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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)

KGB: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
- Drawing Conclusions

By: Sergei Grigoriants
Source: Independent Information Centre "Glasnost", www.glasnostonline.org

The epoch of "perestroika" in the USSR began with Andropov’s coming to power and his famous statement: "If we fail to improve the situation within three years, the catastrophe is unavoidable", and finished with Putin’s coming to power and re-establishment of the memorial plaque in Lubyanka and the imposition of a circlet of flowers to the secret monument of Andropov in the Lubyansky yard. Communist ideology has, as Andropov envisioned, been exchanged for a nationalist one; and FSB officers as well as the officers of other former KGB departments are not just controlling, but are now governing, the country.

For the last eight years the Glasnost Foundation has been the only organization that has been warning about the high probability of such a consequence. Unfortunately, we were right.

Today, when doubts no longer remain, two questions must be answered: First, are all the events that have occurred in Russia the result of a thoroughly elaborated plot to seize power in Russia? Was this plot directed against the power of the Soviet Communist Party as well as against Russian people longing for freedom and prosperity, not for KGB power? Did this plot include the systematic murders of those who opposed its implementation: democrats like Andrei Sakharov; Christians like Alexander Men; and even military like General Rokhlin? Or is everything that has happened over the last fourteen years simply the natural consequence of the coming to power of the most active and viable segment of Russia’s population – the officers of the secret services and henchmen of the criminal world?

The second question is easier to formulate: What has Russia got from the coming to power of the officers of the secret services, and what does this portend for the future of Russia, its neighbours and the entire world?

We are not yet ready to venture an answer to the first question: Too many special investigations and analyses of a huge mountain of secret and even destroyed materials must be pursued. It seems it will be impossible to answer this question in the near future. Moreover, this question must be formulated in another way: How have Andropov’s goals and the first steps of his companions in 1986-91 (in particular, Mikhail Gorbachov) pre-determined today’s "perestroika" outcome in Russia? And to what extent was this process spontaneous, a natural result of developing social relationships and real possibilities of social groups in Russia? The late 1980s, treated by some people as a "romantic" period, are remembered as the time of confrontation of democrats and communists.

But in reality at least five groups should be mentioned: The most numerous of them was the one consisting of people who had not adjusted to the changes and were in despair. But three of them were longing for changes. These were the liberals from the communist party and eurocommunists that saw Russia’s future in her past and believed that Russia would again manage to catch up with her European neighbours. Somewhere in the outskirts of power there was a small number of dissidents that had been released from prisons and who naively believed that they had won and appeared with triumph in the clubs "Perestroika" and magazine "XX century and the world" specially organised for them by the KGB.

But the most active was, of course, another segment of authority and the public. Glasnost Magazine had a really difficult relationship with them. The fact is that Glasnost Magazine did not share the illusions of victory inspired in the dissidents by the KGB; and that was the reason why there were several attempts between 1987 and 1993 to buy or destroy the magazine. The attempts to destroy need no elaboration – the secret service totally demolished Glasnost’s offices in 1988, 1992, and 1993, which forced us to start everything again from scratch. There were some attempts to "reason" with us, as in 1988 when I was forced into a car near our editorial office (Kirill Popov’s flat) and was brought to a police station where two "historians" (as they were introduced) tried to persuade me for several hours: "Why don’t you want to talk to us? We are doing the same thing as you – the Party has assigned us to make our country democratic".

But I knew precisely that we were pursuing different goals from that most active sector of the authorities, for which the slogan "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals" meant the Urals which had reached the Atlantic. They were building a broad railway all these years through Finland to Sweden, and under the guise of "new thinking" they were constructing more atomic submarines than the rest of the world put together. They were transferring billions of dollars abroad: the golden storehouse of the USSR and the money of the Communist Party, the KGB, and the Communist Union of Youth. At the meeting of secret service heads of the Warsaw Pact countries, they planned what positions in the governments would be given to "democrats" so they would discredit themselves and bring people’s discontent. They really were doing things we were opposed to, and it seems they have succeeded.

That is, we know partially the answer to the question how it started, but we don’t clearly understand what came later: Was control over the administration of "perestroika" lost; was the chaos with Yeltsin in power spontaneous or foremanaged; and did GKChP (August 1991 putsch) fight against or, on the contrary, aid Yeltsin? Were the secret services totally demoralized in the middle of the 1990s, as former KGB General Kalugin writes; or was a small part of them not just biding their time, but actively laying the groundwork for it?

