During and after the time he headed the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Andropov drew into his circle quite a few persons whose thinking diverged from what was then the norm. Such persons might be characterized as “within-system dissidents” and included Georgy Arbatov, Anatoly Kovalev, Alexander Bovin, Fyodor Burlatsky, and others. It was Andropov who, contrary to then minister of foreign affairs Gromyko, approved the third basket of the Final Act of the CSCE.
None of this is meant to whitewash perhaps the most enigmatic of all Soviet leaders; my sole objective is to avoid simplifying and schematizing the tangled history of the USSR. We may suppose that Andropov basically fit the general mold of gray Soviet leaders, but he was smarter and better educated than the others. He was a creative person who drafted his own papers—a rare bird among the CPSU leadership—encouraged free discussion among his subordinates, wrote but never published poetry, treasured the Soviet avant-garde and collected their art, and loved Picasso. Did he believe in the false dogmas of the “Founding Fathers” without giving them much thought? This is entirely possible. In any case, in some ways he stood out from the generally accepted norm of top Soviet leaders. One should not dismiss the words of Igor Andropov, son of the former secretary-general and an extraordinary and undoubtedly honest man: “My father always hated communism!”5
Be that as it may, the KGB—a power within power and, in some ways, a power above power—was doing very well until Gorbachev’s liberal reforms began to gain momentum in the late 1980s. It may be that precisely these reforms provoked the return of a situation in which, as Alexander Korzhakov wrote, agents of the special services ran the country. Incidentally, he illustrates this in a curious fashion, to be sure, not with the example of agents but in his own persona as the director of a powerful special service.
Korzhakov asserted—and to the best of my knowledge nobody ever took issue with him—that he planned the shelling of the Russian White House in 1993 and directly oversaw the assault, while President Yeltsin “rested” and during this terrible operation feasted with his cronies, celebrating the victory.6 What a strange page of history! The decision that marked a turning point in the life of Russia was not taken by the president but by his security chief.
It is extremely telling that the fundamental paradox of Russia’s post-Soviet development was the termination of the process of democratic reforms, the very goal that the conspirators of 1991 sought and undoubtedly achieved. This thesis requires some explanation since President Yeltsin initially achieved significant progress in creating democratic institutions in Russia. I have in mind the promulgation of a new constitution consolidating civil and political rights, the actions aimed at establishing parliamentarianism in Russia, the continuation of Gorbachev’s policy of cooperation with Western countries, and the entry of Russia to the Council of Europe. But the key steps toward establishing democracy were taken when Gorbachev was governing. They included introducing freedom of speech, which was then called glasnost; removing punitive and psychiatric persecution of nonconformists; repealing political and religious statutes from the Criminal Code; establishing religious freedom; eliminating the diktat of the CPSU; and creating the foundations of parliamentarianism.
During President Yeltsin’s term in office, with the exception of economic reforms, not only were none of the goals he declared achieved but also the authorities did absolutely nothing to try to achieve them. Although Yeltsin’s obvious and well-known weaknesses clearly played a negative role, they alone cannot serve as an adequate explanation, especially since he wanted to go down in history as the first democratic president of a newly democratic Russia. Unfortunately, the fine-sounding democratic principles enunciated at the time were contradicted by the real actions taken by the nation’s leaders.7
The perturbations of the era of perestroika and the breakup of the USSR and its consequences intensified the long-standing Russian nostalgia for a heavy hand. The people were pleased when Yevgeny Primakov, who demonstratively enhanced the role of the special services, occupied the Russian White House. It seems that the appointment of Primakov as prime minister marked the critical moment in the seizure of power by the special services.
The people were even happier when Yeltsin transferred power to Putin, a move that guaranteed the fusion of the state security organs with the highest state power. For the first time in Russian history and, for that matter, in all of world history, the special services and the authorities became one and the same.
How did this phenomenon occur? Was it the result of cunning and extremely clever intrigues, or was it by the will, thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, or shortsightedness of the electorate, which each time voted for and regularly supported a KGB lieutenant colonel with a very shady biography? Or could it just have happened by itself? I hope not.
As a result of the complete fusion of the higher-level state authorities with the special services, the anti-democratic goals of the August 1991 coup d’état were quickly and effectively achieved. From then on one could only wax nostalgic for the rudiments of a law-based state, democracy, civil society, and freedom of the mass media from the era of perestroika. The de facto restoration in Russia of a one-party system, the “counterterrorist operation” in Chechnya, the unparalleled contempt for the Constitution, and the methods employed in the political struggle would have earned the plaudits of one of the most famous predecessors of the permanent ruler of post-Yeltsin Russia—namely, Stalin himself. Putin’s neologism “vertical of power” simply means the old Soviet administrative-command system. The new term enemies of Russia deserves commendation by those who earlier had employed the term enemies of the people.
