Intro

I came across The Aquarium from a podcast discussing the risks of nation-state espionage directed toward AI labs and the importance of preventing actual model weights and algorithmic innovations more broadly from getting leaked. I ended up reading the full book to get a sense of how intense these national intelligence agencies were toward gathering valuable intelligence. Spoiler alert: they are pretty intense.

The Aquarium is an autobiography describing Viktor Suvorov’s (real name Vladimir Rezun) experience in the Russian military. The book begins with Suvorov commanding a tank company before getting recruited to the Spetnaz special forces and finally later on getting recruited into the GRU, the Russian intelligence agency, before his eventual defection to the United Kingdom.

Suvorov is one of the few living people, if any, to speak about the internal operations of the GRU, and as a result, I’m unsure to what degree the book is an accurate description. There were at least a few details that were modified to protect his identity: for example, he writes that he was stationed in Austria when in reality it was Switzerland. The book also appears to have other inconsistencies with the narrative described in this Guardian piece, such as his defecting to the UK with his wife and kids, who were not mentioned in the book, and his defection being for ideological reasons, as opposed to being the result of a botched operation as described in the book. With respect to the actual operations within the GRU, I was not able to find any concrete refutations of Suvorov’s claims, so I am mostly taking it at its word (though I expect some details to be wrong or exaggerations).

I’ve included a few more notable highlights from the book below.

GRU was brutal

When Suvorov was getting introduced to the GRU, an officer played him a video of a former high ranking GRU captain who had betrayed the organization. In the video, the captain was restrained and fed into an incinerator while he was still alive and conscious. When the video was over, the GRU officer explained to Suvorov that this was the fate that would befall him too if he were to betray the GRU. (The officer then gives Suvorov one minute to reflect on whether he wants to join the GRU. This did not dissuade Suvorov in the slightest.)

In order to complete the training process to become a GRU officer (which took several years), a GRU initiate would need to demonstrate that they can gather intelligence within Russia. All initiates are assigned a particular facility (a research lab, a factory, etc.) and are expected to recruit an individual from this facility to gain classified information from them. However, revealing such sensitive information is a criminal offense. So if the GRU initiate wants to complete their mission and become a full-fledged officer, they have to condemn one of their fellow countrymen to death for espionage. Suvorov succeeded.

GRU officers were surveilled by one another

The GRU constantly tested the loyalty of its own officers to see whether they would put anything before the success of the GRU. For example, at one point, Suvorov is assigned to test another officer by placing a Bible in his mailbox at night without revealing that it was a GRU test. If Suvorov’s colleague chooses to keep the Bible, if he decides to sell or give away the Bible (as it seems that such books were in high demand), if he throws the Bible away, or if he waits too long to do anything, he will have failed the test. The only correct response is for him to immediately report to his GRU superior that he found a Bible in his mailbox. I’m not quite sure what the exact reason was that possessing a Bible was punished, but it seems that the Bible was generally censored in Soviet Russia. As it turns out, Suvorov’s colleague failed the test; it is unclear to me whether he was put in jail or if he was executed outright.

These tests of loyalty were often ruthless. Suvorov mentions that he was friends with the colleague he was testing, and while he wanted to leave a hint to his colleague that this was a test, Suvorov was not sure that he himself was the one being tested. Suvorov was his friend after all, and the GRU leadership might have been checking if Suvorov would put his friendship over the organization.

Philosophy of recruitment

Early in the narrative, Suvorov is in command of a tank company before getting recruited as chief of staff of the division’s reconnaissance battalion by Lieutenant-Colonel Kravtsov. I didn’t quite understand the ranks in the Soviet military or the status level of different positions, but from what I understand, this was a huge and unexpected promotion (as Suvorov himself believed he was about to be demoted from his position as a tank company commander). Kravtsov later explains that he chose Suvorov not because of his ability (though it’s clear that Suvorov impressed him enough and passed all of his subsequent tests) but because Suvorov was undistinguished from the crowd.

