Muito interessante e esclarecedor.
My Life as a Propagandist:
The Memoirs of Col. Aleksandr Golyev
Col. Aleksandr Viktorovich Golyev recounts his education and service in the Directorate of Special Propaganda of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Russian navy (GLAVPUR) and his personal role in overseeing psychological and influence operations in East Germany, Poland and Lithuania in the 1980s. Golyev also discloses that GLAVPUR, previously controlled by the Soviet military, fell under the purview of Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, in 1991, and was rebranded three years later as Unit 54777. This unit played a crucial role in shaping the disinformation and propaganda that attended Russia’s war against Chechen separatists in the mid-1990s, as well as Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas in 2014.
The School Years
I was born on June 30, 1959 in the village of Karl Libnecht in the Lgov District of Kursk Region. Another ancient name for this village was Pena. Historically, it originated on the Seym River at the confluence of the little Reut River. The village was located on an ancient trail leading from Kursk straight west through the ancient Russian towns of Lgov and Rylsk. Pena could be reached either by highway or railroad. Curiously, the railroad station is called “Blokhino.” It was at this station, connected to the Kursk Department of the Moscow Railroad, where my father and mother worked for a long time. There was also an older daughter, Natasha, and a younger one, Olya, in our family.
In those days, the village was growing rapidly – the sugar and machine-build- ing plants needed workers, so housing was quickly built, and social infrastructure created. One school was clearly insufficient. As a result, in this village of 11,000 residents, the Pena Technical Training College opened, and in 1965, a second secondary school was built.
It was the threshold of that brand-new school that I crossed in 1966 when I entered first grade. There was a boarding house at the school, where children from socially dis- advantaged families studied in the elementary classes and at the same time lived on a full subsidy. The boarders and the ordinary students never crossed paths at their studies; they had different classes and teachers, but officially the school was called Pena Middle Boarding School no. 2.
I was fortunate to study for the whole ten years in the same school with the same comrades. To be sure, in the senior classes, several newbies joined us from the surround- ing towns and villages where there was no opportunity to finish elementary school. This circumstance only brought us closer together, however, and expanded the circle of acquaintances. I maintain good relations with many of them to this day.
The happy school years flew by unnoticed. It could be no other way, since the lessons were easy, and the numerous social burdens (beet weeding, scrap metal collection or going out to pick potatoes) were seen as fun adventures. Various clubs, after-school classes in math, physics, the Russian language, and literature helped us to master the material. I was particularly fascinated with the study of the French language, which opened up an enormous new world related to the life of another people, the great French culture.
It was in these years that I got the idea to perfectly master this foreign language. When I won prizes at regional competitions, especially first place in the regional competition in the French language in 1976, my wish was only strengthened.
A worker at the Lgov District Draft Committee, after reviewing the results of my study and the references from the school, tried for a long time to talk me into entering an ordinary military academy. In fact, he himself was a tank driver, and his assignment from the region for recruitment to the tank academy was not yet filled. When his remonstrances were not successful, however, he sympathized with my stubborn wish and gave his approval to register at the “Moscow Military Academy of Foreign Languages.” The Military Institute of Foreign Languages (MIFL) was not widely known then since it did not publish announcements about applications. nevertheless, there were plenty of rumors about MIFL.
This was the best advertisement, because there were plenty of people who wanted to study to be a “military translator.”
In early July 1976, after graduating from middle school with a Gold Medal, I headed to Moscow to enter the Military Institute of Foreign Languages. Youth knows no fear of the future. I saw my trip to the capital as a desire to see the world, show myself, and test my powers and knowledge. If I failed, there was still the opportunity to try to enter a civilian university, since the entrance exams for them took place in August. Furthermore, an invitation to Kursk Pedagogical Institute was still valid, where I had been enrolled without exams as winner of a competition.
The entrance exams for the Military Institute were not held in Moscow but in the village of Sverdlovsky in Moscow Region, where the training center is located. It was here that both conscripts and civilian youth came to try their luck. It must be noted that the competition was relatively small – some- where around three people per place. Before calling the applicants to an exam, there was a strict selection on the basis of documents and forms submitted. As a result, there was serious competition among the candidates for the coveted place of a cadet.
Those who arrived were enlisted in train- ing companies and placed in a tent city. From that moment, all movements were made in formation: to the cafeteria, to the bath house, and to the exams. They were commanded by enlisted sergeants, who came in on par with everyone else.
The first exam was an essay. After its results, about half of the applicants packed their things and went home. Among those who remained, the main grade was “satis- factory”; for some it was “good”; and for just a few it was “excellent.” Therefore, not surprisingly, after I got a B, I was not worried at all about passing all the exams and believed all the more in my powers. Moreover, fate itself had led me to special propaganda.
Military Academy Years
Examination form with the “autograph” of S.N. Zimin
In fact, the second exam was “History of the USSR.” Among the members of the ad- missions commission was a youngish, stocky colonel with a smiling face. For some reason, he liked my answers to the questions on the ticket. After putting “excellent” on the exam paper, which I have saved to this day like a precious relic, he looked for me among the applicants for a thorough conversation. The former examiner introduced himself as Col. Sergei Nikolayevich Zimin, deputy head of political affairs of the Faculty of Special Propaganda.
To be honest, neither his position nor his rank especially impressed me. His descrip- tion of the Faculty and the unique profession which its graduates acquire interested me, or rather, intrigued me. After that thorough conversation, I rewrote my application for acceptance to the Military Institute, indicating in it my wish to study at the Faculty of Special Propaganda. To this day, I do not regret that for a minute. Furthermore, I am grateful to fate for the fact that at a critical moment, I encountered on my path such an enthusiastic person as Col. S. n. Zimin, who was rooting for his cause.
After successfully passing all the remain- ing exams in Russian language and literature and the French language, I was registered for the first year. This was the third recruitment of cadets. Before this, only officers were recruited for the Faculty. In 1976, the last officers’ class was completed.
At first, there were 33 of us “lucky fel- lows,” which clearly exceeded the demand. By comparison: in the third year, there were 23 cadets and in the second, 21. The calculation was that not all would endure the “hard- ships and deprivations of military studies.” In reality, four from the Examination Paper with the “autograph” of Col. S.n. Zimin were removed to younger classes for various reasons; from the English-Greek group, Khvatalov (for theft); A. Sergeyev (for illness); F. Konkov (at his own wish) and for the same reason from the Chinese-English group, O. Steshenko. Surprisingly, the largest group, the German-Polish group, retained all 12 people.
At the training camp, the first-year cadets spent all of August at the “Young Warrior Course” and on September 1, began our studies. Only on the eve of the oath-taking, which took place on September 12, did we come to Moscow. Since the barracks were under repair, all three cadet years were housed on the fourth floor of a dormitory which was unofficially called “the Hilton.” The officer students of the Faculty were also billeted there. But we crossed paths with them only when they were put in charge of holidays and weekends.
