KGB old boys tightening grip on Russia

BBC ^ | Friday, 22 February 2008 | Martin Sixsmith

[fishhound]

Gerry Adams famously said about the IRA that "they never went away, you know", and researching the current BBC World Service series, After the KGB, left me with a very similar impression.

As the BBC's Moscow correspondent in the late 1980s and early to mid-90s, I witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outpouring of popular hatred for the regime's notorious secret police.

I was in Lubyanka Square in front of the KGB's headquarters on 22 August 1991, as demonstrators toppled the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the organisation's founder. When a hawser was tied round Dzerzhinsky's neck and the 14-tonne colossus came crashing to the ground, it seemed the KGB's days were numbered.

The new President, Boris Yeltsin, moved to neutralise the secret policemen by cutting their budget, slashing their numbers and hiving off their functions to rival agencies. He renamed the organisation the FSB - Federal Security Service - but somehow the spirit of the KGB lived on.

[fishhound]

"But there have been suggestions that some of the new politician-businessmen have abused their positions to enrich themselves. Individual branches of the FSB, each controlled by a politically powerful patron, have been involved in turf wars over corrupt business schemes. One of them led to an armed showdown on the tarmac of a Moscow airport."

[dr_who_2]

Boyars and tartars, followed by the Tsar’s secret police, followed by Communist apparatchiks, followed by ex-KGB mafiosos. Happy old Russia.

[SlapHappyPappy]

How much tighter can it get?

[eleni121]

The bBBC and another anti Russian article...take it with a grain of salt.

[fishhound]

I think it’s revenge for more than a few grains of polonium...

[eleni121]

Well the source of the polonium has NEVER been traced...except of course by the yellow press in the UK