Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Read online

  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 go
es 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