KGB Resurrection

Despite the fall of communism in Russia more than a decade ago, thousands of former KGB officers and other members of the Soviet nomenklatura hold significant positions of power in Russia today. The nation also appears to be experiencing a process of re-Brezhnevization, which is marked by the resurrection of the former secret police. What is the significance of this phenomenon? How will it affect U.S. –Russian relations and, more importantly, America’s war with militant Islam?

Frontpage Symposium is honored to host a distinguished panel on this subject. In a world premiere, we have two ex-spy chiefs from opposite sides of the Cold War and a former leading Soviet dissident joining us. One of our guests is the only head of a former Communist espionage service to have ever defected to the West, and he has never been involved in any public dialogue with a former head of the CIA. To add to this unprecedented mix, we are graced by the presence of one of the most courageous and prominent soldiers against totalitarianism in the 20th century.

So, today, Frontpage Symposium has the privilege of introducing the following guests:

Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service, whose book Red Horizons was republished in 24 countries;

James Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993-95 and a former Navy undersecretary and arms-control negotiator;

Vladimir Bukovsky, a former leading Soviet dissident who spent twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for his fight for freedom, and whose works include To Build a Castle and Judgement in Moscow.

Frontpage Magazine: Gentlemen, welcome to Frontpage Symposium. It is a privilege to be in the company of three distinguished titans.

Mr. Bukovsky, perhaps I will begin with you. Could you kindly get us started on this discussion of the resurrection of the KGB in Russia? How real is this development and what are its main ingredients?

Bukovsky: Our national tragedy (as well as the tragedy of all other former communist countries) is that there was no clear defeat of the ruling communist system, no Nuremberg-style trial of its crimes, no vigorous lustration (de-communisation) process. The West was quick to celebrate the end of the Cold War and the victory of democracy in the former Iron Curtained countries, but in reality there was no change of "elites" there. The former communist "nomenklatura" has remained in the position of power in all branches of the government, albeit under a different name.

One particular part of the communist "nomenklatura" - the KGB - is of special interest to us. The Soviet secret police/intelligence service, originally called VChK, was defined by Lenin as an "armed detachment of the Party," and remained as such throughout Soviet history, while changing its name every few years (VChK, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB, FSB...). Its prime task was to safeguard the interests of the Party and of its ideology, both at home and abroad.

By the 1970s, like anybody else, they came to resent the ideological supervision of the Party which they perceived as hampering their efficiency. They vigorously supported Gorbachev in his "perestroika" campaign, and he, in turn, has heavily relied on their services. Their task, (as it was the task of Gorbachev's leadership), was to salvage the remnants of the Soviet system, not to abandon it.

The subsequent collapse of the USSR was the final blow to the KGB as we knew it. Many left for working in the "commercial structures" (hence the "Russian mafia"), others resigned. But the leadership has retained its position. The most able and loyal officers were sent to work "underground," creating the gangs to blackmail the businessmen and to control the organized crime. The others were strategically placed in the administrative structures as civil servants (while still remaining in the service of the KGB). Thousands of operatives were called back from the West to apply their experience at home. Among them, a KGB major Vladimir Putin was called back from East Germany and planted as a Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg. The "armed detachment of the Party" has continued to blow up the trains and bridges even though the Party has disappeared.

Meanwhile, the Russian leadership's crisis has continued to deepen. Yeltsin, who was not prepared at all to inherit the power in the first place, did not even try to use it either. Having failed to go forward, to stage any trial over the former Soviet regime, or to purge the former Soviet nomenklatura from the position of power, he began a long retreat. First, he sacrificed his policies of reform, next he sacrificed his team, and finally, by 1993, he had to fight for his political survival. By then, he lost all political support in the country, and the only force he could count on were "siloviki", the "Power Ministries" - The Army, The Interior Ministry and the FSB. They were the only forces in the country which still supported him, although, in Lenin's words, they supported him like a rope that supports the hanged. From that moment onwards, his main concern was to find an heir who would guarantee him and his family an immunity from prosecution. This is why all three of his last candidates were from the KGB (FSB) - Primakov, Stepashin, Putin.

