting units of spetsnaz
will be carrying out missions behind the enemy's lines. Surely the units of
professional athletes, which are capable of carrying out extremely dangerous
work with even greater precision and speed than the ordinary spetsnaz units, should not be left
unemployed in wartime?
___
Before leaving the subject entirely, I would like to add a few words
about another use of Soviet athletes for terrorist operations. Not only the
Soviet Army but also the Soviet state's punitive apparatus (known at various
times as the NKVD, the MGB, the MVD and the KGB) has its own sports
organisation, Dinamo. Here are some
illustrations of its practical application.
`When the war broke out the «pure» parachutists disappeared, Anna
Shishmareva joined the OMSBON.'3 Anna
Shishmareva is a famous Soviet woman athlete of the pre-war period, while
OMSBON was a brigade of the NKVD's osnaz
which I have already referred to. Another example: `Among the people in our osoby, as our unit was called, were many
athletes, record holders and Soviet champions famous before the war.'4 Finally: Boris Galushkin, the outstanding
Soviet boxer of the pre-war period, was a lieutenant and worked as an
interrogator in the NKVD. During the war he went behind the enemy lines in one
of the osnaz units.
I have quite a few examples in my collection. But the KGB and the Dinamo sports club are not my field of
interest. I hope that one of the former officers of the KGB who has fled to the
West will write in greater detail about the use of athletes in the Soviet
secret police.
However, I must also make mention of the very mysterious Soviet sporting
society known as Zenit. Officially it
belongs to the ministry for the aircraft industry. But there are some quite
weighty reasons for believing that there is somebody else behind the club. The Zenit cannot be compared with the ZSKA
or Dinamo in its sporting results or
its popularity. But it occasionally displays a quite unusual aggressiveness in
its efforts to acquire the best athletes. The style and the general direction
of the training in the Zenit are very
militarised and very similar to what goes on in the ZSKA and Dinamo. Zenit deserves greater attention than it has been shown. It is just
possible that the researcher who studied Zenit
and its connections seriously will make some surprising discoveries.
3 Sovetsky Voin,
No. 20, 1985.
4 Krasnaya Zvezda,
22 May, 1985.
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 Moscow, Stalingrad, the lifting of the Leningrad
blockade, Kursk, the crossing of the Dnieper, the Belorussian operation, and
the Vistula-Oder and Berlin operations. What need had he of education? What
could the professors teach him?
___
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
Soviet Union have the military ranks of generals and marshals. The whole of
Soviet society is militarised and swamped with military propaganda. From a very
early age Soviet children engage in war games in a very serious way, often
using real submachine guns (and sometimes even fighting tanks), under the
direction of officers and generals of the Soviet Armed Forces.
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 Afghanistan. He distinguished himself in battle,
and completed his service in 1985. In May 1986 he took part in a DOSAAF team in
experiments in surviving in Polar conditions. As one of a group of Soviet
`athletes' he dropped by parachute on the North Pole.
DOSAAF is a very useful organisation for spetsnaz in many ways. The Soviet Union has signed a convention
undertaking not to use the Antarctic for military purposes. But in the event of
war it will of course be used by the military, and for that reason the
corresponding experience has to be gained. That is why the training for a
parachute drop on the South Pole in the Antarctic is being planned out by spetsnaz but to be carried out by
DOSAAF. The difference is only cosmetic: the men who make the jump will be the
very same cutthroats as went through the campaigns in Hungary, Czechoslovakia
and Afghanistan. They are now considered to be civilians, but they are under
the complete control of generals like Odintsev, and in wartime they will become
the very same spetsnaz troops as we
now label contemptuously `conscripts'.
Soviet military intelligence controls an enormous number of secret
agents, who, in this context, are foreigners who have been recruited by the
Soviet intelligence services and who carry out tasks for those services. They
can be divided into two networks, the strategic and the operational. The first
is recruited by the central apparat
of the GRU and the GRU's numerous branches within the country and abroad. It
works for the General Staff of the armed forces of the USSR and its agents are
recruited mainly in the capitals of hostile states or in Moscow. The second is
recruited by the intelligence directorates of fronts, fleets, groups of forces,
military districts and the intelligence departments of armies and flotillas,
independently of the central GRU apparat,
and its agents serve the needs of a particular front, fleet, army and so on.
They are recruited mainly from the territory of the Soviet Union or from
countries friendly to it.
The division of agents into strategic and operational networks does not
in any way indicate a difference in quality. The central apparat of the GRU naturally has many more agents than any military
district group of forces, in fact more than all the fleets, military district
armies and so forth put together. They are, broadly speaking, people who have
direct access to official secrets. Nevertheless the operational network has
also frequently obtained information of interest not just to local commanders but
also to the top Soviet leadership.
During the Second World War the information coming from the majority of
foreign capitals was not of interest to the Soviet Union. Useful information
came from a very small number of locations, but however vital it was, it was
insufficient to satisfy wartime demands. Consequently the operational network
of the armies, fronts and fleets increased many times in size during the war
and came to be of greater importance than the strategic network of agents of
the central GRU apparat. This could
happen again in another full-scale war if, contrary to the military and
political consensus on future wars, it proved to be long drawn-out.
The spetsnaz agent network, an
operational one, works for every
military district, group of forces, fleet and front (which all have in addition
an information network). Recruitment of agents is carried out mainly from the
territory of the Soviet Union and states friendly to it. The main places where spetsnaz looks out for likely candidates
for recruitment are: major ports visited by foreign tourists; and among foreign
students. Spetsnaz examines the
correspondence of Soviet citizens and of citizens of the satellite countries
and listens in to the telephone conversations in the hope of coming across interesting
contacts between Soviet and East European citizens and people living in
countries that spetsnaz is interested
in. Usually a foreign person who has been recruited can be persuaded to recruit
several other people who may never have been in the Soviet Union or had any
contact with Soviet citizens. It sometimes happens that spetsnaz officers turn up in somebody else's territory and recruit
agents. Most of them do not have diplomatic cover and do not recruit agents in
the capital cities, but drop off from Soviet merchant and fishing vessels in
foreign ports and appear in the foreign country as drivers of Soviet trucks,
Aeroflot pilots or stewards of Soviet trains. One proven place for recruiting
is a Soviet cruise ship: two weeks at sea, vodka, caviar, the dolce vita, pleasant company and the
ability to talk without fearing the local police.
If the reader had access to real dossiers on the secret agents of spetsnaz he would be disappointed and
probably shocked, because the agents of spetsnaz
bear no resemblance to the fine, upstanding, young and handsome heroes of spy
films. Soviet military intelligence is looking for an entirely different type
of person as a candidate for recruitment. A portrait of an ideal agent for spetsnaz emerges something like this: a
man of between fifty-five and sixty-five years of age who has never served in
the army, never had access to secret documents, does not carry or own a weapon,
knows nothing about hand-to-hand fighting, does not possess any secret
equipment and doesn't support the Communists, does not read the newspapers, was
never in the Soviet Union and has never met any Soviet citizens, leads a
lonely, introspective life, far from other people, and is by profession a
forester, fisherman, lighthouse-keeper, security guard or railwayman. In many
cases such an agent will be a physical invalid. Spetsnaz is also on the lookout for women with roughly the same
characteristics.
If spetsnaz has such a person
in its network, that means: a. that he is certainly not under any suspicion on
the part of the local police or security services; b. that in the event of any
enquiries being made he will be the last person to be suspected; c. that there
is practically nothing by which any suspicions could be confirmed, which in
turn means that in peacetime the agent is almost totally guaranteed against the
danger of failure or arrest; d. that in the event of war he will remain in the
same place as he was in peacetime and not be taken into the army or the public
service under the wartime mobilisation.
All this gives the spetsnaz
agent network tremendous stability and vitality. There are, of course,
exceptions to every rule, and in the rules of intelligence gathering there are
a lot of exceptions. You can come across many different kinds of people among
the agents of spetsnaz, but still spetsnaz tries mainly to recruit people
of just that type. What use are they to the organisation?
The answer is that they are formidably useful. The fact is that the acts
of terrorism are carried out in the main by the professional athletes of spetsnaz who have been excellently
trained for handling the most difficult missions. But the spetsnaz professionals have a lot of enemies when they get into a
foreign country: helicopters and police dogs, the checking of documents at the
roadside, patrols, even children playing in the street who miss very little and
understand a lot. The spetsnaz
commandos need shelter where they can rest for a few days in relative peace,
where they can leave their heavy equipment and cook their own food.
So the principal task of spetsnaz
agents is to prepare a safe hiding place in advance, long before the commandos
arrive in the country. These are some examples of hiding places prepared by spetsnaz agents. With GRU money a
pensioner who is actually a spetsnaz
agent buys a house on the outskirts of a town, and close to a big forest. In
the house he builds, quite legally, a nuclear shelter with electric light,
drains, water supply and a store of food. He then buys a car of a semi-military
or military type, a Land Rover for example, which is kept permanently in the
garage of the house along with a good store of petrol. With that the agent's
work is done. He lives quietly, makes use of his country house and car, and in
addition is paid for his services. He knows that at any moment he may have
`guests' in his house. But that doesn't frighten him. In case of arrest he can
say that the commando troops seized him as a hostage and made use of his house,
his shelter and car.
Or, the owner of a car dump takes an old, rusty railway container and
drops it among the hundreds of scrap cars and a few motorcycles. For the
benefit of the few visitors to the scrapyard who come in search of spare parts,
the owner opens a little shop selling Coca-Cola, hot dogs, coffee and
sandwiches. He always keeps a stock of bottled mineral water, tinned fish, meat
and vegetables. The little shop also stocks comprehensive medical supplies.
Or perhaps the owner of a small firm buys a large, though old yacht. He
tells his friends that he dreams of making a long journey under sail, which is
why the yacht always has a lot of stores aboard. But he has no time to make the
trip; what's more, the yacht is in need of repair which requires both time and
money. So for the moment the old yacht lies there in a deserted bay among
dozens of other abandoned yachts with peeling paint.
Large numbers of such places of refuge have been arranged. Places that
can be used as shelters include caves, abandoned (or in some cases working)
mines, abandoned industrial plants, city sewers, cemeteries (especially if they
have family vaults), old boats, railway carriages and wagons, and so forth. Any
place can be adapted as a shelter for the use of spetsnaz terrorists. But the place must be very well studied and
prepared in advance. That is what the agents are recruited for.
This is not their only task. After the arrival of his `guests' the agent
can carry out many of their instructions: keeping an eye on what the police are
doing, guarding the shelter and raising the alarm in good time, acting as a
guide, obtaining additional information about interesting objects and people.
Apart from all that an agent may be recruited specially to carry out acts of
terrorism, in which case he may operate independently under the supervision of
one person from the GRU, in a group of agents like himself, or in collaboration
with the professionals of spetsnaz
who have come from the Soviet Union.
___
The spetsnaz agent who is
recruited to provide support for the operations of fighting groups in the way I
have described, by acquiring a house and/or transport feels he is quite safe.
The local police would have tremendous difficulty trying to run him to earth.
Even if he were to be found and arrested it would be practically impossible to
prove his guilt. But what the agent does not know is that danger threatens him
from spetsnaz itself. Officers in the
GRU who are discontented with the Communist regime may, either as a mark of
protest or for other reasons, defect to the West. When they do, they are free
to identify agents, including spetsnaz
agents. Equally, once he has carried out his act of terrorism, the spetsnaz commando will destroy all
traces of its work and any witnesses, including the agent who protected or
helped the group in the first place. A man who is recruited as an agent to back
up a commando group very rarely realises what will happen to him afterwards.
Thus if it is relatively easy to recruit a man to act as a `sleeper',
what about recruiting a foreigner to act as a real terrorist, prepared to
commit murder, use explosives and fire buildings? Surely that is much more
difficult?
The answer is that, surprisingly, it is not. A spetsnaz officer out to recruit agents for direct terrorist action
has a wonderful base for his work in the West. There are a tremendous number of
people who are discontented and ready to protest against absolutely anything.
And while millions protest peacefully, some individuals will resort to any
means to make their protest. The spetsnaz
officer has only to find the malcontent who is ready to go to extremes.
A man who protests against the presence of American troops in Europe and
sprays slogans on walls is an interesting subject. If he not only paints
slogans but is also prepared to fire at an American general, should he be given
the sub-machine gun or an RPG-7 grenade-launcher to do the job, he is an
exceptionally interesting person. His goals tally perfectly with those of the
senior officers of the GRU.
In France protesters fired an RPG-7 grenade-launcher at the reactor of a
nuclear power station. Where they got the Soviet-made weapon I do not know.
Perhaps it was just lying there at the roadside. But if it was a spetsnaz officer who had the good
fortune to meet those people and provide them with their hardware, he would
without further ado have been given a Red Banner medal and promotion. The
senior officers of the GRU have a particular dislike of Western nuclear power
stations, which reduce the West's dependence on imported oil (including Soviet
oil) and make it stronger and more independent. They are one of spetsnaz's most important targets.
On another occasion a group of animal rights activists in the UK
injected bars of chocolate with poison. If spetsnaz
were able to contact that group, and there is every chance it might, it would
be extremely keen (without, of course, mentioning its name) to suggest to them
a number of even more effective ways of protesting. Activists, radicals, peace
campaigners, green party members: as far as the leaders of the GRU are concerned,
these are like ripe water-melons, green on the outside, but red on the
inside — and mouth-watering.
So there is a good base for recruiting. There are enough discontented
people in the West who are ready not only to kill others but also to sacrifice their
own lives for the sake of their own particular ideals which spetsnaz may exploit. The spetsnaz officer has only to find and
take advantage of the malcontent who is ready to go to extremes.
___
The spetsnaz network of agents
has much in common with international terrorism, a common centre, for
example — yet they are different things and must not be confused. It would
be foolhardy to claim that international terrorism came into being on orders
from Moscow. But to claim that, without Moscow's support, international
terrorism would never have assumed the scale it has would not be rash.
Terrorism has been born in a variety of situations, in various circumstances
and in different kinds of soil. Local nationalism has always been a potent
source, and the Soviet Union supports it in any form, just as it offers
concrete support to extremist groups operating within nationalist movements.
Exceptions are made, of course, of the nationalist groups within the Soviet
Union and the countries under its influence.
If groups of extremists emerge in areas where there is no sure Soviet
influence, you may be sure that the Soviet Union will very shortly be their
best friend. In the GRU alone there are two independent and very powerful
bodies dealing with questions relating to extremists and terrorists. First,
there is the 3rd Direction of the GRU which studies terrorist organisations and
ways of penetrating them. Then there is the 5th Directorate which is in charge
of all intelligence-gathering at lower levels, including that of spetsnaz.
The GRU's tactics toward terrorists are simple: never give them any
orders, never tell them what to do. They are destroying Western civilisation:
they know how to do it, the argument goes, so let them get on with it
unfettered by petty supervision. Among them there are idealists ready to die
for their own ideas. So let them die
for them. The most important thing is to preserve their illusion that they are
completely free and independent.
Moscow is an important centre of international terrorism, not because it
is from Moscow that instructions are issued, but because selected terrorist
groups or organisations which ask for
help may be given it if little risk is attached to doing so. Moscow's deep
involvement with terrorism is a serious political affair. One `resistance
movement' has to have more financial help, another less. One `Red Army' must
have modern weapons and an unlimited supply of ammunition, another one will do
better with old weapons and a limited supply of ammunition. One movement is to
be recognised, while another will be condemned in words but supported in
practice. `Independent' terrorists give little thought to where the money comes
from with which they travel the countries of the world, or who provides the
Kalashnikov submachine-guns and the cartridges to go with them, or who supplies
the instructors who teach them and train them.
But just look at the `independent' Palestinians: they virtually throw
their ammunition away. And if one watches a film about the fighting in
Afghanistan and then one from the streets of Beirut the difference is very
striking. The Afghan resistance fighters count every round, whereas the groups
fighting each other in the streets of Beirut don't even bother to aim when they
fire; they simply fire into the air in long bursts, although it means they are
wasting someone else's money. Whose money is it?
When I was beginning my military service I was taught to count every
round. Cartridges are metal and a lot of hard work. It is more difficult and
more expensive to make a cartridge than to make a fountain pen. And another
reason for being careful with ammunition is so that you are never without it at
a critical moment. Supplying an army with ammunition is a complex logistical
problem. If the transport carrying ammunition arrives even a few minutes after
you have spent all your ammunition without thinking, then you are dead. But
there are no such problems in Beirut. Nobody tells the conflicting groups what
the ammunition costs. Nobody tells them the cost of the lives they cut off
every day. Nobody mentions the danger that the regular supply of ammunition may
be late. The suppliers are certain that it will not be late.
___
The Soviet Union condemns the civil war in the Lebanon. But there is no
need for it to condemn the war. All it has to do is hold back the next
transport of ammunition, and war will cease.
Apart from military and financial support, the Soviet Union also
provides the terrorists aid in the form of training. Training centres have been
set up in the Soviet Union for training terrorists from a number of different
countries. Similar centres have been set up in the countries of Eastern Europe,
in Cuba and elsewhere. I know the centre in Odessa very well. Officially it
belongs to the 10th Chief Directorate of the General Staff which deals with the
export of weapons, sends Soviet military advisers to foreign countries and
trains foreigners to be fighters and terrorists. In the early 1960s this centre
was a branch of the higher infantry officers school. An intelligence faculty
was formed in it for Soviet students, many of whom ended up in the GRU and spetsnaz, while the remainder of the
huge area, classrooms and living quarters, was given over entirely to the
centre for training foreign fighters. When I was in Odessa most of the people
under training were intended for work in black Africa. Not all of them came
from Africa, quite a lot of them were from Cuba, but that was where the
majority were destined. The difference between the training and the living
conditions of the Soviet and the foreign students was tremendous.
The foreigners were better fed and wore Soviet officers' field uniforms,
though without any badges of rank. They had practically no theoretical tuition
at all. But their practical training was very concentrated, even by Soviet
standards. For them there was no shortage of ammunition. Shooting went on in
their camp day and night.
The foreigners were kept in strict isolation. The only outsiders who
could see them were the Soviet students and then only through the barbed wire.
The total isolation had a bad effect on some of the foreign students. But since
they could not break out of it, the Cuban minister of defence stepped in and
ordered some girls to be sent from Cuba who were trained as nurses for partisan
units at the Odessa centre. It was interesting to note that the soldiers were
under training for one year and the officers for two years, but the nurses'
training lasted ten years or more. At the end of their training the nurses were
sent back to Cuba and some younger ones were sent to replace them. There were
no more psychological problems at the training centre.
___
Foreigners belonging to `liberation movements' who turn up in the Soviet
Union are not generally recruited by the Soviet intelligence services.
Experience has shown that the terrorist who considers himself independent and
who kills people because of his own
beliefs is more effective than the one who fights on the orders of other
people. For his own ideas the terrorist will take risks and sacrifice his life,
but he is scarcely likely to do so merely on instructions from foreigners. So
why recruit him?
But there are important exceptions. Every terrorist is studied carefully
during his training, and among them will be noted the potential leaders and the
born rebels who will not submit to any authority. Of equal importance are the
students' weaknesses and ambitions, and their relationships with one another.
Some time, many years ahead, one of them may become an important leader, but
not one approved by Moscow, so it is vital to know in advance who his likely
friends and enemies will be.
As the students are themselves studied during training, some emerge as
exceptions among the crowd and as likely material for recruitment. Recruitment
at the training centres is carried on simultaneously by two different GRU
organisations. The 3rd Direction recruits informers, who will subsequently
remain inside the `national liberation movements' and will pass on to the heads
of the GRU the internal secrets of the movements. The 5th Directorate of the
GRU recruits some of the students to be part of the spetsnaz network of agents. This is a fairly complicated process.
Formally the candidate remains in his `liberation movement' and works there. In
fact he starts to operate on instructions from the GRU. It is a very delicate
situation and all possible steps are taken to protect the reputation of the
USSR in case of failure. With this aim in view the carefully selected
candidate, unaware of his position, is transferred to training in one of the
countries under Soviet influence. Recruitment then takes place, but not by
Soviet Intelligence, rather by the Intelligence service of one of the Soviet
satellite countries.
The recruitment of a full-blown terrorist is a very different matter
from the recruitment of an informer-agent. The terrorist has to go through very
tough training which becomes a daily, and a nightly nightmare. He dreams of the
training coming to an end: he yearns for the real thing. The instructors talk
to him and ask him what he would like, as a terrorist, to do. The terrorist
tells them. The instructors then `think about it' and a few days later tell him
it is not possible. The torture of the training continues. Again the question
of what he wants to do is raised, and again he is turned down. Various reasons
are given for refusing him: we value your life too highly to send you on such a
risky mission; such an act might have unwanted repercussions on your family,
your comrades, and so on. Thus the range of choice is gradually narrowed down
until the terrorist suggests exactly what the heads of Soviet Military
intelligence want. They `think about it' for a few days and finally give their
agreement in such a way that it does not appear to be something wanted by the
GRU but rather a compromise or a concession to the terrorist: if he really
thinks it necessary to do it, no obstacles will be put in his way.
I have of course simplified a process which is in practice a very
complicated affair.
The reward for the GRU is that a terrorist doing work for spetsnaz does not, in the great majority
of cases, suspect he is being used. He is utterly convinced that he is acting
independently, of his own will and by his own choice. The GRU does not leave
its signature or his fingerprints around.
Even in cases where it is not a question of individual terrorists but of
experienced leaders of terrorist organisations, the GRU takes extraordinary
steps to ensure that not only all outsiders but even the terrorist leader
himself should not realise the extent of his subordination to spetsnaz and consequently to the GRU.
The leader of the terrorists has a vast field of action and a wide choice. But
there are operations and acts of terrorism on which spetsnaz will spend any amount of money, will provide any kind of
weapon, will help in obtaining passports and will organise hiding places. But
there are also terrorist acts for which spetsnaz
has no money, no weapons, no reliable people and no hiding places. The leader
of the terrorists is at complete liberty to choose the mission he wants, but
without weapons, money and other forms of support his freedom to choose is
suddenly severely curtailed.
The standard issue of weapons to a spetsnaz
is a sub-machine gun, 400 rounds of ammunition, a knife, and six hand grenades
or a light single-action grenade-launcher. During a drop by parachute the
sub-machine gun is carried in such a way as not to interfere with the main (or
the reserve) parachute opening correctly and promptly, and not to injure the
parachute on landing. But the large number of fastenings make it impossible for
the parachutist to use the gun immediately after landing. So he should not be
left defenceless at that moment, the parachutist also carries a P-6 silent
pistol. After my escape to the West I described this pistol to Western experts
and was met with a certain scepticism. Today a great deal that I told the
experts has been confirmed, and examples of the silent pistol have been found
in Afghanistan. (Jane's Defence Weekly
has published some excellent photographs and a description of this unusual
weapon.) For noiseless shooting over big distances PBS silencers are used and
some soldiers carry them on their submachine guns.
Officers, radio-operators and cypher clerks have a smaller set of
weapons: a short-barrelled sub-machine gun (AKR) of 160 rounds, a pistol and a
knife.
Apart from personal weapons a spetsnaz
group carries collective weapons in the form of RPG-16D grenade-launchers,
Strela-2 ground-to-air missiles, mines for various purposes, plastic explosive,
snipers' rifles and other weapons. The unit learns how to handle group weapons
but does not keep them permanently with it: group weapons are held in the spetsnaz stores, and the quantity needed
by the unit is determined before each operation. Operations can often be
carried out simply with each man's personal weapons.
A group which sets out on an operation with only personal weapons can
receive the group weapons it needs later, normally by parachute. And in case of
pursuit a group may abandon not only the group weapons but some of their
personal weapons as well. For most soldiers, to lose their weapons is an
offence punished by a stretch in a penal battalion. But spetsnaz, which enjoys special trust and operates in quite unusual
conditions, has the privilege of resolving the dilemma for itself although
every case is, of course, later investigated. The commander and his deputy have
to demonstrate that the situation really was critical.
___
Unlike the airborne and the air assault forces, spetsnaz does not have any heavy weapons like artillery, mortars or
BMD fighting vehicles. But `does not have' does not mean `does not use'.
On landing in enemy territory a group may begin its operation by
capturing a car or armoured troop-carrier belonging to the enemy. Any vehicle,
including one with a red cross on it, is fair game for spetsnaz. It can be used for a variety of purposes: for getting
quickly away from the drop zone, for example, or for transporting the group's
mobile base, or even for mounting the assault on an especially important
target. In the course of exercises on Soviet territory spetsnaz groups have frequently captured tanks and used them for
attacking targets. An ideal situation is considered to be when the enemy uses
tanks to guard especially important installations, and spetsnaz captures one or several of them and immediately attacks
the target. In that case there is no need for a clumsy slow-moving tank to make
the long trip to its target.
Many other types of enemy weapons, including mortars and artillery, can
be used as heavy armament. The situation may arise in the course of a war where
a spetsnaz group operating on its own
territory will obtain the enemy's heavy weapons captured in battle, then get
through to enemy territory and operate in his rear in the guise of genuine
fighting units. This trick was widely used by the Red Army in the Civil War.
The Soviet high command even takes steps to acquire foreign weapons in
peacetime. In April 1985 four businessmen were arrested in the USA. Their
business was officially dealing in arms. Their illegal business was also
dealing in arms, and they had tried to ship 500 American automatic rifles,
100,000 rounds of ammunition and 400 night-vision sights to countries of the
Soviet bloc.
