The Compatriots

by Andrei Soldatov

  2. The text is available on the website of the Yeltsin center, “Predsedatel Verkhovnogo Soveta RSFSR Yeltsin B.N. Obrashenie Predsedatelya Verkhovnogo Soveta RSFSR B.N. Yeltsina k sootechestvennikam za rubezhom, 25.12.1990” [Address of the chairman of the Supreme Council of RSFSR Boris Yeltsin to compatriots abroad, December 25, 1990], https://m.yeltsin.ru/archive/paperwork/9590/.

  3. Douglas Smith, Former People (London: Pan, 2013), 334–335.

  4. The Emigrants was published in late 1930, Kutepov was snatched from the streets of Paris in January of the same year, and his disappearance caused enormous scandal, harming the Soviet reputation in the country.

  5. Mikhail Tolstoy, “Pervy Kongress Sootechestvennikov” [The first Congress of Compatriots], St. Petersburg Historical Journal, no. 3 (2014), 72.

  6. Authors’ email exchange with Mikhail Tolstoy, May–December 2018.

  7. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Tolstoy; see Mikhail Tolstoy, “Pervy Kongress Sootechestvennikov” [The first Congress of Compatriots], St. Petersburg Historical Journal, no. 3 (2014).

  8. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Tolstoy.

  9. Broadcasting Board of Governors, “Resolution Honoring 65th Anniversary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian Service,” March 14, 2018, https://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2018/03/Resolution-65th-Anniversary-of-RFERL-Russian-Service.pdf.

  10. Mikhail Tolstoy, “Pervy Kongress Sootechestvennikov” [The first Congress of Compatriots], St. Petersburg Historical Journal, no. 3 (2014), 86.

  CHAPTER 15: MOVING THE MONEY

  1. US District Court, Central District of California, United States of America v. Stanley Mark Rifkin, No CR 78-1050 (A)—WMB, quoted by Jay Becker, “Rifkin, a Documentary History, 2 Computer L.J.471 (1980),” John Marshall Journal of Information Technology and Privacy Law 2, no. 1 (1980), http://repository.jmls.edu/jitpl/vol2/iss1/23; BookRags, “Stanley Rifkin,” https://www.social-engineer.org/wiki/archives/Hackers/hackers-Mark-Rifkin-Social-Engineer-furtherInfo.htm.

  2. Rifkin’s testimony in court, February 22, 1979, quoted by Jay Becker, “Rifkin, a Documentary History, 2 Computer L.J.471 (1980),” John Marshall Journal of Information Technology and Privacy Law 2, no. 1 (1980), http://repository.jmls.edu/jitpl/vol2/iss1/23.

  3. Kevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2002), 5.

  4. Mitnick and Simon, Art of Deception, 5.

  5. Andrew Tully, Inside the FBI (1980; Lake Oswego, OR; eNet, 2015), 12.

  6. This was how Eurodollars were born. Istoria Sovetskikh I Rossikskikh bankov za granitsey: Vospominania Ochevidtsev, Documenti [The history of Soviet and Russian banks abroad: Witness testimonies, documents] (Moscow, 2007) 1, no. 29. See also M. M. Boguslavskii, Private International Law: The Soviet Approach (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988).

  7. Authors’ email exchange with Stan Rifkin, April 28–29, 2019.

  8. “Technologicheskoye Ograblenie” [Technological heist], Rovesnik Magazine 11, 1980.

  9. Authors’ conversation with the press office of ALROSA; the ALROSA corporate website, http://eng.alrosa.ru/alrosa-and-ddc-sign-a-memorandum-of-understanding/.

  CHAPTER 16: THE SCHEME DEVISED

  1. Sarah Bartlett, “The Clumsy Quest for Irving Bank,” New York Times, September 18, 1988, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/18/business/the-clumsy-quest-for-irving-bank.html.

  2. Robert A. Bennett, “Irving Suitor a Tough Banker,” New York Times, September 29, 1987, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/29/business/irving-suitor-a-tough-banker.html.

  3. Father Vasili Khvostenko was a mountain engineer, and upon his return, he was promptly executed by Stalin’s secret police. His son Lev founded school 213 in Leningrad, and his grandson became the great Russian poet Alexei Khvostenko (“Khvost”).

  4. Authors’ conversation with Natasha Gurfinkel, December 2018.

  5. According to the New York Times.

  6. Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs: 1613–1918 (New York: Vintage, 2016), 22.

