Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  The Woes of Diplomacy

  The Russian diplomatic service also disintegrated. After the Bolshevik coup d’état, it began to acquire genuine professionalism only when Stalinist repressions came to an end in 1953. This service is an extremely complex and sensitive mechanism that not only involves vertical and horizontal coordination within the Foreign Ministry in Moscow and between the ministry and its overseas representatives but also among different generations of diplomats. Here I am referring to the Russian diplomatic school from the prerevolutionary period that trained generations of diplomats and was destroyed by the Bolshevik putsch. Under Stalin it could not be revived because of the repressions. Therefore, a diplomatic academy could not really become an effective establishment until after 1953. I do not mean to suggest that in the interim there were no leading figures in Soviet diplomacy; in fact, just such persons founded the diplomatic school.

  The art of diplomacy merits separate treatment since it represents a universal system of sophisticated sensors of a country’s position in the international arena and the resolution of problems. Diplomats abroad naturally operate within the framework of instructions received from the Foreign Ministry. Ideally these representatives act as sensory organs of the governments they represent in the countries to which they are accredited, and they participate in the making of policy.

  At the start of perestroika the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs was largely staffed with more or less qualified personnel. It contained several schools of thought and was able to fulfill a wide variety of assignments, from achieving mutually acceptable agreements to conducting a policy of sharp confrontation, from manifesting every sort of dogmatism to cooperating with foreign countries. After the fall of the USSR, however, not only was the leadership of all its departments changed but also many of the best-trained and qualified officials left the ministry.

  Loathsomeness and desolation—both material and intellectual-moral—reigned after the merger of the Russian and USSR Ministries of Foreign Affairs. The daily routine of foreign policy, constituting the larger and basic part of the work, fell into a deplorable state. For all the negative aspects of the Soviet system that were overcome only toward the end of Gorbachev’s rule, that system appeared almost ideal compared to the “early” Yeltsin era when incompetence and dissipation characterized the foreign service.

  Important issues were left virtually unstudied. Basically, the inertia of Soviet approaches prevailed. In fact, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, sometimes the approaches were more reactionary than during Gorbachev’s perestroika. The reactionaries in Yeltsin’s entourage were taking their revenge. Yeltsin himself made off-the-cuff remarks and then took childish offense when his Western partners failed to understand him.

  When the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs absorbed the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it felt like an occupation. To be sure, at times it went off without a hitch as in the department where I worked. In the process of reorganization that naturally occurred, the dismissal of some officials often turned into an internecine struggle for survival, settling of personal accounts, and attempts to secure one’s own “warm seat” via unscrupulous means.4 Only a handful of leaders in the USSR Foreign Ministry refrained from taking part in these unscrupulous games. A majority of the new leaders of Russian foreign policy and diplomacy either lacked any practical work experience or had skipped several rungs on the career ladder and lacked the requisite experience. In many cases this led to a dearth of sufficient professionalism or to the acme of servility. The result was that they made ill-considered and contradictory decisions, and documents—including secret, presidential, and other decisions and instructions—vanished into thin air. Some of those in leadership positions ran off to consult with foreign embassies on domestic as well as international problems and openly rustled their papers there. Corruption flowered luxuriantly. Hardly bothering to conceal it, diplomats received rewards from firms for lobbying on their behalf and for other services. The mechanism for foreign policy decision making went out of kilter. Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Kozyrev was subordinate to the incompetent, narcissistic, and peculiar Gennady Burbulis, who held the post of state secretary.

  To escape the avalanche of not only unnecessary but sometimes harmful and nerve-wracking work on a pitiful salary, which was inadequate even to buy food, I accepted a lengthy overseas assignment in Geneva.

  High-level work at the Foreign Ministry headquarters performed under normal circumstances produces constant intellectual and nervous stress. Diplomatic service abroad is entirely different. First, in the majority of Russian overseas diplomatic postings, there is usually nothing that can really be called work. Basically, one spends one’s workday in the leisurely and rather boring perusal of newspapers and in reading mostly vacuous ciphered telegrams that are worth neither writing nor reading. (This is after reviewing the huge piles of paper from Moscow; many of the “top” papers require prompt and, sometimes, not at all obvious responses.) Of course, occasionally there are bursts of activity, but most of the art of being a Russian diplomat abroad consists of doing nothing while appearing to be extremely busy.

  The complete, literally slavish dependence upon the leading members of the diplomatic corps explains a great deal, including the atmosphere of subservience. Diplomats in any normal country receive a salary and decide on their own how to spend it, but in the Russian diplomatic service, everything is different. There is a small salary along with an apartment, car, and furniture provided by the diplomatic representative office. Russian diplomats cannot choose where to live, what to drive, or how to furnish their homes.

  Such paternalism may be partly justified considering a certain pathological greediness exhibited by some holders of Russian diplomatic passports. For example, in New York the parents of one child skimped so much on food that the local authorities were forced to intervene. Some were eating canned cat and dog food. Some were living practically in darkness since they had to pay for electricity from their own pockets; some closed off almost all their rooms in winter so as not to have to heat them and huddled in only a single room. And just look at how many of them dressed! That provided the best evidence of how the concept of a proper life was an abstraction for very many of them. The real question is quite different: why should the system depend upon such people?

