MOSCOW RULES - THE RED ARMY SEIZES CONTROL OF U.S.S.R IN NEW THRILLER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504600004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: February 28, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504600004-6 '
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BOOKS
WASHINGTUN TIMES
28 January 1965
The Red Army Seizes Control
Of U.S.S.R. in New Thriller
obert Moss, co-
author with
Arnaud de Borch-
grave of the best-
selling "The
Spike" and l
"Monimbo" and
sole scribe of "Death Beam;' has
made a successful career out of
anti-communist thrillers. His new
novel, "Moscow Rules;' is the story
of a Soviet military officer whose
brilliant career in the service of
the Soviet Union's armed forces
both conceals and abets an almost
absurd plan: to initiate a coup and
take over the reins of government
in the Soviet Union.
Mr. Moss is well-equipped for
his profession. Before he took up
his novelist's pen, he was editor of
the Economist magazine's Foreign
Report, a newsletter about espi-
onage that was, during his tenure,
the most accurate source on intel-
ligence in the Western world. He is
one of the world's leading experts
on the KGB (he broke the story of
the Bulgarian connection in the
plot to assassinate John Paul II),
and knows Russia like the back of
his hand.
Well-equipped, perhaps; but
judging from his first three books,
not at all talented. 'Ib be sure, "The
Spike" created an international
sensation upon its release in 1980.
But that was more due to its con-
troversial roman a clef revelations
about the way Soviet intelligence
spreads disinformation through
the American press, and Wits,
charge that a certain progressive
Washington think tank was a
Soviet espionage front, than to its
qualities as a novel.
Those were nil; its preposterous
plot concerned a left-wing journal-
ist who sees the truth about the
Soviet Union, only to have his story
killed by his newspaper. There
were stopovers for a Jane Fonda
character brainwashed by the
KGB and a National Security
adviser who is actually a Soviet
agent. A political thriller must
present a wildly implausible plot
but present it in completely plau-
sible terms; it must make the unbe-
lievable believable. This "The
Spike" did not even attempt to do,
and so it wasn't even a good read.
His next two were perhaps even
worse; "Death Beam" is practi-
cally unreadable, while the unin-
tentionally hilarious "Monimbd"
piles up more bodies per page than
the entire fifth act of "Hamlet"
Both books had very short rides on
the best-seller lists, thus proving
that readers had caught on to the
problems of "The Spike" and were
unwilling to entertain much more
from Mr. Moss.
It would be unfortunate if the
same were to happen with "Mos-
cow Rules" Mr. Moss continues to
have major problems with his
similes: Someone is described as
"crowded behind his desk like a
racehorse confined in a narrow
stall;' while an old man's legs are
"loose and brittle, like a wounded
bird's" But despite the infelicities
of his prose, and his textbookish
narrative voice, Mr. Moss has
made a quantum leap as a thriller
writer, and a similar leap as a
novelist.
John Podhoretz is features edi-
tor and critic-at-large of The Wash-
ington Times.
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504600004-6
The pi ttir,i for the coup begins
,n the teen-age Sasha Preobra-
:c;! F:v is growing up in Moscow
:h? late 1950s, the son of a sol-
er',iwho died on the German front
:%J Xerld War 11. But then Sasha
iscn:ers that his father had not
Been killed defending Mother Rus-
sir., as Sasha had been told, but for
al tempting to save a German child
:.!'O n being molested by an intel-
ligence officer named Topchy.
Sasha decides to avenge his
father's murder. Topchy has
become a KGB colonel, and to get
to him Sa-sha must join the ranks
of the Soviet upper crust. But as
time goes on, Sasha realizes that
the problem is not specifically
Topchy, but the entire system. He
must infiltrate it, must become one
of its most effective players, and
then destroy it. -
But that will exact a price.
While they are at college, his lover,
Tatyana, begins hanging around
with a poet whom Sasha is forced
to denounce publicly as part of his
plan to rise in the estimation of the
Communist Party. He loses her
love, and she publicly protests the
poet's arrest. Sasha warns her that
she will be arrested if she keeps it
up, but she refuses his advice with
sneering contempt. She is, indeed,
arrested, and shipped off to Sibe-
ria, where she kills herself.
