SPECIAL BULLETIN
TO: All Strategic Intelligence Forum members
FROM: JKC de Courcy, Chairman, Strategic Intelligence Forum
DATE: 4 January 2007
SUBJECT: The 'resurrection' of the Russian secret services
On 6 December, the editor of Strategic Intelligence Review, Alex Standish, gave a speech at the European Union parliament on the subject of the Russian secret services. The following is a full text of this important speech:
FULL TEXT OF SPEECH:
The ‘resurrection’ of the Russian secret services
Members of the European Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, it is both an honour and a pleasure to be invited to speak today. In particular, I should like to thank Prof. Schöpflin and his staff for organising this opportunity for a discussion about a subject which has become, in many circles today, a political taboo.
Who could have imagined, when the subject of this session was announced, that we would be meeting in the shadow of the controversy unleashed by the recent tragic death of Alex ander Litvinenko – and amid widespread international media speculation that the former KGB officer was assassinated and, if so, by whom?
When I received the invitation to participate in this debate, I must admit that the title caught my eye. The term ‘Afterlife’ suggests that there has been a death. But, as I will explain today, my view is that the ‘old’ Soviet-era Committee for State Security (the KGB) never died.
True, it has changed – in some outward respects at least – beyond recognition. In fact, the Russian secret services resemble an organism that has mutated, shrivelled in the powerful glare of democracy; but then regrouped, expanded and re-generated. Like some horrendous monster from a second-rate horror movie it has returned from the grave to haunt us.
Despite there being a time when many – both within and outside Russia – had genuinely believed that the power of the KGB and its associated structures had been fatally wounded, we are now confronted with the realisation that behind the changes of name; behind the façade of a modern democratically accountable state service, many of the values, aims, objectives and practices of the old Soviet-era have been resurrected – or perhaps more accurately, revitalised and refinanced, and in some instances, former KGB agents re-recruited.
But how could it have been otherwise? What did we really expect? After all, for decades, the KGB and its allied intelligence and security services had performed the assigned role of the watchdog of the Soviet state. Alert to dissent and treachery within; monitoring and acting against the Kremlin’s enemies abroad, there can be no doubt that the KGB played a major role in sustaining the Soviet empire for generations.
Back in July 2000, I wrote my first editorial on the then-recently inaugurated President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. I entitled this article What is Putin’s game?
I took the title from a reference by Putin himself, contained in a document he published in December 1999 entitled Russia at the Turn of the Millennium, to the role of the Russian state authorities going beyond simply “establishing the rules of the game” for the economy.
In my editorial, I highlighted what I believed would be the new president’s key priorities. These included:
- New foreign policy priorities – which I warned would force the West to step up its own intelligence operations in response
- The launch of a new counter-terrorism strategy (this was, of course, long before the events of 9/11)
- A re-centralisation of power away from elected regional governors
- An anti-corruption crackdown aimed at the leading oligarchs, particularly those behind media empires
- A new economic policy focusing on “a strong state”
I concluded the article, by making the following observation:
It remains to be seen whether Putin will be able to play his game with equal success on all fronts. It is certain that he is a much more skilful operator than his ailing predecessor, but in confronting Russia ’s wide range of problems, the new president may have to use all the tricks he learned as a career officer in the Soviet KGB.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, I do not believe that I would revise the key points that I made in 2000. Of course, although one might have suspected it, given Mr Putin’s KGB pedigree, it was still too early to speculate publicly about his personal nostalgia for the Soviet Union and its empire of captive nations. In fact, we had to wait until his April 2005 State of the Nation address before Vladimir Vladimirovich finally permitted the mask to slip when he shared with Russia , and the world, his conviction that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
Staggering as that admission might seem to many of us here – and to the millions of victims of Soviet oppression – I think that President Putin was telling us the truth. He does genuinely believe that the disintegration of the old USSR was a tragedy, a disaster and – indeed – to use his own words “a catastrophe”.
I don’t think that we should underestimate the importance of that defining moment in Putin’s presidency. His State of the Nation address reveals a world-view that is markedly different from his pronouncements at the beginning of his rise to power. Back in December 1999, writing of Communism he referred to “the outrageous price our country and its people had to pay for that social experiment.” He added that Communism was “a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilisation.”
