SPETSNAZ - THE SOVIET SPECIAL FORCES

The Inside Story Of The Soviet Special Forces

Selection And Training

Chapter 7 Page 1 NEXT PAGE >

Between soldiers and their officers are the sergeants, an intermediate rank with its own internal seniority of junior sergeants, full sergeants, senior sergeant and starshina. The training of the sergeants is of critical importance in spetsnaz where discipline and competence are required to an even more stringent degree than in the everyday life of the armed forces.

In normal circumstances training is carried out by special training divisions. Each of these has a permanent staff, a general, officers, warrant 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 goes 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. continued next page...