The rest is recent history which most would remember. Explosions of apartment blocs in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, (blamed on Chechens but obviously caused by the FSB), a "small victorious war" in Chechnya, which still goes on and has turned into a genocide (but still continues to fuel Putin's rating), closure of all independent mass media in Russia, attack on independent businessmen, a Stalin-type atmosphere of xenophobia and spy-mania, first political prisoners, strict censorship and a prevalent fear in the country. KGB is in power again, with all the consequences it entails.

But this time, it cannot be justified even by a crazy ideology, and there is no control over it by any ideological body. What used to be done for the glory of an idea, of the World Socialist Revolution, is done today for the sake of a personal ambition of few non-entities, and of a corporation called KGB. And this time around, it is much easier for them to murder their opponents in a dark lane than to put them into Gulag. Cheaper and easier. As Josef Stalin used to say: "No man - no problem".

Pacepa: I agree. KGB general Aleksandr Sakharovsky, my former de facto boss, who rose to head the almighty Soviet espionage service during the most important Cold War years, repeatedly told me: “every society reflects its own past.” A Russian to the marrow of his bones, he believed that someday Marxism might have been turned upside down, and even the Communist Party itself might have become history. Both Marxism and the party were foreign organisms that had been introduced into the Russian body, and sooner or later they would have to be rejected in any case. One thing, though, was certain to remain unchanged: “our gosbezopasnost” (the state security service). Sakharovsky used to point out that “our gosbezopasnost” had kept Russia alive for the past five hundred years, and “our gosbezopasnost” would guide her helm for the next five hundred years.

So far Sakharovsky has proved to be a dependable prophet. The Soviet Communist Party was indeed disbanded, and nobody within the country really missed it. Until Lenin came along, Russia had never had a significant political party anyway. Russia’s first freely elected president, Boris Yeltsin, who made history by dissolving the Soviet Union, began his rule in the Kremlin by building up his own political police, not his own political party. In October 1993, when the Russian parliament rebelled against Yeltsin, he did not resort to political measures to solve his problem. Rather he ordered his political police to storm the parliament building with artillery and then to arrest Yeltsin’s chief antagonists.

In the summer of 1996 Boris Yeltsin was elected Russia’s president for the second time, but he had not yet created a real political party that would define the democratic future of Russia. Rather, he relied more and more heavily on the historically Russian way of governing the country with the help of his political police, which now reportedly had more officers per capita than the former Soviet Union had had. According to Yevgenia Albats, a Russian intelligence expert and author of a well-documented book about the KGB, “the Soviet Union, with a population of 300 million, had approximately 700,000 political police agents; the new ‘democratic’ Russia, with a population of 150 million, has 500,000 Chekists. Where we once had one Chekist for every 428 Soviet citizens, we now have one for every 297 citizens of Russia.”

The rest is indeed history. Vladimir Putin was the very chief of the entire gosbezopasnost before becoming Russia’s president, and his former KGB colleagues now occupy nearly 50% of the top government positions there.

FP: Mr. Woolsey, as Mr. Pacepa infers, there is a psychology in the Russian character that actually needs a powerful and ruthless KGB to be operating, since the opposite would mean a life of too much individuality and freedom, which poses too much danger and risk. Your take?

Woolsey: I can't think of two people whose judgment about this issue I admire more than Mr. Bukovsky and Mr. Pacepa, and I have no quarrel with their characterization of history or the current situation. For example, like Mr.Bukovsky, I am inclined at this point to believe, based on the information I've seen in David Satter's articles and books, that the Chekists were responsible for the apartment bombings that were blamed on the Chechens and provided the excuse for this most recent Chechen War.

I would point out two long-term trends in Russia that will have a great deal to do with its future -- and may be even more influential than its history and the current dominance of the siloviki.