Why should the Soviet Union need American weapons in such quantities? To
help the national liberation armies which it sponsors? For that purpose the
leadership has no hesitation in providing Kalashnikov automatics, simpler and cheaper,
with no problems of ammunition supply. Perhaps the 500 American rifles were for
studying and copying? But the Soviet Union has captured M-16 rifles from many
sources, Vietnam for one. They have already been studied down to the last
detail. And there is no point in copying them since, in the opinion of the
Soviet high command, the Kalashnikov meets all its requirements.
It is difficult to think of any other reason for such a deal than that
they were for equipping spetsnaz
groups. Not for all of them, of course, but for the groups of professional
athletes, especially those who will be operating where the M-16 rifle is widely
used and where consequently there will be plenty of ammunition for it to be
found.
The quantity of rifles, sights and rounds of ammunition is easy to
explain: 100 groups of five men each, in which everybody except the
radio-operator has a night-sight (four to a group); for each rifle half a day's
requirements (200 rounds), the rest to be taken from the enemy. American sights
are used mainly because batteries and other essential spares can be obtained
from the enemy.
This is clearly not the only channel through which standard American
arms and ammunition are obtained. We know about the businessmen who have been
arrested. There are no doubt others who have not been arrested yet.
___
The weapons issued to spetsnaz
are very varied, covering a wide range, from the guitar string (used for
strangling someone in an attack from behind) to small portable nuclear changes
with a TNT equivalent of anything from 800 to 2000 tons. The spetsnaz arsenal includes swiftly acting
poisons, chemicals and bacteria. At the same time the mine remains the
favourite weapon of spetsnaz. It is
not by chance that the predecessors of the modern spetsnaz men bore the proud title of guards minelayers. Mines are
employed at all stages of a group's operations. Immediately after a landing,
mines may be laid where the parachutes are hidden and later the group will lay
mines along the roads and paths by which they get away from the enemy. The
mines very widely employed by spetsnaz
in the 1960s and 1970s were the MON-50, MON-100, MON-200 and the MON-300. The
MON is a directional anti-personnel mine, and the figure indicates the distance
the fragments fly. They do not fly in different directions but in a close bunch
in the direction the minelayer aims them. It is a terrible weapon, very
effective in a variety of situations. For example, if a missile installation is
discovered and it is not possible to get close to it, a MON-300 can be used to
blow it up. They are at their most effective if the explosion is aimed down a
street, road, forest path, ravine, gorge or valley. MON mines are often laid so
that the target is covered by cross fire from two or more directions.
There are many other kinds of mines used by spetsnaz, each of which has been developed for a special purpose:
to blow up a railway bridge, to destroy an oil storage tank (and at the same
time ignite the contents), and to blow up constructions of cement, steel, wood,
stone and other materials. It is a whole science and a real art. The spetsnaz soldier has a perfect command
of it and knows how to blow up very complicated objects with the minimal use of
explosive. In case of need he knows how to make explosives from material lying
around. I have seen a spetsnaz
officer make several kilograms of a sticky brown paste out of the most
inoffensive and apparently non-explosive materials in about an hour. He also
made the detonator himself out of the most ordinary things that a spetsnaz soldier carries with him —
an electric torch, a razor blade which he made into a spring, a box of matches
and finally the bullet from a tracer cartridge. The resulting mechanism worked
perfectly. In some cases simpler and more accessible things can be used —
gas and oxygen balloons of paraffin with the addition of filings of light
metals. A veteran of this business, Colonel Starinov, recalls in his memoirs
making a detonator out of one matchbox.
___
On the subject of mines, we must mention a terrible spetsnaz weapon known as the Strela-Blok. This weapon was used in
the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. It is quite
possible that by now it has been very substantially improved. In a sense it can
be described as an anti-aircraft mine, because it operates on the same
principle as the mine laid at the side of a road which acts against a passing
vehicle. It is related to mines which are based on portable grenade-launchers
which fire at the side of a tank or an armoured personnel carrier.
The Strela-Blok is an ordinary Soviet Strela-2 portable missile (a very
exact copy of the American Red Eye). A spetsnaz
group carries one or several of these missiles with it. In the area of a major
airfield the launch tube is attached to a tall tree (or the roof of a building,
a tall mast, a hayrick) and camouflaged. The missile is usually installed at a
short distance from the end of the runway. That done, the group leaves the
area. The missile is launched automatically. A clockwork mechanism operates
first, allowing the group to retire to a safe distance, then, when the set time
has run out (it could be anything from an hour to several days) a very simple
sound detector is switched on which reacts to the noise of an aircraft engine
of a particular power. So long as the engine noise is increasing nothing
happens (it means the aircraft is coming nearer), but as soon as the noise
decreases the mechanism fires. The infra-red warhead reacts to the heat
radiated by the engine, follows the aircraft and catches up with it.
Imagine yourself to be the officer commanding an aircraft base. One
plane (perhaps with a nuclear bomb on board) is shot down by a missile as it
takes off. You cancel all flights and despatch your people to find the
culprits. They of course find nobody. Flights are resumed and your next plane
is shot down on take-off. What will you do then? What will you do if the group
has set up five Strela-Blok missiles around the base and anti-infantry mines on
the approaches to them? How do you know that there are only five missiles?
___
Another very effective spetsnaz
weapon is the RPO-A flamethrower. It weighs eleven kilograms and has a single
action. Developed in the first half of the 1970s, it is substantially superior
to any flame-throwers produced at that time in any other country. The principal
difference lies in the fact that the foreign models of the time threw a stream
of fire at a range of about thirty metres, and a considerable part of the fuel
was burnt up in the trajectory.
The RPO-A, however, fires not a stream but a capsule, projected out of a
lightweight barrel by a powder charge. The inflammable mixture flies to the
target in a capsule and bursts into flame only when it strikes the target. The
RPO-A has a range of more than 400 metres, and the effectiveness of one shot is
equal to that of the explosion of a 122 mm howitzer shell. It can be used with
special effectiveness against targets vulnerable to fire — fuel stores,
ammunition dumps, and missiles and aircraft standing on the ground.
___
A more powerful spetsnaz
weapon is the GRAD-V multiple rocket-launcher, a system of firing in salvos
developed for the airborne forces. There the weapon can be mounted on the
chassis of a GAZ-66 truck. It has 12 launching tubes which fire jet-propelled
shells. But apart from the vehicle-mounted version, GRAD-V is produced in a
portable version. In case of need the airborne units are issued with separate
tubes and the shells to go with them. The tube is set up on the ground in the
simplest of bases. It is aimed in the right direction and fired. Several
separate tubes are usually aimed at one target and fired at practically the
same time. Fired from a vehicle its accuracy is very considerable, but from the
ground it is not so great. But in either case the effect is very considerable.
The GRAD-V is largely a weapon for firing to cover a wide area and its main
targets are: communications centres, missile batteries, aircraft parks and
other very vulnerable targets.
The airborne forces use both versions of the GRAD-V. Spetsnaz uses only the second, portable
version. Sometimes, to attack a very important target, for example a submarine
in its berth, a major spetsnaz unit
may fire GRAD-V shells simultaneously from several dozen or even hundreds of
tubes.
___
In spetsnaz the most
up-to-date weapons exist side by side with a weapon which has long been
forgotten in all other armies or relegated to army museums. One such weapon is
the crossbow. However amusing the reader may find this, the crossbow is in fact
a terrible weapon which can put an arrow right through a man at a great
distance and with great accuracy. Specialists believe that, at the time when
the crossbow was competing with the musket, the musket came off best only
because it made such a deafening noise that this had a greater effect on the
enemy than the soft whistle of an arrow from a crossbow. But in speed of
firing, accuracy and reliability the crossbow was superior to the musket,
smaller in size and weight, and killed people just as surely as the musket.
Because it made no noise when fired it did not have the same effect as a
simultaneous salvo from a thousand muskets.
But that noiseless action is exactly what spetsnaz needs today. The modern crossbow is, of course, very
different in appearance and construction from the crossbows of previous
centuries. It has been developed using the latest technology. It is aimed by
means of optical and thermal sights of a similar quality to those used on
modern snipers' rifles. The arrows are made with the benefit of the latest
research in ballistics and aerodynamics. The bow itself is a very elegant
affair, light, reliable and convenient. To make it easy to carry it folds up.
The crossbow is not a standard weapon in spetsnaz, although enormous attention is given in the athletic
training units to training men to handle the weapon. In case of necessity a spetsnaz group may be issued with one or
two crossbows to carry out some special mission in which a man has to be killed
without making any noise at all and in darkness at a distance of several dozen
metres. It is true that the crossbow can in no way be considered a rival to the
sniper's rifle. The Dragunov sniper's rifle is a marvellous standard spetsnaz weapon. But if you fit a
silencer to a sniper's rifle it greatly reduces its accuracy and range. For
shooting accurately and noiselessly, sniper's rifles have been built with a
`heavy barrel', in which the silencer is an organic part of the weapon. This is
a wonderful and a reliable weapon. Nevertheless the officers commanding the GRU
consider that a spetsnaz commander
must have a very wide collection of weapons from which he can choose for a
particular situation. It is possible, indeed certain, that special situations
will arise, in which the commander preparing for an operation will want to
choose a rather unusual weapon.
___
The most frightening, demoralising opponent of the spetsnaz soldier has always been and always will be the dog. No
electronic devices and no enemy firepower has such an effect on his morale as the
appearance of dogs. The enemy's dogs always appear at the most awkward moment,
when a group exhausted by a long trek is enjoying a brief uneasy sleep, when
their legs are totally worn out and their ammunition is used up.
Surveys conducted among soldiers, sergeants and officers in spetsnaz produce the same answer again
and again: the last thing they want to come up against is the enemy's dogs.
The heads of the GRU have conducted some far-reaching researches into
this question and come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with dogs is
to use dogs oneself. On the southeastern outskirts of Moscow there is the
Central Red Star school of military dog training, equipped with enormous
kennels.
The Central Military school trains specialists and rears and trains dogs
for many different purposes in the Soviet Army, including spetsnaz. The history of using dogs in the Red Army is a rich and
very varied one. In the Second World War the Red Army used 60,000 of its own
dogs in the fighting. This was possible, of course, only because of the
existence of the Gulag, the enormous system of concentration camps in which the
rearing and training of dogs had been organised on an exceptionally high level
in terms of both quantity and quality.
To the figure of 60,000 army dogs had to be added an unknown, but
certainly enormous, number of transport dogs. Transport dogs were used in
winter time (and throughout the year in the north) for delivering ammunition
supplies to the front line, evacuating the wounded and similar purposes. The
service dogs included only those which worked, not in a pack but as
individuals, carrying out different, precisely defined functions for which each
one had been trained. The Red Army's dogs had respected military trades: razvedka; searching for wounded on the
battle field; delivery of official messages. The dogs were used by the airborne
troops and by the guards minelayers (now spetsnaz)
for security purposes. But the trades in which the Red Army's dogs were used on
the largest scale were mine detection and destroying tanks.
Even as early as 1941 special service units (Spets sluzhba) started to be formed for combating the enemy's
tanks. Each unit consisted of four companies with 126 dogs in each company,
making 504 dogs in each unit. Altogether during the war there were two special
service regiments formed and 168 independent units, battalions, companies and
platoons.
The dogs selected for the special service units were strong and healthy
and possessed plenty of stamina. Their training was very simple. First, they
were not fed for several days, and then they began to receive food near some
tanks: the meat was given to them from the tank's lower hatch. So the dog
learned to go beneath the tank to be fed. The training sessions quickly became
more elaborate. The dogs were unleashed in the face of tanks approaching from
quite considerable distances and taught to get under the tank, not from the
front but from the rear. As soon as the dog was under the tank, it stopped and
the dog was fed. Before a battle the dog would not be fed. Instead, an
explosive charge of between 4 and 4.6 kg with a pin detonator was attached to
it. It was then sent under the enemy tanks.
Anti-tank dogs were employed in the biggest battles, before Moscow,
before Stalingrad, and at Kursk. The dogs destroyed a sufficient number of
tanks for the survivors to be considered worthy of the honour of taking part in
the victory parade in the Red Square.
The war experience was carefully analysed and taken into account. The
dog as a faithful servant of man in war has not lost its importance, and spetsnaz realises that a lot better than
any other branch of the Soviet Army. Dogs perform a lot of tasks in the modern spetsnaz. There is plenty of evidence
that spetsnaz has used them in
Afghanistan to carry out their traditional tasks — protecting groups from
surprise attack, seeking out the enemy, detecting mines, and helping in the
interrogation of captured Afghan resistance fighters. They are just as mobile
as the men themselves, since they can be dropped by parachute in special soft
containers.
In the course of a war in Europe spetsnaz
will use dogs very extensively for carrying out the same functions, and for one
other task of exceptional importance — destroying the enemy's nuclear
weapons. It is a great deal easier to teach a dog to get up to a missile or an
aircraft unnoticed than it is to get it to go under a roaring, thundering tank.
As before, the dog would carry a charge weighing about 4 kg, but charges of
that weight are today much more powerful than they were in the last war, and
the detonators are incomparably more sophisticated and foolproof than they were
then. Detonators have been developed for this kind of charge which detonate
only on contact with metal but do not go off on accidental contact with long
grass, branches or other objects. The dog is an exceptionally intelligent
animal which with proper training quickly becomes capable of learning to seek
out, identify correctly and attack important targets. Such targets include
complicated electronic equipment, aerials, missiles, aircraft, staff cars, cars
carrying VIPs, and occasionally individuals. All of this makes the spetsnaz dog a frightening and dangerous
enemy.
Apart from everything else, the presence of dogs with a spetsnaz group appreciably raises the
morale of the officers and the men. Some especially powerful and vicious dogs
are trained for one purpose alone — to guard the group and to destroy the
enemy's dogs if they appear.
___
In discussing spetsnaz weapons
we must mention also the `invisible weapon' — sambo. Sambo is a kind of
fighting without rules which was originated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
and has since been substantially developed and improved.
The originator of sambo was B. S. Oshchepkov, an outstanding Russian sportsman.
Before the Revolution he visited Japan where he learnt judo. Oshchepkov became
a black belt and was a personal friend of the greatest master of this form of
fighting, Jigaro Kano, and others. During the Revolution Oshchepkov returned to
Russia and worked as a trainer in special Red Army units.
After the Civil War Oshchepkov was made senior instructor in the Red
Army in various forms of unarmed combat. He worked out a series of ways in
which a man could attack or defend himself against one or several opponents
armed with a variety of weapons. The new system was based on karate and judo,
but Oshchepkov moved further and further away from the traditions of the
Japanese and Chinese masters and created new tricks and combinations of his
own.
Oshchepkov took the view that one had to get rid of all artificial
limitations and rules. In real combat nobody observes any rules, so why
introduce them artifically at training sessions and so penalise the sportsmen?
Oshchepkov firmly rejected all the noble rules of chivalry and permitted his
pupils to employ any tricks and rules. In order that a training session should
not become a bloodbath Oshchepkov instructed his pupils only to imitate some of
the more violent holds although in real combat they were permitted. Oshchepkov
brought his system of unarmed combat up to date. He invented ways of fighting
opponents who were armed, not with Japanese bamboo sticks, but with more
familiar weapons — knives, revolvers, knuckle-dusters, rifles with and
without bayonets, metal bars and spades. He also perfected responses to various
combat combinations — one with a long spade, the other with a short one;
one with a spade, the other with a gun; one with a metal bar, the other with a
piece of rope; one with an axe, three unarmed; and so forth.
As a result of its rapid development the new style of combat won the
right to independent existence and its own name — sambo — which is an
abbreviation of the Russian for `self-defence without weapons' (samooborona bez oruzhiya). The reader should
not be misled by the word `defence'. In the Soviet Union the word `defence' has
always been understood in a rather special way. Pravda formulated the idea succinctly before the Second World War:
`The best form of defence is rapid attack until the enemy is completely
destroyed.'1
1 Pravda, 14
August 1939.
Today sambo is one of the compulsory features in the training of every spetsnaz fighting man. It is one of the
most popular spectator sports in the Soviet Army. It is not only in the Army,
of course, that they engage in sambo, but the Soviet Army always comes out on
top. Take, for example, the championship for the prize awarded by the magazine Sovetsky Voin in 1985. This is a very
important championship in which sportsmen from many different clubs compete.
But as early as the quarter finals, of the eight men left in the contest one
was from the Dinamo club (an MVD
lieutenant), one from the mysterious Zenit
club, and the rest were from ZSKA, the Soviet Army club.
The words `without weapons' in the name sambo should not mislead the
reader. Sambo permits the use of any objects that can be used in a fight, up to
revolvers and sub-machine-guns. It may be said that a hammer is not a weapon,
and that is true if the hammer is in the hands of an inexperienced person. But
in the hands of a master it becomes a terrible weapon. An even more frightful
weapon is a spade in the hands of a skilled fighter. It was with the Soviet
Army spade that we began this book. Ways of using it are one of the dramatic
elements of sambo. A spetsnaz soldier
can kill people with a spade at a distance of several metres as easily, freely
and silently as with a P-6 gun.
There are two sides to sambo: sporting sambo and battle sambo. Sambo as
a sport is just two men without weapons, restricted by set rules. Battle sambo
is what we have described above. There is plenty of evidence that many of the
holds in battle sambo are not so much secret as of limited application. Only in
special teaching institutions, like the Dinamo
Army and Zenit clubs, are these holds
taught. They are needed only by those directly involved in actions connected
with the defence and consolidation of the regime.
___
The spetsnaz naval brigades
are much better equipped technically than those operating on land, for good
reasons. A fleet always had and always will have much more horsepower per man
than an army. A man can move over the earth simply using his muscles, but he
will not get far swimming in the sea with his muscles alone. Consequently, even
at the level of the ordinary fighting man there is a difference in the
equipment of naval units and ground forces. An ordinary rank and file swimmer
in the spetsnaz may be issued with a
relatively small apparatus enabling him to swim under the water at a speed of
up to 15 kilometres an hour for several hours at a time. Apart from such
individual sets there is also apparatus for two or three men, built on the
pattern of an ordinary torpedo. The swimmers sit on it as if on horseback. And
in addition to this light underwater apparatus, extensive use is made of midget
submarines.
The Soviet Union began intensive research into the development of midget
submarines in the middle of the 1930s. As usual, the same task was presented to
several groups of designers at the same time, and there was keen competition
between them. In 1936 a government commission studied four submissions: the
Moskito, the Blokha, and the APSS and Pigmei. All four could be transported by
small freighters or naval vessels. At that time the Soviet Union had completed
development work on its K-class submarines, and there was a plan that each
K-class submarine should be able to carry one light aircraft or one midget
submarine. At the same time experiments were also being carried out for the purpose
of assessing the possibility of transporting another design of midget submarine
(similar to the APSS) in a heavy bomber.
In 1939 the Soviet Union put into production the M-400 midget submarine
designed by the designer of the `Flea' prototype. The M-400 was a mixture of a
submarine and a torpedo boat. It could stay for a long time under water, then
surface and attack an enemy at very high speed like a fast torpedo boat. The
intention was also to use it in another way, closing in on the enemy at great speed
like a torpedo boat, then submerging and attacking at close quarters like an
ordinary submarine.
Among the trophies of war were the Germans' own midget submarines and
plans for the future, all of which were very widely used by Soviet designers.
Interest in German projects has not declined. In 1976 there were reports
concerning a project for a German submarine of only 90 tons displacement.
Soviet military intelligence then started a hunt for the plans of this vessel
and for information about the people who had designed them.
It should never be thought that interest in foreign weapons is dictated
by the Soviet Union's technical backwardness. The Soviet Union has many
talented designers who have often performed genuine technical miracles. It is
simply that the West always uses its own technical ideas, while Soviet
engineers use their own and other people's. In the Soviet Union in recent years
remarkable types of weapons have been developed, including midget submarines
with crews of from one to five men. The spetsnaz
naval brigades have several dozen midget submarines, which may not seem to be
very many, but it is more than all other countries have between them. Side by
side with the usual projects intensive work is being done on the creation of
hybrid equipment which will combine the qualities of a submarine and an
underwater tractor. The transportation of midget submarines is carried out by
submarines of larger displacement, fighting ships and also ships from the
fishing fleet. In the 1960s in the Caspian Sea the trials took place of a heavy
glider for transporting a midget submarine. The result of the trial is not
known. If such a glider has been built then in the event of war we can expect
to see midget submarines appear in the most unexpected places, for example in
the Persian Gulf, which is so vital to the West, even before the arrival of Soviet troops and the Navy. In the 1970s the
Soviet Union was developing a hydroplane which, after landing on water, could
be submerged several metres below water. I do not know the results of this
work.
___
Naval spetsnaz can be very
dangerous. Even in peacetime it is much more active than the spetsnaz brigades in the land forces.
This is understandable, because spetsnaz
in the land forces can operate only in the territory of the Soviet Union and
its satellites and in Afghanistan, while the naval brigades have an enormous
field of operations in the international waters of the world's oceans and
sometimes in the territorial waters of sovereign states.
In the conduct of military operations the midget submarine can be a very
unpleasant weapon for the enemy. It is capable of penetrating into places in
which the ordinary ship cannot operate. The construction of several midget
submarines may be cheaper than the construction of one medium-sized submarine,
while the detection of several midget submarines and their destruction can be a
very much more difficult task for an enemy than the hunt for the destruction of
one medium-sized submarine.
The midget submarine is a sort of mobile base for divers. The submarine
and the divers become a single weapons system which can be used with success
against both seaborne and land targets.
The spetsnaz seaborne brigades
can in a number of cases be an irreplaceable weapon for the Soviet high command.
Firstly, they can be used for clearing the way for a whole Soviet fleet,
destroying or putting out of action minefields and acoustic and other detection
systems of the enemy. Secondly, they can be used against powerful shore-based
enemy defences. Some countries — Sweden and Norway for example — have
built excellent coastal shelters for their ships. In those shelters the ships
are in no danger from many kinds of Soviet weapon, including some nuclear ones.
To discover and put out of action such shelters will be one of spetsnaz's most important tasks.
Seaborne spetsnaz can also be used
against bridges, docks, ports and underwater tunnels of the enemy. Even more
dangerous may be spetsnaz operations
against the most expensive and valuable ships — the aircraft carriers,
cruisers, nuclear submarines, floating bases for submarines, ships carrying
missiles and nuclear warheads, and against command ships.
In the course of a war many communications satellites will be destroyed
and radio links will be broken off through the explosion of nuclear weapons in
outer space. In that case an enormous number of messages will have to be
transmitted by underground and underwater cable. These cables are a very
tempting target for spetsnaz. Spetsnaz can either destroy or make use
of the enemy's underwater cables, passively (i.e. listening in on them) or
actively (breaking into the cable and transmitting false messages). In order to
be able to do this during a war the naval brigades of spetsnaz are busy in peacetime seeking out underwater cables in
international waters in many parts of the world.
___
The presence of Soviet midget submarines has been recorded in recent
years in the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Caribbean seas. They
have been operating in the Atlantic not far from Gibraltar. It is interesting
to note that for this `scientific' work the Soviet Navy used not only the
manned submarines of the Argus class but also the automatic unmanned submarines
of the Zvuk class.
Unmanned submarines are the weapon of the future, although they are
already in use in spetsnaz units
today. An unmanned submarine can be of very small dimensions, because modern
technology makes it possible to reduce considerably the size and weight of the
necessary electronic equipment. Equally, an unmanned submarine does not need a
supply of air and can have any number of bulkheads for greater stability and
can raise its internal pressure to any level, so that it can operate at any
depths. Finally, the loss of such a vessel does not affect people's morale, and
therefore greater risks can be taken with it in peace and war. It can penetrate
into places where the captain of an ordinary ship would never dare to go. Even
the capture of such a submarine by an enemy does not involve such major
political consequences as would the seizure of a Soviet manned submarine in the
territorial waters of another state. At present, Soviet unmanned automatic
submarines and other underwater equipment operate in conjunction with manned
surface ships and submarines. It is quite possible that for the foreseeable
future these tactics will be continued, because there has to be a man somewhere
nearby. Even so, the unmanned automatic submarines make it possible
substantially to increase the spetsnaz
potential. It is perfectly easy for a Soviet ship with a crew to remain
innocently in international waters while an unmanned submarine under its
control is penetrating into an enemy's territorial waters.
___
Apart from manned and unmanned submarines spetsnaz has for some decades now been paying enormous attention to
`live submarines' — dolphins. The Soviet Union has an enormous scientific
centre on the Black Sea for studying the behaviour of dolphins. Much of the
centre's work is wrapped in the thick shroud of official secrecy.
From ancient times the dolphin has delighted man by its quite
extraordinary abilities. A dolphin can easily dive to a depth of 300 metres;
its hearing range is seventy times that of a human being; its brain is
surprisingly well developed and similar to the human brain. Dolphins are very
easy to tame and train.
The use of dolphins by spetsnaz
could widen their operations even further, using them to accompany swimmers in
action and warning them of danger; guarding units from an enemy's underwater
commandos; hunting for all kinds of objects under water — enemy
submarines, mines, underwater cables and pipelines; and the dolphin could be
used to carry out independent acts of terrorism: attacking important targets
with an explosive charge attached to it, or destroying enemy personnel with the
aid of knives, needles or more complicated weapons attached to its body.
