No Peter the Great

NRO ^ | September 20, 2004 | Ion Mihai Pacepa

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September 20, 2004, 8:14 a.m.

No Peter the Great
Vladimir Putin is in the Andropov mold.

By Ion Mihai Pacepa

Vladimir Putin looks more and more like a heavy-handed imitation of Yuri Andropov — does anyone still remember him? Andropov was that other KGB chairman who rose all the way up to the Kremlin throne, and who was also once my de facto boss. Considering that Putin has inherited upwards of 6,000 suspected strategic nuclear weapons, this is frightening news.

Former KGB officers are now running Russia's government, just as they did during Andropov's reign, and the Kremlin's image — another Andropov specialty — continues to be more important than people's real lives in that still-inscrutable country. The government's recent catastrophic Beslan operation was a reenactment of the effort to "rescue" 2,000 people from Moscow's Dubrovka Theater, where the "new" KGB flooded the hall with fentanyl gas and caused the death of 129 hostages. No wonder Putin ordered Andropov's statue — which had been removed after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 — reinstalled at the Lubyanka.

In the West, if Andropov is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving the badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West.

In early 2000, President Putin divided Russia into seven "super" districts, each headed by a "presidential representative," and he gave five of these seven new posts to former KGB officers. Soon, his KGB colleagues occupied nearly 50 percent of the top government positions in Moscow. In a brief interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Putin admitted that he had stuffed the Kremlin with former KGB officers, but he said it was because he wanted to root out graft. "I have known them for many years and I trust them. It has nothing to do with ideology. It's simply a matter of their professional qualities and personal relationship."

THE NATIONAL POLITICAL PASTIME

In reality, it's an old Russian tradition to fill the most important governmental positions with undercover intelligence officers. The czarist Okhrana security service planted its agents everywhere: in the central and local government, and in political parties, labor unions, churches, and newspapers. Until 1913, Pravda itself was edited by one of them, Roman Malinovsky, who rose to become Lenin's deputy for Russia and the chairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Duma.

Andropov Sovietized that Russian tradition and extended its application nationwide. It was something similar to militarizing the government in wartime, but it was accomplished by the KGB. In 1972, when he launched this new offensive, KGB Chairman Andropov told me that this would help eliminate the current plague of theft and bureaucratic chaos and would combat the growing sympathy for American jazz, films, and blue jeans obsessing the younger Soviet generation. Andropov's new undercover officers were secretly remunerated with tax-free salary supplements and job promotions. In exchange, Andropov explained, they would secretly have to obey "our" military regulations, practice "our" military discipline and carry out "our" tasks, if they wanted to keep their jobs. Of course, the KGB had long been using diplomatic cover slots for its officers assigned abroad, but Andropov's new approach was designed to influence the Soviet Union itself.

The lines separating the leadership of the country from the intelligence apparatus had blurred in the Soviet satellites as well. After I was granted political asylum in the United States in July 1978, the Western media reported that my defection had unleashed the greatest political purge in the history of Communist Romania. Ceausescu had demoted politburo members, fired one-third of his cabinet, and replaced ambassadors. All were undercover intelligence officers whose military documents and pay vouchers I had regularly signed off on.

THE MAKING OF A DICTATOR

General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Soviet gauleiter of Romania who rose to head the Soviet foreign intelligence service for an unprecedented 15 years, used to predict to me that KGB Chairman Andropov would soon have the whole Soviet bloc in his vest pocket, and that he would surely end up in the Kremlin. Andropov would have to wait ten years until Brezhnev died, but on November 12, 1982, he did take up the country's reins. Once settled in the Kremlin, Andropov surrounded himself with KGB officers, who immediately went on a propaganda offensive to introduce him to the West as a "moderate" Communist and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and the music of Beethoven. In actual fact, Andropov did not drink, as he was already terminally ill from a kidney disorder, and the rest of the portrayal was equally false.

In 1999, when Putin became prime minister, he also surrounded himself with KGB officers, who began describing him as a "Europeanized" leader — capitalizing, ironically, on the fact that he had been a KGB spy abroad. Yet Putin's only foreign experience had been in East Germany, on Moscow's side of the Berlin Wall. Soon after that I visited the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig and Dresden to see where Putin had spent his "Europeanizing" years. Local representatives of the Gauck Commission — a special post-Communism German panel researching the Stasi files — said that the "Soviet-German 'friendship house'" Putin headed for six years was actually a KGB front with operational offices at the Leipzig and Dresden Stasi headquarters. Putin's real task was to recruit East German engineers as KGB agents and send them to the West to steal American technologies.

