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

  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

  of 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.

  --------

  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 acordance 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 soldiers 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 30, 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.

  ___

  Mud, nothing but mud all round, and it was pouring with rain. It had

  been raining throughout the summer, so that everything was wet and hanging

  limp. Everything was stuck in the mud. Every soldier's boot carried

  kilograms of it. But their bodies were covered in mud as well, and their

  hands and faces up to their ears and further. It was clear that the sergeant

  had not taken pity on the young spetsnaz recruits that day. They had been

  called up only a month before. They had been formed up into a provisional

  group and been put through a month's course for young soldiers which every

  one of them would remember all his life in his worst nightmare.

  That morning they had been divided up into companies and platoons.

  Before letting them back into their mud-covered, sodden tent at the end of

  the day each sergeant had time to show his platoon the extent of his

  authority.

  `Get inside!'

  There were ten young men crowding around the entrance to a huge tent,

  as big as a prison barracks.

  `Get inside, damn you!' The sergeant urged them on.

  The first soldier thrust aside the heavy wet tarpaulin which served as

  a door and was about to enter when something stopped him. On the muddy, much

  trampled ground just inside the entrance a dazzlingly white towel had been

  laid down in place of a doormat. The soldier hesitated. But behind him the

  sergeant was pushing and shouting: `Go on in, damn you!'

  The soldier was not inclined to step on the towel. At the same time he

  couldn't make up his mind to jump over it, because the mud from his boots

  would inevitably land on the towel. Eventually he jumped, and the others

  jumped across the towel after him. For some reason no one dared to take the

  towel away. Everyone could see that there was some reason why it had been

  put there right in the entrance. A beautiful clean towel. With mud all

  around it. What was it doing there?

  A whole platoon lived in one huge tent. The men slept in two-tier metal

  bunks. The top bunks were occupied by the stariki ? the `old men' of

  nineteen or even nineteen and a half, who had already served a year or even

  eighteen months in spetsnaz. The salagi slept on the bottom bunks. They had

  served only six months. By comparison with those who were now jumping over

  the towel they were of course stariki too. They had all in their day jumped

  awkwardly across the towel. Now they were watching silently, patiently and

  attentively to see how the new men behaved in that situation.

  The new men behaved as anybody would in their situation. Some pushed

  from behind, and there was the towel in front. So they jumped, and clustered

  together in the centre of the tent, not knowing where to put their hands or

  where to look. It was strange. They seemed to want to look at the ground.

  All the young men behaved in exactly the same way: a jump, into the crowd

  and eyes down. But no -- the last soldier behaved quite differently. He

  burst into the tent, helped by a kick from the sergeant. On seeing the white

  towel he pulled himself up sharply, stood on it in his dirty boots and

  proceeded to wipe them as if he really were standing on a doormat. Having

  wiped his feet he didn't join the crowd but marched to the far corner of the

  tent where he had seen a spare bed.

  `Is this mine?'

  `It's yours,' the platoon shouted approvingly. `Come here, mate,

  there's a better place here! Do you want to eat?'

  That night all the young recruits would get beaten. And they would be

  beaten on the following nights. They would be driven out into the mud

  barefoot, and they would be made to sleep in the lavatories (standing up or

  lying down, as you wish). They would be beaten with belts, with slippers and

  with spoons, with anything suitable for causing pain. The stariki would use

  the salagi on which to ride horseback in battles with their friends. The

  salagi would clean the `old men''s weapons and do their dirty jobs for them.

  There would be the same goings-on as in the rest of the Soviet Army. Stariki

  everywhere play the same kind of tricks on the recruits. The rituals and the

  rules are the same everywhere. The spetsnaz differs from the other branches

  only in that they place the dazzlingly clean towel at the entranc
e to the

  tent for the recruits to walk over. The sense of this particular ritual is

  clear and simple: We are nice people. We welcome you, young man, cordially

  into our friendly collective. Our work is very hard, the hardest in the

  whole army, but we do not let it harden our hearts. Gome into our house,

  young man, and make yourself at home. We respect you and will spare nothing

  for you. You see -- we have even put the towel with which we wipe our faces

  for you to walk on in your dirty feet. So that's it, is it -- you don't

  accept our welcome? You reject our modest gift? You don't even wish to wipe

  your boots on what we wipe our faces with! What sort of people do you take

  us for? You may certainly not respect us, but why did you come into our

  house with dirty boots?

  Only one of the salagi, the one who wiped his feet on the towel, will

  be able to sleep undisturbed. He will receive his full ration of food and

  will clean only his own weapon; and perhaps the stariki will give

  instructions that he should not do even that. There are many others in the

  platoon to do it.

  Where on earth could a young eighteen-year-old soldier have learnt

  about the spetsnaz tradition? Where could he have heard about the white

  towel? Spetsnaz is a secret organisation which treasures its traditions and

  keeps them to itself. A former spetsnaz soldier must never tell tales: he'll

  lose his tongue if he does. In any case he is unlikely to tell anyone about

  the towel trick, especially someone who has yet to be called up. I was

  beaten up, so let him be beaten up as well, he reasons.

  There are only three possible ways the young soldier could have found

  out about the towel. Either he simply guessed what was happening himself.

  The towel had been laid down at the entrance, so it must be to wipe his feet

  on. What else could it be for? Or perhaps his elder brother had been through

  the spetsnaz. He had, of course, never called it by that name or said what

  it was for, but he might have said about the towel: `Watch out, brother,

  there are some units that have very strange customs.... But just take care

  -- if you let on I'll knock your head off. And I can.' Or his elder brother

  might have spent some time in a penal battalion. Perhaps he had been in

  spetsnaz and in a penal battalion. For the custom of laying out a towel in