It was a cold, grey day, with a gusty wind blowing and ragged clouds
sweeping across the sky. The deputy chief of the spetsnaz department, 17th Army, and I were standing near an old
railway bridge. Many years previously they had built a railway line there, but
for some reason it had been abandoned half-built. There remained only the
bridge across leaden-coloured water. It seemed enormously high up. Around us
was a vast emptiness, forest covering enormous spaces, where you were more
likely to meet a bear than a man.
A spetsnaz competition was in
progress. The lieutenant-colonel and I were umpires. The route being covered by
the competitors was many tens of kilometres long. Soldiers, sodden with the
rain and red in the face, laden with weapons and equipment, were trying to
cover the route in the course of a few days — running, quick-marching,
running again. Their faces were covered with a dirty growth of beard. They
carried no food and got their water from the streams and lakes. In addition
there were many unpleasant and unforeseen obstacles for them on the way.
At our control point, orange arrows told the soldiers to cross the bridge.
In the middle of the bridge another arrow pointed to the handrail at the edge.
A soldier lagging a long way behind his group ran onto the bridge. His
tiredness kept his head down, so he ran to the middle of the bridge, and then a
little further before he came to a sharp halt. He turned back and saw the arrow
pointing to the edge. He looked over the rail and saw the next arrow on a
marshy island, some way away and overgrown with reeds. It was huge and orange,
but only just visible in the distance. The soldier let out a whistle of
concern. He clambered onto the rail with all his weapons and equipment, let out
a violent curse and jumped. As he dropped, he also tried to curse his fate and spetsnaz in good soldier's language, but
the cry turned into a long drawn-out howl. He hit the black freezing water with
a crash and for a long time did not reappear. Finally his head emerged from the
water. It was late autumn and the water was icy cold. But the soldier set off
swimming for the distant island.
At our control point, where one after the other the soldiers plunged
from the high bridge, there was no means of rescuing any soldier who got into
difficulty. And there was no one to rescue anybody either. We officers were
there only to observe the men, to make sure each one jumped, and from the very
middle of the bridge. The rest did not concern us.
`What if one of them drowns?' I asked the spetsnaz officer.
`If he drowns it means he's no good for spetsnaz.'
___
It means he's no good for spetsnaz.
The sentence expresses the whole philosophy of battle training. The old
soldiers pass it on to the young ones who take it as a joke. But they very soon
find out that nobody is joking.
Battle training programmes for spetsnaz
are drawn up in consultation with some of the Soviet Union's leading experts in
psychology. They have established that in the past training had been carried
out incorrectly, on the principle of moving from the simple to the more
difficult. A soldier was first taught to jump from a low level, to pack his parachute,
to land properly, and so forth, with the prospect later of learning to make a
real parachute jump. But the longer the process of the initial training was
drawn out, the longer the soldier was made to wait, the more he began to fear
making the jump. Experience acquired in previous wars also shows that
reservists, who were trained for only a few days and then thrown into battle,
in the majority of cases performed very well. They were sometimes short of
training, but they always had enough courage. The reverse was also shown to be
true. In the First World War the best Russian regiments stayed in Saint
Petersburg. They protected the Emperor and they were trained only to be used in
the most critical situations. The longer the war went on, the less inclined the
guards regiments became to fight. The war dragged on, turned into a senseless
carve-up, and finally the possibility arose of a quick end to it. To bring the
end nearer the Emperor decided to make use of his guards....
The Revolution of 1917 was no revolution. It was simply a revolt by the
guards in just one city in a huge empire. The soldiers no longer wanted to
fight; they were afraid of war and did not want to die for nothing. Throughout
the country there were numerous parties all of which were in favour of ending
the war, and only one of them called for peace. The soldiers put their trust in
that party. Meanwhile, the regiments that were fighting at the front had
suffered enormous losses and their morale was very low, but they had not
thought of dispersing to their homes. The front collapsed only when the central
authority in Saint Petersburg collapsed.
Lenin's party, which seized power in that vast empire by means of the
bayonets of terrified guards in the rear, drew the correct conclusions. Today
soldiers are not kept for long in the rear and they don't spend much time in
training. It is judged much wiser to throw the young soldier straight into
battle, to put those who remain alive into the reserve, reinforce with fresh
reservists, and into battle again. The title of `guards' is then granted only
in the course of battle, and only to those units that have suffered heavy
losses but kept fighting.
Having absorbed these lessons, the commanders have introduced other
reforms into the methods of battle training. These new principles were tried
out first of all on spetsnaz and gave
good results.
The most important feature of the training of a young spetsnaz soldier is not to give him time
to reflect about what is ahead for him. He should come up against danger and
terror and unpleasantness unexpectedly and not have time to be scared. When he
overcomes this obstacle, he will be proud of himself, of his own daring,
determination and ability to take risks. And subsequently he will not be
afraid.
Unpleasant surprises are always awaiting the spetsnaz soldier in the first stage of his service, sometimes in
the most unlikely situations. He enters a classroom door and they throw a snake
round his neck. He is roused in the morning and leaps out of bed to find,
suddenly, an enormous grey rat in his boot. On a Saturday evening, when it
seems that a hard week is behind him, he is grabbed and thrown into a small
prison cell with a snarling dog. The first parachute jump is also dealt with
unexpectedly. A quite short course of instruction, then into the sky and
straight away out of the hatch. What if he smashes himself up? The answer, as
usual: he is no good for spetsnaz!
Later the soldier receives his full training, both theoretical and
practical, including ways to deal with a snake round his neck or a rat in his
boot. But by then the soldier goes to his training classes without any fear of
what is to come, because the most frightful things are already behind him.
___
One of the most important aspects of full battle training is the
technique of survival. In the Soviet Union there are plenty of places where
there are no people for thousands of square kilometres. Thus the method is to
drop a small group of three or four men by parachute in a completely unfamiliar
place where there are no people, no roads and nothing except blinding snow from
one horizon to the other or burning sand as far as the eye can see. The group
has neither a map nor a compass. Each man has a Kalashnikov automatic, but only
one round of ammunition. In addition he has a knife and a spade. The food
supply is the minimum, sometimes none at all. The group does not know how long
it will have to walk — a day, five days, a fortnight? The men can use
their ammunition as they please. They can kill a deer, an elk or a bear. That
would be plenty for the whole group for a long journey. But what if wolves were
to attack and the ammunition were finished?
To make the survival exercises more realistic the groups take no radio
sets with them, and they cannot transmit distress signals, whatever has
happened within the group, until they meet the first people on their way. Often
they begin with a parachute drop in the most unpleasant places: on thin ice, in
a forest, in mountains. In 1982 three Soviet military parachutists made a jump
into the crater of the Avachinsk volcano. First of all they had to get
themselves out of the crater. Two other Soviet military parachutists have
several times begun their exercises with a landing on the summit of Mount
Elbruz (5,642 metres). Having successfully completed the survival route they
have done the same thing on the highest mountains in the Soviet Union —
the peaks named after Lenin (7,134 metres) and Communism (7,495 metres).
In the conditions prevailing in Western Europe today different habits
and different training methods are necessary. For this part of their training spetsnaz soldiers are dressed in black
prison jackets and dropped off at night in the centre of a big city. At the
same time the local radio and television stations report that a group of
especially dangerous criminals have escaped from the local prison.
Interestingly, it is forbidden to publish such reports in the press in the
Soviet Union but they may be put out by the local radio and television. The
population thus gets only small crumbs of information, so that they are scared
stiff of criminals about whom all sorts of fantastic stories start circulating.
The `criminals' are under orders to return to their company. The local
police and MVD troops are given the job of finding them. Only the senior
officers of the MVD know that it is only an exercise. The middle and lower
ranks of the MVD operate as if it were the real thing. The senior officers
usually tell their subordinates that the `criminals' are not armed and they are
to report immediately one of them is arrested. There is a problem, though: the
police often do not trust the report that the criminal is not armed (he may
have stolen a gun at the last moment) and so, contrary to their instructions,
they use their guns. Sometimes the arrested soldier may be delivered back to
his superior officers in a half-dead state — he resisted, they say, and we
simply had to defend ourselves.
In some cases major exercises are carried out, and then the whole of the
police and the MVD troops know that it is just an exercise. Even so, it is a
risky business to be in a spetsnaz
group. The MVD use dogs on exercises, and the dogs do not understand the
difference between an exercise and real fighting.
___
The spetsnaz soldier operates
on the territory of the enemy. One of his main tasks is, as we have seen, to
seek out specially important targets, for which purpose he has to capture
people and extract the necessary information from them by force. That the
soldier knows how to extract the information we have no doubt. But how can he
understand what his prisoner is saying? Spetsnaz
officers go through special language training and in addition every spetsnaz company has an
officer-interpreter who speaks at least two foreign languages fluently. But there
is not always an officer to hand in a small group, so every soldier and
sergeant questioning a prisoner must have some knowledge of a foreign language.
But most spetsnaz soldiers serve for
only two years and their battle training is so intense that it just is not
possible to fit in even a few extra hours.
How is this problem solved? Can a spetsnaz
soldier understand a prisoner who nods his head under torture and indicates his
readiness to talk?
The ordinary spetsnaz soldier
has a command of fifteen foreign languages and can use them freely. This is how
he does it.
Imagine that you have been taken prisoner by a spetsnaz group. Your companion has had a hot iron on the palms of
his hands and a big nail driven into his head as a demonstration. They look at you
questioningly. You nod your head — you agree to talk. Every spetsnaz soldier has a silken
phrase-book — a white silk handkerchief on which there are sixteen rows of
different questions and answers. The first sentence in Russian is: `Keep your
mouth shut or I'll kill you.' The sergeant points to this sentence. Next to it
is a translation into English, German, French and many other languages. You
find the answer you need in your own language and nod your head. Very good. You
understand each other. They can free your mouth. The next sentence is: `If you
don't tell the truth you'll be sorry!' You quickly find the equivalent in your
own language. All right, all clear. Further down the silk scarf are about a
hundred simple sentences, each with translations into fifteen languages —
`Where?', `Missile', `Headquarters', `Airfield', `Store', `Police checkpoint',
`Minefield', `How is it guarded?', `Platoon?', `Company?', `Battalion?',
`Dogs?', `Yes', `No', and so forth. The last sentence is a repetition of the
second: `If you don't tell the truth you'll be sorry!'
It takes only a couple of minutes to teach the stupidest soldier to
communicate with the aid of the silken phrase-book. In addition the soldier is
taught to say and understand the simplest and most necessary words, like
`forward', `back', `there', `here', `to the right', `to the left', `metres',
`kilometres' and the numbers from one to twenty. If a soldier is not able to
learn this no harm is done, because it is all written on the silk scarf, of
which there is one for every man in the group.
In the early 1970s Soviet scientists started to develop a very light
electronic device for translating in place of the silken phrase-book or to
supplement it. The high command's requirements were simple: the device had to
weigh not more than 400 grams, had to fit into a satchel and to be the size of
a small book or even smaller. It had to have a display on which could appear a
word or simple phrase in Russian which would immediately be translated into one
of the most widely used languages. The person being questioned would print out
his answer which would immediately be translated into Russian. I do not know
whether such a device is now in use. But progress in technology will soon
permit the creation of something similar. Not only spetsnaz but many other organisations in the Soviet Army have
displayed interest in the device. However, no device can replace a real
interpreter, and that is why, along with the real interpreters, so many people
of different foreign nationalities are to be found in spetsnaz.
A Soviet soldier who escaped from Afghanistan told how he had been put
into a reconnaissance company from an air-assault brigade. This is a case of
not-quite spetsnaz. Somebody found
out that he spoke one of the local dialects and he was immediately sent to the
commanding officer. The officer asked him two questions, the traditional two:
`Do you drink vodka? What about sport?'
`Vodka, yes, sport no.'
He gave completely the wrong answers. But in battle conditions a man
speaking the language of the enemy is particularly valued. They take him on in
spite of everything, and take very good care of him, because on his ability to
speak and understand what is said may depend the life of the group or of many
groups. And on the way the groups carry out their mission may depend the lives
of thousands and in some cases millions of people. The one drawback to being an
interpreter is that interpreters are never forgiven for making a mistake. But
the drawback is the same for him as it is for everyone else in the unit.
___
No soldier should be afraid of fire. Throughout the Soviet Army, in
every branch of the forces, very close attention is paid to a soldier's or
sailor's psychological readiness to come up against fire. In the Navy old
submarines are grounded, and several sailors are shut in a compartment in which
a fire is started. In the tank forces men are shut into an old tank and a fire
is lit inside or outside and sometimes both at once.
The spetsnaz soldier comes up
against fire more often than any other soldier. For that reason it is
constantly present in his battle training from the first to the last day. At
least once a day he sees fire that is clearly threatening his life. He is
forced to jump over wide ditches with fires raging in them. He has to race
through burning rooms and across burning bridges. He rides a motorcycle between
flaming walls. Fire can break out next to him at any moment — when he is
eating or sleeping. When he is making a parachute jump to test the accuracy of his
fall a tremendous flame may flare up suddenly beneath him.
The spetsnaz soldier is taught
to deal with fire and to protect himself and his comrades by every means —
rolling along the ground to stop his clothes burning, smothering the flames
with earth, branches or a groundsheet. In learning to deal with fire the most
important thing is not so much for him to get to know ways of protecting
himself (though this is important) as to make him realise that fire is a
constant companion of life which is always at his side.
Another very important element of spetsnaz
training is to teach a soldier not to be afraid of blood and to be able to
kill. This is more important and more difficult for spetsnaz than for the infantry, for example. The infantry man kills
his enemy mainly at a distance of more than a hundred metres and often at a
distance of 300 or 400 metres or more. The infantryman does not see the
expression on the face of his enemy. His job is simply to take aim correctly,
hold his breath and press the trigger smoothly. The infantryman fires at
plywood targets in peacetime, and in wartime at people who look at a distance
very much like plywood targets. The blood which an infantryman sees is mainly
the blood of his dead comrade or his own, and it gives rise to anger and a
thirst for revenge. After that the infantryman fires at his enemy without
feeling any twinges of conscience.
The training of a spetsnaz
soldier is much more complicated. He often has to kill the enemy at close
quarters, looking him straight in the face. He sees blood, but it is not the
blood of his comrades; it is often the blood of a completely innocent man. The
officers commanding spetsnaz have to
be sure that every spetsnaz soldier
will do his duty in a critical situation.
Like fire, blood is a constant attribute of the battle training of a
soldier. It used to be thought that a soldier could be accustomed to the sight
of blood gradually — first a little blood and then more day by day. But
experts have thrown out this view. The spetsnaz
soldier's first encounter with blood should be, they argue, quite unexpected
and in copious quantities. In the course of his career as a fighting man there
will be a whole lot of monstrous things which will spring up in front of him
without any warning at all. So he should get used to being unsurprised at
anything and afraid of nothing.
A group of young spetsnaz
soldiers are hauled out of bed at night because of an emergency, and sent in
pursuit of a `spy'. The worse the weather the better. Best of all when there is
torrential rain, a gusty wind, mud and slush. Many kilometres of
obstacles — broken-down stairs, holes in walls, ropes across holes and
ditches. The platoon of young soldiers are completely out of breath, their
hearts beating fast. Their feet slip, their hands are scratched and bruised.
Forward! Everyone is bad-tempered — the officers and especially the men.
The soldier can give vent to his anger only by punching some weaker
fellow-sufferer in the face and maybe getting a kick in the ribs in reply. The area
is dotted with ruined houses, everything is smashed, ripped apart, and there's
broken glass everywhere. Everything is wet and slippery, and there are
never-ending obstacles with searchlights trained on them. But they don't help:
they only hinder, blinding the men as they scramble over. Now they come to a
dark cellar, with the doors ripped off the hinges. Everybody down. Along the
corridor. Then there's water ahead. The whole group running at full tilt
without slowing down rushes straight into some sticky liquid. A blinding light
flashes on. It's not water they are in — it's blood. Blood up to the
knees, the waist, the chest. On the walls and the ceiling are chunks of rotten
flesh, piles of bleeding entrails. The steps are slippery from slimy bits of
brain. Undecided, the young soldiers jam the corridor. Then somebody in the
darkness lets a huge dog off its chain. There is only one way out —
through the blood. Only forwards, where there is a wide passageway and a
staircase upwards.
Where on earth could they get so much blood? From the slaughter-house,
of course. It is not so difficult to make the tank of blood. It can be narrow
and not very deep, but it must be twisting and there must be a very low ceiling
over it. The building in which the tank of blood is arranged can be quite
small, but piles of rotten boards, beams and concrete slabs must be tipped into
it. Even in very limited space it is possible to create the impression that you
are in an endless labyrinth overflowing with blood. The most important thing is
to have plenty of twists and turns, holes, gaps, dead ends and doors. If you
don't have enough blood you can simply use animal entrails mixed with blood.
The bottom of the tank must not be even: you must give the learner the
possibility of tripping over and going under. But most important is that the
first training session should take place with a group of really young soldiers
who have joined spetsnaz but are
still isolated and have had no opportunity of meeting older soldiers and being
warned what to expect. And there's something else: the tank of blood must not
be the final obstacle that night. The greatest mistake is to drive the men
through the tank and then bring the exercise to an end, leaving them to clean
themselves up and go to bed. In that case the blood will only appear to them as
a terrible dream. Keep driving them on over more and more obstacles.
Exhausting training exercises must be repeated and repeated again, never
stopping to rest. Carry on with the exercise throughout the morning, throughout
the day. Without food and without drink. In that way the men acquire the habit
of not being taken aback by any surprises. Blood on their hands and on their
uniforms, blood in their boots — it all becomes something familiar. On the
same day there must also be a lot of gunfire, labyrinths with bones, and dogs,
dogs and more dogs. The tank of blood must be remembered by the men as
something quite ordinary in a whole series of painful experiences.
In the next training session there is no need to use a lot of blood, but
it must be constantly present. The men have to crawl beneath some barbed wire.
Why not throw some sheep's innards on to the ground and the wire? Let them
crawl over that and not just along the ground. A soldier is firing from his
sub-machine-gun on the firing range. Why not surround his firing position with
chunks of rotting meat which is in any case no good for eating? A soldier makes
a parachute jump to test the accuracy of his drop. Why not put on his landing
spot, face down, a big puppet in spetsnaz
uniform with a torn, twisted parachute spattered with pig's blood? These are
all standard tricks in spetsnaz,
simple and effective. To increase the effect the instructors are constantly
creating situations in which the men are obliged to get blood on their hands.
For example, a soldier has to overcome an obstacle by scrambling up a wall.
When he reaches up to grab the ridge at the top of the wall he finds it
slippery and sticky from blood. He has a choice — either to drop down and
break his legs (and maybe his neck) or to hang on tighter with both hands, rest
his chin on the filthy sill, shift his grip, pull himself up and jump in
through the window. A spetsnaz
soldier does not fall. He pulls himself up and, with blood all over him,
swearing hoarsely, he carries on his way, onwards, ever onwards.
Later in the programme come half-joking exercises such as: catch a
pregnant cat, open its belly with a razor blade and count how many kittens it
has. This is not such an easy exercise as might appear at first. The soldier
has no gloves, the cat scratches and he has no one to help him. As an
instrument he is allowed to use only a blunt, broken razor blade or razor, and
he can easily cut his own fingers.
The process of familiarising spetsnaz
men with the sight and the reality of blood is not in the least intended to
make them into sadists. It is simply that blood is a liquid with which they are
going to have to work in wartime. A spetsnaz
soldier may not be scared of the red liquid. A surgeon works continually with
blood and so does the butcher. What would happen if a surgeon or a butcher were
suddenly to be afraid of the sight of blood?
___
Every Soviet soldier, wherever he may be serving, must be able to run,
to shoot accurately, to keep his weapon clean and in good working order, and
carry out the orders of his superiors precisely and quickly and without asking
unnecessary questions. If one studies the battle training of Soviet troops one
notices that there are common standards for all branches of troops operating in
any conditions. This gives the impression that training in the Soviet Army is
the same whatever the conditions. This is not quite true. Many of the demands
placed on officers and men are standard throughout the Army. Nevertheless, each
Soviet military district and each group of forces operates in conditions unique
to itself. Troops of the Leningrad military district have to operate in very
severe northern conditions, and their training takes place in forests, marshes
and the tundra of an arctic climate.
Troops of the Transcaucasian military district have to operate in high
mountains, while those of the Carpathian and Ural military districts have to
operate in medium-high mountains. Even so, the Carpathian district has a mild
European climate, while that of the Ural district is wildly different: harsh,
with a very hot summer and a very cold winter.
Every military district and group of forces has a commanding officer, a
chief of staff and a head of Intelligence who answer with their heads for the
battle-readiness of the troops under their command. But every district and
group faces a specific enemy, and its own particular (though absolutely secret)
task to perform in the event of war, and its own individual role in the plans
of the General Staff.
One reason that training takes place in
situ is that every Soviet frontier district and group of forces has, as a
rule, the same natural conditions as the territories in which it will have to
fight. Conditions in Karelia differ very little from those in Norway, Sweden
and Finland. If troops from the Carpathian military district cross the
frontier, they find themselves in a country of high rugged mountains identical
to that in which they are permanently stationed. And, if the Soviet troops in
Germany cross the frontier, even if there are small differences of terrain and
climate, they are at any rate still in Germany.
Spetsnaz is
concentrated at this level of fronts and armies. To make sure that spetsnaz training is carried out in
conditions as close as possible to those in which the troops will have to
operate the spetsnaz brigades now
have special training centres. For example, the natural conditions in the
Baltic military district are very similar to those in Denmark, Belgium, the
Netherlands, northern Germany and France. The mountainous Altai is strikingly
similar to Scotland. In the Carpathians there are places very similar to the
French Alps. If troops have to be trained for operations in Alaska and Canada,
Siberia is ideal for the purpose, while for operating in Australia spetsnaz units have to be trained in
Kazakhstan. The spetsnaz brigades
have their own training centres, but a brigade (or any other spetsnaz unit) can be ordered at any
moment to operate in an unfamiliar training centre belonging to another brigade.
For example, during the `Dvina' manoeuvres spetsnaz
units from the Leningrad, Moscow and North Caucasus military districts were
transferred to Belorussia to operate there in unfamiliar conditions. The
difference in conditions was especially great for the units transferred from
the northern Caucasus.
These transfers are restricted mainly to troops of the internal military
districts. It is reckoned that troops which are already located in Germany,
Czechoslovakia and the Transcaucasian military districts will remain there in
any circumstances, and it is better to train them thoroughly for operations in
those conditions without wasting effort on training for every kind of
condition. `Universal' training is needed by the troops of the internal
districts — the Siberian, Ural, Volga, Moscow and a few others which in
the event of war will be switched to crisis points. Courses are also provided
for the professional athletes. Every one of these is continually taking part in
contests and travelling round the whole country from Vladivostok to Tashkent
and Tbilisi to Archangelsk. Such trips in themselves play a tremendous part in
training. The professional athlete becomes psychologically prepared to operate
in any climate and any circumstances. Trips abroad, especially trips to those
countries in which he will have to operate in the event of war, are of even
greater assistance in removing psychological barriers and making the athlete
ready for action in any conditions.
___
Spetsnaz
units are often involved in manoeuvres at different levels and with different
kinds of participants. Their principal `enemies' on manoeuvres are the MVD
troops, the militia, the frontier troops of the KGB, the government
communications network of the KGB and the ordinary units of the armed forces.
In time of war KGB and MVD troops would be expected to operate against
national liberation movements within the Soviet Union, of which the most
dangerous is perceived to be the Russian movement against the USSR. (In the
last war it was the Russians who created the most powerful anti-Communist
army — the ROA). The Ukrainian resistance movement is also considered to
be very dangerous. Partisan operations would inevitably break out in the Baltic
states and the Caucasus, among others. KGB and MVD troops, which are not
controlled by the Ministry of Defence, are equipped with helicopters, naval
vessels, tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers, and exercises in
which they operate against spetsnaz
are of exceptional value to them. But the heads of the GRU are keen on joint
manoeuvres for their own reasons. If spetsnaz
has years' experience of operating against such powerful opponents as the KGB
and MVD, its performance against less powerful opponents can only be enhanced.
In the course of manoeuvres the KGB and the MVD (along with the Soviet
military units which have to defend themselves) use against spetsnaz the whole gamut of possible
means of defence, from total control of radio communication to electronic
sensors, from hunter aircraft provided with the latest equipment to sniffer
dogs, which are used in enormous numbers.
Apart from operating against real Soviet military targets, spetsnaz units go through courses at
training centres where the conditions and atmosphere of the areas in which they
will be expected to fight are reproduced with great fidelity. Models of Pluto,
Pershing and Lance missiles and of Mirage-VI, Jaguar and other nuclear-armed
aircraft are used to indicate the `enemy'. There is also artillery capable of
firing nuclear shells, special kinds of vehicles used for transporting
missiles, warheads, and so forth.
The spetsnaz groups have to
overcome many lines of defences, and any group that is caught by the defenders
is subject to treatment that is rough enough to knock out of the men any desire
to get caught in the future, either on manoeuvres or in a real battle. The spetsnaz soldier constantly has the
thought drilled into him that being a prisoner is worse than death. At the same
time he is taught that his aims are noble ones. First he is captured on
manoeuvres and severely beaten, then he is shown archive film shot in
concentration camps in the Second World War (the films are naturally more
frightful than what can be perpetrated on manoeuvres), then he is released, but
may be seized again and subject to a repeat performance. It is calculated that,
in a fairly short time the soldier will develop a very strong negative reaction
to the idea of being a prisoner, and the certainty that death — a noble
death, in the cause of spetsnaz —
is preferable.