In the summer of 1976, the Faculty was headed by Col. Vitaly Trofimovich Priymak, who had come from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany with the position of head of the Office of Special Propaganda of the Political Department of one of the associations. Besides him and the zampolit Col. S.n. Zimin, the class heads were members of the Faculty command.
It should be noted that all the officers of the faculty were special propagandists. After graduating from the faculty, they served in the special propaganda agencies. Only after obtaining practical experience were the more competent of them appointed to command positions at the Institute. Thus, Sr. Lt. Viktor Ivanovich Marinyuk became the head of our class after service in the Central Group of Forces in 1976. In 1968, as a student at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, studying the Czech and Spanish languages, he had taken part in the events related to the entry of Soviet forces to Czechoslovakia.
V.I. Marinyuk was head of the third year as well. Literally a year and a half later, hav- ing received his next military rank, Capt. V.I. Marinyuk left for the position of instructor at the military training section of the Department of Special Propaganda at the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. The heads of the second year were Capt. Konstantin Konstantinovich Khronusov, who had previously served in the Southern Group of Forces.
The Faculty of Special Propaganda was also small in number but made up of experienced professionals. It was headed by Col. Andrei Filippovich Bobikov who ran the Anglo-American area. His assistant was Capt. Valery Ivanovich Pogrebenkov, a young teacher who already had his scholarly degree of candidate of philological sciences. Lt. Col. Yury nikolayevich Zvorykin covered the most important German area. After defense of his candidate’s dissertation, Lt. Yury n. Zvorykin replaced A. F. Bobikov, who went into the reserves. Capt. Aleksandr nikolayevich taught those studying Chinese the basics of the profession, and Capt. Leonid Alekseyevich Karmazin taught Japanese. They taught subjects in their areas with the preface “special”: “Special Country Studies,” “Special Journalism,” and “Foundations of Theory and Practice of Special Propaganda.”
Aside from the lectures, seminars and practical lessons, other forms of education were widely applied. Thus, each month, the “Propagandist’s Oral Journal” was held. Veterans of special propaganda, prominent scholars, the command, and officers from the Directorate of Special Propaganda of the Main Political Directorate (GlavPU) of the Soviet Army and Russian navy were invited. The lectures of Yu. A. Sherkovin, Ph.D. in psychology; O.n. Rzheshevsky, Ph.D. in history; directorate heads Lt. Gen. A.M. Shevchenko and Lt. Gen. D.A. Volkogonov; Maj. Gen. Ye. I. Dolgopolov and Col. A.n. Ratnikov, deputy heads of the directorate; Maj. Gen.
In addition, the cadets were active- ly brought into the work of lecturing. The “Young Lecturer’s School” was created at the initiative of the political section of the Institute at the Kalinin District Committee of the All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth, known as the Komsomol. Cadets with permits for it gave lectures to youth collectives of Moscow plants on current problems of the international situation. In fact, the topics came from the District Committee of the Komsomol. For example, the results of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979 in Iran, and the consequences of the rule of the anti-popular regime of Pol Pot in Kampuchea had to be thoroughly studied in the process of preparing for the lectures. The cadets would fight for the lecturer permits. The lectures enabled one to gain not only professional skills, but the coveted “Leave of Absence” for a trip to the city (the cadets called it the fishka [chip] for short).
Foreign languages constituted the basis of the training for the special propaganda cadets. This was study not only of the ap- plied aspects (conversation practice, military translation) but the theory as well enabled the graduates to obtain a classical philological education. Consequently, this enabled us not only to study more deeply the nuances of the profession but also to do scholarship, teaching, and translation, especially after service in the army.
No less attention was devoted to political sciences. Our faculty was openly called “military-political” for good reason (the very term “special propaganda” was classified). The chief disciplines were “History of the CPSU,” “Marxist-Leninist Philosophy,” “Scientific Communism,” “Political Economy of Capitalism and Socialism,” “Party and Political Work in the Armed Forces of the USSR,” “Fundamentals of Soviet Oratory.”
A diploma from the Military Institute to this day serves as a “seal of quality” for the education received within its walls. The following notations were made on the diploma with honors: “...in 1976, entered the Military Institute and in 1981 graduated the complete course of this institute, now the Military Red Banner Institute, with the specialty of ‘mili- tar-political, foreign languages (German, Polish).’ By decision of the State Accreditation Commission...was awarded the qualification of ‘officer with higher military-political education, translator-advisor in the German language and translator in the Polish language.’”
During the period of my studies, a significant event took place at the Faculty – the 40th anniversary of the day of the Institute’s founding (February 1, 1940). In honor of this event, and also to mark its achievements in preparing unique specialists for the Army and navy, the Military Institute was award- ed the Order of the Red Banner; therefore, it received the honorable name of “Red Banner.”
After passing the test on Weapons of Mass Destruction: cadets Yu.P. Danilov, A.V. Goly- ev, Sgts. V.G. Shibkov, cadets A.O. Didusev and Yu.D. Khrenikov (1978)
The cadets of the Faculty of Special Propaganda not only crammed languages and “gnawed the granite of science,” they went on sentry duty, and had the opportunity to apply the knowledge they had gained in practice. The senior cadets took part for a year as military translators in combat actions in the Ethiopian province of Eritrea or as flight interpreters providing deliveries of military foreign aid to the numerous friends of the
Soviet Union fighting for their independence. They were also in the limited contingent of Soviet forces which entered Afghanistan in December 1979 to provide international aid. A compulsory condition for taking part in such activities was knowledge of the English language. We who were studying German and Polish who also were raring to go into combat were categorically “out of luck.”
A kind of consolation for us were the Summer Olympic Games which took place in Moscow in the summer of 1980. Along with cadets from the Faculties of Western and Oriental Languages, we worked as translators in providing service for events at the Olympics. These were the first Olympic Games in his- tory on the territory of Eastern Europe, and also the first Games held in a socialist country. The ideological confrontation between socialism and capitalism in the years of the “Cold War” reached its height, therefore many Western countries, led by the United States, boycotted them in order to “punish” the Soviet Union for the entry of troops into Afghanistan.
But it was not the Olympic Games that were fated to abruptly change the fate of the cadets of the German-Polish Group of the Faculty of Special Propaganda. The year 1980 was known for the creation of the Polish independent trade union Solidarity. The situation in the Polish People’s Republic had become so aggravated, that the question of an entry into the country of Warsaw Pact troops for its stabilization was seriously be-
ing reviewed. Fortunately, the leadership of the Soviet Union had sufficient political wis- dom not to do this. Therefore, we had the opportunity for another happy year of study at the Faculty of Special Propaganda. nevertheless, in 1981, practically the entire German-Polish Group, without the leave expect- ed after studies, was seconded to deploy the special propaganda organs to the northern Group of Forces. Only Lt. M.E. Torkan did not go to Poland but was appointed to the political section of the compound of ships in the city of Baltiysk, strengthening the Polish area of the special propaganda of the Baltic navy.
