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

  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, lieutenan
t, 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 stu
dents 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.