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Each military district and group of forces consists ot armies. Each fleet consists of flotillas which are equivalent to the armies of the land forces. On the staff of each army there is an intelligence department (RO) which is in effect a full vassal of the superior intelligence directorate and the still superior chief intelligence directorate. The intelligence department (RO) of an army or flotilla does run an agent network of its own. On the strength of each intelligence department, and there are in the Soviet armed forces at least fifty, there is a Spetsnaz company. This company, which numbers 115 saboteurs and cut-throats, is capable of penetrating into the enemy's territory to murder and kidnap people, blow up bridges, electric power stations, dams, oil pipelines and so on. And these Spetsnaz units are supplemented by the intelligence department's wide choice of electronic, air and other types of intelligence.
An army in the Soviet Union consists of from four to six divisions. In peace-time there are in the Soviet armed forces about 180 tank and motorised divisions. In the interests of simplification we can omit the eight divisions of airborne forces (VDV), the brigades of marine infantry belonging to the fleets and still many more branches of the Soviet Army which have intelligence units subordinated directly to the GRU of the general staff. On the strength of the staff of each division there is a chief reco
Everything that we have listed comes under the indivisible control of the GRU, although none of it is called by this name. The researcher who studies the GRU but does not take into consideration the GRU's vassals will have overlooked twenty-four separate espionage organisations, each of which is as powerful as the intelligence service of one central European country. He will have overlooked 100,000 elite troops possessing as many fighting vehicles as a well-equipped Western European country. But even that is not all. In addition to its official vassals the GRU also has unofficial vassals who carry out the orders of the GRU as precisely and with as much jealous zeal as do the intelligence directorates of military districts, the intelligence departments of armies and the chief reco
Chapter Four
The GRU and the Military Industrial Commission (VPK)
When we use the term 'army' with regard to the Soviet Army we must have in mind not only the Ministry of Defence, but also the twelve other ministries whose sole function it is to produce weapons and military technology. Together all these ministries form the high-powered monolith headed by the military industrial commission (VPK). Included in the collegium of the military industrial commission are: one of the first deputies of the chairman of the council of ministers, thirteen ministers, and the chief of the general staff and the chief of the GRU. The military industrial commission is the Army and the Army is the military industrial commission. When we talk of a struggle between the Army and the Party and the KGB we have in mind the struggle of the whole military industrial commission, whose fortunes wax and wane in perfect harmony with the Army's own.
The economic and financial might of the military industrial commission can only be compared with the might of the Soviet Union itself. Theoretically the Soviet Union spends, in the interests of defence, the improbably small sum of nineteen billion roubles a year. This nineteen billion, however, is the budget of the Ministry of Defence alone. The budgets of the remaining twelve ministries which produce armaments are kept secret. The Soviet system is constructed in such a way that the Ministry of Defence does not buy; it receives the armaments necessary to it. For example, an aircraft carrier is under construction in the Soviet Union. The Ministry of Defence does not bear any of the cost of this. The price of the ship is paid to the Ministry of Shipbuilding by the Council of Ministers under the debit item shipbuilding industry'. This Ministry, by the way, has never constructed any non-military vessels. Non-military vessels are, without exception, bought for the Soviet Union in Poland, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark - it is difficult indeed to list all of them. It is probably true that only Switzerland is an exception to this list. The same thing is true of aircraft, tanks, rockets, nuclear bombs, military electronics, every item of hardware. Nobody in the Soviet Union knows exactly how much the military industrial commission swallows up, but in any case it is an astronomical figure.
At the heart of any Soviet five-year plan for economic development - not the propaganda plan which appears in all the newspapers, but the genuine, secret plan - will be found the military industrial commission's plan. For all the other branches of the Soviet economy, metallurgy, machine tool construction, energy, transport, agriculture, have no independent significance but only provide for the activities of the military industrial commission. Soviet science is another organ providing for the military industrial commission. Officially it is allocated about sixty billion roubles a year, three times more than defence. But what sort of science is it, if the Soviet Union can produce the first automatic satellite destroyer in the world but ca
What has the GRU to do with this? The co
Why does the KGB not carry out orders for the armaments industry? This is very simple. The chairmen of the Council of Ministers and Gosplan [The State pla