Since the Faculty trained 12 people for a planned relief in 1981 of a large group of special propaganda officers who had served the established terms in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, the leadership of the special directorate of the Main Political Director- ate of the Soviet Army and navy decided to call up from the reserve the graduates of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute. Having graduated from the military faculty with a major in “special propaganda,” they honorably filled the “personnel gap” that had formed. Col. nikolai Trofimovich Uvaysky, one of the authors of this idea, loved to reminisce about it. Thus, Czeslaw Mikhailovich Germanovich, Vasily nesulo, Vladimir Vladimirovich Zmitrovich and other Belarusian officers wound up in real armed service, contributing an honorable page in the history of special propaganda.
The Years of Polish Solidarity
On July 5, 1981, at a railroad station in Legnica, Col. Yury Petrovich Gusev met the young graduates of the Faculty of Special Propaganda. He was one of the most experienced special propagandists who took part in the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the entry of Soviet Forces to Czechoslovakia in 1968. He had served in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany when the Polish crisis broke out. For the purposes of reacting appropriately to it, the leadership of the Soviet Armed Forces decided to launch an editorial Office of Special Propaganda in the northern Group of Forces. Yury P. Gusev was appointed man- aging editor.
Everyone to a transit center. There it was announced that four of our colleagues were to immediately leave for their compounds. Aleksei Yevgenyevich Avramenko and Yury Pavlovich Danilov were assigned to the political sections of the air divisions; Vladimir Grigoryevich Shibkov was sent to the tank division; and Yury nikolayevich Zhelomsky was sent to the communications brigade.
The remaining lieutenants were invited for a talk with the political directorate of the northern Group of Forces. For some reason, Col. Vyacheslav Vladislavovich Aksyonov, head of the Department of Special Propa- ganda was not at his post, therefore our deployment was delegated to Maj. Yevgeny Ivanovich Vasilko, senior instructor.
By that time, the special propaganda section was reinforced with such experienced special propagandists as Col. Ivan Yulyanovich Chebrovsky; Maj. Yury Timofeyevich Samylkin; Maj. Mikhail Ivanovich Onishchuk, and Maj. Viktor Leonidovich Tsimring. The only advantage of E.I. Vasilko compared to them was the fact that they had just arrived in Poland, but he was finishing up a five-year term of service in the northern Group of Forces.
After the talk with Maj. Vasilko, the young lieutenants Andrei Leonidovich Yegorin, Radik Zagidovich Khayrutdinov, Aleksei Yakovlevich Farin and Vladimir Kimovich Yusov were assigned to further service in the agitation squad of the northern Group of
Nikolai Grigoryevich Rudenko and Aleksei Vyacheslavovich Shakhov were fated to begin service in the position of instructor-editor in the Department of Radio Propaganda of the Special Propaganda Office of the northern Group of Forces, and I was as- signed to be an instructor-editor for the Department of Print Propaganda at the Editorial Board.
With our arrival, the staffing of the edito- rial office was complete. Credit must be giv- en to the organizational capabilities and initiative of Gusev. Within a short time, he had selected spaces in the semibasement and basement floor of the building of the Political Directorate of the northern Group of Forces and organized their repair. Therefore, we started work in offices that smelled of fresh paint.
The main accomplishment of the man- aging editor, however, was the rapid and skilled selection of cadres. The Department of Radio Propaganda was headed by Capt. Sergei Yuryevich Chuprov, who had come together with Gusev from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Five years before us, Chuprov had graduated from the Faculty of Western Languages of the Military Institute with the German and Polish languages.
Maj. Vyacheslav Pchelkin, former teach- er at the military faculty of Lviv University was the head of the Department of Print Propaganda. My colleague in the department was Sr. Lt. Stanislav Ivanovich Snisarenko. He had studied the German language at the Kyiv Combined Arms Command School. After his studies, he landed to serve in the intelligence company of one of the units of the Southern Group of Forces, where he independently learned the Polish language. During the es- calation of the situation in Poland, this knowl- edge came in very handy, which is why he was transferred to one of the creative po- sitions in the agitation squad, which, in the absence of special propaganda in the edi- torial office, had fulfilled its function. There- fore, with the creation of this important subdi- vision, his appointment to the Department of Print Propaganda was quite logical.
After Maj. Pchelkin was killed in an air crash, Maj. Konstantin Konstantinovich ar- rived to take his place. He had studied in one of the language groups with Marinyuk, the former head of our class, and had taken part in the entry of Soviet forces into Czechoslovakia in 1968. After completing his studies at the Military Institute for Foreign Languages, he had served in the special propaganda agencies of the Central Group of Forces, and then at one of the Moscow draft boards. De- spite the fact that he had studied the Czech and Spanish languages, literally within a mere 9 months of serving in Poland, Karavayev already spoke Polish fluently and easily translated articles from Polish media. This yet again underscores the validity of language skills obtained in the years of study at the special faculty.
The Polish People’s Republic, which gave the name of its capital to the military and political bloc of the socialist countries, nevertheless was never at the advanced guard of the building of socialism. Periodically, spontaneous unrest arose among the Poles, which official propaganda explained by the mistakes of Polish leaders. The mis- takes were quickly fixed, and this in no way reflected on the rather high standard of liv- ing of the population. That was how it was in 1956, 1968 and 1976. Therefore, at first, everyone calmly regarded the unrest on the Polish ship-building wharfs and the emergence there in July 1980 of the independent trade union Solidarity as the latest whim of the obstinate Poles.
Poland, unlike the GDR, was not a “front state.” To express it in military language, it was in the second strategic echelon of the participating states of the Warsaw Pact.
Therefore, the northern Group of Forces was relatively small in number. Service in it was considered honorific and not bur- densome. Only this can explain the fact that Col. Vyacheslav Vladislavovich Aksyonov, a Sinologist by training, who had long served in the Far East, was in the post of head of the Department of Special Propaganda of the Political Directorate of the northern Group of Forces. needless to say, the organization of work under conditions of an abrupt escalation of the situation in Poland was incredibly difficult for him. His lack of knowledge of the Polish language and the national and psychological features, history, and culture of the Poles, as well as his lack of experience working in the Western area took its toll.
Therefore, the decision of the leadership of the Directorate of Special Propaganda of the Main Political Directorate regarding his rotation, as it is now customary to say, was quite consistent. Aksyonov was sent to Riga to the Political Directorate of the Baltic Military District in the post of head of the Department of Special Propaganda, and Maj. Valery Pavlovich Buravchenko, who held this post, in September 1981 arrived at the northern Group of Forces for further service. It must be emphasized that for the Soviet Armed Forces, it was typical to appoint only officers with a long period of service to leadership positions in the political directorates of types of the Armed Forces and Military Districts. As a rule, the position of department head becomes the “crown” in a career of experienced special propagandists. From that perspective, the appointment in peace time of Maj. V.P. Buravchenko to a “colonel’s” position as head of the Department of Special Propaganda in a border military district such as the Baltic Military District, was a unique case. In the history of special propaganda, he became the youngest head of such a rank. Another peculiar “record” was set by Buravchenko – he served more than 20 years in positions as head of departments of special propaganda in political directorates at various levels.
