Posted on 11/01/2004 4:34:15 PM PST by TapTheSource
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.
Thanks.
Gary, it's very simple...You are for Putin and the KGB, I am for the Russian people. You defend dictatorship, I support FREEDOM. Your boy Putin supports our enemies, I support the United States. Somehow you have managed to confuse totalitarianism with conservatism. I hate to break it to you, but the two do not go together.
No problem. Unfortunately, the "Putin right or wrong" crowd has arrived.
I didn't say I didn't want you here. I was refering to a post further up. I ran into a post of yours that made me think you would be interested in the Pacepa article. Giving Putin the benefit of the doubt is a far different stance than the people I was referring to (although I would disagree with your stance, but at least your rational about it).
BTW, what exactly do you find unsettling about the Martinez article?
Thank you for the ping.....albeit, doing it by freepmail has me perplexed. I am more used to the public ping, thus my consternation.
John Birchers are losers.
You are boring us to death with your ten-year-old "run, the commies are coming" repeat posts.
He does make for nice opportunities to run into you again, though! Hope things are going well for you and yours!
Truly a sophomoric piece of writing, this article.
This is a really embarassing article isn't it? Blaming Putin for the deaths at the Theatre and Beslan -- with no blame assigned whatsoever to the terrorists? The author is a disgusting, dishonest man.
Falsely suggesting Putin praised Stalin and Lenin -- black propaganda. If I say Pearl Harbor was a "memorable day", does that mean I am praising Japan's attack on the USA? Total bunk. And what is this -- the implication that every career man who worked for the KGB is assumed to be pure evil?
And what's this, blaming Putin for every death in Chechnya -- with no acknowledgement whatsoever that when Russia pulled out of there completely for 3 years, repeated attacks on the rest of Russia were launched from it? From their safe haven in Chechnya, Baseyev and others killed 1000 in Daegestan via raids, and many others with terrorist attacks throughout Russia -- all when there were no troops at all in Chechnya and when they were self governing.
There is no substance to the article, it is all dishonest propaganda.
Yes, by requiring the local legislatures to vote on his appointment, just like Italy and Britian (who by the way until recently appointed the mayor of London). So if Putin is evil for this, then our allies Italy and Britian are evil, then you must love France and Germany, since you would then sound like a democrat. And since you defend Islam, hell you must be a democrat, a liberal, etc.
and then helped him smuggle out the same (
Ummm get with the times propagandist. ABC proved it was there and DOD admitted they used it to blow up the 400,000 tons of other munitions. Your little troll snacks are getting stale. Gertz is a wind bag sensationalist and he's been proven at it again. Your support of that story does nothing but undermine Bush and the election. Just who's side are you on? As if I need to ask.
Putin hasn't implimented anything that our allies: Britian, Italy and the countries of France and Germany don't already do. And nothing more stringent then our Patriot Act. TapTheSource(Allah) is a propagandist who posts yellow journalism and blames all terrorist attacks on Russia, KGB, etc and away from Islam. This is his 3rd reincarnation in less then 2 months.
That's why most of his articles are 10 years old. Things get fuzzy after that.
How can you always be so wrong. First it was Stalin who recognized Israel about 40 minutes before the US, and second, it was the UN's partition plan that Israel accepted. Get a clue and look beyond your propaganda.
Can you explain me why the imperfect (but still partially successful) rescue operations bring back the Cold War? Are you saying that Russia should submit to the terrorists same way as Serbia was required to do? Relevant quote below:
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.
Should Russia be bombed by NATO/US, should Putin be delivered to the Hague and should Maskhadov/Basayev become rulers of the Caucasus and southern Russia?
Pass the crack pipe, you've had enough. Now go pick up a real history book, something not written by the French.
You forget GIJoel. Oh and he's a racist little troll too. Demanding to know everyone's (who disagrees with him) nationality. As if that is relavent in a debate. Accusing his desenters of being Russian. Just like another group did with Jews.
Lame excuse of people like you to hide their true cause behind. Wait, that line also sounds like a democrat line. Do you feel their pain? Good, and since they freely elected not only Putin but gave over 70% of the Duma to right parties, you'd have to respect that, but since you don't and can only attack all the time, you obviously don't give a damn about the Russian people's wishes.
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