The answers to these questions will be heard during our conference; but the second question seems to be an easier one, and I’ll try to answer it to some degree.

No man or social group can give to others more than he possesses and cannot do for himself or for society anything other than what he knows and has got used to. That is why what we’ve got from Putin, Ivanov, and Cherkesov is quite natural. It is the monopolization of the press, the increase of censorship, the interception of telephone calls and the internet, and the fabrication of espionage affairs and criminal cases. But the main thing is their intention to stabilize and legitimize their dictatorship with the help of a revamped Constitution and new quite anti-democratic laws for those instances where the secret services do not want or cannot adjust present laws to their needs.

The seizure of power and of all property in Russia is the main goal of the present leadership. But this process is proceeding simultaneously with the fight against a very weak Russian civil society: the banning of old non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the denial of registration for new ones; a decree on illegal control over NGO budgets established by Putin, intrusions into NGOs’ offices, mainly in the provinces, but also in Moscow – such as Greenpeace and Glasnost Foundation this year – the infiltration of secret service agents into old NGOs and creation of new ones with "their" people. This is a set of actions very familiar to all of us from Soviet times, but it has undergone changes and has adjusted to the new realities.

The characteristic feature of the new regime is an unconcealed defiance that can be justified by our silence, and that is based on the primeval scorn of KGB officers towards the citizen. Today this defiance has come out of the closet and was acknowledged by Gleb Pavlovsky (Kremlin ideologist) in his classical phrase: "People will gorge themselves on everything", and in the ironic smile of Putin broadcast around the world: "What’s happened to your submarine?" "Nothing has happened. It’s sunk." And a smile, behind which are today’s Kremlin and Lubyanka.

But of course there is some injustice in this generalization. Russia is a large country and the secret services are large and quite varied – different people have worked and are still working in them. In fact, we would have chosen between KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Putin and KGB General Primakov, had General Rokhlin not been assassinated. It means that we were to have a choice in who came to power between those in the secret services who were prepared to go to any lengths – to unleash a war in which thousands of people would be killed, and even to blow up apartment houses in their own capital – and those who were not ready to go to such lengths.

Unfortunately, the first-mentioned, precisely because they are prepared to do anything, have come to power. Sooner or later, after another revision of property and power, another sharp confrontation between the secret services and society will begin. I am afraid this is our unavoidable future.

I remember I mentioned in one article that they had allowed the monument to Dzerzhinsky to be demolished to avoid being lynched by the crowd that had rushed to Lubyanka. "You need not have worried about us, Sergei Ivanovich", KGB General Kandaurov told me after publication of that article in "Izvestia" newspaper. "We had enough machine guns to meet them." And once again the historic relationship between the secret services and the people is being re-established.

But there is another aspect of this question: What are the consequences for the rest of the world of the coming to power of the secret services in Russia under the conditions of globalization and the information revolution?

An aggressive and fully militarized internal and foreign policy, like the battle against civil society, has been the modus operandi for Andropov’s successors. It is easy to identify in Putin’s interest in Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea. This is the creation of two polar worlds, according to Putin. And we are in the pole with the dictators and terrorists. In fact, virtually everyone in power nowadays is in the military. The General Staff headed by General Kvashnin, which is increasing its influence, is the most aggressive segment of military authority.

The policy of peaceful development and co-operation demands such skills and professionalism as the present Russian leaders do not have. It’s clear that the Russian economy in its present poor state is doomed to militarization rather than to liberal development. To combine military dictatorship with a liberal economy like General Pinochet’s regime, we need one important thing. Accept this doubtful example: The absolute honesty of generals and the lack of personal interest in profits like those who went to work by tram during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Russia they will govern the country’s economy and it will be similar to Stroessner’s junta in Paraguay, with all its catastrophic consequences for the economy, the nation, and the country.

It seems that under the conditions of dictatorship, militarization, and poor economy, the new Russian authorities will need not only censorship, but also an attempt to isolate Russia from the rest of the world for political and economic reasons. Censorship, as well as the creation of private – but in reality, state – media holdings to replace the television channels and newspapers of Gusinsky and Berezovsky, is now a reality.

How this attempt will be undertaken with all our present means of communication and complex economic relationships, how they will fight against the new Russian generation that will surely oppose them, is hard to say right now; but I am afraid this is what we are facing.

Anyway, Russia is about to be subjected to another social experiment. It is certainly very interesting but not at all humorous.

Thank you for your attention.

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