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Виктор Суворов. Советская Армия: взгляд изнутри (engl)
© Copyright Виктор Суворов
Viktor Suvorov. Inside the Soviet Army
Copyright (C) 1982 by Viktor Suvorov
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Suvorov, Viktor. Inside the Soviet Army. Includes index.
1. Soviet Union. Armiia. I. Title.
UA770.S888 1983 355'.00947 82-22930
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
To Andrei Andreevich Vlasov
Contents
Foreword by General Sir John Hackett
Part I: The higher military leadership
Why did the Soviet Tanks not threaten Romania?
Why was the Warsaw Treaty Organisation set up later than NATO?
The Bermuda Triangle
Why does the system of higher military control appear complicated?
Why is the make-up of the Defence Council kept secret?
The Organisation of the Soviet Armed Forces
High Commands in the Strategic Directions
Part II: Types of armed services
How the Red Army is divided in relation to its targets
The Strategic Rocket Forces
The National Air Defence Forces
The Land Forces
The Air Forces
Why does the West consider Admiral Gorshkov a strong man?
The Airborne Forces
Military Intelligence and its Resources
The Distorting Mirror
Part III: Combat organisation
The Division
The Army
The Front
Why are there 20 Soviet Divisions in Germany but only 5 in
Czechoslovakia?
The Organisation of the South-Western Strategic Direction
Part IV: Mobilisation
Types of Division
The Invisible Divisions
Why is a Military District commanded by a Colonel-General in peacetime,
but only by a Major-General in wartime?
The System for Evacuating the Politburo from the Kremlin
Part V: Strategy and tactics
The Axe Theory
The Strategic Offensive
"Operation Detente"
Tactics
Rear Supplies
Part VI: Equipment
What sort of weapons?
Learning from Mistakes
When will we be able to dispense with the tank?
The Flying Tank
The Most Important Weapon
Why are Anti-tank Guns not self-propelled?
The Favourite Weapon
Why do Calibres vary?
Secrets, Secrets, Secrets
How much does all this cost?
Copying Weapons
Part VII: The soldier's lot
Building Up
How to avoid being called up
If you can't, we'll teach you; if you don't want to, we'll make you
1,441 Minutes
Day after day
Why does a soldier need to read a map?
The Training of Sergeants
The Corrective System
Part VIII: The officer's path
How to control them?
How much do you drink in your spare time?
Drop in, and we'll have a chat
Who becomes a Soviet officer and why?
Higher Military Training Colleges
Duties and Military Ranks
Military Academies
Generals
Conclusion
Index
Foreword
The book, Inside the Soviet Army, is written under the name of "Viktor
Suvorov." As a defector, under sentence of death in the USSR, the author
does not use his own name and has chosen instead that of one of the most
famous of Russian generals. This is a book that should command wide
attention, not only in the armed forces of the free world, but among the
general public as well. It is an account of the structure, composition,
operational method, and general outlook of the Soviet military in the
context of the Communist regime in the USSR and the party's total dominion,
not only over the Soviet Union, but over the client states of the Warsaw
Pact as well.
The book starts with a survey of the higher military leadership and an
analysis of the types of armed services, and of the organization of Soviet
Army formation. An examination of the Red Army's mobilization system that
follows is of particular interest. The chapters that follow on strategy and
tactics and on equipment are also of high interest. The first, on
operational method, emphasizes the supreme importance attached in Soviet
military thinking to the offensive and the swift exploitation of success.
Defensive action is hardly studied at all except as an aspect of attack. The
second, on equipment, examines Soviet insistence on simplicity in design and
shows how equipment of high technical complexity (the T-72 tank, for
instance) is also developed in another form, radically simplified in what
the author calls "the monkey model," for swift wartime production. The last
two chapters on "The Soldiers' Lot" and "The Officer's Role" will be found
by many to be the most valuable and revealing of the whole book. We have
here not so much a description of what the Red Army looks like from the
outside, but what it feels like inside.
This book is based on the author's fifteen years of regular service in
the Soviet Army, in troop command and on the staff, which included command
of a motor rifle company in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. About
this he has written another book, The Liberators, which is a spirited
account of life in the Red Army, highly informative in a painless sort of
way and often very funny. There is rather less to laugh at in this book than
in that one: Viktor Suvorov writes here in deadly earnest.
There is no doubt at all of the author's right to claim unquestioned
authority on matters which he, as a junior officer, could be expected to
know about at firsthand and in great detail. Nevertheless, not everyone
would agree with everything he has to say. Though I know him personally
rather well, Viktor Suvorov is aware that I cannot myself go all the way
with him in some of his arguments and I am sometimes bound to wonder whether
he is always interpreting the evidence correctly.