___
One one occasion following my flight to the West I was present at some
large-scale military manoeuvres in which the armies of many Western countries
took part. The standard of battle training made a very favourable impression on
me. I was particularly impressed by the skilful, I would even say masterly, way
the units camouflaged themselves. The battle equipment, the tanks and other
vehicles, and the armoured personnel carriers are painted with something that
does not reflect the sunlight; the colour is very cleverly chosen; and the
camouflaging is painted in such a way that it is difficult to make out the
vehicle even at a short distance and its outline mixes in with the background.
But every army made one enormous mistake with the camouflaging of some of the
vehicles, which had huge white circles and red crosses painted on their sides.
I explained to the Western officers that the red and white colours were very
easily seen at a distance, and that it would be better to use green paint. I was
told that the vehicles with the red cross were intended for transporting the
wounded, which I knew perfectly well. That was a good reason, I said, why the
crosses should be painted out or made very much smaller. Please be human, I
said. You are transporting a wounded man and you must protect him by every
means. Then protect him. Hide him. Make sure the Communists can't see him.
The argument continued and I did not win the day. Later, other Western
officers tried to explain to me that I was simply ignorant of the international
agreement about these things. You are not allowed to fire on a vehicle with a
red cross. I agreed that I was ignorant and knew nothing about these
agreements. But like me, the Soviet soldier is also unaware of those
agreements. Those big red crosses are painted so that the Soviet soldier can
see them and not fire on them. But the Soviet soldier only knows that a red
cross means something medical. Nobody has ever told him he was not to shoot at
a red cross.
I learnt about this strange rule, that red crosses must not be shot at,
quite by chance. When I was still a Soviet officer, I was reading a book about
Nazi war criminals and amongst the charges made was the assertion that the
Nazis had sometimes fired on cars and trains bearing a red cross. I found this
very interesting, because I could not understand why such an act was considered
a crime. A war was being fought and one side was trying to destroy the other.
In what way did trains and cars with red crosses differ from the enemy's other
vehicles?
I found the answer to the question quite independently, but not in the
Soviet regulations. Perhaps there is an answer to the question there, but,
having served in the Soviet Army for many years and having sat for dozens of
examinations at different levels, I have never once come across any reference
to the rule that a soldier may not fire at a red cross. At manoeuvres I often
asked my commanding officers, some of them very high-ranking, in a very
provocative way what would happen if an enemy vehicle suddenly appeared with a
red cross on it. I was always answered in a tone of bewilderment. A Soviet
officer of very high rank who had graduated from a couple of academies could
not understand what difference it made if there were a red cross. Soviet officers
have never been told its complete significance. I never bothered to put the
question to any of my subordinates.
I graduated from the Military-Diplomatic Academy, and did not perform
badly there. In the course of my studies I listened attentively to all the
lectures and was always waiting for someone among my teachers (many of them
with general's braid and many years' experience in international affairs) to
say something about the red cross. But I learnt only that the International Red
Cross organisation is located in Geneva, directly opposite the Permanent
Representation of the USSR in United Nations agencies, and that the
organisation, like any other international organisation, can be used by
officers of the Soviet Intelligence services as a cover for their activities.
For whose benefit do the armies of the West paint those huge red crosses
on their ambulances? Try painting a red cross on your back and chest, and going
into the forest in winter. Do you think the red cross will save you from being
attacked by wolves? Of course not. The wolves do not know your laws and do not
understand your symbols. So why do you use a symbol the meaning of which the
enemy has no idea?
In the last war the Communists did not respect international conventions
and treaties, but some of their enemies, with many centuries of culture and
excellent traditions, failed equally to respect international laws. Since then
the Red Army has used the red cross symbol, painted very small, as a sign to
tell its own soldiers where the hospital is. The red cross needs only to be
visible to their own men. The Red Army has no faith in the goodwill of the
enemy.
International treaties and conventions have never saved anybody from
being attacked. The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact is a striking example. It did not
protect the Soviet Union. But if Hitler had managed to invade the British Isles
the pact would not have protected Germany either. Stalin said quite openly on
this point: `War can turn all agreements of any kind upside down.'1
1 Pravda, 15
September 1927.
The Soviet leadership and the Soviet diplomatic service adopt a
philosophical attitude to all agreements. If one trusts a friend there is no
need for a treaty; friends do not need to rely on treaties to call for assistance.
If one is weaker than one's enemy a treaty will not be any use anyway. And if
one is stronger than one's enemy, what is the point of observing a treaty?
International treaties are just an instrument of politics and propaganda. The
Soviet leadership and the Soviet Army put no trust in any treaties, believing
only in the force that is behind the treaties.
Thus the enormous red cross on the side of a military vehicle is just a
symbol of Western naivete and faith in the force of protocols, paragraphs, signatures
and seals. Since Western diplomats have signed these treaties they ought to
insist that the Soviet Union, having also signed them, should explain to its
soldiers, officers and generals what they contain, and should include in its
official regulations special paragraphs forbidding certain acts in war. Only
then would there be any sense in painting on the huge red crosses.
The red cross is only one example. One needs constantly to keep in mind
what Lenin always emphasised: that a dictatorship relies on force and not on
the law. `The scientific concept of dictatorship means power, limited in no
way, by no laws and restrained by absolutely no rules, and relying directly on
force.'2
2 Lenin, Vol. 25, p. 441.
Spetsnaz is
one of the weapons of a dictatorship. Its battle training is imbued with just
one idea: to destroy the enemy. It is an ambition which is not subject to any
diplomatic, juridical, ethical or moral restraints.
Chapter
11. Behind Enemy Lines: Spetsnaz
Tactics
Before spetsnaz units can
begin active operations behind the enemy's lines they have to get there. The
Soviet high command has the choice of either sending spetsnaz troops behind the enemy's lines before the outbreak of
war, or sending them there after war has broken out. In the first case the
enemy may discover them, realise that war has already begun and possibly press
the buttons to start a nuclear war — pre-empting the Soviet Union. But if spetsnaz troops are sent in after the
outbreak of war, it may be too late. The enemy may already have activated its
nuclear capability, and then there will be nothing to put out of action in the
enemy's rear: the missiles will be on their way to Soviet territory. One
potential solution to the dilemma is that the better, smaller part of spetsnaz — the professional
athletes — arrives before all-out war starts, taking extreme measures not
to be discovered, while the standard units penetrate behind enemy lines after
war has started.
___
In every Soviet embassy there are two secret organisations — the
KGB rezidentura and the GRU rezidentura. The embassy and the KGB rezidentura are guarded by officers of
the KGB frontier troops, but in cases where the GRU rezidentura has a complement of more than ten officers, it has its
own internal spetsnaz guard. Before
the outbreak of a war, in some cases several months previously, the number of spetsnaz officers in a Soviet embassy
may be substantially increased, to the point where practically all the
auxiliary personnel in the embassy, performing the duties of guards, cleaners,
radio-operators, cooks and mechanics, will be spetsnaz athletes. With them, as their `wives', women athletes from
spetsnaz may turn up in the embassy.
Similar changes of staff may take place in the many other Soviet bodies —
the consulate, the commercial representation, the offices of Aeroflot,
Intourist, TASS, Novosti and so forth.
The advantages of this arrangement are obvious, but it is not without
its dangers. The principal danger lies in the fact that these new terrorist
groups are based right in the centre of the country's capital city,
uncomfortably close to government offices and surveillance. But within days,
possibly within hours, before the outbreak of war they can, with care, make
contact with the spetsnaz agent
network and start a real war in the very centre of the city, using hiding
places already prepared.
Part of their support will come from other spetsnaz groups which have recently arrived in the country in the
guise of tourists, teams of sportsmen and various delegations. And at the very
last moment large groups of fighting men may suddenly appear out of Aeroflot
planes, ships in port, trains and Soviet long-distance road transport
(`Sovtransavto'). Simultaneously there may be a secret landing of spetsnaz troops from Soviet submarines
and surface vessels, both naval and merchant. (Small fishing vessels make an
excellent means of transport for spetsnaz.
They naturally spend long periods in the coastal waters of foreign states and
do not arouse suspicion, so spetsnaz
groups can spend a long time aboard and can easily return home if they do not
get an order to make a landing). At the critical moment, on receipt of a
signal, they can make a landing on the coast using aqualungs and small boats. Spetsnaz groups arriving by Aeroflot can
adopt much the same tactics. In a period of tension, a system of regular
watches may be introduced. This means that among the passengers on every plane
there will be a group of commandos. Having arrived at their intended airport
and not having been given a signal, they can remain aboard the aircraft1 and go back on the next flight. Next day
another group will make the trip, and so on. One day the signal will come, and
the group will leave the plane and start fighting right in the country's main
airport. Their main task is to capture the airport for the benefit of a fresh
wave of spetsnaz troops or airborne
units (VDV).
1 An aircraft is considered to be part of the territory
of the country to which it belongs, and the pilot's cabin and the interior of
the plane are not subject to foreign supervision.
It is a well-known fact that the `liberation' of Czechoslovakia in
August 1968 began with the arrival at Prague airport of Soviet military
transport planes with VDV troops on board. The airborne troops did not need
parachutes; the planes simply landed at the airport. Before the troops
disembarked there was a moment when both the aircraft and their passengers were
completely defenceless. Was the Soviet high command not taking a risk? No,
because the fact is that by the time the planes landed, Prague airport had
already been largely paralysed by a group of `tourists' who had arrived
earlier.
Spetsnaz
groups may turn up in the territory of an enemy from the territory of neutral
states. Before the outbreak of war or during a war spetsnaz groups may penetrate secretly into the territory of
neutral states and wait there for an agreed signal or until a previously agreed
time. One of the advantages of this is that the enemy does not watch over his
frontiers with neutral countries as carefully as he does over his frontiers
with Communist countries. The arrival of a spetsnaz
group from a neutral state may pass unnoticed both by the enemy and the neutral
state.
But what happens if the group is discovered on neutral territory? The
answer is simple: the group will go into action in the same way as in enemy
territory — avoid being followed, kill any witnesses, use force and
cunning to halt any pursuers. They will make every effort to ensure that nobody
from the group gets into the hands of their pursuers and not to leave any
evidence about to show that the group belongs to the armed forces of the USSR.
If the group should be captured by the authorities of the neutral state, Soviet
diplomacy has enormous experience and some well-tried counter-moves. It may
admit its mistake, make an official apology and offer compensation for any
damage caused; it may declare that the group lost its way and thought it was
already in enemy territory; or it may accuse the neutral state of having
deliberately seized a group of members of the Soviet armed forces on Soviet
territory for provocative purposes, and demand explanations, apologies and
compensation, accompanied by open threats.
Experience has shown that this last plan is the most reliable. The
reader should not dismiss it lightly. Soviet official publications wrote at the
beginning of December 1939 that war was being waged against Finland in order to
establish a Communist regime there, and a Communist government of `people's
Finland' had already been formed. Thirty years later Soviet marshals were
writing that it was not at all like that: the Soviet Union was simply acting in
self-defence. The war against Finland, which was waged from the first to the
last day on Finnish territory, is now described as `repelling Finnish
aggression'2 and even as `fulfilling the plan
for protecting our frontiers.'3
2 Marshal K. A. Meretskov, Na Sluzhbe narodu (In the Service of the People), 1968.
3 Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky, Delo Vsei gesnie (A Life's Work), 1968.
The Soviet Union is always innocent: it only repels perfidious
aggressors. On other people's territory.
___
The principal way of delivering the main body of spetsnaz to the enemy's rear after the outbreak of war is to drop
them by parachute. In the course of his two years' service every spetsnaz soldier makes thirty-five to
forty parachute jumps. Spetsnaz
professionals and officers have much greater experience with parachutes; some
have thousands of jumps to their credit.
The parachute is not just a weapon and a form of transport. It also acts
as a filter which courageous soldiers will pass through, but weak and cowardly
men will not. The Soviet Government spends enormous sums on the development of
parachute jumping as a sport. This is the main base from which the airborne
troops and spetsnaz are built up. On
1 January 1985 the FAI had recorded sixty-three world records in parachute
jumping, of which forty-eight are held by Soviet sportsmen (which means the
Soviet Army). The Soviet military athlete Yuri Baranov was the first man in the
world to exceed 13,000 jumps. Among Soviet women the champion in the number of
jumps is Aleksandra Shvachko — she has made 8,200 jumps. The parachute
psychosis continues.
___
In peacetime military transport planes are used for making parachute
drops. But this is done largely to prevent the fact of the existence of spetsnaz from spreading. In wartime
military transports would be used for dropping spetsnaz groups only in exceptional circumstances. There are two
reasons for this. In the first place, the whole fleet of military transport
planes would be taken up with transporting the airborne forces (VDV), of which
there are an enormous number. Apart from which, military aviation would have
other difficult missions to perform, such as the transport of troops within the
country from passive, less important sectors to the areas where the main
fighting was taking place. Secondly, the majority of military transports are
enormous aircraft, built for moving people and equipment on a large scale,
which do not suit the purposes of spetsnaz.
It needs small planes that do not present large targets and carry no more than
twenty or thirty people. They must also be able to fly at very low level
without much noise. In some cases even smaller aircraft that take eight to ten,
or down to three or four parachutists, are needed.
However, the official term `civil aviation', which is the source of most
spetsnaz transport in wartime, is a
substantial misnomer. The minister for civil aviation bears, quite officially,
the rank of air chief marshal in the Air Force. His deputies bear the rank of
generals. The whole of Aeroflot's flying personnel have the ranks of officers
of the reserve. In the event of war Aeroflot simply merges with the Soviet Air
Force, and the reserve officers then become regular officers with the same
rank.
It has more than enough small aircraft for the business of transporting
and supplying spetsnaz units. The
best of them are the Yakovlev-42 and the Yakovlev-40, very manoeuvrable,
reliable, low-noise planes capable of flying at very low altitudes. They have
one very important construction feature — passengers embark and disembark through
a hatch at the bottom and rear of the aircraft. If need be, the hatch cover can
be removed altogether, giving the parachutists an exit as on a military
transport plane, which makes it possible to drop them in complete safety.
Another plane that has great possibilities for spetsnaz is the Antonov-72 — an exact copy of the American
YC-14 of which the plans were stolen by GRU spies.
But how can spetsnaz
parachutists use ordinary civil jet-propelled aircraft, which passengers enter
and leave by side doors? The doors cannot be opened in flight. And if they were
made to open inwards instead of outwards, it would be exceptionally dangerous
for a parachutist to leave the plane, because the force of the current of air
would press the man back against the body of the plane. He might be killed
either from the force with which he bounced back against the plane, or through
interference with the opening of his parachute.
The problem has been solved by a very simple device. The door is
arranged to open inwards, and a wide tube made of strong, flexible, synthetic
material is allowed to hang out. As he leaves the door the parachutist finds
himself in a sort of three-metre long corridor which he slides down so that he
comes away from the aircraft when he is slightly to one side and below the
fuselage.
Variations on this device were first used on Ilyushin-76 military
transport planes. The heavy equipment of the airborne troops was dropped out of
the huge rear freight hatch, while at the same time the men were leaving the plane
through flexible `sleeves' at the side. The West has not given this simple but
very clever invention its due. Its importance lies not only in the fact that
the time taken to drop Soviet parachutists from transport planes has been
substantially reduced, with the result that every drop is safer and that forces
are much better concentrated on landing. What it also means is that practically
any jet-propelled civil aircraft can
now be used for dropping parachute troops.
___
The dropping of a spetsnaz unit
can be carried out at any time of the day or night. Every time has its
advantages and its problems. Night-time is the spetsnaz soldier's ally, when the appearance of a group of spetsnaz deep in the enemy's rear may
not be noticed at all. Even if the enemy were aware of the group's arrival, it
is never easy to organise a full-scale search at night, especially if the exact
landing place is not known and may be somewhere inaccessible where there are
forests and hills or mountains with few roads and no troops on the spot. But at
night there are likely to be casualties among the parachutists as they land.
The same problems of assembly and orientation which face the pursuit troops
face the spetsnaz unit too.
During the day, obviously, there are fewer accidents on landing; but the
landing will be seen. Deliberate daytime landings may sometimes be carried out
for the simple reason that the enemy does not expect such brazen behaviour at
such a time.
In many cases the drop will be carried out early in the morning while
there are still stars in the sky and the sun has not risen. This is a very good
time if large numbers of soldiers are being dropped who are expected to go
straight into battle and carry out their mission by means of a really sudden
attack. In that case the high command does its best to ensure that the groups
have as much daylight as possible for active operations on the first, most
important day of their mission.
But every spetsnaz soldier's
favourite time for being dropped is at sunset. The flight is calculated so that
the parachutists' drop is carried out in the last minutes before the onset of
darkness. The landing then takes place in the twilight when it is still light
enough to avoid landing on a church spire or a telegraph pole. In half an hour
at the most darkness will conceal the men and they will have the whole night
ahead of them to leave the landing area and cover their tracks.
___
On its own territory spetsnaz
has a standard military structure4: section,
platoon, company, battalion, brigade; or section, platoon, company, regiment.
This organisation simplifies the control, administration and battle training of
spetsnaz. But this structure cannot
be used on enemy territory.
4 See Appendices for precise organisation of spetsnaz at different levels.
The problem is, firstly, that every spetsnaz
operation is individual and unlike any other; a plan is worked out for each
operation, which is unlike any other. Each operation consequently requires
forces organised, not in a standard fashion, but adapted to the particular
plan.
Secondly, when it is on enemy territory, a spetsnaz unit is in direct communication with a major headquarters,
at the very least the headquarters of an all-arm or tank army, and orders are
received in many cases directly from a high-level HQ. A very long chain of
command is simply not needed.
On operations a simple and flexible chain of command is used. The
organisational unit on enemy territory is known officially as the
reconnaissance group of spetsnaz (RGSN).
A group is formed before the beginning of an operation and may contain from two
to thirty men. It can operate independently or as part of a detachment (ROSN),
which consists of between thirty and 300 or more men. The detachment contains
groups of various sizes and for various purposes. The names `detachment' and
`group' are used deliberately, to emphasise the temporary nature of the units.
In the course of an operation groups can leave a detachment and join it again,
and each group may in turn break up into several smaller groups or, conversely,
come together with others into one big group. Several large groups can join up
and form a detachment which can at any moment split up again. The whole process
is usually planned before the operation begins. For example: the drop may take
place in small groups, perhaps fifteen of them altogether. On the second day of
the operation (D+1) eight of the groups will join up into one detachment for a
joint raid, while the rest operate independently. On D+2 two groups are taken
out of the detachment to form the basis of a new detachment and another six
groups link up with the second detachment. On D+5 the first detachment splits
up into groups and on D+6 the second group splits up, and so on. Before the
beginning of the operation each group is informed where and when to meet up
with the other groups and what to do in case the rendezvous is not kept.
___
Having landed in enemy territory spetsnaz
may go straight into battle. Otherwise, it will hide the equipment it no longer
needs — boats, parachutes, etc — by either burying them in the ground
or sinking them in water. Very often it will then mine the drop area. The mines
are laid where the unwanted equipment has been buried. The area is also treated
with one of a number of substances which will confuse a dog's sense of smell.
After that, the group (of whatever size) will break up into little sub-groups
which depart quickly in different directions. A meeting of the sub-groups will
take place later at a previously arranged spot or, if this proves problematic,
at one of the several alternative places which have been agreed.
The drop area is usually the first place where casualties occur. However
good the parachute training is, leg injuries and fractures are a frequent
occurrence, and when the drop takes place in an unfamiliar place, in complete
darkness, perhaps in fog, over a forest or mountains, they are inevitable. Even
built-up areas provide their own hazards. Spetsnaz
laws are simple and easy to understand. In a case of serious injury the
commander cannot take the wounded man with him; doing so would greatly reduce
the group's mobility and might lead to the mission having to be aborted. But
the commander cannot, equally, leave the wounded man alone. Consequently a
simple and logical decision is taken, to kill the wounded man. Spetsnaz has a very humane means of
killing its wounded soldiers — a powerful drug known to the men as
`Blessed Death'. An injection with the drug stops the pain and quickly produces
a state of blissful drowsiness. In the event that a commander decides, out of
misguided humanity, to take the wounded man with him, and it looks as if this
might jeopardise the mission, the deputy commander is under orders to dispatch
both the wounded man and the commander. The commander is removed without
recourse to drugs. It is recommended that he be seized from behind with a hand
over his mouth and a knife blow to his throat. If the deputy does not deal with
his commander in this situation, then not just the commander and his deputy,
but the entire group may be regarded as traitors, with all the inevitable
consequences.
As they leave the area of the drop the groups and sub-groups cover their
tracks, using methods that have been well known for centuries: walking through
water and over stones, walking in each other's footsteps, and so forth. The
groups lay more mines behind them and spread more powder against dogs.
After leaving the drop zone and having made sure that they are not being
followed, the commander gives orders for the organisation of a base and a
reserve base, safe places concealed from the view of outsiders. Long before a
war GRU officers, working abroad in the guise of diplomats, journalists,
consuls and other representatives of the USSR, choose places suitable for
establishing bases. The majority of GRU officers have been at some time very
closely familiar with spetsnaz, or
are themselves spetsnaz officers, or
have worked in the Intelligence Directorate of a district or group of forces.
They know what is needed for a base to be convenient and safe.
Bases can be of all sorts and kinds. The ideal base would be a hiding
place beneath ground level, with a drainage system, running water, a supply of
food, a radio set to pick up the local news and some simple means of transport.
I have already described how spetsnaz
agents, recruited locally, can establish the more elaborate bases which are
used by the professional groups of athletes carrying out exceptionally
important tasks. In the majority of cases the base will be somewhere like a
cave, or an abandoned quarry, or an underground passage in a town, or just a
secluded place among the undergrowth in a dense forest.
A spetsnaz group can leave at
the base all the heavy equipment it does not need immediately. The existence of
even the most rudimentary base enables it to operate without having to carry
much with it in the way of equipment or supplies. The approaches to the base
are always guarded and the access paths mined — the closest with ordinary
mines and the more distant ones with warning mines which explode with much
noise and a bright flash, alerting any people in the base of approaching
danger.
When the group moves off to carry out its task, a few men normally
remain behind to guard the base, choosing convenient observation points from
which to keep an eye on it. In the event of its being discovered the guard
leaves the location quietly and makes for the reserve base, leaving warnings of
the danger to the rest of the group in an agreed place. The main group returning
from its mission will visit the reserve base first and only then go to the main
base. There is a double safeguard here: the group may meet the guards in the
reserve base and so avoid falling into a trap; otherwise the group will see the
warning signals left by the guards. The craters from exploded mines around the
base may also serve as warnings of danger. If the worst comes to the worst, the
guards can give warning of danger by radio.
A spetsnaz group may also have
a moving base. Then it can operate at night, unhampered by heavy burdens, while
the guards cart all the group's heavy equipment along by other routes. Each
morning the group meets up with its mobile base. The group replenishes its
supplies and then remains behind to rest or to set off on another operation,
while the base moves to another place. The most unexpected places can be used
by the mobile bases. I once saw a base which looked simply like a pile of grass
that had been thrown down in the middle of a field. The soldiers' packs and
equipment had been very carefully disguised, and the men guarding the base were
a kilometre away, also in a field and camouflaged with grass. All around there
were lots of convenient ravines overgrown with young trees and bushes. That was
where the KGB and MVD units were looking for the spetsnaz base, and where the helicopters were circling overhead. It
did not occur to anybody that a base could be right in the middle of an open
field.
In some cases a spetsnaz group
may capture a vehicle for transporting its mobile base. It might be an armoured
personnel carrier, a truck or an ordinary car. And if a group is engaged in
very intensive fighting involving frequent changes of location, then no base is
organised. In the event of its being pursued the group can abandon all its
heavy equipment, having first removed the safety pin from the remaining mines.
___
In order to destroy a target it has first to be located. In the
overwhelming majority of cases a spetsnaz
operation includes the search for the target. This is understandable, since
targets whose location is known and which are not movable can be destroyed
easily and quickly with missiles and aircraft. But a great number of targets in
present-day fighting are mobile. On the eve of a war or just after it has
broken out, government offices are moved out of a country's capital for secret
command posts whose location is known to very few people. New communications
centres and lines are brought into operation. Aircraft are removed from
stationary aerodromes and dispersed to airfields established in places unknown
to the enemy. Many missile installations are moved to new concealed, and
carefully guarded, locations. Troops and headquarters are also relocated.
In these circumstances the search for targets acquires paramount significance
for spetsnaz. To be able to find a
target of special importance, to identify it, and to know how to distinguish
real targets from false ones, become the most important tasks for spetsnaz, more important even than the
destruction of the targets. Once a target has been discovered it can be
destroyed by other forces — missiles, aircraft, marines, airborne troops.
But a target that has not been discovered cannot be destroyed by anyone.
Because the business of identifying targets is the most important task
for spetsnaz it cannot be a separate
and independent organisation. It can carry out this task only if it relies on
all the resources of the GRU, and only if it can make use of information
obtained by agents and from all the various kinds of razvedka — satellite, aircraft, naval, electronic, and so
forth.