Putin’s initial actions as president-in-waiting and then as president of Russia clearly indicated his political direction and priorities. They included returning to the era of the Cold War, launching a second war in Chechnya, eliminating freedom of the mass media, and purposely reviving Soviet symbols—the Soviet anthem, albeit with different words, and the Soviet flag as the banner of the armed forces.
Thus, in the final analysis, despite the apparent failure of the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, in reality the State Emergency Committee achieved its goals. Some observers hypothesized that during the period of perestroika the KGB conducted an enormous special operation of which the August 1991 coup d’état was only the visible tip of the iceberg. The KGB-FSB infiltrated its agents into Yeltsin’s entourage, into parliament, into leading positions in government institutions and business, among the reformers, into the mass media, and in the Russian Orthodox Church; and they played a very active role in forming the new elite. The agents created a structure of influence that endured and brought great pressure to bear upon Yeltsin and on Russia as a whole.
It is possible that the members of the State Emergency Committee on their part sincerely achieved the goals they had proclaimed, and the new elite, including its second echelon, skillfully manipulated the situation in its own interests.
One may reasonably suppose that this second echelon of the State Emergency Committee, taking advantage of Yeltsin’s peculiarities and poor health, something on which they could depend, was able to reverse directions in foreign policy, turn back the progress of reform, and achieve the unprecedented elevation of the special services into power. While they accomplished this, it was obvious that Yeltsin would not remain in power very long, so the successors and heirs of the KGB also mounted a brilliant operation to put forward their protégé for the post of president. I offer this as just a hypothesis, but it is a quite plausible one since it explains a great deal of what happened in Russia after the August 1991 coup.
But a simpler explanation is also possible: The monster created by Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev—the Central Committee of State Security—was simply doing its daily work of recruiting and infiltrating its agents everywhere it could. As the service did its work well, the agents’ numbers reached a critical mass, and, as a result, power simply fell into the hands of the special ser
vices. Then everything took its accustomed course. The consequences of the August coup strengthened the influence of the special services and facilitated Putin’s advent to power.
In essence, I categorically reject any “conspiracy theories.” But in the given instance, I would prefer to think that this was a cunning multistage strategy of the special services rather than convince myself that this outcome was predetermined and natural. The latter hypothesis would signify that the condition was incurable without a complicated surgical operation to excise the metastases of the special services and a subsequent complicated therapy to cure the ills of Russian society. But even if the assumption about some sort of long-standing, future-oriented KGB plan is incorrect, the result of the 1991 coup is that it was the KGB, by whatever name one calls it, that came to power in 2000.
This point is crucially important since it makes sense of many things. For example, Putin appears as a simple function of the activities of the Soviet-Russian special services, and the veil of liberalism is withdrawn from Medvedev. The forms, methods, and goals of Russian politics at home and abroad become clear, even predictable. Many things that are presently obscure become clear about supposedly liberal persons, well known both domestically and internationally, who, in reality, are collaborating with the Chekist regime. Possibly the main consequence of the revolution of the Chekists is that once in power the special services will never relinquish it voluntarily.
The Bolshevik version of Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina—his secret police—was weakened, but it did not disappear after Stalin’s death in 1953. It operated under the euphemism of “developed socialism.” That is what perestroika dismantled and that is what took its revenge in 1999–2000. Right after Putin came to power in the Kremlin, a foul, icy wind began to blow. This was partly caused by his worldview and membership in the secret services, and it was partly predestined by the preceding period. The credo that sums up the Russian president’s worldview may be briefly stated: The state is all; the individual is nothing. There is a direct analogy with Stalin’s speech at a reception in honor of participants in the Victory Parade of 1945: “I offer a toast to the plain, ordinary, and modest people, the ‘cogs’ who maintain our great mechanism in working condition.”
Unfortunately, only a handful of persons noted the symptoms of Russia’s return, as early as Yeltsin’s presidency, to a policy of revanchism and reaction. Moreover, no one believed them. What they said contradicted not only the liberal image of the president and his advisers but also the expectations both of the West and of most Russians themselves.
It was also difficult for the public to accept that Yeltsin directly conferred power to the special services in the person of Putin. Therefore, a legend was cultivated and given credence about Putin’s supposed democratic leanings. His collaborative work as deputy mayor to Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Saint Petersburg, played into this story. The image of an energetic, young judo expert imprinted itself in the minds of many persons.
Putin turned out to be an extremely successful ruler. Although he did nothing for the Russian economy, thanks to the high prices for oil and gas, a torrent of money literally flowed into Russia as payment for energy exports. This enabled Moscow to flex its muscles again not only with regard to energy but also on the path of rearmament, the inevitable precursor of revanchism. In their actions, the new oprichnina obviously made use of the war cry of their predecessors: The word and the deed!
