Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  And we meant it. For here was a country whose state religion was no religion, a country responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people during the twentieth century, a country that had subjugated most of its continent to a godless tyranny, a country from which my Orthodox Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents had been fortunate enough to escape, but in doing so had left behind millions of other Jews and Christians who went on to suffer some of the worst religious persecution in the history of mankind. Yet as tempting as it was to curse the Soviets for all the evil they had done, as followers of Christ we could not. For in Matthew 5:43-44, Jesus said plainly, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (NASB).

  As best we could, we endeavored to obey those words, praying for that totalitarian system to come crashing down and for the gospel to go pouring in. What we did not realize was just how quickly those prayers would be answered.

  By the time I finally returned to Moscow in the late summer of 2004, everything had changed. The Evil Empire had collapsed. The Soviet Union was gone. An entirely new era was under way. But somehow, the riddle that is Russia remained.

  There is no doubt that Russians became significantly freer after the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time on Christmas Day 1991, and nowhere was this more evident than in the religious life of the country. Where once it had been illegal for me to share my faith in Christ, in 2004 I was able to speak publicly in one of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in Russia. And far from it being illegal to distribute God’s Word in Russia, I could now see that Bibles and other Christian literature were pouring in from around the world, as well as being legally printed inside Russia’s borders. Indeed, between 1992 and 2002, Josh McDowell—himself an atheist turned evangelist—and his team distributed nearly 20 million Bibles and Christian books inside the former Soviet Union through his ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ.125

  But the more time I spent in Moscow, the clearer it became that the tide of freedom was going out. The remarkable season of political, economic, and religious freedom that had begun with Boris Yeltsin’s courageous insistence on free markets and free elections was systematically coming to an end under the reign of Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin. And the West seemed unwilling or unable to do anything about it or to see its prophetic implications.

  THE GATHERING STORM

  On Wednesday, September 1, 2004, my father and I were in Moscow, doing research for The Ezekiel Option. At that point I had written roughly two-thirds of the novel. The opening chapter began with Chechen terrorists hijacking a Russian jetliner.

  As it turned out, truth ended up being stranger than fiction—a common theme in my life since starting to write these books.

  From my hotel room a few blocks from the Kremlin, I posted an item to my weblog detailing some of the events taking place around us:

  Three days before we left Washington for Moscow, Chechen terrorists blew up two Russian jetliners, killing 90 innocent civilians.

  Last night—exactly one week to the day after the airplane attacks—a female Chechen suicide bomber blew herself up at a subway station just blocks from our hotel, killing at least 10 and wounding 50 more.

  Today, Chechen terrorists have seized a school in southern Russia and at the time I write this are holding over 400 Russians as hostage, including hundreds of school children. Security has been dramatically heightened here in the country’s capital, as well as around the country.

  No one knew at that time how long the wave of terror would last. The question on everyone’s mind was whether Russian president Vladimir Putin was up to the job of defending his country.

  [Putin] won reelection with a Sovietesque 71% of the vote. He has thrown political opponents in jail, driven them into exile or frightened them into silence. He has essentially banned negative stories about him on national television. The latest story in the Moscow Times this morning: a small newspaper with a circulation of 10,000 is being threatened to be shut down by the Kremlin for running stories critical of Putin.

  The image Putin has tried to cast is one of stability. Elect me and I will be tough—tough on the terrorists, tough on the billionaire oligarchs, tough on the Russian mafia. Yes, I will take away your freedoms and ignore the democratic reformers. But you need me because I will keep Russia from falling apart. But in talks with leading political analysts here . . . we hear again and again a common theme: was the deal the people made with Putin so wise?

  Personal freedoms are evaporating. Putin is centralizing all power to himself. He is becoming a new Czar for a new Russia.126

  Thirteen days after I posted this item on my weblog, Putin stunned the world by further centralizing power, using the pretext of the terrorist attacks to unveil plans for a “radically restructured” political system in which direct elections of the nation’s eighty-nine regional governors would end and he would appoint those governors instead.

  “Under current conditions, the system of executive power in the country should not just be adapted to operating in crisis situations, but should be radically restructured in order to strengthen the unity of the country and prevent further crises,” Putin said in a nationally televised meeting in the Kremlin. “Those who inspire, organize, and carry out terrorist acts seek to bring about a disintegration of the country, to break up the state, to ruin Russia.”127

  Criticism of the brazen power grab was quick and severe.