  7. Joseph Berger, “Soviet Turmoil,” New York Times, September 17, 1991.

  8. Authors’ conversation with Natasha Gurfinkel, December 2918.

  9. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, June 2018. In 1994, Natasha Gurfinkel married Russia’s representative to the IMF, Konstanin Kagalovsky, who later joined Khodorkovsky’s bank as his deputy. Natasha became known as Mrs. Gurfinkel-Kagalovsky.

  CHAPTER 17: MUDDYING THE WATERS

  1. Timothy O’Brien and Lowell Bergman, “The Money Movers: A Special Report; Tracking How Pair Went from Russia to Riches,” New York Times, October 19, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/19/world/the-money-movers-a-special-report-tracking-how-pair-went-from-russia-to-riches.html.

  2. O’Brien and Bergman, “Money Movers.”

  3. O’Brien and Bergman, “Money Movers.”

  4. Raymond Bonner and Timothy L. O’Brien, “Activity at Bank Raises Suspicions of Russia Mob Tie,” New York Times, August 19, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/19/world/activity-at-bank-raises-suspicions-of-russia-mob-tie.html.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Natasha Gurfinkel.

  6. Bonner and O’Brien, “Activity at Bank.”

  7. Bonner and O’Brien, “Activity at Bank.”

  8. Testimony of Thomas A. Renyi, CEO of BoNY, US House of Representatives, “Russian Money Laundering, Hearing before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, September 21, 1999,” https://archive.org/details/russianmoneylaun00unit.

  9. Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Sharon LaFraniere, “Yeltsin’s Son-in-Law Kept Offshore Accounts, Hill Told,” Washington Post, September 23, 1999.

  10. Authors’ conversation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, June 2018.

  11. Testimony of Thomas A. Renyi, US House of Representatives, “Russian Money Laundering.”

  12. See, e.g., “Delo Bank of New York—kak ochernyali Rossiyu” [The case of the Bank of New York: How Russia was slandered], Kommersant, March 7, 2003, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/369918.

  13. Authors’ conversation with Natasha Gurfinkel, December 2018.

  14. Timothy L. O’Brien with Raymond Bonner, “Banker and Husband Tell of Role in Laundering Case,” New York Times, February 17, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/17/world/banker-and-husband-tell-of-role-in-laundering-case.html.

  15. Jonathan Sibun, “Ex-BoNY Executive Sentenced for Money-Laundering,” Financial News, June 27, 2006, https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/ex-bony-executive-sentenced-for-money-laundering-1-20060727.

  16. Timothy O’Brien, “Bank Settles US Enquiry into Money Laundering,” New York Times, November 9, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/business/bank-settles-us-inquiry-into-money-laundering.html.

  17. Denis Uvarov, “‘Russkuyu mafiu’ ne posadili” [“Russian mafia” was not sent to jail], Vremya Novostey, July 28, 2006, http://www.vremya.ru/2006/133/8/157547.html.

  18. US House of Representatives, “Russian Money Laundering.”

  CHAPTER 18: SOME HABITS DIE HARD

  1. First Chief Directorate, Pervoye Glavnoye Upravlenie (PGU) of the KGB.

  2. Pete Earley, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War (New York: Penguin, 2007), 62–63.

  3. Leonid Shebarshin, Posledniy Boy KGB [The last fight of the KGB] (Moscow: Algoritm, 2013); authors’ conversations with Shebarshin, 2001–2003.

  4. Authors’ conversations with Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a chief of the CIA’s Moscow station in the early 1990s, November 2018.

  5. Earley, Comrade J, 62–63.

  6. The idea was initially suggested by Leonid Nikitenko, chief of the Department K. See Shebarshin, Posledniy Boy KGB, 29.

  7. Shebarshin, Posledniy Boy KGB.

  8. KGB major-general Leonid Makarov. He shared the room with Shebarshin in a KGB foreign intelligence school no. 101 in the 1960s.

  9. Shebarshin, Posledniy Boy KGB, 37.


  10. Argumenti I Fakti, no. 34, 1990.

  11. “Bez Plasha I Kinzhala” [Without cloak and dagger], Pravda, April 22, 1990.

  12. The text of the 1993 report “Novy vyzov posle Kholodnoy Voini” [A new challenge after the Cold War], on the website of the SVR, http://svr.gov.ru/material/2-1.htm. The second report, “Perspektivi rasshirenia NATO i interesi Rossii” [Prospects of the NATO expansion and the interests of Russia], presented in November 1993, concerning the expansion of NATO to the east, was highly critical of NATO, but it’s not available online.