Having said this, however, I hasten to add something that seems to be
of overriding importance. The value of this book, which in my view is high,
derives as much from its apparent weaknesses as from its clearly evident
strengths--and perhaps even more. The author is a young, highly trained
professional officer with very considerable troop service behind him as well
as staff training. He went through the Frunze Military Academy (to which
almost all the Red Army's elite officers are sent) and was thereafter
employed as a staff officer. He tells the reader how he, being what he
is--that is to say, a product of the Soviet Army and the society it
serves--judges the military machine created in the Soviet Union under
Marxism-Leninism, and how he responded to it. He found that he could take no
more of the inefficiency, corruption, and blatant dishonesty of a regime
which claimed to represent its people, but had slaughtered millions of them
to sustain its own absolute supremacy.
It would be unwise to suppose that what is found in this book is
peculiar only to the visions and opinions of one young officer who might not
necessarily be typical of the group as a whole. It might be sensible to
suppose that if this is the way the scene has been observed, analyzed, and
reported on by one Red Army officer of his generation, there is a high
probability that others, and probably very many others, would see things in
much the same way. Where he may seem to some readers to get it wrong, both
in his conclusion about his own army and his opinions on military matters in
the Western world, he is almost certainly representing views very widely
held in his own service. Thus, it is just as important to take note of
points upon which the reader may think the author is mistaken as it is to
profit from his observation on those parts of the scene which he is almost
uniquely fitted to judge.
This book should not, therefore, be regarded as no more than an
argument deployed in a debate, to be judged on whether the argument is
thought to be wrong or right. Its high importance lies far more in the
disclosure of what Soviet officers are taught and how they think. This
window opened into the armed forces of the Soviet Union is, up to the
present time, unique of its kind, as far as I am aware. Every serving
officer in the Western world should read it, whether he agrees with what he
reads or not, and particularly if he does not. All politicians should read
it, and so should any member of the public who takes seriously the threat of
a third world war and wonders about the makeup and outlook of the armed
forces in the free world's main adversary.
--General Sir John Hackett
Part One
The Higher Military Leadership
Why did the Soviet Tanks not threaten Romania?
1
It looked as though the soldiers had laid a very large, very heavy
carpet at the bottom of the wooded ravine. A group of us, infantry and tank
officers, looked at their work from a slope high above them with
astonishment, exchanging wild ideas about the function of the dappled,
greyish-green carpet, which gleamed dully in the sun.
`It's a container for diesel fuel,' said the commander of a
reconnaissance party confidently, putting an end to the argument.
He was right. When the heavy sheeting, as large as the hull of an
airship, was finally unfolded, a number of grubby-looking soldiers laid a
network of field pipelines through our battalion position.
All night long they poured liquid fuel into the container. Lazily and
unwillingly it became fatter, crushing bushes and young fir trees under its
tremendous weight. Towards morning the container began to look like a very
long, flat, broad hot water bottle, made for some giant child. The resilient
surface was carefully draped with camouflage nets. Sappers hung spirals of
barbed wire around the ravine and a headquarters company set up field
picquets to cover the approaches.
In a neighbouring ravine the filling of another equally large fuel
container was in progress. Beyond a stream, in a depression, worn-out
reservists were slowly spreading out a second huge canopy. Struggling
through bogs and clearings, covered from head to foot in mud, the soldiers
pulled and heaved at an endless web of field pipelines. Their faces were
black, like photographs negatives, and this made their teeth seem
unnaturally white when they showed them, in their enjoyment of obscenities
so monstrous that they made their young reserve officer blush.
This whole affair was described, briefly, as "Rear Units Exercise". But
we could see what was going on with our own eyes and we realised that this
was more than an exercise. It was all too serious. On too large a scale. Too
unusual. Too risky. Was it likely that they would amass such enormous stocks
of tank fuel and ammunition, or build thousands of underground command posts
communications centres, depots and stores on the very borders of the country
just for an exercise?
The stifling summer of 1968 had begun. Everyone realised quite clearly
that the sultriness and tension in the air could suddenly turn into a summer
storm. We could only guess when and where this would happen. It was quite
clear that our forces would invade Romania but whether they would also go
into Czechoslovakia was a matter for speculation.
The liberation of Romania would be a joy-ride. Her maize fields suited
our tanks admirably. Czechoslovakia was another matter. Forests and mountain
passes are not good terrain for tanks.
The Romanian army had always been the weakest in Eastern Europe and had
the oldest equipment. But in Czechoslovakia things would be more
complicated. In 1968 her army was the strongest in Eastern Europe. Romania
had not even a theoretical hope of help from the West, for it had no common
frontier with the countries of NATO. But in Czechoslovakia, in addition to
Czech tank divisions, we risked meeting American, West German, British,
Belgian, Dutch and possibly French divisions. A world war might break out in
Czechoslovakia but there was no such risk in Romania.
So, although preparations were being made for the liberation of
Romania, we clearly would not go into Czechoslovakia. The risk was too
great....
2
For some reason, though, despite all our calculations and in the face
of all common sense, they did send us into Czechoslovakia. Never mind, we
reassured ourselves--we'll deal with Dubcek and then we'll get around to
Ceaucescu. First of all we'll make the Czech people happy and then it'll be
the turn of the Romanians.
But for some reason it never was....
