the entrance before the arrival of recruits did not originate in spetsnaz
but in the penal battalions. It is possible that it was handed on to the
present-day penal battalions from the prisons of the past.
The links between spetsnaz and the penal battalions are invisible, but
they are many and very strong.
In the first place, service in spetsnaz is the toughest form of service
in the Soviet Army. The physical and psychological demands are not only
increased deliberately to the very highest point that a man can bear; they
are frequently, and also deliberately, taken beyond any permissible limits.
It is quite understandable that a spetsnaz soldier should find he cannot
withstand these extreme demands and breaks down. The breakdown may take many
different forms: suicide, severe depression, hysteria, madness or desertion.
As I was leaving an intelligence unit of a military district on promotion to
Moscow I suddenly came across, on a little railway station, a spetsnaz
officer I knew being escorted by two armed soldiers.
`What on earth are you doing here?' I exclaimed. `You don't see people
on this station more than once in a month!'
`One of my men ran away!'
`A new recruit?'
`That's the trouble, he's a starik. Only another month to go.'
`Did he take his weapon?'
`No, he went without it.'
I expressed my surprise, wished the lieutenant luck and went on my way.
How the search ended I do not know. At the very next station soldiers of the
Interior Ministry's troops were searching the carriages. The alarm had gone
out all over the district.
Men run away from spetsnaz more often than from other branches of the
services. But it is usually a case of a new recruit who has been stretched
to the limit and who usually takes a rifle with him. A man like that will
kill anyone who gets in his path. But he is usually quickly run down and
killed. But in this case it was a starik who had run off, and without a
rifle. Where had he gone, and why? I didn't know. Did they find him? I
didn't know that either. Of course they found him. They are good at that. If
he wasn't carrying a rifle he would not have been killed. They don't kill
people without reason. So what could he expect? Two years in a penal
battalion and then the month in spetsnaz that he had not completed.
Spetsnaz has no distinguishing badge or insignia -- officially, at any
rate. But unofficially the spetsnaz badge is a wolf, or rather a pack of
wolves. The wolf is a strong, proud animal which is remarkable for its quite
incredible powers of endurance. A wolf can run for hours through deep snow
at great speed, and then, when he scents his prey, put on another
astonishing burst of speed. Sometimes he will chase his prey for days,
reducing it to a state of exhaustion. Exploiting their great capacity for
endurance, wolves first exhaust and then attack animals noted for their
tremendous strength, such as the elk. People say rightly that the `wolf
lives on its legs'. Wolves will bring down a huge elk, not so much by the
strength of their teeth as by the strength of their legs.
The wolf also has a powerful intellect. He is proud and independent.
You can tame and domesticate a squirrel, a fox or even a great elk with
bloodshot eyes. And there are many animals that can be trained to perform. A
performing bear can do really miraculous things. But you cannot tame a wolf
or train it to perform. The wolf lives in a pack, a closely knit and well
organised fighting unit of frightful predators. The tactics of a wolf pack
are the very embodiment of flexibility and daring. The wolves' tactics are
an enormous collection of various tricks and combinations, a mixture of
cunning and strength, confusing manoeuvres and sudden attacks.
No other animal in the world could better serve as a symbol of the
spetsnaz. And there is good reason why the training of a spetsnaz soldier
starts with the training of his legs. A man is as strong and young as his
legs are strong and young. 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.
`Come over here, soldier.' The officer drew a line on the ground. `Now
jump.'
The soldier stood on the line and jumped from there, without any
run-up. The company commander did not have anything with him to measure the
length of the jump, but there was no need. The officer was experienced in
such things and knew what was good and what was excellent.
`Get into my car!'
`I cannot, comrade major, without my officer's permission.'
`Get in and don't worry, you'll be all right with me. I will speak up
for you and tell the right people where you have been.'
The company commander made the soldier get into his car and an hour
later presented him to the chief of army intelligence, saying:
`Comrade colonel, look what I've found among the missile troops.'
`Now then, young man, let's see you jump.'
The soldier jumped from the spot. This time there was a tape measure
handy and it showed he had jumped 241 centimetres.
`Take the soldier into your lot and find him the right sort of cap,'
the colonel said.
The commander of the spetsnaz company took off his own blue beret and
gave it to the soldier. The chief of intelligence immediately phoned the
chief of staff of the army, who gave the appropriate order to the missile
brigade -- forget you ever had such a man.
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 comple
ted 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.
The long jump with no run has been undeservedly forgotten and is no
longer included in the programme of official competitions. When it was
included in the Olympic Games the record set in 1908, was 3 metres 33
centimetres. As an athletic skill the long jump without a run is the most
reliable indication of the strength of a person's legs. And the strength of
his legs is a reliable indicator of the whole physical condition of a
soldier. Practically half a person's muscles are to be found in his legs.
Spetsnaz devotes colossal attention to developing the legs of its men, using
many simple but very effective exercises: running upstairs, jumping with
ankles tied together up a few steps and down again, running up steep sandy
slopes, jumping down from a great height, leaping from moving cars and
trains, knee-bending with a barbell on the shoulders, and of course the jump
from a spot. At the end of the 1970s the spetsnaz record in this exercise,
which has not been recognised by the official sports authorities, was 3
metres 51 centimetres.
