officers and sergeants and a limited number of soldiers in support units.
Every six months the division receives 10,000 recruits who are distributed
among the regiments and battalions on a temporary basis. After five months
of harsh training these young soldiers receive their sergeants' stripes and
are sent out to regular divisions. It takes a month to distribute the young
sergeants to the regular forces, to prepare the training base for the new
input and to receive a fresh contingent. After that the training programme
is repeated. Thus each training division is a gigantic incubator producing
20,000 sergeants a year. A training division is organised in the usual way:
three motorised rifle regiments, a tank regiment, an artillery regiment, an
anti-aircraft regiment, a missile battalion and so forth. Each regiment and
battalion trains specialists in its own field, from infantry sergeants to
land surveyors, topographers and signallers.
A training division is a means of mass-producing sergeants for a
gigantic army which in peacetime has in its ranks around five million men
but which in case of war increases considerably in size. There is one
shortcoming in this mass production. The selection of sergeants is not
carried out by the commanders of the regular divisions but by local military
agencies -- the military commissariats and the mobilisation officers of the
military districts. This selection cannot be, and is not, qualitative. When
they receive instructions from their superiors the local authorities simply
despatch several truckloads or trainloads of recruits.
Having received its 10,000 recruits, who are no different from any
others, the training division has in five months to turn them into
commanders and specialists. A certain number of the new recruits are sent
straight off to the regular divisions on the grounds that they are not at
all suitable for being turned into commanders. But the training division has
very strict standards and cannot normally send more than five percent of its
intake to regular divisions. Then, in exchange for those who were sent
straight off, others arrive, but they are not much better in quality than
those sent away, so the officers and sergeants of the training division have
to exert all their ability, all their fury and inventiveness, to turn these
people into sergeants.
The selection of future sergeants for spetsnaz takes place in a
different way which is much more complicated and much more expensive. All
the recruits to spetsnaz (after a very careful selection) join fighting
units, where the company commander and platoon commanders put their young
soldiers through a very tough course. This initial period of training for
new recruits takes place away from other soldiers. During the course the
company commander and the platoon commanders very carefully select (because
they are vitally interested in the matter) those who appear to be born
leaders. There are a lot of very simple devices for doing this. For example,
a group of recruits is given the job of putting up a tent in a double quick
time, but no leader is appointed among them. In a relatively simple
operation someone has to co-ordinate the actions of the rest. A very short
time is allowed for the work to be carried out and severe punishment is
promised if the work is badly done or not completed on time. Within five
minutes the group has appointed its own leader. Again, a group may be given
the task of getting from one place to another by a very complicated and
confused route without losing a single man. And again the group will soon
appoint its own leader. Every day, every hour and every minute of the
soldier's time is taken up with hard work, lessons, running, jumping,
overcoming obstacles, and practically all the time the group is without a
commander. In a few days of very intensive training the company commander
and platoon commanders pick out the most intelligent, most imaginative,
strongest, most brash and energetic in the group. After completing the
course the majority of recruits finish up in sections and platoons of the
same company, but the best of them are sent thousands of kilometres away to
one of the spetsnaz training battalions where they become sergeants. Then
they return to the companies they came from.
It is a very long road for the recruit. But it has one advantage: the
potential sergeant is not selected by the local military authority nor even
by the training unit, but by a regular officer at a very low level -- at
platoon or company level. What is more, the selection is made on a strictly
individual basis and by the very same officer who will in five months' time
receive the man he has selected back again, now equipped with sergeant's
stripes.
It is impossible, of course, to introduce such a system into the whole
of the Soviet Armed Forces. It involves transporting millions of men from
one place to another. In all other branches the path of the future sergeant
from where he lives follows this plan: training division -- regular
division. In spetsnaz the plan is: regular unit -- training unit -- regular
unit.
There is yet another difference of principle. If any other branch of
the services needs a sergeant the military commissariat despatches a recruit
to the training division, which has to make him into a sergeant. But if
spetsnaz needs a sergeant the company commander sends three of his best
recruits to the spetsnaz training unit.
