Russia's Political Tool

December 20, 1997 is the 80th anniversary of Russia’s bodies of state security, more commonly known here as just organy (bodies). While this is hardly cause for celebration, it is certainly cause for recognition and reflection.

Even though, after the disintegration of the USSR, the KGB has been reorganized and renamed the FSB (Federal Security Service), a great many Russians still associate the organy with three common letters — KGB — the Soviet Union’s notorious political police force that simultaneously occupied itself with internal security, foreign espionage, military intelligence, embassy and border protection and secret service. For many decades, these three letters were enough to strike fear into much of the world, not to mention the average Soviet citizen. At its height, the KGB had an estimated 400,000 persons in its employ and acted as a crucial crutch sustaining Soviet power.

But the KGB was not always the KGB. The powers that be loved to obfuscate by creating new acronyms and shuffling bureaucracies. On December 20, 1917, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution, Sabotage and Speculation (or Cheka) was founded. The Cheka actually replaced the Military-Revolutionary Committee (VRK), which lasted just a month and a half after the October Revolution, and was headed by “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinsky — whose iron statue dominated Moscow’s Lubyanka square until it was toppled along with the entire Soviet state in 1991. The Cheka and its organs liquidated plots and rebellions against Soviet power and also fought sabotage, malfeasance and “speculation.”

That the chekisty — as they are still sometimes called — are celebrating their anniversary almost in parallel with the 80th anniversary of the October Revolution is no coincidence. From the outset, the Cheka was conceived as “the political tool” of the Revolution’s driving force — the Bolshevik party, and this is how its role was defined up until the fall of the USSR. Small wonder that a chekist non-party member was an oxymoron throughout the Soviet history of the organy.

The organys’ multiple renamings and reorganizations did not change the essence of their goals — to be the vigilant political weapon of the ruling party. As such, the organy were a murderous, treacherous bureaucracy that committed crimes against the Russian people on a scale and duration not equaled before or since. (Indeed, some observers argue that the organy have slowly regained their power, in a new guise.)

Soon after the Civil War ended, on February 6, 1922, the Cheka was abolished altogether, and the United State Political Administration (GPU) was formed in its stead under Russia’s NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). In the 1920s and 1930s, the GPU — and later the OGPU (United State Political Administration) began a broadening of powers that would culminate in the creation of a labor camp system (the infamous GULAG), and the cultivation of talented spies and spymasters.

More acronyms followed: the OGPU became the GUGB, the NKVD was divided into the NKVD and the NKGB. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, it was decided to unite the efforts of various political organs to defend the country. On July 20, 1941, the NKGB and NKVD combined to form a single People’s Commissariat — the NKVD of the USSR (it would become a ministry in 1946) — to fight German spies and to carry out intelligence and diversion work at the enemy’s rear flank. But even before that time, the organs work in the war had begun, witnessed by the large number of NKVD officers who were decorated for their part in the appalling massacre of 14,000 Polish prisoners of war in the spring of 1940 (at Katyn and elsewhere).

During the first few years after the war, the organy worked on eliminating the “counter-revolutionary underground” in the liberated regions of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Baltic republics, along with searching out and punishing “traitors” who had cooperated with the Germans. Unfortunately, along with real traitors, thousands of innocent victims — Soviet soldiers and officers taken prisoners during the war — were sent to Stalin’s camps. Hence the post-war wave of Soviet emigres who settled throughout the world for fear of being sent straight from Nazi camps to Stalin’s gulag.

Destalinization had its effect on the organs. In March 1954, the Committee of State Security (KGB) was formed under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, signifying more state control over the organy. Then, in 1956, the KGB was seriously purged and reorganized both structurally and ideologically. But the “thaw” lasted a very short time. Historians tend to agree that, in terms of both its financial and political strength, the “golden age” of the KGB began with the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, reaching its apogee under Yuri Andropov’s leadership from the late 1960s until the early 1980s (Andropov would go on to become CPSU General Secretary). Under Andropov, the bodies regained their control over political, social, economic and even cultural life of Russia. And it was in the Andropov years that the infamous Fifth (Ideological) Directorate was created to target and persecute political dissidents, like Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Andropov’s successors, including Vitaly Fyodorchuk, Viktor Chebrikov and ex-Gorbachev protege Vladimir Kryuchkov, did not change the essence of the KGB’s functions. Moreover, Kryuchkov himself, by participating in the abortive August 1991 putsch, added fuel to the fire of public discontent over the role of the organy in Russian society. On the heels of the putsch, Felix Dzerzhinksy’s statue at Lubyanka was dismantled. And so was the old KGB and its infamous Fifth Directorate. The bold reformer Vadim Bakatin was put in charge of the deconstruction — one he had actually begun in 1990 when he was Minister of the Interior. Upon taking office, Bakatin declared the KGB a “vicious state within a state.” But he was too much too early and lasted just a few months in office, forced out in favor of Yevgeny Primakov, who would later become Russian Foreign Minister.

