8. N. A. Berdyaev, Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma [Sources and meaning of Russian communism] (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 99.
9. Berdyaev, Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma, 100.
10. Alexander Men (1935–90) was a prominent Russian Orthodox theologian and author who was murdered on September 9, 1990, by an unknown assailant under conditions that raised suspicions of the KGB’s involvement in his death. —Trans.
11. Sergei L. Loiko, “Russian Orthodox Church Is in Spiritual Crisis, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2012.
12. Italics mine.
13. Italics mine.
14. Here and further the italics are mine.
15. Italics mine.
16. Italics mine.
17. Mikhail Yur’iev, “Vnutrennii vrag i natsional’naia ideia” [The internal enemy and the national idea], Komsomolskaia pravda [Komsomol truth], June 11, 2004.
18. Yur’iev, “Vnutrennii vrag.” Italics mine.
19. Nina Andreeva, a Soviet chemistry teacher and political activist, published an open letter in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya [Soviet Russia] in March 1988, denouncing Gorbachev and perestroika and giving heart to the old guard communists. —Trans.
20. Shchekochikhin, “Odnazhdy ya stal deputatom” [I once became a deputy], in S liubovyu, 39.
21. Nina Petlyanova, “Shpionashi” [The Nashi spies], Novaia gazeta [New paper]), no. 16 (February 16, 2009).
22. A similar story about this episode can be found in the book by A. N. Yakovlev: “I recall that during a break in one of our regular meetings, we sat down to eat. Mikhail Sergeevich was sullen, silently eating borscht. Suddenly Kriuchkov stood up and said roughly the following: ‘Mikhail Sergeevich, carrying out your instructions, we have begun to found a party; we will give it a contemporary name. We have selected several candidates to lead it.’ Kriuchkov did not give specific names. Gorbachev was silent. It was as if he hadn’t been listening and had really withdrawn into himself.” Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 382.
23. Yakovlev also writes that, during Soviet times, the Russian Communist Party engendered “various sorts of nationalist and pro-fascist groups under the supervision of and with the help of the KGB.” Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 383.
24. Vladimir Tol’ts, “Fal’sifikatsii: Spiski podozrevaemykh i podozrevaiushchikh” [Falsifications: Lists of suspects and those identifying suspects], Svoboda Russian News, July 1, 2009, http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1766749.html.
25. Yury Afanasyev, “Ya khotel by uvidet’ Rossiyu raskoldovannoi” [I would like to see Russia released from its spell], Novaia gazeta, no. 55 (May 27, 2009).
26. Greenpeace Russia, “Data of the World Center for Monitoring Fires,” Forest Forum, August 13, 2010, http://www.forestforum.ru/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7613&view=unread&sid=828475e4f49dd9ad8ff4c6ef3ce14bc#unread, http://www.fire.uni-frieburg.de/GFMCnew/2010/08/13/20100813_ru_htm.
27. Dmitry Pisarenko, “Klimat prevrashchaetsia v moshchnoe oruzhie: V chem prichina zhary?” [Climate turns into a powerful weapon: What is the cause of the fires?], Argumenty i fakty [Arguments and facts] no. 29 (July 21, 2010).
28. Svetlana Kuzina, “Zhara v Rossii—rezultat ispytaniia klimaticheskogo oruzhiia v SShA?” [Are the fires in Russia the result of an American climate weapon test?], Komsomolskaia pravda, July 29, 2010.
29. Vasily Boiko-Velikii, “For facilitating repentance in our people,” address to employees of Russian Milk and all companies in the group Your Financial Guardian, August 9, 2010, http://rusk.ru/st.php?idar=43371.
30. “Orthodox enterprise: Life by their own rules?,” Discussion, Culture Shock, August 14, 2010, http://echo.msk.ru/programs/kulshok/703023-echo/.
6. Strangling Democracy
1. On March 19, 2003, material was posted on the site for WPS–Russian Media Monitoring Agency that said the decision to strengthen the FSB was adopted in the first instance to “enhance management of the election process.” As a result of the reform of the coercive agencies, the Russian Federation Automatized State Election System (RFASES) passed from the Central Elections Commission (CEC) to the FSB. According to information from Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technologies Dmitry Orlov, even before this the CEC was only the corporative user of this system. A special subunit of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information exercised control over receiving and supplying data from the very beginning of the system’s operation. The work of the RFASES was wholly closed to outside observers. It was impossible to verify the reliability of information provided for open access—for example, accusations that were posted on the Internet. For precisely this reason, in the view of the authors of the publication, the capable hands of the RFASES had many means of rigging the data as 99 percent of the observers only received copies of the final results. This facilitated, for example, not only routine alterations to ballots and the “throwing in” of additional ballots (ballot stuffing) but even the creation of virtual voting precincts on the computer network. In general, the RFASES was something like a “black box”; you put in the ingredients (information) and out came the results (the name of a deputy). The publication summed it up as follows: “Control over the process of transformation lies in the hands of the increasingly powerful FSB.”