Every form of razvedka has its
good and its bad side. A complete picture of what is happening can be obtained
only by making use of all forms of razvedka
in close interaction one with another, compensating for the weaknesses of some
forms with the advantages of the others.
Every officer in charge of razvedka
uses spetsnaz only where its use can
give the very best result. When he sends a spetsnaz
group behind enemy lines the officer in command already knows a good deal about
the enemy from other sources. He knows exactly what the unit is to look for and
roughly where it has to look. The information obtained by spetsnaz groups (sometimes only fragmentary and uncertain) can in
turn be of exceptional value to the other forms of razvedka and be the starting point for more attentive work in those
areas by agents and other services.
Only with a union of all forces and resources is it possible to reveal
the plans and intentions of the enemy, the strength and organisation of his
forces, and to inflict defeat on him.
But let us return to the commander of the spetsnaz group who, despatching it to a particular area, already
knows a good deal about the area, the specially important targets that may be
found there, and even their approximate location. This information (or as much
of it as concerns him) is passed on to the commander of the group and his
deputy. The group has landed safely, covered its tracks, established a base and
started its search. How should it set about it?
There are several tried and tested methods. Each target of special
importance must have a communications centre and lines of communication leading
to it. The group may include experts at radio razvedka. Let us not forget that spetsnaz is the 3rd department and radio razvedka the 5th department of the same Directorate (the Second) at
the headquarters of every front, fleet, group of forces and military district. Spetsnaz and radio razvedka are very closely connected and often help each other, even
to the point of having radio razvedka
experts in spetsnaz groups. By
monitoring radio transmissions in the area of important targets it is possible
to determine quite accurately their whereabouts.
But it is also possible to discover the target without the aid of radio razvedka. The direction of receiving and
transmitting aerials of tropospheric, radio-relay and other communication lines
provides a lot of information about the location of the terminal points on
lines of communication. This in turn leads us right up to the command posts and
other targets of great importance.
Sometimes before a search begins the commander of the group will decide
by the map which, in his opinion, are the most likely locations for particular
targets. His group will examine those areas first of all.
If the targets are moved, then the roads, bridges, tunnels and mountain
passes where they may be seen are put under observation.
The search for a particular target can be carried out simultaneously by
several groups. In that case the officer in charge divides the territory being
searched into squares in each of which one group operates.
Each group searching a square usually spreads out into a long line with
tens or even hundreds of metres between each man. Each man moves by the
compass, trying to keep in sight of his neighbours. They advance in complete
silence. They choose suitable observation points and carefully examine the
areas ahead of them, and if they discover nothing they move on to another
hiding place. In this way relatively small groups of well trained soldiers can
keep quite extensive areas under observation. Unlike razvedka conducted from outer space or the air, spetsnaz can get right up to targets and
view them, not from above, but from the ground. Experience shows that it is much
more difficult to deceive a spetsnaz
man with false targets than it is a man operating an electronic intelligence
station or an expert at interpreting pictures taken from the air or from space.
Spetsnaz
groups have recently begun to make ever greater use of electronic apparatus for
seeking their targets. They now carry portable radar, infra-red and acoustic
equipment, night-vision sights, and so forth. But whatever new electronic
devices are invented, they will never replace the simplest and most reliable
method of establishing the location of important targets: questioning a
prisoner.
It may be claimed that not every prisoner will agree to answer the
questions put to him, or that some prisoners will answer the questions put by spetsnaz but give wrong answers and lead
their interrogators astray. To which my reply is categorical. Everybody answers
questions from spetsnaz. There are no
exceptions. I have been asked how long a very strong person can hold out
against questioning by spetsnaz,
without replying to questions. The answer is: one second. If you don't believe
this, just try the following experiment. Get one of your friends who considers
himself a strong character to write on a piece of paper a number known only to
himself and seal the paper in an envelope. Then tie your friend to a post or a
tree and ask him what number he wrote on the paper. If he refuses to answer,
file his teeth down with a big file and count the time. Having received the
answer, open the envelope and check that he has given you the number written on
the paper. I guarantee the answer will be correct.
If you perform such an experiment, you will have an idea of one of spetsnaz's milder ways of questioning
people. But there are more effective and reliable ways of making a person talk.
Everyone who falls into the hands of spetsnaz
knows he is going to be killed. But people exert themselves to give correct and
precise answers. They are not fighting for their lives but for an easy death.
Prisoners are generally interrogated in twos or larger groups. If one seems to
know less than the others, he can be used for demonstration purposes to
encourage them to talk. If the questioning is being done in a town the prisoner
may have a heated iron placed on his body, or have his ears pierced with an electric
drill, or be cut to pieces with an electric saw. A man's fingers are
particularly sensitive. If the finger of a man being questioned is simply bent
back and the end of the finger squashed as it is bent, the pain is unendurable.
One method considered very effective is a form of torture known as `the
bicycle'. A man is bound and laid on his back. Pieces of paper (or cotton wool
or rags) soaked in spirit, eau-de-cologne, etc., are stuck between his fingers
and set alight.
Spetsnaz has
a special passion for the sexual organs. If the conditions permit, a very old
and simple method is used to demonstrate the power of spetsnaz. The captors drive a big wedge into the trunk of a tree,
then force the victim's sexual organs into the opening and knock out the wedge.
They then proceed to question the other prisoners. At the same time, in order
to make them more talkative, the principal spetsnaz
weapon — the little infantryman's spade — is used. As spetsnaz asks its questions the blade of
the spade is used to cut off ears and fingers, to hit the victims in the liver
and perform a whole catalogue of unpleasant operations on the person under
interrogation.
One very simple way of making a man talk is known as the `swallow', well
known in Soviet concentration camps. It does not require any weapons or other
instruments, and if it is used with discretion it does not leave any traces on
the victim's body. He is laid face down on the ground and his legs are bent
back to bring his heels as close as possible to the back of his neck. The
`swallow' generally produces a straight answer in a matter of seconds.
Of course, every method has its shortcomings. That is why a commander
uses several methods at the same time. The `swallow' is not usually employed in
the early stages of an operation. Immediately after a landing, the commander of
a spetsnaz group tries to use one
really blood-thirsty device out of his arsenal: cutting a man's lips with a
razor, or breaking his neck by twisting his head round. These methods are used
even when a prisoner obviously has no information, the aim being to prevent any
possibility of any of the men in the group going over to the enemy. Everyone,
including those who have not taken part in the torture, knows that after this
he has no choice: he is bound to his group by a bloody understanding and must
either come out on top or die with his group. In case of surrender he may have
to suffer the same torture as his friends have just used.
In recent years the KGB, GRU and spetsnaz
have had the benefit of an enormous training ground in which to try out the
effectiveness of their methods of questioning: Afghanistan. The information
received from there describes things which greatly exceed in skill and
inventiveness anything I have described here. I am quite deliberately not
quoting here interrogation methods used by the Soviet forces, including spetsnaz, in Afghanistan, which have
been reported by thoroughly reliable sources. Western journalists have access
to that material and to living witnesses.
Once it has obtained the information it needs about the targets of
interest to it, the spetsnaz group
checks the facts and then kills the prisoners. It should be particularly noted
that those who have told the truth do have an easy death. They may be shot,
hanged, have their throats cut or be drowned. Spetsnaz does not torture anybody for the sake of torture. You come
across practically no sadists in spetsnaz.
If they find one they quickly get rid of him. Both the easier and the tougher
forms of questioning in spetsnaz are an
unavoidable evil that the fighting men have to accept. They use these methods,
not out of a love of torturing people, but as the simplest and most reliable
way of obtaining information essential to their purpose.
___
Having discovered the target and reported on it to their command, spetsnaz will in most cases leave the
target area as quickly as possible. Very soon afterwards, the target will come
under attack by missiles, aircraft or other weapons. In a number of cases,
however, the spetsnaz group will
destroy the target it has discovered itself. They are often given the mission
in that form: `Find and destroy'. But there are also situations when the task
is given as `Find and report', and the group commander takes an independent
decision about destroying the target. He may do so when, having found the
target, he discovers suddenly that he cannot report to his superior officers
about it; and he may also do so when he comes across a missile ready for
firing.
Robbed of the chance or the time to transmit a report, the commander has
to take all possible steps to destroy the target, including ordering a suicide
attack on it. Readiness to carry out a suicide mission is maintained in spetsnaz by many methods. One of them is
to expose obvious sadists and have them transferred immediately to other
branches of the forces, because experience shows that in the overwhelming
majority of cases the sadist is a coward, incapable of sacrificing himself.
The actual destruction of targets is perhaps the most ordinary and prosaic
part of the entire operation. VIPs are usually killed as they are being
transported from one place to another, when they are at their most vulnerable.
The weapons include snipers' rifles, grenade-launchers or mines laid in the
roadway. If a VIP enjoys travelling by helicopter it is a very simple matter.
For one thing, a single helicopter is a better target than a number of cars,
when the terrorists do not know exactly which car their victim is travelling
in. Secondly, even minor damage to a helicopter will bring it down and almost
certainly kill the VIP.
Missiles and aircraft are also attacked with snipers' rifles and
grenade-launchers of various kinds. One bullet hole in a missile or an aircraft
can put it out of action. If he cannot hit his target from a distance the
commander of the group will attack, usually from two sides. His deputy will
attack with one group of men from one side, trying to make as much noise and
gunfire as possible, while the other group led by the commander will move,
noiselessly, as close to the target as it can. It is obvious that an attack by
a small spetsnaz group on a well
defended target is suicide. But spetsnaz
will do it. The fact is that even an unsuccessful attack on a missile ready for
firing will force the enemy to re-check the whole missile and all its
supporting equipment for faults. This may delay the firing for valuable hours,
which in a nuclear war might be long enough to alter the course of the
conflict.
If we describe the modern infantryman in battle and leave it at that,
then, however accurate the description, the picture will be incomplete. The
modern infantryman should never just be described independently, because he
never operates independently. He operates in the closest co-operation with
tanks; his way forward is laid by sappers; the artillery and air force work in
his interests; he may be helped in his fighting by helicopter gunships; ahead
of him there are reconnaissance and parachute units; and behind him is an
enormous organisation to support and service him, from supplying ammunition to
evacuating the wounded quickly.
To understand the strength of spetsnaz
one has to remember that spetsnaz is
primarily reconnaissance, forces which gather and transmit information to their
commanders to which their commanders immediately react. The strength of those
reconaissance forces lies in the fact that they have behind them the whole of
the nuclear might of the USSR. It may be that before the appearance of spetsnaz on enemy territory, a nuclear
blow will already have been made, and despite the attendant dangers, this
greatly improves the position of the fighting groups, because the enemy is
clearly not going to bother with them. In other circumstances the groups will
appear on enemy territory and obtain information required by the Soviet command
or amplify it, enabling an immediate nuclear strike to follow. A nuclear strike
close to where a spetsnaz group is
operating is theoretically regarded as the salvation of the group. When there
are ruins and fires all round, a state of panic and the usual links and
standards have broken down, a group can operate almost openly without any fear
of capture.
Similarly, Soviet command may choose to deploy other weapons before spetsnaz begins operations or
immediately after a group makes its landing: chemical weapons, air attacks or
bombardment of the coastline with naval artillery. There is a co-operative
principle at work here. Such actions will give the spetsnaz groups enormous moral and physical support. And the
reverse is also true — the operations of a group in a particular area and
the information it provides will make the strike by Soviet forces more accurate
and effective.
In the course of a war direct co-operation is the most dependable form
of co-operation. For example, the military commander of a front has learnt
through his network of agents (the second department of the 2nd Directorate at
front headquarters) or from other sources that there is in a certain area a
very important but mobile target which keeps changing its position. He appoints
one of his air force divisions to destroy the target. A spetsnaz group (or groups) is appointed to direct the division to
the target. The liaison between the groups and the air force division is better
not conducted through the front headquarters, but directly. The air division
commander is told very briefly what the groups are capable of, and they are
then handed over to his command. They are dropped behind enemy lines and, while
they are carrying out the operation, they maintain direct contact with their
divisional headquarters. After the strike on the target the spetsnaz group — if it has
survived — returns immediately to the direct control of the front
headquarters, to remain there until it needs to be put under the command of
some other force as decided by the front commander.
___
Direct co-operation is a cornerstone of Soviet strategy and practised
widely on manoeuvres, especially at the strategic level1,
when spetsnaz groups from regiments
of professional athletes are subordinated to commanders of, for example, the
strategic missile troops or the strategic (long-range) aviation.
1 See Appendix D for the organisation of spetsnaz at strategic level.
For the main principle governing Soviet strategy is the concentration of
colossal forces against the enemy's most vulnerable spot. Soviet troops will
strike a super-powerful, sudden blow and then force their way rapidly ahead. In
this situation, or immediately before it, a mass drop of spetsnaz units will be carried out ahead of and on the flanks of
the advancing force, or in places that have to be neutralised for the success
of the operation on the main line of advance.
Spetsnaz
units at army level2, on the other hand, are
dropped in the areas of operations of their own armies at a depth of 100 to 500
kilometres; and spetsnaz units under
the command of the fronts3 are dropped in the
area of operations of their fronts at a depth of between 500 and 1000
kilometres.
2 See Appendix A.
3 See Appendix B.
The headquarters to which the group is subordinated tries not to
interfere in the operations of the spetsnaz
group, reckoning that the commander on the spot can see and understand the
situation better than can people at headquarters far from where the events are
taking place. The headquarters will intervene if it becomes necessary to
redirect it to attack a more important target or if a strike is to take place
where it is located. But a warning may not be given if the group is not going
to have time to get away from the strike area, since all such warnings carry
the risk of revealing Soviet intentions to the enemy.
Co-operation between different groups of spetsnaz is carried out by means of a distribution of territories
for operations by different groups, so that simultaneous blows can be struck in
different areas if need be. Co-operation can also be carried out by forward
headquarters at battalion, regiment and brigade level, dropped behind the lines
to co-ordinate major spetsnaz forces
in an area. Because spetsnaz
organisation is so flexible, a group which has landed by chance in another
group's operational area can quickly be brought under the latter's command by
an order from a superior headquarters.
___
In the course of a war other Soviet units apart from spetsnaz will be operating in enemy
territory:
Deep reconnaissance
companies from the reconnaissance battalions of the motor-rifle
and tank divisions. Both in their function and the tactics they adopt, these
companies are practically indistinguishable from regular spetsnaz. The difference lies in the fact that these companies do
not use parachutes but penetrate behind the enemy's lines in helicopters, jeeps
and armoured reconnaissance vehicles. Deep reconnaissance units do not usually
co-operate with spetsnaz. But their
operations, up to 100 kilometres behind the front line, make it possible to
concentrate spetsnaz activity deeper
in the enemy's rear without having to divert it to operations in the zone
nearer the front.
Air-assault brigades at
front level operate independently, but in some cases spetsnaz units may direct the combat helicopters to their targets.
It is sometimes possible to have joint operations conducted by men dropped from
helicopters and to use helicopters from an air-assault brigade for evacuating
the wounded and prisoners.
Airborne divisions
operate in accordance with the plans of the commander-in-chief. If difficulties
arise with the delivery of supplies to their units, they switch to partisan
combat tactics. Co-operation between airborne divisions and spetsnaz units is not normally
organised, although large-scale drops in the enemy's rear create a favourable
situation for operations by all spetsnaz
units.
Naval infantry are
commanded by the same commander as naval spetsnaz:
every fleet commander has one brigade of the latter and a brigade (or regiment)
of infantry. Consequently these two formations, both intended for operations in
the enemy's rear, co-operate very closely. Normally when the naval infantry
makes a landing on an enemy coastline, their operation is preceded by, or
accompanied by, spetsnaz operations
in the same area. Groups of naval spetsnaz
can, of course, operate independently of the naval infantry if they need to,
especially in cases where the operations are expected to be in remote areas
requiring special skills of survival or concealment.
There are two specific sets of circumstances in which superior
headquarters organises direct co-operation between all units operating in the
enemy rear. The first is when a combined attack offers the only possibility of
destroying or capturing the target, and the second is when Soviet units in the
enemy rear have suffered substantial losses and the Soviet command decides to
make up improvised groups out of the remnants of the ragged units that are
left.
___
In the course of an advance spetsnaz
groups, as might be expected, co-operate very closely with the forward
detachments.
A Soviet advance — a sudden break through the defences of the enemy
in several places and the rapid forward movement of masses of troops, supported
by an equal mass of aircraft and helicopters — is always co-ordinated with
a simultaneous strike in the rear of the enemy by spetsnaz forces, airborne troops and naval infantry.
In other armies different criteria are applied to measure a commander's
success — for example, what percentage of the enemy's forces have been
destroyed by his troops. In the Soviet Army this is of secondary importance,
and may be of no importance at all, because a commander's value is judged by
one criterion only: the speed with which his troops advance.
To take the speed of advance as the sole measure of a commander's
abilities is not so stupid as it might seem at first glance. As a guiding
principle it forces all commanders to seek, find and exploit the weakest spots
in the enemy's defences. It obliges the commander to turn the enemy's flank and
to avoid getting caught up in unnecessary skirmishes. It also makes commanders
make use of theoretically impassable areas to get to the rear of the enemy,
instead of battering at his defences.
To find the enemy's weak spots a commander will send reconnaissance
groups ahead, and forward detachments which he has assembled for the duration
of the advance. Every commander of a regiment, division, army and, in some
cases, of a front will form his own forward detachment. In a regiment the
detachment normally includes a motor-rifle company with a tank platoon (or a
tank company with a motor-rifle platoon); a battery of self-propelled
howitzers; an anti-aircraft platoon; and an anti-tank platoon and sapper and
chemical warfare units. In a division it will consist of a motor-rifle or tank
battalion, with a tank or motor-rifle company as appropriate; an artillery
battalion; anti-aircraft and anti-tank batteries; and a company of sappers and
some support units. In an army the scale is correspondingly greater: two or
three motor-rifle battalions; one or two tank battalions; two or three
artillery battalions, a battalion of multi-barrelled rocket launchers; a few
anti-aircraft batteries; an anti-tank battalion; and sappers and chemical
warfare troops. Where a front makes up its own forward detachment it will
consist of several regiments, most of them tank regiments. The success of each
general (i.e. the speed at which he advances) is determined by the speed of his
very best units. In practice this means that it is determined by the operations
of the forward detachment which he sends into battle. Thus every general
assembles his best units for that crucial detachment, puts his most determined
officers in command, and puts at their disposal a large slice of his
reinforcements. All this makes the forward detachment into a concentration of the
strength of the main forces.
It often happens that very high-ranking generals are put in command of
relatively small detachments. For example, the forward detachment of the 3rd
Guards Tank Army in the Prague operation was commanded by General I. G. Ziberov,
who was deputy chief of staff. (The detachment consisted of the 69th mechanised
brigade, the 16th self-propelled artillery brigade, the 50th motorcycle
regiment, and the 253rd independent penal company).
Every forward detachment is certainly very vulnerable. Let us imagine
what the first day of a war in Europe would be like, when the main
concentration of Soviet troops has succeeded in some places in making very
small breaches in the defences of the forces of the Western powers. Taking
advantage of these breaches, and of any other opportunities offered —
blunders by the enemy, unoccupied sectors and the like — about a hundred
forward detachments of regiments, about twenty-five more powerful forward
detachments of divisions, and about eight even more powerful forward
detachments from armies have penetrated into the rear of the NATO forces. None
of them has got involved in the fighting. They are not in the least concerned
about their rear or their flanks. They are simply racing ahead without looking
back.
This is very similar to the Vistula-Oder operation of 1945, on the eve
of which Marshal G. K. Zhukov assembled all sixty-seven commanders of the
forward detachments and demanded of each one: 100 kilometres forward progress
on the first day of the operation. A hundred kilometres, irrespective of how
the main forces were operating, and irrespective of whether the main forces
succeeded in breaking through the enemy's defences. Every commander who
advanced a hundred kilometres on the first day or averaged seventy kilometres a
day for the first four days would receive the highest award — the Gold
Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Everybody in the detachment would receive a
decoration, and all the men undergoing punishment (every forward detachment has
on its strength anything from a company to a battalion's worth of such men
riding on the outside of the tanks) would have their offences struck out.
Say what you like about the lack of initiative in Soviet soldiers and
officers. Just imagine giving men from a penal battalion such a task. If you
succeed in not getting involved in the fighting, and if you manage to outflank
the enemy and keep moving, we will strike out all your offences. Get involved
in fighting and you will not only shed your blood, you will die a criminal too.
Operations by Soviet forward detachments are not restrained by any
limitations. `The operations of forward detachments must be independent and not
restricted by the dividing lines,' the Soviet Military Encyclopaedia declares.
The fact that the forward detachments may be cut off from the main force should
not deter them. For example, on the advance in Manchuria in 1945 the 6th Guards
Tank Army advanced rapidly towards the ocean, having crossed the desert, the
apparently impregnable Khingan mountain range and the rice fields, and covering
810 kilometres in eleven days. But ahead of it were forward detachments,
operating continually, which had rushed 150 to 200 kilometres ahead of the main
force. When the officer in command of the front learnt of this spurt ahead (by
quite unprotected detachments, which really had not a single support vehicle
with them), he did not order the detachments to slow down; on the contrary, he
ordered them to increase their speed still further, and not to worry about the
distance separating them, however great it was. The more the forward
detachments were separated from the main force, the better. The more
unsuspected and strange the appearance of Soviet troops seems to the enemy, the
greater the panic and the more successful the operations of both the forward
detachments and the main Soviet troops.
Forward detachments were of enormous importance in the last war. The
speed at which our troops advanced reached at times eighty to a hundred
kilometres a day. Such a speed of advance in operations on such an enormous
scale causes surprise even today. But it must always be remembered that this
terrible rate of advance was to a great extent made possible by the operations
of the forward detachments. These are the words of Army-General I.I.
Gusakovsky, the same general who from January to April 1945, from the Vistula
to Berlin itself, commanded the forward detachment of the 11th Guards Tank
Corps and the whole of the 1st Guards Tank Army.
In the last war the forward detachments pierced the enemy's defences
with dozens of spearheads at the same time, and the main body of troops
followed in their tracks. The forward detachments then destroyed in the enemy's
rear only targets that were easy to destroy, and in many cases moved forward quickly
enough to capture bridges before they were blown up. The reason the enemy had
not blown them up was because his main forces were still wholly engaged against
the main forces of the Red Army.
The role played by forward detachments has greatly increased in modern
warfare. All Soviet military exercises are aimed at improving the operations of
forward detachments. There are two very good reasons why the role of the
forward detachments has grown in importance. The first is, predictably, that
war has acquired a nuclear dimension. Nuclear weapons (and other modern means
of fighting) need to be discovered and destroyed at the earliest possible
opportunity. And the more Soviet troops there are on enemy territories, the
less likelihood there is of their being destroyed by nuclear weapons. It will
always be difficult for the enemy to make a nuclear strike against his own rear
where not only are his own forces operating, and which are inhabited but where
a strike would also be against his own civilian population.
A forward detachment, rushing far ahead and seeking out and destroying
missile batteries, airfields, headquarters and communication lines resembles spetsnaz both in character and in
spirit. It usually has no transport vehicles at all. It carries only what can
be found room for in the tanks and armoured transporters, and its operations
may last only a short time, until the fuel in the tanks gives out. All the
same, the daring and dashing actions of the detachments will break up the
enemy's defences, producing chaos and panic in his rear, and creating
conditions in which the main force can operate with far greater chances of
success.
In principle spetsnaz does
exactly the same. The difference is that spetsnaz
groups have greater opportunities for discovering important targets, whereas
forward detachments have greater opportunities than spetsnaz for destroying them. Which is why the forward detachment
of each regiment is closely linked up with the regiment's reconnaissance
company secretly operating deep inside the enemy's defences. Similarly, the
forward detachments of divisions are linked directly with divisional
reconnaissance battalions, receiving a great deal of information from them and,
by their swift reactions, creating better operating conditions for the reconnaissance
battalions.
The forward detachment of an army, usually led by the deputy army
commander, will be operating at the same time as the army's spetsnaz groups who will have been
dropped 100 to 500 kilometres ahead. This means that the forward detachment may
find itself in the same operational area as the army's spetsnaz groups as early as forty-eight hours after the start of
the operation. At that point the deputy army commander will establish direct
contact with the spetsnaz groups,
receiving information from them, sometimes redirecting groups to more important
targets and areas, helping the groups and receiving help from them. The spetsnaz group may, for example, capture
a bridge and hold it for a very short time. The forward detachment simply has to
be able to move fast enough to get to the bridge and take over with some of its
men. The spetsnaz group will stay at
the bridge, while the forward detachment runs ahead, and then, after the main
body of Soviet forces has arrived at the bridge the spetsnaz group will again, after briefing, be dropped by parachute
far ahead.
Sometimes spetsnaz at the
front level will operate in the interests of the army's forward detachments, in
which case the army's own spetsnaz
will turn its attention to the most successful forward detachments of the
army's divisions.
Forward detachments are a very powerful weapon in the hands of the
Soviet commanders, who have great experience in deploying them. They are in
reality the best units of the Soviet Army and in the course of an advance will
operate not only in a similar way to spetsnaz,
but in very close collaboration with it too. The success of operations by spetsnaz groups in strategic warfare
depends ultimately on the skill and fighting ability of dozens of forward
detachments which carry out lightning operations to overturn the enemy's plans
and frustrate his attempts to locate and destroy the spetsnaz groups.
