“Order Number One for the complete seizure of power has been fulfilled. A group of FSB officers has successfully infiltrated the government.” These words were pronounced in December 1999 in the headquarters of the KGB-FSB—the contemporary incarnation of the Cheka, the secret police force Lenin established in 1917—by the recently appointed head of state, Vladimir Putin. Apparently from his own experience, he confirmed that there’s no such person as a “former” Chekist—that is, special service operative.
The advent to power in Russia of the special services is a unique phenomenon in world history, yet it seems fitting for Russia. The appropriate preconditions began to appear soon after the 1917 Bolshevik coup. Let us deduce these preconditions from the Bolshevik slogans that meant nothing in reality. We may recall the measures that the “revolutionaries” who came to power utilized in their “struggle against the autocracy”—namely, terrorist acts and robbery—and the measures they employed in ruling the country: the cynical abandonment of their own slogans; the massive terror campaigns to achieve their goals, including “suppressing counterrevolution” (often understood as nonconformism); the destruction of the peasantry including moderately well-off peasants with the proclamation of “collectivization” and “de-kulakization”; and the pursuit of industrialization via the hands of torturers in the GULAG. Setting demagogy aside, the only possible conclusion is that on November 7, 1917, terrorists and criminals seized power and then systematically transformed revolutionary terrorism into state terrorism.
Alexander Yakovlev, who is rightly considered the architect of perestroika as well as one of the most intelligent and honest persons of his time, wrote, “I came to the profound conviction that the October coup d’état was a counterrevolution that marked the beginning of a criminal-terrorist fascist-type state.”1
Vladimir Bukovsky offered an interesting discussion of the nature of Soviet power:
Sometimes . . . the self-destructive stubbornness of the authorities seemed simply unbelievable; however, we forget that terrorist power cannot be otherwise. The distinction between it and democratic power is that it is not a function of public opinion. In such a state people can have no rights—any inalienable right of the individual instantly deprives the state of an atom of its power. Every person is obliged to learn the axiom from childhood that never, under any circumstances, and by no means, will he ever be able to influence the authorities. Every decision comes only on initiative from above. Power is unshakable, infallible, and inexorable, and the only thing the whole world can do is to accommodate to it. One may beg mercy of it, but not make any demands. It has no use of conscientious citizens who demand legality; it needs only slaves. By the same token, it has no need of partners, only of satellites. Just like paranoids in the grip of their own fantasies, it cannot and does not want to recognize reality; it thrives on its delirium and imposes its own criteria on everyone.2
This kind of authority required a reliable and effective instrument to create an unprecedented form of slavery, including mental slavery, on the territory that it ruled. The Cheka, the All-Russia Emergency Commission, which ruthlessly uprooted all heresies, was such an instrument. Moreover, initially the activity of the Cheka was largely grounded in myths of its own devising. Just as the leadership of the “country of Soviets” viewed the USSR as a besieged fortress, a passion for spying became one of the favorite pastimes of the Russian authorities and an extremely important element of their politics. The period of greatest activity in this sphere was followed by a relative lull after the death of Stalin in 1953. It is hardly an accident that the leaders of the country’s political police (for example, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenty Beriya, and Yury Andropov) were among its top leaders. But the special services remained by the side of power even when they were in power.
Yakovlev believed that a special form of rule developed in the USSR—that is, a dual power of the party and of the law enforcement organs.3 “The Soviet state could not last for a single day without the punitive services,” he wrote. “Such was its nature. And such being the case, the party had constantly to share power with the political police.”4 It may be that for all his wisdom and experience Yakovlev actually underestimated the power of the special services. Indeed, officials of the punitive services were necessarily members of the CPSU, but the special services were not controlled by the party. On the contrary, the authorities themselves were controlled by the special services at every level, from decision making on practically all matters, to listening in on telephone and other conversations of important officials and government leaders, to keeping tabs on them in other ways.
The monster created by Lenin, developed by Stalin, and, after the latter’s death, nurtured by his successors up until the time of Gorbachev’s reforms acquired unbelievable power. Its writ included ensuring the security of the regime and its leaders, conducting political investigations, performing the functions of intelligence and counterintelligence, preserving state secrets and maintaining the regime’s confidentiality, protecting government communications, guarding the state borders, and dealing with virtually all the other questions that were even marginally connected with the concept of state security, a concept that had been boundlessly expanded to the point of utter madness. Almost every question came within its purview, in particular via the regime of secrecy, since during Soviet times almost everything was classified secret. Thus, the KGB was omnipresent even though not omniscient.
Overtly or covertly the KGB was everywhere. Every institution and many enterprises had a First Department, which comprised the official representatives of the security services. But this was a drop in the ocean compared to the covert activity of the KGB. The so-called active reserve, or officers of the special services who officially had nothing in common with the organs of state security, penetrated all of society. These employees of the Soviet special services were guaranteed a comfortable life. They could speak as they pleased and act as they pleased, while their interlocutors risked their future, their freedom, and even their lives at any moment. Moreover, employees of the “organs” were virtually guaranteed good career prospects and other perquisites in their official places of employment.
The special services were potentially able to become the ruling authorities on two occasions—after the death of Stalin in March 1953, when Lavrenty Beriya made a bid for power but was soon condemned for treason and executed that December, and after the “election” of former chief of the KGB Andropov as general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1982. There are two basic versions of the Andropov story. One of them holds that Andropov was not without traces of liberalism and that he was a sufficiently wise politician not to transform the country into the patrimony of the political police. The other version is diametrically opposite. Its adherents contend that Andropov aimed for a dictatorship of the special services and did not succeed in doing so because during his tenure as chairman of the KGB he elevated its role higher than at any period since Stalinist times. Yakovlev asserts that Andropov’s ascent signified that the dream of the special services to lead the country had been achieved and that only Andropov’s rapidly failing health—he died in February 1984, barely fifteen months after his rise to power—saved the country from a new round of mass repressions.
Various arguments are adduced in support of both hypotheses. Obviously, it would be rather extravagant to suspect a communist leader of Andropov’s age and experience of “excessive” liberalism. It is likewise obvious that it was under Andropov (basically when he headed the KGB) that a significant hardening of the regime took place, including the exaltation of the KGB and the intensification of the struggle against nonconformists and dissenters. That this occurred under Andropov, however, does not mean it was his doing. One should not forget that the leadership included a great variety of persons and that Andropov could have been subjected to strong pressure from reactionaries within the highest circle of leaders. There is reason to believe that the Hungarian revolution in 1956, where the future KGB chief and general secretary was then serving as ambassador in Budapest, exerted a strong influence on him. Several persons close to him thought that Andropov sympathized with the Hungarian path of development, which differed significantly from the Soviet one. Others referred to him as suffering from a “Hungarian syndrome.”