Elementary logic suggested that it was essential to liberate Romania
and to do so immediately. The reasons for acting with lightning speed were
entirely convincing. Ceaucescu had denounced our valiant performance in
Czechoslovakia as aggression. Then Romania announced that henceforth no
exercises by Warsaw Pact countries might be held on her territory. Next she
declared that she was a neutral country and that in the event of a war in
Europe she would decide for herself whether to enter the war or not and if
so on which side. After this she vetoed a proposal for the construction of a
railway line which was to have crossed her territory in order to link the
Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Each year, too, Romania would reject suggestions
by the Soviet Union that she should increase her involvement in the
activities of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation.
Then there was a truly scandalous occurrence. Soviet military
intelligence reported that Israel was in great need of spare parts for
Soviet-built tanks, which had been captured in Sinai, and that Romania was
secretly supplying these spare parts. Hearing of this, the commander of our
regiment, without waiting for instructions, ordered that a start should be
made with bringing equipment out of mothballing. He assumed that the last
hour had struck for the stubborn Romanians. It turned out to be his last
hour that had come. He was rapidly relieved of his command, the equipment
was put back in storage and the regiment fell back into a deep sleep.
Things became even worse. The Romanians bought some military
helicopters from France. These were of great interest to Soviet military
intelligence, but our Romanian allies would not allow our experts to examine
them, even from a distance. Some of the more hawkish generals and their
juniors still believed that the Soviet leadership would change their mind
and that Romania would be liberated or at least given a good fright by troop
movements of a scale befitting a super-power along her borders. But the
majority of officers had already given Romania up as a bad job. We had got
used to the idea that Romania was allowed to do anything that she liked,
that she could take any liberties she pleased. The Romanians could exchange
embraces with our arch-enemies the Chinese, they could hold their own
opinions and they could make open criticisms of our own beloved leadership.
We began to wonder why the slightest piece of disobedience or evidence
of free thinking was crushed with tanks in East Germany, in Czechoslovakia,
in Hungary or inside the Soviet Union itself, but not in Romania. Why was
the Soviet Union ready to risk annihilation in a nuclear holocaust in order
to save far-off Cuba but not prepared to try to keep Romania under control?
Why, although they had given assurances of their loyalty to the Warsaw
Treaty, were the Czech leaders immediately dismissed, while the rulers of
Romania were allowed to shed their yoke without complications of any sort?
What made Romania an exception? Why was she forgiven for everything?
3
Many explanations are put forward for the behaviour of Soviet
Communists in the international arena. The most popular is that the Soviet
Union is, essentially, the old Russian Empire--and an empire must grow. A
good theory. Simple and easy to understand. But it has one defect--it cannot
explain the case of Romania. In fact, none of the popular theories can
explain why the Soviet rulers took such radically differing approaches to
the problems of independence in Czechoslovakia and in Romania. No single
theory can explain both the intolerance which the Soviet leadership showed
towards the gentle criticism which came from Czechoslovakia and their
astonishing imperviousness to the furious abuse with which Romania showered
them.
If the Soviet Union is to be regarded as an empire, it is impossible to
understand why it does not try to expand south-eastwards, towards the
fertile fields and vineyards of Romania. For a thousand years, possession of
the Black Sea straits has been the dream of Russian princes, tsars and
emperors. The road to the straits lies through Romania. Why does the Soviet
Union leap into wars for Vietnam and Cambodia, risking collision with the
greatest powers in the world and yet forget about Romania, which lies right
under its nose?
In fact the explanation is very simple. The USSR is not Russia or the
Russian Empire; it is not an empire at all. To believe that the Soviet Union
conforms to established historical standards is a very dangerous
simplification. Every empire has expanded in its quest for new territories,
subjects and wealth. The motivating force of the Soviet Union is quite
different. The Soviet Union does not need new territory. Soviet Communists
have slaughtered scores of millions of their own peasants and have
nationalised their land, which they are unable to develop, even if they
wished to. The Soviet Union has no need of new slaves. Soviet Communists
have shot sixty million of their own subjects, thus demonstrating their
complete inability to rule them. They cannot rule or even effectively
control those who remain alive. Soviet Communists have no need of greater
wealth. They squander their own limitless resources easily and freely. They
are ready to build huge dams in the deserts of Africa for next to nothing,
to give away their oil at the expense of Soviet Industry, to pay lavishly,
in gold, for any adventurous scheme, and to support all sorts of
free-booters and anarchists, no matter what the cost, even if this brings
ruination to their own people and to the national exchequer.
Different stimuli and other driving forces are at work upon the Soviet
Union in the international arena. Herein lies the fundamental difference
which distinguishes it from all empires, including the old Russian version,
and here too lies the main danger.
The Soviet Communist dictatorship, like any other system, seeks to
preserve its own existence. To do this it is forced to stamp out any spark
of dissidence which appears, either on its own territory or beyond its
borders. A communist regime cannot feel secure so long as an example of
another kind of life exists anywhere near it, with which its subjects can
draw comparisons. It is for this reason that any form of Communism, not only
the Soviet variety, is always at pains to shut itself off from the rest of
the world, with a curtain, whether this is made of iron, bamboo or some
other material.