With the arrival of a new director of the department, the special propaganda in the northern Group of Forces picked up speed. This emphasizes once again the importance of a well-conceived personnel policy. A unique ratio between experienced and young officers was formed in the special propaganda agencies of the northern Group of Forces, which enabled many complicated tasks to be resolved quickly and qualitatively, and for new directions of work to be developed.
Buravchenko did not have to take long to “grow into” the setting. It helped that after graduating from the Faculty of Special Propaganda with the German and Polish languages, he had served in Poland, and then as liaison at the Main Political Directorate to the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland, known as the Wojsko Polskie. The first thing he did was establish monitoring of changes in the military and political situation in the Polish People’s Republic. With that aim, a round-the-clock news watch was organized. The duty room had the most modern reception and recording equipment of the day: 10 Integral radio receivers, Tembr-2 reel-to-reel tape recorders and VM cassette recorders, two color television sets, and Yatran electric typing machines.
At first, experienced officers were ap- pointed as heads of the duty roster: Col. I. Yu. Chebrovsky, Maj. M.I. Onishchuk, Maj. Yu. T. Samylkin and Maj. V.L. Tsimring. They rapidly prepared a replacement for them- selves in the person of young officers, while they themselves performed more difficult and responsible assignments.
Usually two news bulletins were published every 24 hours, which reached all the members of the Military Council of the Southern Group of Forces. In the first half of the day, there was a news Bulletin with Reports from Polish newspapers and Radios and in the evening, there was a news Bulletin with Reports from Polish Television. Emergency re- ports were translated and reported outside of the schedule.
The next step in this direction was the receiving and processing of internal information on the situation in the country from the Voivodship Committee of Polish United Workers’ Party and the Voivodship Commit- tee of the Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Affairs of the People’s Republic of Poland [PRP].
Officers were actively recruited to pro- vide official and unofficial contacts with the Party and military leadership of Poland, and numerous activities were conducted along the lines of so-called Soviet-Polish Friend- ship, state holidays, and memorial dates of the USSR and PRP.
Officers of the unified field newspaper at the Druzhba-82 [Friendship 1982] Soviet-Pol- ish-German exercises: Lt. A. V. Golyev and Lt. N.G. Rudenko (left and right), officers of the special propaganda editorial office of the Northern Group of Forces, 1982, town of Czarne
The Special Propaganda Editorial Office of the northern Group of Forces began issuing monthly reviews. The Department for Print Propaganda was responsible for pre- paring brochures on “the Military and Political Situation in the nATO Countries” and the Department of Radio Propaganda, “On Events in the PRP.” This and other print products were published on the stationary printer of the editorial office, which was equipped with a Czech-made Romayor offset print-
ing machine. The head of the printing plant was Ensign Oleg Serafimovich Gusev, who had served in the cartographic unit before that. A Robotron copying machine, the most modern at that time, manufactured in the GDR, served the purpose of rapid printing. This rather cumbersome machine stuck in my memory thanks to its capriciousness. This primeval Xerox could break down at the most critical moment. Only Sr. Lt. S.I. Snisarenko could cope with it, as he possessed a diabolical super-patience and unbeatable tenacity. The chief method of fixing it consist- ed of taking apart the machine, cleaning its corotron wires and selenium drum, and then assembling it in reverse order. Amazingly, this magical ritual often helped. There was yet another amazing duplicating device in the editorial office – the rotoprinter. It used a special paper for its matrix called “the wax paper,” and required an incredible amount of the purest alcohol, cranking out only a few dozen low-quality copies. In order to economize on “liquid currency,” the rotoprinter was used extremely rarely, although it en- joyed honor and respect.
Thus, the special propaganda agencies organized the gathering and processing of diverse information about events in Poland. Being quite well informed, we understood that some sort of important events was com- ing to a head in the country. nevertheless, the declaration of martial law on the night of December 12-13, 1981, was unexpected for the majority. On that Sunday, I was on news duty and was preparing a brief, routine bulletin. There was so little information of value in the media, that I had to use some stock materials to “stretch” the bulletin to one-and-a- half typed pages.
When late at night, I was distributing the news bulletin to its regular addressees, to my surprise I discovered that despite the week- end day, all the command of the northern Group of Forces was at their workplaces. I was given the task of closely monitoring re- ports from the Western subversive radio stations – Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, BBC, Deutsche Welle and other “voices” (as the special propagandists called them among themselves for the sake of brevity). But they “slept through” the imposition of martial law, and “awoke” only on the morning of December 13, when at 6:00 a.m., Army Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski made a speech to Poles on Polish television.
From that moment, the volume of work increased significantly, but no nervousness or alarm was sensed. On the contrary, a certainty appeared in the development of the situation. The well-coordinated collective of the department, editorial office and agitation squad began even more responsibly to approach the performance of their official duties. none of the officers even fell sick, al- though the winter that year with its frost and snow tested not only the Poles for endurance.
The entire weight of the organization and implementation of the measures flowing from the very fact of the imposition of martial law lay on the shoulders of the military personnel of the Wojsko Polskie. The Soviet officers did not interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state but were prepared at any moment to come to the aid of their allies. But I think for the Poles at that moment the moral sup- port was more important, and the awareness that they themselves, without external interference, were resolving the problems of their country.
Life did not stay in place, and the personnel of the special propaganda agencies of the northern Group of Forces gradually changed. The first to leave was Col. Gusev, who was appointed as a teacher at the Faculty of Special Propaganda at the Military Institute; Col. I. Yu. Chebrovsky headed up the editorial office, and in his place Lt. Col. Leonid Dmitrievich Grenkevich came from the Soviet Union. In the place of Capt. Chuprov, who was admitted to the postgraduate school of the V.I. Lenin Military Political Academy, Maj. Valery nikolayevich Volostnykh, an officer of the Group’s newspaper Znamya pobedy [Banner of Victory] was appointed to the post of head of the Department of Ra- dio Propaganda. Lt. Aleksandr Anatolyevich Abramkin became my colleague at the editorial office’s Department of Print Propaganda, who took the place of Capt. Snisarenko who went to the political directorate of the Kyiv Military District. Instead of Abramkin, Yu. n. Zhelomsky was sent to the position of senior instructor of the Political Department of the division in Świętoszów, and his position in the Political Department of the communications brigade in Kęszyce was filled by A. Ya. Farin, who had served as an announcer and translator in the agitation squad.
In 1984, at the base of the headquarters of the northern Group of Forces in Legnica, the High Command of Western Forces was created, where Lt. Col. V.P. Buravchenko, head of the Special Propaganda Division of the Political Directorate, was appointed. The northern Group of Forces’ headquarters was redeployed in full force to Świdnica, and Lt. Col. M.I. Onishchuk became the head of the Special Propaganda Department of the Political Directorate of the northern Group of Forces. Other changes occurred in the department, for example, Lt. Col. Yu. T. Samylkin was transferred to the GDR to the position of deputy head of the Department of Special Propaganda of the Political Directorate of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.