Chapter
13. Spetsnaz and Deception
Secrecy and disinformation are the most effective weapons in the hands
of the Soviet Army and the whole Communist system. With the aim of protecting
military secrets and of disinforming the enemy a Chief Directorate of Strategic
Camouflage (GUSM) was set up within the Soviet General Staff in the 1960s. The
Russian term for `camouflage' — maskirovka —
is, like the word razvedka,
impossible to translate directly. Maskirovka
means everything relating to the preservation of secrets and to giving the
enemy a false idea of the plans and intentions of the Soviet high command. Maskirovka has a broader meaning than
`deception' and `camouflage' taken together.
The GUSM and the GRU use different methods in their work but operate on
the same battlefield. The demands made of the officers of both organisations
are more or less identical. The most important of these demands are: to be able
to speak foreign languages fluently; and to know the enemy. It was no
coincidence that when the GUSM was set up many senior officers and generals of
the GRU were transferred to it. General Moshe Milshtein was one of them, and he
had been one of the most successful heads the GRU had had; he spent practically
the whole of his career in the West as an illegal1.
Milshtein speaks English, French and German fluently, and possibly other
languages as well. He is the author of a secret textbook for GRU officers
entitled An Honourable Service. I
frequently attended lectures given by him about operations by Soviet `illegals'
and the theory upon which the practice of disinformation is based. But even the
briefest study of the writings of this general in Soviet military journals, in
the Military-Historical Journal (VIZ)
for example, reveals that he is one of the outstanding Soviet experts in the
field of espionage and disinformation.
1 See Viktor Suvorov, Soviet Military Intelligence (London, 1984).
___
The GUSM is vast. It is continually gathering a colossal number of facts
on three key subjects:
1. What the West knows about us.
2. What the West shows us it does not know.
3. What the West is trying to find out.
The GUSM has long-term plans covering what must be concealed and what
must have attention drawn to it in the Soviet Army and armaments industry. The
experts of the GUSM are constantly fabricating material so that the enemy
should draw the wrong conclusions from the authentic information in his
possession.
The extent of the powers given to the GUSM can be judged from the fact
that at the beginning of the 1970s REB osnaz
(radio-electronic warfare) was transferred from the control of the KGB to the
control of the GUSM, though still preserving the name osnaz.
There are very close links existing between the GUSM and the GRU and
between spetsnaz and the REB osnaz. In peacetime the REB osnaz transmits by radio `top-secret'
instructions from some Soviet headquarters to others. In time of war spetsnaz operations against headquarters
and centres and lines of communications are conducted in the closest
co-operation with the REB osnaz,
which is ready to connect up with the enemy's lines of communication to transmit
false information. An example of such an operation was provided in the
manoeuvres of the Ural military district when a spetsnaz company operated against a major headquarters. Spetsnaz groups cut the communication
lines and `destroyed' the headquarters and at the same time an REB osnaz company hooked into the enemy's
lines and began transmitting instructions to the enemy in the name of the
headquarters that had been wiped out.
___
Even in peacetime the GUSM operates in a great variety of ways. For example,
the Soviet Union derives much benefit from the activities of Western pacifists.
A fictitious pacifist movement has been set up in the Soviet Union and
Professor Chazov, the personal physician of the General Secretary of the
Communist Party, has been made head of it. There are some who say that the
movement is controlled by the Soviet leadership through the person of Chazov.
Chazov, in addition to being responsible for the health of the General
Secretary, is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, i.e.
one of the leaders who has real power in his hands. There are very few people
who can manipulate him.
The mighty machinery of the GUSM was brought into operation in order to
give this Communist leader some publicity. General Moshe Milshtein himself
arrived in London in April 1982 to attend a conference of doctors opposed to
nuclear warfare. There were many questions that had to be put to the general.
What did he have to do with medicine? Where had he served, in what regiments
and divisions? Where had he come by his genuine English accent? Did all Soviet
generals speak such good English? And were all Soviet generals allowed to
travel to Great Britain and conduct pacifist propaganda, or was it a privilege
granted to a select few?
The result of this publicity stunt by the GUSM is well known — the
`pacifist' Chazov, who has never once been known to condemn the murder of
children in Afghanistan or the presence of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, and
who persecutes opponents of Communism in the USSR, received the Nobel Prize.
`But,' as Stalin said, `in order to prepare new wars pacifism alone is
not enough.'2 That is why the Soviet leaders
are preparing for another war not only with the aid of the pacifists but with
the help of many other people and organisations which, knowingly or
unwittingly, spread information which has been `made in the GUSM'.
2 Leningradskaya
Pravda, 14 July 1928.
___
One of the sources spreading Soviet military disinformation is the GRU's
network of agents, and in particular the agents of spetsnaz.
In the preparation of a strategic operation the GUSM's most important
task is to ensure that the operation is totally unexpected by the enemy,
particularly the place where it is to take place and the time it is due to
start; its nature, and the weapons the troops will be using; and the number of
troops and scope of the operation. All these elements must be planned so that
the enemy has not prepared to resist. This is achieved by many years of intensive
effort on the part of the GUSM at concealment. But concealment is twofold: the
GUSM will, for example, conceal from the enemy advances in Soviet military
science and the armaments industry, and at the same time demonstrate what the
enemy wants to see.
This would provide material for a separate and lengthy piece of
research. Here we are dealing only with spetsnaz
and with what the GUSM does in connection with spetsnaz. GUSM experts have developed a whole system aimed at
preventing the enemy from being aware of the existence of spetsnaz and ensuring that he should have a very limited idea of
its strength and the nature of the operations it will conduct. Some of the
steps it takes we have already seen. To summarise:
1. Every prospective member of spetsnaz
is secretly screened for his general reliability long before he is called into
the Army.
2. Every man joining spetsnaz
or the GRU has to sign a document promising not to reveal the secret of its
existence. Any violation of this undertaking is punished as spying — by
the death sentence.
3. Spetsnaz units do not have
their own uniform, their own badges or any other distinguishing mark, though it
very often uses the uniform of the airborne troops and their badges. Naval spetsnaz wear the uniform of the naval
infantry although they have nothing in common with that force. Spetsnaz units operating midget
submarines wear the usual uniform of submariners. When they are in the
countries of Eastern Europe the spetsnaz
units wear the uniform of signals troops.
4. Not a single spetsnaz unit
is quartered separately. They are all accommodated in military settlements
along with airborne or air-assault troops. In the Navy spetsnaz units are accommodated in the military settlements of the
naval infantry. The fact that they wear the same uniform and go through roughly
the same kind of battle training makes it very difficult to detect spetsnaz. In Eastern Europe spetsnaz is located close to important
headquarters because it is convenient to have them along with the signals
troops. In the event of their being moved to military settlements belonging to
other branches of the forces spetsnaz
units immediately change uniform.
Agent units in spetsnaz are
installed near specially well-defended targets — missile bases, penal
battalions and nuclear ammunition stores.
5. In the various military districts and groups of forces spetsnaz troops are known by different
names — as reidoviki (`raiders')
in East Germany, and as okhotniki
(`hunters') in the Siberian military district. Spetsnaz soldiers from different military districts who meet by
chance consider themselves as part of different organisations. The common label
spetsnaz is used only by officers
among themselves.
6. Spetsnaz does not have its
own schools or academies. The officer class is trained at the Kiev Higher
Combined Officers' Training School (reconnaissance faculty) and at the Ryazan
Higher Airborne School (special faculty). It is practically impossible to
distinguish a spetsnaz student among
the students of other faculties. Commanding officers and officers concerned
with agent work are trained at the Military-Diplomatic Academy (the GRU
Academy). I have already mentioned the use made of sports sections and teams
for camouflaging the professional core of spetsnaz.
There are many other ways of concealing the presence of spetsnaz in a particular region and the
existence of spetsnaz as a whole.
In spetsnaz everyone has his
own nickname. As in the criminal underworld or at school, a person does not
choose his own nickname, but is given it by others. A man may have several at
the outset, then some of them are dropped until there remains only the one that
sounds best and most pleases the people he works with. The use of nicknames
greatly increases the chances of keeping spetsnaz
operations secret. The nicknames can be transmitted by radio without any
danger. A good friend of mine was given the nickname Racing Pig. Suppose the
head of Intelligence in a district sent the following radiogram, uncyphered:
`Racing Pig to go to post No. 10.' What could that tell an enemy if he
intercepted it? On the other hand, the commander of the group will know the
message is genuine, that it has been sent by one of his own men and nobody
else. Spetsnaz seldom makes use of
radio, and, if the head of Intelligence had to speak to the group again he
would not repeat the name but would say another name to the deputy commander of
the group: `Dog's Heart to take orders from Gladiolus,' for example.
Before making a jump behind enemy lines, in battle or in training, a spetsnaz soldier will hand over to his
company sergeant all his documents, private letters, photographs, everything he
does not need on the campaign and everything that might enable someone to
determine what unit he belongs to, his name, and so on. The spetsnaz soldier has no letters from the
Russian alphabet on his clothes or footwear. There may be some figures which
indicate the number he is known by in the Soviet armed forces, but that is all.
An interesting point is that there are two letters in that number, and for the spetsnaz soldier they always select
letters which are common to both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets — A, K,
X, and so forth. An enemy coming across the corpse of a spetsnaz soldier will find no evidence that it is that of a Soviet
soldier. One could, of course, guess, but the man could just as easily be a
Bulgar, a Pole or a Czech.
___
Spetsnaz
operates in exceptionally unfavourable conditions. It can survive and carry out
a given mission only if the enemy's attention is spread over a vast area and he
does not know where the main blow is to be struck.
With this aim, drops of large numbers of spetsnaz troops are not carried out in a single area but in smaller
numbers and in several areas at the same time. The dropping zones may be
separated from each other by hundreds of kilometres, and apart from the main
areas of operation for spetsnaz
other, subsidiary areas are chosen as well: these are areas of real interest to
spetsnaz, so as to make the enemy
believe that that is the area where the main spetsnaz threat is likely to appear, and they are chosen as
carefully as the main ones. The decision as to which area will be a prime one
and which a subsidiary is taken by the high command on the very eve of the
operation. Sometimes circumstances change so rapidly that a change in the area
of operation may take place even as the planes are over enemy territory.
The deception of the enemy over the main and subsidiary areas of
operation begins with the deception of the men taking part in the operation. Companies,
battalions, regiments and brigades exist as single fighting units. But during
the period of training for the operation, groups and detachments are formed in
accordance with the actual situation and to carry out a specific task. The
strength and armament of each group is worked out specially. Before carrying
out an operation every detachment and every group is isolated from the other
groups and detachments and is trained to carry out the operation planned for
that particular group. The commander and his deputy are given the exact area of
operations and are given information about enemy operations in the given area
and about operations there by spetsnaz
groups and detachments. Sometimes this information is very detailed (if groups
and detachments have to operate jointly), at others it is only superficial,
just enough to prevent neighbouring commanders getting in each other's way.
Sometimes the commander of a group or detachment is told the truth,
sometimes he is deceived. A spetsnaz
officer knows that he can be deceived, and that he cannot always detect with
any certainty what is true and what is a lie.
Commanders of groups and detachments who are to take part in operations
in reserve areas are usually told that their area is the main one and the most important,
that there is already a large force of spetsnaz
operating there or that such a force will soon appear there. The commander of a
group that is operating in the main area may be told, on the contrary, that
apart from his groups there are very few groups operating in the area.
Irrespective of what the comander is told he is given quite specific tasks, for
whose accomplishment he answers with his head in the most literal sense.
In any operation the GRU high command keeps a spetsnaz reserve on its own territory. Even in the course of the
operation some groups may receive an order to withdraw from the main areas into
the reserve areas. Spetsnaz reserves
may be dropped into the reserve areas, which then become main areas of
operations. In this way the enemy obtains information about spetsnaz simultaneously in many areas,
and it is exceptionally difficult to determine where the main areas and where
the reserve ones are. Consequently the enemy's main forces may be thrown
against relatively small groups and detachments which are conducting real
military operations but which are none the less a false target for the enemy.
Even if the enemy establishes which are the main areas of spetsnaz operations the enemy may be too late. Many spetsnaz groups and detachments will
already be leaving the area, but those that remain there will be ordered to
step up their activity; the enemy thus gets the impression that this area is
still the main one. So as not to dispel this illusion, the groups remaining in
the area are ordered by the Soviet high command to prepare to receive fresh spetsnaz reinforcements, are sent
increased supplies and are continually told that they are doing the main job.
But they are not told that their comrades left the area long ago for a reserve
area that has now become a main one.
At the same time as the main and reserve areas are chosen, false areas
of operations for spetsnaz are set. A
false, or phoney, area is created in the following way. A small spetsnaz group with a considerable
supply of mines is dropped into the area secretly. The group lays the mines on
important targets, setting the detonators in such a way that all the mines will
blow up at roughly the same time. Then automatic radio transmitters are fixed
up in inaccessible places which are also carefully mined. This done, the spetsnaz group withdraws from the area
and gets involved in operations in a quite different place. Then another spetsnaz group is dropped into the same
area with the task of carrying out an especially daring operation.
This group is told that it is to be operating in an area of special
importance where there are many other groups also operating. At an agreed
moment the Soviet air force contributes a display of activity over the
particular area. For this purpose real planes are used, which have just
finished dropping genuine groups in another area. The route they follow has to
be deliberately complicated, with several phoney places where they drop torn
parachutes and shroud-lines, airborne troops' equipment, boxes of ammunition,
tins of food, and so forth.
Next day the enemy observes the following scene. In an area of dense
forest in which there are important targets there are obvious traces of the
presence of Soviet parachutists. In many places in the same area there had been
simultaneous explosions. In broad daylight a group of Soviet terrorists had
stopped the car of an important official on the road and brutally murdered him
and got away with his case full of documents. At the same time the enemy had
noted throughout the area a high degree of activity by spetsnaz radio transmitters using a system of rapid and super-rapid
transmission which made it very difficult to trace them. What does the enemy
general have to do, with all these facts on his desk?
To lead the enemy further astray spetsnaz
uses human dummies, clothed in uniform and appropriately equipped. The dummies
are dropped in such a way that the enemy sees the drop but cannot immediately
find the landing place. For this purpose the drop is carried out over mountains
or forests, but far away from inhabited places and places where the enemy's
troops are located. The drops are usually made at dawn, sunset or on a moonlit
night. They are never made in broad daylight because it is then seen to be an
obvious piece of deception, while on a dark night the drop may not be noticed
at all.
The enemy will obviously discover first the dummies in the areas which
are the main places for spetsnaz operations. The presence of the
dummies may raise doubts in the enemy's mind about whether the dummies indicate
that it is not a false target area but the very reverse.... The most important
thing is to disorient the enemy completely. If there are few spetsnaz forces available, then it must
be made to appear that there are lots of them around. If there are plenty of
them, it should be made to appear that there are very few. If their mission is
to destroy aircraft it must look as if their main target is a power station,
and vice versa. Sometimes a group
will lay mines on targets covering a long distance, such as oil pipelines,
electricity power lines, roads and bridges along the roads. In such cases they
set the first detonators to go off with a very long delay and as they advance
they make the delay steadily shorter. The group then withdraws to one side and
changes its direction of advance completely. The successive explosions then
take place in the opposite direction to the one in which the group was moving.
Along with operations in the main, reserve and false areas there may
also be operations by spetsnaz
professional groups working in conditions of special secrecy. The Soviet air
force plays no part in such operations. Even if the groups are dropped by
parachute it takes place some distance away and the groups leave the drop zone
secretly. Relatively small but very carefully trained groups of professional
athletes are chosen for such operations. Their movements can be so carefully
concealed that even their acts of terrorism are carried out in such a way as to
give the enemy the impression that the particular tragedy is the result of some
natural disaster or of some other circumstances unconnected with Soviet
military intelligence or with terrorism in general. All the other activity of spetsnaz serves as a sort of cover for
such specially trained groups. The enemy concentrates his attention on the
main, reserve and false target areas, not suspecting the existence of secret
areas in which the organisation is also operating: secret areas which could
very easily be the most dangerous for the enemy.
Spetsnaz
continues to grow. In the first place its ranks are swelling. In the next few
years spetsnaz companies on the army
level are expected to become battalions, and there is much evidence to suggest
that this process has already begun. Such a reorganisation would mean an
increase in the strength of spetsnaz
by 10,000 men. But that is not the end of it. Already at the end of the 1970s
the possibility was being discussed of increasing the number of regiments at
the strategic level from three to five. The brigades at front level could,
without any increase in the size of the support units, raise the number of
fighting battalions from three or four to five. The possibilities of increasing
the strength of spetsnaz are entirely
realistic and evoke legitimate concern among Western experts.1
1 See Appendices for notes on organisation.
___
The principal direction being taken by efforts to improve the quality of
the spetsnaz formations is
mechanisation. No one disputes the advantages of mechanisation. A mechanised spetsnaz soldier is able to withdraw
much more quickly from the dropping zone. He can cover great distances much
more quickly and inspect much larger areas than can a soldier on foot. And he
can get quickly into contact with the enemy and inflict sudden blows on him,
and then get quickly away from where the enemy may strike him and pursue him.
But the problem of mechanisation is a difficult one. The spetsnaz soldier operates in forests,
marshland, mountains, deserts and even in enormous cities. Spetsnaz needs a vehicle capable of transporting a spetsnaz soldier in all these
conditions, and one that enables him to be as silent and practically invisible
as he is now.
There have been many scientific conferences dealing with the question of
providing spetsnaz with a means of
transport, but they have not yet produced any noticeable results. Soviet
experts realise that it will not be possible to create a single machine to meet
spetsnaz needs, and that they will
have to develop a whole family of vehicles with various features, each of them
intended for operations in particular conditions.
One of the ways of increasing the mobility of spetsnaz behind enemy lines is to provide part of the unit with
very lightweight motorcycles capable of operating on broken terrain. Various
versions of the snow-tractor are being developed for use in northern regions. Spetsnaz also uses cross-country
vehicles. Some of them amount to no more than a platform half a metre high, a metre
and a half wide and two or three metres long mounted on six or eight wheels.
Such a vehicle can easily be dropped by parachute, and it has considerable
cross-country ability in very difficult terrain, including marshland and sand.
It is capable of transporting a spetsnaz
group for long distances, and in case of necessity the group's base can be
moved around on such vehicles while the group operates on foot.
The introduction of such vehicles and motorcycles into spetsnaz does more than increase its mobility;
it also increases its fire-power through the use of heavier armament that can
be transported on the vehicles, as well as a larger supply of ammunition.
The vehicles, motorcycles and snow-tractors are developments being
decided today, and in the near future we shall see evidence that these ideas
are being put into practice. In the more distant future the Soviet high command
wants to see the spetsnaz soldier
airborne. The most likely solution will be for each soldier to have an
apparatus attached to his back which will enable him to make jumps of several
tens or even hundreds of metres. Such an apparatus could act as a universal
means of transport in any terrain, including mountains. Since the beginning of
the 1950s intensive research has been going on in the Soviet Union on this
problem. It would appear that there have so far been no tangible achievements
in this field, but there has been no reduction in the effort put into the
research, despite many failures.
The same objective — to make the spetsnaz soldier airborne, or at least capable of big leaps —
has also been pursued by the Kamov design office, which has for several
decades, along with designing small helicopters, been trying to create a midget
helicopter sufficient for just one man. Army-General Margelov once said that
`an apparatus must be created that will eliminate the boundary between the
earth and the sky.' Earth-bound vehicles cannot fly, while aircraft and
helicopters are defenceless on the ground. Margelov's idea was that they should
try to create a very light apparatus that would enable a soldier to flit like a
dragon-fly from one leaf to another. What they needed was to turn the Soviet
soldier operating behind enemy lines into a sort of insect capable of operating
both on the ground and in the air (though not very high up) and also of
switching from one state to the other without effort.
Every farmer knows that it is easier to kill a wild buffalo that is
ruining his crops than to kill a mass of insects that have descended on his
plants at night. The Soviet high command dreams of a day when the neighbour's
garden can be invaded not only by buffaloes but by mad elephants too, and
swarms of voracious insects at the same time. On a more practical basis for
now, intensive research is being conducted in the Soviet Union to develop new
ways of dropping men by parachute. The work is testing out a variety of new
ideas, one such being the `container drop', in other words the construction of
a container with several men in it which would be dropped on one freight
parachute. This method makes it possible to reduce considerably the amount of
time set aside for training soldiers how to jump by parachute: training time
which can be better spent on more useful things. The container enables the
people in it to start firing at targets as they are landing and immediately
afterwards. The container method makes it much easier to keep the men together
in one spot and solves the problem of assembling a group after it has been
dropped. But there are a whole lot of technical problems connected with the
development of such containers for air drops, and I am not competent to judge
when they may be solved.
Another idea being studied is the possibility of constructing parachutes
that can glide; hybrid creations combining the qualities of the parachute and
the hang-glider. This would make it possible for the transport aircraft to fly
along the least dangerous routes and to drop the parachutists over safe areas
far from the target they are making for. A man using his own gliding parachute
can descend slowly or remain at one level or even climb higher. Since they are
able to control the direction of their flight the spetsnaz groups can approach their targets noiselessly from various
directions.
The hang-glider, especially one equipped with a very light motor, is the
subject of enormous interest to the GRU. It makes it possible not only to fly
from one's own territory to the enemy's territory without using transport
planes, but also to make short flights on the enemy's territory so as to
penetrate to targets, to evade any threat from the enemy and to perform other
tasks.
The hang-glider with a motor (the motodeltoplan)
is the cheapest flying machine and the one easiest to control. The motor has
made it possible to take off from quite small, even patches of ground. It is no
longer necessary to clamber up a hillside in order to take off. But the most
important feature of the motorised hand-glider is, of course, the concealment
it provides. Experiments show that very powerful radar systems are often quite
unable to detect a hang-glider. Its flight is noiseless, because the motor is
used only for taking off and gaining height. By flying with the motor shut off
the man on the hang-glider is protected from heat-seeking means of detection
and attack.
The distance that motorised hang-gliders can fly is quite sufficient for
spetsnaz. It is enough to allow a man
to take off quite a long way behind the frontier, cross it and land deep in the
enemy's rear. Flight in a dangerous area can be carried out at very low
altitudes. They are now developing in the Soviet Union a piece of equipment
that will make it possible for motorised hang-gliders to fly at very low
altitudes following the contours of the ground. Flights will have to take place
at night and in conditions of bad visibility, and a simple, lightweight but
reliable navigation aid is being developed too.
The motorised hang-glider can be used for other purposes apart from
transporting spetsnaz behind the
enemy's lines. It can be used for identifying and even for destroying
especially important enemy targets. Experiments show that the deltoplan can carry light machine-guns,
grenade-launchers and rockets, which makes it an exceptionally dangerous weapon
in the hands of spetsnaz. The main
danger presented by these `insects' is of course not to be found in their
individual qualities but in their numbers. Any insect on its own can easily be
swatted. But a swarm of insects is a problem which demands serious thought: it
is not easy to find a way of dealing with them.
The officers commanding the GRU know exactly the sort of deltoplan that spetsnaz needs in the foreseeable future. It has to be a machine
that needs no more than twenty-five metres to take off, has a rate of climb of
not less than a metre per second, and has a motor with a power of not more than
30 kilowatts which must have good heat isolation and make a noise of not more
than 55 decibels. The machine must be capable of lifting a payload of 120 to
150 kilograms (reconnaissance equipment, armaments, ammunition). Work on its
development, like the work carried out in the 1930s on the first midget
submarines, is being carried on simultaneously and independently by several
groups of designers.
The GRU realises that hang-gliders can be very vulnerable in daytime and
that they are also very sensitive to changes in the weather. There are three
possible ways of overcoming these difficulties: improving the construction of
the machines themselves and improving the professional skills of the pilots;
employing them suddenly and in large numbers on a wide front, using many
combinations of direction and height; and using them only in conjunction with
many other weapons and ways of fighting, and the use of a great variety of
different devices and tricks to neutralise the enemy.
At the same time as developing ways of dropping people in the enemy's
rear, work is being done on methods for returning spetsnaz units to their own territory. This is not as important as
the business of dropping them; nevertheless there are situations when it is
necessary to find some way of transporting someone from a group, or a whole
group, back to Soviet territory. For many years now this has sometimes been
done with low-flying aircraft, but this is a risky method which has yet to be perfected.
Better methods are needed for evacuating men from territories where there is no
sea nearby, where the helicopter cannot be used and where an aircraft cannot
land.
___
A Soviet general named Meshcheryakov opened up a vast area for study and
research when he made the proposal that the armed forces should `create for spetsnaz the kind of conditions in which
no one should interfere with its work'. There are many problems here which
Soviet science is concentrating on trying to solve. Who interferes with the
work of spetsnaz? Primarily the
enemy's radar system. Radar installations interfere with the activity of the
entire Soviet Army. In order to open the way for the Soviet Army into the
territory of the enemy it is necessary first of all to `blind' the enemy's
radar system. That is always one of spetsnaz's
principal tasks. But to carry it out, the radars obstructing spetsnaz itself have somehow to be put
out of action. One solution to this problem is, prior to dropping the main spetsnaz force, to send small groups
behind the enemy's lines who will clear the way for spetsnaz which will in turn clear the way for the whole Soviet
Army. Such a solution can be regarded as satisfactory only because no other
solution has so far been found. But terrific effort is being put into the work
of finding some other solution. The Soviet high command needs a technical
solution, some method that would make it possible, even for a short period,
simultaneously to `blind' the enemy's radar over a fairly wide area, so as to give
the first wave of spetsnaz the
opportunity to carry out its mission.
