Spetsnaz Read online

  Operation ‘War of the Rails’ was carried out simultaneously in a territory with a front more than 1000 kilometres wide and more than 500 kilometres in depth. On the first night of the operation 42,000 explosions took place on the railway lines, and the partisan activity increased with every night that passed. The German high command threw in tremendous forces to defend their lines of communication, so that every night could be heard not only the sound of bridges and railway lines being blown up but also the sounds of battle with the German forces as the partisans fought their way through to whatever they had to destroy. Altogether, in the course of the operation 215,000 rails, 836 complete trains, 184 rail and 556 road bridges were blown up. A vast quantity of enemy equipment and ammunition was also destroyed.

  Having won the enormous battle at Kursk, the Red Army sped towards the river Dnieper and crossed it in several places. A second large-scale operation in support of the advancing troops was carried out in the enemy’s rear under the name of ‘Concert’, which was in concept and spirit a continuation of the ‘War of the Rails’. In the final stage of that operation all the spetsnaz units were taken off to new areas and were enabled to rest along with the partisan formations which had not taken part in it. Now their time had come. Operation ‘Concert’ began on 19 September 1943. That night in Belorussia alone 19,903 rails were blown up. On the night of 25 September 15,809 rails were destroyed. All the spetsnaz units and 193 partisan units took part in the operation ‘Concert’. The total number of participants in the operation exceeded 120,000. In the course of the whole operation, which went on until the end of October, 148,557 rails were destroyed, several hundred trains with troops, weapons and ammunition were derailed, and hundreds of bridges were blown up. Despite a shortage of explosives and other material needed for such work, on the eve of the operation only eighty tons of explosives could be sent to the partisans. Nevertheless ‘Concert’ was a tremendous success.

  After the Red Army moved into the territory of neighbouring states spetsnaz went through a radical reorganisation. The independent reconnaissance units, the reconnaissance posts which recruited agents for terrorist actions, and the independent radio battalions for conducting disinformation, were all retained in their entirety. There are plenty of references in the Soviet military press to operations by special intelligence units in the final stages of the war. For example, in the course of an operation in the Vistula-Oder area special groups from the Intelligence directorate of the headquarters of the 1st Ukrainian Front established the scope of the network of aerodromes and the exact position of the enemy’s air bases, found the headquarters of the 4th Tank Army and the 17th Army, the 48th Tank Corps and the 42nd Army Corps, and also gathered a great deal of other very necessary information.

  The detachments of ‘guards minelayers’ of spetsnaz were reformed, however, into regular guards sapper detachments and were used in that form until the end of the war. Only a relatively small number of ‘guards minelayers’ were kept in being and used behind the enemy lines in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Such a decision was absolutely right for the times. The main targets for spetsnaz operations had been the enemy’s lines of communication. But that had been before the Red Army had started to advance at great speed. When that happened, there was no longer any need to blow up bridges. They needed to be captured and preserved, not destroyed. For this work the Red Army had separate shock brigades of motorised guards engineering troops which, operating jointly with the forward units, would capture especially important buildings and other objects, clear them of mines and defend them until the main force arrived. The guards formations of spetsnaz were used mainly for strengthening these special engineering brigades. Some of the surviving guards battalions of spetsnaz were transferred to the Far East where, in August 1945, they were used against the Japanese Army.

  The use of spetsnaz in the Manchurian offensive of 1945 is of special interest, because it provides the best illustration of what was supposed to happen to Germany if she had not attacked the USSR.

  Japan had a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. But Japan had gone to war with other states and had exhausted her military, economic and other resources. Japan had seized vast territories inhabited by hundreds of millions of people who wanted to be liberated and were ready to welcome and support any liberator who came along. Japan was in exactly the situation in which Stalin had wanted to see Germany: exhausted by war with other countries, and with troops scattered over expansive territories the populations of which hated the sight of them.

  Thus, in the interests naturally of peace and humanity Stalin struck a sudden crushing blow at the armed forces of Japan in Manchuria and China, violating the treaty signed four years earlier. The operation took place over vast areas. In terms of the distances covered and the speed at which it moved, this operation has no equal in world history. Soviet troops operated over territories 5000 kilometres in width and 600-800 kilometres in depth. More than a million and a half soldiers took part in the operation, with over 5000 tanks and nearly 4000 aircraft. It really was a lightning operation, in the course of which 84,000 Japanese officers and men were killed and 593,000 taken prisoner. A tremendous quantity of arms, ammunition and other equipment was seized.

  It may be objected that Japan was already on the brink of catastrophe. That is true. But therein lies Soviet strategy: to remain neutral until such time as the enemy exhausts himself in battle against someone else, and then to strike a sudden blow. That is precisely how the war against Germany was planned and that was why the partisan units, the barriers and defensive installations were all dispensed with, and why the ten airborne corps were created in 1941.

