KGB old boys tightening grip on Russia

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.