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

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  Given the progressive seizure of power by, and final victory of, representatives of the special services, the following question arises: are not all of Putin’s policies nothing other than purposefully conveyed information? In other words, has there not been an inversion between ends and means? Especially since under Putin an immense number of myths have arisen that are directly tied to purposefully conveyed information.

  This is not the place to delve in detail into Soviet communist dogmas; however, those that resonated or were reanimated under Putin deserve attention—for example, the postulate of the unity of the party and the people under whose weight the Soviet people were crushed. Naturally, a return to Soviet communism in pure form was impossible and unnecessary. The pro-Putin party, United Russia, like the CPSU before it, literally occupied both houses of parliament, and membership in it was virtually obligatory for a successful career in government service. It was financed by businessmen, thus allowing it to be relatively secure from the state. Moreover, United Russia created its own Komsomol, or pro-Kremlin youth movements. The proclamation that the parliamentary elections of 2007 were a “vote of confidence” in Putin not only made a farce of them, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the slogan “The people and the party are one,” but also effectively eliminated parliamentary democracy in Russia.

  To create his own cult, Stalin turned Lenin into a god. Putin took a different route, inciting others to proclaim him as the national leader. It took considerable effort to ensure that a majority of the population would accept this myth. Acting as Kremlin puppets, the mass media began to sing the praises of the incumbent president in every possible way. Meanwhile, Putin did everything possible to transform all his activities into media events. He turned every working session with a state official into a mini spectacle that was widely covered by television and other mass media. A large part of the population also lapped up the television shows in which Putin appeared in a variety of theatrical roles and costumes, mostly highlighting his patriotism and machismo.

  The restoration of the dictatorship of ideology in Russia sometimes assumes grotesque forms. In February 2009 Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, absolutely outside his sphere of competence, asserted that persons who denied the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War should be held criminally responsible. At first glance, this initiative is absolutely senseless, for the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition in the Second World War is a historical fact. But this attempt at verification conceals a dirty trick. From the time of Stalin, the role of the USSR’s allies was invariably denigrated. Reflecting upon the tragic results of the war for the country’s people now became subject to criminal penalties.

  On May 15, 2009, President Medvedev, concerned about the “correct interpretation” of history, including the history of the Great Patriotic War, issued decree number 549 that established the “Presidential Commission to Counteract Attempts to Falsify History that Damage Russia’s Interests.” The title of the commission was revealing as it is impossible to falsify history exclusively to damage the interests of Russia. From the beginning apparently no consideration was paid to the fact that over a period of centuries and in Lenin–Stalin times as well as during the period of stagnation, history (including the history of the Second World War) was repeatedly falsified. It is typical, though not unexpected, that the composition of the commission copied Soviet ideological structures. It included representatives from the FSB, the General Staff, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the State Duma, the Council of the Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, the Ministry of Culture, the Russian Archives, the Federal Agency for Science and Innovations, and, for the sake of appearances, the Institutes of Russian and of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Naryshkin, a mechanical engineer by training and secondarily an economist, led the commission.

  But this was not all. In the summer of 2009 a new scandal erupted. Radio Liberty obtained a scurrilous letter that had been sent by Academician V. A. Tishkov, the director of the History Section and the academic secretary of the Division of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to some of his colleagues. This letter made it clear that the bureau had adopted an official resolution, “On the Tasks of the Division of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” in connection with the Russian Federation president’s decree number 549 and the presidential commission. That such an official resolution exists is remarkable. The “scholars” had rushed to serve the powers that be.

  But even this can be done in different ways. One can limit oneself to a formal reply, or one can prostrate oneself before power. The leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences chose the second path. It arranged to provide an “annotated list of historical-cultural falsifications . . . (indicating the original sources, persons or organizations that created or disseminated the falsifications; and the potential danger of a given falsification to Russia’s interests).” Moreover, the scholarly institutes are instructed to report on how they uncovered these concepts and provide a contact person or list of scholars to cooperate with the aforementioned commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences.24 All of this is very reminiscent of both the methods by which Stalin destroyed Soviet science and the system of denunciation that existed in Soviet times.

  Different things are permitted to persons with a different system of values and with a different degree of self-respect and of respect toward others. At a session of the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vilnius on July 3, 2009, a resolution was adopted designating August 23, the date when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. In addition to appeals to study history so as to avoid similar crimes in the future, the resolution called upon participating states, including the Russian government and parliament, “to ensure that any governmental structures and patterns of behaviour that resist full democratisation or perpetuate, or embellish, or seek a return to, or extend into the future, totalitarian rule are fully dismantled.”

  It was not difficult to predict Russia’s reaction. The Federation Council and the State Duma called this resolution “an attempt to ruin the developing dialogue between Russia and the West.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also took notice, drafting some sort of vague recommendations in response. What is the problem with historical truth? There was not a single negative word about Russia or its people in the resolution, only a condemnation of a criminal regime and of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had already been censured in Soviet times.

