23.10.2005
KGB Back at Power: The Spies' Coup in Russia
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Pavel Simonov, Ulugbek Juraev, AIA
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The KGB chief
Yuri Andropov |
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A total collapse of the state systems could cause not only a deep economic crisis, but confrontations inside the country, and an outbreak of criminality. It was easy to predict that the sufferings of ordinary people would create a favorable atmosphere for the emergence of a "Savior". As it was planned, he would be the representative of all the Russian Intelligence...
The KGB's Fears
Under the Soviet regime, only the representatives of the KGB leadership and other leaders of the ruling communist party had access to complete information on the situation in the USSR and other countries of the Warsaw bloc. On the basis of data collected by the KGB, by the end of the seventies it finally became clear that the Soviet state system had completely exhausted itself. "Some people in Intelligence dared to think differently, but very few people dared to speak of this" - the former officer of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, recollected at about that time (a book "From the First Person", 2000).
The absolute bankruptcy of the Soviet regime was especially felt in the field of economics. The USSR was not simply in a condition of deep stagnation, but already on the verge of the deepest economic crisis. The crisis was temporarily stalled only due to huge stocks of natural resources, mainly oil and gas. It was not difficult for analysts of the KGB to realize that without real transformations in the economy, the situation would promptly worsen. Further impoverishment of the population sooner or later threatened a social explosion. Together with carefully covered up ethnic conflicts it could become the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet state.
As for the KGB officers, such a script promised the most negative consequences for them. First of all they were the supreme social caste of Soviet society; they had every possible material privilege. A crash of the USSR would instantly deprive them of all this. Secondly, possessing powerful services of intelligence and counterespionage, secret political police, divisions of commandos and units of protection for the higher-ranking people of the state, and also its own troops, the KGB was the main guarantor of the security and stability of the regime.
The KGB was the one organization busy with eliminating the regime's political opponents, and of those simply dissatisfied with it. Accordingly, the heads of this secret service were afraid that disorder in the USSR would end up with their prosecution and punishment. The KGB chief, Yuri Andropov, and his deputy, the head of Foreign Intelligence, Vladimir Kriuchkov, had no doubt that the fall of Soviet authority would end up sadly for them and their subordinates. In autumn of 1956, during the popular uprising in Hungary, Andropov was the ambassador of the USSR in Budapest, and Kriuchkov was his assistant. Even almost half a century later, the latter recollected in his memoirs with horror how "the true hunting down of communists and employees of the security service" started there. Further, being afraid of the collapse of the Warsaw bloc, and of the USSR after it, Andropov initiated a severe suppression of the popular uprising in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968. He put forward the idea of using Soviet armies against the independent trade union "Solidarity" in Poland in 1980.
The KGB Head Comes to Power
Yuri Andropov realized that the decaying, corrupt leadership of the communist party was not capable of saving the country from this crisis. According to the ex-deputy chief of the KGB, Fillip Bobkov, his former chief lived by the principle "it is not sufficient to know, it is necessary to react" (the Russian edition "Who’s Who", ¹ 1, 2004). In the autumn of 1982 he decided to try to rescue the USSR by himself. In November 1982 Andropov became the head of the state. The employees of the KGB, almost idolizing their boss, totally supported him. "He hastened to find new means to overcome true existing social contradictions," the present director of the FSB, Nikolay Patrushev, recollects (the Russian newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta," June 2004). "He did not have enough time" – Bobkov adds (the Russian edition "Who’s Who", ¹ 1, 2004). Only a year after coming to power, the new Soviet leader was very ill and was placed in the hospital, where he died several months later. Bobkov, as well as his many former colleagues up to now asserts, "Andropov provided an opportunity for the country. There would be no collapse of the USSR if he had remained alive" (Ukraine.info, September 2005).
Judging from available information, by the end of the seventies some of the supreme officers of the KGB as, for example, the head of the "residentura" in Kabul, nevertheless had no hope for an opportunity to preserve the Communist regime. Some of them did not want it to meaningfully survive. It was already noted that the KGB served as the guarantor of the security and stability of the Soviet authority. This authority consisted of functionaries of the Communist party. Though the employees of the KGB had no right to conduct shadowing of the party heads in the cities, regions and at the state level, different information on them was coming through in huge amounts from KGB agents. On this basis, events on a horrifying scale of moral degradation and corruption of activists of the party were seen. Despite it, authority remained in their hands. It caused growing irritation of the supreme officers of the KGB, who, in their abilities, intelligence and discipline greatly surpassed the Communist functionaries.
Vladimir Kriuchkov, a long-term assistant of Andropov and his successor in the post of head of the KGB, was not at all suited to occupy the post of head of state. He did not possess the political weight of his former chief. The greater part of Kriuchkov's career passed in the shadow of Andropov, in bureaucratic work. He could not think and operate independently and globally.