During and after the time he headed the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Andropov drew into his circle quite a few persons whose thinking diverged from what was then the norm. Such persons might be characterized as “within-system dissidents” and included Georgy Arbatov, Anatoly Kovalev, Alexander Bovin, Fyodor Burlatsky, and others. It was Andropov who, contrary to then minister of foreign affairs Gromyko, approved the third basket of the Final Act of the CSCE.
None of this is meant to whitewash perhaps the most enigmatic of all Soviet leaders; my sole objective is to avoid simplifying and schematizing the tangled history of the USSR. We may suppose that Andropov basically fit the general mold of gray Soviet leaders, but he was smarter and better educated than the others. He was a creative person who drafted his own papers—a rare bird among the CPSU leadership—encouraged free discussion among his subordinates, wrote but never published poetry, treasured the Soviet avant-garde and collected their art, and loved Picasso. Did he believe in the false dogmas of the “Founding Fathers” without giving them much thought? This is entirely possible. In any case, in some ways he stood out from the generally accepted norm of top Soviet leaders. One should not dismiss the words of Igor Andropov, son of the former secretary-general and an extraordinary and undoubtedly honest man: “My father always hated communism!”5
Be that as it may, the KGB—a power within power and, in some ways, a power above power—was doing very well until Gorbachev’s liberal reforms began to gain momentum in the late 1980s. It may be that precisely these reforms provoked the return of a situation in which, as Alexander Korzhakov wrote, agents of the special services ran the country. Incidentally, he illustrates this in a curious fashion, to be sure, not with the example of agents but in his own persona as the director of a powerful special service.
Korzhakov asserted—and to the best of my knowledge nobody ever took issue with him—that he planned the shelling of the Russian White House in 1993 and directly oversaw the assault, while President Yeltsin “rested” and during this terrible operation feasted with his cronies, celebrating the victory.6 What a strange page of history! The decision that marked a turning point in the life of Russia was not taken by the president but by his security chief.
It is extremely telling that the fundamental paradox of Russia’s post-Soviet development was the termination of the process of democratic reforms, the very goal that the conspirators of 1991 sought and undoubtedly achieved. This thesis requires some explanation since President Yeltsin initially achieved significant progress in creating democratic institutions in Russia. I have in mind the promulgation of a new constitution consolidating civil and political rights, the actions aimed at establishing parliamentarianism in Russia, the continuation of Gorbachev’s policy of cooperation with Western countries, and the entry of Russia to the Council of Europe. But the key steps toward establishing democracy were taken when Gorbachev was governing. They included introducing freedom of speech, which was then called glasnost; removing punitive and psychiatric persecution of nonconformists; repealing political and religious statutes from the Criminal Code; establishing religious freedom; eliminating the diktat of the CPSU; and creating the foundations of parliamentarianism.
During President Yeltsin’s term in office, with the exception of economic reforms, not only were none of the goals he declared achieved but also the authorities did absolutely nothing to try to achieve them. Although Yeltsin’s obvious and well-known weaknesses clearly played a negative role, they alone cannot serve as an adequate explanation, especially since he wanted to go down in history as the first democratic president of a newly democratic Russia. Unfortunately, the fine-sounding democratic principles enunciated at the time were contradicted by the real actions taken by the nation’s leaders.7
The perturbations of the era of perestroika and the breakup of the USSR and its consequences intensified the long-standing Russian nostalgia for a heavy hand. The people were pleased when Yevgeny Primakov, who demonstratively enhanced the role of the special services, occupied the Russian White House. It seems that the appointment of Primakov as prime minister marked the critical moment in the seizure of power by the special services.
The people were even happier when Yeltsin transferred power to Putin, a move that guaranteed the fusion of the state security organs with the highest state power. For the first time in Russian history and, for that matter, in all of world history, the special services and the authorities became one and the same.
How did this phenomenon occur? Was it the result of cunning and extremely clever intrigues, or was it by the will, thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, or shortsightedness of the electorate, which each time voted for and regularly supported a KGB lieutenant colonel with a very shady biography? Or could it just have happened by itself? I hope not.
As a result of the complete fusion of the higher-level state authorities with the special services, the anti-democratic goals of the August 1991 coup d’état were quickly and effectively achieved. From then on one could only wax nostalgic for the rudiments of a law-based state, democracy, civil society, and freedom of the mass media from the era of perestroika. The de facto restoration in Russia of a one-party system, the “counterterrorist operation” in Chechnya, the unparalleled contempt for the Constitution, and the methods employed in the political struggle would have earned the plaudits of one of the most famous predecessors of the permanent ruler of post-Yeltsin Russia—namely, Stalin himself. Putin’s neologism “vertical of power” simply means the old Soviet administrative-command system. The new term enemies of Russia deserves commendation by those who earlier had employed the term enemies of the people.
Putin’s initial actions as president-in-waiting and then as president of Russia clearly indicated his political direction and priorities. They included returning to the era of the Cold War, launching a second war in Chechnya, eliminating freedom of the mass media, and purposely reviving Soviet symbols—the Soviet anthem, albeit with different words, and the Soviet flag as the banner of the armed forces.
Thus, in the final analysis, despite the apparent failure of the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, in reality the State Emergency Committee achieved its goals. Some observers hypothesized that during the period of perestroika the KGB conducted an enormous special operation of which the August 1991 coup d’état was only the visible tip of the iceberg. The KGB-FSB infiltrated its agents into Yeltsin’s entourage, into parliament, into leading positions in government institutions and business, among the reformers, into the mass media, and in the Russian Orthodox Church; and they played a very active role in forming the new elite. The agents created a structure of influence that endured and brought great pressure to bear upon Yeltsin and on Russia as a whole.
It is possible that the members of the State Emergency Committee on their part sincerely achieved the goals they had proclaimed, and the new elite, including its second echelon, skillfully manipulated the situation in its own interests.
One may reasonably suppose that this second echelon of the State Emergency Committee, taking advantage of Yeltsin’s peculiarities and poor health, something on which they could depend, was able to reverse directions in foreign policy, turn back the progress of reform, and achieve the unprecedented elevation of the special services into power. While they accomplished this, it was obvious that Yeltsin would not remain in power very long, so the successors and heirs of the KGB also mounted a brilliant operation to put forward their protégé for the post of president. I offer this as just a hypothesis, but it is a quite plausible one since it explains a great deal of what happened in Russia after the August 1991 coup.
But a simpler explanation is also possible: The monster created by Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev—the Central Committee of State Security—was simply doing its daily work of recruiting and infiltrating its agents everywhere it could. As the service did its work well, the agents’ numbers reached a critical mass, and, as a result, power simply fell into the hands of the special services. Then everything took its accustomed course. The consequences of the August coup strengthened the influence of the special services and facilitated Putin’s advent to power.