The KGB was formally abolished as an institution on October 22, 1991. Its organs were transplanted and divided up into separate services (which, of course, have changed their acronyms several times): the Foreign Intelligence Service (now known as the SVR), directly subordinate to the President, while the Counter-Intelligence Service was downsized and renamed the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Now, the organy are gradually staging a comeback in Russia’s political arena. The media now gladly gives front-page coverage to the spy war between the US and Russia (as in 1996) or gives the floor to current SVR chief Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who in a recent series of interviews boasted that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has maintained its strong position in the world.

By the mid-1990s, the executive branch, primarily President Boris Yeltsin himself, came to realize that it is one thing to criticize the KGB while in the opposition, but another cup of tea altogether to rule the country without a loyal and strong “political tool.” Interestingly enough, under Yeltsin, a former KGB 9th Directorate officer — presidential bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov — gained unprecedented political influence for a man of his rank. It was also Korzhakov and his relative, ex-FSB head Mikhail Barsukov, who contributed to the FSB’s hawkish reputation, as they reportedly helped persuade Yeltsin to unleash the war in Chechnya (see book review, p. 35).

In spite of the bodies’ sinister past, the Russian public, worried about mafias and crime, may be reconciling itself with the organy (or maybe there are some who would have it seem that way). More and more positive materials about the chekisty are being published again, and both the mass media and the state-controlled ORT channel are showcasing each new foreign spy arrest (the latest featured a Russian military journalist in Vladivostok spying for Japan).

The FSB has inherited a gruesome, despicable past. But modern states still need the services of such organy for foreign intelligence and for protection from enemies without and within. It is a positive result of Russia’s cash-strapped economy that it can no longer afford such an enormous apparatus as the former KGB. One hopes that there will continue to be enough money (and will)  to continue developing democratic checks and balances that will keep the FSB and other organy from repeating the excesses of their past.  

In Brief

December is full of political and creative anniversaries. On December 1, 205 years ago, Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792-1856), the mathematician who created non-Euclidean geometry, was born. Unfortunately, as with so many geniuses, Lobachevsky’s contributions were not recognized during his lifetime.

Speaking of lack of appreciation, on December 1, 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, at an art exhibition at Moscow’s Manezh (where the artists of the time had taken advantage of the political thaw of the early 1960s to exhibit their best works), uttered words that would long rob Russian artists of the right to work and exhibit freely: “You don’t understand whether these pictures were painted by a human hand or by a donkey’s tail.” He was talking about the works of such talented figures as sculptor Ernst Neizvestny and painter Robert Falk. Ironically, it was Neizvestny who later designed Khrushchev’s monument, which can be seen in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery.

December 30 marks 75 years since the founding of the USSR. On this day in 1922, a decision was taken at the first Congress of Soviets to unite six republics then located on the territory of former tsarist Russia – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – into a single state.

On December 2, 100 years ago, Soviet military commander Marshal Ivan Bagramyan (1897-1982) was born. During the Second World War, he commanded the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belarussian fronts.

On the subject of wars on Russian soil, on long-ago December 7, 1237, the Mongol-Tatar Yoke, which would subjugate Russia for almost two and a half centuries, began. Khan Batu, the grandson of Ghengis Khan, easily conquered a series of unprepared Russian princes, who could not or would not unite against the invaders, who looted and burned all towns in their path. After defeating Russia – and much of Eastern Europe – Batu established his base in the lower Volga (in the town of Old Sarai). Though they did not interfere greatly in Russian culture and life, the Mongols demanded tribute to be paid and occasionally required Russians to fight in their army. In the 1300s, the Mongols’ hold over Russia gradually weakened, especially after Moscow Prince Dmitry Donskoy won a major battle at Kulikovo in 1380. The “yoke” was not finally broken, however, until 1480, when Ivan III declared Russia’s independence.

December contains the anniversaries of two well-known Russian poets who wrote about love and nature. December 3 marks 105 years since the death of subtle lyricist Afanasy Fet (1820-1892), many of whose verses later became romances and chamber music pieces. And on December 26, 135 years ago, poet Semyon Nadson (1862-1887) was born.

December 8 marks 195 years since the birth of yet another poet – Alexander Odoevsky (1802-1839). He was exiled for participating in the Decembrist insurrection of December 14, 1825, first to Siberia and then to the Caucasus, and this prevented his copious talent from flowering. Like Pushkin, he lived 37 years, and like Pushkin, he died at the height of his talent. From Siberia, he replied to Pushkin’s poem to the Decembrists Message to Siberia with his famous Sounds of Ardent Singing Strings Reached Our Ears.

On December 27, 165 years ago, Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898) – founder of the world-famous Tretyakov Gallery – was born. In 1856, he bequeathed Moscow his large private collection of paintings, as well as the art collection of his brother Sergei Tretyakov. Recently restored, the Tretyakov is one of the world’s largest art galleries.

The month of January contains two important Orthodox Church holidays: Orthodox Christmas on January 7 and Epiphany on January 19. And, speaking of the Church, on January 20, 1918 – 80 years ago – a decree on the separation of church and state was issued, marking the beginning of Soviet religious repression.