The representative of the conservative wing in the party's leadership became the new head of the USSR, and he was categorically against any transformations. "I had a sensation then that the country was gone. It became clear that the Union was sick. It was a fatal, incurable illness - paralysis. The paralysis of authority," – the successor of Andropov in the post of chief of the secret service and head of the state, Vladimir Putin would write later (a book "From the First Person", 2000).
The KGB Begins "Perestroika"
In 1984 many representatives of the middle and top echelons in the leadership of the KGB understood that hopes were empty for the coming of someone who might save the "fatally ill patient" - the Soviet Union. In the beginning of 1985, with the secret assistance of the KGB, the USSR was headed by a fellow countryman, close comrade, and protégé of Andropov - Michael Gorbachev. He and several of his colleagues were obligated exclusively to the former chief of the KGB for their prompt ascent in the hierarchy of the party in power. Exactly 20 years after becoming the head of the USSR (March 2005), in an interview in the Russian edition "Rodnaya Gazeta", Gorbachev suddenly and unexpectedly declared: "I shall say what I've never said before..." He told about Andropov's secret will which had been handed over to the Supreme Soviet heads in December 1983, two months prior to his death. It was written there that the ex-chief of KGB had selected Michael Gorbachev to be his successor to the post of head of the state.
A team of considerably younger party functionaries from the peripheral areas, who arrived in Moscow with Andropov's help, started the well-known "Reorganization" – "Perestroyka" soon after his death. Subsequently, due to Vladimir Kriuchkov's diligence, a myth started circulating that the "Reorganization" was a result of "subversive activities" of the western secret services.
In June 1991 he publicly declared that 14 years ago such plans of the CIA were already known. Kriuchkov emphasized that the initiators of "Perestroika" were American "agents of influence." However, from the moment of Gorbachev's arrival to power he held the post of first deputy chief of the KGB, and three years later became its chairman. Accordingly, Kriuchkov not only possessed all the opportunities and powers, but also was obliged to struggle with dangerous enemy agents. However, he did not bother to investigate their activity, and during all of "Perestroika", he obediently carried out the assignments of its official initiator Michael Gorbachev.
The "Perestroika" was a series of unprecedented political and economic transformations of the USSR, which were carried out without taking into account local realities, without a precise plan or a clear ultimate goal. It promoted an even greater deterioration of the economic situation, a weakening of central authority, the loss of Moscow's control over the periphery, and the growth of nationalistic and separatist moods in the republics. Fertile conditions for prompt development of all these processes were already prepared by the time of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The huge assistance rendered to the puppet Kabul regime and huge expenses for conducting military maneuvers finally undermined the Soviet economy. The sanctions of the West actively supported by Saudi Arabia played a significant role in this, (in particular expressed by an artificial reduction of oil prices, which was the main source of income for the Soviet treasury). Besides, owing to the war in Afghanistan, the influence of the Islamic world on the Muslim republics of Central Asia increased considerably. The peak of religious, nationalistic and separatist moods there, and, especially in the Ferghana valley, had essentially sped up the collapse of the USSR. Simultaneously, the intervention against Afghanistan promoted the discrediting of the authorities in the opinion of the Soviet population. All this added to the process of disintegration of the state system caused by "Perestroika" and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Performing the Main Task
For the first five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union its successor - Russia suffered from almost total ruin of economy, revelry of criminality, bloody conflicts on Caucasus. Gradually, together with proceeding social and economical crisis, the war in the Chechen Republic
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Putin (L) and Yeltzin |
became the main internal problem of the state. In 1997 the military actions ended with signing of peace agreement, stabilization of economy started, the crime rate began lower. However, further influenced by the crisis in Southeast Asia Russia again suffered from sharp economic recession. Against this background, in the autumn of 1998, a former non-staff assistant of Andropov, the ex-head of Foreign Intelligence, Eugeny Primakov, headed the government. The following spring the former chief of FSB (main successor of the KGB), Sergey Stepashin, replaced him. In parallel, representatives of the democratic camp had almost disappeared from governmental structures; the foreign policy of the state was turning back to the traditional Soviet course. In the autumn of 1999, a former officer of the KGB and ex-director of FSB, Vladimir Putin, became the new head of the cabinet. The war in the Chechen Republic renewed. In the spring of 2000, Putin officially became the President. Further, the process of strengthening the central authority and rigid submission to it in all the spheres of life of the state began. Any forces not under the Kremlin's control, such as independent mass-media and representatives of large private businesses were neutralized by various methods. Simultaneously, Moscow returned to an imperial foreign policy, with insignificant updating to modern realities. On this background it finally became clear that the process, which was started more than two decades ago by Yuri Andropov and his closest assistants in KGB, actually had come to an end.
Re-capturing Authority
Owing to the Afghani intervention and the parallel "Perestroika", the crash of the USSR took place. The Communist party was deprived of the monopoly on authority. The huge financial reserves of the party turned out to be under the control of a group of the supreme officers of several divisions of the KGB. Earlier this money was controlled by the general party. The members of the Central committee of the Communist party, who knew about this died under strange circumstances, one by one (accidents, suicides, falling from windows, heart attacks, etc.) At the same time, representatives of other divisions of the KGB took out archives of the secret police of the former Soviet republics containing compromising materials on the political, military and economic elite of the new independent states. Later, the most qualified and skilled officers of the republican branches of the KGB transferred to Moscow. With the help of former colleagues and chiefs they were arrayed in Russia along with the opening of private companies and banks, and later appeared in various supervisory posts in secret services in regional and municipal administrations.
