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In discussing spetsnaz weapons we must mention also the 'invisible weapon' -- sambo. Sambo is a kind of fighting without rules which was originated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and has since been substantially developed and improved. The originator of sambo was B. S. Oshchepkov, an outstanding Russian sportsman...Oshchepkov took the view that one had to get rid of all artificial limitations and rules. In real combat nobody observes any rules, so why introduce them artificially at training sessions and so penalise the sportsmen? Oshchepkov firmly rejected all the noble rules of chivalry and permitted his pupils to employ any tricks and rules...Today sambo is one of the compulsory features in the training of every spetsnaz fighting man.

In the same company there was a soldier known as 'The Otter'; slim, well built, handsome. He was not very big and appeared to have little strength. But he was like a sprung steel plate. His strength seemed to be explosive. He had amazing reactions. When, as a recruit, he first jumped over the towel, he was subjected to the usual treatment by the stariki ['old men' i.e. senior members of the unit]. 'Drop your pants and lie down,' they said. He took hold of his belt as though he was ready to carry out their orders. They dropped their guard, and at that moment The Otter struck one of them in the mouth with such a blow that his victim fell to the ground and was knocked senseless. While he was falling The Otter struck another one in the teeth. A third backed out of the way.

That night, when he was asleep, they bound him in a blanket and beat him up brutally. They beat him the second night, and the third, and again and again. But he was a very unusual person even by spetsnaz standards. He possessed rather unusual muscles. When they were relaxed they looked like wet rags. He suffered a lot of beatings, but one had the impression that when he was relaxed he felt no pain. Perhaps there were qualities in his character that put him above the standards we were used to. When The Otter slept he was then in the power of the stariki and they did not spare him. They attacked him in the dark, so that he should not recognise his attackers. But he knew all of them instinctively. He never quarrelled with them and he always avoided groups of them. If they attacked him in the daylight he made no great effort to resist. But if he came across a stariki on his own he would punch him in the teeth. If he came across him again he would do the same again. He could knock a man's teeth out. He would strike suddenly and like lightning. He would be standing relaxed, his arms hanging down, looking at the ground. Then suddenly there would be a frightful, shattering blow. On several occasions he punched stariki in the presence of the whole company and sometimes even with officers present. How beautifully he punched them! If there were officers present the company commander would admire The Otter and indicate his approval with a smile on his face -- then sentence him to three days in the guard room, because they were not allowed to hit each other...The Otter had accepted [an] offer [to join the professional athletic service] and is now serving in one of the best spetsnaz formations, training for the ultimate job of assassinating key political and military figures on the enemy's side.

If a man has a sloppy way of walking and if he drags his feet along the ground, that means he himself is weak. On the other hand, a dancing, springy gait is a sure sign of physical and metal health. Spetsnaz soldiers are often dressed up in the uniform of other branches of the services and stationed in the same military camps as other especially secret units, usually with communications troops. But one doesn't need any special experience to pick out the spetsnaz man from the crowd. You can tell him by the way he walks. I shall never forget one soldier who was known as 'The Spring'. He was not very tall, slightly stooping and round-shouldered. But his feet were never still. He kept dancing about the whole time. He gave the impression of being restrained only by some invisible string, and if the string were cut the soldier would go on jumping, running and dancing and never stop. The military commissariat whose job it was to select the young soldiers and sort them out paid no attention to him and he fetched up in an army missile brigade. He had served almost a year there when the brigade had to take part in manoeuvres in which a spetsnaz company was used against them. When the exercise was over the spetsnaz company was fed there in the forest next to the missile troops. The officer commanding the spetsnaz company noticed the soldier in the missile unit who kept dancing about all the time he was standing in the queue for his soup.

Of course, another aspect of Systema is "no wasted movement" and dancing about while waiting for one's soup is not an efficient use of energy. Nevertheless, it brought him to the attention of the spetsnaz commander who, after testing his jumping ability (241 centimetres from the spot), recruited him into the spetsnaz and told his former commander to "forget you ever had such a man."

Professional athletes and Spetsnaz

The dancing soldier was given the nickname 'The Spring' on account of his flexibility. He had never previously taken a serious interest in sport, but he was a born athlete. Under the direction of experienced trainers his talents were revealed and he immediately performed brilliantly. A year later, when he completed his military service, he was already clearing 2 metres 90 centimetres. He was invited to join the professional athletic service of spetsnaz, and he agreed.