  After the collapse of the USSR, almost all my colleagues had an extremely distorted notion of diplomacy. They were unfamiliar with the definition of diplomacy as a science and an art, as the application of mind and tact. They did not realize that a diplomat should study a problem, understand what his country’s interests were with regard to that problem, work out appropriate recommendations to the government, and, if they were accepted, make every effort to implement them.

  The main criteria for assessing the work of diplomats in foreign postings as well as the diplomats themselves are the quality rather than the quantity of their dispatches and, even more, the effectiveness of their work. In the case of Russian diplomats, hardly anyone was bothered that almost all their cables were copied from the press and that many of them bore only a distant resemblance to reality. The record breaker in this connection was Mikhail Fradkov, a future prime minister and later chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who was then the ambassador to the European Union. This worthy insisted that every diplomat must write no fewer than four telegrams per week. His directive produced a veritable paper blizzard rather than useful information. Most of the dispatches were copied from the local media; the telegrams contradicted each other, relayed unverified information, and unsubstantiated interpretations and commentaries. Quantity was the name of the game.

  Another peculiarity of the diplomatic service was that nobody ever knew who was really who. For example, a chauffeur or a workman might turn out to be a high-ranking officer of the special services, a diplomatic courier, or even one of the top political leaders, as occurred with the chargé d’affaires in Lithuania on the eve of World War II.

  Groveling in fr
ont of and being completely dependent on one’s superior and lacking any sort of real work led to absolute idleness and to lying. (What could you do when you had to demonstrate nonexistent work?) It also led to such a disastrous state of affairs in the Russian foreign diplomatic service that it was tantamount to an epidemic of alcoholism.

  When I arrived in Geneva, Fradkov was already working there. Geneva became the launching pad for a dizzying career. From senior counselor he catapulted to deputy minister of foreign trade, then minister, deputy secretary of the Security Council, head of the tax police, Russian representative to the European Union with the rank of federal minister, prime minister, and then chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

  During Fradkov’s service as Russia’s permanent representative in Brussels, he demanded unquestioning submission to the most unrealizable and extravagant directives. His favorite response, which he literally squeezed out of his subordinates, was the military response: “Yes, sir!” He permitted no one to doubt his infallibility. On one occasion one of the most obsequious diplomats dared to doubt the practicality of an outlandishly extravagant directive:

  “Mikhail Yefimovich, and what if it doesn’t work out?”

  “How could that be? Not work out?” roared the special representative of the president with the rank of federal minister. “That would be betrayal of the M-m-motherland! Just watch what you’re saying!”

  He really loved to repeat, “Better watch your step! Don’t get out of line! . . . There should be a paper for everything so that every trace of our work is preserved!”

  Here is a significant brushstroke in his portrait and perhaps in his schemes for power. Judging from several indicators, Fradkov already knew that he would soon be appointed prime minister. He let us know that Putin frequently called him on his mobile phone. What striking hypocrisy! In order to maintain security—the unsecured building of the permanent representative was totally open to eavesdropping—he forbade anyone to carry mobile phones. His own telephone rang in the single secured facility (“the submarine”), which he never allowed anyone else to enter.

  Rudeness bordering on outright boorishness was inbred in him. He was pathologically disrespectful toward others. He suffered from both mediocrity and a Napoleon complex. He viewed everyone else as members of the common herd, dirt, and at best the hoi polloi. To an unprecedented degree he promoted a culture of informers in the mission that astounded even those who had seen everything from Soviet times. (Speaking of everyone, I include clandestine officers of the special services who were working under diplomatic cover.) His style of behavior was redolent of the Soviet past and familiar to anyone who has lived in the USSR.

  While working in Geneva I had occasion to encounter a number of other more or less well-known persons. The strongest impression was produced by Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, whose brief sojourn in Geneva illustrates many of the special features of the Russian foreign diplomatic service. Permanent Representative to the UN Office Yevgeny Makeyev, who really disliked me—a feeling I reciprocated—was terribly apprehensive about Shoigu’s arrival. In addition to requesting that I draft various memoranda and reference materials, he ordered me to prepare a critical dossier on Shoigu and his ministry in order to have arguments at hand in case the minister criticized him.

  As soon as Shoigu arrived, Makeyev handed him this analysis of the errors and omissions of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, along with public accusations printed in the press, and said, “Andrei Anatol’evich has prepared this for your arrival.” Naturally Shoigu immediately hated me and barred me from all of his meetings, heedless that others were simply not up to speed on the problems. Therefore, I played no role at all in preparations for his major assignment during this mission, a discussion with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata.

  During that meeting various facts and figures arose, but these facts and figures were erroneous. The discussion almost produced a major scandal. Returning from the discussion, Shoigu asked a classic Russian question: who among the Russian diplomats was guilty of Ogata’s not having been briefed for her discussion with him? (Needless to say, Ogata had been splendidly briefed but by her own colleagues; Russian diplomats had nothing to do with it, nor could they have had.) The immediate response, however, was: “Kovalev.” “Get rid of him,” Shoigu commanded in his usual style.