First, Russia is living a demographic nightmare, with a tiny birth rate (except among its Muslim citizens) and very short life expectancies, especially for males. By around the middle of the century, if these trends stay in place, the population could fall to under 100 million. This could point in any of several directions, including an effort to, in effect, re-establish much of the USSR (although of course not under that name) to provide security -- continuing post-Cold War Russian aggression against Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine; it could also point toward an inability to defend such a massive country on such a small population base and could lead to fragmentation of Russia itself. Your guess is as good as mine as to which way things will go -- what I don't see is stability.

Second, oil prices will drive the health of the Russian economy, and indirectly many political and social trends, for a long time. Oil wealth has not often been conducive to the development of a vibrant, entrepreneurial middle class. It will take real creativity for a Russian government, if it were so inclined, to figure out how to distribute the proceeds of oil sales in such a way as to promote the interests of the people as a whole and to do so in a way that does not promote a mentality of dependence. The siloviki will prosper, but will anyone else? Here also, the odds don't seem to favor positive developments.

To overcome the negative influence of much of its history and the problems presented by demographics and oil, Russia will need leadership as bold and as willing to break with the past as that which was provided, e.g., to Turkey in the aftermath of WW I by Kemal Attaturk. Mr. Putin has in no way shown himself to be a leader of that caliber. We must hope that the great Russian people are, at some early point, able to produce a leader worthy of the better angels of their nature.

FP: So Mr. Bukovsky, Putin is clearly consolidating his powerful control of Russia. He is placing myriad former KGB officers in his presidential administration posts and has appointed Mikhail Fradkov, also KGB, as chief of government. The Russian media is increasingly practicing self-censorship and political opponents face increasing violence and intimidation. Russia is clearly going back to an authoritarian security state and Putin has made himself somewhat of an oligarch.

Where do you see all of this going? Russia's re-Sovietization, and I realize this term must be used with caution, clearly can't be a good thing in terms of America having a strong ally in the international environment. Might a new Cold War with Russia emerge? How will this fit in the War on Terror? Since both America and Russia have an enemy in militant Islam, will the two powers have an alliance on certain grounds? How will the West's war with militant Islam be affected overall?

Bukovsky: If by "re-Sovietization" we mean a restoration of some sort of the Soviet Union, then we can be sure that such an attempt is doomed to failure. Contrary to what Mr. Putin and his KGB cronies might think, there were objective reasons for the Soviet collapse, and those reasons did not disappear just because they took over. The former Republics' ruling bureaucracy (which now became the governments of independent states) wants to restore Moscow's control over themselves even less than the KGB wants to restore the Communist Party control over itself. A military solution is hardly an option, as we have seen in Chechnya. If the entire Russian Army could not conquer this tiny speck on the map, it surely cannot re-conquer the Ukraine or Central Asia, or even the Baltic states. Clearly, restoring the Soviet Union is less feasible a project than restoring Roman Empire.

If, on the other hand, we mean by it a restoration of a totalitarian state in Russia, this again seems to be an exercise in futility. Soviet leaders launched their "glasnost & perestroika" campaign not because they suddenly saw the light on the road to Damascus and converted to liberalism, but because they could see that their system was incompatible with the modern technology, and was leading them to a deadly structural crisis. Fifteen years later, preconditions for a totalitarian rule could hardly improve. Just try to imagine a problem of maintaining an Iron Curtain in the time of internet, satellite television and mobile phones.

Besides, how can anyone maintain a totalitarian control in a fantastically corrupt country, in which a certain percent of people is wealthy enough to buy off a secret policeman or a judge? Odd as it may sound, one needs a certain critical mass of fanatics in order to exercise tight control over a society.

Then, again, let us not forget that the Soviet Union has collapsed as a result of its bankruptcy. To put it simply, the Soviet economic base turned out to be too small for its global ambitions. The ever-growing cost of empire and of the arms race has just exhausted it, while a sudden drop of the oil price in 1986 has finished it off.