2. In June 1962 Soviet troops forcefully suppressed worker demonstrations in the southern Russian city of Novocherkassk, resulting in dozens of killed and wounded. See Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). —Trans.
3. In saying this, I am not in the least absolving other countries of their share of responsibility, but here I am speaking of Russia.
4. In the period between 1901 and 1911, about 17,000 persons became victims of terrorist acts.
5. According to several estimates, more than 25 million people were exterminated in the course of intra-party struggle, civil war, collectivization, and industrialization.
6. Nikolai Berdiaev et al., Smertnaia kazn’: Za i protiv [The death penalty: For and against] (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia Literatura, 1989), 104.
7. Berdiaev et al., Smertnaia kazn’, 110.
8. It was reported that 94 persons died in the first incident, and 121 died in the second.
9. Vyacheslav Izmailov, “Ne vosplamenyaetsia, ne gorit, ne vzryvaetsia” [It does not ignite, doesn’t burn, doesn’t explode], Novaia gazeta, no. 82 (October 30, 2006).
10. Anna Politkovskaya, “Polgoda posle ‘Nord-Osta’: Odin iz gruppy terroristov utselel. My ego nashli” [Six months after “Nord-Ost” one of the terrorists has survived. We found him], Novaia gazeta, no. 30 (April 28, 2003).
11. Politkovskaya, “Polgoda posle ‘Nord-Osta.’”
12. For example, in August 2000, Order No. 130, signed earlier by Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman, was registered in the Ministry of Justice and went into force. This was “An Order to Introduce a System of Technical Means to Secure Operational-Search Measures on Telephonic, Mobile, and Wireless Communications and Publicly Used Personal Communication Devices.” Publishing this notice, the newspaper Segodnia [Today] asserted that in line with this document all Internet providers as well as operators of telephonic, network, and paging services were obliged to draw up and coordinate with the FSB a plan to establish listening devices, initially providing the special services with all passwords, and then at their own expense install the listening devices on their networks, inform the FSB on how to employ them, and train agents in their use. It was specially stipulated that this work be kept secret.
According to Segodnia’s August 22, 2000, report, the order said, “Information about the subscribers who were being subjected to surveillance as well as the decisions on the basis of which surveillance was being conducted would not be provided to the network operators.” Such a formulation gave the special services practically unlimited opportunity to listen in to everyone and everything.
13. Igor Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy: Spetssluzhby sozdali paralellel’nye strukt
ury dlia ispolneniia vnesudebnykh prigovorov” [Reserve organs: The special services created parallel structures to carry out extrajudicial sentences], Novaia gazeta, January 11, 2007.
14. The acronym GUBOP stands for Glavnoe upravlenie po bor’be s organizovannoi prestupnost’iu (Main Administration for the Struggle against Organized Crime). —Trans.
15. Maxim Lazovsky (1965–2000) headed a criminal gang whose members were implicated in various domestic acts of terrorism. He was shot to death in April 2000. —Trans.
16. The acronym SVR stands for Sluzhba vneshnei razvedki (Foreign Intelligence Service). —Trans.
17. The acronym OPG stands for Organizovannaia prestupnaia gruppirovka (organized criminal gang). —Trans.
18. Italics mine.
19. I am following the previously cited Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy.”
20. This is another example of how they take care of their own. Ul’man vanished into thin air without a trace. Another instance speaks for itself: the jury found the murderer innocent.
21. The arrest of Aleksei Pichugin, an employee of the Internal Security Department of YUKOS, was somewhat unique in this story; therefore, it is put into this footnote.
22. “Tezisy vystupleniia pervogo zamestitelia ministra inostrannykh del SSSR A. G. Kovalev na zasedanii Politburo, 13 August 1987” [Bullet points of the speech by First Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR A. G. Kovalev at the meeting of the Politburo, August 13, 1987], from the author’s private archive.
23. Galina Mursalieva, “Mezhdu strakhom i nenavist’yu” [Between fear and hatred], Novaia gazeta, no. 130 (November 19, 2010).