  In the Manchurian offensive the spetsnaz detachments put up their best performance. Twenty airborne landings were made not by airborne troops, but by special reconnaissance troops. Spetsnaz units of the Pacific Fleet were landed from submarines and surface boats. Some spetsnaz units crossed the frontier by foot, captured Japanese cars and used them for their operations. Worried about the railway tunnels on a strip of the 1st Far Eastern front, the Soviet high command created special units for capturing the tunnels. The groups crossed the frontier secretly, cut the throats of the guards, severed the wires connected to the explosive charges, and put the detonators out of action. They then held the tunnels until their own forces arrived.

  In the course of the offensive a new and very risky type of operation was employed by spetsnaz. Senior GRU officers, with the rank of colonel or even major-general, were put in charge of small groups. Such a group would suddenly land on an airfield close to an important Japanese headquarters. The appearance of a Soviet colonel or general deep in the Japanese rear never failed to provoke astonished reactions from both the Japanese high command and the Japanese troops, as well as from the local population. The transport planes carrying these were escorted by Soviet fighter aircraft, but the fighters were soon obliged to return to their bases, leaving the Soviet transport undefended until it landed. Even after it landed it had at best only one high-ranking officer, the crew and no more than a platoon of soldiers to guard over the plane. The Soviet officer would demand and usually obtain a meeting with a Japanese general, at which he would demand the surrender of the Japanese garrison. He and his group really had nothing to back them up: Soviet troops were still hundreds of kilometres away and it was still weeks to the end of the war. But the local Japanese military leaders (and the Soviet officers too, for that matter) naturally did not realise this. Perhaps the Emperor had decided to fight on to the last man. . . .

  In several recorded instances, senior Japanese military leaders decided independently to surrender without having permission to do so from their superiors. The improvement in the morale and position of the Soviet troops can be imagined.

  * * *

  After the end of the Second World War spetsnaz practically ceased to exist for several years. Its reorganisation was eventually carried out under the direction of several generals who were fanatically devoted to the idea o
f spetsnaz. One of them was Viktor Kondratevich Kharchenko, who is quite rightly regarded as the ‘father’ of the modern spetsnaz. Kharchenko was an outstanding sportsman and expert in the theory and practice of the use of explosives. In 1938 he graduated from the military electrotechnical academy which, apart from training specialists in communications, at that time also produced experts in the business of applying the most complicated way of blowing up buildings and other objectives. During the war he was chief of staff of the directorate of special works on the Western front. From May 1942 he was chief of staff on the independent guards spetsnaz brigade, and from June he was deputy commander of that brigade. In July 1944 his brigade was reorganised into an independent guards motorised engineering brigade.

  Kharchenko was working in the General Staff after the war when he wrote a letter to Stalin, the basic point of which was: ‘If before the outbreak of war our sportsmen who made up the spetsnaz units spent some time in Germany, Finland, Poland and other countries, they could be used in wartime in enemy territory with greater likelihood of success.’ Many specialists in the Soviet Union now believe that Stalin put an end to the Soviet Union’s self-imposed isolation in sport partly because of the effect Kharchenko’s letter had on him.

  In 1948 Kharchenko completed his studies at the Academy of the General Staff. From 1951 he headed the scientific research institute of the engineering troops. Under his direction major researches and experiments were carried out in an effort to develop new engineering equipment and armaments, especially for small detachments of saboteurs operating behind the enemy’s lines.

  In the immediate postwar years Kharchenko strove to demonstrate at the very highest level the necessity for reconstructing spetsnaz on a new technical level. He had a great many opponents. So then he decided not to argue any more. He selected a group of sportsmen from among the students at the engineering academy, succeeded in interesting them in his idea, and trained them personally for carrying out very difficult tasks. During manoeuvres held at the Totskyie camps, when on Marshal Zhukov’s instructions a real nuclear explosion was carried out, and then the behaviour of the troops in conditions extremely close to real warfare was studied, Kharchenko decided to deploy his own group of men at his own risk.

  The discussions that took place after the manoeuvres were, the senior officers all agreed, instructive - all except General Kharchenko. He pointed out that in circumstances of actual warfare nothing of what they had been discussing would have taken place because, he said, a small group of trained people had been close to where the nuclear charges had been stored and had had every opportunity to destroy the transport when the charges were being moved from the store to the airfield. Moreover, he said, the officers who took the decision to use nuclear weapons could easily have been killed before they took the decision. Kharchenko produced proof in support of his statements. When this produced no magic results, Kharchenko repeated his ‘act’ at other major manoeuvres until his persistence paid off. Eventually he obtained permission to form a battalion for operations in the enemy’s rear directed at his nuclear weapons and his command posts.