Is the Russian economy so much better now that they can sustain the cost of a second Cold War? Hardly. The Russian economy has changes considerably less than the Western observers think. It was not thoroughly restructured during Yeltsin's decade and still remains suitable mainly for a large-scale military production, or for gigantic projects of socialist Utopia (and it will remain so as long as the oil prices are high, while Americans provide $ billions a year for its "conversion"). Once those two factors change, once the oil price goes down and Americans wisen up, Russia will experience a second bankrupcy, far more devastating than the first one. And if the first one has led to disintegration of their empire, the second is most likely to lead to fragmentation of Russia proper.

So, all in all, re-Sovietization is not a realistic prospective. Perhaps, the only sphere where we observe it is in the return of Soviet mentality. Self-censorship in the media, shameless public glorification of the Supreme Leader, political jokes told to close friends in the privacy of one's kitchen and a dominant sense of fear in the society - all of it has returned with a frightening speed, as if there were no years of "glasnost". Above all, Soviet mentality reigns supreme in the Kremlin again. And this is why, inspite of everything said above and contrary to elementary logic, new Kremlin comrades will try to re-create Soviet Union, to re-establish totalitarian control, to scare the world into accepting this Upper Volta with rusty missiles as a "Great Power". No doubt, they will fail. But how much damage will be caused by this lunacy?

I think it was Karl Marx who once said that if history repeats itself, what happened the first time as a drama, the second time comes as a farce. Indeed, what was once a collossal tragedy played by fanatics, might very well be staged again as a farce by non-entities with inferiority complex. We can only hope this farce is not going to be as bloody.

FP: Mr. Pacepa, your thoughts? Mr. Bukovsky is pointing out that any kind of "re-Sovietization" of Russia is simply mired in futility. How does the resurrection of the KGB play a role in this context? It is, and will obviously be, a different kind of KGB than the one of the past, right?

Pacepa: In today’s nuclear age, even farces could be deadly dangerous. When people talk about the KGB they generally think about its visible acts of repression, brutal interrogations and gulags. There is little public awareness of the fact that the KGB, which is calling the shots in today’s Russia, holds the launching codes for 6,000 nuclear missiles. Even fewer people know that the KGB has also been charged to develop, produce, stockpile and guard the country’s weapons of mass destruction. When I was in Romania, the KGB’s nuclear component alone had as many as 87 “secret cities,” some occupying whole islands, such as the hush-hush military laboratories on Vozrozhdeniye and Komsomolsk islands in the Aral Sea. All were secret towns built and run by the KGB, and not listed anywhere, not even on the Soviet Union’s most highly classified military maps. Chelyabinsk city in the Urals, for instance, was on a map of the Soviet Union, but Chelyabinsk-40, a city of 40,000 people located in the Urals, where 27 tons of weapons-grade plutonium were stockpiled, was not.

The same KGB, with a new nameplate on the door, is now playing an even more prominent role in today’s Russia than it ever did in the Communist age.

FP: Mr. Woolsey, in the context of the KGB resurrection that Mr. Pacepa describes, could you sum up for us what danger it poses and what American policy toward Russia should now be?

Woolsey: Once again, I have no substantial disagreement with the views of these two remarkable men. It seems to me that the direction of Russia is decidedly negative and that the question for us in the West is the one Lenin was fond of posing: "What is to be done?"

Our oil dependence is an even more salient issue than when our percentage of imports was much less during the two oil shocks of the 1970's. The Russian economy is heavily influenced by the price of oil. Saudis, controlling at least half of the world's swing production capacity, dropped the bottom out of the oil market in 1985 and the Soviets never really recovered. We will never have that kind of control, but we can to a great extent reduce our dependence, give ourselves more leverage over the oil market, make it more difficult for the Saudis and others to raise prices to our economic and political disadvantage, and lead the Russian regime to realize that it may need to re-assess its direction.

