Inside Soviet Military Intelligence

The Cold War - Dr. Strangelove, The Soviet Union versus NATO, 'duck and cover', etc. In the U.S. there is a good chance that your college professors (among others) protested *everything* the U.S. and allies did, and insisted that the Soviets were peaceloving and misunderstood. This book offers the rest of the story, the aspects of the Soviet Union that ideological communists don't want you to hear. "Inside Soviet Military Intelligence" describe the workings of Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU - Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye) from the perspective of a disillusioned GRU officer who came over to the West at the height of Cold War in the late 1970s. Most of the book is a detailed description of the history, organization, and operations of the GRU. What made the book interesting were the author's descriptions of Russian attitudes towards intelligence, other countries, how they treated their own people, and other personal observations. It would be easy to say that this book is about the USSR, and that country has been gone for almost two decades (as I write). True, but the government of the USSR was dominated by Russians, especially Muscovites, as is Russia of today. Note that the KGB became the FSB, but had been the NKVD, OGPU, and Tcheka but the GRU has always been the GRU. The continuity of organizational culture and the Russian character of the organization make this book of some relevance to present day Russia. The book has they dry line-and-block organizational charts for the pieces of the GRU interspersed with such facinating tidbits as the details of the daily life of a GRU communications officer at an embassy posting (He was under constant surveillance and escort, but it beat being in Moscow), and the use of husband and wife teams in intelligence (the husband was the operator, but the wife was the mission manager and held greater authority on scene). If your interest is in the techniques of espionage, be patient, they are there. Detailed discussions of how GRU spies worked with locals in foreign countries are in here, but after meticulous descriptions of the formal structure of the GRU. Most of all, I enjoyed the perspective it offered on the Soviet Union. Instead of the "worker's paradise" that communists in the U.S. described it as, Suvorov lays open the Russian attitude towards those ideological fellow travellers (contempt; the Russians thought that Americans, Britons, or any other Westerner that would sell out their country for the USSR were idiots and deserved the derision of both Westerners and Soviets). The jealously guarded privileges and power of the GRU and KGB are also at odds with the idealized vision of the Soviet Union as a place of equality and social justice. The book is a little dry and technical on the formal organization and operations of the GRU, but the nuggets of insight make up for that in full measure. E. M. Van Court

I got it for my b/friend who is military. He enjoyed reading this book as well as others by this author. One comment from him - it is a hard reading if you are not familiar with Russian politics and history of those times.

Yet another tremendous book by Viktor Suvorov, nom de plume of a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence author who defected to the West before the fall of the Soviet Union. The level of detail is astounding, as Suvorov recounts who was who in Soviet embassies, illegal operations, and KGB versus GRU warfare. A fascintaing read by anyone researching Cold War spying or trying to gain insight into today's undercover operations by friend and foe alike. As usual, Suvorov's sense of humor and irony shows through, relieving some of the tedium associated with big, thick books about fairly dry subjects. This book is neither thrilling nor action-packed, but is still deserving of a place on many shelves.