I visited those offices and found that they looked just like the offices of my own midlevel case officers in regional Securitate directorates in Romania. Yet Moscow claims Putin had held an important job in East Germany and was decorated by the East German government. The Gauck Commission confirmed that Putin was decorated in 1988 "for his KGB work in the East German cities of Dresden and Leipzig." According to the West German magazine Der Spiegel, he received a bronze medal from the East German Stasi as a "typical representative of second-rank agents." There, in those prison-like buildings, cut off even from real East German life by Stasi guards with machine guns and police dogs, Lieutenant Colonel Putin could not possibly have become the modern-day, Western-oriented Peter the Great that the Kremlin's propaganda machine is so energetically spinning.

Indeed, on December 20, 1999, Russia's newly appointed prime minister visited the Lubyanka to deliver a speech on this "memorable day," commemorating Lenin's founding of the first Soviet political police, the Cheka. "Several years ago we fell prey to the illusion that we have no enemies," Putin told a meeting of top security officials. "We have paid dearly for this. Russia has its own national interests, and we have to defend them." The following day, December 21, 1999, another "memorable day" in Soviet history — Stalin's 120th birthday — Putin organized a closed-door reception in his Kremlin office reported as being for the politicians who had won seats in the Duma. There he raised a glass to good old Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin, meaning "man of steel," was the dictator's nom de guerre).

Days later, in a 14-page article entitled "Russia on the Threshold of a New Millennium," Putin defined Russia's new "democratic" future: "The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as required." The Chechens' effort to regain their independence was mere "terrorism," and he pledged to eradicate it: "We'll get them anywhere — if we find terrorists sitting in the outhouse, then we will piss on them there. The matter is settled." It is not.

SCAPEGOATING AND CONSOLIDATING

On September 9, 2004, Chechen nationalists announced a $20 million prize on the head of the "war criminal" Vladimir Putin, whom they accuse of "murdering hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians on the territory of Chechnya, including tens of thousands of children."

For his part, President Putin tried to divert the outrage over the horrific Breslan catastrophe away from his KGB colleagues who had caused it, and to direct public anger toward the KGB's archenemy, the U.S. Citing meetings of mid-level U.S. officials with Chechen leaders, Putin accused Washington of having a double standard when dealing with terrorism. "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Putin told reporters in Moscow.

Then Putin blamed the collapse of the Soviet Union for what he called a "full scale" terrorist war against Russia and started taking Soviet-style steps to strengthen the Kremlin's power. On September 13, he announced measures to eliminate the election of the country's governors, who should now be appointed by the Kremlin, and to allow only "certified" people — that is, former KGB officers — to run for the parliament.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, its people had a unique opportunity to cast out their political police, a peculiarly Russian instrument of power that has for centuries isolated their country from the real world and in the end left them ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of modern society. Unfortunately, up until then most Russians had never owned property, had never experienced a free-market economy, and had never made decisions for themselves. Under Communism they were taught to despise Western democracy and everything they believed to be connected with capitalism, e.g., free enterprise, decision-making, hard work, risk-taking, and social inequality. Moreover, the Russians had also had minimal experience with real political parties, since their country has been a police state since the 16th century. To them, it seemed easier to continue the tradition of the political police state than to take the risk of starting everything anew.

But the times have changed dramatically. My native country, which borders Russia, is a good example. At first, Romania's post-Communism rulers, for whom managing the country with the help of the political police was the only form of government they had ever known, bent over backwards to preserve the KGB-created Securitate, a criminal organization that became the symbol of Communist tyranny in the West. Article 27 of Romania's 1990 law for organizing the new intelligence services stated that only former Securitate officers "who have been found guilty of crimes against fundamental human rights and against freedom" could not be employed in the "new" intelligence services. In other words, only Ceausescu would not have been eligible for employment there. Today, Romania still has the same president as in 1990, but his country is now a member of NATO and is helping the U.S. to rid the world of Cold War-style dictators and the terrorism they generated.

Russia can also break with its Communist past and join our fight against despots and terrorists. We can help them do it, but first we should have a clear understanding of what is now going on behind the veil of secrecy that still surrounds the Kremlin.

— Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former two-star general, is the highest-ranking intelligence officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc. His book Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.

 

	http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200409200814.asp

[griffin]

BUMP

[Luis Gonzalez]

Right back at ya!

