Aquarium (book)

Tank company commander senior lieutenant Viktor Suvorov showed himself brilliantly in the exercises: when, due to a malfunction, the tank in front of the regiment blocked the exit of all the regiment’s equipment from the park, breaking the rate of equipment’s exit from the location during the alarm, he broke through the wall with his tank, withdrawing his tank platoon . His platoon finds and destroys the "rocket battery" of the enemy. He is noticed by the head of the intelligence department of the headquarters of the 13th army, Lieutenant Colonel Kravtsov, who forms his personal group, recruiting "people from the crowd", and takes Suvorov to his intelligence department of the army headquarters. While collecting information about the movements of the forces of the probable enemy , Suvorov guesses what the secret departments of intelligence are doing . Shocked by his ingenuity, Kravtsov sends Suvorov to training in the 3rd division, in other words, to the “ special forces ”. In the process of training during the exercises, Suvorov is thrown as the controller of a sabotage group into the rear of the guard army.

Soon Suvorov received the rank of captain and transferred with his patron to the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Carpathian military district , while continuing his training in special forces. Kravtsov tells Suvorov that his patron, Lieutenant General Obaturov, also chose Kravtsov “from the crowd” and has since moved him along. He explains that their group is fighting for power. Sometimes Kravtsov gives Suvorov various secret tasks: both real ones directed against party officials and the KGB , and false ones to test his performance, loyalty and loyalty. Victor accidentally learns that there is such a thing as “Aquarium”. He asks Kravtsov what this means and learns that the Aquarium is the main building of the 2nd Main Directorate of the General Staff, that is, the Main Intelligence Directorate (abbreviated GRU ). But Suvorov did not find out details about this organization, since the GRU is an absolutely classified organization.

Soon, Suvorov was summoned to the 10th General Directorate of the General Staff , preparing military advisers in various countries. But actually the call comes from the GRU. Suvorov successfully passes many days of exhausting exams and enters the Academy , where he studies for 5 years at the limit of his capabilities. As an final exam, Suvorov successfully recruits an engineer at a secret missile plant in Mytishchi . After working for a year in the department for working with foreigners coming to the USSR and having completed his first recruitment, Suvorov was sent to the Soviet embassy in Vienna . At first, Suvorov worked “in providing” (assistance to those scouts who are directly involved in obtaining information), supporting the operations of other, more successful officers. But after a few years, he is also driven into the “Varangians” (extracting information), having invented the operation “Alpine tourism”, thanks to which the GRU officers, including the author himself, make several successful recruits. Suvorov manages to recruit a man from the Spanish base of Rota , where American submarine missile carriers are based.

The resident entrusts Suvorov with a top secret operation: he must take a picture of the important agent who got in touch. However, at the meeting place, he notices a deputy resident (his immediate superior). The task of photographing the agent was not fully completed. According to strict GRU rules, Suvorov reports to all his superiors. A resident evacuates his deputy to the USSR, where the “conveyor” awaits him (a consequence of the GRU’s internal security service) and subsequent repressions, and the Suvorov, as the mission failed, sets up the surveillance. Despite the shock, the downcast Suvorov notices surveillance and realizes that he will also be expelled to the USSR, the investigation into the GRU and the unenviable future. Because he has long hated this System, he flees to the UK .

• Despite the detailed account of such a secret organization, the author was not able to reveal a single secret or secret of this organization; all surnames, people (with the exception of key figures), places - fictitious or changed. Even the place of his own service abroad was changed - in fact, the author worked in Geneva . He spoke about this in his numerous interviews, refuting accusations of divulging state secrets . The positions and military ranks of some high-ranking generals have also been changed.
• The plot, where mass recruitment takes place at an international exhibition, is taken from life. This happened at the Telecom-75 exhibition (Telecom 75, Geneva, Switzerland, October 2–10, 1975).
• The book mentions the case when the KGB "has a big holiday today - they stole a man." We are talking about Nikolai Fedorovich Artamonov, also known as Nicholas Shadrin ^[1] .
• The book mentions the Mytishchi Rocket Plant, in fact it is the Mytishchi Machine-Building Plant (MMZ, Metrovagonmash), which never built rockets, but was related to the production of other military equipment.
• The book describes the burning of a former GRU colonel. It is often assumed that this was Oleg Penkovsky . Suvorov does not mention the name of the officer anywhere, but in an interview stated that he did not know whether the film was real or fiction. However, GRU veterans claim that such a practice never existed in Soviet intelligence, and this whole episode is nothing more than Suvorov’s fiction. Perhaps this story originates from an article by Joseph Brodsky for The New Republic. Ernst the Unknown told this story to him, who, in turn, recognized it from one of the emigrating ministers of the crematorium, who had become an unwitting witness. According to this story, the condemned, gradually pushing into the furnace, was burned alive in the presence of a large group of GRU and PSU KGB officers. The process was filmed on film. A possible prototype of the legend is the death of the Bolshevik Sergey Lazo , who was allegedly burned in the furnace of a steam locomotive.
• The book describes professional special forces and undercover intelligence at the army level. In fact, according to other books of Suvorov himself, they existed at a level no lower than the military district. The distortion may be due to a similar change in his biography - in reality, Rezun began headquarters work in the district headquarters.

The book was first published in 1986 in English by Macmillan Publishers , entitled Inside the Aquarium: the making of a top Soviet spy . A year later - in 1987 - the book was published in Russian at the London-based emigre publishing house OPI ^[2] Former GRU employee Alexander Kadetov in his book “How Victor Suvorov betrayed Aquarium” states that Suvorov wrote together with a “team” of SIS authors and The book was published with the money of special services ^[3] .

In August 1991, excerpts from the Aquarium were published in the Literary Newspaper . There was a request from the editorial office of the GRU on the degree of reliability of the described events (unanswered) and a polemic on this topic in various publications. In the same year, the story was published in its entirety (for the first time in the USSR) in the literary journal Neva (No. 6-8), and soon Aquarium came out as a separate book (first edition: Democratic Russia ^[4] ) and literally flooded Russian books counters. GRU General Vitaly Nikolsky , arguing with Suvorov, whom he considers “a hoaxer” and “violent visionary,” notes that the publication of Aquarium in Russian “made a lot of noise” and became a bestseller for a long time ^[5] .

In Poland, the book was published in two million copies.

In the reviews of the first (English) publication, critics positively assess the dynamics of the plot in the spirit of the best espionage novels ^[6] , note that although the reliability of the factual statements presented in the book is doubtful, and the author is prone to exaggeration and escalation of mystery, the book creates psychologically convincing description of espionage everyday life, internal intrigues and rivalry between the GRU and the KGB ^{[7] [8]} . "Aquarium" was named the best of the first four books of Suvorov ^[8] .

The book was filmed in 1996 in Poland ^[9] . Screenwriter and director - A. Krause, starring actor - Yuri Smolsky. The author of the book, V. Suvorov (Rezun), appears in the film. There are some deviations from the original plot in the film.