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Home » Russian leaders: intelligence officials all the way down

Russian leaders: intelligence officials all the way down

The New Neo Posted on by

If true, this article on the Russian leadership is certainly depressing. I have no way to know whether it’s true, but my gut feeling is that it is.

It makes some interesting points, for example that the reason the Russian higher-ups didn’t stop hundreds of thousands of men from leaving the country to avoid conscription is that the emigration got rid of people who would be troublemakers and protestors anyway, leaving those who are more supportive of the Ukrainian war (and the regime in general) and/or more malleable. So why bother? Those leaving weren’t needed as additional cannon fodder – Russia has plenty of that – even though they tended to be among the more educated in the population.

Here’s the basic thesis of the article:

The main challenge to Putin’s power, then, comes not from the street but from within the regime itself…

Institutionally, the Kremlin has for years been effectively an extension of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. The three most powerful men in Russia today are all current or former FSB chiefs — Putin himself, the Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev and the current FSB head Alexander Bortnikov…

Modern Russia is not just a security state but literally a state that has been taken over by its own security services. Putin is the ultimate decision-maker and arbiter in various disputes between rival factions inside that extended FSB-connected ruling class…

So when we consider whether regime change is possible in Russia, what we are really wondering is whether some outside force could ever challenge the rule, not of Putin himself, but of the extended FSB clan that currently holds ultimate political and economic power.

The army has not played a decisive political role in Russia since the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953, when Marshal Georgy Zhukov effectively pulled off an armed coup by arresting and soon after murdering KGB boss Lavrentiy Beria. Ever since that painful showdown between soldiers and secret police, the KGB and FSB made very sure that Russia’s military had no role in internal security — most recently by creating the Russian National Guard, headed naturally by a former KGB man, Putin’s former body-guard Viktor Zolotov. The silent majority of Russia’s elite — the mid-level bureaucrats, professionals and business-people who have been robbed of their futures and their wealth by the war — are by all accounts collectively horrified by it. Notionally these people represent significant economic and bureaucratic power. But they have no organized political voice and generally have too much to lose to risk rebellion.

So when Kadyrov, Prigozhin and the other heavily armed patriotic critics attack the failed war effort, they are not so much challenging the status quo as jockeying for advantage within it. And they succeed in advancing up the chain of command to positions of greater influence. There are other critical voices… All have called for Putin to be more ruthless and aggressive in Ukraine…

The power of the extended FSB dwarfs that of any potential challengers except for one: a rising, angry people who feel cheated of victory by their corrupt leaders.

It doesn’t sound as though that last sentence describes an uprising that’s likely to happen, or is likely to succeed if it does happen.

As I read the article, it occurred to me that, although the situation in the US is markedly different in many ways, it’s nowhere near as different as one would like. In other words, the intelligence apparatus in this country has grown entrenched, partisan, and very powerful. It is putting out false information and withholding true information in order to get its preferred candidates elected, with the cooperation of the MSM to which it feeds selected information. Even when the intelligence community’s mendacious influence is exposed, nothing seems to change and the perpetrators go free and either continue in power or become pundits or behind-the-scenes string pullers.

Only half the nation’s citizens seem to care about this; the rest seem to either be ignorant of it or applaud it. And it’s not at all clear that there’s a good way out of this mess we’re in.

Comments

Russian leaders: intelligence officials all the way down — 26 Comments

  1. Our only hope, as I see it, is someone with a rock-solid respect for the Bill of Rights and utter strength of personality to get elected — if such is still possible in America (see: https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1578483416286101504 ).

    I see our best hope as being Ron DeSantis.

    While I disagree with her about many issues (abortion, etc.), Tulsi Gabbard seems to understand the mortal danger our nation faces. She is the only D.

    There are many R’s that, while they are respectable people (Hailey, Pompeo, Pence, Noem, etc.), they are not up to what we are facing. The pressure on them will be overwhelming. I don’t them any of them having the strength of character demanded.

    The Wall Street Journal’s recent series about the overwhelming civil service corruption ( https://www.based-politics.com/2022/10/11/wsj-investigation-reveals-huge-corruption-in-federal-government/ ) means it will be hard to dislodge unless there is a complete reform of civil service laws. We can’t count on with the R’s (McConnell, etc.) or the D’s (Pelosi, etc.) to assist because of their own corruption and double-dealing.

