Spetsnaz Read online

  Chapter 5

  The ‘Other People’

  Although the vast majority of spetsnaz is made up of Slavonic personnel, there are some exceptions.

  At first glance you would say he is a gypsy. Tall, well- built, athletic in his movements, handsome, with a hooked nose and flashing eyes. The captain plays the guitar so well that passers-by stop and do not go away until he stops playing. He dances as very few know how. His officer’s uniform fits him as if it were on a dummy in the window of the main military clothing shop on the Arbat.

  The officer has had a typical career. He was born in 1952 in Ivanovo, where he went to school. Then he attended the higher school for airborne troops in Ryazan, and he wears the uniform of the airborne forces. He commands a company in the Siberian military district. All very typical and familiar. At first glance. But he is Captain Roberto Rueda-Maestro - not a very usual name for a Soviet officer.

  There is a mistake: the captain is not a gypsy. And if we study him more carefully we notice some other peculiarities. He is wearing the uniform of the airborne troops. But there are no airborne troops in the Siberian military district where he is stationed. Even stranger is the fact that after finishing school Roberto spent some time in Spain as a tourist. That was in 1969. Can we imagine a tourist from the Soviet Union being in Spain under Franco’s rule, at a time when the Soviet Union maintained no diplomatic relations with Spain? Roberto Rueda-Maestro was in Spain at that time and has some idea of the country. But the strangest aspect of this story is that, after spending some time in a capitalist country, the young man was able to enter a Soviet military school. And not any school, but the Ryazan higher school for airborne troops.

  These facts are clues. The full set of clues gives us the right answer, without fear of contradiction. The captain is a spetsnaz officer.

  * * *

  During the Civil War in Spain thousands of Spanish children were evacuated to the Soviet Union. The exact number of children evacuated is not known. The figures given about this are very contradictory. But there were enough of them for several full-length films to be made and for books and articles to be written about them in the Soviet Union.

  As young men they soon became cadets at Soviet military schools. A well-known example is Ruben Ruis Ibarruri, son of Dolores Ibarruri, general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain. Even at this time the Spaniards were put into the airborne troops. Ruben Ibarruri, for example, found himself in the 8th airborne corps. It is true that in a war of defence those formations intended for aggressive advancing operations were found to be unnecessary, and they were reorganised into guard rifle divisions and used in defensive battles at Stalingrad. Lieutenant Ibarruri was killed while serving in the 35th guard rifle division which had been formed out of the 8th airborne corps. It was a typical fate for young men at that time. But then they were evacuated to the Urals and Siberia, where the Spanish Communist Party (under Stalin’s control) organised special schools for them. From then on references to Spanish children appeared very rarely in the Soviet press.

  * * *

  One of the special schools was situated in the town of Ivanovo and was known as the E. D. Stasova International School. Some graduates of this school later turned up in Fidel Castro’s personal bodyguard, some became leading figures in the Cuban intelligence service - the most aggressive in the world, exceeding its teachers in the GRU and KGB in both cruelty and cunning. Some of the school’s graduates were used as ‘illegals’ by the GRU and KGB.

  It has to be said, however, that the majority of the first generation of Spanish children remained in the Soviet Union with no possibility of leaving it. But then in the 1950s and 1960s a new generation of Soviet Spaniards was born, differing from the first generation in that it had no parents in the USSR. This is very important if a young man is being sent abroad on a risky mission, for the Communists then have the man’s parents as postages.

  The second generation of Spaniards is used by the Soviet Government in many ways for operations abroad. One very effective device is to send some young Soviet Spaniards to Cuba, give them time to get used to the country and acclimatise themselves, and then send them to Africa and Central America as Cubans to fight against ‘American Imperialism’. The majority of Cuban troops serving abroad are certainly Cubans. But among them is a certain percentage of men who were born in the Soviet Union and who have Russian wives and children and a military rank in the armed forces of the USSR.

  For some reason Captain Roberto Rueda-Maestro is serving in the Urals military district. I must emphasise that we are still talking about the usual spetsnaz units, and we haven’t started to discuss ‘agents’. An agent is a citizen of a foreign country recruited into the Soviet intelligence service. Roberto is a citizen of the Soviet Union. He does not have and has never had in his life any other citizenship. He has a Russian wife and children born on the territory of the USSR, as he was himself. That is why the captain is serving in a normal spetsnaz unit, as an ordinary Soviet officer.

  Spetsnaz seeks out and finds - it is easy to do in the Soviet Union - people born in the Soviet Union but of obviously foreign origin. With a name like Ruedo-Maestro it is very difficult to make a career in any branch of the Soviet armed forces. The only exception is spetsnaz, where such a name is no obstacle but a passport to promotion.

  * * *

  In spetsnaz I have met people with German names such as Stolz, Schwarz, Weiss and so forth. The story of these Soviet Germans is also connected with the war. According to 1979 figures there were 1,846,000 Germans living in the Soviet Union. But most of those Germans came to Russia two hundred years ago and are of no use to spetsnaz. Different Germans are required, and they also exist in the Soviet Union.