I used to believe that anything, including a strong oil market, that bolstered the Russian economy and produced prosperity would be likely to cause the growth of a middle class and, in time, more pressure for economic and political liberalization. The events of the last eighteen months or so have convinced me that such is not correct. Putin has used the economic prosperity produced by a strong oil market to consolidate his power and lead Russia toward a form of fascism -- oil prices have given him the idea that he can do anything he wants. Oil can tend to centralize power in any society except in a mature democracy such as Norway.

It now seems to me that it is in our interest both in terms of our dealings with Russia and with the Middle East to do as much as possible to reduce our reliance on oil. To do this we would need to move toward alternative fuels, especially those produced from waste, that can be used in the existing infrastructure and toward more fuel efficient vehicles, such as hybrids, that are available now -- not wait on the hydrogen economy.

In spite of their very high levels of oil production the Russians can't bring new production on- and off-line quickly as the Saudis can due to weather, location, etc. So if the Russians see us moving steadily toward reducing our oil use and thus their ability to make money from their high-cost production they may become far more reasonable than they are now. Today they have the bit in their teeth and, to mix a metaphor, they feel as if they have the world by the tail more and more firmly with each dollar the price of oil increases. They need to be shown that their prosperity is not assured without some fundamental changes and that it would be good for their economy and society if they diversified their economy. For more reasons than one it is in our interest for them to be worried about the possibility that oil prices could fall.

FP: So Mr. Bukovsky, is reducing our reliance on oil the crucial factor in our relations with Russia? And as we now wrap up with a final word from each of you, kindly tell us what advice you would give American foreign policy makers vis-à-vis Putin’s Russia today.

Bukovsky: Actually, I stopped giving advice to any government a long time ago as I have learned over the years that it is an extremely frustrating and thankless task. Governments are notoriously incapable of operating on the basis of long-term policies or strategies. Their decision-making is mostly reactive, meaning that they always react to yesterday's events.

While any strategy aimed at anticipating a problem in advance leaves them totally disinterested, they usually demand a solution when it is too late and the problem in question is already full-blown. But even if by chance they accept your advice, they would always implement it wrongly, through wrong people, with wrong timing etc. It always gave me a feeling that they are trying to solve a mathematical equation by negotiations. In reality, governments don't want a solution to a problem, they want to muddle through it, and I am no expert on muddling through.

Of course I agree with Mr. Woolsey that reducing (or even eliminating) US dependency on imported oil is a right strategy for many reasons. It should have been implemented for over 30 years now, ever since the Arab oil boycott of 1970s. Yet, it becomes an issue only sporadically, at the twelfth hour, when we suddenly learn that the most powerful country on Earth is virtually powerless. And each time, as we muddle through, the strategy is forgotten.

Of course I agree with the US Congress that G8 should once again become G7 for it should not have been G8 in the first place. But I can tell you in advance all the arguments State Department, Foreign Office and other "professionals" are going to throw at us. And they are the "decision-makers".

Of course I agree with the European Parliament resolution condemning Russia for its genocide in Chechnya. But we don't even know how many Chechens are still alive. When Putin was named as Yeltsin's successor by the end of 1999, only two people (to my knowledge) publicly expressed their apprehension based on his KGB past - Richard Pipes and me.

Many evil doings could have been prevented then. But the rest of the "professionals" went on television in almost every Western country to say: "So what? After all, the KGB was the elite of the Soviet regime". Sure, they were "elite", very much like the SS was an elite of the Nazi regime.

In a sick society, the elite is the main virus-carrier. And while I am convinced that any effort at re-Sovietization will be a futile absurdity, I am equally convinced this "elite" will try it, ruining more human lives and poisoning international relations in the process. Just as we conduct our symposium, Dr. Igor Sutyagin was sentenced in Moscow to 15 years of hard labor as an American spy. Now, it is a common knowledge in Russia that Dr. Sutyagin, a peaceful scholar who had no access to state secrets and who conducted his research from open sources on contracts with different Western research institutions, is just a convenient scapegoat. His sentence is a stern warning to Russian intellectuals: stay clear of close contacts with foreigners. It is meant to chill down enthusiasm of too pro-Western Russians, and it is meant to scare off too enthusiastic Westerners.

