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Soviet Union [USSR] Special Departments in the Armed Forces
Since the 1920s, an important internal security function of the
security police has been ensuring the political reliability of the
armed forces. This function was carried out through a network of
so-called special departments (osobye otdely), which were
under the supervision of the KGB's Third Chief Directorate.
Officially designated as a military counterintelligence
organization, the Third Chief Directorate performed tasks that
extended far beyond counterintelligence to encompass extensive
political surveillance of the military and other military security
duties.
Special departments were responsible for security clearances of
military personnel and for ensuring that security regulations and
procedures were strictly observed in all branches of the armed
forces. Thus they had control over (or at least immediate access
to) military personnel files and information relating to the
political reliability of members of the armed forces. The
leadership claimed that their armed forces were continually
threatened by ideological sabotage, i.e., attempts by Western
governments to subvert individuals through bourgeois propaganda
aimed at weakening their political convictions. Hence a key element
of special department activities was political surveillance on both
a formal and an informal level.
Officially, special departments were empowered to investigate
armed forces personnel for the same crimes that were under KGB
purview for ordinary citizens. In addition, the KGB had the
authority to investigate military crimes defined in Article 259 of
the Russian Republic's Code of Criminal Procedure--disclosure of a
military secret or loss of a document containing a military secret.
In investigating cases under their purview, special department
employees were supposed to follow set rules of criminal procedure,
but they did not always do so. In 1989, however, they no longer had
the right to conduct trials, as they did during Stalin's time. Once
an investigation was completed, the case was tried by special
military tribunals under the Main Military Procuracy.
In addition to criminal investigations, the special departments
had extensive informal responsibilities for ensuring the political
reliability of the armed forces. Soviet authorities stated that
they prevented political crimes by various preventive measures.
Thus they carried on daily educational activities to increase
political vigilance and communist ideological convictions among the
armed forces and monitored telephone conversations and
correspondence of military personnel. Special departments relied
heavily on a broad network of informers, recruited from among
military personnel.
The special departments were also charged with protecting all
state and military secrets, including those involving nuclear
weapons, a task that placed them in a position of considerable
strategic importance. One Soviet official pointed out that "the
reliable defense of Soviet forces from all types of espionage took
on special significance when the basic defensive strength of the
country came to consist of the most contemporary weapons systems,
especially ballistic nuclear weapons."
According to Western sources, the KGB had custody and transport
responsibilities for nuclear charges, which were separated from
missiles and aircraft, until the late 1960s. At that time the KGB
apparently relinquished its physical control over nuclear warheads,
but it remained involved in the nuclear control process. Not only
did it maintain a strategic communications network independent of
the military communications system, but its responsibilities for
protecting nuclear secrets presumably gave the KGB access to
nuclear weapons installations as well as to military plans
regarding the use of nuclear weapons.
Data as of May 1989
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