The frontiers of a state which has nationalised its heavy industry and
collectivised its agriculture--which has, in other words, carried out a
"socialist transformation"--are always reminiscent of a concentration camp,
with their barbed wire, watch-towers with searchlights and guard-dogs. No
Communist state can allow its slaves free movement across its frontiers.
In the world today there are millions of refugees. All of them are in
flight from Communism. If the Communists were to open their frontiers, all
their slaves would flee. It is for this reason that the Democratic Republic
of Kampuchea has set up millions of traps along its borders--solely to
prevent anyone from attempting to leave this Communist paradise. The East
German Communists are enemies of the Kampuchean regime but they, too, have
installed the same sort of traps along their own borders. But neither Asian
cunning nor German orderliness can prevent people from fleeing from
Communism and the Communist leaders are therefore faced with the immense
problem of destroying the societies which might capture the imagination of
their people and beckon to them.
Marx was right: the two systems cannot co-exist. And no matter how
peace-loving Communists may be, they come unfailingly to the conclusion that
world revolution is inescapable. They must either annihilate capitalism or
be put to death by their own people.
There are some Communist countries which are considered
peace-loving--Albania, Democratic Kampuchea, Yugoslavia. But the love of
peace which these countries affect is simply the product of their weakness.
They are not yet strong enough to speak of world revolution, because of
their internal or external problems. But regimes which can hardly be much
more self-confident than these, such as Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea,
quickly plunge into the heroic struggle to liberate other countries, of
which they know nothing, from the yoke of capitalism.
Communist China has her own very clear belief in the inevitability of
world revolution. She has shown her hand in Korea, in Vietnam, in Cambodia
and in Africa. She is still weak and therefore peace-loving, as the Soviet
Union was during its period of industrialisation. But China, too, faces the
fundamental problem of how to keep her billion-strong population from the
temptation to flee from the country. Traps along the borders, the jamming of
radio broadcasts, almost complete isolation--none of these produces the
desired result and when China becomes an industrial and military super-power
she, too, will be forced to use more radical measures. She has never ceased
to speak of world revolution.
The fact that Communists of different countries fight between
themselves for the leading role in the world revolution is unimportant. What
is significant is that all have the same goal: if they cease to pursue it
they are, in effect, committing suicide.
`Our only salvation lies in world revolution: either we achieve it
whatever the sacrifices, or we will be crushed by the petty bourgeoisie,'
said Nikolay Bukharin, the most liberal and peace-loving member of Lenin's
Politburo. The more radical members of the Communist forum advocated an
immediate revolutionary war against bourgeois Europe. One of them, Lev
Trotsky, founded the Red Army--the army of World Revolution. In 1920 this
army tried to force its way across Poland to revolutionary Germany. This
attempt collapsed. The world revolution has not taken place: it has been
disastrously delayed but sooner or later the Communists must either bring it
about or perish.
4
To the Soviet Union Romania is an opponent. An enemy. An obstinate and
unruly neighbour. To all intents and purposes an ally of China and of
Israel. Yet not a single Soviet subject dreams of escaping to Romania or
aspires to exchange Soviet life for the Romanian version. Therefore Romania
is not a dangerous enemy. Her existence does not threaten the foundations of
Soviet Communism, and this is why drastic measures have never been taken
against her. However, the first stirrings of democracy in Czechoslovakia
represented a potentially dangerous contagion for the peoples of the Soviet
Union, just as the change of regime in Hungary represented a very dangerous
example for them. The Soviet leaders understood quite clearly that what
happened in East Germany might also happen in Esthonia, that what happened
in Czechoslovakia might happen in the Ukraine, and it was for this reason
that Soviet tanks crushed Hungarian students so pitilessly beneath their
tracks.
The existence of Romania, which, while it may be unruly, is
nevertheless a typical Communist regime, with its cult of a supreme and
infallible leader, with psychiatric prisons, with watch towers along its
frontiers, presents no threat to the Soviet Union. By contrast, the
existence of Turkey, where peasants cultivate their own land, is like a
dangerous plague, an infection which might spread into Soviet territory.
This is why the Soviet Union does so much to destabilise the Turkish regime,
while doing nothing to unseat the unruly government in Romania.
For the Communists any sort of freedom is dangerous, no matter where it
exists--in Sweden or in El Salvador, in Canada or in Taiwan. For Communists
any degree of freedom is dangerous--whether it is complete or partial,
whether it is economic, political or religious freedom. `We will not spare
our forces in fighting for the victory of Communism:' these are the words of
Leonid Brezhnev. `To achieve victory for Communism throughout the world, we
are prepared for any sacrifice:' these are the words of Mao Tse-Tung. They
also sound like the words of fellow-thinkers.... For that is what they are.
