Customer Reviews

Inside Soviet Military Intelligence

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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.

I would like to open by saying that I love what I've read of Vitktor Suvorov's work -- "Inside the Soviet Army" and "The Liberators" are two of my favorite books. It is because I liked these two earlier works, however, that I found "Inside Soviet Military Intelligence" a bit too much like peanut butter without the jelly.

In "Inside the Soviet Army" Suvorov balances a massive flood of statistical information with revealing anecdotes from his own career as a Soviet military officer during the 1960s and 1970s. In the the last two chapters of that book, "The Soldier's Lot" and "The Officer's Path" he shows us what it is like to be a private soldier or young lieutenant in the Soviet Army -- physically, mentally, emotionally. The chapters are fascinating, hilarious and utterly horrifying, and they remain the reason why I keep reading the book almost 15 years after the USSR went to the great dictatorship garbage can in the sky. Suvorov is not a writer by trade, but his great passion for his work, his seething hate of communism and his marvelous East European cynicism can make for a delightful read. "The Liberators" is a great example of his pen at its sharpest and most acid.

When I bought "Intelligence" I was hoping for this same balance of information and personal experience. Unfortunately, while there is a preponderance of the former, there is very little of the latter. Suvorov limits the personal anecdotes to a tiny handful, spending most of the work explaining the blood-soaked history of the GRU and how and where it operates. The book is written in the style of a thorough technical manual, which often makes for a tough, slogging read. My guess is Suvorov didn't want to go into too much personal detail as he was saving it for a book dedicated to just that purpose called, "Inside the Aquarium" (which I haven't read yet) But for me, the lack of his personal touch here is telling.

That is not to say the book doesn't have its moments. My favorite part was his revealing passage on how the Soviets looked at communists in the Western countries: "Officially, all Soviet representatives regard these parasites with touching feelings of friendship, but privately they call them [expletive] eaters. It is difficult to say where this name originated, but truly it is the name they deserve....The behavior [of these people] is utterly incomprehensible to Soviet people. In the Soviet Union everybody without exception wishes to be abroad, to go absolutely anywhere, even with only one eye to look at Mongolia or Cambodia....When Soviet people want to say that a thing is outstandingly good, they say, 'Oh, this must be foreign'....But suddenly one finds these friends of the Soviet Union, who enjoy all the fruits of civilization....and can by anything they want in the shops, and yet they praise the Soviet Union!" He records his boss as saying: "Today we're having some [expletive] eaters for dinner. Prepare a suitable menu."

If you are a fan of Suvorov's work, you should probably read this book despite what I've said and form your own opinon....my recommendation however is to buy it used and save the big money for his more readable works.

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.

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