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, broad-shouldered 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 the 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.
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Notes
[1] All figures as of 1 January, 1979. 22 September, 1985. [Return]
[2] 22 September, 1985. [Return]
[3] Sovetsky Voin, No. 20, 1985. [Return]
[4] Krasnaya Zvezda, 22 May, 1985. [Return]
Chapter 7
Selection and Training
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 t
heir 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 coordinate 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.
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