History of occurrence GORKA suit

Mountain Special Costume (GORKA)

Who has not heard the name "Gorka"? Variants of the name: a suit special for mountain units, a mountain costume, a storm / assault suit, a tarpaulin, just a mountain or Gorka, Gorka with indexes of models No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, etc., as well as various models called gorkas or above named mountain suit, now produced by many commercial companies. All this is strong, reliable, not blown by the wind and protecting suit from damp weather, equally well-proven in the conduct of military operations, settled down in the mountains, in forests, in fields and in the city, hunting, hiking, fishing and dachas. Initially developed for military purposes, GORKA became a classic suit for active daily activities.

History of adoption for armament

Usually, it is considered that the GORKA was developed and began to arrive in the army in 1981, and this was due to the 40th combined-arms army that was part of the limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. By that time, taking into account the experience of combat operations in the DRA, the organizational structure of the 40th OA was changed, when, under the directive GS-No. D-0314/3/00655, in each motorized rifle brigade and regiment on the basis of regular MSB, so-called mountain-rifle battalions, in which personnel passed a special, and as a rule, not too long, mountain training and received appropriate mountain uniforms and equipment.

However, very few people know that in fact the official terms of reference for the development of the "Gorka" (mountain special costume), as well as the development of suits for special purpose units (the so-called "mabuta" in the summer and winter versions and some other special products ), was received approximately in 1973/1974.

This was due to the fact that, in the mid-1960s, terrorist organizations were much more active than in the Middle East. There was an urgent need to create special staff structural units capable of meeting the challenges of combating international terrorism, including in the territories of the USSR.

The sharp emergence of left-wing political movements in 1968 led to the formation of numerous leftist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, seeking to use violence in the revolutionary struggle. Ideologically, terrorists focused on Marxism, Maoism, anarchism, Trotskyism and other leftist doctrines.

In place of ultra-left terrorism of the 60-70's. came ethnic and religious terrorism. These types of terrorism have developed due to abnormal, unhealthy, unjust political, socio-economic, national and other relations between the state and the individual, personality and personality. They generate a desire, through violence, to restore, in their opinion, justice, law, faith.

A serious push for various countries of the world, including for the USSR, to an urgent solution to this issue was a terrorist act, committed during the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, members of the terrorist Palestinian organization "Black September", whose victims were 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. One of the following olympiads was to be held in Moscow ...

If not for this fact, the Russians, as usual, "would have harnessed for a long time". However, the events in Munich led to the fact that on July 29, 1974, the Chairman of the KGB at the Council of Ministers of the USSR Yu.V. Andropov signed Order No. 0089 / OV on the change in the staff of the 7th Department and approval of the Regulation on Group A of the 5th Department of Management. The recruitment to the group was mainly carried out from the most prepared operational officers of the KGB of the USSR and servicemen of the Airborne Forces of the USSR Ministry of Defense.

The creation of this division of highly qualified specialists required not only the development of new methods for special training, but also completely new models of weapons and equipment that ensure maximum effectiveness of the tasks assigned, and since the KGB of the USSR had subordinate frontier troops with their structural tasks that are the same demanded special equipment, and despite the fact that the "working" relations with the GRU GSH were, as always, complicated by active internal competition - the moment of consolidation of "tasks and thoughts "as a result of a decision, which, special units, at different levels, and in different geographic locations, could comfortably carry out the assigned tasks. The time has come to resolve the issue of developing a regular "Spetsnaz Equipment".

In the light of the simultaneous consolidation of various competing agencies, additional assistance in the development of equipment and equipment, all the same, provided the experience of special units and units related to the Main Intelligence Agency (GRU GSH MO).

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Ministry of Defense of the USSR had up to 13 brigades of special forces. It was during this period that they began active combat work in a number of hot spots in the world, including in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. The strong presence of special forces was, of course, in the DRA, where the special forces came before the beginning of the introduction of troops ("Muslim battalion", storming the palace of Amin). As part of a limited Soviet contingent, by 1985, eight DPS units had been deployed in the DRA, which had been organisationally organized into two brigades.