  During the war, and especially in its final stages, the Red Army took a tremendous number of German soldiers prisoner. The prisoners were held in utterly inhuman conditions, and it was not surprising that some of them did things that they would not have done in any other situation. They were people driven to extremes by the brutal Gulag regime, who committed crimes against their fellow prisoners, sometimes even murdering their comrades, or forcing them to suicide. Many of those who survived, once released from the prison camp, were afraid to return to Germany and settled in the Soviet Union. Though the percentage of such people was small it still meant quite a lot of people, all of whom were of course on the records of the Soviet secret services and were used by them. The Soviet special services helped many of them to settle down and have a family. There were plenty of German women from among the Germans long settled in Russia. So now the Soviet Union has a second generation of Soviet Germans, born in the Soviet Union of fathers who have committed crimes against the German people. This is the kind of young German who can be met with in many spetsnaz units.

  * * *

  Very rarely one comes across young Soviet Italians, too, with the same background as the Spaniards and Germans. And spetsnaz contains Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Koreans, Mongolians, Finns and people of other nationalities. How they came to be there I do not know. But it can be taken for granted that every one of them has a much-loved family in the Soviet Union. Spetsnaz trusts its soldiers, but still prefers to have hostages for each of its men.

  The result is that the percentage of spetsnaz soldiers who were born in the Soviet Union to parents of genuine foreign extraction is quite high. With the mixture of Soviet nationalities, mainly Russian, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Georgians and Uzbeks, the units are a very motley company indeed. You may even, suddenly, come across a real Chinese. Such people, citizens of the USSR but of foreign extraction, are known as ‘the other people’. I don’t know where the name came from, but the foreigners accept it and are not offended. In my view it is used without any tinge of racism, in a spirit rather of friendship and good humour, to differentiate people who are on the one hand Soviet people born in the Soviet Union of Soviet parents, and who on the other hand differ sharply from the main body of spetsnaz soldiers in their appearance,
speech, habits and manners.

  I have never heard of there being purely national formations within spetsnaz - a German platoon or a Spanish company. It is perfectly possible that they would be created in case of necessity, and perhaps there are some permanent spetsnaz groups chosen on a purely national basis. But I cannot confirm this.

  Chapter 6

  Athletes

  In the Soviet Union sport has been nationalised. That means to say that it does not serve the interests of individuals but of society as a whole. The interests of the individual and the interests of society are sometimes very different. The state defends the interests of society against individuals, not just in sport but in all other spheres.

  Some individuals want to be strong, handsome and attractive. That is why ‘body-building’ is so popular in the West. It is an occupation for individuals. In the Soviet Union it scarcely exists, because such an occupation brings no benefit to the state. Why should the state spend the nation’s resources so that someone can be strong and beautiful? Consequently the state does not spend a single kopek on such things, does not organise athletic competitions, does not reward the victors with prizes and does not advertise achievements in that field. There are some individuals who engage in body-building, but they have no resources and no rights to organise their own societies and associations.

  The same applies to billiards, golf and some other forms of which the only purpose is relaxation and amusement. What benefits would it bring the state if it spent money on such forms of sport? For the same reason the Soviet Union has done nothing about sport for invalids. Why should it? To make the invalids happy?

  But that same state devotes colossal resources to sport which does bring benefit to the state. In the Soviet Union any sport is encouraged which: demonstrates the superiority of the Soviet system over any other system; provides the ordinary people with something to take their minds off their everyday worries; helps to strengthen the state, military and police apparatus.

  The Soviet Union is ready to encourage any sport in which achievement is measured in minutes, seconds, metres, kilometres, centimetres, kilograms or grams. If an athlete shows some promise that he may run a distance a tenth of a second quicker than an American or may jump half a centimetre higher than his rival across the ocean, the state will create for such an athlete whatever conditions he needs: it will build him a personal training centre, get together a personal group of trainers, doctors, managers or scientific consultants. The state is rich enough to spend money on self-advertisement. These ‘amateur’ sportsmen earn large sums of money, though exactly how much is a secret. The question has irritated some Soviets because it would not be a secret if the amount were small. Even the Literaturnaya Gazeta, on 6 August, 1986, raised the question with some indignation.

  The Soviet Union encourages any striking spectator sport which can attract millions of people, make them drop what they are doing and admire the Soviet gymnasts, figure-skaters or acrobats. It also encourages all team games. Basketball, volleyball, water polo are all popular. The most aggressive of the team games, ice-hockey, is perhaps more of a national religion than is Communist ideology. Finally, it encourages any sport directly connected with the development of military skills: shooting, flying, gliding, parachute jumping, boxing, sambo, karate, the biathlon, the military triathlon, and so forth.

