"This is brilliant plan, Fearless Leader-instead of killing Moose and Squirrel, we come up with better marketing strategy!"
Posted on 11/17/2006 3:27:24 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
MOSCOW -- The appointment of a former KGB agent to a top post at Russian energy giant OAO Gazprom this week highlights the growing roles former spies have in the country's business world, analysts say.
"Since 2003, there has been a tendency of placing former KGB people in the economy," said Olga Krishtanovskaya, who heads up a study centre on Russia's elites at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Valery Golubyev, who was promoted to become Gazprom's deputy chief executive officer on Wednesday, is one of three out of the 17 members of the management board of the state-controlled company to have worked for the KGB.
Like President Vladimir Putin, who worked as a KGB agent in Germany and later became head of Russia's FSB secret service, Mr. Golubyev also worked for the mayor's office in the northern city of Saint Petersburg in the 1990s.
Gazprom's two other ex-KGB board members, according to their official biographies published on the company's website, are Sergei Ushakov, another deputy CEO, and Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the legal department.
But "many" other employees of Gazprom, which is one of the world's biggest companies and has been taking an ever greater role in European and world markets, also come from the KGB, Ms. Krishtanovskaya said.
"They don't necessarily highlight that in their biographies," she added.
For Yulia Latynina, a political commentator, the new appointment at Gazprom is a sign that the Kremlin is moving to undermine potential critical voices in the business world.
"The most interesting thing about this phenomenon is not so much that so-and-so is from the KGB, but that the authorities are slowly getting rid of anyone not considered as their own," Ms. Latynina told AFP.
Alexander Ryazanov, whom Mr. Golubyev replaces, was seen as too independent.
The Vedomosti business daily yesterday quoted a top Gazprom manager as saying Mr. Ryazanov had "too independent a position on many questions and didn't consistently carry out the leadership's orders."
Ms. Krishtanovskaya agreed that the tendency in Russia in recent years has been towards ever greater centralization of the economy under the watchful eye of the Kremlin.
"Under Putin, there has been a reimposition of a centralizing system, with the Kremlin controlling everything, including the economy," said Ms. Krishtanovskaya, who has written about the growing power of former military officers and spies.
"This control is not 100 per cent like in Soviet times but it concerns the major strategic companies, like Gazprom or Rosneft," another state-controlled firm that is the second biggest oil producer in Russia, Ms. Krishtanovskaya added.
The key figure in this control system, the analyst said, is Igor Sechin, a former KGB agent who is now both deputy head of the presidential administration and chairman of the board of OAO Rosneft.
In another possible sign of the rising influence of the intelligence community, Mr. Sechin hired a young adviser in September, Andrei Patrushev -- son of FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.
"This is brilliant plan, Fearless Leader-instead of killing Moose and Squirrel, we come up with better marketing strategy!"
Why I thinking of Rocky and Bullwinker LOL!
Think NEP.
Now that funny Monk LOL!
With President Bush becoming his father, John Boehner becoming Bob Michel and Vlad Putin becoming Leonid Brezhnev, it is as if the whole last 15 years were vanishing and we are morphing into the 1980's!
Ed
One thing about the 1980's era, at least top Russia communist party bosses admitted they were commies.
If by "to make their career" you mean becoming a nomenclaturist - then in a sense yes, although not necessarily true in a strict formal sense. These were kegebuns in spirit, but not always by payroll. Just look at Belarus Lukashenko who used to be a lowest level boss- the boss of a collective farm. Thus one could speak of pervasive "kegebuchest'" [pun in russian: KGB-ing, or rather KGB-effing]- most of the elite there has this type of a background, thus it is by no means a new phenomenon. Why, even the dissidents used to come from there - the late Politkovskaya was a daughter of soviet diplomat [and USSR foreign service was a KGB cover].
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Wrong. Power corrupts. From my experience [on the receiving end], KGB was, if anything, more corrupt, mediocre and morally defecative than a typical non-power apparatus soviet organization.
For close to a century, Russia has been ruled by a cabal of insiders, people who are experts of intrigue, and very willing to kill anybody who threatens their power in any way
Sometimes they are more visible than at other times
I'm sure that the KGB, as a whole, was just as corrupt as any powerful institution; I was referring to the fact that the organization provided one of the very few places for intelligent and ambitious people during that period.
Wrong again. There were "antillectual" fields for the antillectually inclined, and one could [and indeed, on ethical grounds ought to have] become a dissident. Regarding "intelligent and ambitious people" - not for nothing one Niccolo Machiavelli considered ambition as evil. Even more so in the evil empire. Thus what you were writing about earlier ["if you have a choice between being cannon fodder, a impoverished worker drone OR becoming part of the elite who run things it's not a dilemma; at least it wouldn't have been for me"] is indeed at the root of that evil. You might have fitted well, there, too - and this is NOT a compliment, but a condemnation.
I can't make up my mind whether they are worse than lawyers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.