Their philosophies are identical, although they belong to different branches
of the same Mafia. Their philosophies must be identical, for neither can
sleep soundly so long as there is, anywhere in the world, a small gleam of
freedom which could serve as a guiding light for those who have been
enslaved by the Communists.
5
In the past every empire has been guided by the interests of the State,
of its economy, of its people or at least of its ruling class. Empires came
to a halt when they saw insuperable obstacles or invincible opposition in
their paths. Empires came to a halt when further growth became dangerous or
economically undesirable. The Russian Empire, for example, sold Alaska for a
million dollars and its colonies in California at a similarly cheap price
because there was no justification for retaining these territories. Today
the Soviet Communists are squandering millions of dollars each day in order
to hang on to Cuba. They cannot give it up, no matter what the cost may be,
no matter what economic catastrophe may threaten them.
Cuba is the outpost of the world revolution in the western hemisphere.
To give up Cuba would be to give up world revolution and that would be the
equivalent of suicide for Communism. The fangs of Communism turn inwards,
like those of a python. If the Communists were to set about swallowing the
world, they would have to swallow it whole. The tragedy is that, if they
should want to stop, this would be impossible because of their physiology.
If the world should prove to be too big for it, the python would die, with
gaping jaws, having buried its sharp fangs in the soft surface, but lacking
the strength to withdraw them. It is not only the Soviet python which is
attempting to swallow the world but the other breeds of Communism, for all
are tied inescapably to pure Marxism, and thus to the theory of world
revolution. The pythons may hiss and bite one another but they are all of
one species.
The Soviet Army, or more accurately the Red Army, the Army of World
Revolution, represents the teeth of the most dangerous but also the oldest
of the pythons, which began to swallow the world by sinking its fangs into
the surface and then realised just how big the world is and how dangerous
for its stomach. But the python has not the strength to withdraw its fangs.
Why was the Warsaw Treaty Organisation set up later than NATO?
1
The countries of the West set up NATO in 1949 but the Warsaw Treaty
Organisation was created only in 1955. For the Communists, comparison of
these two dates makes excellent propaganda for consumption by hundreds of
millions of gullible souls. Facts are facts--the West put together a
military bloc while the Communists simply took counter-measures--and there
was a long delay before they even did that. Not only that, but the Soviet
Union and its allies have come forward repeatedly and persistently with
proposals for breaking up military blocs both in Europe and throughout the
world. The countries of the West have rejected these peace-loving proposals
almost unanimously.
Let us take the sincerity of the Communists at face value. Let us
assume that they do not want war. But, if that is so, the delay in
establishing a military alliance of Communist states contradicts a
fundamental tenet of Marxism: `Workers of the World Unite!' is the chief
rallying cry of Marxism. Why did the workers of the countries of Eastern
Europe not hasten to unite in an alliance against the bourgeoisie? Whence
such disrespect for Marx? How did it happen that the Warsaw Treaty
Organisation was set up, not in accordance with the Communist Manifesto but
solely as a reaction to steps taken by the bourgeois countries--and then so
belatedly?
Strange though it may seem, there is no contradiction with pure Marxism
in this case. But, in trying to understand the aims and structures of the
Warsaw Treaty Organisation, the interrelationships within it and the delay
in its establishment (which at first sight is inexplicable), we shall not
immerse ourselves in theory nor attempt to follow the intricate workings of
this unwieldy bureaucratic organisation. If we study the fate of Marshal K.
K. Rokossovskiy we shall come to understand, if not everything, at least the
essentials.
2
Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovskiy was born in 1896 in the old
Russian town of Velikiye Luki. At eighteen he was called up by the Russian
army. He spent the whole of the war at the front, first as a private, then
as an NCO. In the very first days of the Revolution he went over to the
Communists and joined the Red Army. He distinguished himself fighting
against both the Russian and Polish armies. He moved rapidly upwards, ending
the war in command of a regiment. After the war he commanded a brigade, then
a division and then a corps.
At the time of the Great Purge the Communists tortured or shot those
people who had miraculously survived until then despite past connections
with the Russian government, army, police, diplomatic service, church or
culture. Red Army Corps Commander Rokossovskiy found himself among the
millions of victims because of his service with the Russian army.
During the investigations he underwent appalling tortures. Nine of his
teeth were knocked out, three of his ribs were broken, his toes were
hammered flat. He was sentenced to death and spent more than three months in
the condemned cell. There is testimony, including his own, that, twice, at
least, he was subjected to mock shootings, being led to the place of
execution at night, and made to stand at the edge of a grave as generals on
his right and left were shot, while he was `executed' with a blank cartridge
fired at the nape of his neck.
On the eve of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union Rokossovskiy
was let out of gaol and given the rank of Major-General of Tank Forces and
command of a mechanised corps. However, the charge resulting from his
service with the Russian army was not dropped and the death sentence was not
annulled. `Take command of this mechanised corps, prisoner, and we'll see
about your death sentence later....'