  The most successful, richest and largest society in the Soviet Union concerned with sport is the Central Army Sports Club (ZSKA). Members of the club have included 850 European champions, 625 world champions and 182 Olympic champions. They have set up 341 European and 430 world records. [1]

  Such results do not indicate that the Soviet Army is the best at training top-class athletes. This was admitted even by Pravda. [2]

  The secret of success lies in the enormous resources of the Soviet Army. Pravda describes what happens: ‘It is sufficient for some even slightly promising boxer to come on the scene and he is immediately lured across to the ZSKA.’ As a result, out of the twelve best boxers in the Soviet Union ten are from the Army Club, one from Dinamo (the sports organisation run by the KGB), and one from the Trud sports club. But of those ten army boxers, not one was the original product of the Army club. They had all been lured away from other clubs - the Trudoviye reservy, the Spartak or the Burevestnik. The same thing happens in ice-hockey, parachute jumping, swimming and many other sports.

  How does the army club manage to attract athletes to it? Firstly be giving them military rank. Any athlete who joins the ZSKA is given the rank of sergeant, sergeant-major, warrant officer or officer, depending on what level he is at. The better his results as an athlete the higher the rank. Once he has a military rank an athlete is able to devote as much time to sport as he wishes and at the same time be regarded as an amateur, because professionally he is a soldier. Any Soviet ‘amateur’ athlete who performs slightly better than the average receives extra pay in various forms - ‘for additional nourishment’, ‘for sports clothing’, ‘for travelling’, and so forth. The ‘amateur’ receives for indulging in his sport much more than a doctor or a skilled engineer, so long as he achieves European standards. But the Soviet Army also pays him, and not badly, for his military rank and service.

  The ZSKA is very attractive for an athlete in that, when he can no longer engage in his sport at international level, he can still retain his military rank and pay. In most other clubs he would be finished altogether. What has this policy produced? At the 14th winter Olympic Games, Soviet military athletes won seventeen gold medals. If one counts also the number of silver and bronze winners, the number of athletes with military rank is greatly increased. And if one were to draw up a similar list of military athletes at the summer Games it would take up many pages. Is there a single army in the world that comes near the Soviet Army in this achievement?

  * * *

  Now for another question: why is the Soviet Army so ready to hand out military ranks to athletes, to pay them a salary and provide them with the accommodation and privileges of army officers?

  The answer is that the ZSKA and its numerous branches provide a base that spetsnaz uses for recruiting its best fighters. Naturally not every member of the ZSKA is a spetsnaz soldier. But the best athletes in ZSKA almost always are.

  Spetsnaz is a mixture of sport, politics, espionage and armed terrorism. It is difficult to determine what takes precedence and what is subordinate to what, everything is so closely linked together.

  In the first place the Soviet Union seeks international prestige in the form of gold medals at the Olympics. To achieve that it needs an organisation with the strictest discipline and rules, capable of squeezing every ounce of strength out of the athletes without ever letting them slack off.

  In the second place the Soviet Army needs an enormous number of people with exceptional athletic ability at Olympic level to carry out special missions behind the enemy’s lines. It is desirable that these people should be able to visit foreign countries in peace time. Sport makes that possible. As far as the athletes are concerned, they are grateful for a very rich club which can pay them well, provide them with cars and apartments, and arrange trips abroad for them. Moreover, they need the sort of club in which they can be regarded as amateurs, though they will work nowhere else but in the club.

  Spetsnaz is the point where the interests of the state, the Soviet Army and military intelligence coincide with the interests of some individuals who want to devote their whole lives to sport.

  * * *

  After the Second World War, as a result of the experience gained, sports battalions were created by the headquarters of every military district, group of forces and fleet; at army and flotilla HO level sports companies were formed. These huge sports formations were directly under the control of the Ministry of Defence. They provided the means of bringing together the best athletes whose job was to defend the sporting honour of the particular army, flotilla, district, group or fleet in which they served. Some of the athletes were people called up for the
ir military service, who left the Army once they had completed their service. But the majority remained in the military sports organisation for a long time with the rank of sergeant and higher. Soviet military intelligence chose its best men from the members of the sports units.

  At the end of the 1960s it was recognised that a sports company or a sports battalion was too much of a contradiction in terms. It could arouse unnecessary attention from outsiders. So the sports units were disbanded and in their place came the sports teams. The change was purely cosmetic. The sports teams of the military districts, groups, fleets and so forth exist as independent units. The soldiers, sergeants, praporshiki and officers who belong to them are not serving in army regiments, brigades or divisions. Their service is in the sports team under the control of the district’s headquarters. The majority of these sportsmen are carefully screened and recruited for spetsnaz training to carry out the most risky missions behind the enemy’s lines. Usually they are all obliged to take part in parachute jumping, sambo, rifle-shooting, running and swimming, apart from their own basic sport.

  A person looking at the teams of the military districts, groups and so forth with an untrained eye will notice nothing unusual. It is as though spetsnaz is a completely separate entity. Every athlete and every small group have their own individual tasks and get on with them: running, swimming, jumping and shooting. But later, in the evenings, in closed, well-guarded premises, they study topography, radio communications, engineering and other special subjects. They are regularly taken off secretly in ones and twos or groups, or even regiments to remote parts where they take part in exercises. Companies and regiments of professional athletes in spetsnaz exist only temporarily during the exercises and alerts, and they then quietly disperse, becoming again innocent sections and teams able at the right moment to turn into formidable fighting units.