The Compatriots

by Andrei Soldatov

  5. Kremlin, “President Vladimir Putin Met with Representatives of the Media and State Duma Deputies,” November 25, 2002, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/27753.

  6. Kremlin, full transcript of Putin’s angry remarks, November 25, 2002, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21788.

  7. PBS, “Commanding Heights: Boris Jordan,” https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/pdf/int_borisjordan.pdf.

  8. Authors’ conversations with Kara-Murza Jr.

  CHAPTER 24: COURTING THE WHITE CHURCH

  1. Berel Lazar is the chairman of the Confederation of Jewish Communities of Russia.

  2. Andrei Kolesnikov, “K nim priekhal, k nim priekhal Vladimir Vladimirich dorogoy” [To them came Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich], Kommersant, November 15, 2001, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/292187.

  3. CNN, “Transcript: Bush, Putin News Conference,” June 18, 2001, http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/18/bush.putin.transcript/index.html.

  4. Gregory L. Freeze, “Russian Orthodoxy and Politics in the Putin Era,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 9, 2017, https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/02/09/russian-orthodoxy-and-politics-in-putin-era-pub-67959.

  5. Kremlin, “Gosudarstvenny visit v Soedinennie Shati Ameriki” [State visit to the United States of America], November 7–16, 2001, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/trips/45476.

  6. Authors’ conversation with Boris Jordan, December 2018.

  7. In the conversation with the authors, Jordan claimed that it was he who raised the topic of reunification, not Putin.

  8. Sophia Kishkovsky, “2 Russian Churches, Split by War, Reuniting,” New York Times, May 17, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/world/europe/17russia.html.

  CHAPTER 25: REUNION

  1. Authors’ conversation with Sophia Kishkovsky, who was raised in Sea Cliff. See Lois Morton, “A Village Tinged with Old Russia,” New York Times, April 10, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/10/archives/long-island-weekly-a-village-tinged-with-old-russia-in-sea-cliff.html.

  2. Authors’ conversation with Boris Jordan.

  3. Hanna Kozlowska, “As the American UN Delegation Moves Out of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Putin Books a Suite,” https://qz.com/497342/as-the-american-un-delegation-moves-out-of-the-waldorf-astoria-hotel-putin-books-a-suite/.

  4. “Vladimir Putin dorozhit vtorim mestom” [Vladimir Putin praises the second place], Kommersant, September 29, 2003, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/414468.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Holodny, November 2018. Holodny claimed he picked up a blue cassock purely by chance.

  6. “Putin rasporyadilsa postavit v Moskve Pamyatnik Andropovu” [Putin ordered to erect a monument to Andropov in Moscow], Lenta, October 6, 2003, https://lenta.ru/news/2003/10/06/monument/.

  7. Kishkovsky, “2 Russian Churches.”

  8. We documented this process in our book, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010).

  9. “Vstrecha delegatsii ot Russkoy Zarubezhnoy Tserkvi s Patriarkhom Moskovskim i vseya Rusi Aleksiem i chlenami Sinoda RPTs MP” [The meeting of the delegation of the Russian Church Abroad with the Moscow and all Russia’s Patriarch Alexei, and with the members of Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church], Vestnik Germanskoy Eparkhii Russkoy Pravoslavnoy Tservki za Granitsey, December 3, 2003, http://ruskline.ru/monitoring_smi/2003/12/03/vstrecha_delegacii_ot_russkoj_zarubezhnoj_cerkvi_s_patriarhom_moskovskim_i_vseya_rusi_aleksiem_i_chlenami_sinoda_rpc_mp/.

  10. Authors’ conversation with Kiselev.

  11. The mastermind of Klebnikov’s assassination was never identified.

  12. Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser, “American Optimist Mourned in Moscow,” Washington Post, July 15, 2004, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/07/15/american-optimist-mourned-in-moscow/c2076f2a-a86d-4701-b355-406a9959c297/.

  13. Authors’ email exchange with Musa Klebnikov, widow of Paul.

  14. Authors’ email exchange with Musa Klebnikov, widow of Paul.

  15. Officially titled “IV All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia of the Clergy and Laity.”

  16. The remains of Anton Denikin, the commander in chief of the White army, along with the remains of Ivan Ilyin, a chief ideologue of the White army in exile, were transferred to Moscow in October 2005 and given a full-honor military funeral in the Moscow Donskoy monastery.