Well, suppose Mr. Putin pardons him tomorrow (under the pressure of Western public opinion). Would it change anything? Would it unring the bell (as the British say)? Of course not. Such lessons are not easily forgotten. Mind you, it would not even save Sutyagin because his life is ruined already: he has spent 4.5 years in pre-trial detention. This is Soviet "elite" in action as I know it. "Foreigners" are still enemies. Americans are still "enemy number one". President Bush and President Putin might be great personal friends, calling each other by their first names. Looking into each other's eyes at every opportunity. They are partners in the anti-terrorist coalition. Their Secret Services are cooperating in a common struggle. Praised be the Heroes of Invisible Front! But Dr. Sutyagin's life is already destroyed. He is an American spy. But who cares about spies, right? They are expendable because they are “dirty people.”

Just as we conduct our symposium, the Russian authorities are playing games with a tiny Caucasian Republic of Georgia, which managed by a miracle to get rid of their old Soviet "elite". The game is as simple and as old as the ancient Roman Empire. Divido et Empero. Divide and rule. Two tiny ethnic areas, Abchasia and Adjaria, are used as Trojan horse to destroy a newly regained democracy. And what do they know about it in Washington, D.C.? Nothing. Perhaps, if it was A.C., they would have known something. A blip on the map.

We are talking about a Russian crisis coming to fruition after almost 90 years. As soon as the oil price comes down, Russia proper will go into fragmentation. Seven, eight, ten pieces apart, I just don't know. The consequences will be horrible. We don't know how these fragments of Russia are going to be governed: by parliaments, or by war lords? Are they going to live in peace with each other, or they are going to fight? And if they do fight, what weapons at their disposal will they use?

Above all, none of these fragments of Russia are likely to maintain the national infrastructures. And we still have about 30 potential Chernobyls, not to mention quite a few of chemical factories. Now tell me, do our "professionals" have a slightest inkling of what to do with these? Do they have at least some contingency plan? Not likely. More than 10 years ago Istarted to speak about this eventuality, and no one so far has bothered to ask me what to do about it. And, inevitably, when they come rushing to me with these questions, I will be happy to oblige. You want my advice? Hell no. It just too often appears that the West is only preoccupied with hanging itself.

FP: Thank you Mr. Bukovsky. Mr. Pacepa, do you share Mr. Bukovsky’s pessimism? Kindly give us your final word thoughts on this discussion.

Pacepa: I spent 27 years of my life working for the KGB, I defected from it 26 years ago. Today most of the top governmental positions in Russia are held by former KGB officers. This is like “democratizing” Germany by putting the old, supposedly defeated Gestapo officers in charge. That’s not good for our future relations with Russia.

By definition, police states are totalitarian, and totalitarianism requires a tangible enemy. The Gestapo targeted the Jews. The KGB’s main enemy has always been the United States. And anti-Americanism has increased as more former KGB have taken over key government positions. A week after Putin became president, an American businessman, Edmund Pope, was arrested in Russia, charged with spying for America, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in a farcical show-trial. Shortly afterwards, in a grand gesture of magnanimity, Putin pardoned Pope. But, following the same old Soviet pattern, the trial was used to demonize America and inflame the idea in the minds of the Russian people that America is still Russia’s number one enemy. Simultaneously, the fact that such trials go largely unnoticed in the West means that Russia maintains its cover as a friend to America.

The Russian government said in its own press release that over 300 closed-door espionage trials were underway in March of 2001. The Western press has described those trials as “so lacking in evidence and so far-fetched in their suppositions that at least three of them have been thrown out by Russian appeals courts.” Not-guilty verdicts are simply re-prosecuted, over and over, with no deference to double jeopardy, a very basic rule of democratic systems that take civil rights seriously. A 2002 public-opinion poll shows that anti-American sentiment in Russia has been pumped up to levels not seen since the Cold War by the continual running of these show trials. The recent framing of Dr. Igor Sutyagin as an American spy, described by Mr. Bukovsky, indicates to me that the Kremlin wants to keep anti-Americanism in vogue in Russia.