  In the evening an event was held at the Office of the Permanent Representative that, as usual, I did not attend. Later I was told that the chauffeur of our mission, who was sitting right behind Shoigu, clapped him on the shoulder and invited him into the sauna. Shoigu thus declined an invitation to dine with the ambassador, saying, “I have already agreed to visit the sauna with your chauffeur.” The chauffeur was no ordinary person; he was an officer of the special services who had gone to Geneva to take a breather. In his capacity as a chauffeur, he performed his basic duties, including engaging in numerous intrigues. And the chauffeur said to the minister, “Don’t touch Kovalev.” Shoigu listened to him as the chauffeur was appointed to a high-ranking position in his ministry.

  Later Shoigu demanded that his colleagues urgently procure cash to pay officials of his ministry who had worked in the former Yugoslavia. This was done, not without difficulty. Immediately afterward he sent a fax, which he personally signed, saying that his colleagues should receive a piddling share of the money due them. One can only guess where the rest of it went.

  Incidentally, it should be noted that Sergei Shoigu holds the record for the longest tenure as the head of a state organ in Russia, having headed the Ministry of Emergency Situations from 1991 through all the successive governments until 2012. For a short time, he shifted to be governor of the Moscow Region and then became minister of defense in November 2012. Shoigu was undoubtedly a fitting symbol and sign of the period that Russia was going through. He rescued everyone and everything, including Russian history, from “falsification” as the prime mover in initiatives to produce the “definitive” official version of Russia’s past.5 In 1996 he directed Yeltsin’s election campaign in the Russian Federation, then he actively supported Putin on his path to becoming the president. In 2000 he headed the Unity Party upon whose foundation its successor, United Russia, was subsequently established.

  No one dared speak ill of Shoigu—not about his corruption, his extreme personal moral deficiency, or his being a petty tyrant. This silence reflected his basic strength: Everyone feared him. Everyone fawned upon him.

  With rare exceptions I took no pleasure at all in associating with other well-known persons in Russia. I was absolutely stunned by my namesake Valentin Kovalev, who fancied himself the leading jurist in the country because of his position as minister of justice. Later he became notorious for misappropriating state funds and for corruption. He flew to Geneva escorted by a number of desperadoes who were listed as his assistants. They immediately rushed off to rent an armored Mercedes with tinted windows, for the embassy limousine was not to Kovalev’s liking. He saw the main outcome of the war in Chechnya as the signing of a presidential directive that supposedly established the legality of this crime. Another such notable was the director of Russia’s Federal Migration Service Tatyana Regent, who impressed people with her total incompetence and indifference toward the issues she handled. I met other notable persons as well. My acquaintance with the human rights advocate Sergei Kovalev, for instance, turned into a genuine friendship.

  As much as possible I tried not to sit behind a microphone during sessions of the UN in order to avoid situations where I would have to denounce someone for criticizing Russian military atrocities in Chechnya or the Baltic representatives, whom I liked. At one event a scandal developed over Latvia. I felt ashamed about Russian policy toward the Baltic states. After acknowledging during the late Soviet era the existence of secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that had enabled the USSR’s occupation of the Baltic states, subsequently, with incredible offhandedness, Russia changed its position and denied that the takeo
ver of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in 1940 had been an occupation. Russia delayed the withdrawal of troops from these countries. The pretext—that is, the need to stay and defend the Russian-speaking population—was particularly rich. I found all of this extremely distasteful and tried to avoid an altercation.

  Latvia’s ambassador to the UN branch offices in Geneva, Sandra Kalniete—later the ambassador to Paris, the minister of foreign affairs, and a member of the European Parliament—is a very sharp-minded diplomat and a pleasant interlocutor. We agreed that neither of us wanted a battle of words and harmoniously compiled a list of critical points to which neither of us would react. As a result the public squabble ceased, and a dialogue began. My colleagues called me a Latvian spy.

  A lack of professionalism leads to absolutism, peremptoriness, and mediocrity. Unfortunately, this was a common reality. For example, working in the Russian Security Council I practically had to conduct a campaign to eradicate ignorance regarding the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe at a meeting of second- and third-ranking officials in ministries and departments, including the intelligence agencies. They sincerely believed that the accords’ “third basket” provided a basis for a military incursion into Chechnya “under the pretext of defending human rights.” Such ignorance regarding international rights and politics became increasingly evident after the collapse of the USSR, although many of those who implemented policy in Soviet times were also hardly distinguished by their erudition. For example, I was literally shocked on one occasion when I was asked to review the suitability for publication of a scholarly monograph written by a retired colonel of the General Staff who had worked all his life on problems concerning NATO. I encountered striking evidence that this former intelligence officer was ignorant of the text of the North Atlantic Treaty’s founding document and the principles and operational mechanism of NATO’s military organization. I could extend this sorry list of glaring incompetence that I witnessed, but these two examples provide sufficient evidence of the level of qualifications and knowledge of those in power and the persons who worked for them.