  CHAPTER 19: COOPERATION AND REBRANDING

  1. Authors’ conversations with Rolf Mowatt-Larssen; see Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, “US and Russian Intelligence Cooperation during the Yeltsin Years,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, February 11, 2011, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/us-and-russian-intelligence-cooperation-during-yeltsin-years.

  2. Viktor Abakumov, the head of the dreaded military counterintelligence agency SMERSH (SMErt SHpionam—Death to Spies) during World War II and then a minister of state security of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1951. He was arrested and shot after Stalin’s death.

  3. “Shef Rossiyskoy Razvedki posetil SCHA” [Chief of Russian Foreign Intelligence visited the United States], Kommersant, June 22, 1993, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/51323?query=CBP%20и%20ЦPУ.

  4. Authors’ conversation with Rolf Mowatt-Larssen.

  5. Authors’ conversation with Alexander Vassiliev.

  6. The SVR hastened to announce that it reached an understanding with Random House in July 1992, but the talks continued until 1993. See the following: V SCHA izdayut patiknizhie o geroiakh-razvedchikakh [Five-volume set about hero-spies to be published in the United States], Kommersant, July 6, 1992, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5536.

  7. John Castello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions: The KGB Orlov Dossier Reveals Stalin’s Master Spy (New York: Crown, 1993).

  8. Only three books were published according to the initial plan: Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy J. Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1998).

  9. Authors’ email exchange with James O’Shea Wade.

  10. Phillip Knightly, “Disinformation,” London Review of Books, July 8, 1993, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n13/phillip-knightley/disinformation.

  11. Authors’ conversation with Alexander Vassiliev, July 2018.

  12. Authors’ conversation with Alexander Vassiliev, July 2018.

  13. Weinstein and Vassiliev, Haunted Wood; Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

  14. Wilson Center, Vassiliev Notebooks, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.

  15. We described this operation in our book The New Nobility (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 116 (Assistance directorate of the FSB).

  16. Andrei Soldatov, “The True Role of the FSB in the Ukrainian Crisis,” Moscow Times, April 15, 2014, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/04/15/the-true-role-of-the-fsb-in-the-ukrainian-crisis-a33985.

  17. Earley, Comrade J, 22–23; authors’ conversations with Sergei Tretyakov and with former SVR operatives previously based in New York.

  18. Earley, Comrade J, 195.

  19. Authors’ conversations with Tretyakov.

  20. Brian Ross, Pete Madden, and Michelle McPhee, “Russian Spy Evgeny Buryakov Deported from the United States, April 5, 2017,” ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/International/russian-spy-evgeny-buryakov-deported-united-states/story?id=46601947.

  CHAPTER 20: A FRESH START

  1. Kremlin, transcript of Putin’s address to the First World Congress of Compatriots, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21359.

  2. The full name is the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation.

  3. The KGB 1968’s manual, “The Use of the Soviet Culture Committee for Cultural Ties with Compatriots Abroad in Intelligence Activity” (39), published by Michael Weiss at the Interpreter. This tradition was never broken; in autumn 2013, Yuri Zaytsev, the head of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Washington, was investigated by the FBI as a possible spy. The FBI then suspected that a cultural exchange program funded by Rossotrudnichestvo and run by Zaytsev was clandestinely recruiting Americans. See Molly Redden, “FBI Probing Whether Russia Used Cultural Junkets to Recruit American Intelligence Assets,” Mother Jones, October 2013, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/fbi-investigating-yury-zaytsev-russian-diplomat-spy/; and Sari Horwitz, “Head of D.C.-Based Russian Cultural Center Being Investigated as Possible Spy,” Washington Post, October 23, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/head-of-dc-based-russian-cultural-center-being-investigated-as-possible-spy/2013/10/23/63a0bb54-3c02-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html?utm_term=.2a4bde2a419e.

  4. Congress Sootechestvinnikov, 11–12 Oktabrya 2001, Itogovie Materiali [Congress of Compatriots, October 11–12, 2001, the final materials] (Moscow: Drofa, 2001).

  5. “Znakomie vse Vice” [Familiar all vice], Kommersant, October 23, 2001, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/288415.

  6. Obituary for Alexei Jordan: “Pamyati moego druga” [In memoriam of my friend], http://www.fskk.ru.

  7. Alexei Jordan, “Alexei Jordan: Ya veryu v velikoye budushee Rossii” [Alexei Jordan: I believe in the great future of Russia], PMJ, http://www.pmg-online.ru/article_jordan2.htm.