  “It’s the beginning of a constitutional coup d’etat,” said Sergei Mitrokhin of Russia’s pro-democracy Yabloko Party. “It’s a step toward dictatorship. . . . These measures don’t have anything to do with the fight against terrorism.”128

  Viktor Pokhmelkin, another pro-democracy member of the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament), called Putin’s plan evidence of the restoration of “imperial management” and warned, “Today a very serious mistake has been made. The mistake is a threat to the future of the Russian state.”129

  Vladimir Tikhonov, the governor of Russia’s Ivanovo region, blasted Putin’s plan as “undemocratic and unconstitutional.”130

  Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the plan “a step back from democracy” and warned that “under the motto of war on terror” Putin was “sharply limiting democratic freedoms” and “citizens are [being] stripped of the opportunity to directly express their attitude toward the government.”131

  Even former president Boris Yeltsin—the man who put Putin in office—cautioned, “We should not allow ourselves to step away from the letter or the spirit of a constitution that the country adopted in a national referendum. . . . The strangling of freedoms, the rollback of democratic rights—this can only mean that the terrorists won.”132

  Not that such criticism had any effect. Putin’s plan was soon passed by the parliament, two-thirds of whose members were already controlled by the Kremlin.133

  And Putin was only getting started.

  In October the Washington Post reported that the ex-Soviet republic of Belarus had “held a referendum on making strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who already has agreed to reunite his country with Russia, the equivalent of president-for-life. An exit poll conducted by the Gallup Organization showed that the proposition failed. But when Belarusan authorities announced it had passed with 77 percent of the vote, Russia pronounced the vote free and fair.”134

  Meanwhile, in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, Putin aggressively backed Viktor Yanukovych, a close friend of the Kremlin, to be the country’s next president and prime minister against pro-democracy candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Putin repeatedly praised Yanukovych. He traveled to Ukraine twice to campaign for him. Russian state television gave Yanukovych glowing coverage, all of which could be seen by neighboring Ukrainians. Russia even “supplied half of the $600 million that Yanukovych is spending on his campaign—including a $200 million payment from the Kremlin-c
ontrolled energy giant Gazprom,” the Washington Post reported.

  “In return,” the Post’s account continued, “Yanukovych promised Putin at their last meeting that he would end Ukraine’s policy of seeking membership in NATO, promote an open border and dual citizenship for Russians and Ukrainians, make Russian the country’s second official language, and subordinate Ukraine’s bid for membership in the World Trade Organization to the requirements of forming the ‘single economic space,’ the Putin initiative to create a new union with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.”135

  By November the vastly underfunded Yushchenko—who was mysteriously poisoned during the campaign, terribly disfiguring his previously telegenic face—had fought Putin’s handpicked man to a draw. But Putin publicly opposed a runoff, summarily declared Yanukovych the winner, and demanded that the West not interfere. The gambit backfired—sparking what became known as the Orange Revolution as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to demand a free and fair runoff. In the end, the election was settled fairly, with Yushchenko the eventual winner, but Putin’s plans to rebuild the Russian empire piece by piece had been exposed.136

  By year’s end, the question of “Where is Russia going?” was becoming clearer—and more disturbing. On Friday, December 3, 2004, as I put the finishing touches on The Ezekiel Option, I posted the following item on my weblog:

  In September I was in Russia for ten days doing research for my next novel. I met with a senior member of the State Duma (legislature), senior officials at the U.S. Embassy, leading Russian political analysts, and the New York Times’ Moscow bureau chief and an economic reporter for the Times.

  To each one, I tossed out a possible scenario: a fascist, ultra-nationalist coup in Moscow leads to the assassination of the democratically elected leader of Russia and leaves a nuclear-armed dictator in power itching for a dangerous new confrontation with the West. One by one, each told me there was no need for a coup; the dictator is already in place. And so he is.

  Over the past eighteen months or so, Vladimir Putin has steadily turned the clock back on Russian democracy, centralizing power back in the Kremlin and slowly morphing himself into an all-powerful Czar.

  He has nationalized Russian television networks; thrown political opponents in prison on suspect charges; all but threatened to seize and nationalize one of Russia’s largest petroleum companies; announced Russia’s governors will no longer be popularly elected but rather appointed by the Kremlin; and steadfastly supported a presidential candidate in Ukraine even after international observers protested the candidate was trying to steal the election.

  Meanwhile, Putin is selling nuclear power plants, fuel, and technology to Iran—the most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism on the planet—has announced a 40% increase in the Russian military budget, and just announced the development of a new class of Russian strategic nuclear missiles.

  “We are not only conducting research and successful testing of the newest nuclear missile systems,” Putin told commanders at the Ministry of Defense, according to the New York Times (11/17/04). “I am certain that in the immediate years to come we will be armed with them. These are such developments and such systems that other nuclear states do not have and will not have in the immediate years to come.”

  The Times added that the Russian military “is widely reported to have been trying to perfect land- and sea-based ballistic missiles with warheads that could elude a missile-defense system like the one being constructed by the Bush administration.”

  Which brings us to today.

  During a speech in India, Putin lashed out at Washington, accusing the Bush administration of seeking a “dictatorship of international affairs.

  “Even if dictatorship is wrapped up in a beautiful package of pseudo-democratic phraseology, it will not be in a position to solve systemic problems,” Putin said in New Delhi.

  Dictatorship?

