Spetsnaz troopers during the 1992 Tajik war.jpg

Spetsnaz are special forces in numerous post-Soviet states. (The term is borrowed from rus, спецназ, p=spʲɪtsˈnas; abbreviation for or 'Special Purpose Military Units'; or .)

Historically, the term ''spetsnaz'' referred to the Soviet Union's Spetsnaz GRU, special operations units of the GRU, the main military intelligence service. It also describes task forces of other ministries (such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs' ODON and Ministry of Emergency Situations' special rescue unit) in post-Soviet countries.

As ''spetsnaz'' is a Russian term, it is typically associated with the special units of Russia, but other post-Soviet states often refer to their special forces units by the term as well, since these nations also inherited their special purpose units from the now-defunct Soviet security agencies. The 5th Spetsnaz Brigade of Belarus is an example of a non-Russian spetsnaz force.

Etymology

The Russian abbreviations ''spetsnaz'' and ''osnaz'' are syllabic abbreviations of Soviet era Russian, for ''spetsialnogo naznacheniya'' and ''osobovo naznacheniya'', both of which may be interpreted as "special purpose". As syllabic acronyms they are not normally capitalized.

They are general terms that were used for a variety of Soviet special operations (''spetsoperatsiya'') units. In addition, many '' Cheka'' and Internal Troops units (such as ''OMSDON'' and ''ODON'') also included ''osobovo naznacheniya'' in their full names. Regular forces assigned to special tasks were sometimes also referred to by terms such as ''spetsnaz'' and ''osnaz''.

''Spetsnaz'' later referred specifically to special (''spetsialnogo'') purpose (''naznacheniya'') or special operations (spetsoperatsiya; ''spec ops'') forces, and the word's widespread use is a relatively recent, post-'' perestroika'' development in Russian language. The Soviet public used to know very little about their country's special forces until many state secrets were disclosed under the '' glasnost'' ("openness") policy of Mikhail Gorbachev during the late 1980s. Since then, stories about ''spetsnaz'' and their purportedly incredible prowess, from the serious to the highly questionable, have captivated the imagination of Russians. A number of books about the Soviet military special forces, such as 1987's ''Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS'' by defected GRU agent Viktor Suvorov, helped introduce the term to the Western public.

In post-Soviet Russia, ''spetsnaz'' became a colloquial term as special operations (''spetsoperatsiya''), from police raids to military operations in internal conflicts, grew more common. Coverage of these operations, and the celebrity status of special operations forces in state-controlled media, encouraged the public to identify many of these forces by name: SOBR, Alpha, Vityaz, Vympel. The term ''spetsnaz'' has also continued to be used in several other post-Soviet states such as Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan for their own special operations forces. In Russia, foreign special operations forces are also referred to as ''spetsnaz'' (for example, United States special operations forces would be called ''amerikanskiy spetsnaz'').

History and known operations

The Imperial Russian Army had hunter-commando units, formed by a decree of Emperor Alexander III in 1886, which saw action in World War I prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Also during World War I, General Aleksei Brusilov became one of the first senior commanders to utilize the tactics of fast-action shock troops for assaults following concentrated accurate artillery fire in what would be later be known as the Brusilov Offensive of 1916. Such tactics, considered revolutionary at the time, would later inspire people like Prussian Captain Willy Rohr in the development of the Prussian Stormtroopers (founded in 1915).

Early Soviet Union

The origins of the Spetsnaz can be found in the Russian Civil War. To act against anti-Communist workers and farmers the Soviet regime set up so called ''Tschasti Osobogo Nasatschenia'' (Units for special use) in 1918. In the next year they were expanded to the so called '' Cheka'' (The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission), fighting counterrevolution and (alleged) sabotage. They took part in the Kronstadt rebellion 1921, setting up machine guns behind units of the Red Army, to "increase their motivation". The ''GRU'' and ''NKVD'' descended from the ''Cheka.'' Since 1927 Russians were experimenting with parachutes. Airborne units where used against central Asian and Afghan isurgents.

Second World War and spanish civil war

GRU and NKVD derived from the tcheka and participated in the spanish civil war fighting faschists behind their lines using guerilla and terror strategies. Fighting Germany, Japan and Finland in the Second World War, new units of storm pioneers, parachuters, NKVD and GRU were set up. Thereby the soviets merged existing experiences and started to unify different military branches.

Navy

It became clear early on for Soviet leadership that it had an urgent need for immediate intelligence on German land forces in northern Norway and Finland. On 5 July 1941 Admiral Arseniy Golovko of the Northern Fleet authorized the formation of a ground reconnaissance detachment. This unit, the 4th Special Volunteer Detachment, was to be recruited from the fleet's athletes and have an initial fill of 65 to 70 personnel. Later the unit was renamed the 181st Special Reconnaissance Detachment. They were trained as frogmen.Spetsnaz:Russia's Special Forces by Mark Galeotti The most prominent of these new recruits was Viktor Leonov, who joined the Soviet Navy in 1937. He was assigned to a submarine training detachment and then transferred to a repair station in the Northern Fleet at Polyarnyy. Leonov had trained as a scuba diver, after which he joined 4th Special Volunteer Detachment, where he proved his daring and leadership skills conducting numerous clandestine operations and twice being awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Initially the unit was confined to performing small scale reconnaissance missions, platoon sized insertions by sea and on occasion on land into Finland and later Norway. They began conducting sabotage missions and raids to snatch prisoners for interrogation. They would also destroy German ammunition and supply depots, communication centers, and harass enemy troop concentrations along the Finnish and Russian coasts.

When the European conflict ended, the Naval Scouts were sent to fight the Japanese. Leonov along with Capt. Kulebyakin and 140 men, landed on a Japanese airfield at Port Vonsan, not realizing they were opposed by over 3,500 enemy soldiers. A tense standoff ensued, until the commanding officers of the unit managed to bluff the Japanese forces into surrendering.

Army

Each soviet front/army had had up to 1942 their own independent guard-battalion (''Otdelnly Gwardieskij Batalion Minerow), OGBM,'' so called miners, for reconnaissance and commando missions. The soldiers had to be younger than 30 years, were mostly athletes or hunters and had to identify 100% with their mission. Many exhausted and wounded soldiers were, even in training, left to their own devices. They had a hardcore selection qualifying them to be elite but caused high numbers of casualties. They infiltrated foreign occupied areas by air and land, cooperated with and trained local partisans.

Right before the major Russian offensive at Smolesk in 1943 316 ''OGBM,'' were dropped with parachutes in nine groups behind the enemy lines. Up to 300 km behind the enemies lines they blew up 700 km of railways, cooperating with local partisans, using 3500 explosive charges.

Cold War

By the end of the 2nd World War the soviet union dissolved most of the special units. At the End of the 50s KGB and GRU set up new special forces. In 1966 the 3rd guard special-reconnaissance-brigade was found, being stationed in Fürstenberg/Havel with the soviet forces in eastern Germany. Up to the knockdown of the Prague Spring in 1968 there is only the Crabb Affair reported.

The Crabb Affair

Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Crabb was a British Royal Navy frogman and MI6 diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission around a Soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956. On 16 November 2007, the BBC
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