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

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  The evolution of the spiderweb in post-Soviet times is extremely paradoxical. The first and greatest paradox is that for a large majority of the population, the Russians’ quest for freedom began to make significant progress with the reforms of Gorbachev and Yeltsin but was soon replaced by a nostalgia for the order of the Stalinist dictatorship or, at best, for the era of stagnation (1964–85). This shift occurred partly because the reforms were deliberately compromised by elements of the state apparatus, the Central Committee, the KGB, and the economic planners during Gorbachev’s perestroika; by the active efforts of the special services under Yeltsin; and, after Putin’s assumption of power, by all the state information and propaganda agencies. The fall in living standards and quality of life also inevitably had an impact, as many people associated the decline with the democratic reforms.

  A second paradox lies in how the totalitarian Soviet regime, which ruthlessly uprooted any kind of nonconformism, itself greatly helped to strengthen the dissident movement in the USSR, in particular, by signing the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Of course, the movement arose earlier, but it changed significantly following the signing of the Helsinki Act, which included the third basket dedicated to human rights. Was this a mistake on the part of the regime? In reality, a fascinating chess match had played out between conservatives and proponents of liberalization in the USSR during the process whereby participating states of the CSCE reached accord on the Final Act.

  The basic mission assigned to the Soviet delegation in Helsinki was to “confirm the results of the Second World War and postwar development,” and that meant, in part, the division of Germany. Thus, the Soviets’ main issue at the CSCE was gaining acceptance of the principle of the inviolability of borders in their current configuration. Naturally, the Western partners understood this very well and made every possible use of this Soviet concern to include provisions regarding human rights in the Final Act. Thanks in part to the efforts of Anatoly Kovalev, head of the Soviet delegation, the Soviet leadership found itself in a situation where it could achieve its goal only via compromise, ensuring the principle of the inviolability of borders in exchange for accepting the third basket. Since Soviet leader Brezhnev repeatedly said to his inner circle that he could die in peace after acceptance of the Final Act’s “confirming the results of the war and postwar development,” resolving the issue of the third basket was facilitated.6

  The third paradox is that despite the efforts undertaken to establish democracy in Russia after Gorbachev’s advent to power, democracy did not take root. After getting a taste of ersatz democracy and not realizing it was only an imitation of the real thing, the people spat it out. This made it possible for the Kremlin to destroy the multibillionaire oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 and openly exact its revenge upon him. The story of the government’s seizure of his company YUKOS and the arrest of Khodorkovsky, the richest person in Russia, after he was suspected of having presidential ambitions vividly illustrated the status of freedom of entrepreneurship and of political and civil rights. Without delving into Khodorkovsky’s activity per se, from a legal perspective the essence of the matter is that he became the only “oligarch” punished for what everyone was doing; that is, it was a case of selective justice. Many observers asserted that Khodorkovsky’s first trial meant the end of an independent system of justice in Russia.

  Corruption is another tsarina of justice in Russia. Lawyers say students at law school lectures are told the following anecdote: One side in a trial gave a bribe to the judge, and the other side gave a bribe that was twice as large. The judge, after thinking it over, accepted only half of the latter bribe, saying, “Now your chances in court are equal.”

  It is not only in court that corruption encroaches upon the rights of Russians. It is a phenomenon throughout Russia. Government and municipal officials are corrupt, as are the militia, doctors, and teachers. The most dangerous aspect is that the Kremlin and the Russian White House are corrupt. The halls of power have turned into a kind of closed joint-stock company where outsiders are not admitted. By its very nature the virtually blatant commercialization of power destroys human rights, democracy, and common sense. It seems that the Russian authorities have outstripped Napoleon’s famous minister of foreign affairs Talleyrand, who sold and betrayed everyone and everything—except France itself. The authorities’ looting of Russia indeed constitutes a form of betrayal.

  Pervasive corruption is due to the people’s extremely low wages. Massive poverty also engenders many other problems, among them prostitution, including of children, and an unprecedented number of cases of syphilis, tuberculosis, and other illnesses induced by social conditions. The exacerbation of social problems, together with the subservience to authority cultivated by the communists, renders political and civil rights of secondary importance, if not totally illusory.

  This is especially so because from the moment he came to power, Putin strove to ensure that society received only the information that he approved. His first steps as head of state were directed toward extinguishing the freedom of the mass media. After liquidating Vladimir Gusinskii’s influential independent media holding company Media-Most, Putin then subordinated TV’s Channel One, previously controlled by Boris Berezovsky, to the Kremlin. Putin gradually pulled into his web other previously independent mass media. His reprimand to editor in chief Aleksei Venediktov of radio station Ekho Moskvy (Moscow echo) for Ekho’s supposedly “incorrect” treatment of the war in Georgia demonstrates that the Russian authorities are even taking control of smaller media with extremely limited audiences. In this context particular attention should be paid to provincial media, which are often tightly controlled by the local authorities.

