Russia: Bear Trap Alliance?

Yuri Maltsev, former senior advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, stated in a May 1996 interview: "Russia has become the criminal capital of the world. In Russia today, the organized Mafia and the government are one and the same thing. They're two hands of the same ruling elite." This state of affairs began with the founding of the Soviet state. In a 1995 interview: Former Lithuanian Vice President Algirdas Katkus stated that although "Westerners believe that the Mafia is the product of post-Communism ... in reality it is organized, staffed, and controlled by the KGB...

Mafiosity is a characteristic of communism as a way of life. This way of life [which has nothing to do with red banners and other externalities like party membership. Our clintons are behavioral commies, for they walk through life like commie nomenklaturists -"rules are for thee but not for me - I'm from the master race!"] - so, this way of life did not start in Russia in 1917, but much earlier [in Paleolithic]. While everyone started as a behavioral commie back then, some other civilizations through mounds of dirt and blood managed to restrain and weaken that primeval commie - and thus progressed and became civilized. Russia has not and is not going to.

"We are trying to figure out just who in Russia would do the best job of fighting the "terrorists" which, they say, now "plague" the old Soviet Empire. Or who can we trust with infusions of U.S. dollars, technology and insider security information to help them with their "holy" work? We’ve settled on the Russian Mob. After all, they have come to be known as the most brutal, vicious, efficient criminal network in the world – they know how to think like terrorists. And besides, they run things in Russia, own most of the property, are one with the KGB (now FSB), and have probably been active in training the terrorists – so who could hide from them?

They are also the same dedicated criminals and communists who have always run Russia.

In an April 1994 interview published in the International Herald Tribune, Georgian Mafia leader Otari Kvantrishvili confessed: "They write that I am the Mafia’s godfather. It was Vladimir Lenin who was the real organizer of the Mafia and who set up the criminal state."

Well let's see how good this post really is. In their 2001 prognostications we have:

In Stage 1, which is already taking place, Russia has armed, at the request of the United States, anti-Taliban militants and opened up her bases as a staging ground for the U.S. military.

Didn't happen. And the bases we did get were all in former Soviet Republics, not Russia.

In Stage 2 expect a permanent Russian occupation force in Afghanistan, as well as a healthy flow of U.S. aid, U.S. technology, and U.S. security secrets spilling into Russia to assist it with its internal battle against "terrorism" (opposition)

Has not and did not happen.

In Stage 3 – which is a constant – expect our aid and shared secrets to be used against the United States and free people everywhere, even as the old Soviet Union re-unites under the leadership of Mother Russia..

Has not and did not happen. None of it.

Twenty-two years later [22 years after 1979], the Russians will invade Afghanistan again, this time not just with technology paid for in the USA, but with American soldiers by their side..

Did not happen.

Now, I am not saying Russia does not continue to present security issues and questions for the U.S., but the authors were not accurate predictors of what issues would actually arise.

As far as the KGB and the Russian Mob being the only ones with a working organized structure, with which to rule or influence those who do when the Soviet's government and party structure collapsed, that much is true. They were the only ones whose organizations were still intact and functioning and spread across the Soviet union. His knowledge of that is possibly one of the reasons Gorbachev did not embrace Yeltzin and sought to continue his slower Glasnost and Perestroika approaches; hoping to build institutions that would keep everything from falling, by default into the hands of the state-police and their friends in the Mob.

On the other hand, while I never before read Alexis de Tocqueville's comments comparing Russia and the U.S., I can agree with him in those comparisons, as I have, since the late 1990s viewed Russia as simply not having changed since the 16, and 17 hundreds. They have simply replaced one form of Czar for another. While I describe their present set up as a "mobocracy", Putin and his FSB clearly operate much as did the former royal and communist Czars.

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