On the second day of the war, Rokossovskiy's 9th Mechanised Corps
struck an unexpected and powerful blow against German tanks, which were
breaking through in the area of Rovno and Lutsk, at a moment when the rest
of the Soviet forces were retreating in panic. In a situation of confusion
and disorganisation, Rokossovskiy showed calmness and courage in his defence
of the Soviet regime. He managed to maintain the fighting efficiency of his
corps and to make several successful counter-attacks. On the twentieth day
of the war he was promoted, becoming Commander of the 16th Army, which
distinguished itself both in the battle of Smolensk and, especially, in the
battle for Moscow, when, for the first time in the course of the war, the
German army was heavily defeated. During the battle of Stalingrad
Rokossovskiy commanded the Don front, which played a decisive role in the
encirclement and complete destruction of the strongest German battle group,
consisting of twenty-two divisions.
During the battle for Kursk, when weather conditions put the
contestants on equal terms, Rokossovskiy commanded the Central Front, which
played a major part in smashing Hitler's last attempt to achieve a decisive
success. Thereafter Rokossovskiy successfully commanded forces in operations
in Byelorussia, East Prussia, Eastern Pomerania and, finally, in Berlin.
Stars rained upon Rokossovskiy. They fell on to his shoulder boards, on
to his chest and around his neck. In 1944 he was awarded the diamond
Marshal's Star and a gold star to pin on his chest. In 1945 he was awarded
both the Victory order, on which sparkle no less than one hundred diamonds,
and a second gold star. Stalin conferred the highest honour on Rokossovskiy
by giving him command of the Victory Parade on Red Square.
But what has all this to do with the Warsaw Treaty Organisation? The
fact that, immediately after the war, Stalin sent his favourite,
Rokossovskiy, to Warsaw and gave him the title of Marshal of Poland to add
to his existing rank as Marshal of the Soviet Union. In Warsaw Rokossovskiy
held the posts of Minister of Defence, Deputy President of the Council of
Ministers and Member of the Politburo of the Polish Communist Party. Think
for a moment about the full significance of this--a Marshal of the Soviet
Union as deputy to the head of the Polish government!
In practice Rokossovskiy acted as military governor of Poland, senior
watchdog over the Polish government and supervisor of the Polish Politburo.
As all-powerful ruler of Poland, Rokossovskiy remained a favourite of
Stalin's, but a favourite who was under sentence of death, a sentence which
was lifted only after the death of Stalin in 1953. A favourite of this sort
could have been shot at any moment. But, even if the death sentence had been
lifted, would it have taken long to impose a new one?
Now let us see the situation from the point of view of the
Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, J. V. Stalin. His subordinate in Warsaw
is Marshal of the Soviet Union Rokossovskiy. This subordinate carries out
all orders unquestioningly, accurately and speedily. Why should Stalin
conclude a military alliance with him? Even to contemplate such a step would
show a flagrant disregard for the principles of subordination and would be
an offence in itself. A sergeant has no right to make an agreement of any
kind with the soldiers under him or a general with his officers. In the same
way, a Generalissimo is not entitled to conclude alliances with his own
Marshal. It is the right and duty of a commander to give orders and a
subordinate is bound to obey these orders. Any other kind of relationship
between commanders and their subordinates is entirely forbidden. The
relationship between Stalin and Rokossovskiy was based upon the fact that
Stalin gave the orders and that Rokossovskiy carried them out without
question.
3
The fact that he knew no Polish did not disturb Rokossovskiy in the
slightest. In those glorious days not a single general in the Polish army
spoke Polish, relying instead on interpreters who were constantly in
attendance.
In Russia in 1917 a Polish nobleman, Felix Dzerzhinskiy, established a
blood-stained organisation; this was the Cheka, the forerunner of the GPU,
NKVD, MGB, and KGB. Between 1939 and 1940 this organisation destroyed the
flower of the Polish officer corps. During the war a new Polish army was
formed in the Soviet Union. The soldiers and junior officers of this army
were Poles, the senior officers and generals were Soviets. When they were
transferred to the Polish army the Soviets received joint Polish-Soviet
nationality and Polish military ranks, while remaining on the strength of
the Soviet military hierarchy. Here is one case history from many thousands:
Fyodor Petrovich Polynin was born in 1906 in the province of Saratov.
He joined the Red Army in 1928 and became a pilot. In 1938-39 he fought in
China with the forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. He used a Chinese name and was
given Chinese nationality. Although thus a Chinese subject, he was
nevertheless made a `Hero of the Soviet Union'. He returned to the Soviet
Union and reverted to Soviet nationality. During the war he commanded the
13th Bomber Division and then the 6th Air Army. He became a
Lieutenant-General in the Soviet Air Force. In 1944 he became a Polish
general. He never learned Polish. He was made Commander of the Air Force of
sovereign, independent Poland.
In 1946, while still holding this high position in Poland, he received
the rank of `Colonel-General of the Air Force'. The Air Force concerned was,
of course, the Soviet one, for Polynin was also a Soviet General. The
announcement that this rank had been awarded to the officer commanding the
Polish Air Force was signed by the President of the Council of Ministers of
the USSR, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, J. V. Stalin.