The Kremlin’s foreign policy has been made to seem relatively pro-American, at least in comparison with the Soviet past. I believe the facts on the ground in Russia indicate that this may be a deception campaign aimed at gaining advantages from the West. In this way Russia has its cake and eats it, too. Putin was the first leader of a foreign country to express sympathy to President George W. Bush on September 11, and Russia is said to have contributed some Russian intelligence. Russia has also been admitted into NATO and agreed with the U.S. to cut existing nuclear warheads by 65%. Nevertheless, Putin and the former KGB officers who staff his government, I believe, have not broken with their anti-American past because, simultaneously, Putin has been making fresh overtures to the very three governments America has termed an “axis of evil.” This is “crazy like a fox” behaviour.

In March 2002 Mr. Putin quietly reinstituted Russian sales of weapons to Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, a key terrorist state. In August 2002, he concluded a $40 billion trade deal with Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. In September 2002, he received Kim Jong Il, dicator of the third top terrorist state of North Korea, in Moscow with grand honors. In February 2003, he proposed a Moscow-Berlin-Paris anti-American axis, and has tried to include Beijing as well. Anti-Americanism may well be Russia’s true policy under the cover of a pose of friendship. Anti-Americanism is a part of KGB culture of long standing, and today, under Putin, ex-KGB run the show. The danger of Russia’s remaining 6,000 nuclear missiles may be the least of it. The infrastructure that has not been dismantled is Russia’s police state culture, which knows little else than how to maintain power using disinformation, espionage and dirty tricks, covertly, to whip up hatred of an enemy. Perhaps NATO can be used as a kind of trans-Atlantic “civilizing” club to gradually help Westernize Russia, but it will be a long process, and expensive. Meanwhile, there are grave risks to assuming that Russia was reborn as a mild-mannered democracy with fond feeling toward America in 1991. Russia is not a blank slate. That would require an erasure of history, and no one has ever managed to do that.

Woolsey: I have no substantial disagreement with either of these two remarkably insightful and courageous men about the situation in Russia and the return of, essentially, the KGB to power. The Russian government under Putin has moved to within striking distance of being, essentially, fascist. The framing of Dr. Sutyagin, Mr. Pope, and many others is one sure index of the KGB dominance -- the KGB is totalitarian and totalitarians need enemies in order to justify their maintenance of power and control. Putin's overtures to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as set out by my Mr. Pacepa are also crucial pieces of evidence. Mr. Putin was offered olive branches by two American administrations and he has chosen not only to spurn them by making common cause with these totalitarian states but to try to thwart efforts in his "near abroad" by, e.g., the people of Georgia to move toward democracy and freedom.

Putin is right, given that he has decided to move toward fascism, to fear the spirit of freedom that marked the recent developments in Georgia -- it is a spirit that could be quite contagious. It is a major threat to the demonization of democracy and of the West that is essential to his and the KGB's maintenance of power by their chosen tactic of ruling by fear.

The Russian people have, sadly, seen this before -- indeed for a huge share of their history. Other than Russian nationalism, however, Putin and the KGB have no ideology to augment this fear, so it will be difficult for him to obtain the kind of Western support, via espionage or otherwise, that the USSR did in the 1930's and early 1940's from establishment figures such as Philby and Hiss. The Soviets got very few ideological supporters of note in the West after WW II, although they, and later the Russians, effectively paid cash on the barrelhead for some effective spies and agents of influence (Ames, e.g.). By the late 40's they had essentially lost the ideological war in the West. This time they aren't even fighting it. In the mind of any thinking young Georgian, e.g., the future of his country will be determined by a battle between KGB-backed fear on the one hand and freedom on the other -- not a good long-run bet for the KGB.

I would close with one bit of optimism somewhat different in tone to the excellent and clear-eyed description of our current situation by Mr. Bukovsky.