  The battalion operated very successfully, and that was the beginning of the resurrection of spetsnaz. All the contemporary formations of spetsnaz have been created anew. That is why, unlike those which existed during the war, they are not honoured with the title of ‘guards’ units. [7]

  * * *

  Notes

  [1] В. Bazhanov: 'Memoirs of a Secretary to Stalin’, pub. Tretya volna 1980, pp 67-69. [Return]

  [2] Ibid. p. 68. [Return]

  [3] Strategy. The Indirect Approach, p.241. [Return]

  [4] ‘I cannot take responsibility for the waiting any longer, because I cannot see anyway that the danger will disappear. . . . The concentration of Soviet force is enormous. . . . All available Soviet armed forces are now on our border. . . . It is quite possible that Russia will try to destroy the Rumanian oilfields.’ [Return]

  [5] Pravda, 11 March 1939. [Return]

  [6] In the Soviet Army the title of ‘guards’ can be won only in battle, the only exceptions being certain formations which were awarded the title when they were being formed. These included spetsnaz detachments. [Return]

  [7] Kharchenko himself moved steadily up the promotion ladder. From 1961 he was deputy to the Chief of Engineering troops and from February 1965 he was head of the same service. In 1972 he was promoted to Marshal of engineering troops. Having attained such heights, however, Kharchenko did not forget his creation, and he was a frequent guest in the 'Olympic Village’, the main spetsnaz training centre near Kirovograd. When he was killed in 1975 during the testing of a new weapon, his citations used the highest peacetime formula ‘killed in the course of carrying out his official duties’, which is very seldom met with in reference to this senior category of Soviet officers. [Return]

  Chapter 4

  The Fighting Units of Spetsnaz

  Spetsnaz is made up of three distinct elements: the fighting units, the units of professional sportsmen and the network of secret agents. In numerical terms the fighting units of spetsnaz are the largest. They are composed of soldiers from the ranks, out of those who are especially strong, especially tough and especially loyal.

  A factor that facilitates the selection process is that within the Soviet Army there exists a hidden system for the selection of soldiers. Long before they put on a military uniform, the millions of recruits are carefully screened and divided into categories in accordance with their political reliability, their physical and mental development, the extent of their political involvement, and the ‘cleanliness’ (from the Communist point of view) of their personal and family record. The Soviet soldier does not know to which category he belongs, and in fact he knows nothing about the existence of the various categories. If a soldier is included in a higher category than his comrades that does not necessarily mean that he is fortunate. On the contrary, the best thing for a soldier is to be put into the lowest category and to perform his two years of military service in some remote and God-forsaken pioneer battalion in which there is neither discipline nor supervision, or in units of which the officers have long since drunk away all the authority they had. The higher the category the soldier is put into the more difficult his military service will be.

  Soldiers of the highest category make up the Kremlin guard, the troops protecting the government communications, the frontier troops of the KGB and spetsnaz. Being included in the highest category does not necessarily mean being posted to the Kremlin, to a spetsnaz brigade or to a government communications centre. The highest-category men selected by the local military authorities simply represent the best human material which is offered to the ‘customer’ for him to choose from. The ‘customer’ selects only what suits his need. All those who do not appeal to the customers move down to a lower level and are offered to representatives of the next echelon, that of the strategic missile troops, the airborne forces and crews of nuclear submarines.

  The young soldier does not realise, of course, what is going on. He is simply summoned to a room where people he doesn’t know ask him a lot of questions. A few days later he is called to the room again and finds a different set of strangers there who also ask him questions.

  This system of sorting out recruits reminds one of the system of closed shops for leading comrades. The highest official has the first choice. Then his deputy can go to the shop and choose something from what remains. Then lower ranking officials are allowed into the shop, then their deputies, and so on. In this system spetsnaz rank as the very highest category.

  The soldiers who have been picked out by spetsnaz officers are gathered together into groups and are convoyed by officers and sergeants to fighting units of spetsnaz, where they are formed into groups and go through an intensive course of training lasting several weeks. At the end of the course the soldier fires shots from his Kalashnikov automatic rifle for the first time and is then made to take the military oath. The best out of the group of young s
oldiers are then sent to a spetsnaz training unit from which they return six months later with the rank of sergeant, while the rest are posted to fighting units.

  In spetsnaz, as throughout the Soviet Army, they observe the ‘cult of the old soldier’. All soldiers are divided into stariki (‘old men’) and salagi (‘small fry’). A real salaga is a soldier who has only just started his service. A really ‘old man’ (some twenty years’ old) is one who is about to complete his service in a few months. A man who is neither a real starik nor a real salaga falls between the two, a starik being compared to anyone who has done less time than he has, and a salaga to anyone who has served in the army a few months longer than he.

  Having been recruited into spetsnaz, the soldier has to sign an undertaking not to disclose secret information. He has no right ever to tell anyone where he has served or what his service consisted of. At most he has the right to say he served with the airborne corps. Disclosure of the secrets of spetsnaz is treated as high treason, punishable by death according to article 64 of the Soviet criminal code.

  Once he has completed his two years’ service in spetsnaz a soldier has three choices. He can become an officer, in which case he is offered special terms for entering the higher school for officers of the airborne forces in Ryazan. He can become a regular soldier in spetsnaz, for which he has to go through a number of supplementary courses. Or he has the option to join the reserve. If he chooses the last course he is regarded as being a member of the spetsnaz reserve and is with it for the next five years. Then, up to the age of thirty, he is part of the airborne reserve. After that he is considered to belong to the ordinary infantry reserve until he is fifty. Like any other reserve force, the existence of a spetsnaz reserve makes it possible at a time of mobilisation to multiply the size of the spetsnaz fighting units with reservists if necessary.