Putin Regime Seeks to Replicate Itself Abroad, Felshtinsky and Popov Say

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – The mafia state Vladimir Putin has put in place in Russia is not only a danger to that country but to the world, Yury Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov say, because like its Soviet predecessor, the Russian regime seeks to replicate itself in other countries and is even less constrained in its actions toward that end than were the communists.

            In a new book, From the Red Terror to the Mafia State: Russia’s Special Services in the Struggle for World Rule (in Russian; Kyiv: Nash Forman), the US-based Russian historian and the former KGB lieutenant colonel demolish the argument of those who insist that Putinism is a threat only to Russia or at most to Russia’s neighbors.

            In that respect, the argument of the two is even more important than was that of Felshtinsky in his 2002 volume, The FSB Blows Up Russia, that documented how Putin orchestrated the blowing up of the apartment blocks in Russian cities in order to have a pretext for restarting Moscow’s war against Chechnya.

            Felshtinsky told Radio Liberty interviewer Dmitry Volchek that his new book covers a far broader theme than did his earlier one. It focuses on “the century-long history of the struggle of the special services for power first in the state and then already after 2000 when this power was seized for the spread of this power beyond the borders of the Russian Federation” (svoboda.org/a/agenty-i-obekty-omerziteljnaya-gadina-gosudarstva-chekistov/31506942.html).

            Some see this as a return to the Soviet past, but there is a fundamental difference, one that springs from the relationships between the CPSU and the security services. The latter were celebrated as the weapon of the former, but in fact, “the chief enemy of state security” in Soviet times was not invaders or dissidents but the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

            The KGB under its various names was engaged in a struggle against the CPSU even as it ostensibly served that ruling stratum, Felshtinsky says. When the CPSU ceased to exist, the KGB, now renamed the FSB, had an unobstructed path to total power and was prepared for this because it had its agents in all parts of Russian society.

            “Tens of thousands of spies secretly worked in Soviet structures and organizations, in the editorial offices of newspapers, in television, in banks, in scientific research institutions and in universities.” As a result, when Putin became president, the FSB was able to seize power almost “instantaneously.” There was no real power capable of opposing them.

            This regime, unprecedented in history, has proven surprisingly strong and stable, the researcher continues. That is because the KGB officers are “very special people.” They are committed to obedience to those above them and to view everyone else as an enemy that must be destroyed and against whom all means are justified.

            These people are prepared to use military force when they can but also to subvert and recruit leaders in other countries, much as they have already done in the Russian Federation, Feltshtinsky says. This is their strategic goal and its immediate application calls for the destruction of the EU and NATO so that the KGB rulers can expand their power.

            “We are accustomed to exist in a system when states are run by political parties, when leaders who represent the interests of this or that party come to power. [But] in the Russian Federation, a system has been established when the parties fight for places in parliament” to enrich themselves “but do not fight for political power in the country.”

            Those who think otherwise either about the KGB state’s goals abroad or its actions at home only deceive themselves and others and make it easier for the Putinist special services state to achieve its ends, Felshtinsky concludes.

            In his interview, the US-based Russian analyst does not say; but the logical of his argument is this: democratic forces in Russia and their supporters in the West focused on doing away with the CPSU 30 years ago but failed to recognize that there was a parallel and even greater threat from the Russian security agencies.

            As a result, those were never dismantled in the same way; and the Putin regime today is at least in part the consequence of this failure in understanding then and to this day.