The agency’s advancement was not always one of absorption. When the FSB could not subsume the rival foreign intelligence service, it created its own department with regional branches for gathering foreign intelligence. It was officially called “organs of external intelligence” and was established within the main analytical structure of the FSB department devoted to analysis, forecasting, and strategic planning.
29
In this way, the FSB entered the field previously dominated by the foreign intelligence service and military intelligence.
The architects of the overhaul were all friends who once served in the FSB’s regional departments in St. Petersburg and neighboring Karelia, a group including Putin, Patrushev, Nurgaliev, and Cherkhesov. Others involved were Victor Ivanov, deputy chief of the Kremlin administration and the main personnel director, and Igor Sechin, another deputy chief of the Kremlin administration in charge of the secret services in 2000-2008. They all helped each other and their junior colleagues, who were to fill the ranks of the FSB’s central apparatus. As a group, they were known as
piterci
(people from St. Petersburg).
The FSB gained power and scope even when Yeltsin sought to use checks and balances to keep the security services under control. Later, under Putin, the FSB managed to outstrip the other security services. After a few years of his reign, the FSB had no parliamentary oversight and no competitors.
30
Rather than a revival of the Soviet KGB, the FSB had evolved into something more powerful and more frightening, an agency whose scope, under the aegis of a veteran KGB officer, extended well beyond the bounds of its predecessor.
2
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
CULTIVATING THE SECURITY SERVICES
T
HE FALL OF the Soviet Union was, for the tens of thousands of people in the KGB, a personal disaster. The overwhelming majority of officers had joined the ranks of the KGB not because they were inspired by Communist ideals or the allure of the omnipotent Soviet secret police, but for the guarantee of stable, well-paying jobs with lifetime tenure, pensions, health care, and housing. For many the KGB was a family business that spanned generations. In the inner circles of the KGB, officers lived in a world of acquaintances, became accustomed to hierarchical structures, and fell out of touch with life beyond the walls of the Lubyanka headquarters. Contact with the outside world was limited by the culture of the secret police. While in 1991, many former KGB officers lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union, most did not know what to do in the new circumstances. Their biggest fear was that they would lose the apartments, salaries, health care, and pensions that had long been assured by the state. In the dawn of a new era, former KGB officers faced the rise of a market economy with trepidation.
Some KGB veterans found they had skills and knowledge useful in the wild capitalism of the early years after the collapse. Those most in demand were for private security agencies at a time when business disputes were often being settled violently in the streets. This included the fighters of the Alpha elite special operations unit because of their indisputable expertise in personal protection and martial skills. Specialists in surveillance and interception who could help businesses spy on competition and defend against espionage were also sought-after. The former generals and colonels of the KGB were prize hires for these security agencies, which were structured in such a way as to literally duplicate the shape of the old KGB, with the same “lines” and directorates but on a smaller scale.
1
Those who remained in the security services were motivated by patriotism, or feared the risks of starting over in chaotic times, or a little of both. But soon they, too, were beckoned by the new capitalism. KGB officers trained to protect the Russian state were now lured to protect Russia’s tycoons—the oligarchs. For their part, oligarchs realized it was cheaper to exploit the security services than to pay for their own private secret services. Those who hired former KGB officers were often as interested in their contacts, files, and access to the security structures as they were in meaningful protection.
2
A wave of lawlessness engulfed everyone—businessmen, the new security agencies, even the government officials and agents who represented the state. For some businessmen, it was more economical to pay the FSB or the Interior Ministry to intercept phone calls by a competitor than to carry out the job themselves.
For the officers who did not leave the state, jealousies were often sparked at the sight of a former colleague parking a luxury car outside of headquarters. As honest officers were forced to comply with the orders of corrupted generals, the FSB’s morale was corroded. The rank and file often seemed to be sleepwalking through their jobs. (It is known that some officers who were supposed to recruit agents simply asked the teenage children of friends to fill out the required paperwork, perhaps in exchange for such valued privileges as taking a good course in English.)
3
With morale declining, the leadership of the FSB struggled to regain its Investigative Directorate, which had been disbanded in 1993, and by 1995 succeeded in having it restored.
4
Now the FSB combined the functions of a secret service and a law enforcement agency with the right to investigate the crimes of businessmen. In effect, more opportunities were provided for corrupt officers who could be used not only to conduct investigations but also to help businessmen fight their competitors.
5
For people inside the security services, strict and repressive state control seemed the only possible answer to the FSB’s internal corruption. Disenchanted FSB officers were obsessed by the Chinese approach of freewheeling market capitalism governed by political authoritarianism.
6
By the end of the 1990s, these officers saw in Putin’s leadership hope for resurrection of the order that they remembered from Soviet times. A lingering resentment toward the oligarchs, many of whom were Jewish, was keenly felt. (In Yeltsin’s time, a common complaint heard in the halls of the Lubyanka headquarters was that “the Jews sold out Russia,” reflecting a sense of dismay that rich tycoons had manipulated the president and were at fault for the country’s economic woes.)
7
Those who remained inside the state security structures blamed the corruption of their own generals on the radical democrats of the early 1990s who had subdivided the KGB and weakened the security services and the country. These democrats, many of them connected with Soviet dissidents, were viewed at Lubyanka as the puppets of Western intelligence services, part of the overall Western plan to ruin the mighty Russian state.