  The suppression of freedom of opinion opened the floodgates for manipulating social awareness and for hypnotizing audiences with a force and effectiveness not at all inferior to, and perhaps even exceeding, the hypnosis of communist times. In Soviet times at least people believed in the possibility of something better—by which they meant democracy—but under Putin they have lost that faith. Against the protests of many people, Putin restored the music of the Soviet Union’s anthem, to the strains of which Stalin carried out the genocide of his own people; made the communist red flag the banner of the Russian armed forces; erected a monument to Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founding father of the Soviet secret police; and revived Stalin’s popularity.

  After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, many young Russians began to cast aside their studies. In many Russian universities, rather than those who attended lectures and seminars, those students who joined the evocatively named Nashi (Ours)—the youth wing of Putin’s party, United Russia—and took part in its activities were considered good students. Those who objected were bluntly informed there was no point in their continuing their studies. It also happened that students were taken from their studies to attend Russian Orthodox religious services.

  Religious freedom in Russia has been imperiled since Soviet times, although the situation has changed since 1991. Russian authorities have used Russian Orthodoxy to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of communist ideology. The leaders of what the Constitution proclaims is a secular state do everything to show themselves as fervent Orthodox believers. To say the least, the authorities do not look favorably on other denominations and are particularly hostile toward Catholicism. The same people who in Soviet times shouted, “Glory to the CPSU,” now with equal fervor shout, “Glory to God!”

  Such a state of affairs is even more troubling, given the numerous publications that raise doubts about the moral profile of the top hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. I am specifically referring to the fact that many of them, including the previous patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia, Aleksei II, were members of the KGB and to the financial and property manipulations of the Orthodox Church.

  The authorities are also carefully nurturing aggressive nationalism and xenophobia. During Soviet times this was based on the
need to frighten people with the specter of Russian Nazism. After the fall of the USSR the authorities intensified their efforts. News of interethnic differences and resulting related crimes became a part of everyday Russian life.

  The spiderweb also entangled Western countries. Naturally, it would be naive to suppose that their governments did not see or understand what was going on in Russia. As far as I can judge, the move toward what might be called the “New Munich,” in this case the appeasement of Russia, was due to very simple reasons. First was the West’s fear of Russia’s gigantic, destructive potential and of its unpredictable politics. Many Russians, including specialists in international relations, were convinced that the West hoped for all kinds of disasters to befall Russia. This delusion was the fruit of the psychology of the “defenders of the besieged fortress” who suffered from xenophobia and a persecution complex. The spiderweb caught the West in another form as well—that is, the oil and gas that the West desired and that the infantile and vainglorious rulers of Russia turned from a national treasure into a weapon.

  In a situation where the small number of oppositionists has been subjected to the Kremlin’s manipulation and is suppressed by all possible means that are quickly written into law, to say nothing of political assassinations; when, to all appearances, a majority of the population supports Putin; and when the very word democracy has been turned into an imprecation, it seems that Russia has irrevocably become entangled in the spiderweb spun by the authorities and the people themselves. Is this so? Is there no hope? Yes, there is hope.

  The Spider has imbibed so much blood and treasure that it is ready to burst, like the “model full-belly man” in the brilliant satire on Russian life by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky.7 The answer to the question of when this will happen is very simple: it will happen when people stop mocking themselves, when they realize that they do not exist to serve as slaves for the authorities, and when they grasp that the authorities, who are no more than servants hired by the citizens of Russia to defend their rights and lawful interests, should work for them.

  5

  Inside the Secret Police State

  “Order Number One for the complete seizure of power has been fulfilled. A group of FSB officers has successfully infiltrated the government.” These words were pronounced in December 1999 in the headquarters of the KGB-FSB—the contemporary incarnation of the Cheka, the secret police force Lenin established in 1917—by the recently appointed head of state, Vladimir Putin. Apparently from his own experience, he confirmed that there’s no such person as a “former” Chekist—that is, special service operative.

  The advent to power in Russia of the special services is a unique phenomenon in world history, yet it seems fitting for Russia. The appropriate preconditions began to appear soon after the 1917 Bolshevik coup. Let us deduce these preconditions from the Bolshevik slogans that meant nothing in reality. We may recall the measures that the “revolutionaries” who came to power utilized in their “struggle against the autocracy”—namely, terrorist acts and robbery—and the measures they employed in ruling the country: the cynical abandonment of their own slogans; the massive terror campaigns to achieve their goals, including “suppressing counterrevolution” (often understood as nonconformism); the destruction of the peasantry including moderately well-off peasants with the proclamation of “collectivization” and “de-kulakization”; and the pursuit of industrialization via the hands of torturers in the GULAG. Setting demagogy aside, the only possible conclusion is that on November 7, 1917, terrorists and criminals seized power and then systematically transformed revolutionary terrorism into state terrorism.

