A tip from your local friendly Spetznaz

[redbear]

This from the Spetszan handbook, their philosophies are VERY differant from most western militaries. hopefully translated half way decent;
======================================

"In the spetsnaz soldier's opinion the most dangerous thing he can do is
put faith in his comrade, who may at the most critical moment turn out to be
a beast. It is much simpler for him not to trust his comrade (or anybody
else), so that in a critical situation there will be no shattered illusions.
Better that he regards all his fellow human beings as beasts from the outset
than to make that discovery in an utterly hopeless situation.
The soldier's credo can be stated in a triple formula: Don't trust,
don't beg, don't fear. It is a formula which did not originate in spetsnaz,
but in prisons many centuries ago. In it can be seen the whole outlook of
the spetsnaz soldier: his practically superhuman contempt for death, and a
similar contempt for everybody around him. He does not believe in justice,
goodness or humanity. He does not even believe in force until it has been
demonstrated by means of a fist, a whip or the teeth of a dog. When it is
demonstrated his natural reflex is to challenge it immediately.
Sometimes in the life of a spetsnaz soldier he has a sort of
revelation, a sense of complete freedom and happiness. In this mental state
he fears nobody at all, trusts no one at all, and would not ask anybody for
anything, even for mercy. This state comes about in a combination of
circumstances in which a soldier would go voluntarily to his death,
completely contemptuous of it. At that moment the soldier's mind triumphs
completely over cowardice, the vileness and meanness around him. Once he has
experienced this sensation of liberation, the soldier is capable of any act
of heroism, even sacrificing his life to save a comrade. But his act has
nothing in common with ordinary soldiers' friendship. The motive behind such
an act is to show, at the cost of his own life, his superiority over all
around him, including the comrade he saves.
In order for such a moment of revelation to come on some occasion, the
soldier goes through a long and careful training. All the beatings, all the
insults and humiliations that he has suffered, are steps on the path to a
brilliant suicidal feat of heroism. The well-fed, self-satisfied, egoistic
soldier will never perform any acts of heroism. Only someone who has been
driven barefoot into the mud and snow, who has had even his bread taken away
from him and has proved every day with his fists his right to existence --
only this kind of man is capable of showing one day that he really is the
best."

And on training;

"The spetsnaz training battalion works on the principle that before you
start giving orders, you have to learn to obey them. The whole of the
thinking behind the training battalions can be put very simply. They say
that if you make an empty barrel airtight and drag it down below the water
and then let it go it shoots up and out above the surface of the water. The
deeper it is dragged down the faster it rises and the further it jumps out
of the water. This is how the training battalions operate. Their task is to
drag their ever-changing body of men deeper down.
Each spetsnaz training battalion has its permanent staff of officers,
warrant officers and sergeants and receives its intake of 300-400 spetsnaz
recruits who have already been through a recruit's course in various
spetsnaz units.
The regime in the normal Soviet training divisions can only be
described as brutal. I experienced it first as a student in a training
division. I have already described the conditions within spetsnaz. To
appreciate what conditions are like in a spetsnaz training battalion, the
brutality has to be multiplied many times over.
In the spetsnaz training battalions the empty barrel is dragged so far
down into the deep that it is in danger of bursting from external pressure.
A man's dignity is stripped from him to such an extent that it is kept
constantly at the very brink, beyond which lies suicide or the murder of his
officer. The officers and sergeants of the training battalions are, every
one of them, enthusiasts for their work. Anyone who does like this work will
not stand it for so long but goes off voluntarily to other easier work in
spetsnaz regular units. The only people who stay in the training battalions
are those who derive great pleasure from their work. Their work is to issue
orders by which they make or break the strongest of characters. The
commander's work is constantly to see before him dozens of men, each of whom
has one thought in his head: to kill himself or to kill his officer? The
work for those who enjoy it provides complete moral and physical
satisfaction, just as a stuntman might derive satisfaction from leaping on a
motorcycle over nineteen coaches. The difference between the stuntman
risking his neck and the commander of a spetsnaz training unit lies in the
fact that the former experiences his satisfaction for a matter of a few
seconds, while the latter experiences it all the time.
Every soldier taken into a training battalion is given a nickname,
almost invariably sarcastic. He might be known as The Count, The Duke,
Caesar, Alexander of Macedon, Louis XI, Ambassador, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, or any variation on the theme. He is treated with exaggerated
respect, not given orders, but asked for his opinion:
`Would Your Excellency be of a mind to clean the toilet with his
toothbrush?'
`Illustrious Prince, would you care to throw up in public what you ate
at lunch?'
In spetsnaz units men are fed much better than in any other units of
the armed forces, but the workload is so great that the men are permanently
hungry, even if they do not suffer the unofficial but very common punishment
of being forced to empty their stomachs:
`You're on the heavy side, Count, after your lunch! Would you care to
stick two fingers down your throat? That'll make things easier!'

___

The more humiliating the forms of punishment a sergeant thinks up for
the men under him, and the more violently he attacks their dignity, the
better. The task of the training battalions is to crush and completely
destroy the individual, however strong a character he may have possessed,
and to fashion out of that person a type to fit the standards of spetsnaz, a
type who will be filled with an explosive charge of hatred and spite and a
craving for revenge.
The main difficulty in carrying out this act of human engineering is to
turn the fury of the young soldier in the right direction. He has to have
been reduced to the lowest limits of his dignity and then, at precisely the
point when he can take no more, he can be given his sergeant's stripes and
sent off to serve in a regular unit. There he can begin to work off his fury
on his own subordinates, or better still on the enemies of Communism.
The training units of spetsnaz are a place where they tease a recruit
like a dog, working him into a rage and then letting him off the leash. It
is not surprising that fights inside spetsnaz are a common occurrence.
Everyone, especially those who have served in a spetsnaz training unit,
bears within himself a colossal charge of malice, just as a thunder cloud
bears its charge of electricity. It is not surprising that for a spetsnaz
private, or even more so for a sergeant, war is just a beautiful dream, the
time when he is at last allowed to release his full charge of malice.

