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 fingernails, 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 an
d 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 paramilitary 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 cosmeti
c: 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’.
Chapter 8
The Agent Network
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.
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