7. The New Russian Imperialism
1. USSR minister of foreign affairs Andrei Gromyko never tired of saying, “We need to cut the bottom off the Third Basket.” [He was referring to the section of the Final Act dealing with human rights. —Trans.]
2. Needless to say, the collapse of the USSR was the result of the coup of August 1991, but the coup was also an attempt to put an end to perestroika.
3. Although I stood at the periphery of this scandal, I knew, first, that everything connected with it was personally controlled by Putin; and, second, from the very start it was clear to me that the Pope affair was groundless and the result of a provocation.
4. Italics mine.
5. In Azerbaijan there were 340,000 ethnic Russians (including immigrants from the republics of the North Caucasus), 15,000 in Armenia, 1.2 million in Belarus, 400,000 in Estonia, 200,000 in Georgia, 4.5 million in Kazakhstan, 685,000 in Kyrgyzstan, 900,000 in Latvia, 307,000 in Lithuania, 600,000 in Moldova, 65,000 in Tajikistan, 200,000 in Turkmenistan, 11.5 million in Ukraine, and1.2 million in Uzbekistan.
6. Zurab Imnaishvili and Yury Roks, “Poboishche v tsentre Tbilisi: V popytke noiabrskogo perevorota Gruziia obviniaet Rossiyu” [Carnage in the center of Tbilisi: Russia is accused in the November coup attempt in Georgia], Novaia gazeta, August 11, 2007.
7. Anatoly Adamishin and Richard Schifter, Human Rights, Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009), 170–71.
Conclusion
1. Andrei Volnov, “Nostalgiia po pesochnitsa: Psikhonevrologicheskoe issledovanie povedeniia rossiskoi vlasti” [Nostalgia for the sandbox: A psycho-neurological study of the conduct of Russian power], Novaia gazeta, February 7, 2007. [Andrei Volnov is a nom de plume of the author.]
2. Yury Afanasyev, “My ne raby? Istoricheskii beg na meste: ‘Osoby put’ Rossii” [Are we not slaves? Historical running in place: Russia’s “special path”], Novaia gazeta, Tsvetnoi vypusk ot [color edition], no. 47 (December 5, 2008).
3. According to Daniil Granin, this is how the outstanding biologist and geneticist N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii (1900–81) characterized the reason for many disasters.
4. I knew this from working on the staff of the Russian Security Council.
5. Konstantin Gaaze and Mikhail Fishman, “Sluzhili dva tovarishcha” [Two comrades served], Russkii Newsweek [Russian newsweek], December 22, 2008.
6. Anatoly Chernyaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod: Dnevnik dvukh epoch, 1972–1991 [Combined outcome: A diary of two epochs, 1972–19910] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008), 280–81.
7. Yevgeny Schwartz (1896–1958) was a Russian playwright and author of The Naked King (1934), which is partly based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. —Trans.
8. Telegraph Video and AP, “Watch: Vladimir Putin ‘Probably’ Ordered Alexander Litvinenko’s Murder, Concludes Chairman Sir Robert Owen,” The Telegraph, January 21, 2016, www.telegraph.co/uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12112046/Watch-Vladimir-Putin-probably-ordered-Alexander-Litvinenkos-murder-concludes-Chairman-Sir-Robert-Owen.html.
9. Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie, 478.
Index
Page numbers refer to the print edition.