Again, back in 2000, he was still keen to portray himself as a modest, even simple, civil servant. I’m reminded of a summary he is supposed to have given of his life and career to the authors of the shamelessly hagiographic portrait of the new president, published in English under the title of First Person. According to Putin:
In fact, I have had a very simple life. Everything is an open book.
I finished school and went to university.
I graduated from university and went to the KGB.
I finished the KGB and went back to university.
After university, I went to work for Sobchak.
From Sobchak, to Moscow , and to the General Department.
Then to the Presidential Administration.
From there to the FSB.
Then I was appointed Prime Minister.
Now I’m Acting President. That’s it!
A masterpiece of under-statement. In fact, First Person was part of Putin’s own election campaign material. Recruited into the KGB from university in 1975, Putin spent the first decade of his career in the Soviet Union , followed by five years based in East Germany . He only resigned from the security service in the summer of 1991 – that is following a 16-year career – but was then appointed to head the ‘new’ Russian security service, the FSB, from July 1998 until August 1999.
So, why is Putin’s career as a KGB officer so significant in understanding the resurrection of Russia ’s secret services? The answer lies in the fact that Russia ’s president was a loyal Soviet official throughout the first 16-years of his working life. There is no evidence of any dissidence, any act which might suggest an independence of mind, no doubt of the rightness of his professional duty. To give him due credit, in the course of the interviews on which First Person was based, Putin admitted this:
For better or worse, I was never a dissident.
Indeed he was not… In fact, his career in the KGB progressed steadily, if unspectacularly. Describing his own activities whilst working in the Soviet KGB based in the German Democratic Republic, Putin provides a neat summary of the role of any foreign intelligence service:
The usual intelligence activities: recruiting sources of information, obtaining information, analyzing it, and sending it to Moscow . I looked for information about political parties, the tendencies inside these parties, their leaders. I examined today’s leaders and the possible leaders of tomorrow and the promotion of people to certain posts in the government. It was important to know who was doing what and how, what was going on in the Foreign Ministry of a particular country, how they were constructing their policy on certain issues and in various areas of the world, and how our partners would react in disarmament talks. Of course, in order to obtain such information, you need sources. So recruitment of sources, procurement of information, and assessment and analysis were big parts of the job. It was very routine work.
In many ways, Vladimir Vladimirovich was the ideal Soviet secret service man. Unhesitatingly loyal to the Soviet Union , hardworking and with a distinctly conventional personal life, he had no moral qualms about his professional activities, whether these involved suppressing dissident activities in Leningrad or in persuading foreign citizens to betray their own countries.
In fact, very different from the late Aleksandr Zinovyev’s concept of the Homo Sovieticus – the Soviet Man. In Putin we see no evidence of the indifference and resigned, if often resentful, acceptance of Soviet norms, corruption and injustices. He was a true KGB man who appears to have thrived in the foreign service.
Perhaps that is why the collapse of the Soviet Union came as such a bitter blow. For Putin this would have appeared as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe”. Everything to which he had devoted his professional life was falling apart before his eyes.
The mutation of the KGB
One of the early victims of the post-Soviet era was the KGB. From its foundation as the Cheka by Lenin in 1917, the Soviet security apparatus had a variety of names, but two key functions – the defence of the Soviet state and the promotion of its interests abroad. And it carried out these tasks with singular loyalty.
Its range of activities included espionage abroad and counter-espionage. It was also responsible for the elimination of ‘anti-Soviet’ individuals; for monitoring and suppressing dissent and ‘ideological subversion’ (a specific task for the infamous Fifth Directorate of the KGB), as well as protecting Soviet leaders and institutions. Its frontier police maintained the security of the Soviet borders, while the so-called Service A prepared and disseminated disinformation.
The influence of the KGB was arguably at its height under its longest serving Chairman, Yuri Andropov, who headed the service from 1967 until 1982 when he succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the CPSU, a post he held until his death in 1984.
Then, in the aftermath of the August coup d’etat against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, during which KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov played a leading role, the organisation was apparently dissolved, ceasing to exist on 6 November 1991 .
If there was a point at which the Russian security service is supposed to have died… this was it. However, as we now know, what really happened was a largely cosmetic restructuring. Most of the KGB’s assets and functions were transferred to renamed agencies. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) was created officially in October 1991 and has taken over the role and activities previously assigned to the KGB’s First Directorate.
Meanwhile, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is responsible for domestic security, counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism, as well as combating organised crime and the narcotics trade. These functions were formerly carried out by the KGB’s Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Directorates. Between 1991 and 1995, the service was known as the FSK (Federal Counter-intelligence Service). In July 1998, Putin became the head of the FSB.