A spetsnaz soldier knows that he is invincible. This may be a matter of
opinion, but other people's opinions do not interest the soldier. He knows
himself that he is invincible and that's enough for him. The idea is
instilled into him carefully, delicately, not too insistently, but
continually and effectively. The process of psychological training is
inseparably linked to the physical toughening. The development of a spirit
of self-confidence and of independence and of a feeling of superiority over
any opponent is carried out at the same time as the development of the
heart, the muscles and the lungs. The most important element in training a
spetsnaz soldier is to make him believe in his own strength.
A man's potential is unlimited, the reasoning goes. A man can reach any
heights in life in any sphere of activity. But in order to defeat his
opponents a man must first overcome himself, combat his own fears, his lack
of confidence and laziness. The path upwards is one of continual battle with
oneself. A man must force himself to rise sooner than the others and go to
bed later. He must exclude from his life everything that prevents him from
achieving his objective. He must subordinate the whole of his existence to
the strictest regime. He must give up taking days off. He must use his time
to the best possible advantage and fit in even more than was thought
possible. A man aiming for a particular target can succeed only if he uses
every minute of his life to the maximum advantage for carrying out his plan.
A man should find four hours' sleep quite sufficient, and the rest of his
time can be used for concentrating on the achievement of his objective.
I imagine that to instil this psychology into a mass army formed by
means of compulsory mobilisation would be impossible and probably
unnecessary. But in separate units carefully composed of the best human
material such a philosophy is entirely acceptable.
In numbers spetsnaz amounts to less than one per cent of all the Soviet
armed forces in peacetime. Spetsnaz is the best, carefully selected part of
the armed forces, and the philosophy of each man's unlimited potential has
been adopted in its entirety by every member of the organisation. It is a
philosophy which cannot be put into words. The soldier grasps it not with
his head, but with his feet, his shoulders and his sweat. He soon becomes
convinced that the path to victory and self-perfection is a battle with
himself, with his own mental and physical weakness. Training of any kind
makes sense only if it brings a man to the very brink of his physical and
mental powers. To begin with, he must know precisely the limits of his
capabilities. For example: he can do 40 press-ups. He must know this figure
precisely and that it really is the limit of his capacity. No matter how he
strains he can do no more. But every training session is a cruel battle to
beat his previous record. As he starts a training session a soldier has to
promise himself that he will beat his own record today or die in the
attempt.
The only people who become champions are those who go into each
training session as if they are going to their death or to their last battle
in which they will either win or die. The victor is the one for whom victory
is more important than life. The victor is the one who dives a centimetre
deeper than his maximum depth, knowing that his lungs will not hold out and
that death lies beyond his limit. And once he has overcome the fear of
death, the next time he will dive even deeper! Spetsnaz senior lieutenant
Vladimir Salnikov, world champion and Olympic champion swimmer, repeats the
slogan every day: conquer yourself, and that was why he defeated everyone at
the Olympic Games.
An excellent place to get to know and to overcome oneself is the
`Devil's Ditch' which has been dug at the spetsnaz central training centre
near Kirovograd. It is a ditch with metal spikes stuck into the bottom. The
narrowest width is three metres. From there it gets wider and wider.
Nobody is forced to jump the ditch. But if someone wants to test
himself, to conquer himself and to overcome his own cowardice, let him go
and jump. It can be a standing jump or a running jump, in running shoes and
a track suit, with heavy boots and a big rucksack on your back, or carrying
a weapon. It is up to you. You start jumping at the narrow part and
gradually move outwards. If you make a mistake, trip on something or don't
reach the other side you land with your side on the spikes.
There are not many who wanted to risk their guts at the Devil's Ditch,
until a strict warning was put up: `Only for real spetsnaz fighters!' Now
nobody has to be invited to try it. There are always plenty of people there
and always somebody jumping, summer and winter, on slippery mud and snow, in
gas-masks and without them, carrying an ammunition box, hand-in-hand, with
hands tied together, and even with someone on the back. The man who jumps
the Devil's Ditch has confidence in himself, considers himself invincible,
and has grounds for doing so.
The relations within spetsnaz units are very similar to those within
the wolf pack. We do not know everything about the habits and the ways of
wolves. But I have heard Soviet zoologists talk about the life and behaviour
of wolves and, listening to them, I have been reminded of spetsnaz. They say
the wolf has not only a very developed brain but is also the noblest of all
the living things inhabiting our planet. The mental capacity of the wolf is
reckoned to be far greater than the dog's. What I have heard from experts
who have spent their whole lives in the taiga of the Ussuri, coming across
wolves every day, is sharply at odds with what people say about them who
have seen them only in zoos.
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. The killing of the weak is
not the result of a court decision but of lynch law. It may appear to be an
act of barbarism, but it is only by doing so that the wolves have retained
their strength for millions of years and remained masters of the forests
until such a time as an even more frightful predator -- man -- started to
destroy them on a massive scale.
But the she-wolf has also another reputation, and it is no accident
that the Romans for centuries had a she-wolf as the symbol of their empire.
A strong, wise, cruel and at the same time caring and affectionate she-wolf
reared two human cubs: could there be a more striking symbol of love and
strength?
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.
The beating up of the young recruits who are just starting their
service is an effort on the part of the stariki to preserve their dominating
position in the section, platoon or company. But among the recruits too
there is right from the beginning a no less bitter battle going on for
priority. This struggle takes the form of continual fighting between groups
Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Page 6