...maddeningly senseless drill, stupefying political indoctrination, enormous corruption... What happened with the once glorious Red Army, the pride of 'right'-minded people, is the best indicator of the decay of the communist system itself....A brilliant book, saturated with black humor as much as the Soviet life itself... a born writer presents us with a master piece."—Vladimir Bukovsky, The Times (London) "A unique and invaluable view of the Soviet army from the inside: the insanely rigid and brutal discipline (Russian troops loot and rape only when permitted to do so by their commanders), the clumsiness, the wastefulness, the sycophancy and venality of so many junior officers and the vulgar and drunken extravagance of much of the top brass... [told] in a most readable manner through a series of scenes drawn from life, adding up to a savage and also hilariously funny exposure of the failures of a military machine which we, meekly accepting the teaching of experts who should know better, have come to regard with entirely misplaced (and rather shameful) awe... Read Mr Suvorov both for fun and salutary instruction." —Edward Crankshaw, The Observer "Here a Soviet officer gives us an unvarnished picture of the adversary's troops. The book is brief, comic, and authentic.... It does throw startling light on the degradation of Soviet soldiers, often treated as no better than uniformed serfs." —Nora Beloff, The Daily Telegraph Here is a sardonic and highly personal document by the author of the definitive study of the Red Army, Inside the Soviet Army, published earlier in the year. Suvorov is the pseudonym of an officer in the post- Khrushchev Soviet army who defected recently to England. No previous book by a Russian has revealed with such clarity and honesty what life is like now in the Soviet army. Suvorov takes the reader through the mind-freezing savagery of a penal glass-house and the extravagant idiocy of army maneuvers on the grandest scale. He shows how an officer is trained, and how the hierarchy of the Soviet army is achieved and maintained. He gives brutally frank portraits of the senior commanders and politicians, and of the petty bureaucrats and Party informers. There is much satiric humor in his vivid narrative, which includes his experiences not only in training and garrison but in action, such as the infamous crushing of the Czech uprising. Suvorov tells his story with simplicity but also with deadly accuracy. He knows what it was like, and he knows that it could happen again. It was his army that could invade Poland, or Germany, or....It is officers of his kind and with his training who could be involved in the next war. Entertaining, often crude in its impact, and— ultimately—deeply disturbing, this is a book of importance to our times. THE LIBERATORS My Life in the Soviet Army VIKTOR SUVOROV There is on earth no sadder ditty Than the tale of the Central Committee! —Russian Folk Song CONTENTS Preface: How I became a Liberator 1 Kiev Tank-Technology School Check Point. 25 March, 1966 11 Kiev Garrison Detention Centre. 29 March, 1966 25 Kiev Garrison Detention Centre. 31 March, 1966 42 April 1967. The final days before graduation from the Kharkov Guards Tank Commanders' School 48 Kharkov 1967. Theatre 55 Summer 1967. The Ukraine. Operation 'Dnieper' 61 1967. Moscow - The Ukraine. Operation 'Bridge' 86 Oster, the Ukraine. October 1967. Training 92 Oster, the Ukraine. March 1968 94 Headquarters, Leningrad Military District. Early 1969 101 The Ukraine, 1967 107 The all-army conference of young officers. The Kremlin. 26 November, 1969 114 The Group of Soviet Troops in Germany. Spring 1970 116 A training division, Oster. Early 1967. Durov's Way 118 Impressions of the Soviet combat air force 127 The Ukraine. Beginning of summer 1968 135 Liberators 146 The Western Ukraine. August 1968 153 The final stop before the state frontier 158 Invasion 161 The centre of Prague. August 1968 164 First days of September 1968. Counter-revolution 182 Koshitse. Early September 1968. Flight 185 Koshitse - Prague. September 1968. Farewell to the Liberators 189 V The Soviet Army after the liberation 193 The Western Ukraine, 12 October, 1968 198 Postscript 201 vi Preface How I Became a Liberator The Party is our helmsman - Popular song The General Secretary of the Party set a task: there must be a sharp rise in agricultural output. So the whole country reflected on how best to achieve this magnificent aim. The Secretary of our Regional Party Committee thought about it, as did all his advisers, consultants and researchers. To tell the truth, it was a ridiculously easy task: the climate of our Region is similar to that of France - there is plenty of sun and warmth and water. And our soil is splendid. The black