Vast numbers of the ex-officers of the KGB went into Russia's civil labour market in 1991-93. They continued to be registered as "a working reserve" of this service, receiving salary and periodically carrying out tasks for their former heads. In the civilian market the former KGB men had a clear advantage. They had a corporate consciousness, common views, high self-discipline, professional skills, higher education, foreign languages, and connections in various state structures. Besides, the former employees of the Foreign Intelligence of the KGB had experience living in a western society.
The ex-officers of the secret police and counterespionage possessed extensive information on activists of the democratic movement who had temporarily come into authority and on newly appeared heavyweight businessmen. And most importantly, the narrow circle of former officers of the KGB supervised huge financial assets – leftovers of the inheritance from Soviet times. Based on this money, commercial and bank "empires" were created. For this purpose figureheads were used, who were KGB agents during the Soviet time, (mainly the young, talented, vigorous activists of the youth movement of the Communist party or skilled businessmen, who in the past were pursued for conducting private business).
Soon the ex-KGB men took an appreciable place in the Russian economy. Up to the middle of the Nineties there almost did not remain any the large company where there would be no former employees of the KGB in the management.
At the second half of the Nineties the penetration of ex-KGB into the state structures started.
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Putin's inauguration
as President of Russia in 2000 |
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In 1997-98 the mass media began a systematic discrediting of the first Russian President, Boris Yeltsin. An image of a sick and incapacitated politician, who was falling under the control of his coterie, was actively created for him. It was emphasized that his confidants were guided by mercenary motives, or, being Jews by origin, meaningfully damaging the state interests of Russia.
On this background, acts of terrorism of Islamic mujahids from the Chechen Republic territory against the neighboring republics of the Northern Caucasus were sharply becoming frequent. The mass-media in a veiled form inspired the population, saying that President Yeltsin was not capable of putting an end to the terrorism and rescuing Russia from disorder (such as the USSR faced). As a consequence, the Russian myth about an "Ideal Tsar" was revived. It was based on the messianic beliefs of orthodox Christianity and the eternal hopes of people for a strong, fair and careful leader, free from the influence of corrupt officials.
In August 1999, Islamic armed formations intruded from the Chechen Republic into Daghestan. It became a pretext for the replacement of one ex-director of FSB to the post of Prime Minister by another ex-head of this service. Further, across Russia a series of mega-acts of terrorism occurred. The population was intimidated into hysteria. It was only necessary to propose a candidate who would be an "Ideal Tsar" in the upcoming presidential elections. This candidate was the new Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. He "hastened" to rescue Russia even before the elections, having already given the order to start the next conquest of the Chechen Republic.
To start the Second Chechen War, the method of Soviet intervention against Afghanistan was used. In 1979 the "residentura" and the management of the KGB presented the Kremlin with "proofs" of preparation of the landing of armies of the opponent (Americans) on the southern borders of the USSR. In 1999 the head of the FSB had no weight in the Kremlin, such as the chief of the KGB once had. To justify the beginning of military actions in the Chechen Republic just one confidential report of intelligence was not enough. The enemy really landed on the southern borders of Russia. In 2000 as a result of a rivalry in the Chechen Republic of FSB and military intelligence GRU, it became known that at least some of the commanders of the mujahids in Daghestan campaign were... the agents of the FSB!
Furthermore, according to the Afghani script, a local puppet government became a support for the Russians (the truth was that this time, the Kremlin got luckier than in the case of Babrak Karmal or Doka Zavgaev - the Russian protégé during the First Chechen War). If the Afghani intervention promoted the deprivation of a monopoly for the Communists of their authority, the Second Chechen War permitted getting rid of the government of former functionaries of the Communist party and primarily of Boris Yeltsin. In March 2000 the ex-head of the FSB became the second President of Russia. He repeated the capture of authority, which was carried out twenty years ago by the ex-head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. However Putin's advantage was not only because of his youth. As opposed to Andropov, he came to authority not alone, but accompanied by thousands of former colleagues and subordinates. The year 2000 became the year of the beginning of a mass "conscription" of former officers of the KGB into all the structures of authority, at national, regional and municipal levels. Today just among the highest-ranking people in the Russian leadership are the President, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Minister of Natural Resources, all ex KGB men.
And these men, headed by Putin, seem to be rebuilding the Soviet Empire as the most successful and prominent leader of the Soviet KGB - Yuri Andropov dreamed it to be.
Related items:
The Afghani Intrigue of the Russian Intelligence (18.10.2005)
Russian Intelligence, the Arab Sheikhs, Afghanistan... (11.10.05)
KGB's Afghan Foundling Wants to Die in Prison (30.09.05)
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