But I did not manage to move with the special propaganda editorial collective to Świdnica, located 70 kilometers from Legnica. I was fated to take a much longer route to Moscow; in November 1984, I was appointed senior editor of the West European Languages Editorial Department of the Foreign Languages Division at the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and navy.
Main Political Directorate School
Service in the Directorate of Special Propaganda of the Main Political Directorate was a real school of life for a young person. The Main Political Directorate operated as the military department of the Central Committee of the CPSU – the main leadership core of the entire Soviet system. This alone placed enormous responsibility.
At that time, the most outstanding Soviet political workers were at the head of the Main Political Directorate. Thus, Army Gen. Aleksei Alekseyevich Yepishev was the head, and the first deputy was navy Admiral Aleksei Ivanovich Sorokin.
The bulk of the Main Political Director- ate staff were officers and generals who had traveled a long path in life. Those among them with the greatest respect were veterans of the Great Fatherland War. There were quite a few of them in the Special Propaganda Directorate. I had a real feeling of pride to work alongside Lt. Gen. Nikolai Ivanovich Smorigo, Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Ivanovich Dolgopolov, Lt. Nikolai Trofimovich Uvaysky, Lt. Pyotr Petrovich Tarutta, Lt. Aleksei Vasilyevich nesterov, Lt. Nadif Sbirovich Sabirov, and Lt. Viktor Vasilyevich Tarasov
The Seventh Directorate, as it was then called, was unique among the structures of political agencies. They were intended for the instruction and political education of Soviet military personnel, where the Special Propaganda Directorate was aimed at political work primarily among foreigners; preparation for launching political work among the troops and population of an enemy; strengthening of friendship with the soldiers of socialist armies; development of cooperation with the armed forces of states embarking on the socialist path of development and indoctrination of foreign military personnel studying in the military schools of the Soviet Union.
But most likely it was not this, but the people working in the Special Propaganda Directorate who created its indisputable authority and respect. It was just such a serious attitude that I, a senior lieutenant, sense to- ward myself on the part of the other, more mature Main Directorate staff. In such an atmosphere, there is only one wish: to justify the trust and prove your professionalism indeed.
The Editorial Department for Foreign Languages, consisting of several editorial offices, was part of the seventh directorate. However, it was formed as an independent division only during the reforms of the political bodies that had begun in the Armed Forces of the USSR. Before this, all editorial section positions were equally distributed among departments of the directorate. Essentially, it was created in order to strengthen the directorate in connection with the expansion of our assigned tasks. So, Col. Nikolai Nikoforovich Yerashov was listed as the head of the editorial department; he was on the staff of the First Department which was involved in issues of special propaganda.
Formally holding the post of senior editor of the editorial office (for West European languages) at the editorial section for foreign languages, he performed 13 functional du- ties as an officer of the Second Department, which was responsible for strengthening international ties with the armies of the Warsaw Pact and other socialist countries. In those years, Lt. Aleksei Vasilyevich nesterov, Lt. Pavel Ivanovich Topolev, Lt. Yury Ivanovich Skotnikov, Lt. Col. Nikolai Ivanovich Andre- yev, Lt. Col. Yury Leonidovich Knyasev, and Lt. Col. Aleksandr Alekseyevich Nikulchenkov were staff officers of the Department of Socialist Countries. My colleague at the editorial department, Capt. Yevgeny Vyachesla- vovich Yozhikov and I felt ourselves to be members of one, friendly team, and the rest devoted a little more attention and concern to us because of our youth.
The department was headed by Col. Anatoly Dmitrievich Verbitsky, who had graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages with German and Polish. His informal approach to his subordinates was proven by the fact that he personally brought my report of appointment to the position to the Central Financial Directorate of the Armed Services, and went to a number of offices in order to get it signed by the very head of the Financial Directorate. The problem is that I was appointed to a major’s position, which had a “diverse” salary, from 130 to 150 rubles. At the Special Propaganda editorial office at the northern Group of Forces in Legnica, a similar position was valued at 130 rubles. So, I was expecting to get as much without any problem in Moscow as well. Verbitsky not only insisted on an actual raise of my salary, but he also made sure to get it implemented.
I constantly sensed paternal care on the part of the department head. As soon as there was an order from the USSR Ministry of Defense about my appointment, Anatoly Dmitrievich proposed that I immediately write a request for an apartment. This was December 20, 1984. Why did this date stick in my mind? Because on that day, Soviet Marshal Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov, USSR Minister of Defense, and member of the Politburo of
the Central Committee of the CPSU passed away, and mourning was declared in the country. When I absolutely sincerely stated that the moment for a request was not entirely appropriate in the political sense, Verbitsky simply and clearly explained to me: “Write it up, you and the Marshal are different levels of people!” As a result, I got into the housing line that same year of 1984 (this was monitored by the department head himself), and I received an apartment in Moscow on Pobeda [Victory] Square, at building 2, block 2 already by the next year. But this is another story, a decisive role in which was played by Maj. Gen. Ye. I. Dolgopolov, head of the di- rectorate, who was a member of the Main Political Directorate Housing Commission from the directorate.
Reception of a delegation of Polish special propagandists at the Special Propaganda Di- rectorate of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy: Lt. B. V. Khilko, Lt. A. E. Ivanov, Maj. Gen. V. F. Molchanov, Capt. V. G. Shibkov and Capt. A. V. Golyev.
In the second department, I was responsible for developing relations with the political agencies of the Wojsko Polskie. The practical experience gained during service in the northern Group of Forces came in very handy. Many a time I recalled with a kind word the master class on service in special propaganda, given in his day by Buravchenko, the department head. not sparing effort and time, he scrupulously and methodically worked with each of his young subordinates. Likely, this knowledge and skill was the greatest capital that we managed to take away from Poland.
Our relations with the countries of the Warsaw Pact were built on the basis of an annual plan which counted hundreds of activities. Just with the Wojsko Polskie alone, there were 30 mutual visits, starting with trips by heads of political bodies at all levels and ending with an exchange of delegations of military journalists and battle artists. Aside from the drafting of such plans, the officers of the Department of Socialist Countries staffed the joint exercises and maneuvers, the study of the military and political situation in the countries of responsibility, preparation of articles and materials for the press, organization of various exhibits and numerous other activities. All of this was called “international friendship” for short.
My baptism by fire was the organization of a reception in Moscow for Polish colleagues – a delegation of the Main Political Directorate of the Wojsko Polskie led by Commander Zbigniew Czechkovski, the head of the Special Propaganda Department. After the first trial, the rest of the events did not seem so difficult, even if it were a question of visits from the heads of the Main Political Directorates of our armies, for example, General of Arms Józef Baryła, General of Arms Tadeusz Shachilo, or General of the Army Aleksei Dmitrievich Lizichev.