Beginning from 1975/1976, the first experimental samples of the "mabuta", mountain costume and some other "special items" by limited parties began to arrive for test tests in the units of special purpose units of the GSh, the created group "A" and some operational groups of the Border Guard of the KGB of the USSR.

As a result, approximately by 1978/1979 the model of the mountain costume acquired a more or less complete form, which we see, for example, in the photographs about the war in Afghanistan.

And, by 1980/1981, the supply of mountain suits (which in addition had a woolen sweater (a shawl) and the same mask (pot)) as an independent type of equipment began to take on a relatively massive scale.

History of creation

Dear authors, unfortunately, without thinking that "something" is not born from "nothing", without trying to get to the bottom of historical pre-writings, they form a "history" in the whole Internet community completely far from the truth.

In the description of "Gorka" - the costume of mountain "egers", the word "anorak" is found everywhere - this is the key point in historical research.

"Anorak" is a long, knee-high, and often even lower jacket, "raincoat", one-piece, both behind and in front, with a large hood, in modern vision - comparable to a sleeping bag with sleeves, representing nothing but , as the field clothes of the extreme peoples of the north of Russia, and, later, the USSR and Russia, (the Yakuts, Khanty, Mansi, etc.) and the Finno-Ugric peoples of Western Europe, that is, the peoples' clothing of the central and extreme north. Some of the ethnic names of this outer clothing: Malitsa (80% sewed without a hood), Goose, Ghosh, etc.

Germany (not without Finland), with its pedantry, was actually one of the first, in about 1935/1938, to summarize the experience of building ethnic clothes for emergency situations, applying the concept of the cut of this garment, to the needs of providing separate units of regular troops. That, in the conditions of WWII, had a relatively massive nature of the supply of certain arms (mainly "SS" and the unit "mountain egers"). But it was not a primacy, but just an optimization of the ancestors' experience to the current time.

Why not us?

At this time (from 1935 and almost to 1941) in the USSR, once again, the "cleaning" of the party and "power" apparatus was actively going on. Realizing the inevitability of the conflict between the USSR and Germany, the top leadership of the USSR cleaned out any dissent, often sacrificing people with more progressive views and just those in whom it seemed a little doubtful that under the pressure of fear it would create a single, well-managed "organism," ready to self-sacrifice. In light of the signed "non-attack" pact between the USSR and Germany, the heads of the international affairs departments (now the Ministers of Foreign Affairs) Molotov and Ribentrop, the USSR received, albeit not for long, a delay in time, up to the time of Germany's attack. During this time, the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR faced several other tasks, and the development of new equipment for the armed forces was not the first one in these tasks, if we speak primitively, then the enemy had to use something from something and shoot something.

The whole "experience of ancestors", lying on the shelves, dusting, ripened, waiting for his time. This material base, little by little, was replenished with trophy samples of arms and equipment of all countries, regular units, and "volunteer" units, all nationalities drawn in WWII. Naturally, trophy samples of ethnic clothing and more convenient and practical form (equipment) of the enemy's regular troops, through rear services and other services, after WWII, became available, beginning with the average, to the highest command of the USSR. It was after WWII that in the minds of some military specialists the question of professional equipment and special armament of various combat arms began to arise. To the great regret, the result of solving this issue began to acquire material features only to the 70 / 80th years of the last century.

Why a jacket and not anorak?

There is a legend that when taking a mountain suit by a state commission (and these are people of high positions and usually elderly people), someone raised the question about the fact that when providing medical assistance when wounding an anorak jacket of a mountain suit, having one or several holes in many cases would be cut and came to complete disrepair, but just a jacket could be unbuttoned, later washed, mended and fought in it further. And despite the complication of the design, and therefore the cost of production, this option was adopted for service.