  17. Authors’ conversation with Boris Jordan.

  18. We documented this process in our 2010 book, The New Nobility.

  19. “Putin otkryl v Krimy pamyatnik, Chto s nim ne tak” [Putin opened a monument in Crimea: What’s wrong with it], Korrespondent.net, November 20, 2017, https://korrespondent.net/ukraine/events/3908485-putyn-v-krymu-otkryl-pamiatnyk-chto-s-nym-ne-tak.

  CHAPTER 26: POLITICAL EMIGRATION: RESTART

  1. Authors’ conversation with Evgeny Kiselev, who confirmed the conversation between Alexander Voloshin and Gusinsky.

  2. Sergey Lukyanov, “Russia, Inc.,” Moscow Times, November 12, 1996, http://old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1996/11/article/russia-inc/316250.html.

  3. “Kolokol Berezovskogo nauchit grazhdan otstaivat svoi prava pered gosudarstvom” [Berezovsky’s Kolokol will teach citizens to protect their rights before the state], Lenta, October 5, 2001, https://lenta.ru/news/2001/10/05/kolokol/.

  4. Soldatov and Borogan, The New Nobility, 102–103.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Alexander Litvinenko, 2004, London.

  6. We provided our version of the 1999 apartment bombings in our 2010 book, Soldatov and Borogan, New Nobility.

  7. The Russian edition was published in 2002 (New York: Liberty Publishing House), available online, http://www.terror99.ru/book.htm; the English edition: Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror (New York: Encounter Books, 2007).

  8. For instance, Georges Agabekov, an officer of OGPU, defected in Istanbul in 1929, published his book, OGPU: The Russian Secret Terror in 1931, and got killed in 1937 in the Pyrenees; or Walter Krivitsky, a Soviet intelligence officer who defected in 1937, published his memoirs In Stalin’s Secret Service in 1939, and was assassinated in Washington in 1941.

  9. Ian Cobain, Matthew Taylor, and Luke Harding, “‘I Am Plotting a New Russian Revolution,” Guardian, April 13, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/13/topstories3.russia.

  10. Luke Harding, “Berezovsky Charged with Coup Plot over Guardian Interview,” Guardian, July 3, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jul/03/russia.pressandpublishing.

  CHAPTER 27: ILLUSIONS CRUSHED

  1. Echo Moskvy, Semya Zaslavskikh [Family of the Zaslavskiys], May 6, 2007, https://echo.msk.ru/guests/14021/.

  2. Authors’ conversations with Ilya Zaslavskiy.

  3. Sergei Mashkin, “Taina porkitaya srokom” [Secret covered by the prison term], Kommersant, May 8, 2008, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1165775.

  4. Authors’ conversations with Alexei Kozlov.

  5. To name just a few: Alexander Lebedev, an officer with the London KGB station in the 1980s, helped Soviet capitalists to open bank accounts in London banks in the late 1980s and became one of the top Russian bankers, working with Russian debts. A former intelligence officer was head of Vnesheconomobank, a state bank in charge of raising export and financial credits for the Soviet Union and then Russia; in the early 1990s, the chairman of the Central Bank—a Russian analogue of the Federal Reserve system—was a KGB foreign intelligence officer.

  6. Authors’ conversations with Olga Romanova.

  7. Kozlov denied this.

  8. Authors’ conversations with Romanova and Kozlov; see also Olga Romanova, Butyrka, Turemnaya Tetrad [Butyrka, Prison’s Notebook] (Moscow: Angedonia, 2016).

  CHAPTER 28: “WE NEED SOME TARGETED HITS”

  1. BBC, “At the Pro-Kremlin Rally, the Opposition Was Planted
on the Stake” [in Russian], July 27, 2010, https://www.bbc.com/russian/russia/2010/07/100727_russia_seliger_mockery.

  2. Authors’ conversations with Kara-Murza Jr.

  3. Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 365.

  4. “Nemtsov protiv Putina” [Nemtsov against Putin], Voice of America, January 18, 2011, https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/a/nemtsov-vestus-putin-2011-01-18-114149549/192376.html.

  5. Executive Office of the President, “Proclamation 8697, Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons Who Participate in Serious Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Violations and Other Abuses,” August 9, 2011, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2011/08/09/2011-20395/suspension-of-entry-as-immigrants-and-nonimmigrants-of-persons-who-participate-in-serious-human.

