Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,114
permitted when Brezhnev was general secretary. Naturally, he also decided to use the KGB to improve—from the Soviet perspective—the situation in Afghanistan. And so it came about that they were sent in. It happened in summer 1983: the most highly classified unit under the administration of KGB Border Guard Headquarters set foot on Afghan soil. It was known by the code name “S,” or sometimes “Department S.” On June 16, Andropov had been chosen as the new Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, so he now had control over everything—the party, the KBG, and the army. He had climbed his way to the top both in name and in fact, and was both the leader of and the most powerful person in the entire Soviet Union. This was how “S” got permission to carry out independent operations, free from army supervision—an unprecedented level of authority. “S” had no need to be in contact with the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, despite the fact that the GRU oversaw all the special forces in the USSR.
“S” was in charge of all special operations within the KGB. The KGB Border Guards as a whole had more combat experience than any of the Soviet Union’s other military organizations, having been active since the Great Patriotic War (World War II). And within the Border Guards, “S” was special. It specialized in unconventional warfare.
“S” rapidly adapted itself to the battle against the mujahideen.
Its fighters made use of the difficult, hilly terrain. They learned how to counter the special tactics of the Afghan jihadists.
Even then “S” hadn’t realized its full potential. The Soviet Union itself was still changing. The drama surrounding its leadership continued. On February 9, 1984, General Secretary Andropov suddenly passed away after fifteen months in office. His successor was Konstantin Chernenko, a man who had been born, astonishingly enough, in 1911. He was way too old to be doing this. The only reason he could take over from Andropov was that he had been a loyal follower and right-hand man to Brezhnev. The old faction Andropov had struggled to crush was back. General Secretary Chernenko died on March 10, 1985, however, also of sickness.
Too old.
“S” found its fortunes changing, then changing again. If Andropov had remained general secretary, “S” might have managed to turn the quagmire of the Afghan War into something closer to a pond, at least, with relatively clear waters. “S” probably could have calmed the situation. But that wasn’t what happened. Because the Soviet leaders kept popping in and out so fast, one after the other. General Secretary Brezhnev was replaced by General Secretary Andropov, General Secretary Andropov was replaced by General Secretary Chernenko. Three deaths from sickness, one sudden. But these three men weren’t the only ones to have an effect on the fortunes of “S.” The unit—the most highly guarded secret at KGB Border Guard Headquarters—had been created by the man who preceded General Secretary Brezhnev. The previous general secretary…except that he wasn’t general secretary. Until April 1966, the party had put a moratorium on the use of this title, going instead with “first secretary”—a title that Brezhnev had used for his first year and a half in the position. First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Why had “general secretary” been abandoned? Because that was the title Stalin had used. And who had decided to abandon the title? Which forces? Forces critical of Stalin, obviously. Who was first secretary before First Secretary Brezhnev? The man who had declared that Stalin was a despot. The man who had delivered a searing critique of Stalin in 1956 in a closed session at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party. Nikita Khrushchev.
The man Red China’s leader, Mao Zedong, hated.
Khrushchev had had a dream. He dreamed of a day—sometime, somewhere—when the Cold War would turn hot. Perhaps the magma would come spurting up in the form of a proxy war somewhere in the Third World. And just imagine how cool it would be if, when that day came, the USSR could dispatch to the front lines of that regional conflict a unit so unlike any other that it would take people’s breath away—imagine the value that would have as propaganda! Incomparable! He had that dream. And so he gave the order, almost as a joke. And when it reached the end of the long chain of command, having made its way through that rigid bureaucratic system, the order was rigorously enacted. All the romance of the dream