Hello!

I have a rather unusual question. I hope this is the right sub for this question, I'm sorry if not.

Today something came to mind that I would finally like to come to terms with.

My father was born in the soviet union and after university he had to go to the military. Because of seemingly exceptional capabilities he was put into a speznas unit, unfortunately I don't know which one specifically. I do know though that they were about 30 people stationed in Georgia near the border to Turkey in the mid-late 80's with the objective to storm and secure the nearest nuclear missile base in case the cold war turned hot.

But while my father never faced combat, a conversation my sister had with him suggests he may have killed somebody in his life. Now this could of course either have been after his time in the military or not true at all. But she asked him directly if he ever killed somebody and he answered: "Let's not talk about this", which kinda doesn't seem like an answer a person would give that never killed anybody.

So the most logical scenario that I can think of in which he might have killed someone during his time in the red army would be something like a psychological test or training to ensure that the soldier in question is obedient and will kill on command, no questions asked.

Seeing that many soldiers in wars shoot without proper aiming because deep-down most humans don't want to harm or especially kill other human beings, this must be surely known to people in charge of training soldiers, especially those in special forces. And given the objective of securing a nuclear missile base to prevent nuclear weapons being fired all over the USSR it seems like a pretty big deal to me, not that I have any military training or knowledge myself, mind you.

But it seems logical that if this is what you're there for, if this is what you train for, then there is absolutely no room for error or hesitation. Hence I can imagine that there could've been some kind of psychological test or something that ensures the soldier will indeed kill without hesitation.

Now this implicates the execution of a most likely unarmed and defenseless person, because as I stated, he wasn't deployed to combat. Killing another soldier in war is of course also bad, but definetly something else than the scenario I described. I don't like my father either way, but somehow I can't find peace with this shit, because I know my father is definetly capable of killing someone, and also willing to under the right circumstances.

Does anybody of you happen to know specifics of the soviet speznas units and their training, especially regarding such methods? Or do you know of similar methods in other armies/special forces/paramilitaries, etc?

I apologize for this rather unpleasant question and the long post, but I thought it was necessary to lay it out more precisely than to keep it short. You would help me greatly with settling an inner conflict of rationally knowing he absolutely could have done it, but emotionally not wanting to accept it.

So I would like to thank anyone who could share some insight, point me in a direction to research, etc. I appreciate your help greatly.

Thank you and I hope you all have a more pleasant day than I had.