2025

Security and Defence Quarterly

Rocznik: 2025 | Numer: Online first

artykuł recenzyjny

angielski

EN Military security On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905, the Russian Quartermaster General Jakov Zhilinsky remarked: “The Japanese army undoubtedly still is in a far from ideal situation and cannot be compared in any way with the most important European armies, especially ours.” Zhilinsky could not have been more wrong in his assessment, as we now know, since Russian armed forces, both on land and at sea, suffered catastrophic defeats in the ensuing war against Japan. This anecdote is a striking illustra- tion of the fact that political and military leaders often gravely misjudge the strength of their own armies and consequently of their opponents, even on the eve of a major war. It can be found in Matthias Uhl’s newly published volume on the history of the GRU, the military intelligence organisation of the former USSR and today’s Russia.1 The GRU was traditionally an organisation about which very little was known, especially when compared with the KGB.2 A fair number of KGB officers defected to the West during the Cold War, where they were extensively debriefed and often wrote memoirs. Defections from the GRU were far fewer in number, and its officers rarely wrote memoirs (Haslam, 2015, pp. 283–285).3 Consequently, very little information is available regard- ing the GRU in the public domain in Western countries. Among the exceptions are several works by Viktor Suvorov (real name: Vladimir Rezun), who defected to Britain in 1978 from Geneva where he was stationed as a major in Soviet military intelligence. He later wrote several books on the GRU that tended not to be very well-sourced and contained assertions that were often barely credible, if not verifiable.4 He alleges, for instance, in Inside the Aquarium (Suvorov, 1986) that Stalin allowed the Gestapo to execute German communists in the Moscow area from 1939 to 1941 (artykuł recenzyjny).

DE Die GRU, der russische Militärgeheimdienst ist einer der effektivsten und geheimsten Nachrichtendienste weltweit. Bis heute gibt es im Westen kaum gesicherte Informationen über die GRU, vor allem, weil bis in die Gegenwart kaum ein Dokument aus den Archiven der GRU zugänglich ist.​ Das Buch stellt erstmals für einen breiten Leserkreis die Geschichte der GRU von ihrer Gründung 1918 bis heute dar. Matthias Uhl kann dabei auf Dokumente aus dem legendären Archiv des Militärgeheimdienstes zurückgreifen. Zudem lüftet er die Identität des GRU-Agenten »Murat«, der Moskau in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren Hunderte streng geheime Unterlagen aus dem NATO-Hauptquartier geliefert hat. Und er beleuchtet Operationen und Spionageaktionen während des Kalten Krieges und des heutigen Russland – bis hin zu Mordanschlägen in Westeuropa sowie zum Einsatz der GRU bei der Besetzung der Krim und im Ukraine-Krieg (rezcenzowana publikacja)

18.10.2025

10.35467/sdq/209635

https://securityanddefence.pl/Book-Review-Matthias-Uhl-2024-GRU-Die-unbekannte-Geschichte-des-sowjetisch-russischen,209635,0,2.html

Corresponding author Ben de Jong formerly with the Department of European Studies, independent researcher, retired, Netherlands

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18.10.2025

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