After a further short period in Poland, as if this was an entirely
normal development, Fedya Polynin resumed his Soviet rank and was given the
post of Deputy to the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Forces. During
his years in command of the Polish Air Force, he learned not a single word
of Polish. Why should he bother to do so? His orders reached him from Moscow
in Russian and when he reported that they had been carried out he did so in
Russian, too. None of his subordinates at the headquarters of the Polish Air
Force spoke Polish either, so that there was no point in learning the
language.
Once again, why should Stalin conclude a military alliance with Fedya
Polynin, if the latter was no more than a subordinate of Rokossovskiy, who
was himself subordinated to Stalin? Why set up a military alliance if a more
reliable and simpler line of direct command was already in existence?
4
The Polish Army, which was set up in 1943 on Soviet territory, was
simply a part of the Red Army, headed by Soviet commanders, and it did not,
of course, recognise the Polish government-in-exile in London. In 1944 the
Communists established a new `people's' government, a large part of which
consisted of investigators from the NKVD and from Soviet military
counterintelligence (SMERSH). However, even after the `people's' government
had been established, the Polish army did not come under its command,
remaining a part of the Soviet Army. After the war, the `people's'
government of Poland was quite simply not empowered to appoint the generals
in the `Polish' army or to promote or demote them. This was understandable,
since the generals were also Soviet generals and posting them would amount
to interference in the internal affairs of the USSR.
There was no reason why the Soviet government should have had the
slightest intention of setting up any kind of Warsaw Treaty, Consultative
Committee or other similarly non-functional superstructure. No one needed a
treaty, since the Polish army was nothing more than a part of the Soviet
army, and the Polish government, brought up to strength with Soviet
cut-throats and bully boys, was not allowed to intervene in the affairs of
the Polish army.
Nevertheless, after the death of Stalin, the Soviet government, headed
by Marshal of the Soviet Union Bulganin, decided to conclude an official
military agreement with the countries it was occupying. Communist propaganda
proclaimed, at the top of its voice, as it continues to do, that this was a
voluntary agreement, made between free countries. But a single example from
the time when the official document was signed is an indication of the
truth. The signatory for the Soviet Union was Marshal of the Soviet Union G.
K. Zhukov, and for free, independent, popular, socialist Poland Marshal of
the Soviet Union Rokossovskiy, assisted by Colonel-General S. G.
Poplavskiy--Rokossovskiy's deputy. Marshal of the Soviet Union Bulganin, who
was present at the ceremony, took the opportunity to award Colonel-General
Poplavskiy the rank of General of the Army. You have, of course, guessed
that Poplavskiy, who signed for Poland, was also a Soviet general and the
subordinate of Marshals Bulganin, Zhukov and Rokossovskiy. Within two years
Poplavskiy had returned to the USSR and become deputy to the Inspector
General of the Soviet Army. These were the sort of miracles which took place
in Warsaw, irrespective of the existence of the Warsaw Treaty. Rokossovskiy,
Poplavskiy, Polynin and the others were compelled by Soviet legislation to
carry out the orders which reached them from Moscow. The Treaty neither
increased nor lessened Poland's dependence upon the USSR.
However Poland is a special case. With other East European countries it
was much easier. In Czechoslovakia there were reliable people like Ludwig
Svoboda, who neutralised the Czech army in 1948 and did so again in 1968. He
carried out the orders of the USSR promptly and to the letter and it was
therefore not necessary to keep a Soviet Marshal in Prague holding a
ministerial post in the Czech government. With the other East European
countries, too, everything went well. During the war all of them had been
enemies of the USSR and it was therefore possible to execute any political
figure, general, officer or private soldier, at any given moment and to
replace him with someone more cooperative. The system worked perfectly; the
Soviet ambassadors to the countries of Eastern Europe kept a close eye on
its operation. What sort of ambassadors these were you can judge from the
fact that when the Warsaw Treaty was signed the Soviet Ambassador to
Hungary, for instance, was Yuriy Andropov, who subsequently became head of
the KGB. It was therefore understandable that Hungary should welcome the
treaty warmly and sign it with deep pleasure.
Under Stalin, Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe were
governed by a system of open dictatorship, uncamouflaged in any way. The
Warsaw Treaty did not exist for one simple reason--it was not needed. All
decisions were taken in the Kremlin and monitored by the Kremlin. The
Defence Ministers of the East European countries were regarded as equal in
status to the Commanders of Soviet Military Districts and they came under
the direct command of the Soviet Minister of Defence. All appointments and
postings were decided upon by the Kremlin. The Defence Ministers of the
`sovereign' states of Eastern Europe were either appointed from the ranks of
Soviet generals or were `assisted' by Soviet military advisers. In Romania
and Bulgaria, for instance, one such `adviser' was Marshal of the Soviet
Union Tolbukhin. In East Germany there was Marshal Zhukov himself, in
Hungary Marshal of the Soviet Union Konev. Each adviser had at his disposal
at least one tank army, several all-arms armies and special SMERSH punitive
detachments. To disregard his `advice' would be a very risky business.