In essence, I categorically reject any “conspiracy theories.” But in the given instance, I would prefer to think that this was a cunning multistage strategy of the special services rather than convince myself that this outcome was predetermined and natural. The latter hypothesis would signify that the condition was incurable without a complicated surgical operation to excise the metastases of the special services and a subsequent complicated therapy to cure the ills of Russian society. But even if the assumption about some sort of long-standing, future-oriented KGB plan is incorrect, the result of the 1991 coup is that it was the KGB, by whatever name one calls it, that came to power in 2000.
This point is crucially important since it makes sense of many things. For example, Putin appears as a simple function of the activities of the Soviet-Russian special services, and the veil of liberalism is withdrawn from Medvedev. The forms, methods, and goals of Russian politics at home and abroad become clear, even predictable. Many things that are presently obscure become clear about supposedly liberal persons, well known both domestically and internationally, who, in reality, are collaborating with the Chekist regime. Possibly the main consequence of the revolution of the Chekists is that once in power the special services will never relinquish it voluntarily.
The Bolshevik version of Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina—his secret police—was weakened, but it did not disappear after Stalin’s death in 1953. It operated under the euphemism of “developed socialism.” That is what perestroika dismantled and that is what took its revenge in 1999–2000. Right after Putin came to power in the Kremlin, a foul, icy wind began to blow. This was partly caused by his worldview and membership in the secret services, and it was partly predestined by the preceding period. The credo that sums up the Russian president’s worldview may be briefly stated: The state is all; the individual is nothing. There is a direct analogy with Stalin’s speech at a reception in honor of participants in the Victory Parade of 1945: “I offer a toast to the plain, ordinary, and modest people, the ‘cogs’ who maintain our great mechanism in working condition.”
Unfortunately, only a handful of persons noted the symptoms of Russia’s return, as early as Yeltsin’s presidency, to a policy of revanchism and reaction. Moreover, no one believed them. What they said contradicted not only the liberal image of the president and his advisers but also the expectations both of the West and of most Russians themselves.
It was also difficult for the public to accept that Yeltsin directly conferred power to the special services in the person of Putin. Therefore, a legend was cultivated and given credence about Putin’s supposed democratic leanings. His collaborative work as deputy mayor to Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Saint Petersburg, played into this story. The image of an energetic, young judo expert imprinted itself in the minds of many persons.
Putin turned out to be an extremely successful ruler. Although he did nothing for the Russian economy, thanks to the high prices for oil and gas, a torrent of money literally flowed into Russia as payment for energy exports. This enabled Moscow to flex its muscles again not only with regard to energy but also on the path of rearmament, the inevitable precursor of revanchism. In their actions, the new oprichnina obviously made use of the war cry of their predecessors: The word and the deed!
Russians have a weakness for false prophets and false prophecy. Probably it is because the false prophets are not shy about their words or deeds; moreover, the latter are shamelessly masked in words. In Russia from time immemorial, words have played an incomparable role. For good reason from the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russian rulers have feared the word no less than the deed. But the main function of words in Russian politics is “hypnosis,” which, as a form of manipulation, became the foundation of national politics after the Bolshevik coup d’état. It was precisely because of their effectiveness that philosophy, literature, science, and art became the most important areas of state regulation, and thus a system was established in the country that the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev termed the “dictatorship of a systematic ideology.”8 He wrote that “a teaching that is the basis for totalitarian doctrine, which embraces every aspect of life—not only politics and economics, but also thought, consciousness, and all works of culture—can only be a matter of faith.”9 The Big Lie that the people all embraced socialism was enthroned. The essence of Gorbachev’s reformation was to liquidate this dictatorship and this lie, a lie that was guarded by the entire punitive and law enforcement apparatus of the country headed by the KGB.
After Russia became a sovereign state, the tradition of the Big Lie returned to politics with full honors. Soon hypnosis returned as well. To work effectively, it was first necessary to conceal the actual state of affairs in Russia and next to create a distorted version of it that served the interests of the authorities.
When people speak and write about the Soviet Union, they often limit themselves to asserting it was a totalitarian communist state. What they generally overlook is that the USSR was an ideological state; moreover, ideology was the weight-bearing structure. This observation is vital since under Putin, just as during the communist period, Russia has reverted to ideological dogmatism. Here we should remember that in 1985 Gorbachev rose to power and attempted to reform a country that not only was unique with respect to size, population, military potential, and other objective criteria but also was the only state with a secular ideology grounded in Stalin’s uniquely correct interpretation of the dogmas formulated by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. All of Russia’s domestic and foreign policies were traditionally rooted in myth-making. These myths arose partly as a reflexive defense against one or another real phenomenon, partly as a protest against it, and partly from ignorance or misunderstanding of the actual state of affairs and of history. One might also cite other reasons intrinsic to the Russian people, including Russia’s historical peculiarities, the deficit of political culture that was nurtured by the authorities, and so forth. In the context of the present discussion, however, the most interesting myths are those devised and disseminated by the authorities along with the instruments employed for ensuring their effectiveness.
One of the Kremlin’s propaganda points is that the predominant feature of contemporary Russia’s foreign policy is the “restoration of national pride.” But just what sort of national pride?
Many Russians, especially since Yevgeny Primakov became prime minister in 1998, finding themselves under the spell of the authorities, really did keenly feel the loss of the country’s former power that resulted from the breakup of the USSR. Even during Soviet times, they were unable to forgive “betrayals of the country’s interests” such as terminating the war in Afghanistan, withdrawing Soviet troops from the colonized countries of Central and Eastern Europe, allowing the reunification of Germany, ending the Cold War, taking steps toward real disarmament, and terminating support for terrorists abroad. In the first post-Soviet years Russia really was a very weak player in international affairs. And this was not simply a result of the acute economic crisis.
This myth is closely connected to another—that is, Russia was pursuing a “subtle foreign policy.” Having participated in numerous political decisions from 1992 to 2004 as an official of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a staff member of the National Security Council, and later as an informed observer, I can confidently assert that from 1992 onward Russia had nothing that could really be called a foreign policy. The ill-considered actions of the Putin regime to destroy the postwar system of international relations—ones that threatened Russia itself most of all—may also not be called a policy. Moreover, things were no different under Putin than they were under Yeltsin.
Vladimir Putin, unlike Yeltsin, had undergone a certain kind of professional training and had some, though very restricted, experience in the realm of foreign policy. KGB officials like Putin looked upon the West as the enemy; indeed, many of them developed a visceral hatred of the West. In addition, the kind of work they were engaged in—the collection of intelligence, to say nothing of counterintelligence—is not an activity concerned with foreign policy planning and execution. The work consists of gathering information, playing dirty tricks on the “opponent,” and recruiting agents. The service also ferrets out threats, often laying it on thick or simply inventing them. Nor should we forget that the KGB was a punitive organization that protected the authorities. Under Putin, intelligence officers, counterintelligence officers, and undercover agents took possession of the Kremlin, the government, the parliament, and all the conceivable and inconceivable floors, corridors, alleyways, and nooks of power.