___
The spetsnaz training battalion works on the principle that before you
start giving orders, you have to learn to obey them. The whole of the
thinking behind the training battalions can be put very simply. They say
that if you make an empty barrel airtight and drag it down below the water
and then let it go it shoots up and out above the surface of the water. The
deeper it is dragged down the faster it rises and the further it jumps out
of the water. This is how the training battalions operate. Their task is to
drag their ever-changing body of men deeper down.
Each spetsnaz training battalion has its permanent staff of officers,
warrant officers and sergeants and receives its intake of 300-400 spetsnaz
recruits who have already been through a recruit's course in various
spetsnaz units.
The regime in the normal Soviet training divisions can only be
described as brutal. I experienced it first as a student in a training
division. I have already described the conditions within spetsnaz. To
appreciate what conditions are like in a spetsnaz training battalion, the
brutality has to be multiplied many times over.
In the spetsnaz training battalions the empty barrel is dragged so far
down into the deep that it is in danger of bursting from external pressure.
A man's dignity is stripped from him to such an extent that it is kept
constantly at the very brink, beyond which lies suicide or the murder of his
officer. The officers and sergeants of the training battalions are, every
one of them, enthusiasts for their work. Anyone who does like this work will
not stand it for so long but go
es off voluntarily to other easier work in
spetsnaz regular units. The only people who stay in the training battalions
are those who derive great pleasure from their work. Their work is to issue
orders by which they make or break the strongest of characters. The
commander's work is constantly to see before him dozens of men, each of whom
has one thought in his head: to kill himself or to kill his officer? The
work for those who enjoy it provides complete moral and physical
satisfaction, just as a stuntman might derive satisfaction from leaping on a
motorcycle over nineteen coaches. The difference between the stuntman
risking his neck and the commander of a spetsnaz training unit lies in the
fact that the former experiences his satisfaction for a matter of a few
seconds, while the latter experiences it all the time.
Every soldier taken into a training battalion is given a nickname,
almost invariably sarcastic. He might be known as The Count, The Duke,
Caesar, Alexander of Macedon, Louis XI, Ambassador, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, or any variation on the theme. He is treated with exaggerated
respect, not given orders, but asked for his opinion:
`Would Your Excellency be of a mind to clean the toilet with his
toothbrush?'
`Illustrious Prince, would you care to throw up in public what you ate
at lunch?'
In spetsnaz units men are fed much better than in any other units of
the armed forces, but the workload is so great that the men are permanently
hungry, even if they do not suffer the unofficial but very common punishment
of being forced to empty their stomachs:
`You're on the heavy side, Count, after your lunch! Would you care to
stick two fingers down your throat? That'll make things easier!'
___
The more humiliating the forms of punishment a sergeant thinks up for
the men under him, and the more violently he attacks their dignity, the
better. The task of the training battalions is to crush and completely
destroy the individual, however strong a character he may have possessed,
and to fashion out of that person a type to fit the standards of spetsnaz, a
type who will be filled with an explosive charge of hatred and spite and a
craving for revenge.
The main difficulty in carrying out this act of human engineering is to
turn the fury of the young soldier in the right direction. He has to have
been reduced to the lowest limits of his dignity and then, at precisely the
point when he can take no more, he can be given his sergeant's stripes and
sent off to serve in a regular unit. There he can begin to work off his fury
on his own subordinates, or better still on the enemies of Communism.
The training units of spetsnaz are a place where they tease a recruit
like a dog, working him into a rage and then letting him off the leash. It
is not surprising that fights inside spetsnaz are a common occurrence.
Everyone, especially those who have served in a spetsnaz training unit,
bears within himself a colossal charge of malice, just as a thunder cloud
bears its charge of electricity. It is not surprising that for a spetsnaz
private, or even more so for a sergeant, war is just a beautiful dream, the
time when he is at last allowed to release his full charge of malice.
___
Apart from the unending succession of humiliations, insults and
punishments handed out by the commanders, the man serving in a spetsnaz
training unit has continually to wage a no less bitter battle against his
own comrades who are in identical circumstances to his own.
In the first place there is a silent competition for pride of place,
for the leadership in each group of people. In spetsnaz, as we have seen,
this struggle has assumed open and very dramatic forms. Apart from this
natural battle for first place there exists an even more serious incentive.