  6. “Boris Nemtsov and Chirikova poluchayut instruktsii v Vashingtone,” YouTube, September 21, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZemHhZcpKsQ.

  CHAPTER 29: DESPERATE TIMES

  1. One such figure was Alexei Navalny, who had come to prominence in the late 2000s as an anticorruption campaigner and popular blogger.

  2. Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (New York: Knopf, 2016).

  3. Natalia Rostova, “Kara-Murza mladshy govorit, chto uvolen iz-za spiska Magnitskogo” [Kara-Murza said he was fired because of the Magnitsky list], Republic, July 14, 2012, https://republic.ru/posts/l/811013.

  4. This was the next logical development in Gusinsky’s long journey into exile. A few years earlier, Gusinsky had publicly asked Putin to let him back into Russia. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he praised Putin. But the Kremlin rejected Gusinsky’s plea.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Gary Kasparov, March 2018.

  6. Ian Cobain, “No Evidence Boris Berezovsky Was Murdered, Oligarch’s Inquest Hears,” Guardian, March 27, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/no-evidence-boris-berezovsky-murdered-russian-oligarch-inquest.

  7. Khodorkovsky and Putin’s conversation in the Kremlin, February 2003, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6NKb79VN8U.

  8. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “Ten Years as a Prisoner,” New York Times, October 24, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/international/ten-years-a-prisoner.html.

  9. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

  10. Authors’ conversation with Gary Kasparov.

  11. Carl Schreck, “Russian Asylum Applications in US Hit 24-Year Record,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 2, 2018, https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-asylum-applications-in-u-s-hit-24-year-record/29204843.html.

  12. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

  CHAPTER 30: WHEN THE PARTY’S OVER

  1. Rebecca Mead, “Black Hole,” New Yorker, November 15, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/15/black-hole-rebecca-mead.

  2. Rachel Morarjee, “Snob Appeal,” Fortune, October 27, 2010, http://archive.fortune.com/2010/10/26/news/international/Snob_magazine_Prokhorov.fortune/index.htm.

  3. “O Proekte” [About the project], Snob, https://snob.ru/basement.

  4. Mead, “Black Hole”; Sam Dolnick, “Oligarchs and Absinthe Shots,” New York Times, October 29, 2010, https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/oligarchs-and-absinthe-shots/.

  5. See details in our book, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The Red Web: The Kremlin’s Wars on the Internet (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).

  6. Megan Davies, “Prokhorov Reassures Investors as He Focuses on Politics,” Reuters, October 28, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-prokhorov/prokhorov-reassures-investors-as-he-focuses-on-politics-idUSL1E8LS06Q20121028.

  7. Richard L. Cassin, “OFAC Adds Five Russians to Magnitsky Sanctions List,” FCPA Blog, January 10, 2017, http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2017/1/10/ofac-adds-five-russians-to-magnitsky-sanctions-list.html.

  8. Ingrid Nordgaard, “Lost Opportunities and Newfound Possibilities: Awaiting a New Cold War or a New Generation,” NYU Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, April 9, 2013, http://jordanrussiacenter.org/event-recaps/lost-opportunities-and-newfound-possibilities-awaiting-a-new-cold-war-or-a-new-generation/#.XDO8ZM_YrOQ.

  9. Masha Gessen, “Flying Putin, Fired Editor,” New York Times, September 10, 2012, https://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/flying-putin-fired-editor/.

  10. Amie Ferris-Rotman, “Masha Gessen, 2017 Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers profile,” https://2017globalthinkers.foreignpolicy.com/2017/profile/masha-gessen?c0244ec121=; Masha Gessen’s page on the website of New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/masha-gessen/page/2.

  11. Authors’ conversation with Luke Harding, July 2018.

  12. Interview of Masha Gessen [in Russian], TV Rain, October 19, 2016, https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/harddaysnight/gessen-419223/.

  13. Authors’ conversation with Masha Gessen, September 2018.

  14. “Putin Has Been Good for Russia,” IQsquared, YouTube, June 3, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjDTtgAkCSo.

  15. Interview of Boris Jordan [in Russian], Delovoy Peterburg, June 14, 2014, https://www.dp.ru/a/2014/04/11/Putin_otvetil_i_na_jetot_v.