  To be sure, the situation in Russia isn’t nearly as bad today as it was during the Cold War. And Putin has done some things right; he has, for example, been supportive of U.S. efforts in the war on terror; has permitted U.S. and NATO planes to fly over Russian territory to support war efforts in Afghanistan; opposed but didn’t directly attempt to block the U.S.-led war against Iraq; and his 13% flat tax plan, among other pro-market economic reforms, has, in fact, helped the Russian economy grow significantly in recent years and attract U.S. and Western foreign investment and companies.

  That said, however, the trend lines are disturbing. Russia is lurching back in the wrong direction. Putin is a dictator in the making.137

  I was not alone in these assessments. A growing number of journalists, editorial boards, and Kremlin watchers both inside and outside Russia were connecting the same dots as I was. And they continue to do so, if the following headlines are any guide:

  CZAR VLADIMIR

  Boston Globe, September 15, 2004

  IS RUSSIA GOING BACKWARD?

  Commentary, October 2004

  IS DEMOCRACY RUSSIA’S FUTURE? PUTIN AGAIN RAISES DOUBTS

  USA Today, November 29, 2004

  PUTIN SETS RUSSIA ON FASCIST PATH

  Omaha Herald, December 16, 2004

  RUSSIA’S DOWNHILL SLIDE TO DICTATORSHIP: PUTIN’S REGIME PARALLELS WEIMAR GERMANY

  Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2005

  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK A CONFIDENT KREMLIN IS THROWING ITS WEIGHT AROUND.

  Newsweek, January 30, 2006

  RUSSIA’S PUTIN RECLAIMING DOMINANT ROLE IN FORMER SOVIET UNION

  Associated Press, March 20, 2006

  PUTIN IN HIS OWN WORDS

  Vladimir Putin was trained by the KGB and at one time was Russia’s top spy, yet surprisingly he has not been secretive about his long-term objectives or his strategies for achieving them. To the contrary, he has been quite candid, for those who are watching closely and listening carefully.

  In 1999, for example, Reuters ran the following headline: “Russian Premier Vows to Rebuild Military Might.” Putin, then prime minister under Yeltsin, had just delivered a speech declaring that “the government has undertaken to rebuild and strengthen the military might of the state to respond to the new geopolitical realities, both external and internal threats.” He focused special attention on “new threats [that] have emerged on our southern frontiers.” Putin also announced a 57 percent increase in military spending in the year 2000.138

  No sooner had Yeltsin stepped down than Putin repeated the vow to rebuild his country’s badly withered military machine. “Our country Russia was a great, powerful, strong state,” he declared in January 2000, “and it is clear that this is not possible if we do not have strong armed forces, powerful armed forces.”139

  Putin has kept his word. Consider 2004.

  In January Putin ordered the largest maneuvers of Russian nuclear forces in two decades, scrambling strategic bombers, launching cruise missiles, test-firing ballistic missiles, and sending new spy satellites into orbit, in what analysts described as “an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.”140

  In February Putin insisted that Russia “does not have and cannot have aggressive objectives of imperial ambitions.” Yet he ordered dramatic improvements in the Russian military to achieve a more “combat-capable army and navy,” causing one of China’s leading dailies to worry about “the resurrection of the Russian military.”141

  In August Putin ordered a 40 percent increase in Russia’s defense budget, including new fighter aircraft, new rockets, and two new army divisions.142

  In December, as the election crisis in Ukraine was still unfolding, Putin ordered the test launch of a Cold War–era Russian intercontinental ballistic missile known as the SS-18 Satan, the first time the Russians had fired such a missile since the Soviet Union collapsed.143

  With the rebuilding of Russia’s conventional military and strategic nuclear-missile forces under way, Vladimir Putin then delivered a speech on April 25, 2005, that I believe ranks as the most dangerous presid
ential address of our times.

  “First and foremost,” he declared, “it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.”

  Putin went on to argue that since the threat to Russia from terrorism was “still very strong,” the Kremlin must be strong to eradicate such terror. “The moment we display weakness or spinelessness, our losses will be immeasurably greater.” Then he insisted that Russia should remain “connected” to “the former republics of the USSR.” He argued that Russia and her neighbors have “a single historical destiny” together and said he wants to “synchronize the pace and parameters of [the] reform processes” in Russia and those former Soviet republics.144

  Consider for a moment what such a speech says about the lenses through which the leader of Russia views his country and the world. When Vladimir Putin looks out over the vast expanse of the twentieth century, he is not primarily concerned with the 20 million people who perished under Stalin’s reign of terror. Or the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler. Or the 3 million who died in the killing fields of Cambodia under Pol Pot. Rather, he believes that the disintegration of the Evil Empire ranks as the “greatest political catastrophe of the century” and that its reintegration and synchronization is a matter of “historical destiny.”

  Such fondness for an empire so murderous and cruel would be chilling if it were voiced by the leader of any country possessing 10,000 nuclear warheads. But it is particularly chilling coming from the leader of Russia, a country described in the Scriptures as having expansionist ambitions in the last days.