This absence of a policy had lamentable consequences. Moreover, Soviet “military-patriotic education” was so effective that many Russians would not embrace a policy that forswore saber rattling. Putin revived the most dismal Soviet traditions, relying on images of domestic and foreign enemies in his policies.
Another object of national pride that was closely linked to Russia’s “subtle” foreign policy was using oil and gas to blackmail foreign partners. Even during the depths of the Cold War, neither Brezhnev, nor Andropov, nor Chernenko considered it possible to resort to what in the West is called the “problem of the spigot.” Of course, the rise in oil and gas prices was not something Moscow had caused.
Against this background, the widely disseminated and convenient myth of the democratic character of Russian power was particularly attractive. Unfortunately for Russians, Boris Yeltsin became a malicious parody of liberalism and democracy that alienated Russians from these concepts for a long time. His unforgivable shortcomings as head of state, his constant lies, and his distortion of the very foundations of democracy created a situation in which many saw the sober, cynical, and rather malicious Putin as a panacea for all the disasters besetting the country. The political and moral trajectory of Yeltsin’s actions was evident from the start. But the myth of his supposed democratic inclinations, which took on a life of its own, suited the reactionaries who were striving to compromise the very notion of democracy.
Although Russia’s national shame reached its acme under Yeltsin, it was still permissible to tolerate him, as became evident after he had exited the political scene. When Yeltsin finally sank into a condition that was strange for a head of state, as noted previously something entirely unimaginable occurred: he appointed as his successor an officer of the KGB under whom myth-making reached an incalculable height.
Another myth is that Putin had already retired from the KGB during the Soviet era. Anyone even the slightest bit acquainted with the work of the organs of state security during that time knows this was impossible. Only one possible conclusion follows: Putin was infiltrated into the close circle of one of the most outstanding, if complex, democratic leaders of the USSR, Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Saint Petersburg. Was Putin not one of the causes of the political downfall of this undoubtedly extraordinary man? An alternate version holds that Sobchak was, at the least, an alien presence in the democratic movement. This version likewise does nothing to paint Putin in flattering colors as it suggests that he was sent to assist Sobchak. In either case, Putin’s collaboration with Sobchak worked to Putin’s advantage. He presented himself as virtually the right-hand man of a leading democrat, a description that hardly fit Sobchak himself.
In fairness, I should emphasize that Putin merely inherited many of the Yeltsin myths; however, he improved upon some of them. Putin did not unleash the genocide of the Chechen nation, but he authored the false thesis that international terrorism was flourishing in Chechnya. Putin did not liquidate the emerging parliamentary democracy; he merely took this process to its logical conclusion. Putin did not initiate the persecution of an independent press . . . One could extend this list.
The myth of Yeltsin’s democratic inclinations carried over to his successor. One must give Putin his due: He juggled the stereotypes so skillfully that for a long time he managed to avoid rejection by his Western partners, who perceived him as a fighter against terrorism and corruption and as a supporter of upholding Russia’s Constitution. Invoking pretexts embraced by Russian, and part of international, public opinion, he succeeded in decisively compromising democracy and liberalism and in fully eliminating them as significant factors in Russian politics.
As a typical product of his time and his communist education, President Yeltsin was concerned about the need for establishing some sort of ideology. Considerable time and effort were spent by persons of various persuasions in and around the Kremlin to come up with one. Apparently, both Yeltsin and his successors remembered that in the beginning was the Word. During the period of stagnation from Brezhnev through Chernenko (1964–85), the communist leaders ruled the country with words. Those who devised Yeltsin’s ideology, pretentiously called the National Idea, thought that it would solve an entire range of problems. The new Kremlin masters could not live without an ideology and did not want to try. After wracking their brains vainly trying to think of something new, they settled on what they thought were the traditional foundations of Russian mentality—patriotism and Russian Orthodoxy. For many reasons this was unquestionably a mistaken choice.
Let us begin with patriotism. Love of one’s motherland—one’s village, city, country, people—is an innate human emotion. Although there are numerous aphorisms and sayings directed against patriotism, they usually evoke a sharp response from those who believe that their village, or their fellow tribesmen, or their country is always right no matter what and that others are guilty for any and all disasters. But there is also a different approach, succinctly expressed by the wise Charles de Montesquieu who wrote, “If I knew of something that would serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman . . . because I am necessarily a man and only accidentally am I French.” The nineteenth-century Russian essayist Nikolai Dobroliubov considered real patriotism a private expression of love for humanity that is incompatible with enmity toward particular nationalities. Moreover, Dobroliubov insisted that patriotism “excludes any sort of international enmity, and a person animated by such patriotism is prepared to work on behalf of all humankind.”
Unfortunately, shortly after Russia acquired sovereignty, this expansive concept of patriotism as the foundation for international peace and cooperation was rejected in favor of jingoist or, more accurately, oleaginous patriotism, which in various forms became the prime cause of the country’s numerous disasters. In this connection, the redistribution of the state property of the USSR occurred under patriotic slogans. In the loans-for-shares scheme of 1995 banks lent the nearly destitute government money in exchange for shares of enterprises, resulting in wholesale privatization that benefited the newly emergent oligarchic elite. This process, in which foreign capital was not allowed to participate, led to Russia’s complete political as well as economic bankruptcy, the massive impoverishment of the people, and the consolidation of bandit capitalism. There are many similar examples of self-serving “patriotism.”
Another foundation of the National Idea that crawled to the surface after the breakup of the USSR was Russian Orthodoxy. After the collapse of communist ideology, a large ideological vacuum occurred in Russia and with it an enormous, extremely promising market for some faith to fill that vacuum. Persons entirely lacking in convictions find there is nothing more profitable than commerce in convictions, including religious ones. They sell that which does not exist for themselves, converting what they consider mirages into power, influence, and money. Naturally, the originally Soviet part of the clergy and businessmen from the Russian Orthodox Church—in other words, those persons in the USSR who had been assigned to working with religions—rushed boldly into this market. It is not difficult to imagine who was entrusted by whom “to work in the field of religion.” Religious publications and the press blossomed. From my own sources I knew for sure that some members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy were also members or officers of the KGB, and with regard to certain others, I was able to guess what their original and basic place of work was.
After the adoption of the law on religious freedom, there was a leap from virtually universal aggressive atheism to an era of “candlesticks,” as the leaders of the country, who posed before the cameras holding candles in their hands during church services, came to be called. (Let us note that the ostentatious Russian Orthodoxy of the country’s leadership, while ignoring other religions, was a gross violation of the Constitution since it stipulates that the church is separate from the state and all religions are equal. Religiosity is a personal matter, not for display.) The Bible replaced the works of the “Founding Fathers” of Marxism-Leninism, whom none of the dignitaries, of course, had ever read. And why should they have since there were assorted professors, consultants, and other party-state retainers at hand? In the minds of the nomenklatura and its retainers, trained to accept without question various twists and turns, the firm conviction that God did not exist was replaced by a diametrically opposed and no less firm assurance. For much of the Russian population, it doesn’t much matter what they believe; what is important is to believe in something . . .