The regular conferences on special propaganda of the armies of the participating countries of the Warsaw Pact were very interesting. They convened every two years by turn in one of the countries. I took part in the organization of such a conference in 1987 in Moscow. It took place in the building of the Headquarters of the Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact on Leningradsky Prospekt [Avenue]. Its participants were received by Soviet Marshal Viktor Georgievich Kulikov, Commander in Chief of the Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact, and Army General Anatoly Ivanovich Gribkov, Chief of Staff of the Joint Armed Forces, and also they award- ed a group of Soviet special propagandists with the quite deserved medal, “For Strengthening Brotherhood of Arms.”
The political bodies of the fraternal armies had a practice of exchanging lecturers, who spoke on the topics of the day regarding the internal political life of their countries. At the initiative of n.I. Andreyev, an officer of our department, special propagandists who were fluent in the language of the host country began to be included in the Soviet lecturers’ groups. In 1989, in my capacity as a lecturer of the Main Political Di- rectorate, I was able to speak before Polish military personnel from several garrisons of the Warsaw Military District. It would seem that the ordinary topic of perestroika in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Armed Forces aroused genuine interest from the Poles, and a lively and candid discussion on the fate of socialism and the prospects for cooperation between the USSR and PRP followed.
After the dismissal of Yu. I. Skotnikov, his duties regarding development of ties with the political bodies of the national People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic were transferred to me. These were the last years of the existence of East Germany as an independent state. The Soviet leadership headed by Mikhail Gorbachev had already promised the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl not to interfere in the process of absorbing the GDR in exchange for purely symbolic financial aid in withdrawing Soviet forces from German territory. The main thing was that the USSR did not demand to stipulate any military and political conditions or agreements for the unification of Germany. Thus, it was offensive in a human way and it was difficult to talk with colleagues from the national People’s Army of the GDR who saw that their former allies were leaving them to the whim of fate. From outside, the impression was created that Gorbachev, who had been awarded the honorary title of “German of the year” in West Germany, was getting revenge against Erich Honecker, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and all the East Germans for not supporting his “perestroika” and “policy for disarmament.”
Perestroika brought quite a few ills to the Soviet Union as well. The impression is created that profound transformations of the Soviet system announced at the April Plenary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in April 1985 were not well-conceived and planned, and did not have a clear end goal, but mainly, were not calculated and bolstered economically. The political uncertainties, the campaigns against alcoholism, the implementation of the food program or providing every Soviet family with an apartment amid increasing economic hardships and pressure from the West led to loss of the country’s governability. At the same time, these conditions enabled the growth of political activism and the public’s self-awareness. Unfortunately, the Soviet Party and state leadership, which lost authority, was not able to correctly evaluate these developments and guide them into a positive channel. Interethnic conflicts broke out in the Soviet Union, and the centrifugal trends increased. Under these conditions, the only healthy force was the armed forces.
In the absence of a coherent policy from the leadership, Soviet military personnel per- formed functions they ordinarily did not, separated the warring sides, and often took the fire on themselves.
Officers of the Special Propaganda Di- rectorate took part in settling the situations in Sumgait, Nagorno Karabakh, the Ferghana Valley and other places. I personally had the opportunity to take part in the spring of 1990 in formation work in Lithuania after the so-called events around the storming of the television center in Vilnius. The Central Committee’s decision about the creation in Vilnius of a joint press center of representatives of the power ministries was followed only by the Ministry of Defense, which seconded officers to the center’s staff from the Special Propaganda Directorate and the Press Department of the Main Political Directorate. The Department of Special Propaganda of the Political Directorate of the Baltic Military District, headed by Col. Yury Grigoryevich Podolnitsky, was also involved in this work. We managed to set up the printing and distribution of a weekly newspaper, Sovetskaya Litva, printed in Minsk. Television broadcast- ing was restored in Lithuania thanks to the courageous act of Col. Edmundus Vintsovich Kasperavicius, a cadre special propagandist. At a critical moment during the boycott of the television by Lithuanian TV journalists under the influences of Sąjūdis’ nationalist ideas, he led the work of the news service and personally ran the broadcasts as an announcer.
By 1990, during the perestroika reforms, the political bodies were turned into military-political bodies, and the Special Propaganda Directorate simply became the Special Directorate. It was headed by Lt. Gen. Vladimir Fyodorovich Molchanov. He came to us from the position of department head at the Institute of Military History. Prior to that, for a long time he had headed a department of the Agitation and Propaganda Director- ate of the Main Political Directorate. After the dismissal of Maj. Gen. Leonid Ivanovich Shershnev, Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Yegorovich Ivanov became the deputy head of the Special Directorate.
Col. Anatoly Aleksandrovich Chekulayev was appointed head of the Editorial Department for Foreign Languages, who managed to get the Department out of the Special Directorate and made an independent division. After a successful business trip to Vilnius in May 1990, I was appointed to the position of managing editor of the editorial office of the (special) Editorial Department (for Foreign Languages) at the Main Political Directorate. For a major, this was a big career post, since the staff category of the new position was “lieutenant colonel.”
Under the new military and political conditions, the tasks of the Special Director- ate changed. Thus, with the self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the mutual contacts among its armies became history. The Soviet Union,
which was going through not the best of times, reduced its military aid to developing countries, and that meant the number of foreign military personnel studying in our country was drastically reduced.
Meanwhile, the volume of tasks significantly increased which involved keeping the command informed on changes in the military and political situation both at the borders of the country and in the zone of interethnic conflicts. In connection with the reforms con- ducted, the command of the Armed Forces of the USSR became interested in foreign experience on resolving analogous problems. For the purposes of the propaganda of its achievements, and also of the progressive Soviet military traditions, a Department of Souvenir and Advertising Production was created in the Special Directorate, which was headed by the energetic Col. Nikolai Ivanovich Kharchenko.
Approximately at the same time, at the Novosti Press Agency, a military editorial office was formed, and at Foreign Broad- casting, an editorial office for military commentators. These important divisions of Soviet military and political propaganda for foreign countries was headed respectively by Col. Valery Ivanovich Pogrebenkov and Col. Vadim Anatolyevich Solovyev.
The acquiring of independence by the editorial Department for Foreign Languages significantly strengthened and activated the information work of the Special Directorate and strategically, justified itself. The correct- ness of this step was soon proven by the war in the Persian Gulf. Col. A. A. Chekulayev established the printing of a daily news bulletin of military and political information, regular roundups of events and thematic anthologies. Furthermore, translations in the Russian language of important military documents, articles from the foreign media, and annotations of foreign publications were rapidly prepared.
The new head of the editorial department held staff training camps, during which the department was deployed to wartime staff levels (increased approximately 10 times over). This activity was important for us cadre officers, especially those recently assigned to positions of managing editors at editorial offices: Lt. Col. Yury Andreyevich Galushko, Lt. Col. Alexander Vasilyevich Filimonov, and 3rd-rank Capt. Mikhail Ivanovich Bolshakov. For the first time we saw with our own eyes the scale of the tasks assigned to us and become acquainted with subordinates who, in the event of the escalation of the situation, would have to perform these tasks. In a word, Chekulayev, under conditions of a to- tal deficit and total organizational confusion managed to conduct a complicated activity which served to bring together the collective of the editorial department. Subsequently this had a positive effect on relations of camaraderie and mutual help among the officers of the department.