Both The Otter and The Spring ended up in the professional athletic units of Spetsnaz. Prior to reading Suvorov's book, I never realized the prominent role of Soviet athletes in military endeavors. The professional athletic units are the most elite of all the spetsnaz forces. Suvorov describes this at length in Chapter Six: The Athletes:

In the Soviet Union sport has been nationalised...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...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... 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.

There is also an appendix which describes the military careers of some of the more prominent professional sportsmen who presumably served in spetsnaz, such as Valentin Yakovlevich Kudrevatykh.

...at the age of eighteen, he had reached a high level at parachute jumping and shooting. In 1959 he was called into the army, serving in the airborne forces. In 1961 he set five world records in one week in parachute sport, for which he was promoted sergeant and sent to the airborne officers' school in Ryazan. After that he was sent to spetsnaz and put in command of some special women's units. He had under his command the most outstanding women athletes, including Antonina Kensitskaya, to whom he is now married. She has established thirteen world records, her husband fifteen. He made parachute jumps (often with a women's group) in the most incredible conditions, landing in the mountains, in forests, on the roofs of houses and so forth...Then, as he was completing his 5,555th jump, he got into a critical situation. Black humour among Soviet airborne troops says that, if neither the main nor the reserve parachute opens, the parachutist still has a whole twenty seconds to learn to fly. Kudrevatykh did not learn to fly in those last seconds, but he managed with his body and the unopened parachutes to slow his fall. He spent more than two years in hospital and went through more than ten operations. When he was discharged he made his 5,556th jump. Many Soviet military papers published pictures of that jump. As usual Kudrevatykh jumped in the company of professional women parachutists. But there are no women in the Soviet airborne divisions. Only in spetsnaz. After making that jump Kudrevatykh was promoted full colonel.

I find it remarkable that Kudrevatykh survived a parachute jump without actually opening his parachute. He must have sustained terrible injuries, and it's amazing that he prevailed to make yet another jump.

Women and Spetsnaz

I was also intrigued by the mention of female Spetsnaz in the professional athletic units, as this was the first I'd heard of women serving in Spetsnaz.

In the sports sections and teams of the military districts, groups, armies, fleets, flotillas there is a very high percentage of women also engaged in sport and who defend the honour of their district, group and so forth. Like the men, the women are given military rank and, like the men, are recruited into spetsnaz.

There are no women in the usual spetsnaz units. But in the professional sports units of spetsnaz women constitute about half the numbers. They engage in various kinds of sport: parachute jumping, gliding, flying, shooting, running, swimming, motocross, and so on. Every woman who joins spetsnaz has to engage in some associated forms of sport apart from her own basic sport, and among these are some that are obligatory, such as sambo, shooting and a few others. The woman have to take part in exercises along with the men and have to study the full syllabus of subjects necessary for operating behind the enemy's lines.

That there should be such a high percentage of women in the professional sports formations of spetsnaz is a matter of psychology and strategy: if in the course of a war a group of tall, broadshouldered young men were to appear behind the lines this might give rise to bewilderment, since all the men are supposed to be at the front. But if in the same situation people were to see a group of athletic-looking girls there would be little likelihood of any alarm or surprise.

Suvorov does not provide any additional details about the role of women in spetsnaz, except to write that they were suited for covert operations, and sometimes posed as "wives" of the spetsnaz men, who themselves posed as low-level laborers (cook, janitors, mechanics, etc.) in foreign embassies. Presumably they endured the same sort of rigorous training as the male recruits.

I wish that Suvorov had described the Spetsnaz training more extensively, he describes in only a few chapters. Of course, if you've read the Russian System Guidebook, the brutality of such training won't be much of a surprise.

Training and Service

At our control point, orange arrows told the soldiers to cross the bridge. In the middle of the bridge another arrow pointed to the handrail at the edge. A soldier lagging a long way behind his group ran onto the bridge...At our control point, where one after the other the soldiers plunged from the high bridge, there was no means of rescuing any soldier who got into difficulty. And there was no one to rescue anybody either. We officers were there only to observe the men, to make sure each one jumped, and from the very middle of the bridge. The rest did not concern us.

'What if one of them drowns?' I asked the spetsnaz officer.

'If he drowns it means he's no good for spetsnaz.'

It means he's no good for spetsnaz. The sentence expresses the whole philosophy of battle training. The old soldiers pass it on to the young ones who take it as a joke. But they very soon find out that nobody is joking.