earth is nearly a metre thick and rich enough to spread on a slice of bread. There are also plenty of technicians and specialists. The only misfortune is that the people themselves have no interest in work because, however much a peasant works, the reward for him, personally, will be just the same, since to pay for a peasant's labour according to results is, of course, quite impossible. Just imagine what would happen! Your hard-working peasant would soon be rich while layabouts would remain beggars. A rift would appear and then inequality would creep in. And all this would be contrary to the ideals of socialism. So the First Secretary of the Regional Party Committee and all his advisers gave much thought as to how to increase agricultural output without infringing the principle of common material equality. And at last it dawned on them what to do. They could achieve the desired increase by using fertilizers. A vast meeting, thousands strong, complete with brass bands, speeches, placards and banners, was urgently called at the local Chemical Combine. To a man, they shouted slogans, applauded, chanted patriotic songs. After that meeting, a competitive economy drive was launched at the Chemical Combine to harvest raw materials and energy resources. It lasted throughout the winter and, in the spring, on Lenin's birthday, all the workers reported at the Combine and laboured all day, without wages, using up the raw materials which had been saved. During the course of this day, they produced several thousand tons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer and, in accordance with the meeting's resolution, they decided to hand over all this fertilizer, free of charge, to the Region's collective farms. 1 It was a real red letter day for labour, and not only the newspaper correspondents of the local and republican press but also those of the central newspapers came in person to the Combine. In the evening, both the All-Union radio and the Central Television programmes reported this remarkable feat. The Central Committee of the Party officially commended the initiative of our chemical workers and appealed to all Chemical Combines, throughout the country, to launch competitions aimed at economising on raw materials which would later be used to produce additional amounts of fertilizer, to be handed over, in turn, free of charge, to neighbouring collective farms. Let our country bloom! Let it blossom forth like a vernal garden! When the labour fete-day ended, the labour daily grind began. The next morning, the Director of the Chemical Combine telephoned to the Regional Committee and said that, if the collective farms did not, during the next twenty-four hours, collect the free fertilizer presented to them, the Chemical Combine would come to a standstill: all its tanks were full to overflowing with excess fertilizer production and there was nowhere to put current production. There followed a series of insistent calls from the Regional Committee to all the small District Committees, and from them to all collective farms. Each of the fifty regional collectives had immediately to take away the 150 tons of the fertilizer presented by the Combine. The news that our own collective had been given such an amount of fertilizer free of charge did not please our Chairman. Our collective farm owned seventeen lorries, but only three of these had tanks. One was used for milk, another for water, the third for petrol. Those used for milk and water could not possibly be used for liquid fertilizer. There remained only the one used for petrol. The lorry was old and battered beyond recall. The capacity of its tank was one and a half tons of liquid. The distance from our collective farm to town was seventy-three kilometres; taking into consideration the state of our road, that meant five hours there and five hours back. I was the driver of this lorry. 'Now look here,' said the Chairman, 'if you do not sleep for twenty-four hours, if your battery does not pack up, if your radiator does not melt with the heat, if your gear-box does not jam, if your lorry does not get stuck in the mud, you can do two trips in twenty-four hours, and bring back three tons of this bloody fertilizer. But you have to do, not two, but a hundred trips!' 'Right,' I said. 'That is not all,' he said. 'We are short of petrol. Of course I will give you petrol for three trips but, for the remaining ninety-seven, do the best you can. Push your lorry with your arse if you have to!' 2 'Right,' I said. 'You are our only hope. If you cannot do a hundred trips, you know only too well I will be dismissed from the chairmanship.' I knew it. I knew also that, although our chairman was not to everyone's liking, nevertheless his replacement was a bloody sight worse.