  CHAPTER 21: THE SIEGE

  1. Authors’ conversations with Victor Shenderovich, Evgeny Kiselev, and Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr.

  2. Authors’ conversation with Evgeny Kiselev, August 2018.

  3. His name was Leonid Rozhetskin. Rozhetskin was part of the third wave of emigration—he had been brought to the United States by his mother in 1980, when he was fourteen years old. A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to Columbia University, from which he graduated with distinction, and in 1990 he graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. He disappeared in March 2008 in Jurmala, Latvia, when he was forty-one years old. His body was found in Latvian woods in 2012.

  4. Richard W. Stevenson, “An American in Moscow,” New York Times, September 20, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/20/business/an-american-in-moscow.html.

  5. Yuri Sagaidak was a former colleague of Vassiliev—in the late 1980s, he had served in London under disguise of a journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda until 1989. For details, see Valentine Low, “My Friend Yuri… the Communist Spy,” The Times (London), February 24, 2018, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/valentine-low-my-friend-yuri-the-communist-spy-g9z5q7qt9.

  6. Authors’ conversations with Evgeny Kiselev.

  7. Authors’ conversations with Kara-Murza Sr., December 2017–April 2019.

  8. “Takeover of NTV,” Radio Svoboda, April 15, 2001, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24197943.html.

  9. NTV report on a takeover of NTV, April 14, 2001, “Vipuski novostei o zakhvate NTV 14.04.2001” [News reports about the seizure of NTV April 14, 2001], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueF9mDOCCGE.

  10. Mila Kuzina, “Putin I Dobrodeev ponyali drug druga” [Putin and Dobrodeev understood each other], Gazeta.Ru, April 16, 2001, https://www.gazeta.ru/2001/04/16/putinidobrod.shtml; see also Radio Svoboda reporting, April 15, 2001, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24197943.html.

  11. News reports on a takeover of NTV, April 14, 2001, “Vipuski novostei o zakhvate NTV 14.04.2001” [News reports about the seizure of NTV April 14, 2001], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueF9mDOCCGE.

  12. NTV, “Itogi with Evgeny Kiselev,” April 3, 2001, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD9hU8fkwBo&t=2407s.

  CHA
PTER 22: GETTING OUT THE MESSAGE

  1. “NTV popytalos prervat translatsiyu program Inter-TV za rubezh” [NTV tried to interrupt the translation of Inter-TV abroad], Newsru.com, September 28, 2001, https://www.newsru.com/russia/28sep2001/inter.html.

  2. “Bush nazval Putina reformatorom” [Bush called Putin a reformer], Kommersant, November 15, 2001, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/926509.

  3. Peter Baker, “‘I’m Thrilled He’s Here,’ Bush Says as Putin Visits His Texan Ranch,” Washington Post, November 15, 2001, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/11/15/im-thrilled-hes-here-bush-says-as-putin-visits-his-texas-ranch/d9928257-b7e4-428c-9d44-865a1ce6e5f5/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f9766e0f64c5.

  4. Boris Jordan, “Control of Russian TV,” New York Times, December 7, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/opinion/l-control-of-russian-tv-547751.html.

  5. TSN, “Shuster v 60-letniy yubiley priznalsa v antisovetskoy deyatelnosti” [Shuster at his 60th jubilee admitted his anti-Soviet activity], November 23, 2012, https://ru.tsn.ua/politika/shuster-v-60-letniy-yubiley-priznalsya-v-antisovetskoy-deyatelnosti-i-zvanii-agenta-cru.html.

  6. Edward Glazarev, “Russian Immigrants’ CNN RTVI Broadcasts Lots of News—and Soaps,” New York Daily News, December 15, 2002, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/boroughs/russian-immigrants-cnn-rtvi-broadcasts-lots-news-soaps-article-1.500196.

  CHAPTER 23: THE CRISIS

  1. For details, see our 2010 book, The New Nobility.

  2. Susan B. Glasser, “NTV Feeling Kremlin’s Wrath,” Washington Post, November 22, 2002, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/11/22/ntv-feeling-kremlins-wrath/b2edc32a-1666-43b5-95c7-eb8b8506e70d/?utm_term=.8098c4625963.

  3. C-SPAN, “Media Coverage of Terrorism,” November 18, 2002, https://www.c-span.org/video/?173903-1/media-coverage-terrorism.

  4. Glasser, “NTV Feeling Kremlin’s Wrath.”