Friday, April 20, 2012

Book Review: Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy



This was a profoundly disturbing book. Suvorov traces his career from his assignment as a lieutenant commanding a company of tanks in the Soviet 13th Army, through being promoted into military intelligence, then being picked for the Spetsnaz, and finally winding up as a GRU spy in the Soviet embassy in Vienna. Along the way he gives us an unparalleled vista of the bankruptcy of the Soviet system.

The view he gives of the GRU is instructive. It was a military intelligence organization that demanded the absolute loyalty and total domination of its secretive minions. The metaphor that most fits is that of selling one’s soul to the devil for your thirty minutes of power and privilege. Suvorov openly admits that he loved the power and privilege he had as a member of the Nomenklatura, of which he was a part by virtue of his association with the GRU. The acquisition and exercise of power were the factors that motivated him, by his own testimony.

In the GRU, every one was being watched and everyone was watching someone else. The lives of the agents were dominated by fear of failure, fear of mistakes, and fear of exposure—but not exposure to the other side so much as exposure to the GRU itself.

Perhaps the most telling example the author provides is of an assignment he was given by a GRU superior to drop a package containing a bible into a fellow GRU agent’s apartment mailbox, an agent known to be Suvorov’s friend. The agent was being tested. His only possible correct response was to immediately report that he’d received a bible in the mail (I can not imagine living under such petty reporting requirements). If he failed to make the report he would be accused of having an interest in religion (subversive indeed!) and would be evacuated from Vienna to the Aquarium, GRU headquarters at Khodinka airfield in Moscow, where he would be executed. While Suvorov was delivering the package he was tempted to warn his friend to make the report. He decided against doing so, realizing that he himself was known to be the man’s friend and was himself also under surveillance. As he made the drop, it dawned on Suvorov that this was as much a test for him as it was for his friend. Would he be loyal to the GRU, even though he would be condemning his friend to death, or would his friendship win out? Suvorov survived; his friend failed to make the requisite report, and was condemned.

It was a group which devoured its own. In such an organization, you quickly learned to trust no one, and to subvert all loves and loyalties to the overriding demands of the GRU. True friendship was impossible; it could get you killed. It was a soulless system, officially and aggressively atheistic, with no moral good other than the good of the State itself, as defined by the corrupt individuals who had happened to claw their way to the top of the mountain of bodies at the moment. “I serve the Soviet Union!” was the obligatory response to any praise or commendation.

I read the book as part of my research for my novel, Falcon Down, in which the GRU plays a significant part. It was a valuable exercise, and I gained much useful information. It is an interesting read, though you want to wash your hands when you put the book down.

One thing the book left me with was a renewed understanding of what the closed Soviet society became, especially for the upper class. The brutality of the Soviet system, combined with an official atheism able to offer no moral constraints, no meaning, and no hopes beyond the personal acquisition of power and privilege, nearly ruined a beautiful country and a vibrant people. Suvorov’s Soviet Union became a real-life Lord of the Flies experience. One can only hope that some day Russia will come into its own as a prosperous, free, and happy country.

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