Anti-aircraft systems are the main killers of spetsnaz. The soldier in a transport aircraft is utterly
defenceless. One quite small missile, or even a shell, can kill spetsnaz troops in whole groups. What
can be done to put out of action the anti-aircraft defence systems at least on
a narrow sector before the arrival of the main force of spetsnaz on the enemy's territory? Much thought is being devoted to
this. The solution may be technical. GRU's spies may help. But spetsnaz can help itself by recruiting
an agent long before the war begins and teaching him what to do on receipt of a
sign from the centre.
Once it has arrived in enemy territory spetsnaz is vulnerable from the moment of landing to the moment of
meeting up with its own troops.
In order to increase its effectiveness and create conditions in which
`no one should interfere with its work' intensive work is being done on the
development of jamming stations to be used in areas where spetsnaz is operating, to prevent the enemy's electronic devices
(radio receivers and transmitters, radars, optical-electronic devices,
computers and any other instruments) from working normally so as to interfere
with the co-ordination of the various enemy forces operating against spetsnaz.
Aircraft and helicopters cause a great deal of trouble for spetsnaz. Spetsnaz already has fairly impressive means of its own for
defending itself from air attacks, but work is now going on to provide spetsnaz groups with a reliable
anti-helicopter weapon, and to develop a weapon capable of covering
considerable areas or even of establishing zones free of all air activity by
the enemy.
Finally, weapons systems are being developed of which the main purpose
will be to isolate fairly large areas from penetration by the enemy's ground
forces. This involves the use of mines and automatic guns mounted and hidden
near bridges, crossroads, tunnels and so forth, which operate automatically and
destroy the enemy trying to transfer reinforcements into the area where spetsnaz is operating and so to
interfere with its work.
___
The process of seeking out especially important targets in the enemy's
territory will in future be carried out not so much by spetsnaz men on foot or even `jumping' as by automatic machines of
a fairly simple (not by today's standards perhaps, but certainly by tomorrow's)
and reliable construction.
Work has been going on for quite a long time on the development of light
(up to 100 kilograms) cross-country vehicles with remote control. The vehicles
tested have mostly been driven by electricity. They have been steered by remote
control with the aid of television cameras installed inside them, similar to
some modern bomb-disposal equipment. Apart from using them to find the targets,
experiments have been conducted into using them to destroy targets by means of
a grenade-launcher mounted in the vehicle or an explosive charge that detonates
on contact with the target. The rapid advances in electronics open up enormous
possibilities for the development of light remote-controlled vehicles capable
of covering large areas quickly and noiselessly and of destroying targets in
enemy territory.
Pilotless aircraft have long been used for identifying targets over
large areas, and the Soviet Union is a leader in this field. Take, for example,
the Soviet strategic high-flying pilotless rocket-driven plane known as the
`Yastreb'. A tremendous amount of work is being done on the development of
relatively small pilotless spy-planes. In the future such planes will take off
not only from Soviet territory but from enemy territory as well. Soviet
airborne troops and spetsnaz have for
long been very keenly interested in the possibility of developing a very light
pilotless aircraft that could be put together and launched on enemy territory,
survey vast areas and transmit a picture to Soviet troops. The ideal aircraft
would be one carrying not only the equipment for carrying out reconnaissance
but an explosive charge as well. Once it discovered the target and transmitted
a picture of it, it could attack it independently. There is nothing fantastic
about this plan. Modern technology is quite capable of building such an
aircraft. The problem is simply to make the aircraft sufficiently light, cheap,
reliable and accurate.
Advances in spetsnaz follow
the usual paths. While this research goes on at the cutting edge of Soviet
military power: improvements are being made to the familiar weapons and
increases in the range, accuracy and fire-power of grenade-launchers, rifles
and other armament; improvements in the quality of footwear, clothes, soldiers'
equipment and means of communication of all kinds; and reductions in the weight
of weapons like mines along with an increase in their destructive potential.
Chapter
15. Spetsnaz's First World War
I was standing on the top of an enormous skyscraper in New York when I
saw King Kong. The huge gorilla surveyed Manhattan triumphantly from a dizzy
height. Of course I knew it wasn't real. But there was something both
frightening and symbolic in that huge black figure.
I learnt later that the gorilla was a rubber one, that it had been
decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the showing of the first film
about King Kong by creating a gigantic inflatable model of the beast and
placing it high above New York. The rubber monster was hauled up and swayed
about in the wind. From the technical point of view the operation had been a
real triumph by the engineers and workmen who had taken part in it. But it was
not an entire success. The monster turned out to be too huge, with the result
that holes appeared in its body through which the air could escape. So the
gigantic muscular frame quickly collapsed into a shapeless bag. They had to
pump more air into it, but the harder they pumped the bigger the holes became
and the quicker the air escaped from the monster. So they had to keep on
pumping....
The Communist leaders have also created a rubber monster and have hauled
it up to a dizzy height. The monster is known as the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, and the Soviet leaders are faced with a dilemma: to expand or to
decline rapidly and become a flabby sack. It is interesting to note that the
Soviet Union became a superpower in the course of the most destructive war in
the history of civilisation, in spite of the fact that it suffered the greatest
loss of life and the greatest destruction on its own territory. It has become a
military superpower and perhaps war is essential for its existence.
I do not know how or when World War Three will start. I do not know
exactly how the Soviet high command plans to make use of spetsnaz in that war: the first world war in which spetsnaz will be a major contributor. I
do not wish to predict the future. In this chapter I shall describe how spetsnaz will be used at the beginning
of that war as I imagine it. It is not my task to describe what will happen.
But I can describe what might happen.
___
The last month of peace, as in other wars, has an almost palpable air of
crisis about it. Incidents, accidents, small disasters add to the tension. Two
trains collide on a railway bridge in Cologne because the signalling system is
out of order. The bridge is seriously damaged and there can be no traffic over
it for the next two months.
In the port of Rotterdam a Polish supertanker bursts into flames.
Because of an error by the captain the tanker is far too close to the oil
storage tanks on the shore, and the burning oil spreads around the harbour. For
two weeks fire brigades summoned from practically the whole country fight an
heroic battle with the flames. The port suffers tremendous losses. The fire
appears to have spread at a quite incredible speed, and some experts are of the
opinion that the Polish tanker was not the only cause of the fire, that the
fire broke out simultaneously in many places.
In the Panama Canal the Varna,
a Bulgarian freighter loaded with heavy containers, rams the lock gates by
mistake. Experts reckoned that the ship should have remained afloat, but for
some reason she sinks there and then. To reopen the canal could well take many
months. The Bulgarian government sends its apologies and declares itself ready
to pay for all the work involved.
In Washington, as the President's helicopter is taking off, several
shots are fired at it from sniper's rifles. The helicopter is only slightly
damaged and the crew succeed in bringing it down again safely. No one in the
craft is hurt. Responsibility for the attack is claimed by a previously unknown
organisation calling itself `Revenge for Vietnam'.
There is a terrorist explosion at Vienna airport.
A group of unidentified men attack the territory of the British military
base in Cyprus with mortars.
A serious accident takes place on the most important oil pipeline in
Alaska. The pumping stations break down and the flow of oil falls to a trickle.
In West Germany there are several unsuccessful attempts on the lives of
American generals.
In the North Sea the biggest of the British oil rigs tips over and
sinks. The precise reason for this is not established, although experts believe
that corrosion of main supports is the culprit.
In the United States an epidemic of some unidentified disease breaks out
and spreads rapidly. It seems to affect port areas particularly, such as San
Francisco, Boston, Charleston, Seattle, Norfolk and Philadelphia.
There are explosions practically every day in Paris. The main targets
are the government districts, communication centres and military headquarters.
At the same time terrible forest fires are raging in the South of France.
All these operations — because of course none of these events is an
accident — and others like them are known officially in the GRU as the
`preparatory period', and unofficially as the `overture'. The overture is a
series of large and small operations the purpose of which is, before actual
military operations begin, to weaken the enemy's morale, create an atmosphere
of general suspicion, fear and uncertainty, and divert the attention of the
enemy's armies and police forces to a huge number of different targets, each of
which may be the object of the next attack.
The overture is carried by agents of the secret services of the Soviet
satellite countries and by mercenaries recruited by intermediaries. The
principal method employed at this stage is `grey terror', that is, a kind of
terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet
secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other
people's cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing
extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name
of fictitious organisations.
The GRU reckons that in this period its operations should be regarded as
natural disasters, actions by forces beyond human control, mistakes committed
by people, or as terrorist acts by organisations not connected with the Soviet
Union.
The terrorist acts carried out in the course of the `overture' require
very few people, very few weapons and little equipment. In some cases all that
may be needed is one man who has as a weapon nothing more than a screwdriver, a
box of matches or a glass ampoule. Some of the operations can have catastrophic
consequences. For example, an epidemic of an infectious disease at seven of the
most important naval bases in the West could have the effect of halving the
combined naval might of the Soviet Union's enemies.
The `overture' could last from several weeks to several months,
gradually gathering force and embracing fresh regions. At the same time the
GUSM would become involved. Photographs compromising a NATO chief appear on the
front pages of Western newspapers. A scandal explodes. It appears that some of
the NATO people have been having meetings with high-ranking Soviet diplomats
and handing over top secret papers. All efforts to refute the story only fuel
the fire. The public demands the immediate dismissal of NATO's chiefs and a
detailed enquiry. Fresh details about the affair are published in the papers
and the scandal increases in scope. At that moment the KGB and GRU can take out
and dust off a tremendous quantity of material and put it into circulation. The
main victims now are the people whom the Soviets had tried to recruit but
failed. Now carefully edited and annotated materials get into the hands of the
press. Soviet Intelligence has tried to recruit thousands, even tens of
thousands, of people in its time. They include young lieutenants who have now
become generals and third secretaries who have now become ambassadors. All of
them rejected Soviet efforts to recruit them, and now Soviet Intelligence
avenges their refusal. The number of scandalous affairs increases. The nations
discover to their surprise that there are very few people to be trusted. The
Soviet intelligence service has nothing to lose if the press gets hold of
material showing that it tried to recruit a French general, without saying how
the attempt ended. It has even less to lose on the eve of war. That is why the
newspapers are full of demands for investigations and reports of resignations,
dismissals and suicides. The best way of killing a general is to kill him with
his own hands.
There is a marked increase in the strength of the peace movement. In
many countries there are continual demands to make the country neutral and not
to support American foreign policy, which has been discredited. At this point
the `grey terror' gathers scope and strength and in the last days of peace
reaches its peak.
From the first moment of the first day of war the main forces of spetsnaz go into action. From then on
the terror is conducted in the name of the Soviet Union and of the Communist
leadership: `red terror'.
But between the `grey' and the `red' terror there may be an intermediate
period — the `pink' terror, when active military operations have not yet
begun and there is still peace, but when some of the best spetsnaz units have already gone into action. The situation is
complicated by the fact that, on the one hand, Soviet fighting units are
already in battle, but that, on the other hand, they are not yet operating in
the name of the Soviet Union. This is an exceptionally risky moment for the
Soviet high command. But he who risks nothing gains nothing. The Soviet
commanders want to gain a great deal, and so are ready to risk a lot. A great
deal has of course been done to reduce the level of risk. Only a relatively
small number of spetsnaz troops take
part in the `pink' terror, but they are the best people in spetsnaz — professional athletes of Olympic class. Everything
has been done to make sure that not one of them should fall into the hands of
the enemy before the outbreak of war. A great deal has also been done to ensure
that, if one of them should fall into enemy hands at that moment, it would be
very difficult to establish his connection with any country whatsoever.
The `pink' terror may continue for no more than a few hours. But those
are the most important hours and minutes — the very last hours and minutes
of peace. It is very important that those hours and minutes should be spoilt
for the enemy and used for the maximum advantage to the Soviet side. It must be
pointed out that the `pink' terror may not be carried out at all. It is used
only when there is absolute certainty of the success of the operations and
equal certainty that the enemy will not be able in the remaining hours and
minutes to assess the situation correctly and strike the first pre-emptive
blow.
___
For Soviet Communists the month of August has a special significance. It
was in August that the First World War began, which resulted in revolutions in
Russia, Germany and Hungary. In August 1939 Georgi Zhukov succeeded in doing
something that no one before him had managed to do: with a sudden blow he
routed a group of Japanese forces in the Far East. It is possible that that
blow had very far-reaching consequences: Japan decided against attacking the
Soviet Union and chose to advance in other directions. Also in August 1939 a
pact was signed in the Kremlin which opened the flood gates for the Second
World War, as a result of which the USSR became a super-power. In August 1945
the Soviet Union carried out a treacherous attack on Japan and Manchuria. In
the course of three weeks of intensive operations huge territories roughly
equal in area and population to Eastern Europe were `liberated'. In August 1961
the Soviet Union built the Berlin Wall, in violation of international
agreements it had signed. In August 1968 the Soviet Army `liberated'
Czechoslovakia and, to its great surprise, did not meet with any opposition
from the West. Suppose the Soviet Communists again choose August for starting a
war....
___
On 12 August, at 0558 local time, a van comes to a halt on the vast
empty parking lot in front of a supermarket in Washington. Three men open the
doors of the van, roll out the fuselage of a light aircraft and attach its
wings. A minute later its motor bursts into life. The plane takes off and
disappears into the sky. It has no pilot. It is controlled by radio with the
aid of very simple instruments, only slightly more complicated than those used
by model aircraft enthusiasts. The plane climbs to about 200 metres and
immediately begins to descend in the direction of the White House. A minute
later a mighty explosion shakes the capital of the United States. The screaming
of sirens on police cars, fire engines and ambulances fills the city.
Three minutes later a second plane sweeps across the centre of the city
and there is a second explosion in the place where the White House once stood.
The second plane has taken off from a section of highway under construction,
and has a quite different control system. Two cars with radio beacons in them
have been left earlier in the middle of the city. The beacons have switched on
automatically a few seconds before the plane's take-off. The automatic pilot is
guided by the two beacons and starts to descend according to a previously
worked-out trajectory. The second plane has been sent off by a second group
operating independently of the first one.
It was a simple plan: if the first plane did not destroy the White House
the second would. If the first plane did destroy the White House then a few
minutes later all the heads of the Washington police would be near where the
explosion had taken place. The second plane would kill many of them.
At 0606 all radio and television channels interrupt their normal
programmes and report the destruction of the White House and the possible death
of the President of the United States.
At 0613 the programme known as Good Morning America is interrupted and
the Vice-President of the USA appears. He announces a staggering piece of news:
there has been an attempt to seize power in the country on the part of the
leaders of the armed forces. The President of the United States has been
killed. The Vice-President appeals to everyone in the armed forces to remain
where they are and not to carry out any orders from senior officers for the
next twenty-four hours, because the orders would be issued by traitors shortly
to be removed from their posts and arrested.
Soon afterwards many television channels across the country cease
transmitting....
___
The Soviet military leaders know that if it doesn't prove possible to
destroy the President of the United States in peacetime, it will be practically
impossible to do so at a time of crisis. The President will be in an
underground, or airborne, command post, somewhere extremely inaccessible and
extremely well guarded.
Consequently the leaders, while not abandoning attempts to kill the
President (for which purpose several groups of assassins with every kind of
weapon, including anti-aircraft missiles, have been dropped in the country),
decide to carry out an operation aimed at causing panic and confusion. If it
proves impossible to kill the President then they will have to reduce his
capacity to rule the country and its armed forces at the most critical moment.
To carry out this task the Soviets have secretly transferred to
Washington a spetsnaz company from
the first spetsnaz regiment at the
strategic level. A large part of the company is made up of women. The entire
complement of the company is professional athletes of Olympic standard. It has
taken several months to transfer the whole company to Washington. The athletes
have arrived in the guise of security men, drivers and technicians working in
the Soviet embassy and other Soviet establishments, and their weapons and
equipment have been brought in in containers covered by diplomatic privilege.
The company has been split into eight groups to carry out its mission. Each
group has its own organisation, structure, weapons and equipment. To carry out
their tasks some of the groups will have to make contact with secret agents
recruited a long time previously by the GRU rezidentura.
On 11 August the GRU rezident
in Washington, a major-general known by the code-name of `Mudry' (officially a
civilian and a high-ranking diplomat) receives an encyphered telegram
consisting of one single word — `Yes'. On the rezident's orders the spetsnaz
company leave their places of work. Some of them simply go back home. Some are
transported secretly in the boots of their cars by GRU officers and dropped in
the woods round the city, in empty underground garages and other secluded
places.
The group commanders gather their groups together in previously agreed
places and set about carrying out their tasks.
Group No. 1 consists of three men and the group is backed up by one
secret agent. The agent works as a mechanic at an airport. In his spare time he
builds flying models of aircraft of various sizes. This particular model was designed
by the best Soviet aircraft designers and put together in America from spares
bought in the open market. The agent himself does not play any part in the
operation. A van containing a light radio-guided aircraft and its separate
wings has been standing in his garage for some months. What the aircraft is for
and to whom it belongs the agent does not know. He only knows that someone has
the keys to the garage and that that person can at any moment come and take the
van along with the aircraft. In the middle of the night the spetsnaz group drives the van out into
the forest where they take the explosive charges from a secret hiding place and
prepare the plane for flight. At dawn the van is standing in the deserted
parking lot.
Group No. 2 is doing roughly the same at that time. But this group has
three agents working for it, two of whom have left their cars with radio
beacons parked in precisely defined spots in the centre of the city.
Group No. 3 consists of fifteen spetsnaz
men and five experts from the REB osnaz.
They are all wearing police uniforms. At night the group kidnaps the director
of a television company and his family. Leaving the family at home as hostages
guarded by three spetsnaz men, the
rest of the group make their way to the studios, capturing two more highly
placed officials on their way, also as hostages, but without giving cause for
noise or panic among the staff. Then, with guns threatening them and supervised
by Soviet electronics experts, the director and his assistants insert, instead
of the usual advertising programme, a video cassette which the commander of the
group has given him. The video cassette has been made up in advance in the
Soviet Union. The role of the Vice-President is played by an actor.
The Soviet high command knows that it is very difficult to cut into
American military channels. If it is at all possible, then at best it will be
possible to do no more than overhear conversations or interrupt them. It is
practically impossible to use them for transmitting false orders at the
strategic level. That is why it is decided to make use of the civilian
television network: it is difficult to get into a television studio, but it is
possible and there are many to choose from. Operations are carried out
simultaneously in several different cities against various TV companies. If the
operation succeeds in only one city it will not matter — millions of
people will be disoriented at the most critical moment.
The operational plan has provided that, just after the `Vice-President'
has spoken several retransmitters will be destroyed by other spetsnaz groups and one of the American
communication satellites will be shot down `by mistake' by a Soviet satellite.
This is intended to deprive the President and the real Vice-President of the
opportunity to refute the false declaration.
But events do not go entirely according to plan. The President succeeds
in addressing the people and issuing a denial of the report. After the
television network throughout America has suffered such major damage, the radio
immediately becomes the principal means of communication. Radio commentators
produce different commentaries about what is happening. The majority of them
report that it is difficult to say which report is genuine and which was false,
but that the only fact about which there is no doubt is that the White House
has been destroyed.
At the moment when all these events are taking place in Washington
another spetsnaz company from the
same regiment is ordered by the GRU rezident
in New York to carry out the same operation but on a much larger scale. They do
not make use of radio-guided aircraft, but seize two television studios and one
radio studio which they use for transmitting the same false report. Five other spetsnaz groups emerge from official
Soviet offices and make open, armed attacks on underground cables and some
radio and TV transmitting and receiving aerials. They manage to damage them and
also some transformer stations, as a result of which millions of TV screens go
blank.
A few hours later spetsnaz
detachment I-M-7 of 120 men lands in New York harbour from a freighter sailing
under a Liberian flag. Using its fire-power the detachment makes its way to the
nearest subway station and, splitting into small groups and seizing a train
with hostages, sets about destroying the underground communications of the
city.
In the area around the berths of America's huge aircraft-carriers and
nuclear submarines in Norfolk, several mini-subs are discovered, as well as
underwater saboteurs with aqualungs.
In Alaska eighteen different places are recorded where small groups have
tried to land from Soviet naval vessels, submarines and aircraft. Some of the
groups have been destroyed as they landed, others have managed to get back to
their ships or, after landing successfully, hidden in the forests.
Spetsnaz
detachment I-S-7 consisting of eighty-two men lands on the coast of Mexico,
immediately commandeers private cars, and the next night, using their
fire-power and new mobility, cross the United States border.
Small spetsnaz groups land and
use routes and methods employed by illegal immigrants, while others make use of
paths and methods used by drug dealers.
Islands and the military installations on them are more vulnerable to
sabotage operations, and at the same moment spetsnaz
groups are landing on Okinawa and Guam, on Diego Garcia, in Greenland and
dozens of other islands on which the West has bases.
___
Spetsnaz
group 2-S-13 has spent three weeks aboard a small Soviet fishing vessel fishing
close to the shores of Ireland. On receiving the signal `393939' the ship's
captain gives the order to cut the nets, switch off the radio, radar and
navigation lights and set course at top speed for the shores of Great Britain.
In darkness two light speed-boats are lowered from the side of the ship.
They are big enough to take the whole group. In the first boat is the group
commander, a lieutenant with the code-name of `Shakespeare', a radio operator,
a machine-gunner and two snipers. In the second boat is the deputy group commander,
a junior lieutenant with the code-name `Poet', two soldiers with flame-throwers
and two snipers. Each man has a supply of food for three days, which is
supposed to be used only in the event of being pursued for a long period. For
general purposes the group has to obtain its food independently, as best it
can. The group also includes two huge German shepherd dogs.
After landing the group the little fishing vessel, still without lights
or radio, puts out into the open sea. The ship's captain is hoping to hide away
in a neutral port in Ireland. If the vessel is stopped at sea by a British
naval patrol the captain and his crew have nothing to fear: the dangerous
passengers have left the fishing boat and all traces of their presence on it
have already been removed.
`Shakespeare's' group lands on a tiny beach close to Little Haven. The
landing place has been chosen long ago, and very well chosen: the beach is shut
in on three sides by huge cliffs, so that even in daytime it is impossible to
see from a distance what is going on on the beach itself.
At the same time as `Shakespeare' four other spetsnaz groups are going ashore in different places two or three
kilometres apart. Operating independently of each other, these four groups
arrive by different routes at the little village of Brawdy and at 3.30 in the
morning they make a simultaneous attack from different directions on a large
building belonging to the United States Navy. According to reports received by
the GRU, hundreds, and possibly thousands, of acoustic listening posts have
been set up in the region of the Atlantic Ocean. The underwater cables from
these posts come together at Brawdy where hundreds of American experts analyse
with the aid of a computer a huge amount of information about the movement of submarines
and surface ships all over the North Atlantic. According to the GRU's
information similar establishments have been set up in Antigua in the Azores,
in Hofn and Keflavik in Iceland, in Hawaii and on Guam. The GRU's commanding
officers are aware that their information about Brawdy may not be accurate. But
the decision has been taken to attack and destroy the Brawdy monitoring station
and all the others as well. The four attacking groups have been given the task
of killing as many as possible of the technical staff of the station and of
destroying as much as possible of the electronic apparatus, and everything that
will burn must be burnt. Mines must be laid at the approaches to the building.
All four groups can then depart in different directions.
The `Shakespeare' group takes no part in the raid. Its task, beginning
with the following night, is to lay the mines at the approaches to the
building. Apart from that, with sniper fire and open attacks, the group has to
make it difficult for anyone to attempt to save or restore the station. The
group commander knows that the four neighbouring groups which are taking part
in the attack are nearby and are doing the same. But the group commander does
not know everything. He does not know that spetsnaz
detachment 2-S-2, under the command of a major known as `Uncle Kostya', has
landed in the area of St David's. Detachment 2-S-2 consists of fifty-six men,
fifteen lightweight motorcycles and six small cars with a considerable supply
of ammunition. The detachment's task is to move rapidly, using secondary and
forest roads and in some cases even the main roads, and reach the Forest of
Dean to organise a base there. The Forest of Dean is a wonderful place for spetsnaz operations. It is a hilly area
covered with dense forest. At one time it was an important industrial region.
There are still the remains of the abandoned coal mines and quarries and
railway tunnels, although it is a long time since there was any railway there.
Once firmly established in that forest `Uncle Kostya' can strike out in any
direction: nearby there is a nuclear power station, the Severn bridge, a
railway tunnel beneath the river Severn, the port of Bristol, the GCHQ
government communications centre at Cheltenham, very important military
factories also at Bristol and a huge munitions dump at Welford. The GRU
believes that it is somewhere in this area that the Royal Family would be sent
in the event of war, and that would be a very important target.
The four spetsnaz groups which
have taken part at the outset in the operation against Brawdy depart
immediately after the attack and make their different ways to the Forest of
Dean where they can join up with Uncle Kostya's detachment. Shakespeare knows
nothing about this. The large-scale raid on Brawdy and Shakespeare's continued
activity in the following days and nights ought to give the enemy the
impression that this is one of the main areas of operation for spetsnaz.