Of course, no-one seriously expects any modern state to simply dissolve its intelligence and security services. The key issue is the extent to which the operations of such agencies are regulated and accountable within a legislative framework.
And the obvious question that follows is to what extent do the SVR and the FSB carry out legitimate activities, to what extent are they used by the Kremlin to further Russia’s agenda at home and abroad and whether they represent a real and present danger to foreign countries, particularly European Union and NATO member states?
Putin’s objectives
At the beginning of this presentation, I focused on Vladimir Putin’s own career as a KGB officer. I believe that this is highly relevant to achieving an insight into the role of the Russian security and intelligence services since his election as president in 2000. If we examine the state of Russia on the eve of Putin’s rise to power, we can better understand his role and significance in the resurrection of the security services.
We cannot ignore the fact that the Yeltsin era was a period of severe upheaval, involving economic and social dislocation. Russia was faced with the reality of having lost an empire, without having found an alternative role. With the economy in turmoil, the standard of living for many ordinary Russians was in serious decline.
The Russian security services were also facing a major crisis, both of identity and of funding. For example, during 1991, the SVR is known to have deployed just one officer in London, based at the Russian embassy – perhaps the lowest level of Russian intelligence service representation in Great Britain since diplomatic relations were restored after the British government finally recognised the Soviet Union in 1924. In contrast, within three years of Putin’s election as president, this number had risen to at least 33 and an even higher number is being quoted today by intelligence analysts.
Rebuilding Russia ’s international influence – and its foreign intelligence service – has been a major strategic objective for President Putin. Indeed, I would argue that in almost every aspect of Russia ’s relations with those states still within the CIS, with former Soviet republics and with those countries which were formerly part of either the Warsaw Pact or COMECON, the revamped intelligence services are playing a major role.
For example, there has been evidence of Russian intelligence service activity during every recent parliamentary and/or presidential election in countries which Moscow considers to be within its own sphere of influence: Ukraine was perhaps the most blatant case, but Russian ‘election advisers’ and ‘campaign workers’ are being deployed (and bankrolled) via the Russian intelligence services.
However, more traditional areas of intelligence service activity are not being neglected under Putin. Disinformation campaigns and the dissemination of propaganda is again being undertaken. Other activities including stirring up domestic discontent and fuelling of ethnic divisions in states perceived to be too pro-Western.
Moreover, the Russian intelligence services have been particularly active in infiltrating the intelligence and security agencies of new member states of both the EU and NATO. In late 2002 and early 2003, I played a supporting role in highlighting the risks associated with continuing to have Vladimir Mitro, a Soviet-trained intelligence officer, in post as director of Slovakia ’s intelligence service, the SIS. Mitro had been recruited by the former Czechoslovak communist regime and received his training during the 1970s when Czechoslovakia was undergoing a period of Moscow-imposed ‘normalisation’ following the Soviet invasion that crushed the Prague Spring in 1968.
In common with several post-communist intelligence services, Slovakia ’s continued to recruit extensively from among former members of the Communist-era secret police, the StB – which was, of course, completely controlled during the Soviet-era by the KGB. Mitro was only the most blatant case of a former Communist secret police officer being installed as the head of the intelligence service in a state that was a member both of NATO and of the European Union. After a three month long battle fought both in the international and domestic media, Mr Mitro resigned in March 2003.
Why is this case – and others like it – so crucial? The key issue is that individuals who served within the Communist intelligence agencies did so with the assent of Moscow . Loyalty to their own nations was secondary to the requirement for loyalty to the Soviet Union . And to ensure that this was the case, the KGB ‘insurance policy’ was to collect potentially compromising material – known colloquially in Russian intelligence circles as ‘kompromat’ – which might be useful in ensuring an individual’s continued loyalty to Moscow . Needless to say, those files remain available to the FSB and the SVR.
For that reason, the continued employment, or re-employment – of former members of Communist secret police services greatly increases the risk of such an individual being pressured. In my opinion, it is a risk too great for any independent state to take. Of course, this problem is not limited to former secret policemen. Similarly, some politicians may be vulnerable to pressure being exerted from Moscow .