It derives from the fact that for every sergeant's place in a spetsnaz
training battalion there are three candidates being trained at the same
time. Only the very best will be made sergeant at the end of five months. On
passing out some are given the rank of junior sergeant, while others are not
given any rank at all and remain as privates in the ranks. It is a bitter
tragedy for a man to go through all the ordeals of a spetsnaz training
battalion and not to receive any rank but to return to his unit as a private
at the end of it.
The decision whether to promote a man to sergeant after he has been
through the training course is made by a commission of GRU officers or the
Intelligence Directorate of the military district in whose territory the
particular battalion is stationed. The decision is made on the basis of the
result of examinations conducted in the presence of the commission, on the
main subjects studied: political training; the tactics of spetsnaz
(including knowledge of the probable enemy and the main targets that
spetsnaz operates); weapons training (knowledge of spetsnaz armament, firing
from various kinds of weapons including foreign weapons, and the use of
explosives); parachute training; physical training; and weapons of mass
destruction and defence against them.
The commission does not distinguish between the soldiers according to
where they have come from, but only according to their degree of readiness
to carry out missions. Consequently, when the men who have passed out are
returned to their units there may arise a lack of balance among them. For
example, a spetsnaz company that sends nine privates to a training battalion
in the hope of receiving three sergeants back after five months, could
receive one sergeant, one junior sergeant and seven privates, or five
sergeants, three junior sergeants and one private. This system has been
introduced quite deliberately. The officer commanding a regular company,
with nine trained men to choose from, puts only the very best in charge of
his sections. He can put anybody he pleases into the vacancies without
reference to his rank. Privates who have been through the training battalion
can be appointed commanders of sections. Sergeants and junior sergeants for
whom there are not enough posts as commanders will carry out the work of
privates despite their sergeant's rank.
The spetsnaz company commander may also have, apart from the freshly
trained men, sergeants and privates who completed their training earlier but
were not appointed to positions as commanders. Consequently the company
commander can entrust the work of commanding sections to any of them, while
all the new arrivals from the training battalion can be used as privates.
The private or junior sergeant who is appointed to command a section
has to struggle to show his superiors that he really is worthy of that trust
and that he really is the best. If he succeeds in doing so he will in due
course be given the appropriate rank. If he is unworthy he will be removed.
There are always candidates for his job.
This system has two objectives: the first is to have within the
spetsnaz regular units a large reserve of commanders at the very lowest
level. During a war spetsnaz will suffer
tremendous losses. In every section
there are always a minimum of two fully trained men capable of taking
command at any moment; the second is to generate a continual battle between
sergeants for the right to be a commander. Every commander of a section or
deputy commander of a platoon can be removed at any time and replaced by
someone more worthy of the job. The removal of a sergeant from a position of
command is carried out on the authority of the company commander (if it is a
separate spetsnaz company) or on the authority of the battalion commander or
regiment. When he is removed the former commander is reduced to the status
of a private soldier. He may retain his rank, or his rank may be reduced, or
he may lose the rank of sergeant altogether.
___
The training of officers for spetsnaz often take place at a special
faculty of the Lenin Komsomol Higher Airborne Command School in Ryazan.
Great care is taken over their selection for the school. The ones who join
the faculty are among the very best. The four years of gruelling training
are also four years of continual testing and selection to establish whether
the students are capable of becoming spetsnaz officers or not. When they
have completed their studies at the special faculty some of them are posted
to the airborne troops or the air assault troops. Only the very best are
posted to spetsnaz, and even then a young officer can at any moment be sent
off into the airborne forces. Only those who are absolutely suitable remain
in spetsnaz. Other officers are appointed from among the men passing out
from other command schools who have never previously heard of spetsnaz.
The heads of the GRU consider that special training is necessary for
every function, except that of leader. A leader cannot be produced by even
the best training scheme. A leader is born a leader and nobody can help him
or advise him how to manage people. In this case advice offered by
professors does not help; it only hinders. A professor is a man who has
never been a leader and never will be, and nobody ever taught Hitler how to
lead a nation. Stalin was thrown out of his theological seminary. Marshal
Georgi Zhukov, the outstanding military leader of the Second World War, had
a million men, and often several million, under his direct command
Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Page 10