Meanwhile spetsnaz group
2-C-41, of twelve men, has been landed at night near the port of Felixstowe
from the catamaran Double Star. The
boat is sailing under the Spanish flag. The group has left the catamaran in the
open sea and swum ashore in aqualungs. There it has been met by a spetsnaz agent recruited some years
previously. He has at the GRU's expense bought a small motorcycle shop, and his
shop has always had available at least fifteen Japanese motorcycles all ready
for the road, along with several sets of leather jackets, trousers and crash
helmets. The group (containing some of the best motorcyclists in the Soviet
Union) changes its clothes, its weapons are wrapped in tarpaulin, the spetsnaz agent and his family are killed
and their bodies hidden in the cellar of their house, and the motorcycle gang
then rushes off at a great speed along the A45 in the direction of Mildenhall.
Its task is to set up automatic Strela-Blok anti-aircraft missiles in the area
of the base and knock out one of the most important American air bases in
Europe, used regularly by F-111s. Afterwards the group is to make for the
nearest forest and link up with spetsnaz
detachment 2-C-5.
The group commander does not know that at the same time and not far away
from him ten other spetsnaz groups,
each working independently, are carrying out similar operations against the
American military bases at Woodbridge, Bentwaters and Lakenheath.
___
The motor yacht Maria was
built in Italy. In the course of a decade she has changed owners several times
and visited the oceans of the world until she was sold to some wealthy person,
after which she has not been seen for several years in any port in the world.
But when the international situation takes a turn for the worse the Maria
appears in the North Sea sailing under a Swedish flag. After some modernisation
the appearance of the yacht has changed somewhat. On receiving the signal
`393939' the Maria travels at full speed towards the coast of Great Britain.
When it is inside British territorial waters and within range of Fylingdales
Moor the yacht's crew removes hatch covers to reveal two BM-23 Katusha-like
multi-barrelled missile-launchers. The sailors quickly aim the weapon at the
gigantic spheres and fire. Seventy-two heavy shells explode around the
installation, causing irreparable harm to the early warning system. The sailors
on the yacht put on their aqualungs and jump overboard. For two hours the yacht
drifts close to the shore without a crew. When the police clamber aboard, she
explodes and sinks.
___
For operations against NATO forces in Central Europe the Soviet high
command has concentrated an immensely powerful collection of forces consisting
of the 1st and 2nd Western Fronts in East Germany, the 3rd Western Front in
Poland, the Central Front in Czechoslovakia and the Group of Tank Armies in
Belorussia. This makes fifteen armies altogether, including the six tank
armies. On the right flank of this collection of forces there is the combined
Baltic Fleet. And deep in Soviet territory another five fronts are being built
up (fifteen armies altogether) for supporting attack.
On 12 August at 2300 hours spetsnaz
battalions drawn from the seven armies of the first echelon cross the frontier
of Western Germany on motorised hang-gliders, ordinary gliders and gliding
parachutes. Operating in small groups, each battalion strikes at the enemy's
radar installations, concentrating its efforts on a relatively narrow sector so
as to create a sort of corridor for its planes to fly through. Apart from these
seven corridors, another one of strategic importance is created. It was for
this purpose that back in July the 13th spetsnaz
brigade arrived in East Germany from the Moscow military district on the
pretext that it was a military construction unit and based itself in the
Thuringer Wald. The brigade is now split into sixty groups scattered about the
forests of the Spessart and Odenwald hills, and faced with the task of
destroying the anti-aircraft installations, especially the radar systems. In
the first wave there are altogether 130 spetsnaz
groups dropped with a total of some 3300 troops.
Two hours after the men have been dropped, the Soviet air force carries
out a mass night raid on the enemy's anti-aircraft installations. The combined
blow struck by the air force and spetsnaz
makes it possible to clear one large and several smaller corridors through the
anti-aircraft defence system. These corridors are used immediately for another
mass air attack and a second drop of spetsnaz
units.
Simultaneously, advance detachments of the seven armies cross the
frontier and advance westwards.
At 0330 hours on 13 August the second wave of spetsnaz forces is dropped from Aeroflot aircraft operating at very
low heights with heavy fighter cover.
The Central Front drops its spetsnaz
brigade in the heavily wooded mountains near Freiburg. The brigade's job is to
destroy the important American, West German and French headquarters, lines of
communication, aircraft on the ground and anti-aircraft defences. This brigade
is, so to speak, opening the gates into France, into which will soon burst
several fronts and a further wave of spetsnaz.
The 1st and 2nd Western Fronts drop their spetsnaz brigades in Germany to the west of the Rhine. This part of
West Germany is the furthest away from the dangerous eastern neighbour and
consequently all the most vulnerable targets are concentrated there:
headquarters, command posts, aerodromes, nuclear weapon stores, colossal
reserves of military equipment, ammunition and fuel.
The spetsnaz brigade of the
1st Western Front is dropped in the Aachen area. Here there are several large
forests where bases can be organised and a number of very tempting targets:
bridges across the Rhine which would be used for bringing up reserves and
supplying the NATO forces fighting to the east of the Rhine, the important air
bases of Bruggen and Wildenrath, the residence of the German government and
West Germany's civil service in Bonn, important headquarters near
München-Gladbach, and the Geilenkirchen air base where the E-3A early-warning
aircraft are based. It is in this area that the Soviet high command plans to
bring into the battle the 20th Guards Army, which is to strike southwards down
the west bank of the Rhine. The spetsnaz
brigade is busy clearing the way for the columns of tanks which are soon to
appear here.
The spetsnaz brigade of the
2nd Western Front has been dropped in the Kaiserslautern area with the task of
neutralising the important air base and the air force command posts near
Ramstein and Zweibrücken and of destroying the nuclear weapons stores at
Pirmasens. The place where the brigade has been dropped is where, according to
the plan of the Soviet high command, the two arms of the gigantic pincer
movement are to close together: the 20th Guards Army advancing from the north
and the 8th Guards Tank Army striking from Czechoslovakia in the direction of
Karlsruhe. After this the second strategic echelon will be brought into action
to inflict a crushing defeat on France.
At the same time the Soviet high command inderstands that to win the war
it has to prevent the large-scale transfer of American troops, arms and
equipment to Western Europe. To solve the problem the huge Soviet Northern
Fleet will have to be brought out into the Atlantic and be kept supplied there.
The operations of the fleet will have to be backed up by the Air Force. But for
the fleet to get out into the Atlantic it will have to pass through a long
corridor between Norway and Greenland and Iceland. There the Soviet fleet will
be exposed to constant observation and attack by air forces, small ships and
submarines operating out of the fjords and by a huge collection of
radio-electronic instruments and installations.
Norway, especially its southern part, is an exceptionally important area
for the Soviet military leaders. They need to seize southern Norway and
establish air and naval bases there in order to fight a battle for the Atlantic
and therefore for Central Europe. The Soviet high command has allotted at least
one entire front consisting of an airborne division, considerable naval forces
and a brigade of spetsnaz. But
airlifting ammunition, fuel, foodstuffs and reinforcements to the military, air
and naval bases in Norway presents great problems of scale. So there have to be
good and safe roads to the bases in southern Norway. Those roads lie in Sweden.
In the past Sweden was lucky: she always remained on the sidelines in a
conflict. But at the end of the twentieth century the balance of the
battlefield is changing. Sweden has become one of the most important strategic
points in the world. If war breaks out the path of the aggressor will lie
across Sweden. The occupation of Sweden is made easier by the fact that there
are no nuclear weapons on its territory, so that the Soviet leaders risk very
little. They know, however, that the Swedish soldier is a very serious opponent —
thoughtful, disciplined, physically strong and tough, well armed, well
acquainted with the territory he will have to fight over, and well trained for
action in such terrain. The experience of the war against Finland teaches that
in Scandinavia frontal attacks with tanks do not produce brilliant results. It
requires the use of special tactics and special troops: spetsnaz.
And so it goes on, all over the world. In Sweden the capital city in
reduced to a state of panic by the murder of several senior government figures
and arson and bombing attacks on key buildings and ordinary civilians. In
Japan, American nuclear bases are destroyed and chemical weapons used on the
seat of government. In Pakistan, a breakaway movement in Baluchistan province,
instantly recognised by the Soviet Communist Party, asks for and receives
direct military intervention from the USSR to protect its fragile independence:
Soviet-controlled territory extends all the way from Siberia through
Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.
It may not even need a third world war for the Soviet Union to occupy
Baluchistan. The Red Army may be withdrawing from Afghanistan, but knowing what
we know about Soviet strategy and the uses to which spetsnaz can be put, such a withdrawal can be seen as a useful
public relations exercise without hindering the work of spetsnaz in any way. With a spetsnaz
presence in Baluchistan, the Politburo could be reaching very close to the main
oil artery of the world, to the Arab countries, to Eastern and Southern Africa,
to Australia and South-east Asia: territories and oceans that are practically
undefended.
Appendix
A-D Skipped (diagrams)
The part the Soviet athletes
play
Below are a number of examples of the very close relationship between
the sporting and military achievements of Soviet athletes.
Vladimir Myagkov. In
the Soviet ski championships in 1939 Myagkov put up an exceptionally good time
over the 20-kilometre distance, and became Soviet champion at that distance.
During the war he was called into the Army and put in charge of a small unit of
athletes which came directly under the Intelligence directorate of the front.
He was later killed in fighting behind enemy lines. He was the first of the top
Soviet athletes to be made a Hero of the Soviet Union, in his case
posthumously. The tasks that Myagkov's sports unit was carrying out, the
circumstances of his death and the act for which he was made a Hero remain a
Soviet state secret to this day.
Porfiri Polosukhin. A
Red Army officer before the war, he held world records at parachute jumping. He
had been an instructor training special troops for operations on enemy
territory. During the war he continued to train parachutists for spetsnaz units of `guard minelayers'. He
was often behind the enemy's lines, and he developed a method of camouflaging
airfields and of communicating with Soviet aircraft from secret partisan
airfields. This original system operated until the end of the war and was never
detected by the enemy, as a result of which connection by air with partisan
units, especially with spetsnaz and osnaz units, was exceptionally reliable.
After the war many a soldier from special troops trained by Polosukhin became
world and European parachute champions.
Dmitri Kositsyn.
Before the war he headed the skating department in one of the State Institutes
of Physical Culture. It was supposed to be a civilian institute, but the
teachers and many of the students had military rank. Kositsyn was a captain and
had some notable achievements to his credit in sport, having established a
number of Soviet records. During the war he commanded a special unit known as
`Black Death'. From that `civilian' institute, in the first week of war alone,
thirteen such units were formed. They engaged in active terrorist work in support
of the Red Army, and the speed with which the units were formed suggests that
long before the war all the members of the units had been carefully screened
and trained. Otherwise they would not have been sent behind the lines.
Kositsyn's unit acquired a name as the most daring and ruthless of all the
formations on the Leningrad front.
Makhmud Umarov.
During the Second World War Umarov was a soldier in an independent spetsnaz mine-laying battalion. He was
several times dropped with a group of men behind enemy lines. He had two
professions: he was a crack shot, and a doctor. After the war he was an officer
in the Intelligence directorate of the Leningrad military district. He
continued to have two professions, and as a doctor-psychiatrist he received an
honorary doctorate for theoretical work. As a crack shot he became European and
world champion; in fact, he was five times European champion and three times
world champion. He won two Olympic silver medals for pistol shooting, in
Melbourne and in Rome. After the resurrection of spetsnaz he served as an officer in that organisation, where both
his professions were valued. Thanks to his sporting activities
Lieutenant-Colonel Umarov visited many countries of the world and had extensive
connections. In 1961 Makhmud Umarov suddenly disappeared from the medical and
sporting scenes. There is some reason to believe that he died in very strange
circumstances.
Yuri Borisovich Chesnokov. A
man of unusual physical strength and endurance, he took part in many kinds of
sport. He was particularly successful at volleyball: twice world champion and
Olympic champion. Chesnokov's physical qualities were noticed very early and as
soon as he finished school he was taken into the Academy of Military
Engineering, although he was not an officer. From that time he was closely
involved in the theory and practice of using explosives. Apart from an Olympic
gold medal he has another gold medal for his work on the technique of causing
explosions. Chesnokov is now a spetsnaz
colonel.
Valentin Yakovlevich
Kudrevatykh. He joined the para-military DOSAAF organisation when
he was still at school. He took up parachute jumping, gliding and rifle
shooting at the same time. In May 1956 he made his first parachute jump. Two
years later, at the age of eighteen, he had reached a high level at parachute
jumping and shooting. In 1959 he was called into the army, serving in the
airborne forces. In 1961 he set five world records in one week in parachute
sport, for which he was promoted sergeant and sent to the airborne officers'
school in Ryazan. After that he was sent to spetsnaz
and put in command of some special women's units. He had under his command the
most outstanding women athletes, including Antonina Kensitskaya, to whom he is
now married. She has established thirteen world records, her husband fifteen.
He made parachute jumps (often with a women's group) in the most incredible
conditions, landing in the mountains, in forests, on the roofs of houses and so
forth. Kudrevatykh took part in practically all the tests of new parachute
equipment and weapons. Along with a group of professional women parachutists he
took part in the experimental group drop from a critically low height on 1
March 1968. Then, as he was completing his 5,555th jump, he got into a critical
situation. Black humour among Soviet airborne troops says that, if neither the
main nor the reserve parachute opens, the parachutist still has a whole twenty
seconds to learn to fly. Kudrevatykh did not learn to fly in those last
seconds, but he managed with his body and the unopened parachutes to slow his
fall. He spent more than two years in hospital and went through more than ten
operations. When he was discharged he made his 5,556th jump. Many Soviet
military papers published pictures of that jump. As usual Kudrevatykh jumped in
the company of professional women parachutists. But there are no women in the
Soviet airborne divisions. Only in spetsnaz.
After making that jump Kudrevatykh was promoted full colonel.
The Spetsnaz Intelligence
Point (RP-SN)
Imagine that you have graduated from the 3rd faculty (operational
intelligence) of the Military-Diplomatic Academy of the General Staff. If you
have passed out successfully you will be sent to one of the twenty Intelligence
directorates (RUs), which are to be found in the headquarters of military
districts, groups of forces and fleets.
On the first day I spent at the Military-Diplomatic Academy I realised
that diplomacy is espionage and that military diplomacy is military espionage.
Successful completion of the 3rd faculty of the Military-Diplomatic Academy
means serving in one of the Intelligence directorates, or in subordinate units
directly connected with the recruitment of foreign agents and managing them.
Imagine you have been posted to the Intelligence Directorate of the Kiev
military district. Kiev is without doubt the most beautiful city in the Soviet
Union, and I have heard it said more than once by Western journalists who have
visited Kiev that it is the most beautiful city in the world.
So you are now in the enormous building housing the headquarters of the
Kiev military district. At different times all the outstanding military leaders
of the Soviet Union have worked in this magnificent building: Zhukov,
Bagramyan, Vatutin, Koshevoi, Chuikov, Kulikov, Yakubovsky and many others. The
office of the officer commanding the district is on the second floor. To the
right of his office are the massive doors to the Operational Directorate. To
the left are the no less massive doors to the Intelligence Directorate. It is a
symbolic placing: the first directorate (battle planning) is the commanding
officer's right hand, while the second directorate (razvedka) is his left. There are many other directorates and
departments in the headquarters, but they are all on other floors.
Your first visit to the Intelligence Directorate at the district
headquarters takes place, of course, in the company of one of the officers.
Otherwise you would simply not be admitted.
Before entering the headquarters you must call at the permit office and
produce your authority. You are given a number to phone and an officer comes to
escort you. The permit office examines your documents very carefully and issues
you with a temporary pass. The officer then leads you along endless corridors
and up numerous stairs. You must be ready at every turn to produce your permit
and officer's identity card. Your documents are checked many times before you
reach the district's head of razvedka.
Now you are in the general's huge office. Facing you is a major-general,
the head of razvedka for the Kiev
military district. You introduce yourself to him: `Comrade general, Captain
so-and-so reporting for further duty.'
The general asks you a few questions, and as he talks with you about
trivialities he decides your fate. There are a number of possibilities. Perhaps
he doesn't take to you and so decides not to take you on. You will be posted to
the district Personnel Directorate and will never again have anything to do
with Intelligence work. Or he may like you but not very much. In that case he
will send you for reconnaissance work on lower floors to serve in a division or
regiment. You will be working in razvedka,
but not with the agent network.
If you really please him several paths will be open to you. The razvedka of a military district is a
gigantic organisation with a great deal of work to do. Firstly, he can post you
to the headquarters of one of three armies to work in the headquarters
Intelligence department, where you will be sent on to an intelligence post (RP)
to recruit secret agent-informers to work for that army.
Secondly, he can leave you in the Intelligence directorate for work in
the second (agent network) or the third (spetsnaz)
department. Thirdly, he can post you to one of the places where the recruitment
of foreigners to work for the Kiev military district is actually taking place.
There are two such places: the Intelligence centre (RZs) and the spetsnaz Intelligence point (RP spetsnaz).
The general may ask you for your own opinion. Your reply must be short:
for example — I don't mind where I work, so long as it is not at
headquarters, preferably at recruitment. The general expects that sort of reply
from you. Intelligence has no need of an officer who is not bursting to do recruiting
work. If someone has got into Intelligence work but is not burning with desire
to recruit foreigners, it means he has made a mistake in his choice of
profession. It also means that the people who recommended him for Intelligence
work and spent years training him at the Military-Diplomatic Academy were also
mistaken.
The general asks his final question: what kind of agents do you want to
recruit — for providing information or for collaborating with spetsnaz? Every intelligence officer at
the front and fleet level must know how to recruit agents of both kinds. It is,
you say, all the same to you.
`All right,' the general says, `I am appointing you an officer in the spetsnaz Intelligence point of the 3rd
department of the Second Directorate of the headquarters of the Kiev military
district. The order will be issued in writing tomorrow. I wish you well.'
You thank the general for the trust placed in you, salute smartly, click
your heels, and leave the office. The escorting officer awaits you at the exit.
From here, without any permits, you come out into a little courtyard, where
there is always a little prison van waiting. The door slams behind you and you
are in a mousetrap. Facing you is a little opaque window with a strong grille
over it. No use trying to look out. The van twists and turns round the city's
streets, often stopping and changing direction, and you realise that it is
stopping at traffic lights. At last the van drives through some huge gates and
comes to a halt. The door is opened and you step out into the courtyard of the
penal battalion of the Kiev military district. It is a military prison. Welcome
to your new place of work.
___
The ancient city of Kiev has seen conquerors from all over the world
pass down its streets. Some of them razed the city to the ground; others
fortified it; then a third lot destroyed it again. The fortifications around
the ruined and burnt-out city of Kiev were built for the last time in 1943 on
Hitler's orders. On the approaches to Kiev you can come across fortifications
of all ages, from the concrete pillboxes of the twentieth century to the ruins
of walls that were built five hundred years before the arrival of Batu Khan.
The place you have been brought to is a fort built at the time of
Catherine the Great. It is built on the south-west approaches to the city at
the top of steep cliffs covered with ancient oaks. Alongside are other forts,
an enormous ancient monastery, and an ancient fortress which now houses a
military hospital.
Through the centuries military installations of the most varied
kinds — stores, barracks, headquarters — have been built on the most
dangerous approaches to the city and, apart from the basic purpose, they have
also served as fortifications. The fort we have come to also served two purposes:
as a barracks for 500 to 700 soldiers, and as a fort. Circular in shape, its
outside walls used to have only narrow slits and broad embrasures for guns.
These have now all been filled in and the only remaining windows are those that
look into the internal courtyard. The fort has only one gateway, a
well-defended tunnel through the mighty walls. A brick wall has been added
around the fort. From the outside it looks like a high brick wall in a narrow
lane, with yet another brick wall, higher than the first one, behind it.
Both the inner and outer courtyards of the fort are split up into
numerous sectors and little yards divided by smaller walls and a whole jungle
of barbed wire. The sectors have their own strange labels: the numbering has
been so devised that no one should be able to discern any logic in it. The
absence of any system facilitates the secrecy surrounding the establishment.
There are three companies of men undergoing punishment and one guard
company in the penal battalion. The men in the guard company have only a very
vague idea of who visits the battalion and why. They have only their
instructions which have to be carried out: the men undergoing punishment can be
only in the inner courtyard in certain sectors; officers who have a triangle
stamped in their passes are allowed into certain other sectors; officers with a
little star stamped in their passes are allowed to enter other sectors; and so
forth.
Apart from the officers of the penal battalion, frequent callers at the
fort are officers of the military prosecutor's office, the military commandant
of the city, and officers of the commandant's office: investigators, lawyers.
And there is a sector set aside for you. The spetsnaz intelligence point has no connection at all with the penal
battalion. But if it were to be situated separately in some building, sooner or
later people in the vicinity would be struck by the suspicious behaviour of the
people occupying the building. Here in the penal battalion you are hidden from
curious eyes.
The spetsnaz intelligence
point is a small military unit headed by a lieutenant-colonel, who has under
him a number of officers, graduates from the Military-Diplomatic Academy, and a
few sergeants and privates who carry out support functions without having any
idea (or the correct idea) of what the officers are engaged on. Officers of the
penal battalion and those visiting the battalion are not supposed to ask what
goes on in your sector. Many years back one of your predecessors appeared to
allow himself the luxury of `careless talk', to the effect that his was a group
reporting directly to the officer commanding the district and investigating
cases of corruption among the senior officers. This is sufficient to ensure
that you are treated with respect and not asked any more questions.
Its location in the penal battalion gives the spetsnaz point a lot of advantages: behind such enormous walls, the
command can be sure that your documents will not get burnt or lost by accident;
it is under the strictest guard, with dozens of guard dogs and machine-guns
mounted in towers to preserve your peace of mind; no outsider interested in
what is going on inside the walls will ever get a straight answer; the
independent organisation does not attract the attention of higher-ranking
Soviet military leaders who are not supposed to know about GRU and spetsnaz; and even if an outsider knows
something about you he cannot distinguish spetsnaz
officers from among the other officers visiting the old fort.
Spetsnaz has
at its disposal a number of prison vans exactly the same as those belonging to
the penal battalion and with similar numbers. They are very convenient for
bringing any person of interest to us into or out of your fort at any time.
What is good about the prison van is that neither the visitor nor outsiders can
work out exactly where the spetsnaz
point is. A visitor can be invited to any well guarded place where there are
usually plenty of people (the headquarters, commandant's office, police
station) and then secretly brought in a closed van to the old fort, and
returned in the same way so that he gets lost in the crowd. Fortunately there
are several such forts in the district.
A penal battalion, that is to say a military prison, is a favourite
place for the GRU to hide its branches in. There are other kinds of camouflage
as well — design bureaux, missiles bases, signals centres — but they
all have one feature in common: a small, secret organisation is concealed
within a large, carefully guarded military establishment.
In addition to its main premises where the safes crammed with secret
papers are kept, the spetsnaz
Intelligence point has several secret apartments and small houses on the
outskirts of the city.
Having found yourself in the place I have described, you are met by an
unhappy-looking lieutenant-colonel who has probably spent his whole working
life at this work. He gives you a brief order: `You wear uniform only inside
the fort and if you are called to the district headquarters. The rest of the
time you wear civilian clothes.'
`I understand, comrade lieutenant-colonel.'
`But there's nothing for you to do here in the fort and even less in the
headquarters. This is my place, not yours. I don't need any bureaucrats; I need
hunters. Go off and come back in a month's time with material on a good foreign
catch.'
`Very well.'
`Do you know the territories our district will be fighting on in a war?'
`Yes, I do.'
`Well, I need another agent there who could meet up with a spetsnaz group in any circumstances. I
am giving you a month because you are just beginning your service, but the
time-scale will be stricter later on. Off you go, and remember that you have
got a lot of rivals in Kiev: the friends of yours who have already joined the
Intelligence point are probably active in the city, the KGB is also busy, and
goodness knows who else is recruiting here. And remember — you can slip up
only once in our business. I shall never overlook a mistake, and neither will spetsnaz. In wartime you are shot for
making a mistake. In peacetime you land in prison. You know which prison?'
___
That was what Kiev was like before the Chernobyl disaster. For hundreds
of years barbarians from many of the countries of Asia and Europe had been
doing their best to destroy my great city, but nobody inflicted such damage on it
as did the Communists. The history of nuclear energy in the Soviet Union is
one — very long — story of crime. The founding father of the
development of nuclear energy was Lavrenti Beria, the all-powerful chief of the
secret police and, as later became apparent, one of the greatest criminals of
the twentieth century. The majority of the Soviet ministers, designers and
engineers connected with the development of nuclear energy were kept in
prisons, and not only in Stalin's time. All nuclear plants are built with
prison labour. I have personally seen thousands of convicts working in the
uranium mines in the Kirovograd region. (See V. Suvorov, Aquarium). The convicts have no incentive whatsoever to turn out
good quality work.
Sooner or later this was bound to end in disaster. The paper Literaturnaya Ukraina1
reported on the criminal attitude to construction work and the use of defective
materials and obsolete technology at Chernobyl. The paper issued a warning that
several generations of people would have to pay for the irresponsible attitude
of the people in charge of the building work. But nobody paid any attention to
this article or others like it; a month later the catastrophe took place.
1 27 March 1986.