Another cause for mounting concern is the often close ties which are believed to exist between the Russian intelligence services and organised crime groups, both in Russia and abroad. These links, by their very nature, are difficult to quantify. However, it is known that after the KGB was officially disbanded in 1991, a number of former officers sought alternative routes to influence, in addition to amassing personal wealth.
Moreover, Russian criminals active abroad in the diaspora are well placed to provide information to Putin’s intelligence service. Such ties can also provide invaluable access to fresh kompromat and as a means of applying pressure through blackmail. And if anyone doubts just how useful such links can be, one only has to point to the criminal enclave that is Moldova ’s breakaway region of Transdniester to see evidence of how Russian support for Tiraspol is being used as a political strategy.
The results of Moscow ’s political patronage of this rogue regime are evident. As the European Parliament's delegation to Moldova observed in 2002, Transdniester is “a black hole in which illegal trade in arms, the trafficking in human beings and the laundering of criminal finance was carried on”.
History and perceptions
One of Vladimir Putin’s principal achievements in respect of his country’s security services is that he has made significant progress in his aim of re-interpreting (indeed, re-writing) the history of the KGB. According to the ‘Putin version’ of events, the KGB was a patriotic, loyal organisation which defended the Soviet Union against its enemies, internal and external. As an intrinsic and loyal member of the KGB himself, it is hardly likely that Putin could admit any other interpretation.
It is important to note that in his December 1999 analysis of Russia ’s position on the eve of the Millennium mentioned earlier, he criticised the economic failures of the Communist system, but never the actual security organs of state ultimately responsible for the enforcement of the “social experiment” that he acknowledges failed. In particular, there is no room for criticism of the KGB or its methods. This would not be acceptable in Putin’s version of Soviet history.
Amid the continuing rise of Russian nationalism – a sentiment that is being shamelessly manipulated for domestic consumption – the FSB is portrayed as an honourable service, dedicated to protecting Russia from its enemies. This portrayal is almost identical to the propaganda used during the Soviet era to justify the activities of the NKVD and later the KGB. Naturally, Putin’s version of history omits the crucial fact that the vast majority of the KGB’s victims were ordinary Russian citizens.
Recent targets include foreign organisations based in Russia and Russian NGOs with foreign links. As is well known, independent broadcast media in Russia is effectively gone. Even academics and journalists – favoured targets for the old KGB - are being prosecuted for ‘treason’ or espionage, or else they are killed. Of course, there are many theories as to the motives behind the deaths of Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya. I don’t propose to add to the current speculation. Perhaps it is enough to observe that I am not optimistic those responsible will ever be identified or brought to justice.
Conclusions
I should like to conclude with a brief summary of my views. I think that it is difficult to speak of an ‘afterlife’ of the Communist secret police. Although there has been some change of personnel and a very successful re-branding of the KGB, I believe that the essential characteristics of the modern Russian intelligence and security services remain the same. Under a president with the biography of Vladimir Putin, I do not see how it could have been any different.
The real challenge for both the West and those states within the so-called ‘near abroad’ is to have the political vision to refocus on the danger posed by the massive increase in Russian intelligence service activity within their borders. The war against terrorism is one of the greatest gifts the West has offered Putin. Not only has it enabled him to justify repressive policies within the Russian Federation , but it has led Western governments to reorient their own intelligence services towards the threat – a genuine threat – posed by Islamic extremism. This in turn, has led to a substantial cut in resources and personnel away from counter-espionage.
In the warm glow of the expected ‘peace dividend’ when the Soviet Union disintegrated, there was an optimistic conviction that Russia no longer posed a significant threat to the West. Counter-espionage budgets were cut, intelligence services were downsized and experienced Soviet analysis retired or laid off. Even when Putin – and the entourage in the shadows behind him – came to power, there was much wishful thinking and the hope that Vladimir Vladimirovich was a man with whom we could do business.
That honeymoon period is now long over and in its place we have greater realism about Russia and its strategic objective of regaining Great Power status. We also need to recognise that the Russian intelligence services are a key component of the Kremlin’s broader strategy and are increasingly active in subversion, espionage, the recruitment of a fresh generation of intelligence assets and the re-activation of older agents. Propaganda, disinformation, the manipulation of the media, stirring up of ethnic and nationalist tensions and the gathering of kompromat for the purposes of blackmail are all potent tools in the hands of the SVR and the FSB. Democracies, east and west, ignore these threats at their peril.
Thank you
Alex Standish
Editor, Strategic Intelligence Review
6 December 2006