The precise and coordinated actions of the Soviet Army, its active involvement in settling interethnic conflicts, could not stop the slide of the Soviet party and state system into chaos. The last convulsion of the ruling elite was August 19, 1991, when the creation of a State Committee for the State of Emergency (the GKChP) was announced. The absurdity and crudeness of this step was proven if by nothing else the fact that the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and navy – one of the key organs of military governance – was not notified in advance of the impend- ing events. Officers were not called to ser- vice, and not brought back from vacations.
On the morning of August 19, which was a Monday, I was going to work on the trolleybus, past the White House (the Russian Federation government building) and the building of the Council on Economic Mutu- al Aid (Comecon), which was surrounded by tanks, and I did not understand what had happened. no one could clarify anything at the Special Directorate. Lt. Gen. Molchanov, head of the Special Directorate, excuse me for the pun, was silent and invited all those officers who were not busy with service to come into his office, where there was a color TV. Tchaikovsky’s ballet, “Swan Lake,” was playing on central television. Suddenly, the broadcast was interrupted, and the whole country learned who their “heroes” were – the members of the GKChP.
Next, the events took an even more ab- surd turn. The head of the department left for a meeting, after which he warned us that he would summon whom he needed. Most of the young officers thus understood that their services were not needed.
How can anyone speak of a “coup,” if there was no coup, but only a total farce?! Apparently, someone needed to do this. Thus, on August 19, 1991, the history of a great country called the Soviet Union came to an end. Without exaggeration, it can be stated that this event reflected on the destiny of each of its citizens.
Along with the liquidation of the Main Political Directorate (GlavPU), the Special Propaganda Directorate ceased to exist. A struggle then began for many months to pre- serve in the structures of the Armed Forces the structures so necessary to it under the new historical conditions. As a result, in November 1991, the fateful decision was made to trans- fer it to the Main Directorate of the General Staff (GU GSh). The Editorial Department for Foreign Languages was transferred there and given the number “91.” Thus, I became the managing editor of the (special) Editorial Office 91 of the Editorial Department.
Who Would You Go Scouting With?
At the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the former officers of Special Propaganda were appointed not automatically, but through dismissal from their former posts. In doing so, the General Staff personnel di- rectors were guided by criteria and clear instructions from the command. It was not hard to guess what these instructions were in a period of permanent reduction of the number of managing agencies of the Armed Forces.
Therefore, all the positions were accept- ed but not all the specialist propagandist officers. The vacant positions were immediately cut. nevertheless, practically all the officers selected and recommended by the new head of the service, Boris Vitalyevich Khilko, were appointed to the Main Directorate of the General Staff.
As a result, the cadre service potential, the experience, and traditions accumulated by the previous generations of special propagandists managed to be preserved. How great and extensive they are, we young officers sensed physically when we hauled the archives of the Special Directorate, the materials of the special office and library, to the new space on the second floor of the main building of the “Aquarium.”
I was not based there for long. In June 1992, I departed for Wünsdorf, where I had been appointed editor of radio broadcast- ing for the Department of Propaganda (Radio) Special Propaganda Editorial Office, of the Western Group of Forces. Former Soviet forces rapidly left the territory of the unified Germany; therefore, specialists were need- ed with knowledge of the German language and the country to ensure this process. Col. n.I. Andreyev, an experienced Germanist, headed the Department for Liaison with the local population at the headquarters of the Western Group of Forces, who replaced the no less experienced special propagandist
Col. Yu. T. Samylkin. Col. Yevgeny Georgievich Torsukov, managing editor, who had come to Wünsdorf also in June 1992, had defended his candidate’s degree in German philosophy. His deputy was Col. Yu. G. Podolnitsky, appointed from the position of head of the Department of Special Propaganda of the Baltic Military District. The heads of the editorial departments were Col. n.I. Kharchenko and Lt. Col. Czeslaw Mikhailovich Germanovich. The latter was from the “Minsk draft” I mentioned earlier and completed his second tour of duty in Germany.
After Col. L. G. Palaguta left for the Kyiv Military District in March 1993, I was ap- pointed the head of the Department of Propaganda (Radio) at the Special Propaganda Editorial Office at the Western Group of Forces. nevertheless, from the beginning to the end of my stay at Wünsdorf, I had to occupy myself with already familiar news and analysis work. It was impossible to get adjusted to the fact, however, that as the number of Russian forces were reduced, the volume of work constantly grew.
Moreover, we had to keep to the usual Army routine as well – taking part in exercises, numerous inspections, and trainings. The broadband radio station Burya [Storm] M-245 was transferred to the staff of the editorial office. It was part of the staff communications of a separate brigade at the rear of the Western Group of Forces and broadcast the group radio station, Volga. As the head of the Department of Propaganda (Radio), I was assigned to accept and master the new staff equipment.
Our Special Propaganda Editorial Office prepared for withdrawal. Tver was to be the place of new deployment. In the interests of informational and psychological support for the withdrawal of Russian forces, it was planned so that the Editorial Office was among the last to leave German territory, in June 1994. A train with the equipment and vehicles and property of the Editorial Office, numbering 12 cars, and a platform, was led by Col. Yu. G. Podolnitsky.
In order to meet it, that is, to prepare well in advance for the unloading and placement of the equipment, property, and personnel of the Editorial Office, I was assigned to Tver in May 1994 to the 166th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Moscow Military District. By an irony of fate, it had come from Poland several years previously, where it was part of the northern Group of Forces, deployed at Borne Sulinowo and named the 90th Guard Tank Division. In fact, all of its quite modern tanks were preserved and are located on an enormous field on the outskirts of Tver. It is just that the personnel in the brigade were barely sufficient to guard all of that former Soviet might.
After the Editorial Office was settled into the new place in the autumn of 1994, I re- turned to the 91st Editorial Department (for Foreign Languages) of the Main Directorate of the General Staff in the position of deputy head. I had numerous duties, but the very first was to prepare a set of documents on the combat and mobilization readiness of the department, which had just received the conditional name “Military Unit 54777.”
Literally a month later, however, at the end of November, the first Chechen campaign began, called “the operation to re- store the Constitutional order in the Chechen Republic.” The Editorial Department, headed by Lt. Col. Sergei Stanislavovich Sekanov got to work performing its combat missions for its intended purpose: the preparation, publication, and distribution of printed materials.
The first such document was the Appeal of the President of the RF to participants in the armed conflict in the Chechen Republic on November 29, 1994.
The officers of the Editorial Department prepared informational and reference mate- rials (fact sheets, bulletins, reviews, reports, annotations, memos, and so on) and ma- terials for informational and psychological influence (leaflets, posters, calendars, etc.) During the first Chechen campaign we de- signed and printed about a hundred such materials for informational and psychological influence. A separate line of activity was delivering them to Chechnya. This operation was repeated weekly, but sometimes even twice a week, and therefore was performed with filigree precision without breakdowns or overlaps. The officers knew the procedure for making flight manifests, the schedule of flights of planes to Mozdok, the features of work at the Chkalovsky Airport, the personal qualities of several members of the crews and the main commanders of the flights. The military pilots should be given credit for treating our leaflets as “Freight no. 1” and always meet- ing us halfway.