Sasha will continue to face the
same dilemma: Though his aim is
of utmost importance, how much
will he be forced to sacrifice for it?
How many evil acts will he have to
commit to stay on course?
He makes a loveless marriage
with the daughter of a powerful
general, and begins making the
contacts with others in the mili-
tary, the party, and the KGB to
make his plan work.
He also goes to New York to
work as a military intelligence
agent. There, in Bloomingdale's,
he finds himself face to face with
Thtyana's double, a beautiful young
New Yorker with whom he falls in
love. When the CIA cottons to the
affair, it decides to use Elaine for
its own purposes in an effort to get
Sasha to defect.
But Sasha leaves New York to go
back and serve in the military com-
mand. He volunteers for service in
Afghanistan, where he finds a
Soviet army frustrated and unable
to cope with the fanatical rebels.
But for Sasha, Afghanistan proves
a military coup d'etat could be
carried off today. It is convinc-
ing, entirely believable.
The question of believability
is essential because it is on the
rocks of reality that all too many
novels founder. If it has anything,
"Moscow Rules" has an immedi-
acy and a sense of the possible
that makes it almost prescient.
"Moscow Rules" tells the story I
of Alexander Sergeyovich
Preobrazhensky, a major general
in the Red army. "Sasha" to his,
friends, Preobrazhenslry is the
son-in-law and principal aide to
Marshal Alexei. Ivanovich Zotov,
chief of the general staff.
Preobrazhensky is a name
immediately familiar to students
of Russian history. Named for the
village in which Peter the Great
spent some time as a child, the
Preobrazhensky was the senior
guards infantry regiment of the
Imperial Russian Army. Mr.
Moss purposefully chose that
name for his protagonist.
"The name Preobrazhensky
has a heraldic ring to any Rus-
sian ear," he said. "As a regiment
created by the young Peter, its
officers, among other things, sat
in judgment of those accused of
corruption"
In "Moscow Rules;" Sasha too
sits in judgment on the fantas-
tically corrupt Soviet regime,
bound up as it is in a web of greed
and deceit that immobilizes the
leadership and extends into
every corner of the land.
"It's a strange thing to live in
my country," Sasha tells a friend.
"Ninety percent of what you are
told is a lie, but the lies are more
familiar than the truth, so it is the
truth that seems unbelievable.
"There's a permanent contra-
diction between what you see and
what you hear. People get along
by rejecting the evidence of
their own eyes. But the people
are suffocating. It's only the ones
at the top who can breathe."
Readers of Mr. Moss' earlier
novel "Death Beam" know him as
a writer intimately familiar with
the Soviet military-industrial
complex. As co-author, with
Arnaud De Borchgrave, of the
best-selling "The Spike" and
"Monimbo," Mr. Moss has proven
to be a stylist of fertile
imagination and abundant
descriptive talents.
He has something else, as
well: a deep understanding of the
Soviet system and the nature of
the men who run it.
A prize-winning Australian
journalist and former editor of
the influential intelligence bulle-
tin of The Economist, Mr. Moss
is well-known to American audi-
ences. He has written for several
U.S. publications, including The
New York Times Magazine,
National Review; Commentary,
and the New Republic.
The Soviets best remember
him, however, for his 'role in pre-
paring British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher's "Iron
Lady" speech in the late 1970s. It
earned him the undying enmity
of the Kremlin. An editorial in
Izvestia, the Sovietgovernment
newspaper, denounced him as "a
serious threat to detente."
Mr. Moss said, `Put yourself in
the skull of a middle-ranked Rus-
sian officer. Three leaders totter
and die: Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri
Andropov, and now the ill [Kon-
stantin] Chernenko, who can't
even manage to work his way
through a speech.
"What that middle-ranked
officer is viewing is the visible
decomposition of Communist
Party rule."
"The Communist system;' he
went on, "has been allowed to
transform itself into a corrupt,
baksheesh system. Yet while the
Western pundits talk about [heir
apparent Mikhail] Gorbachev,
the Soviet system has not even
begun to resolve the long-term
problem of transition lof politi-
cal power].
