2008-02-22 14:26:01
By Martin Sixsmith
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams famously said about the IRA that "they never went
away, you know", and researching the current BBC World Service series, After
the KGB, left me with a very similar impression.
As the BBC's Moscow correspondent in the late 1980s and early to mid-90s, I
witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outpouring of popular hatred
for the regime's notorious secret police.
I was in Lubyanka Square in front of the KGB's headquarters on 22 August 1991,
as demonstrators toppled the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the organisation's
founder. When a hawser was tied round Dzerzhinsky's neck and the 14-tonne
colossus came crashing to the ground, it seemed the KGB's days were numbered.
The new President, Boris Yeltsin, moved to neutralise the secret policemen by
cutting their budget, slashing their numbers and hiving off their functions to
rival agencies. He renamed the organisation the FSB - Federal Security Service
- but somehow the spirit of the KGB lived on.
They were crazy days. So many dead bodies, so many guys who simply disappeared
Dima Fonariev
Ex-KGB bodyguard
In the political and economic chaos of the Yeltsin era, thousands of
disillusioned agents went into the private security business.
Dima Fonariev, a KGB bodyguard for Mikhail Gorbachev who set up his own
security firm, says private sector pay in the 1990s could be 10 times higher. A
burgeoning crime wave also meant security expertise was in high demand.
"They were crazy days. So many dead bodies, so many guys who simply
disappeared. I remember this time because I was invited to work for a guy who
wanted me to carry a Kalashnikov. But I said 'no, no it is against the law!'"
Inquiries quashed
Not all the former agents shared Mr Fonariev's scruples. Some became involved
in organised crime. Within a few years, former and serving security men had
replaced the mafia in running the country's thriving protection rackets. Some
were caught up in even darker activities.
Mikhail Trepashkin, an ex-KGB-colonel who remained in the service, worked
closely with Nikolai Patrushev, who is now the head of the FSB. Mr Trepashkin
won a medal for uncovering illegal arms sales by FSB agents to Chechen
militants, but when he began to probe deeper into connections between FSB
officers and criminal groups, he found himself ostracised and his investigation
blocked.
They are just people like us - they are not aliens
Dmitry Peskov, Putin spokesman on former KGB members
"In Moscow, several times, we arrested armed men who were preparing terrorist
acts, and then they were released! It made no sense to me at all. So I decided
to compile a report for our leadership in the FSB to establish why this was
happening. My report went to Nikolai Patrushev, who was then working on
internal FSB affairs. I got no reaction.
"Then, in 1995, I had definite information about an FSB employee who was
working in a criminal group, kept a weapons store, and killed people. When I
wanted to catch that group Patrushev gave the order for those documents of mine
to be destroyed."
Eventually Mr Trepashkin himself was arrested. A gun was planted in his car and
he was charged with the illegal possession of firearms. He successfully
contested that charge, but was then accused of disclosing state secrets and
sentenced to four years in a labour camp. When I spoke to him he had just been
released from the prison.
Business leaders
Despite Yeltsin's efforts, the FSB remained stubbornly unreformed and
determined to regain its lost power. In 1999, Vladimir Putin, then director of
the FSB and a career KGB man, was appointed prime minister.
On 20 December 1999, at an FSB party to celebrate the founding of the Cheka,
the Bolshevik secret police, he told his former colleagues: "Dear comrades, I
can report that the group of agents you sent to infiltrate the government has
accomplished the first part of its mission."
The second part of the mission - getting a KGB man into the presidency - was
accomplished the following year.
Under Vladimir Putin, the security services have regained their former
prestige, their budgets and their numbers are now higher than ever, and they
have gained positions of power in all areas of the nation's life.
According to research by the Russian Academy of Sciences, three quarters of
senior politicians have a background in the security forces and Russia's
largest companies are now headed by former KGB men with personal ties to
Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin argues this is a good thing - that Russia needs a strong hand to
restore order. When I spoke to President Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, he
was reassuring.
"The majority of [former KGB men] are very talented and very skilful people.
They are just people like us - they are not aliens," he said.
Turf wars
But there have been suggestions that some of the new politician-businessmen
have abused their positions to enrich themselves. Individual branches of the
FSB, each controlled by a politically powerful patron, have been involved in
turf wars over corrupt business schemes. One of them led to an armed showdown
on the tarmac of a Moscow airport.
When he was elected, Mr Putin declared war on the wheeler-dealer businessmen,
the so-called oligarchs who snapped up the country's massively lucrative state
industries in the economic meltdown of the 1990s.
Many of them were dispossessed and their assets, counted in the billions of
dollars, were taken over by state corporations, most of which have a former KGB
man in charge. Mr Putin's former colleagues now head up the country's oil,
media, railways and armaments industries as well as the state airline.
It would be wrong to say the bad old days are back in Russia: the security
services are no longer the monolithic instrument of state repression they were
in the darkest periods of the Soviet Union.
But they have become rich and powerful, and whereas the Soviet KGB was always
tightly controlled by the Communist Party, their modern equivalents are
increasingly becoming a law unto themselves. The new president, due to be
elected next month, will inherit a secret police that is in danger of becoming
a state within the state.
The first part of Martin Sixsmith's two-part documentary, After the KGB, can be
heard on the BBC World Service on Friday 22 February. Part two will be aired on
29 February.