Suvorov describes Kravtsov saying the following: “But I don’t need helpers who will betray me at the most difficult moment. To achieve that there is only one way: to choose helpers from the very lowest level. You owe everything to me, and if I’m kicked out you will be kicked out too. If I lose everything so will you. I pulled you up, I picked you out of the crowd not because of your ability but because you are one of the crowd. Nobody needs you. If something happens to me you will find yourself again in the crowd, without any of your power and privileges. This way of choosing assistants and bodyguards is as old as the hills.” (Kravtsov also acknowledges that he himself was recruited by his commanding officer in a similar way.)

This “patronage” based appointment seems to be in direct contrast with a more meritocratic appointment of positions. Some questions that came up as I thought about this: Naively, I would expect that meritocratic systems should work the best since the most qualified individual is in each position. Under what conditions and incentives does this sort of patronage-based approach make more sense? It seems that Kravtsov is making an explicit tradeoff here: a more loyal subordinate who may be less competent. Does this patronage system actually prevent Suvorov from betraying Kravtsov? Plausibly I could imagine there being scenarios where Suvorov is able to take Kravtsov’s position. However, I suppose that Suvorov would be more loyal to Kravtsov than the “most qualified person” for that position would be to Kravtsov. That person would likely have other allies to rely on in the event that Kravtsov is chucked out.

Active versus passive players

There was an interesting dynamic within the GRU where there were two “castes” of officers: the Borzois and the Vikings. The Vikings were the main active players running the intelligence operations, and they tended to get all the credit for successful operations. On the other hand, the majority of GRU officers were Borzois who took on all the remaining, less glamorous jobs in an operation to ensure the success of the Vikings. Notably, the Borzois got very little credit for the success of the operation, even if the support role was as risky and dangerous as that of the Vikings. For most of his time in the GRU, Suvorov played the Borzois role, though temporarily he did manage to take on the Viking role for a few operations.

Suvorov describes an analogous dynamic with pilots in the Russian Air Force. There seemed to be two classes of pilots: those who were very successful and ended their careers with many medals and accolades and the majority who had very few (and were much more likely to have perished in the fighting). This disparity is striking given that initially all pilots had the same training and were in essentially the same position. However, in their first battle, pilots who were not afraid to engage in fighting and did not fly to get away from the enemy were marked as “active”, with the remaining pilots marked as “passive”. The active pilots were soon made leaders with passive pilots providing support, and the more successful the active pilot was, the more support the air force leadership would provide. Suvorov mentions that aces like Alexander Pokryshkin often had entire squadrons of fighter pilots supporting them. (As an aside, Pokryshkin is an interesting example where the more success he achieved, the more famous he became to the Soviet Russian population, and as a result the more the Soviet leadership tried to prevent him from flying due to a fear of him dying in combat. Are there other examples of roles where the more success you achieve, the more that your boss will want to remove you from that role?)

In general, switching from a Borzois role to a Viking role is difficult because the Borzois need to demonstrate that they have found some lead (usually an individual with valuable secrets) or have a promising idea for gathering intelligence some other way. Yet they are constantly supporting the Vikings and often have no time to invest in such ideas. (A notable quote from Suvorov: “Five hours of sleep cannot make up for months of insomnia.”)

One takeaway is that small initial successes can quickly snowball into larger successes as more people are invested in you. On the other hand, if you don’t succeed early, there may be more and more inertia that you have to push against if you want to achieve some success later on.

Suvorov himself is mildly unhinged

I learned that “anting” is a real phenomenon where birds rub insects like ants on them to get the ants to secrete chemicals like formic acid. It seems that there are health benefits for the bird as the bird can use these chemicals as a sort of insecticide and bacteriocide. My introduction to this phenomenon was through Suvorov’s description of him taking off his clothes, jumping into an ant nest, and letting the ants bite him for several minutes. He then jumps out of the ant nest, brushes the ants off, and continues on his day. I’m not quite sure what to make of this anecdote.