  All this forces one to remember that there has probably never been a country in the world where the discipline of history has been subjected to such prolonged and systematic outrages as in Russia. History not only fulfilled the “social demand” of preserving the existing order of things but also was widely used by everyone who could to advance his or her personal, narrowly egotistical goals. A rather narrow but powerful circle of ideologues vanquished history and established a monopoly over historical “truth” or, more accurately, “pseudo truth.” They did not engage in scholarly research or value objectivity but indulged in dogmatism embellished with only two colors—black and white. As everyone knows, mixing these produces only the color gray, albeit in different shades. Many of these ideologues had no goal other than to conceal the truth and transform it into a lie.

  This need to forget the truth in the name of immorality, lies, falsehoods, and justifications for intellectual and political weakness is characteristic of certain individuals and certain associations. Under Putin it revived in the form of a state policy directed, as the Russian historian Yury Afanasyev rightly noted, “toward cloaking one’s rule in quasi-juridical form, to surrounding the self-reproduction of Putinism legally on the basis of preserving its immutability, relying, as has always been the case with the Russian authorities, on patriotic
traditionalism and Russian archaism.” The establishment of the commission is “only an episode in the sequence of well-thought out and logical actions of the Putinists to perpetuate their regime. However, these well-thought out actions are menacing and nonsensical.”25

  A glaring example of how hypnosis operates in practice came in the summer of 2010 when Russia was subjected to a siege of fire. Forests, villages, and vacation settlements burned, and the fire destroyed two military depots and came close to the nuclear centers in Sarov and Snezhinsk. According to data from the Global Fire Monitoring Center, from the start of 2010 through August 13 of that year, on the natural territories of Russia fires consumed an area of 60,575 square miles. These figures differ from the data provided by the Ministry of Emergency Situations (26,977 natural fire sites on a total area of 3,213 square miles) by an order of approximately nineteen times.26

  The Russian and regional authorities must have known about the impending disaster. The weather forecasters had predicted a hot, dry summer; however, nothing was done to avert the disaster. The professional Chekist Putin was too distracted by the collapse of a Russian spy network in the United States and even found time to meet with the exposed agents and sing with them a popular Soviet song, “What Does Our Homeland Begin With?” Nor did he pass up the opportunity to appear at a gathering of rockers and talk about the feeling of freedom that riding motorcycles provide. The mayor of Moscow, a city that was choking on the heat and smoke from the burning forests and peat-bogs, safely waited out the fire by going on vacation.

  The reaction to what was going on, although unofficial, was wholly in the spirit of the Cold War: the Americans were said to be deploying a climate weapon, although more sober-minded specialists said that normal human activity was quite enough to provoke such a cataclysm.27 The popular Russian “yellow journalism” paper Komsomolskaia pravda (Komsomol truth), citing the words of retired, former military, weather forecaster Capt. Second Class Nikolai Karaev, asserted that there was absolutely no doubt that the fires occurred as the result of intentional testing activity of what was supposedly a powerful new weapon at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program station located 250 miles northeast of Anchorage. By way of confirmation, it noted that “on the eve of the current weather cataclysm a new American pilot-less spaceship, the X-37B, capable of carrying a powerful laser weapon, was launched into space. The mission of the X-37B was highly classified.”28 This is a publication devoted to disseminating that kind of hypnosis.

  It is true that in every joke there’s a dollop of jest. When the head and co-owner of the company Your Financial Guardian, the Russian Orthodox entrepreneur Vasili Boiko, decided to put an end to confusion about his surname—many so surnamed were rather important people—and changed it to Boiko-Velikii (Boiko the Great), this action was viewed either as a joke or as a marker of his vainglory. How could one distinguish between them? There is as yet no answer to this question, but to make up for it Boiko-Velikii made the following demand of his employees.

  1. In the course of the coming academic year all employees of all enterprises during work hours or after work must take the instructional course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture.” . . .

  3. All employees who undergo an abortion or who assist in performing one are subject to dismissal for cause;

  4. All employees who are cohabiting, but not married, unless they become married by October 14, 2010—the Feast of the Protective Veil of the Holy Mother—will be subject to dismissal for cause;

  5. Newly hired employees who are cohabiting, but not married, must get married within their probationary period (three months).

  I appeal to you to pray more at home, away from home, and in places of worship for forgiveness of our sins and for sending down rains on the fields and our villages and pastures. And for God to bestow his grace upon our hearts.

  I appeal to you to pray that the conflagrations subside and the fires cease.

  I request that the enterprise accountants organize a collection of contributions from employees who wish to assist those suffering from the fires.

