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Deadly Force
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16279 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1989 |
2,923 Words |
| Author
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Stanislav Levchenko
Stanislav Levchenko is a J.M. Olin Fellow of Boston
University's College of Communications. He is the author of
On the Wrong Side and other books and is a member of the
Jamestown Foundation, which helps defectors from communist
countries resettle in the West. |
SPETSNAZ
The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces
Victor Suvorov
New York: W. Norton & Co., 1988
231 pp., $19.95
In 1966, I was summoned to the conscription office in Moscow, and as a military reserve officer was issued an order to change my military profession--from psychological warfare to army illegal intelligence. In effect, I was to become a closet kamikaze. In case of a "pre-world War III situation" I was supposed to be delivered by plane or submarine to the area of the British port of Liverpool. There I had to conduct visual reconnaissance to determine the stage of readiness of the British nuclear submarines, report my findings to Moscow over the special radio, and then perish in the flames of a Soviet nuclear strike together with the unfortunate citizens of this major British port.
I went through many weeks of training in various forms of espionage and for the first time in my life learned that the leaders of the Soviet Union were seriously planning a first-strike scenario against the West. I had no doubt that at least several thousand people like myself had been secretly trained for this kind of mission. At that time, however, due to the paranoid secrecy within the Soviet military system, I had no actual knowledge of Spetsnaz troops in the Soviet army.
Why Spetsnaz?
The acronym Spetsnaz sounds chilly like the clicking of the trigger of a handgun. It stands for Voiska Spetsialnogo Naznacheniya, or special purpose forces--the elite of the Soviet army.
Until recently, not much has been known about Spetsnaz in the West. The book Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces by Victor Suvorov provides a unique insight into this top-secret part of the Soviet military machine. Although he was never in Spetsnaz, the author is familiar with the subject--Suvorov is the pen name of a Soviet defector who was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) officer. Before joining GRU, he spent some time observing Spetsnaz.
Special Purpose Forces is a combination of Soviet military reconnaissance and intelligence with shock troops. It combines elements of espionage, terrorism, and large-scale guerrilla
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