The most important feature of the training of a young spetsnaz soldier is not to give him time to reflect about what is ahead for him. He should come up against danger and terror and unpleasantness unexpectedly and not have time to be scared. When he overcomes this obstacle, he will be proud of himself, of his own daring, determination and ability to take risks. And subsequently he will not be afraid. Unpleasant surprises are always awaiting the spetsnaz soldier in the first stage of his service, sometimes in the most unlikely situations. He enters a classroom door and they throw a snake round his neck. He is roused in the morning and leaps out of bed to find, suddenly, an enormous grey rat in his boot. On a Saturday evening, when it seems that a hard week is behind him, he is grabbed and thrown into a small prison cell with a snarling dog. The first parachute jump is also dealt with unexpectedly. A quite short course of instruction, then into the sky and straight away out of the hatch. What if he smashes himself up? The answer, as usual: he is no good for spetsnaz!

Later the soldier receives his full training, both theoretical and practical, including ways to deal with a snake round his neck or a rat in his boot. But by then the soldier goes to his training classes without any fear of what is to come, because the most frightful things are already behind him.

Some of the training descriptions are rather brutal and not for the squeamish. Suvorov does not shy away from merciless and thoroughly unappealing aspects of spetsnaz. For example, when foreign agents are recruited, after they have served their purpose, they and their families are summarily executed. In a fictional scenario:

There it has been met by a spetsnaz agent recruited some years previously. He has at the GRU's expense bought a small motorcycle shop, and his shop has always had available at least fifteen Japanese motorcycles all ready for the road, along with several sets of leather jackets, trousers and crash helmets. The group (containing some of the best motorcyclists in the Soviet Union) changes its clothes, its weapons are wrapped in tarpaulin, the spetsnaz agent and his family are killed and their bodies hidden in the cellar of their house, and the motorcycle gang then rushes off at a great speed along the A45 in the direction of Mildenhall.

Most of the foreign agents served no other purpose but to maintain supplies, shelter, communications, and equipment until such time as it was needed by the spetsnaz. Once the time came to make use of the resources, the agents were simply killed off.

There are also some not-for-the-squeamish descriptions of spetsnaz coercion of prisoners:

It may be claimed that not every prisoner will agree to answer the questions put to him, or that some prisoners will answer the questions put by spetsnaz but give wrong answers and lead their interrogators astray. To which my reply is categorical. Everybody answers questions from spetsnaz...Everyone who falls into the hands of spetsnaz knows he is going to be killed. But people exert themselves to give correct and precise answers. They are not fighting for their lives but for an easy death...It should be particularly noted that those who have told the truth do have an easy death. They may be shot, hanged, have their throats cut or be drowned. Spetsnaz does not torture anybody for the sake of torture. You come across practically no sadists in spetsnaz. If they find one they quickly get rid of him... Readiness to carry out a suicide mission is maintained in spetsnaz by many methods. One of them is to expose obvious sadists and have them transferred immediately to other branches of the forces, because experience shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases the sadist is a coward, incapable of sacrificing himself.

It did seem to me that some of the earlier descriptions of the beating of new recruits border on the sadistic. But Suvorov says the senior members of the troop rationalize it as "I was beaten up, so let him be beaten up as well." And perhaps this struggle to establish hierarchy helps the officers identify those best suited for leadership. This kind of bullying does seem to take place wherever groups of young men are forced to live together, whether it's a military barracks, a prison, even boarding schools.

The Wolf Pack

Suvorov likens the Spetsnaz to wolves:

The relations within spetsnaz units are very similar to those within the wolf pack. The experts say that the she-wolf never kills her sickly wolf-cubs. She makes her other cubs do it. The she-wolf herself gives the cubs the first lesson in hunting in a group. And the cubs' first victim is their weaker brother. But once the weaker ones are disposed of, the she-wolf protects the rest. In case of danger she would rather sacrifice herself than let anyone harm them. By destroying the weaker cubs the she-wolf preserves the purity and strength of her offspring, permitting only the strong to live. This is very close to the process of selection within spetsnaz. At the outset the weaker soldier is naturally not killed but thrown out of spetsnaz into a more restful service. When a unit is carrying out a serious operation behind enemy lines, however, the wolf-cubs of spetsnaz will kill their comrade without a second thought if he appears to weaken.

Within their pack the wolves conduct a running battle to gain a higher place in the hierarchy. And I never saw anything inside spetsnaz that could be described as soldier's friendship, at least nothing like what I had seen among the tank troops and the infantry. Within spetsnaz a bitter battle goes on for a place in the pack, closer to the leader and even in the leader's place. In the course of this bitter battle for a place in the pack the spetsnaz soldier is sometimes capable of displaying such strength of character as I have never seen elsewhere.