The outlook of these officers is decidedly provincial and inward looking, and the reason for this is rooted in the structure of the organization. The FSB is comprised of two unequal parts: its headquarters, which has never had a staff of more than a few thousand personnel, and its regional offices, estimated to employ hundreds of thousands of individuals. Although there have been major changes at headquarters, the structure of the regional directorates has remained largely unchanged for decades. Today this system tends to drag the FSB into a provincial mind-set. These fossilized provincial state security agencies are constantly shaping the special service from within, due to the FSB’s system of personnel rotation: Colonels and generals are moved from one regional directorate to another and are eventually offered positions on the central staff at FSB headquarters. The center is crammed full of officers who were promoted from the regions, bringing with them a provincial outlook.
The Russian Orthodox Church has similarly helped foster the FSB’s xenophobia. The security service and the Church have been moving closer in recent years. In December 2002, the Cathedral of St. Sophia of God’s Wisdom was reopened just off Lubyanka Square, a block away from the FSB headquarters. Patriarch Aleksey II himself blessed the opening of the cathedral in a ceremony attended by then FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev.
8
Despite having been a target of the KGB in Soviet times, the Russian Orthodox Church has always been closely connected with the state. The Russian Tsar was the head of the Church; Russia’s brand of orthodoxy is based on the concept that Moscow is “the Third Rome” (after ancient Rome and Constantinople) and on a belief in Russian uniqueness. Being “unique,” Russia sees itself as surrounded by numerous enemies that the FSB must combat. In this vein, the Russian Orthodox Church is always suspicious of Catholic expansion. As recently as 2002 five Catholic priests were expelled by the FSB from Russia, some of them accused of espionage.
9
The FSB helps to protect the Orthodox sphere of influence against Western proselytizing, and in return the Church blesses the security service in its struggle with enemies of the state.
IN SOVIET TIMES, the members of the KGB were part of an elite. But when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia plunged into the new capitalism, few KGB officers emerged as business leaders. They were outflanked by younger, fleeter hustlers: a new breed of oligarchs. Instead, KGB veterans found their calling in second and third tiers of the new business structures, running the security departments of the tycoons’ empires. No longer masters of the universe, they now served the new rich.
Putin’s offer to the generation of security service veterans was a chance to move to the top echelons of power. Their reach now extends from television to university faculties, from banks to government ministries, but they are not always visible as men in epaulets. They go dressed in business suits into a zone of influence where power flows back and forth—sometimes the agents are the exploited, and other times they are the infiltrators.
The Russian saying “There is no such thing as a former KGB officer” has more than a bit of truth in it. Many officers, supposedly retired, were put in place as active agents in business, media, and the public sector while still subordinated to the FSB. A special euphemism was invented for such agents: a DR officer, where DR means
destvuyushego rezerva
—of the active reserve. The term has a long history, being used from the 1920s until the 1990s. In 1998, DR officers were renamed APS officers, for
apparat prikomandirovannih sotrudnikov (
apparatus of attached officers) but in essence remained the same.
The status of an agent on active reserve is considered a state secret. It is prohibited by law to reveal it. This army of hidden FSB officers does not identify itself to the rest of society, and they often work in organizations entirely undercover—while sending reports to FSB leadership and actively recruiting members. It is hard to know precisely how many officers are working on active reserve, but the total is probably in the thousands.
In one of the more striking known examples, the FSB placed one of its officers in a prominent spot at a major television channel. In June 2002, former FSB spokesperson General Alexander Zdanovich, who had also been an officer in military counterintelligence and the main FSB official historian, was appointed deputy director general of the state-owned Russian Television and Radio Company, known by its initials VGTRK, which owns several television and radio stations including the Second Channel, considered the country’s main official station.
10
At first Zdanovich was said to be responsible for company security, but soon afterward it became clear that his powers were much wider.
11
When hostages were captured by Chechens in the Dubrovka Theater during the musical show
Nord-Ost
in October 2002, Zdanovich essentially told newscasters how to cover the event. At the peak of the crisis, Zdanovich was an official member of the operations staff, with one hand in both the security agency and the other in the news media.
12
In September 2004, when hostages were taken in the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, the authors met Zdanovich on the streets of Beslan just two hours before the school was stormed. Zdanovich was invited to the scene of a crisis by the security agencies—even though he was appointed to the television channel. In December 2004, Zdanovich’s role in defining how television would handle hot topics for the Kremlin was confirmed by Vladimir Putin, who signed a decree congratulating Zdanovich on his “active participation in information support of the Presidential elections in Chechnya.”
13
In the years to come, Zdanovich was responsible for supervising the creation of television programs highlighting the FSB’s successes. In 2005-2006, the serial
Secret Guards
was broadcast about FSB agents carrying out surveillance on the streets. The show, aired on the Second Channel, was produced with the help of the FSB.
This was a far cry from the period of relative freedom in the early 1990s when a private television channel, NTV, stood up to the authorities and broadcast uncensored news reports on the first Chechen war. Now, with Zdanovich and others, Putin and the security services were directly influencing what millions of Russians saw on their television screens.