"Viktor Suvorov. Inside soviet military intelligence (англ) " - читать интересную книгу автора

trains its ears to hear with precision every rustle of the night. Although
the crocodile is firmly tied to the Party and the KGB, the general staff and
the integral GRU are practically independent of external control. Why this
should be is explained by the Party's experience. In the period before the
war, the Party supervised the general staff so carefully, and the Tchekists
insisted strongly on the observance of every minute directive of the Party,
that the general staff completely lost the ability to think independently.
As a result the crocodile, despite its enormous size, completely lost its
presence of mind, its speed of reaction and any capability to think and take
independent decisions All this brought the system to the edge of
catastrophe, as the Army became practically incapable of fighting. The Party
learnt from this sad experience and realised that it must not interfere in
the working of the crocodile's brain, even if this brain had ceased to think
along Party lines. The Party and the KGB preferred, for purely practical
reasons, to keep only the body of the crocodile under control and not to
interfere with the work of its brain, of its sharp ears and piercing eyes.
Chapter Two
History
Soviet military intelligence [The Russian version of the English
'intelligence' - razvedka - has wider significance and includes everything
we understand by the terms 'intelligence', 'reconnaissance', 'surveillance'
and all activity governing collection and processing of information about
actual or potential enemies.] and its superior organ, the GRU, are an
integral part of the Army. The history of Soviet intelligence can therefore
only be surveyed in the light of the history of the development of the Army
and consequently in the light of the continuous struggle between the Army,
the Party and the KGB. From the moment of the creation of the first
detachment of the Red Army, small intelligence groups were formed within
these detachments quietly and often without any order from above. As the
regular army developed into newly-formed regiments, brigades, divisions,
army corps and armies, so these intelligence organs developed with it. From
the outset, intelligence units at all levels were subordinated to the
corresponding staffs. At the same time the superior echelons of intelligence
exercised control and direction of the lower echelons. The chief of
intelligence of an army corps, for example, had his own personal
intelligence unit and in addition directed the chiefs of intelligence of the
divisions which formed a part of his army corps. Each divisional
intelligence chief, in his turn, had his own intelligence unit at the same
time as directing the activities of the intelligence chiefs of the brigades
which formed his division. And so on down the scale. On 13 June 1918 a front
was formed, for the first time in the composition of the Red Army. This
front received the name of the Eastern Front, and in it there were five
armies and the Volga military flotilla. On the same day there was created a
'registrational' (intelligence) department in the Eastern Front. The
department had the intelligence chiefs of all five armies and the flotilla
reporting to it. These intelligence chiefs of the front possessed a number
of aircraft for aerial reconnaissance, some cavalry squadrons and, most
important, an agent network. The agent network for the Eastern Front was
first formed on the basis of underground organisations of Bolsheviks and
other parties which supported them. Subsequently the network grew and,