  President OAO Russian Milk Vasili Boiko-Velikii.29

  I think any commentary is superfluous, although I should note that there were enthusiastic responses. For example, speaking of this order, another entrepreneur, German Sterligov, in a broadcast on Ekho Moskvy, linked it to the fires: “Everyone says that the firemen are guilty, that the governors are guilty with respect to the fires, the heat, etc. Of course, this is due to our sins, and, ultimately, they are at least pointing in the right direction, so there is something to consider. Otherwise, it is utter nonsense.”30

  There’s something for everyone. There are those who accuse the Americans; others say it is God’s will, that the fires are punishment for sins. The main thing is to shift responsibility away from the authorities. Hypnosis has been elevated to a new and even higher level than it had attained under “socialism.”

  6

  Strangling Democracy

  A strange situation exists in Russia resulting largely from the nature of the Soviet period, the ideological character of the USSR, and the enhanced suggestibility of the Russian people: Beginning in 1917 the ruling authorities regularly and methodically committed improper acts. Concealing these acts required even more unacceptable practices, culminating in human disasters, tragedies, and limits on a wide spectrum of human rights. For the people to accept this as natural, the state had to possess additional means and instruments and to resort to indisputable and continuous lies. In 2000 Putin named this instrumentality the “vertical of power.”

  The Vertical of Power

  It would be naive to assume that Putin and Company’s lack of a formal program means that no such program exists. Of course it does. If it were openly proclaimed, however, both Russian and foreign public opinion would recoil in horror from the regime that has ruled Russia since 2000. Although this program is known only to the initiated, it can easily be deciphered by analyzing what the Russian authorities have done from the beginning of the present century. The program is one of reaction, reviving totalitarianism at home and expansion abroad.

  When Putin became president, Russia was virtually ungovernable. Therefore, people accepted his deliberately neutral-sounding thesis about the need to establish a “vertical of power” in Russia as something natural, especially since the absence of a workable system of governance had produced negative consequences under both Gorbachev and Yeltsin. What that power represented, what its goals were, and what the means were for achieving them were quite another matter. Putin’s vertical of power is nothing other than a new oprichnina—in other words, the creation of a group of Kremlin loyalists who enjoy special privileges and power.

  I worked for many years with representatives of organizations that called themselves “the organs.” Many of my colleagues and acquaintances belonged to these organizations. In the course of working with them, I acquired an in-depth understanding of their peculiar worldview. What, then, did those who took power in 2000 see as Russia’s fundamental problems?

  The first thing to understand is that a majority of employees of the Russian special services possess Bolshevik—that is, communist—convictions. Approaching the situation in Russia from this perspective, they trace the root of Russia’s misfortunes to pluralism and the germs of democracy. Starting in 1997 when I was working in the Security Council, representatives of the special services “cultivated” the idea of the need to establish a two-party system in Russia rather than the multiplicity of parties that had sprung up in the first post-Soviet years. They spoke to me with such conviction about the harm of having a large number of parties that I realized they were parroting a line that had come down “from above.” Under Yeltsin, however, this plan was not destined to be implemented.

  The communist convictions of most officials in the special services and the military by no means signified their adherence to the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. They often had only the foggiest notion of such things. To
them communism meant the organization of society, the way it functioned, and the relationship between the individual and the authorities. In other words, it was the Leninist-Stalinist model of state and society that inherently denied personal interests and enshrined public interests, which the authorities defined as the unity of thought and the domination of force in foreign and domestic policy.

  When Gorbachev’s opponents began to employ the vilest methods to stop his cascading reforms, the masses, with the help of the special services, naturally began to embrace the stereotype that politics is intrinsically a dirty business. Indeed, the KGB and the reactionary segment of the Soviet leadership proceeded from the false premise that all means were permissible to achieve their goals. Regrettably, from a short-term perspective, the extremely immoral Leninist-Stalinist approach to politics is justified. For this kind of politics to work, the tender shoots of democracy must be weeded out, the air holes through which fresh air flows must be sealed off, everything and everybody must be “arranged,” and, above all, control must be established over the hitherto independent legislative and judicial powers as well as the mass media. As noted previously, Putin began his tenure as head of state by asserting his control over the Fourth Estate.

  Intent on creating a new totalitarianism in Russia, Putin could not ignore the fact that the broad plenary powers of the president were partially limited by parliament. Under Yeltsin, the State Duma had been occasionally insubordinate and had even tried to impeach him. Moreover, not infrequently, opposition parties in the State Duma and the regional leaders seated in the upper house of parliament put the executive authorities in a difficult position. The new Russian autocrat could not abide such insubordination. Soon after assuming power he set about dismantling parliamentarianism in Russia; however, there was no special urgency with respect to the State Duma. Thanks to the efforts of the “patriots,” a reliable pro-Putin majority had been established there.