[MarMema]

So how about those chechens having independence and turning it into a barbarian state, Luis? Want some more links on this?

You think all those innocent civilians protested the two human slave markets in Grozny and Urus-Martin? Guess again.

By that time all the decent people were gone.

And there were not that many of them, Luis, because the chechens have always been a fairly barbaric people. As evidenced by what they chose to do with their independence.

It only took wahabbi islam to take them over the edge. And now it is a portal to Hades.

The reason it is a portal to Hades, Luis, is because the chechens kidnapped the aid workers coming in to provide assistance, the pro-chechen journalists coming in to tell the world the chechen side of the story, and they beheaded them too! Wow, takes some evil to do that, doesn't it? Kill the people who are coming in to help you or support you.

So the conclusion anyone reaches about chechens is that they are either completely clueless and stupid, or just as evil and sick as possible, enjoying death, gore and killing so much that they even choose to use their own political and social supporters for it.

Guess which choice makes the most sense?

According to the Euros on the chechen lists, the ones who support the chechens in full, on their trips to Grozny there were kiosks everywhere with videos of throat-slitting and worse. Even they found it to be disgusting, but they still support the chechens. You know why they do?

Because like you, they don't really support the chechens, and they know these people are basically blood and gore motivated. It's because they hate Russia. Like you.

[Destro]

I was right - you are old.

[MarMema]

Wednesday, September 22, 2004. Page 1.

Putin Finds Ally in World Bank

By Valeria Korchagina

Amid an international chorus of criticism over a presidential initiative to abolish elections for governors and single-mandate State Duma deputies, one of the world's most influential bankers has offered an surprisingly strong endorsement of President Vladimir Putin and his plans to gain more power.

"I personally would be reluctant to conclude that his motives are bad," World Bank president James Wolfensohn told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Tuesday. "I think Russia is a pretty difficult place to run, and so I wouldn't come to that conclusion too quickly."

Wolfensohn's remarks came after leaders from the United States and European Union expressed concern that Putin would roll back a decade of democratic gains by further strengthening the executive chain of command.

Putin presented his proposals as part of a Kremlin effort to fight terrorism last week. But coupled with the ongoing legal assault on oil giant Yukos and a tightening of controls on national media, the plans are raising fears that Putin is reverting to the Soviet past.

Wolfensohn, who is known as a staunch supporter of Putin in the West, acknowledged the problems.

"Clearly the moves in relation to press freedoms and in relation to Yukos are of concern," Wolfensohn was quoted as saying, indicating a change in his perception of Yukos.

Wolfensohn said during a visit to Moscow in January that he was "relaxed" about the Yukos affair.

In the newspaper interview, Wolfensohn noted that Putin has been put in a difficult situation by the Beslan hostage-taking.

"I think Putin has a very difficult issue to face. The act of barbarism has upset the entire country, and the first reaction is for security and trying to centralize it," he said.

Although unusual, Wolfensohn's remarks did not surprise political analysts, who said the difference between him and world leaders is that he probably sees Russia through the eyes of an investment banker and businessman.

"I see it more as an emblematic diversion in views regarding Putin between those who pursue economic interests and those who monitor his domestic and international policies," said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "Those who are primarily interested in the economy see Russia much more positively."

Kuchins said Wolfensohn looks at Russia as an emerging market and compares it with other emerging markets, all of which lack developed democratic institutions.

Wolfensohn's comments also illustrate that the West's perception of Russia is far from united, said Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin political consultant. Politicians in democracies that value human rights see Putin as a former KGB agent seeking a tighter grip on the country, and they find this worrisome, he said. Businessmen, however, see Putin's actions as neutral or positive, as a good manager needs to have control.

"What is there to complain about? Returns are growing, and businesses are prospering," Markov said.

Among the Western criticism, U.S. President George W. Bush said last week that he was "concerned about the decisions that are being made in Russia that could undermine democracy in Russia."

Two visiting U.S. congressmen said in interviews published Tuesday that Putin's plans deserve criticism and his statements in the wake of Beslan may have a negative impact on U.S.-Russian relations. Representative Michael Burgess, a Republican, said Bush had "significant reason" to offer criticism and that Putin's statements after Beslan "could lead to a situation when our relations will become as bad as they were before," Izvestia reported. He did not specify to which statements he was referring.

Burgess' worries were echoed by Representative Thomas Tancredo, a Republican, who urged Moscow to strike a correct balance between "forces struggling for more freedoms" and "forces struggling for more security," Izvestia said.

