Cold War Russian Communications

For those interested in old communicaitons history. I received this from another group I belong to and it seemed interesting as all get out

Some months ago, someone asked if the Russians, during the Cold War era,
had an equivalent AUTODIN or Tape Relay system, such as what the US had.

The answer is most likely "no". My information is from some of the Order
of Battle Technicians (Warrant Officers) who used to know and study this
stuff when I was still on active duty.

Russian fixed-station commcenters were more or less a patchwork of
assorted networks and did not compare favorably to anything the US had.
Russian systems included in their networks, fixed-base teletype, civilian
landline teletype, miltary RATT, CW, voice radio, courier, cable and all
manner of tactical systems that were all integrated to form the "military
network". The Russians also used "WIREFOTO" which we called FAX, and
unlike the US, included FAX long before it became popular in either the US
military or civilian work places. FAX was never part of the US military
commcenter system during either the tape relay era, or during AUTODIN.

There was no known equivalent whatsoever to our AUTODIN system.

The Russians never used cards or mag tape, although it is known that
they experimented with cassette tapes in the early 70s to see if this
methodology could be adapted to their commo systems. The Russians
attempted to use burst communications, but no info as to whether they
were able to perfect this method.

The Russians had teletype machines. Most operated in what we called 3rd
Shift Cyrillic alphabets (don't worry -- you (we) can't read it). The nominal
TTY speed for the Russians was 60-66 wpm most of the time. The Russians
had some home-built equipment, and they also had a lot of US-license built
machines on the order of our older Model 15s and Model 19s which were
their mainstay machines throughout the Cold War. The license-built machines
dated from the 1920s and later (thru about the end of WW II).

Like the US military, the Russian military were prolific message makers;
traffic was often heavy on all of their circuits which were constantly backlogged.
The Russians used a precedence system, and they had a compartmented
classification system. No info on what their precedences were, but their
compartmented classified system mirrored the US system at the SCI level.

So far as everyone knows, the Russians didn't have extensive tape relay
centers, such as we knew them, but they did have message switches that
they referred to as "filter centers". These were manually operated message
clearing houses, rather than relays. Most Russian filter centers were more
like very large, multi-printer terminal stations with tape capability. Traffic
was very rarely relayed; it had to "read" first at one of the terminals by a
senior staffer (military officer) who then decided what traffic was to be
sent onward and to whom and when. Nothing was automatic. There are
no known equivalents to our Routing Indicator system, or Q and Z Signals.
Russian traffic was routed using "titles", similar to what our Western Union
message addressing system used. This is similar again to the US World War II
method of routing --- manual and slow. For a terminal operation, this is
fine, but again, does not lend itself well to rapid movements of high volumes
of traffic. Many Soviet military units relied on voice radio and especially
CW. The Russian Navy was very heavy into CW, and CW was almost an
exclusive in their submarine services. Coast stations, trawlers, fishing fleets,
spy fleets and surface ships (also) used the above mentioned teletypes.

Russian radio traffic was also routed using Call Signs, esp for ship and/or
tactical traffic. The Russian Navy did have a Fleet Broadcast capability
for their Navy and these operated on several different schedules and
frequencies using different modes of operation (TTY and CW). Aside from
Navy Fleet Broadcast, the non-navy fleets had their dedicated Fleet Broadcast
networks as well, also in TTY and CW (Odessa and Vladivostok Radio come
to mind; Vladivostok Radio is still active today and can be copied on HF SITOR
with a decent receiver, in the clear. It uses the Call Sign UFZ).

Side Note: The Russians also operated something very similar to our
MARSGRAM system for ships crews. These were generally via TTY and
could be copied in the clear. Like MARSGRAMS, these were Health and
Welfare messages, from families to ships company. We used to monitor
these at Field Station Berlin and simply logged them as "Grams"....

The Russians had 200%+ communications redundancy on all of their circuits,
compared to the US 50%. In other words, a single station had 3 or 4 circuits
in case one went out, so there was never an interuption in their comms.
Civilian circuits were often used as military circuits, when needed. Often,
Russian Signal Plans made provision for the use of all available circuits,
regardless of ownership. The military had authority over most non-military
links (or roads, or aircraft, etc).

Little information on online crypto. They did have at least one online system
that was very effective. It was really a manual system that was a mixer
of sorts. The Russians were heavy users of off line (manual) encryption
systems and they employed several different types of systems and equipments.
Their best known system was similar to our older vintage KW-9, which was
an online, rotor-based machine or "scrambler" of sorts.

There is no record of the Russians ever having anything that was the
equivalent of a KW-7 or a KW-26, or any equipment that had a synchronous
online random or key-generated capability (at least not until computers came
along). In that respect, the US and its allies were lightyears ahead of the
Russians and the Warsaw Pact forces.

The Russians were big users of "one time pads" for voice radio encryption
systems. They made extensive use of Brevity Codes, Shackle Codes and
their radio procedures closelly followed our older SOI and later CEOI methods.
The difference was that within the Russian military, communications
discipline among operators was nearly non-existent. Radio users and operators
were often careless, sloppy and generally ignored their own security
regulations and procedures. Net discipline was often non-existent in some
radio networks, and it was common to hear lower ranking Russian operators
talking about anything and everything not related to the ongoing operation... .
The exceptions were in their submarine services where running silent was
well known and understood to avoid detection.

In spite of Russian modernization, they often found it necessary to bring
along and integrate very old methods into their more modern systems. For
instance, nuke subs still communicated using CW as the primary commo
and messaging system as late as the 1980s. In their war in Afghanistan,
the Russians still relied on 66 wpm Model 15-licensed teletype machines for their
record message traffic, and all of their Afghan-era TTY circuits were purely
point to points operating via RATT. (These machines were probably Russian
Model designated T-63s or similar). Their crypto capability was largely
5 letter code groups using FALAGA or similar off line crypto (not to be
confused with later model GOST or MK-85 cipher devices). By the way,
the MK-85, the newest Russian cryptos -- still produced a machine-generated
5-letter code group (up to 750 letters at a time), and this is a solid-state
computerized device. The security of the 5-letter offline encrypted algorithm
is that it is 100% secure and often can't be broken even by modern-day
computers).

More later. Anyone having any new information on the Russian messaging
systems, especially the CommCenter or RATT traffic, please feel free to
send it. Much more to write about on the subject. This is only a small
part of what is known.....