The world has gone from 20 democracies in August 1945 to 121 today (Freedom House figures) -- 89 of those operate under, generally, the rule of law, 32 have serious problems such as heavy corruption but have regular elections. We, i.e. the West, the democracies, have not accomplished this mainly by force of arms -- although deterrence, alliances, and the willingness to fight where it was essential, as in the Korean War, were prerequisites. We have done it by convincing brave and crucially important individuals such as Mr. Bukovsky and Mr. Pacepa, that we were on the same side. The poet Carl Sandberg put it best in his magnificent poem, "The People, Yes". Speaking of people who live in freedom, from Pericles's Athens to today, Sandberg wrote:

FP: Mihai Pacepa, Jim Woolsey and Vladimir Bukovsky, we are out of time. We are very grateful that you have honored us with your presence today. Thank you. We hope to see you again soon.

...but in reality there was no change of "elites" there. The former communist "nomenklatura" has remained in the position of power in all branches of the government, albeit under a different name.

This is an important thing to remember. Thanks for the ping Matt.

Great article on Russia. Thanks for the info. The bible mention the battle of gog and magog Ezekiel ch:38,39. Gog is the city Moscow and magog is Russia state. With the Russian becoming freindly with Iran (old Persia)it looks like thing are taking shape for this battle. Give it another 20-25 years. By then the russian missles will be no good the fuel will have gotten to old to burn reliable. If that not already the case.

Oil can tend to centralize power in any society except in a mature democracy such as Norway.

...a welfare state which, for all we know, may be completely controlled by standard issue European social democrat politicians who likely have strong links to the Norwegian oil industry, assuming that the Norwegian oil industry is anything of note.

Vladimir Bukovsky, a former leading Soviet dissident who spent twelve years in Soviet prisons, ==

I regret that Bukovsky tangled himself in this bunch with Pacepa and other palin russophobes. I respected that guy:(.

Don't bother, it is American protestant fundimentalist fanaticism. Since Cold War, it is not enough to make Soviet Union ideological enemy, they make it religious crusade and nothin yet to change, not until all Russians dead. This is much like what Arabs view Jews.

Don't bother, it is American protestant fundimentalist fanaticism. ==

Let them be fanatism. BUT they are christians not muslims right?
So I cann't get how so christians can call brother beleivers from another CHRISTIAN country as they do?
I'd say it is highest level of stupidity and ignorance.

Not to add confusion. But America protestant fundamentalist fanaticism have also prophesied the down fall of America.

In the end, only the Kingdom of God will stand. And all christian inherited that kingdom thru Jesus Christ so we call each other brothers. Regardless of what country we are born in and what prophesies have been spoken FOR or AGAINST our countries.

For example, like Mr.Bukovsky, I am inclined at this point to believe, based on the information I've seen in David Satter's articles and books, that the Chekists were responsible for the apartment bombings that were blamed on the Chechens and provided the excuse for this most recent Chechen War.

I am rather amazed to see Woolsey endorsing such a theory, which is on a par with "Bush Knew". I guess either he's right, he's wrong, or he's cynical (doesn't believe it, but advocates it for political reasons).

This critic of Satter says that the accusations have been "kept afloat... by people close to Berezovsky". I read here that FSB head Patrushev in turn "accused Berezovsky of providing financial support to Chechen terrorists".

There is no chance the Soviet Union will be restored. No one in Russia wants it and Putin and Co already have their hands full keeping Russia together. The market economy and multi-party institutions cannot be undone. To restore full-fledged totalitarian rule would mean the break-up of what's left of Russia. Putin's Russia in some respects has adopted some aspects of the Soviet past but this is not a sign of a Soviet restoration. Russia does not have funds or the strength to attempt it. The secret police does play a significant role in Russia and it has always done so throughout five centuries of Russian history. My guess is the KGB under Putin and his prospective heirs would like a Russia run more to the imperatives of Russian culture than of a Western outlook but all that same the Communist past will remain the past.

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