Burgess and Tancredo were in Moscow to commemorate those killed in the recent terrorist attacks. They left for Beslan on Tuesday, a U.S. Embassy official said. Representative Curt Weldon, a Republican, led a delegation to Russia on a similar mission last week.

Also last week, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said during a visit to St. Petersburg that Putin's post-Beslan moves were understandable and that the U.S. government had taken similar measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But he warned that it would be wrong to allow all important economic decisions to be made at the federal level, saying that would slow economic development. Gore was speaking Friday at an international forum on Russian economic development.

Commenting on media freedoms, Gore said: "I have an impression that Russian television is more controlled by the state than newspapers. While here, I read The Moscow Times newspaper and saw very critical articles about President Putin. It means those newspapers are free. However, television traditionally has more influence on the mass of the population."

[MarMema]

LOL, he comes from Cuba but refuses to believe a culture can be evil. Unless it is Russian.

[FormerLib]

Nah, I believe that calling an Islamonazi such to his face is a statement of fact and does not constitute personal abuse.

And I stand by that statment!

Life's like that, Louie.

[FormerLib]

I absolutely will not post to you any longer.

I got $10 says he drops that faster than a 11-year old Havana girl can roll a cigar on her thigh!

[A. Pole]

To: MarMema
I truly believe that you are not mentally balanced and that your mentality is every bit that of a fanatic as the most fanatical Muslim extremist out there.

Your pro-Chechen friends, Louis:

Hello Friends!
Here is info about recent activity of KOR-ABC in Warsaw.
-------
On 17th February 1996 during an anticapitalist demonstration in Cracov, 16 anarchists were arrested, among them Marek Milewski, archoelogy student at Warsaw University. Marek Milewski was accused of throwing molotov cocktails (he didn't do that) at police bastards. He was sentenced for one month jail awaiting trial. The prosecutor can jail him for between 3 and 7 years. Marek is obviously not guilty. Police and judges in Cracov are willing to jail him to discourage anarchists in Cracov and all Poland.

Since the day when Marek was arrested, KOR (Komitet Obrony Represjonowanych) ABC (Anarchist Black Cross) in Warsaw, Cracov, Gdansk and Rzeszow have been trying to help Marek. Several demonstrations were organised and some funds were collected. Unfortunatly all the lawyers we asked to help us refused to co-operate, because they are afraid of loosing their reputation for defending an anarchist. We are very dissapointed with this.

On 23rd February Marek Kurzyniec, an anarchist from Cracov, one of the founders of the Anarchist Federation, organizer of 2 aid convoys to Chechnya was arrested and accused of organizing an illegal demonstration. He was sentenced for 4 months for not paying the fine (1400 polish zlotys). Cracov ABC managed to collect money and Kurzyniec was released on 2nd March. But Marek Milewski is still in jail.
Now we are trying to find a lawyer who will help us or eventually find enough money to pay as a caution for releasing Marek.
Hope soon Marek Milewski will be free!

In solidarity,
Mike Kusnierz (KOR-ABC Warsaw)
(http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/eu/poland/polandb.html)

The gratitude of their Chechen friends after they got the practical independence at the end of 1996:

Krzysztof Galinski, Mac Pariadka and Zycie Marek Kurzyniec, Marscho and Zycie
Imprisoned: December 17, 1997

Galinski and Kurzyniec were kidnapped in Chechnya along with three other Polish citizens by unknown assailants while trying to deliver a shipment of food aid. All five undertook the mission on behalf of the National Federation of Anarchists in Poland, of which they are all members. Galinski is an editor with the Gdansk-based Mac Pariadka, the country's largest national anarchist monthly magazine. Kurzyniec edits his own small political bulletin Marscho, also in Gdansk.

Although their primary mission was the food aid delivery, both carried press credentials from Zycie, a national daily newspaper in Gdansk. They had agreed to a request from the editor to write free-lance articles about the situation in Chechnya upon their return.

The National Federation of Anarchists reported that all five hostages were safe as of mid-January. Rumors that the hostage-takers demanded ransom from Zycie and the anarchists' group could not be confirmed.

The kidnapping is the latest in a long series of abductions of foreign journalists and aid workers in Chechnya, usually for ransom.
(http://www.cpj.org/attacks97/confirmedright.html)

[Destro]

Well they are Polish after all - JOKE! Sorry :)

[MarMema]

Those were exactly the kinds of things that convinced me these people were out to lunch. When I first began studying them I was shocked, over and over again, to see how brutally they would kill, not just their enemies but their friends and supporters. I still don't get it. It has to be evil.