    If we don’t get someone like DeSantis elected in 2024 (again, if it is even possible), I don’t see how the America we have known and loved can survive. The hour is already late.

  2. My old RFE/RL colleague Viktor Yasmann wrote about the KGB’s/FSB’s influence in Russian political life in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here’s a link to a 2004 article by Yasmann:

    https://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Russia/Yasmann-Victor/Spymania-Returns-To-Russia

    Excerpts from Yasmann’s piece:

    “The enhanced role of former KGB and other secret-service veterans in Russia has given impetus to a real process of cultural counterrevolution in Russian society, one that is reacting against the liberal values of the 1990s reforms and is seeking a return to Soviet traditions and norms.”

    […]

    “Supporters of Putin often argue that it is natural that he, a former intelligence officer, would rely on his colleagues just as a president with a business background might be expected to bring private-sector representatives into his administration. But whatever the motive, the result is that spymania and other attributes of the secret-service mentality will continue to be prominent elements of Russian public life, and domestic policy will continue to be transformed into little more than a series of special operations.”

    And yes, there are disturbing similarities between the Russian police state and the behavior of our own intelligence agencies. Not only have we created our own nomenklatura; we have created our own NKVD. Makes you wonder who really won the Cold War. I used to think we did.

    Finally, good interview on Soviet and Russian political culture with historian Stephen Kotkin, courtesy of the Hoover Institution at Stanford:

    https://www.hoover.org/research/secrets-statecraft-unwrapping-enigma-mystery-and-riddle-stephen-kotkin-explains-russia

    Kotkin talks about Putin and the manipulation of history starting around the 37-minute mark.

  3. Many in this country like to take pride in our superiority to the current Russian system, but one might well argue that today’s hideously “woke-ified” America demonstrates an unfortunate resemblance, in several ways, to the USSR, which ceased to exist more than three decades ago. Our schools and our universities are madrassas for leftist social engineering, neither the media nor the administrative state can ever really be trusted to be truthful about any matter of importance, our “alphabet agencies” are little better than the KGB or the Stasi, our system of (in)justice is now set up (anarcho-tyranny) to protect those of the favored ethnicity or ideology and to persecute those who are disfavored, whilst our highest elected officials consistently lie about the border, about crime, about inflation Inter alia), and ever fewer informed and rational persons have faith in our electoral system or in the future of the republic. Perhaps some self-criticism should temper hubris.

  4. You make a good point, Neo. What with the “Intelligence community” and military personnel ganging up on the Trump/Ukraine impeachment, and the evidence that there’s little to no daylight between the FBI and the intelligence services coming from the Danchenko trial, we’re in deep trouble.

  6. Yup, Barry Meislin. Plus, Pelosi had a film crew with her on Jan. 6. Total setup, and some foolish people walked into it.

  7. the question of means vs ends, shoigu, and prigozhin and kadyrov share ends, but not means, gerasimov apparently wrote the war plan for a relatively light blue print, consider that general ivashov was part of the prague invasion in 68, along with razin aka suvorov, and that involved 250,000 Soviet and an equal number of warsaw pact forces, the short lived georgian incursion, had about 65,000 troops, and it ended in a rough stalemate,shoigu the tuvan, has a pronounced ethnic animus toward ukrainians,

  8. shoigu is an old fashioned bureaucrat, who aced out seleznov, (sic) who was a modernizer, prigozhin was a thug in his earlier career, who started out in food services, and diversified into private security, wagner corps, and information management, kadyrov took over from his father, and served as a more durable proxy eliminating the need for large soviet compliment, he has a certain animal cunning, hes cultivated a palace guard, the kadyrovsky who displaced the yamadev clan who fought some of the harsher battles of the second chechen war,

  9. Mike Smith (5:18 pm) cites “many R’s that, while they are respectable people (Haley, Pompeo, Pence, Noem, etc.), they are not up to what we are facing.”

    I agree a hundred percent.

    I hear and see a lot of references to “existential threat to ‘our’ democracy” coming from the left and its flying monkeys, but like so much of what they say, it’s all so much gaslighting in the form of political clickbait hyperbole.

    I fully agree with Mike Smith, in that we both “see our best hope as being Ron DeSantis.” [Let’s leave the 2024 Trump/DeSantis rivalry aside, okay?] We both “don’t see how the America we have known and loved can survive.” I read Mike Smith’s words *literally* here, and *not* as hyperbole.

