Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces
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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.
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Appendix F
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 w
ho 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 bu
reaux, 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