After Stalin's death the Soviet leadership embarked on the process of
`liberalisation'. In Eastern Europe everything stayed as it was, for all
that happened was that the Soviet government had decided to conceal its
wolf's jaws behind the mask of a `voluntary' agreement, after the NATO
model.
To some people in Eastern Europe it really seemed as though
dictatorship had come to an end and that the time for a voluntary military
agreement had arrived. But they were quite wrong. Just one year after the
signing of this `voluntary' alliance the actions of Soviet tanks in Poland
and Hungary gave clear proof that everything was still as it had been under
Stalin, except for some small, cosmetic alterations.
Communist propaganda quite deliberately blends two concepts; that of
the military organisation in force in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
and that of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. The military organisation of the
East European countries was set up immediately <after> the Red Army arrived
on their territories, in 1944 and 1945. In some cases, for example Poland
and Czechoslovakia, military pro-Communist formations had been established
even before the arrival of the Red Army.
The armies of East European countries which were set up by Soviet
`military advisers' were fully supervised and controlled from Moscow. The
military system which took shape was neither a multilateral organisation nor
a series of bilateral defensive treaties, but was imposed, forcibly, on a
unilateral basis in the form in which it still exists.
The Warsaw Treaty Organisation is a chimera, called into being to
camouflage the tyranny of Soviet Communism in the countries under its
occupation in order to create an illusion of free will and corporate spirit.
Communist propaganda claims that it was as a result of the establishment of
NATO that the countries of Eastern Europe came together in a military
alliance. The truth is that, at the end of the Second World War, the Soviet
Union took full control of the armies of the countries which it had overrun,
long before NATO came into existence. It was many years later that the
Communists decided to conceal their mailed fist and attempt to present the
creation of NATO as the moment when the military framework of Eastern Europe
was set up.
But the Communists lacked the imagination to establish this purely
ornamental organisation, which exists solely to conceal grim reality,
tactfully and with taste. During the Organisation's first thirteen years the
Ministers of Defence of the sovereign states, whether they were pro-Soviet
puppets or actual Soviet generals and Marshals, were subordinated to the
Commander-in-Chief, who was appointed by the Soviet government and who was
himself Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR. Thus, even in a legal sense,
the Ministers of these theoretically sovereign states were directly
subordinated to a Soviet Minister's deputy. After the Czechoslovak affair
the similarly spurious Consultative Committee was set up. In this committee
Ministers of Defence and Heads of State gather supposedly to talk as equals
and allies. But this is pure play-acting. Everything remains as it was
several decades ago. Decisions are still made in the Kremlin. The
Consultative Committee takes no decisions for itself.
Any attempt to understand the complex and fanciful structure of
committees and staffs which make up the Warsaw Treaty Organisation is a
complete waste of time. It is rather like trying to understand how the
Supreme Soviet arrives at its decisions or how the President of the Soviet
Union governs the country--the nature of his authority and the extent of his
responsibilities. You know before you start that, despite its great
complexity, the organisation has absolutely no reality. The Supreme Soviet
neither formulates policy nor takes decisions. It is purely decorative, like
the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, there for show and nothing more. In the same
way, the President of the Soviet Union himself does nothing, takes no
decisions, and has neither responsibilities nor authority. His post was
devised solely to camouflage the absolute power of the General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Warsaw Treaty Organisation, then, is a body of the same type as the
Supreme Soviet. It is a showpiece whose only function is to conceal the
Kremlin's dictatorship. Its Consultative Committee was set up solely to hide
the fact that all decisions are taken at the Headquarters of the Soviet
Army, on Gogol Boulevard in Moscow. The function of the Commander-in-Chief
of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation is purely decorative. Like the President
of the Soviet Union he is without authority. Although he is still listed
among the first deputies of the Soviet Minister of Defence, this is a legacy
of the past, and is no more than an honour, for he is remote from real
power.
During a war, or any such undertaking as `Operation Danube', the
`allied' divisions of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation are integrated in the
Soviet Armies. None of the East European countries has the right to set up
its own Corps, Armies or Fronts. They have only divisions commanded by
Soviet generals. In the event of war, their Ministers of Defence would be
concerned only with the reinforcement, build-up and technical servicing of
their own divisions, which would operate as part of the United (that is the
Soviet) Armed Forces.
Lastly, a few words on the ultimate goal of the Warsaw Treaty
Organisation: the disbandment of all military blocs, in Europe and
throughout the world. This is the real aspiration of our Soviet `doves'. It
is based on a very simple calculation. If NATO is disbanded, the West will
have been neutralised, once and for all. The system of collective
self-defence of the free countries will have ceased to exist. If the Warsaw
Treaty Organisation is disbanded at the same time, the USSR loses nothing
except a cumbersome publicity machine. It will remain in complete control of
the armies of its `allies'. The military organisation will survive,
untouc...