Abkhazia, 121, 238, 279–81, 283, 284–85
“active measures” (aktivka), 208–10
Adamishin, Anatoly, xiv, 18, 20, 24, 51, 61, 68
Adamov, Yevgeny, xviii, 147–48
Adygeia, Republic of, 329n17
Afanasyev, Yury, 214, 296
Afghanistan, 3, 12, 132, 184, 259, 284
Akhmatova, Anna, 85
Akhromeyev, Sergei, 71
Alekhina, Maria, 193
Aleksanian, Vasily, 244, 303
Alekseeva, Liudmila, 327n1
Aleksei II, 45, 171
Alexander II, xxv–xxvi
Alexander III, xxvi
Andreeva, Nina, 200, 322n9
Andropov, Igor, 177
Andropov, Yuri, xx, 99, 176, 185, 270, 298; Anatoly Kovalev and, xxxiv–xxxv; character and personality, 177; special services and, 174, 176–77
antialcohol campaign, 109, 329n7
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972), 271–72
anti-Semitism, 63, 299–300, 308
“Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda” criminal code, 32–33
Arbatov, Georgy, xx, 177, 332n7
Arctic region, in Yeltsin era, 133–35
Armenia, 36, 121, 335n5
Asahi newspaper, 247
Assad, Bashar al-, 305, 307, 309
assassination. See political assassinations
assembly, freedom of, 34–35
August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, 67–95, 328n9, 335n2; Anatoly Kovalev’s health after, 72–77; atmosphere after, 71–72, 85–91; doubts about true failure of, 68–71; economic and political context of, 67–68; Gorbachev’s loss of power after, 91–95; outcomes of, generally, 77–79; redistribution of property and power after, 80–85; special services and, 142, 179–80, 181; the West and, 288
Azerbaijan, 36, 121, 266, 335n5
Babitskii, Andrei, 242–43
Babkin, Anatoly, 250
Baburova, Anastasia, 241
Bagreev, Roman, 240
Bakatin, Vadim, 69, 76, 90, 246
Bakhmin, Vyacheslav, 62
Baklanov, Oleg, 70
Basaev, Shamil, 130, 233, 330n24
Bashkortostan, 125, 126, 132, 241, 329n17
Bekhtereva, Natalia, 75
Belarus, 162, 263, 271, 275, 335n5
Bellona Foundation, 247
Belovezhe Accords (1991), 120, 260, 262, 264
Berdyaev, Nikolai, 182
Berdzenishvili, Levan, 283
Berezovsky, Boris, 170, 207, 235, 242, 330n24
Beriya, Lavrenty, 174, 176, 282
Berlusconi, Silvio, 302
Beslan school seizure and hostage-taking, xxiii, 198, 232–33, 269
Bessarabia, 284
Bessmertnykh, Alexander, 61
Bogoraz, Larisa, 62
Boiko-Velikii, Vasili, 215–16
Boldin, Valery, 92, 93
Bolshevik coup, 3, 225; diplomatic services after, 151; policies leading to, xxvi; totalitarian system established after, 98, 104–5, 182; used by special services to gain power, 173–74, 218
Bordiuzha, Nikolai, xviii–xix, 149, 150
Bosnia, 161
&nb
sp; Bovin, Alexander, 177
Brezhnev, Leonid, xiv, xxiii, 7, 32, 168, 180, 268, 270; Anatoly Kovalev and, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvi–xxxvii; gas and oil and, 185; nostalgia for, 302; stagnation under, 19, 99, 186, 289, 298–99, 301–2
Bronze Soldier monument, in Estonia, 277–78
Brutents, Karen, 85–86, 88
Budanov, Yury, 240–41
Bukharin, Nikolai, 62, 328n8
Bukovskaia, Anna, 208
Bukovsky, Vladimir, 101–2, 174
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 113
Bulgaria, 256, 271
Bunin, Ivan, xxv
Buraev, Shamil, 236
Burbulis, Gennady, 153
Buriatia, 125
Burlatsky, Fyodor, xx, 177
Bush, George H. W., 289
Bush, George W., 230, 266, 302
Cardin, Benjamin, 304
Central Committee of the CPSU, xxix–xxx, 11, 22–23, 39–40, 51, 57–58, 164–66, 176–77; August 1991 coup and, 77–79, 80–84, 92, 180; hatred of Gorbachev, 79; perestroika and, 38–39, 108–9; Pope John Paul’s visit and, 23; psychiatry and, 51, 57–58; religious freedom and, 39, 40; special services in Yeltsin era and, 98
Chaadaev, Pyotr, xii, xxiv, 104, 294–95, 314
Channel One (television), 170, 207
Chaplin, Vsevolod, 193
Charlie Hebdo attack, 307–8
Chazov, Yevgeny, 55, 59
Chebrikov, Viktor, 58
Chechnya: First Chechen War, 112, 128–30, 191, 229, 286; Putin and, xvi, 179, 186, 269, 274, 280; Second Chechen War, 130–33, 139, 179, 330n24; terrorism and need for enemy of Russia, xxii, 225, 227–34, 236, 266; in Yeltsin era, 123, 124, 127–33, 138, 149–50, 329n18, 330–31nn19–27
Cheka, 173, 174, 200, 226, 245–46
Chernenko, Konstantin, 7, 99, 185, 186, 251, 270, 298–99, 301–2
Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe (1986), 18, 33, 118, 201
Chernyaev, Anatoly, 64, 300, 301; August 1991 coup and, 68–69, 71, 72, 87, 88, 93
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