    I fail to see that those “many R’s that, while they are respectable people” *really* see and have *really* internalized that our enemies *really mean it* — and are now 80 to 90 percent there already. Indeed, “The hour is already late.”

    And yes, among Democrats, only “Tulsi Gabbard seems to understand the mortal danger our nation faces.” She gets it.

    Those “many R’s” are respectable and good people, hearts in the right place and all that, and that’s “character”. I’m not sure it’s so much a question of character as it is of “strength of character” (Mike Smith’s words).

    The way I read it, having “strength of character” would entail that they are sufficiently *woke* [ahem!] to the very dead seriousness [pun intended] of the very real and very imminent threat we are facing.

    Would they be sufficiently *woke* to withstand the relentless pressure, including the assassinations — both of character and possibly worse, and that can include family — that they must endure to stay the course and not cave?

    I believe Governor DeSantis would.

  12. I agree with the article’s thesis that both Russia and the US are currently dominated by their upper echelon intelligence officials.

    I do not agree with the article’s implication that their stranglehold upon the reins of governance is so firm that it can never be removed.

  14. If only Vlad knew that the former KGB had infected the loyal and pure servants of Mother Roosia. Those FSB wreckers have misled Vlad and falsified the entire Ukraine situation.

    How can Vlad be told? He would solve this problem if only he could be told! (sarc)

  15. PA+Cat (8:21 pm), very effective. With so many of us so laser-focused on 2024 and/or the 2022 Congressional contests, I tend to forget that DeSantis is running for reelection as Florida Governor.

  16. neo (8:28 pm), *somewhat*. Yes.

    . . . which is to say, in a degree or in varying degrees. I think “somewhat” can be said of others as well, including (in varying degrees) Mike Smith’s four R’s.

    And I’ll be pleased to add Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to the list; actually, I think those two seem to *totally* get it. And Louis Gohmert and Kari Lake and quite a few others, in fact.

    We’re not alone, but we’re vastly outnumbered.

  18. “…somewhat gets it…”

    Perhaps amend to “…somewhat got it…”
    Then she, somehow, like Manchin, “…ungot it…”—perhaps because of Manchin??
    In any event, the two, after almost 18 jmonths of HEROIC RESISTANCE have, by buckling, enabled “Biden” to accelerate his planned demolition of Racist, Sexist, White-Supremacist, Deplorable, Semi-Demi-Hemi-Fascist AmeriKKKa.

    Note, however, that West Virginians didn’t “unget” it…
    “Manchin popularity drops precipitously in West Virginia”—
    https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/manchin-popularity-drops-double-digits-west-virginia
    Nor is it likely that they will…

    (And it might be “interesting” to see how Arizonans swing…)
    – – – – – –
    WRT cb’s link, I agree—that is freakin’ DYNAMITE.

  19. There are several points.

    Russia was incredibly sloppy going into the Ukraine. If you are sending in troops, the lead elements have to have all the logistics that they might need if they ran into a hot spot of Ukrainian resistance. Russia didn’t do that and didn’t know how to do that. When mobilization was necessary to provide “new blood”, the Russian population either ran for the border or was too docile to resist the new Tsar who was sending them to die. They had to be aware of the coffins and funerals. They were in a nothing to loose situation. The Ukrainians bloodied the nose of the northern invasion force and then took time to train up their forces to fight the Russian invaders in the south. I guess we will see how well they do reformulating their government when the fighting is done.

    In the US, almost half of the population seems comfortable with the Woke neo- Marxist autocracy. I see it as new petticoats on the same Corruptocrats that my parents had to deal with, back in the New York City surround. If our population is as docile as that in Russia, we are in deep trouble. As long as that docile group is not disturbed, they will not likely resist. They seem to believe that they are beyond the reach of the Corruptocrats and too smart to be taken in by rhe Woke fantasies. The Corruptocrats are patient opponents. They have gained control of most of our cities. They don’t baulk at, “Gibs me dat”, for now. When the “Gibs” run out, the game will change. Then it may be too late. There will always be plenty for the elite.

