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Women and Spetsnaz

I was also intrigued by the mention of female Spetsnaz in the professional athletic units, as this was the first I'd heard of women serving in Spetsnaz.

In the sports sections and teams of the military districts, groups, armies, fleets, flotillas there is a very high percentage of women also engaged in sport and who defend the honour of their district, group and so forth. Like the men, the women are given military rank and, like the men, are recruited into spetsnaz.

There are no women in the usual spetsnaz units. But in the professional sports units of spetsnaz women constitute about half the numbers. They engage in various kinds of sport: parachute jumping, gliding, flying, shooting, running, swimming, motocross, and so on. Every woman who joins spetsnaz has to engage in some associated forms of sport apart from her own basic sport, and among these are some that are obligatory, such as sambo, shooting and a few others. The woman have to take part in exercises along with the men and have to study the full syllabus of subjects necessary for operating behind the enemy's lines.

That there should be such a high percentage of women in the professional sports formations of spetsnaz is a matter of psychology and strategy: if in the course of a war a group of tall, broadshouldered young men were to appear behind the lines this might give rise to bewilderment, since all the men are supposed to be at the front. But if in the same situation people were to see a group of athletic-looking girls there would be little likelihood of any alarm or surprise.

Suvorov does not provide any additional details about the role of women in spetsnaz, except to write that they were suited for covert operations, and sometimes posed as "wives" of the spetsnaz men, who themselves posed as low-level laborers (cook, janitors, mechanics, etc.) in foreign embassies. Presumably they endured the same sort of rigorous training as the male recruits.

I wish that Suvorov had described the Spetsnaz training more extensively, he describes in only a few chapters. Of course, if you've read the Russian System Guidebook, the brutality of such training won't be much of a surprise.

Koliko sam ja shvatila u daljem tekstu sve je manje vise tajna. Od broja ljudi u jedinici, do operacija.