An important component of the work on the line and in the department were trips to the combat zone. At first only line officers were assigned to the operations group of the Main Directorate of the General Staff. The first to go to Mozdok in November 1994 was Maj. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Yepifanov; in December he was relieved by Col. Yury Andreyevich Galushko. Then Col. Vladimir Nikolayevich Shaparsky and Col. Andrei Nikolayevich Borodin went there. After the redeployment of the operational group to the Khankala Airfield (a suburb of Grozny), its staff was increased by taking an officer from the editorial department. This enabled the operational group of the Main Directorate of the General Staff to be involved not only in organizational issues but also to design ma- terials for informational and psychological influence on the spot. In October-November 1994, I was fortunate to be on a trip together with Lt. Col. Sergei Nikolayevich Stetsun. In order to repair the printing equipment, an employee of the editorial department’s print- ing press, Ensign Ildar Rifatovich Aymasov was flown in. From the results of the trip to Chechnya, the command of the Service recommended me for the assignment of the new military rank of “colonel” ahead of schedule.
One of the results of the first Chechen campaign was the decision of the command of the Main Directorate of the General Staff to expand the Service. On January 15, 1996, a Center was created on the basis of the line of the 14th Directorate and the 91st Editorial Department (for Foreign Languages). Its conditional name was inherited from the Editorial Department – “Military Unit 54777.” I was assigned from the moment the Center was formed to be the head of the group of Department 2 (Information and Analysis) of that military unit.
Among the UN observers at the location of a Russian peacekeeping battalion in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict: Maj. Gen. Yu. N. Naumov, head of the staff of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces and Col. A. V. Golyev, head of the operational group of the Main Directorate of the General Staff, town of Urta (Georgia), June 2004
With the active participation of 1st- rank Capt. M.I. Bolshakov and other officers, the Directive of the Chief of the General Staff was prepared, according to which the Center was openly named the “Center for Foreign Military Information and Communication” (TsZVIK). Col. Boris Vitalyevich Khilko was appointed head of the Center. There were about 100 military personnel at the Center, and several different civilian employees. It had its own printing press for foreign languages and was outfitted with the most modern printing equipment. The newest video and computer technology were purchased. All of this enabled us to create news and propaganda production at the level of world standards.
The video films “Dogs of War” and “Werewolves,” which exposed the atrocities of the Chechen fighters, have been etched in my memory. Likely not only because I took part in creating them. They were dubbed into English and repeatedly shown at nATO headquarters and the capitals of Western states. The films inevitably left a deep mark on people’s souls for the truthfulness and emotionality of the documentary scenes. In fact, many of them had been filmed by our officers during trips to Chechnya or were obtained as “trophies” during combat operations.
I served in the news and Analysis Department for a long time. I went through a good school of news work under the leadership of Col. Yury Andreyevich Galushko, head of that department, and also Col. Nikolai Ivanovich Andreyev, head of the ser- vice. A most experienced analyst, Nikolai Ivanovich was always distinguished by his nonstandard approach to the solving of difficult problems, by scrupulous organization and careful thinking through of all activities. Behind the seeming casualness and simplicity of his actions there was always a major preliminary preparation. His talent as an analyst was displayed especially when it was required to briefly outline the core of a con- fused problem on a tight deadline, clearly and logically, or to prepare an important document.
Col. n.I. Andreyev made a particularly notable contribution to the search and mastery of new channels of informational and psychological influence. In that connection, it is worth noting the numerous activities of our Service in the development of connections and contacts with the Bundeswehr and the West German public.
During these activities, we were able to rapidly convey to the military-political leadership of Germany and nATO the perspective of the command of the Armed Forces o the Russian Federations to current problems, and to influence the formation of public opinion in the West.
And important factor was that the officers of the Service obtained the unique opportunity to go abroad, where they honed their professional skill in practice, improved their language skills, and studied everyday life, morals, and customs. In particular, I managed to take part in such activities several times.
In January 1999, Col. Galushko resigned upon reaching the age limit for military service, and in his position was appointed 1st-rank Capt. Mikhail Ivanovich Bolshakov, and I, correspondingly, as his deputy. How- ever, in connection with nATO’s war against Yugoslavia, he went on a trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I had to perform the duties of the department head. When in December 2002, 1st-rank Capt. Bolshakov made the unexpected decision to go into the reserves ahead of schedule, the experience I had of leading the news and analytical work turned out to be sufficient to calmly regard appointment to that responsible post.
At that time, the Service was already headed by Col. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Kostyukhin. Practically all my service in managerial positions in the Service took place under his leadership. A very experienced officer and analyst, he made a great contribution to the further development of the Service and its integration into the Main Directorate. In particular, at his initiative, all the units and divisions of the Main Directorate began to perform a very important state task in the in- formational and psychological sphere, and the Service gained the status of a division to evaluate this task.
The very difficult trials of the second Chechen Campaign fall into this period, out of which the Service emerged with strengthened authority. The lines changed and the content of its activity, which was the dictates of the times, and this created a good foundation of stability for the future. All of this en- abled the Service to pass through with honor the very difficult stage of the next reforms of the Armed Services in 2008-2010.
In 2002, I underwent training at the faculty for retraining and professional development of the Military Academy of the General Staff majoring in “military and civilian administration.” I took part in peacekeeping operations in Abkhazia (2004), Tajikistan (2006), and Southern Ossetia (2006).
In December 2006, I was appointed head of the department and deputy head of the Service.
During work at the State Accreditation Com- mission at the Military University: Col. A. Yu. Golubev, Col. A.V. Golyev, and Col. Yu.D. Khrenikov, 2008
In June 2010, upon reaching the age limit for military service, my army career was finished. I had continued my training and pedagogical activity at the faculty of Foreign Military Information of the Military University, where in September 2006, I had transmit- ted my knowledge and experience to future officers of the Service.
At the same time, starting in July 2010, I worked as a senior science officer at the scientific research department and teacher at the Faculty of Country Studies and Military Diplomatic Service of the Military Academy of the Minister of Defense (VDA). My academic courses for senior staff in 1997 at the VDA in the major of “command and staff” came in handy. On November 26, 2010, as a candidate for the scholarly degree of candidate in military sciences, I defended my dissertation at the Dissertation Council at the Military Academy of the Ministry of Defense, on problems of informational and psycho- logical support of the activity of the Armed Forces of the FRG.
In 2007, I underwent professional re- training at the Faculty of Retraining and Professional Development of the Military University, in the program of professional re- training for specialists to perform a new type of professional activity in the area of higher education pedagogy (teaching of foreign languages). Starting in September 2011, I began teaching at Moscow State Linguistics University.
Veteran of Military Service.
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