    The flood of Illegal Aliens is for a purpose. Compton, California is a good model. Compton was ~100% Black for decades with ~100 homicides per year. A Hispanic population (and their gangs) colonized Compton. Those Hispanic gangs targeted Black gang-bangers, their friends and families. Compton is now about 70% Hispanic with next to no violent crime. That is profit for the property owners and grift for the politicians. Most US cities are surrounded by suburbs and rural areas. Guess who will be your new neighbors.

    Russia and the US are totally different but the same. If you speak out and complain or dare defend yourself or your family from the people that the government put next to you, then there is a gulag bunk with your name on it. If you speak unkindly about a ghetto defective, speech is violence, and you will be made to repent with a threat of gulag, unemployment, or social shunning. Your efforts “on the job” will be buried under the burden of the inept, low IQ, people hired to provide racial or ethnic “equity”. There will be no need to recite Marxist prattle, but you had better keep up on the latest Woke confabulation of racial or ethnic privilege. See, just like Russia/Soviet Union, but totally different. But you’d better get it right.

    The “Elite” will be known as the “nomenklatura”. They will always try to be the rulers. Ask the old Bolsheviks how that worked out under Stalin. Trotsky eventually got the point. Russia is a good example of centralized failure, but for some, the translation is difficult. If we are not careful, there will be a Tsar Putin in our future.

  20. A very interesting article, but I think Matthews greatly overstates the importance of the FSB (which admittedly is no small feat given how vital they are). The FSB and other intel and security apparatus personnel are unspeakably powerful, let nobody doubt that. However, they do not have the kind of monolithic hold on power the article seems to imply. For starters, the FSB must contend with rivals inside the wider Russian security apparatus for power, such as the SVR and GRU. But more broadly, Putin may be OF or FROM the FSB, but this does not mean he is a fanatical partisan or servant of theirs. Very much the opposite.

    In particular, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things there was a major political showdown between many members of the FSB and the Chechen collaborators under Kadyrov, in which the FSB were concerned about the amount of power, prestige, and autonomy that Kadyrov was being given, both inside Chechnya and further afield. They were right to be concerned, since Putin ultimately sided with Kadyrov and proceeded to purge much of the FSB, especially those opposed to Kadyrov.

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2015/03/11/nemtsov-probe-exposes-widening-rift-between-kadyrov-fsb-a44671

    https://theconversation.com/hes-back-but-the-power-struggle-around-vladimir-putin-continues-behind-the-scenes-38868

    (Yes, I know The Conversation is trash but it is a half-decent reference here).

    Moreover, while the Army has been generally kept from the levers of state level decision making, I think it is overstated that it has been kept out of political life. In particular the military held a very exalted position in Russian society for centuries and particularly since the dawn of the USSR (in large part due to the ideological imperatives the Old Bolsheviks had for it). So the military had to be treated appropriately, even after Zhukov was canned (in part to avoid a major backlash).

  21. My gut feeling is the US internal and external Intel agencies have more surveillance of its citizens than Russian Intel agencies of it’s citizens.

  22. neo on October 15, 2022 at 8:28 pm said:
    M J R:

    Kyrsten Sinema somewhat gets it as well.

    I disagree. She is smart and knows she is an Arizona Senator, which Kelly is late to mention, but she is a dedicated leftist.

  23. Mike K:

    I never said Sinema wasn’t on the left. She is. What I meant was that she “gets it” in terms of not running roughshod over the Constitution and/or certain hallowed political conventions (such as for example the filibuster) in the race to power. Sinema is quite consistent in this position, too. She wrote a book on the subject back in 2009 and has adhered to that, under quite a bit of pressure.

  24. “…even though they tended to be among the more educated in the population.”

    That same elitist attitude will be your ruin. Tell me, what do “educated people” actually contribute to society? As far as I can see, all major advances in civilization have been invented by college dropouts.

  25. RE the Putin/FSB regime not caring if more talent flees the country as long as it increases their power, that’s an old story. It’s called “Curley Effect”, after the infamous Boston Mayor James Michael Curley who was perfectly happy to erode Boston’s overall wealth as long as it helped maintain his political machine’s power. There’s a lot of it going around.

    And yes, keeping the spies from taking over isn’t just a problem in Russia.

  26. I disagree. She is smart and knows she is an Arizona Senator, which Kelly is late to mention, but she is a dedicated leftist.

    That doesn’t mean she doesn’t “get it”.

    Also, I’ll note that if you go out in public, go to work, etc., this generally goes unmentioned, but you know many are thinking it.

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