SPETSNAZ - THE SOVIET SPECIAL FORCES

The Inside Story Of The Soviet Special Forces

The Fighting Units Of Spetsnaz

Chapter 4 Page 2 NEXT PAGE >

The soldier was not inclined to step on the towel. At the same time he couldn't make up his mind to jump over it, because the mud from his boots would inevitably land on the towel. Eventually he jumped, and the others jumped across the towel after him. For some reason no one dared to take the towel away. Everyone could see that there was some reason why it had been put there right in the entrance. A beautiful clean towel. With mud all around it. What was it doing there?

A whole platoon lived in one huge tent. The men slept in two-tier metal bunks. The top bunks were occupied by the stariki — the `old men' of nineteen or even nineteen and a half, who had already served a year or even eighteen months in spetsnaz. The salagi slept on the bottom bunks. They had served only six months. By comparison with those who were now jumping over the towel they were of course stariki too. They had all in their day jumped awkwardly across the towel. Now they were watching silently, patiently and attentively to see how the new men behaved in that situation. The new men behaved as anybody would in their situation. Some pushed from behind, and there was the towel in front. So they jumped, and clustered together in the centre of the tent, not knowing where to put their hands or where to look. It was strange. They seemed to want to look at the ground. All the young men behaved in exactly the same way: a jump, into the crowd and eyes down. But no -- the last soldier behaved quite differently. He burst into the tent, helped by a kick from the sergeant. On seeing the white towel he pulled himself up sharply, stood on it in his dirty boots and proceeded to wipe them as if he really were standing on a doormat. Having wiped his feet he didn't join the crowd but marched to the far corner of the tent where he had seen a spare bed.

`Is this mine?'

`It's yours,' the platoon shouted approvingly. `Come here, mate, there's a better place here! Do you want to eat?'

That night all the young recruits would get beaten. And they would be beaten on the following nights. They would be driven out into the mud barefoot, and they would be made to sleep in the lavatories (standing up or lying down, as you wish). They would be beaten with belts, with slippers and with spoons, with anything suitable for causing pain. The stariki would use the salagi on which to ride horseback in battles with their friends. The salagi would clean the `old men''s weapons and do their dirty jobs for them. There would be the same goings-on as in the rest of the Soviet Army. Stariki everywhere play the same kind of tricks on the recruits. The rituals and the rules are the same everywhere. The spetsnaz differs from the other branches only in that they place the dazzlingly clean towel at the entrance to the tent for the recruits to walk over. The sense of this particular ritual is clear and simple: We are nice people. We welcome you, young man, cordially into our friendly collective. Our work is very hard, the hardest in the whole army, but we do not let it harden our hearts. Gome into our house, young man, and make yourself at home. We respect you and will spare nothing for you. You see -- we have even put the towel with which we wipe our faces for you to walk on in your dirty feet. So that's it, is it -- you don't accept our welcome? You reject our modest gift? You don't even wish to wipe your boots on what we wipe our faces with! What sort of people do you take us for? You may certainly not respect us, but why did you come into our house with dirty boots?

Only one of the salagi, the one who wiped his feet on the towel, will be able to sleep undisturbed. He will receive his full ration of food and will clean only his own weapon; and perhaps the stariki will give instructions that he should not do even that. There are many others in the platoon to do it.

Where on earth could a young eighteen-year-old soldier have learnt about the spetsnaz tradition? Where could he have heard about the white towel? Spetsnaz is a secret organisation which treasures its traditions and keeps them to itself. A former spetsnaz soldier must never tell tales: he'll lose his tongue if he does. In any case he is unlikely to tell anyone about the towel trick, especially someone who has yet to be called up. I was beaten up, so let him be beaten up as well, he reasons.

There are only three possible ways the young soldier could have found out about the towel. Either he simply guessed what was happening himself. The towel had been laid down at the entrance, so it must be to wipe his feet on. What else could it be for? Or perhaps his elder brother had been through the spetsnaz. He had, of course, never called it by that name or said what it was for, but he might have said about the towel: `Watch out, brother, there are some units that have very strange customs.... But just take care -- if you let on I'll knock your head off. And I can.' Or his elder brother might have spent some time in a penal battalion. Perhaps he had been in spetsnaz and in a penal battalion. For the custom of laying out a towel in 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. continued next page...