Religion became fashionable for many people. This had nothing to do with faith. Fashion and faith belong to different orders. Of course, we all decide for ourselves whether to follow the fashion. For example, during perestroika, after a sumptuous meal accompanied by vodka, I declined to be christened by one of the highest officials of the Russian Orthodox Church in his private chapel. It is an understatement to say that I had more than a few questions about him. Chief among them: Why was he so delighted with the murder of Alexander Men?10 Why did he think this had occurred so opportunely? Who had arranged the murder—was it he or his companions in arms and confederates? How could someone occupying one of the highest posts in the Russian Orthodox Church rejoice in a murder, especially the murder of a priest?
But let us return to the question of whether to follow the current fashion. In contemporary Russia it is not easy to resist the fashion for religion. For example, the blessing of his office was stipulated as a condition for confirming an official of my acquaintance in his new job. Those persons who pose as the most zealous Orthodox are employees of the special services and communists. (Incidentally, I am convinced with good reason that the overwhelming majority of our special service agents are dyed-in-the-wool communists.)
As with any other fashion, it is profitable and expedient to speculate on religion. After all, who would pass up the opportunity to take advantage of this market! Pseudo priests collect alms on the streets although it is forbidden by law. For substantial sums authentic priests bless whatever comes their way, from the launching pads of intercontinental missiles to the Mercedes of gangsters. Various kinds of pseudo- and quasi-religious agitators incite interdenominational, interethnic, and other kinds of discord. Priests with ruble signs in their eyes see the possibility of selling something at a better price by cozying up to the state.
In 1994 the Russian Orthodox Church declared that it was impoverished. The government could rescue it if it allowed the church’s Office of Humanitarian Aid to import duty-free wine and cigarettes. Over a period of three years, ten thousand tons of cigarettes came to the Russian Orthodox Church’s Office of Humanitarian Aid. According to various data, from this delivery of cigarettes the church would receive about a billion rubles every week in non-denominated currency. But this was not enough. The church, including the patriarch, played a very active role in the election campaign of 1996. It was rewarded by a government commission, which ruled that the church’s wine, supplied gratis from Germany, was humanitarian assistance for the needs of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The patriarchy reached such a high degree of cynicism that it even extended its talons to military property: watercraft, naval docks, port equipment, airports, repair facilities, engineering technology, transportation equipment, and communications. It also grabbed hold of the medical-sanitary complex; cultural, sports, warehousing, production, and other investments; and parcels of land and other real estate that formerly belonged to the Ministry of Defense. According to rumors, the Russian Orthodox Church was also involved in the diamond trade, in the tourist business, and in the sale of real estate and material-technical equipment belonging to the former Soviet forces in Germany.
If one believes the laws in force in Russia, Orthodoxy is separate from and superior to mainstream Christianity. I will not dispute the notion that many of the highest clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church are indeed far removed from Christianity. Naturally, the question arises, were things better before? Of course not. But they were simpler. And there were no fewer genuine believers even though they were forced to conceal their religious convictions. One kind of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness was replaced by others. Another thing: Russian Orthodoxy became a way of life. How convenient it was to invoke the name of God to cover up all kinds of disgraceful acts. This also became fashionable.
Be that as it may, whatever it was that replaced the “new historical community of people—the Soviet nation”—it inherited a complicated spiritual and philosophical legacy. The bankruptcy of the previous system was brought about by the gross errors and miscalculations of the authorities, who completely ignored the fact that the country was multi-confessional and multicultural. Unfortunately, this was not limited to the unconstitutional and destructive state takeover of the Russian Orthodox Church while virtually ignoring all the other denominations. An enemy was required. And one was chosen. As noted previously, Islam was picked out as the enemy. It would be difficult to conceive of anything more harmful, dangerous, and unjust.
In Soviet times the party bureaucracy and the law enforcement machine purposely crushed the natural historic, cultural, and ethno-religious pluralism of Russia (and the USSR as a whole). It was almost as if the regime had placed a bet upon Russian Orthodoxy as the sole religion acceptable to the communists as “the least of all evils” among the variegated religious life of the country. This, along with the role of Islam in national and cultural identity formation, significantly stimulated the upwelling of pro-Islamic sentiment in post-Soviet times.
After the end of the dictatorship of the CPSU and soon after the attainment of sovereignty by the states that had formed the USSR, however, Islam rushed into the philosophical and ideological vacuum, attracting a part of the population in the same way that Russians were drawn to Russian Orthodoxy. The First Chechen War, along with gross mistakes and miscalculations by the Russian leadership with respect to inter-confessional and nationality policies, has still further exacerbated the problem of Islam.
But one “enemy” was too few for the state-controlled Russian Orthodox Church. It declared a real holy crusade against all other confessions, groups, and faiths, and it branded all of the nontraditional religions as “totalitarian sects,” although many of them had nothing in common with totalitarianism and the well-known destructive aspects of pseudo religions. The law enforcement agencies as well as thuggish church hangers-on served the Russian Orthodox Church. The diktat of religious and pseudo dogmas led to extremely dubious and unending disputes. The best example is the Moscow Patriarchate’s blind fear of the Vatican and its pathological hatred of Catholicism.
In 2009 after Kirill, who was previously dubbed the “tobacco metropolitan” for the business ascribed to him, became the patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate became an extremely strange organization. I made the acquaintance of the future patriarch Kirill soon after his appointment in November 1989 as chair of the synodal Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, when I took part in a discussion with him and Deputy Minister Vladimir Petrovsky.
It was clear to which agency Kirill owed his allegiance. In Soviet times the directors of this department were always KGB agents. Although Kirill was appointed to this position at the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika, and something might already have changed, it is doubtful that the KGB would have relinquished such a plum position. In addition, Kirill had been the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva in 1971–74. As confirmation of his secret allegiance, one may also point to the fact that he was joined at this meeting by a former official of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was close to him at the time, Father Ioan Ekonomtsev. Kirill’s KGB-FSB alias, Mikhailov, is also widely known. For many years Kirill had the reputation of a reformer and supporter of ecumenism. Soon after his enthronement, however, these illusions dissipated. Moreover, all the illusions regarding his humane qualities and his primary allegiance were also dispelled.
No matter how offensive they may have found it, people became used to the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church was headed by KGB agents. But they were indignant when this hierarch, an otherworldly white monk who loved to discuss asceticism, was seen wallowing in luxury and wearing an incredibly expensive Breguet watch on his wrist.