"It can't even cope with any of
the truly serious problems, such
as agricultural failures, and,
importantly Afghanistan"
If there is a turning point in
"Moscow Rules;' it is Sasha's vol-
untary posting to Afghanistan.
There, in the desolate, forbid-
ding mountains of that hard land
Sasha discovers firsthand the
disaffection and, ultimately, the
alienation of the Soviet officer
corps.
"The time will come," says a
character in "Moscow Rules;"
.'when the army, will have to
clean house."
The words - spoken tenta-
tively at first, then with greater
conviction and disdain - fire
Sasha's desire to rid his country
of the corrupt rule of the com-
missars.
"The situation in Afghanistan
is for the Soviet military leader-
ship reminiscent of how many
Americans felt about Vietnam,"
Mr. Moss said.
2
Continued
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504600004-6 13
The difference, he said, is that
in the Soviet Union the military
is not blamed by the people, who
until fairly recently were largely
unaware of the dimensions of the
problem or the cost it exacted in
Russian blood. The army is
viewed not as the molder of
policy, merely as its faithful
executor.
"The military has achieved a
great deal of power in Moscow,"
he said. "The question is, will it
be allowed to extend that power?"
Since the Bolsheviks over-
threw the Provisional Govern-
ment in October 1917 and
established the "dictatorship of
the proletariat," every Soviet
leader, including Lenin, has lived
in fear that the army one day
would turn on its masters.
It wasn't long before the_ fear
was realized.
On March 7, 1921, sailors in
the great naval fortress at Kron-
stadt in the Gulf of Finland rose
against the Bolsheviks. They
demanded that Lenin live up to
his promises and put an end to
Bolshevik political domination.
The Kronstadt Rebellion was
short-lived. Eleven days later,
forces loyal to the regime put it
down with enormous bloodshed.
In the late 1930s, Joseph Sta-
lin, fearing a-plot against him in
the-ranks of the army, ordered
virtually the entire officer corps
executed. The effect of that
ghastly episode was to bear bit-
ter fruit when Hitler's panzer
divisions crushed the Red army
in the sping of 1940 and swept to
the very gates of Moscow.
" Ibdav," Mr. Moss said, "West-
ern pundits say the army is too
controlled" by its political cad-
res to pose a threat to the regime.
"However, 'Moscow Rules' shows
one way the military could over-
throw the party and take control:
by using Spetsnaz."
Spetsnaz units are the Praeto-
rian Guard of the Red army.
"There are about 30,000 mem-
bers of Spetsnaz;' said Mr. Moss.
The name is an acronym for the
Russian words Special Oper-
ations.
Spetsnaz operates in four-man
teams specially trained for work
behind enemy lines. Officers and
men are fluent in the languages
political, and military leaders,
capture command and control
centers, and destroy strategic
installations such as airbases,
power plants and nuclear reac-
tors. "Spetnaz is not organized like
the Green Berets or the British
Special Air Service," Mr. Moss
said. "They generally are under
the orders of individual military
districts, or even regional com-
mands.
"They are ethnically segre-
gated, with every officer and
virtually all of the men being
Russian. Asa matter of fact, I've
never even heard of any Central
Asians or other nationalities in
heir: mission is to eliminate
Spetsnaz," he added. "There are
no Jews, no non-Byelorussians "
One could assume that their
loyalty to the regime would be
beyond reptoach, but that would
be delusory, Mr. Moss says. As he
seeks to show in his novel, noth-
ing in the Soviet Union is ever
what it appears to be.
"The highest tribute 'Moscow
Rules' could receive came from
an `ex-officer of the KGB, Mr.
Moss said. "He called this a
totally Russian novel.
"A summary of the book will
be routinely prepared by the
KGB and studied at the highest
levels. Beyond that, there are
men in large numbers in the offi-
cer corps who will read it avidly."
The book, it hardly bears men-
tioning, will not be available to
readers in the Soviet Union.
Mr. Moss is an expert on espi-
onage and terrorism, and lec-
tures widely at a number of
universities and NATO military
academies, including the Royal
College of Defense Studies. He is
well acquainted with many of the
most important Soviet bloc intel-
ligence defectors.
What he learned in those con-
versations over the years planted
the seeds for "Moscow Rules."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504600004-6