  Alexander Yakovlev, who is rightly considered the architect of perestroika as well as one of the most intelligent and honest persons of his time, wrote, “I came to the profound conviction that the October coup d’état was a counterrevolution that marked the beginning of a criminal-terrorist fascist-type state.”1

  Vladimir Bukovsky offered an interesting discussion of the nature of Soviet power:

  Sometimes . . . the self-destructive stubbornness of the authorities seemed simply unbelievable; however, we forget that terrorist power cannot be otherwise. The distinction between it and democratic power is that it is not a function of public opinion. In such a state people can have no rights—any inalienable right of the individual instantly deprives the state of an atom of its power. Every person is obliged to learn the axiom from childhood that never, under any circumstances, and by no means, will he ever be able to influence the authorities. Every decision comes only on initiative from above. Power is unshakable, infallible, and inexorable, and the only thing the whole world can do is to accommodate to it. One may beg mercy of it, but not make any demands. It has no use of conscientious citizens who demand legality; it needs only slaves. By the same token, it has no need of partners, only of satellites. Just like paranoids in the grip of their own fantasies, it cannot and does not want to recognize reality; it thrives on its delirium and imposes its own criteria on everyone.2

  This kind of authority required a reliable and effective instrument to create an unprecedented form of slavery, including mental slavery, on the territory that it ruled. The Cheka, the All-Russia Emergency Commission, which ruthlessly uprooted all heresies, was such an instrument. Moreover, initially the activity of the Cheka was largely grounded in myths of its own devising. Just as the leadership of the “country of Soviets” viewed the USSR as a besieged fortress, a passion for spying became one of the favorite pastimes of the Russian authorities and an extremely important element of their politics. The period of greatest activity in this sphere was followed by a relative lull after the death of Stalin in 1953. It is hardly an accident that the leaders of the country’s political police (for example, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenty Beriya, and Yury Andropov) were among its top leaders. But the special services remained by the side of power even when they were in power.

  Yakovlev believed that a special form of rule developed in the USSR—that is, a dual power of the party and of the law enforcement organs.3 “The Soviet state could not last for a single day without the punitive services,” he wrote. “Such was its nature. And such being the case, the party had constantly to share power with the political police.”4 It may be that for all his wisdom and experience Yakovlev actually underestimated the power of the special services. Indeed, officials of the punitive services were necessarily members of the CPSU, but the special services were not controlled by the party. On the contrary, the authorities themselves were controlled by the special services at every level, from decision making on practically all matters, to listening in on telephone and other conversations of important officials and government leaders, to keeping tabs on them in other ways.

  The monster created by Lenin, developed by Stalin, and, after the latter’s death, nurtured by his successors up until the time of Gorbachev’s reforms acquired unbelievable power. Its writ included ensuring the security of the regime and its leaders, conducting political investigations, performing the functions of intelligence and counterintelligence, preserving state secrets and maintaining the regime’s confidentiality, protecting government communications, guarding the state borders, and dealing with virtually all the other questions that were even marginally connected with the concept of state security, a concept that had been boundlessly expanded to the point of utter madness. Almost every question came within its purview, in particular via the regime of secrecy, since during Soviet times almost everything was classified secret. Thus, the KGB was omnipresent even though not omniscient.

  Overtly or covertly the KGB was everywhere. Every institution and many enterprises had a First Department, which comprised the official representatives of the security services. But this was a drop in the ocean compared to the covert activity of the KGB. The so-called active reserve, or officers of the special services who officially had nothing in common with the organs of state security, penetrated all of society. These employees of the Soviet special
services were guaranteed a comfortable life. They could speak as they pleased and act as they pleased, while their interlocutors risked their future, their freedom, and even their lives at any moment. Moreover, employees of the “organs” were virtually guaranteed good career prospects and other perquisites in their official places of employment.

  The special services were potentially able to become the ruling authorities on two occasions—after the death of Stalin in March 1953, when Lavrenty Beriya made a bid for power but was soon condemned for treason and executed that December, and after the “election” of former chief of the KGB Andropov as general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1982. There are two basic versions of the Andropov story. One of them holds that Andropov was not without traces of liberalism and that he was a sufficiently wise politician not to transform the country into the patrimony of the political police. The other version is diametrically opposite. Its adherents contend that Andropov aimed for a dictatorship of the special services and did not succeed in doing so because during his tenure as chairman of the KGB he elevated its role higher than at any period since Stalinist times. Yakovlev asserts that Andropov’s ascent signified that the dream of the special services to lead the country had been achieved and that only Andropov’s rapidly failing health—he died in February 1984, barely fifteen months after his rise to power—saved the country from a new round of mass repressions.

  Various arguments are adduced in support of both hypotheses. Obviously, it would be rather extravagant to suspect a communist leader of Andropov’s age and experience of “excessive” liberalism. It is likewise obvious that it was under Andropov (basically when he headed the KGB) that a significant hardening of the regime took place, including the exaltation of the KGB and the intensification of the struggle against nonconformists and dissenters. That this occurred under Andropov, however, does not mean it was his doing. One should not forget that the leadership included a great variety of persons and that Andropov could have been subjected to strong pressure from reactionaries within the highest circle of leaders. There is reason to believe that the Hungarian revolution in 1956, where the future KGB chief and general secretary was then serving as ambassador in Budapest, exerted a strong influence on him. Several persons close to him thought that Andropov sympathized with the Hungarian path of development, which differed significantly from the Soviet one. Others referred to him as suffering from a “Hungarian syndrome.”