Russia's Higher Police
Mini Teaser: Whether Czarist or Soviet, the Russian intelligence elite has always conceived on itself as the "most loyal" servant of "the Russian idea." Now one of their own is president.
First of all, the demand today is precisely for such tough, pragmatically thinking politicians. They are in command of operative information, they have a broad field of view, and they're open to new ideas. But at the same time, they are patriots and proponents of a strong state grounded in centuries-old tradition. History recruited them [emphasis in original] to carry out a special operation for the resurrection of our Great Power (Derzhava), because there has to be balance in the world, and without a strong Russia the geopolitical turbulence will begin. Second, it was only representatives of the System that were prepared to carry out that task. It turned out to be too much for the others. But then again, what is a KGB officer? He is, above all, a servant of the state. . . . Experience, loyalty to the state, strong intellectual capabilities, an iron will--where else are you going to find cadres? So there's nothing surprising about the fact that representatives of the System were demanded by Russia. The only p eople that can bring order to the state are state people (gosudarstvennyye lyudi).11
With these remarks as the immediate background, the figure of Russian President Vladimir Putin acquires an interesting relief. Putin's hallmark, his signature phraseology, has been associated first and foremost with "the Russian idea" and with notions of efficiency and pragmatism: greatness of the State (derzhava in traditional Russian political language) through competent management, but without totalitarianism and a centrally planned economy. But for those who know history, Putin also raises eerie echoes from the past. Prince Loris-Melikov spoke of a "dictatorship of the heart"; Putin talks of a "dictatorship of the law." Colonel Sergei Zubatov explained that "the free Russian people do not wish their country to become another France or United States"; Putin argues that "Russia cannot become the second edition of, say, the U.S. or Britain in which liberal values have deep historic traditions." 12 The Higher Police are in charge.
In his landmark "Millennium Message", delivered via the Internet in the final days of 1999, Putin presented a comprehensive program for his administration. To date, it is the most far-reaching programmatic document to have come from the Russian presidency, and is therefore a source of considerable weight. Russians today, he asserted, must again become Servants of the Russian Idea: "The public looks forward to the restoration of the guiding and regulating role of the state to a degree which is necessary, proceeding from the traditions and present state of the country." They must work on behalf of
the greatness of Russia. Russia was and will remain a great power. It is preconditioned by the inseparable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic, and cultural existence. They determined the mentality of Russians and the policy of the government throughout the history of Russia and they cannot but do so at present. 13
MANY QUESTIONS remain to be studied. The relationship within the intelligence services between a Higher Police committed to managing Russia by means of social engineering, on the one hand, and those we have labeled the oprichniki, who rely on brute force and power, must be better understood. Their rivalry and interplay will shape much of the domestic sources of Russia's future evolution. As crises strike and as key issues become more sharply defined, opposition between these tendencies will likewise become more focused. Diverging agendas will clash, and contending currents will be at daggers drawn.
Further, the version of Russia's polity presented here is a stylized, ideal type. Shades and nuances must be added to bring the model closer to everyday realities in Russia. But there are means to test the validity of the hypothesis we present. For instance, what is the treatment meted out to Beria in documentaries and fiction, in film, television and literature, and the media? What kinds of heroes are presented for the adulation and identification of the masses in thrillers and other popular culture movies? Are the principal tenets of the Higher Police's doctrines spreading in policy circles, among the contemporary manufacturers of ideology? From answers to such questions it may be possible to adduce the directions being taken by Russia's ruling elite. It seems to be firmly on a Higher Police course for the time being. Where exactly that will lead, of course, no one can say.
1 This article uses "KGB" as shorthand for all post-1917 Soviet intelligence organizations, including their post-1991 incarnations; while Chekisty is used as the generic term for members of these organizations.
2 The "Cheka" was created in 1917 and stands for the Russian initials for the term "Extraordinary Commission." The GPU (Glavnoe Politicheskoe Upravleniie, or the Main Political Administration) was created in 1922. In 1934 its functions were assigned to the NKVD (Narodnyi Kommisariyat Vnutrenikh Del, or the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). In 1954 the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security) was created. It was dissolved in 1991.
3 P.S. Squire, The Third Department: The Establishment and Practices of the Political Police in the Russia of Nicholas I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 2.
4 Ibid., p. 205.
5 Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A Short History (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 309.
6 Jeremiah Schneiderman, sergei Zubatov and Revolutionary Marxism: The Struggle for the Working Class in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970).
7 Bonch-Bruyevich was Russia's premier authority on the religious schismatics, the Old Believers, who comprised about 20 percent of the Russian population at the time. The legacy of government persecution, the role played by Old Believers in rebellions against czarist rule, and the secretive, conspiratorial nature of some Old Believer sects fascinated Leninist revolutionaries.
8 A new source documenting the work of this unit has started appearing in Moscow as a book series, Top Secret: The Lubyanka to Stalin on the Situation in the Country (1922-1934). Publication is jointly sponsored by the Russian Academy of Science's Institute for Russian History and the Central Archives of the FSB. The foreword to the entire series, by G. N. Sevast'yanov, is available on the FSB website, http://www.fsb.ru.
9 Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin, Francoise Thom, ed., translated by Brian Pearce (London: Duckworth, 2001).
10 The "Siberian Academy", established in Novosibirsk, was created to provide scientists a degree of breathing space and relative freedom from Communist Party inquisitors and ideologues. It played a crucial role in the advancement of both the natural and the social sciences in the former USSR.
11 Pavel Yevdokimov, "Russkaya pravda generala Leonova" ("General Leonov's Russian Truth"), Spetsnaz Rossii (May 2001).
12 Vladimir V. Putin, "Vystupleniye na zasedanii kollegii Ministerstva yustitsii RF" ("Speech at the Meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation"), January 31, 2000.
13 Vladimir V. Putin, "Rossiya na rubezhe tysyacheletiy" ("Russia on the Threshold of a New Millennium"), December 1999, available at www.government.ru.
Laurent Murawiec is a senior policy analyst with the RAND Corporation, Washington, DC. His book, L'Esprit de Nations--Cultures et geopolitique ("The Spirit of Nations--Cultures and Geopolitics") has just been published by Odile Jacobs (Paris, 2002). Clifford Caddy is a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is a co-author of Russia's Virtual Economy (Brookings, forthcoming).
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