  16. An author of the idea, Vladimir Yakovlev, emigrated to Israel. In 2017 he said that there are no Global Russians anymore, only refugees. Vladimir Yakovlev, “Upotreblyat termi Global Russians segodnya v principe nepristoino” [Vladimir Yakovlev: To use the term Global Russians today is unfair], Zima, July 3, 2017, https://zimamagazine.com/2017/07/vladimir-yakovlev-upotreblyat-termin-global-russians-segodnya-v-printsipe-nepristojno/.

  CHAPTER 31: ELIMINATING THE PROBLEM

  1. This chapter is largely based on recollections of Vadim Prokhorov, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., and his wife, Zhenya, as well as the documents provided by Prokhorov.

  2. Authors’ conversation with Vadim Prokhorov.

  3. Authors’ conversation with Vadim Prokhorov.

  4. Authors’ conversations with Kara-Murza Jr.

  5. Yevgenia Albats, The State within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux), 1994.

  6. “Vladimir Kara-Murza—zagadka otravlenia” [Kara-Murza, a mystery of poisoning], Current Time, January 18, 2016, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/27493037.html.

  7. “Vladimir Kara-Murza,” Current Time.

  8. Maria-Luisa Tirmaste, “Otravlenie Vladimira Kara-Murzi Mladshego vnov zainteresovalo Sledstevenny Komitet” [Investigative Committee took a renewed interest in the poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.], Kommersant, April 16, 2018, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3605068.

  9. Authors’ conversation with Zhenya Kara-Murza, January 2019.

  CHAPTER 32: CHASING A POISON

  1. Authors’ conversations with Vadim Prokhorov.

  2. X-Pertise Consulting, “Oberhuasbergen, Ref: case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, 17A035-bis” [Report about the examination of hair, blood, and urine], author’s copy provided by Prokhorov, March 17, 2017.

  3. Alexander Dobrovolsky, “Moskovsky Komsomolets, Smertelny ukus Lenina” [Lethal bite of Lenin], https://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2006/12/26/173541-smertelnyiy-ukus-lenina.html. Research done by Nikina Petrov also supports this statement.

  4. Andrew E. Kramer, “More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead,” New York Times, August 21, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/world/europe/moscow-kremlin-silence-critics-poison.html.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Vadim Prokhorov.

  6. Mike Eckel, “FBI Silent on Lab Results in Kremlin Foe’s Suspected Poisoning,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 26, 2018, https://www.rferl.org/a/fbi-silent-on-lab-results-in-kremlin-foe-s-suspected-poisoning/29564152.html.

  CHAPTER 33: EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

  1. The details in this section are derived from the authors’ conversation with Sergei Tretyakov and from Earley, Comrade J.

  2. Interview with Sergei Tretyakov by Andrei Soldatov, Novaya Gazeta,
January 2, 2008, https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2008/02/01/39469-beglyy-i-pushistyy.

  3. On March 21, 2001, the US State Department announced the expulsion of fifty Russian diplomats: four accused of direct involvement with a former FBI agent, agent-turned-spy Robert Hanssen, to be expelled immediately and an additional forty-six to leave by July. The scandal was considered to be the most serious spy row between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War: the last time the United States expelled dozens of Russian diplomats was in 1986. On March 25, the Sunday Times claimed that British prime minister Tony Blair, during the two-day EU summit in Stockholm, warned Vladimir Putin of the growth of Russian intelligence activity in Britain. On March 29, the German Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (German counterintelligence service) released the annual report stating that Russia increased the number of spies operating out of its diplomatic missions in Germany. It seemed to merely echo British claims: “The number of intelligence operatives has increased as the amount of embassy personnel has grown.”

  4. Authors’ conversations with Sergei Tretyakov.

  5. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Operation Ghost Stories: Inside the Russian Spy Case,” October 11, 2011, https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/operation-ghost-stories-inside-the-russian-spy-case.

  6. In 2003 Putin okayed the plan of the Russian domestic agency FSB to form an intelligence department. It was called the Department of Operative Information. The department was meant to become a cross point between counterintelligence and intelligence; it was formed out of the sections in charge of collecting “intelligence from the territory,” a euphemism for recruiting foreign nationals in Russia, with an eye to subsequently running them as agents in their home countries. As its official symbol, the department adopted a globe, the same symbol of world-spanning reach used in the insignia of the Russian foreign intelligence agency (for details, see Soldatov and Borogan, New Nobility). It was this department that was put, apparently, in charge of dealing with compatriots; since 2010, the deputy head of the department was made a permanent member of the government commission on the issues of compatriots abroad.