They just killed for the fun of making movies, it seems.

[MarMema]

chechens

"Kidnap capital of the world"

The killing of the four hostages is the worst single incident against foreigners in Chechnya since six Red Cross workers lost their lives in December 1996.

Beyond the personal tragedy of the deaths of the four men, this is another heavy blow for President Maskhadov. He has failed to stem the tide of kidnappings that have made his republic a no-go area for foreigners.

He himself compared these murders to the killing of six Red Cross workers in Chechnya in December 1996.

The president repeated the accusation that this was the work of "foreign intelligence services." (sound familiar??)

That sounds highly implausible, when most of the kidnap gangs in Chechnya are plain criminals, but there is little doubt that the gangs are also trying to undermine Mr Maskhadov's government.

The president's authority has been further weakened this autumn with the murder of one of the commanders of combating kidnapping - Shadid Bargishev - and the political defection of another, Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov.

Hostage-taking continues

There are still at least 100 hostages being held in Chechnya.

The dozen or so foreigners who have been captured and in most cases released have claimed most attention.

One of them, the Frenchman Vincent Cochetel, head of the North Caucasus office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is known to be still alive.

But the majority of the 100 or so captives are Chechens and some have been as young as two years old.

Hostage-taking in Chechnya has become a vicious circle. The economy is in ruins and there is no work, which makes it attractive for armed young men to join the many kidnap gangs.

The gangs have become more and more powerful after receiving ransoms of up to $2m for foreign hostages, which they have used to equip themselves even better.

This in turn undermines the government and halts all foreign investment or economic activity.

Projects such as those the four unfortunate engineers were working on, to restore a telephone network, have lapsed.

And Chechnya has slipped into a condition of complete lawlessness.

[MarMema]

check this out

Now all the Orthodox countries have officially stepped out with aid. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria.

"Bulgaria has also suggested for some 100 Beslan children to travel on the plane's flight back, and spend recovery time in Bulgaria."

[ninenot]

Well, as it turns out, the NRO/NeoCon axis is working overtime. Ledeen, Wolfe, Perle--ALL of them telling GWB to condemn Putin.

Poor ol' GWB steps in.

The analogy: the Czar telling Andy Jackson to keep his troops away from the Indians--who after all, were just trying to defend their buffalo lands by torturing settlers.

Uh-huh.

[A. Pole]

When I first began studying them I was shocked, over and over again, to see how brutally they would kill, not just their enemies but their friends and supporters. I still don't get it. It has to be evil.

I think that the situation over there is different. Mountain Chechens live in another world - divided in clans (hostile one to another with long lasting vendettas), close knit, with traditional robbery, confused by modernity, by recent Wahabi influences and by their Western admirers.

The Chechens who have more brains or desire for better life left for the Russian cities long time ago. In fact most of them did. Some are troublemakers (organized crime) but many are productive normal citizens.

This Polish anarchist group was engaging in Western phantasy of brave tribal freedom fighters and ugly Russophobic hatred. They were brainwashing confused Chechens with this "noble" vision. But when one clan was more into traditional kindapping (they need to make living in these poor mountains somehow) the dreamy delusion was crushed by the morbid reality.

I recommend the film Prisoner of the Mountains that "introduces a world that is likely to be unfamiliar to most Western viewers."

If the Western PC doogooders, Big Game players and Saudi sponsors stop to meddle, Russia might quiet down the situation by delevoping peaceful local Chechen leadership focused on economic and cultural development. It will take time, but it is only humane solution.

[jb6]

Like Bush, I too am concerned about the deconstruction of democracy in Russia, Putin's power grab, and the ongoing backwards move toward totalitarianism that have been the most visible characteristics of the Putin presidency. Like Bush, I believe that Chechnya is an internal Russian problem, and favor a peaceful resolution to the ten year-long war between Chechnya and Russia

Really? I don't support Putin's bid to extend his term, I am not against his centralization, since half of Europe, to include our coalition partner England appoints governors..oops.. But you seem to spend most of your time excusing Chechins autrocities, I even saw you on a thread in memory of the victems, shifting blame and excusing the Islamics. That was very low.

[jb6]

Did he really say he hates Russians in general? If so, please post it or a link. At least if he did, then we can all see what we are dealing with and treat it like wise. But I want to see some proof before I form that opinion.

[GOP_1900AD]

You are a one man discrediting operation. Not a very good one, but one nonetheless.

[Destro]

Made you comment did it not?