In Moscow there is a famous apartment house, the House on the Embankment or the First House of the Soviets. Initially it was inhabited by the Soviet “elite.” Quite properly, Citizen Gundyaev, better known as Patriarch Kirill, lived there. Former minister of health Citizen Yuri Shevchenko was imprudent enough to live in the apartment above that of Citizen Gundyaev. As a result, the patriarch came to be identified not only with tobacco and Breguet watches but also with dust once Shevchenko undertook some repairs. It would seem like a worldly matter, but the repairs turned into an affair that nearly cost the ex-minister his apartment. The construction dust supposedly so harmed the property of the patriarch, who had taken a vow of poverty, that Shevchenko’s apartment was seized on the complaint of a certain Citizeness Lidia Leonova who, for some reason, was living in the patriarch’s monastic apartment. In April 2012 the ex-minister paid out 20 million rubles to the patriarch’s tenant.
When a torrent of questions and criticisms poured down upon the incumbent of the highest office in the Russian Orthodox Church, the Holy One’s favorite, the sadist-maniac with ice-cold eyes Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the Synod Department for Church-Society Relations, provided explanations. They leaned toward a conspiracy theory: the story about the apartment was part of a larger campaign “to destabilize the situation in the country which is also aimed against the people, against the army, the police, against the government. . . . At the core of this campaign is a small group of pro-Western Muscovites, and residents of other big cities, the pro-Western part of Russian financial circles, political establishment, and the media elite.”11
At about the same time, members of the punk group Pussy Riot dramatically exploded the situation prevailing in the Moscow Patriarchate when, wearing masks, they tried to perform a punk prayer to the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on February 21, 2012, and called for the liberation of Russia from Putin. Naturally, their peculiar prayer was immediately interrupted. Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Ekaterina Samutsevich were arrested and handed two-year sentences in a penal colony for hooliganism. Following an appeal, the court commuted Samutsevich’s punishment to a suspended sentence.
On April 3, 2012, the Supreme Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted an extraordinarily powerful appeal on such “antichurch forces.” It is worth analyzing in some detail, since the document enables us to understand more clearly what is going on not only in the Russian Orthodox Church but also in Russia as a whole.
According to this document by the “spiritual fathers,” “anti-church forces fear the strengthening of Orthodoxy in the country and are frightened by the renascence of national consciousness and mass popular initiative.” Bolshevism crawls out from every one of these words. From the appeal it follows that anyone who does not accept what is going on in the Moscow Patriarchate is taking an anti-Russian stance. Moreover, it seems that national consciousness did not exist in Russia before, and it is only now reviving. Just as in the times of Stalin and Brezhnev, what is emphasized is how few there are of “such people” (read—renegades). Further, there is a transparent hint about the influence of several among them and their willingness to “make use of their financial, informational, and administrative resources to discredit the hierarchy and the clerics in order to promote schisms and attract people away from the churches.” In other words, a conspiracy! “Those who propagate the false values of aggressive liberalism” are uniting with these vile conspirators.12
One might subject these phrases to endless analysis. But the result would be the same—a lie. Nor would it be a sin if the “church fathers” glanced at a dictionary to understand that by its very nature liberalism cannot be aggressive.
Why, then, is this the view of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church? It turns out that the liberals do not embrace the Russian Orthodox Church because of its “inflexible position of opposition to such anti-Christian phenomena as recognizing same-sex unions, the freedom to express all one’s desires, unrestrained consumerism, and propaganda in favor of permissiveness and fornication.”13 This passage is even more interesting in that the “holy fathers”—who, in the preamble to the law on religious freedom, insisted on distinguishing Orthodoxy from Christianity—now dare to pose as the most zealous defenders of that very same Christianity they previously disavowed. Let us recall that it was then metropolitan Kirill who was involved in drafting the law that enshrined this norm in its preamble. Deciphering the “holiness” of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy is no simple matter.
The appeal asserts that the “confrontation between the Church and anti-Christian forces” became even more obvious and sharper “during the campaign and post-election period, which demonstrates their [evil forces] real political agenda, including their anti-Russia stance.”
Thus, the church authorities formulate the following postulate: The Russian Orthodox Church, the state, and Russia are one and the same. Moreover, any single element of the “three-tailed whip” may be omitted as being self-evident. In the context of this book, the falsity of such an assertion surely requires no explanation.
Let us return to the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, which claims that all its troubles, like those of its Patriarchate, are due to “planned and systematic efforts to discredit” it and not to its own internal problems. Moreover, “the clergy are drawn into provocations; the arch-priests and priesthood generally are the focus of unremitting attention on the part of malcontents looking for the smallest hook on which to distort everything via smear campaigns.” It is difficult not to agree that the public has become witness to the undignified behavior of the Moscow Patriarchate and that the persons defended in the appeal, with a vigor worthy of a better cause, are themselves responsible for the “smear campaigns.”
And, finally, as they say in diplomacy, let us go to the heart of the matter: “In this very context a libelous media attack on the Head of the Church is being mounted. All this converges into one campaign against Orthodoxy and the Russian Orthodox Church.” The conclusion is quite striking: “We must all preserve unanimity of opinion.”
The mask comes off. Patriarch Kirill was born in 1946 and thus is bound to understand the meaning of the words unanimity of opinion. He grew up and lived a large part of his life under the “unanimity of opinion” implanted by the communists.
This disproportionate response to the action of Pussy Riot and others can only evoke amazement. Somehow it was entirely forgotten that Russia is a secular country in which, according to the Constitution, the church should be separate from the state. Amnesty International recognized the participants in the group as prisoners of conscience and demanded their immediate release.
Then Sergei Gavrilov and Sergei Popov, deputies in the State Duma from the Communist Party and United Russia, respectively—with the approval of the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the leadership of the lower house of parliament—hastened to establish an inter-factional group to “defend Christian values.” In Gavrilov’s words, “Many deputies from various factions of the State Duma are united in recognizing the role and importance of the Russian Orthodox Church in the preservation of the spiritual, moral, cultural, and socio-political specificity of the Russian Federation as a unique Christian civilization.” This passage evokes perplexity on two counts. First, the idea that Russia’s originality equates with Orthodoxy is incorrect. The dominant religion undoubtedly did play an extremely important and far from one-sided role in its formation, but it was just one of many factors contributing to the national identity of the Russian people. Second, the thesis concerning the uniqueness of Christian civilization in Russia is surprising, as if other countries did not embrace Christianity. In addition, Gavrilov asserted that the deputies, along with the Russian Orthodox Church, intend to resist the “totalitarian and sectarian ideologies of aggressive liberalism and secularism and their unrestricted advocacy of hedonism, violence, consumption of narcotics and alcohol, and gambling.”