___

Apart from the unending succession of humiliations, insults and
punishments handed out by the commanders, the man serving in a spetsnaz
training unit has continually to wage a no less bitter battle against his
own comrades who are in identical circumstances to his own.
In the first place there is a silent competition for pride of place,
for the leadership in each group of people. In spetsnaz, as we have seen,
this struggle has assumed open and very dramatic forms. Apart from this
natural battle for first place there exists an even more serious incentive.
It derives from the fact that for every sergeant's place in a spetsnaz
training battalion there are three candidates being trained at the same
time. Only the very best will be made sergeant at the end of five months. On
passing out some are given the rank of junior sergeant, while others are not
given any rank at all and remain as privates in the ranks. It is a bitter
tragedy for a man to go through all the ordeals of a spetsnaz training
battalion and not to receive any rank but to return to his unit as a private
at the end of it.
The decision whether to promote a man to sergeant after he has been
through the training course is made by a commission of GRU officers or the
Intelligence Directorate of the military district in whose territory the
particular battalion is stationed. The decision is made on the basis of the
result of examinations conducted in the presence of the commission, on the
main subjects studied: political training; the tactics of spetsnaz
(including knowledge of the probable enemy and the main targets that
spetsnaz operates); weapons training (knowledge of spetsnaz armament, firing
from various kinds of weapons including foreign weapons, and the use of
explosives); parachute training; physical training; and weapons of mass
destruction and defence against them.
The commission does not distinguish between the soldiers according to
where they have come from, but only according to their degree of readiness
to carry out missions. Consequently, when the men who have passed out are
returned to their units there may arise a lack of balance among them. For
example, a spetsnaz company that sends nine privates to a training battalion
in the hope of receiving three sergeants back after five months, could
receive one sergeant, one junior sergeant and seven privates, or five
sergeants, three junior sergeants and one private. This system has been
introduced quite deliberately. The officer commanding a regular company,
with nine trained men to choose from, puts only the very best in charge of
his sections. He can put anybody he pleases into the vacancies without
reference to his rank. Privates who have been through the training battalion
can be appointed commanders of sections. Sergeants and junior sergeants for
whom there are not enough posts as commanders will carry out the work of
privates despite their sergeant's rank.
The spetsnaz company commander may also have, apart from the freshly
trained men, sergeants and privates who completed their training earlier but
were not appointed to positions as commanders. Consequently the company
commander can entrust the work of commanding sections to any of them, while
all the new arrivals from the training battalion can be used as privates.
The private or junior sergeant who is appointed to command a section
has to struggle to show his superiors that he really is worthy of that trust
and that he really is the best. If he succeeds in doing so he will in due
course be given the appropriate rank. If he is unworthy he will be removed.
There are always candidates for his job.
This system has two objectives: the first is to have within the
spetsnaz regular units a large reserve of commanders at the very lowest
level. During a war spetsnaz will suffer tremendous losses. In every section
there are always a minimum of two fully trained men capable of taking
command at any moment; the second is to generate a continual battle between
sergeants for the right to be a commander. Every commander of a section or
deputy commander of a platoon can be removed at any time and replaced by
someone more worthy of the job. The removal of a sergeant from a position of
command is carried out on the authority of the company commander (if it is a
separate spetsnaz company) or on the authority of the battalion commander or
regiment. When he is removed the former commander is reduced to the status
of a private soldier. He may retain his rank, or his rank may be reduced, or
he may lose the rank of sergeant altogether."

Enjoy~

[doktor_ecchs]

Originally posted by redbear
This from the Spetszan handbook, their philosophies are VERY differant from most western militaries. hopefully translated half way decent;
======================================

"In the spetsnaz soldier's opinion the most dangerous thing he can do is
put faith in his comrade, who may at the most critical moment turn out to be
a beast. It is much simpler for him not to trust his comrade (or anybody
else), so that in a critical situation there will be no shattered illusions.
Better that he regards all his fellow human beings as beasts from the outset
than to make that discovery in an utterly hopeless situation.
The soldier's credo can be stated in a triple formula: Don't trust,
don't beg, don't fear. It is a formula which did not originate in spetsnaz,
but in prisons many centuries ago. In it can be seen the whole outlook of
the spetsnaz soldier: his practically superhuman contempt for death, and a
similar contempt for everybody around him. He does not believe in justice,
goodness or humanity. He does not even believe in force until it has been
demonstrated by means of a fist, a whip or the teeth of a dog. When it is
demonstrated his natural reflex is to challenge it immediately.

It's not a bad way to look at day-to-day living, IMO...

as ever,
Dr. X

[Geist762]

I'm sure our seals have similar conditioning.

It kind or reminds me of some ninja mind exercises, lol.

First you have to devalue the thing you are killing.
Your enemy is nothing more than a target.
Destroy him, and move through to the next target.
There is no need for emotions.
etc. etc. etc.

But what I found interesting is that their esprit de corpse is the same as
towards their victims. Kind of like a brainwashed pack of wolves.
Mindless killers? Empty Jar Heads.... just kidding.

In Kung Fu they say...

move instead of block
block instead of strike
strike instead of maim
maim instead of kill
kill instead of be killed.

Maybe we need to see the Spetznas vs. the shao-lin monks on Kung Fu theatre? lol.

Geist762