Viktor Suvorov: “Aquarium”

The work

The English edition, “Aquarium”, was published in June 1985 by Hamish Hamilton (249 pp., translated by David Floyd). The Polish Literary Bibliography lists the Polish translation from the Russian by Andrzej Mietkowski (Rebis, Poznań 2013) and classifies the book as Russian memoirs concerning Soviet intelligence in 1945–1985.^1,2

The book follows a young officer from his recruitment by a newly promoted general, through his GRU training, to his work in the rezidentura in Vienna, where the author rises from the lower group of officers to those who run operations. The “Aquarium” of the title is the GRU headquarters in Moscow.¹

The real background: the author

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe bibliography states that Viktor Suvorov is the pen name of Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun. According to RMF FM and PAP, he served in the Soviet Army and in GRU military intelligence; as a tank company commander he took part in the intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, graduated from the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, and in 1978 defected to the United Kingdom.^2,3

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesPAP (2014) notes that Suvorov has written more than a dozen books on recent Russian history, and that his books are particularly popular in Poland.⁴

What is accurate

The reviewer in the “London Review of Books” (1985) found the portrait of the GRU’s internal culture credible and vividly told. He drew attention to a difference the author describes: you do not apply to the GRU – the GRU chooses its candidates, unlike the KGB. Among the themes he listed were rivalry within the rezidentura, the emphasis on acquiring Western technology, and methods of recruitment.¹

The life story in the book – the training, taking part in the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia, the defection to the British – broadly matches what the media report about the author.^1,3

What raises doubts

The same reviewer wrote that the book reads like a spy novel, and that some scenes – for example, a film of a traitor being burned in a crematorium at GRU headquarters, shown to trainees – are hard to verify. He also felt that the reasons for the defection were not convincingly explained: the author gives two motives that do not fit the amorality he professes.¹

A defector’s memoirs are a one-sided source, published under a pen name and without documents; we know of no declassified GRU files that would allow them to be verified.