About Systema

We welcome you on our site. Probably you are here because of your interest in Martial Arts or Martial Art in general.

As you know Russia took part in different wars and conflicts for thousands of years and during the centuries evolved its own unique style of hand-to-hand combat. Big group of Russian warriors were known as cossacks. They formed elite of Russian Army for centuries. Among the cossacks there were groups that stayed separately from the rest. Those groups formed what  now is called Specnaz and were mainly involved in borders protection, special missions and high ranks body-guarding. They developed combat techniques for centueies and kept them in their families. After Soviet revolution many cossacks were destroyed because of their loyalty to the Tsar and Russian Orthodoxy. During the Second World War there were many cossacks divisions. After the war most of them were sent to Siberia and short dead because were considered as a thread to the government. During the Cold War Soviet Government decided to develop military combat that would be very efficient and fast to learn. So special group of specialists were brought together to study existing styles and at that time they put a lot of effort to find people with knowledge of cossacks` hand-to-hand combat. A. Kadochnikov was in charge of several years of intense work with thousands people involved. Lots of experiments and research in specially created laboratories and institutes were done. Millions of soviet rubbles were spent. As result they got product that got well-known name - SYSTEMA Kadochnikova. SYSTEMA Kadochnikova proudly stays in line with other great achievements of Soviet Era such as world-wide known Kalashnikov`s machine gun AK-47, Airplane MIG, Battle Tank T-134 just mention a few. In 1980` SYSTEMA was first introduced to KGB and some other special units. It got the name KGB`s secret weapon and was kept in secret until the collapse of Soviet Union. In 1990`s it was revealed to public by former KGB and military personal. At the moment there are a lot of Russian Styles based on SYSTEMA. Most of these styles derive directly from Kadochnikov`s students and their followers.