The Word
Russians have a weakness for false prophets and false prophecy. Probably it is because the false prophets are not shy about their words or deeds; moreover, the latter are shamelessly masked in words. In Russia from time immemorial, words have played an incomparable role. For good reason from the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russian rulers have feared the word no less than the deed. But the main function of words in Russian politics is “hypnosis,” which, as a form of manipulation, became the foundation of national politics after the Bolshevik coup d’état. It was precisely because of their effectiveness that philosophy, literature, science, and art became the most important areas of state regulation, and thus a system was established in the country that the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev termed the “dictatorship of a systematic ideology.”8 He wrote that “a teaching that is the basis for totalitarian doctrine, which embraces every aspect of life—not only politics and economics, but also thought, consciousness, and all works of culture—can only be a matter of faith.”9 The Big Lie that the people all embraced socialism was enthroned. The essence of Gorbachev’s reformation was to liquidate this dictatorship and this lie, a lie that was guarded by the entire punitive and law enforcement apparatus of the country headed by the KGB.
After Russia became a sovereign state, the tradition of the Big Lie returned to politics with full honors. Soon hypnosis returned as well. To work effectively, it was first necessary to conceal the actual state of affairs in Russia and next to create a distorted version of it that served the interests of the authorities.
The Ideological State
When people speak and write about the Soviet Union, they often limit themselves to asserting it was a totalitarian communist state. What they generally overlook is that the USSR was an ideological state; moreover, ideology was the weight-bearing structure. This observation is vital since under Putin, just as during the communist period, Russia has reverted to ideological dogmatism. Here we should remember that in 1985 Gorbachev rose to power and attempted to reform a country that not only was unique with respect to size, population, military potential, and other objective criteria but also was the only state with a secular ideology grounded in Stalin’s uniquely correct interpretation of the dogmas formulated by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. All of Russia’s domestic and foreign policies were traditionally rooted in myth-making. These myths arose partly as a reflexive defense against one or another real phenomenon, partly as a protest against it, and partly from ignorance or misunderstanding of the actual state of affairs and of history. One might also cite other reasons intrinsic to the Russian people, including Russia’s historical peculiarities, the deficit of political culture that was nurtured by the authorities, and so forth. In the context of the present discussion, however, the most interesting myths are those devised and disseminated by the authorities along with the instruments employed for ensuring their effectiveness.
One of the Kremlin’s propaganda points is that the predominant feature of contemporary Russia’s foreign policy is the “restoration of national pride.” But just what sort of national pride?
Many Russians, especially since Yevgeny Primakov became prime minister in 1998, finding themselves under the spell of the authorities, really did keenly feel the loss of the country’s former power that resulted from the breakup of the USSR. Even during Soviet times, they were unable to forgive “betrayals of the country’s interests” such as terminating the war in Afghanistan, withdrawing Soviet troops from the colonized countries of Central and Eastern Europe, allowing the reunification of Germany, ending the Cold War, taking steps toward real disarmament, and terminating support for terrorists abroad. In the first post-Soviet years Russia really was a very weak player in international affairs. And this was not simply a result of the acute economic crisis.
This myth is closely connected to another—that is, Russia was pursuing a “subtle foreign policy.” Having participated in numerous political decisions from 1992 to 2004 as an official of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a staff member of the National Security Council, and later as an informed observer, I can confidently assert that from 1992 onward Russia had nothing that could really be called a foreign policy. The ill-considered actions of the Putin regime to destroy the postwar system of international relations—ones that threatened Russia itself most of all—may also not be called a policy. Moreover, things were no different under Putin than they were under Yeltsin.
Vladimir Putin, unlike Yeltsin, had undergone a certain kind of professional training and had some, though very restricted, experie
nce in the realm of foreign policy. KGB officials like Putin looked upon the West as the enemy; indeed, many of them developed a visceral hatred of the West. In addition, the kind of work they were engaged in—the collection of intelligence, to say nothing of counterintelligence—is not an activity concerned with foreign policy planning and execution. The work consists of gathering information, playing dirty tricks on the “opponent,” and recruiting agents. The service also ferrets out threats, often laying it on thick or simply inventing them. Nor should we forget that the KGB was a punitive organization that protected the authorities. Under Putin, intelligence officers, counterintelligence officers, and undercover agents took possession of the Kremlin, the government, the parliament, and all the conceivable and inconceivable floors, corridors, alleyways, and nooks of power.
This absence of a policy had lamentable consequences. Moreover, Soviet “military-patriotic education” was so effective that many Russians would not embrace a policy that forswore saber rattling. Putin revived the most dismal Soviet traditions, relying on images of domestic and foreign enemies in his policies.
Another object of national pride that was closely linked to Russia’s “subtle” foreign policy was using oil and gas to blackmail foreign partners. Even during the depths of the Cold War, neither Brezhnev, nor Andropov, nor Chernenko considered it possible to resort to what in the West is called the “problem of the spigot.” Of course, the rise in oil and gas prices was not something Moscow had caused.
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin Page 25