Especially bewildering is the defense of Russian Orthodox hierarchs by communists who, according to their own founder, are supposed to be atheists. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, evidently either forgot this or did not know it. Condemning the “campaign of attacks” against the Russian Orthodox Church, he said, “The army and the Orthodox faith—these are the two pillars that after the liquidation of the accomplishments of Soviet power will be the first to be uprooted by those who hate the Russian people and Russia and whose main mission is the destruction of our spirituality and traditions. . . . Today we are observing a coordinated campaign of attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church by representatives of aggressive liberal forces.”14 In this connection, he did not fail to refer to “various kinds of Russophobic mud-slinging.” And making allowances for the coefficient of mental development, the particular situation, and the passage of time, his words reek of something painfully familiar and Soviet: “Sooner or later liberal crackpots will smash their own heads,” and “aggressive liberalism is cave-man Russophobia,[and] blaspheming our religious values is the most refined and most vile extremism.” But Zyuganov has evidently developed a split personality, the result of which is that, in some unfathomable fashion, his essence as Homo sovieticus has been united with his alternate, essentially anticommunist essence. It is too obvious even to point out the servility of his utterances.
As a result of its extremely dubious leadership, the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church has been transformed into a simulacrum of an enormous totalitarian sect. It is not only the leaders who are guilty. The majority of priests are ill educated and coarse and think only of money. Their congregations accept this, and they become even more boorish and brutalized. Their lack of spirituality is sometimes reflected in proverbs and sayings—for example, “as lacking in spirituality as a priest,” “greedy as a priest,” “coarse as a priest.”
Government officials and priests wax enthusiastically about the “rebirth of spirituality.” It would be more accurate to speak of obscurantism and religious superstition, which the classics of Russian literature long ago stigmatized.
Since the emergence of religious freedom in Russia was one of the chief accomplishments I was involved in during Gorbachev’s perestroika, I will take the liberty of departing from the chronological framework of this book to try and answer the following question: who among those, including myself, who secured religious freedom in the Soviet years bears responsibility for what happened in this sphere in contemporary Russia? Of course, in light of what happened, one cannot seriously argue that we were absolutely correct during Soviet times. Even giving us our due, we were unable to take into account all the hypothetical future dangers, especially such profound distortions of the very principle of freedom of conscience. We operated in a different historical context, when it was impossible to imagine that the Russian Orthodox would insult atheists and followers of different faiths. I think our chief mistake was in not anticipating the need for limits and responsibility in exercising the right of religious freedom.
What are the other elements of the National Idea? In other words, how, and with what means, does one hypnotize the people of Russia? The Kremlin provided a fairly distinct answer to this question for the first time after the hostage taking in a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, on September 1, 2004. What happened there was ascribed to the “weakness” of the state, and to avert such tragedies in the future, the Kremlin asserted the need to strengthen the authorities for its own sake, abolished the direct election of governors, and created a sham democratic supervisory institution called the Public Chamber. Further, as Putin said, we need to “support citizens’ initiatives in organizing volunteer structures in the area of maintaining public order. They are capable not only of providing real assistance in gathering information and giving signals from the people about the possible preparation of crimes, but can also become a real factor in the struggle against crime and terrorism.”15
Are we going back to the past? Was this a call for denunciations and anonymous informers? Of course. The president was openly appealing for the revival of a mass stool pigeon movement, which was the fundamental basis of Soviet totalitarianism.
Naturally, such utterances demanded an explanation. Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s chief ideologist, rushed to the ramparts. According to what, in Soviet terminology, might be called a “guided interview,” the most important thing that Putin said on September 4 and 13, 2004, was to call for the mobilization of the nation in the struggle against terrorism. “We must all recognize that the enemy is at the gates,” cried this confidant of the president. “The front passes through every city, every street, every house. We need vigilance, solidarity, mutual assistance, uniting the strength of citizens and the state.”16
Some sort of mysterious “interventionists,” he maintains, are waging a “secret war” against Russia. There is a “fifth column of persons” even in Russia itself who will never be our real partners. However, why are they unknown? After all, it is not in some empty space but on the Kremlin’s team in Russia that a spy mania has revived and flourished luxuriantly. Critics of those in power are called extremists and enemies of Russia.
Many persons approve of the clear impulse to equate the National Idea with the search for enemies. The hoary concept of an internal enemy has been revived in full force. Surkov includes liberals, along with terrorists, in the circle of enemies, but even his explanations appear insufficient. Authors such as Mikhail Yur’iev, who write either on Surkov’s orders or simply from a desire to curry favor, are also involved.17
The fundamental premise underlying attempts to create the National Idea is that “Russia is and must be a great power.” For some reason, however, authors writing in this vein often associate the idea of greatness with throngs of starving slaves who, inexplicably, willingly forfeit their rights and are ready to tighten their belts even more. Is this a direct allusion to the time of barracks socialism? This is hardly greatness but a parody of it.
The new ideologues truly believe that a universal fear of Russia is a necessary condition of Russia’s greatness. They ignore the well-known fact that such fear existed earlier and resulted in the economic collapse and breakup of the USSR.
Contrary to the notions of those elaborating the National Idea, Russia is a multinational state in which the main criterion for belonging to the country is Russian citizenship and nothing more. The Russian nation and the Russian Orthodox faith are far from identical. Not only are many entirely respectable Russians not Orthodox, but there are also Old Believers, Catholics, and adherents of other faiths, as well as agnostics and atheists. If those aspiring to fashion the Russian National Idea consider themselves to be supporters of a strong Russian state, then they should realize that nothing would be more ruinous for Russia than to divide its people into Russians and non-Russians, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, or any other signs of distinction. In general, it is dangerous to divide. That path leads directly toward the breakup of the country.
Symbolically, the various types of supporters of a strong Russian state not only seek to be the authors of the National Idea—moreover in a very specific form—but also aspire to the role of Supreme Court. They blithely condemn as enemies almost everyone who disagrees with them. Those who are not considered enemies still are viewed at a minimum as second-class citizens. In their minds the National Idea is clearly a search for internal enemies. They are addicted to groping convulsively for the boundary between “enemies” and “near enemies.”
It is quite touching, almost naive, how Mikhail Yur’iev let the cat out of the bag in grounding the need for the National Idea. To avoid any misunderstanding, I quote: “One cannot introduce the concept of an internal enemy in the absence of an accepted national idea, because it is the national idea that defines what it is that must be considered an enemy.”18 In other words, the National Idea is needed exclusively to legitimize the concept of an internal enemy.
Democrats and, employing Yur’iev’s vocabulary, “people in general [obshchecheloveki] must be cauterized.” This is exactly what he wrote.
I think that Yur’iev played the same role for Putin and his ideologues as the notorious Nina Andreeva did for the reactionaries during Gorbachev’s perestroika.19 What happened on the ideological front in the later Yeltsin period and under Putin may largely be explained by the advent to power of people from the special services. They were taught not to make policy, to identify and formulate the national interests, and to defend them but something entirely different—that is, to maintain existing policies by specific and often quite unethical means. As a result in the minds of the ruling Cheka-KGB agents, the false idea that politics is a dirty business became firmly lodged. Once this happened, there could be no moral limitations whatsoever.
The saddest part is that so many people find such a way of thinking congenial. To a high degree, of course, this is due to such factors as suffering from an inferiority complex, striving to deflect onto others the responsibility for one’s own mistakes and crimes, and, of course, continuing the age-old Russian habit of dividing people into “us” and “them.”
Following the Leninist script, many efforts were undertaken in post-Soviet Russia to ensure that such ideas would become a material force possessed by the masses. Among these efforts were the removal of the opposition from the legal field, the de facto elimination of parliamentarianism, the creation of pro-Kremlin youth groups, and so forth. Nor was the Kremlin squeamish about employing “dirty tricks.” It commissioned and published articles in the press, including the foreign press, thereby placing in circulation various myths supposedly bolstering or formulating the National Idea.
Starting with Lenin, policies that from the outset were grounded in crimes and lies to Russia and the world required a reliable defense in order to conceal the truth about the crimes and ensure the lies would pass for truth. This goal was served by secrecy, which was and remains the most important and indispensable component of Russian political tradition. It is an inalienable attribute of the rough and ready power game directed against the “enemies of the people” under Lenin and Stalin and the “enemies of Russia” under Putin. Thus, secrecy functions as the most vital element of the ideological state that actively employs hypnosis on its own people as well as on foreign public opinion.
The Soviet practice of classifying information on a broad range of issues embodied the boldest bureaucratic dream: do whatever you like, and let no one know about it. The ministries, the departments, and the censors perfected this practice to the nth degree. But all this paled in comparison to what transpired in the editorial offices and publishing houses that were virtually the undisputed masters of the materials presented to them for publication. That editors bore equal responsibility with authors for what was published, coupled with the editors’ broad powers, led them to play it safe and act arbitrarily.
Almost everything was classified to one degree or another. One needed special passes to access the foreign periodicals and scholarly literature that were kept in special sections of the library. There, too, Russian “non-Marxist” philosophy languished. A striking situation arose after the Chernobyl tragedy. If one followed the letter and spirit of the law, merely announcing its occurrence was supposed to entail criminal responsibility since the locations of atomic power plants were classified. Such subjects as the USSR’s failure to observe international law, the poverty of its people, and many others were all shielded in secrecy.
During Gorbachev’s perestroika when, thanks to Shevardnadze and my immediate superiors, we liberated ourselves from the pernicious and unjustified classification of everything, I managed to launch an effort to review and mitigate the classification regime. I began with the secret office that compiled the index of issues constituting state secrets. What was there that was not enumerated in this extremely hefty brochure? The information that accompanied the memorandum to the minister turned out to be so sensitive that first a working group inside the Foreign Ministry was established and then an interdepartmental working group. Subsequently the notorious list was significantly shortened, time limits were established for how long information could be classified, and (along with work on other matters) the possibility of restricting the departure of persons possessing knowledge of secrets from the USSR had to be stipulated beforehand in work contracts. Other aspects of the classification system were also reviewed.
Secrecy serves several basic functions. The main one is the opportunity it affords to manipulate information to conceal outrages one has created. The notorious list also served this fundamental purpose. For example, information about the size of the mesh in fishing nets was classified if it was smaller than the generally accepted international standard.
But there were also politically significant and strategic issues. The main one was to deceive the people on any matter that the authorities desired. If something is classified, then no one knows about it; therefore, it does not exist. For example, almost everything concerning life outside the USSR was classified, including prices in the stores, salaries, and standards of living. However, in this area secrecy is effective only up to a certain point, after which censorship comes into force, whether officially, as in the USSR prior to perestroika, or unofficially, as was the case after Putin came to power. Yury Shchekochikhin wrote perceptively that “censorship is not censors, it is a state of society in which it is sometimes forced and sometimes desires to find itself. . . . Censorship is, most of all, a need of society itself at one or another stage of its development, one of the means of defending itself from the world outside that the authorities make use of, encouraging this instinct and supporting it by creating special state institutions.”20
As for secrecy, at the level of everyday bureaucratic work, secrecy imparts a special quality to anything, even the most insignificant question. The lion’s share of ciphered dispatches between Moscow and its diplomatic representatives abroad consists of completely open information: communications incoming from people on overseas assignments, summaries of articles published in the press, and similar trifles that could most certainly be sent by fax. But even though the faxes might not be read, and the summaries of articles might be of no interest to anyone, the mighty aura of secrecy comes into play. The cipher clerks were very surprised and asked for verification when they saw on many of my telegrams the notation “unclassified.”
The most important function of the system of classification is that it facilitates the control of “bearers of state secrets,” who are well aware that access (albeit formal) to classified material automatically implies the possibility of being shadowed by the special services. In addition, having access to state secrets also signifies the possibility of being barred from travel abroad, for a request for a passport to travel abroad is premised upon “approval” from the special services.
I can illustrate this with an example from my own experience. When I was given access to classified material at the Diplomatic Academy, I was summoned to the Special Department to review an encoded telegram that was of no interest to me whatsoever. The purpose was obvious: from the moment I signed that I had read it, I could be considered the bearer of a state secret, and the KGB had a formal basis to monitor my phone conversations and everything else in my life.
Here is another example. I was writing something at my desk in my office at the Security Council. Without knocking, the door was flung open, and in marched the chief security officer with a stern and severe look pasted on his face; behind him loomed two or three of his subordinates, checking procedures. Needless to say, there was trouble. “You’re not following the rules! You’re violating procedures! You must know what this will come to!” This is what it was all about. As someone who was actively engaged in work, I was simply unable to carry out the required demands. After receiving a classified document, officials were obligated to write down its number, its title, and a summary of its content in a special notebook (also classified, of course). When passing the document to anyone else, one had to make the appropriate notation and get the signature of the person who received it from you. There were mountains of such documents that flew back and forth among us officials, uncontrolled by the special services. Apparently, I had “rubbed so much salt” into someone’s wounds that the person had decided to strike back in full force. In fact, the only officials who scrupulously entered into their notebooks all the papers they had received were good-for-nothings who had nothing better to occupy their time. However, my “well-wishers” miscalculated, for I was held in quite high esteem.
As noted previously, the regime of secrecy was firmly ensconced even in the Kremlin’s medical establishment that initially served Soviet and, later, high-ranking Russian officials. In the First Polyclinic that treated the highest-ranking officials below the ministerial level, under no circumstances were patients ever given their medical records. According to the established rules in Russia, the pages of a medical record were supposed to be sewn together in order to avoid falsification. Not so in this clinic. Medical records were kept in loose-leaf binders from which at any time a page might be removed and another substituted in its place. Moreover, in the notorious Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry many medical records were also classified.
The Iron Curtain served the same purpose. Even for trips to “socialist” countries only the most reliable persons, from the perspective of the KGB, were selected. Foreign radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union were jammed. Even high-ranking diplomats were given foreign newspapers and magazines with articles and photographs cut out, and other articles were stamped with what, because of their shape, were called “screws,” indicating the extreme sensitivity of this information. I remember from childhood such a photograph from the West German magazine Der Spiegel stamped with two such “screws” that showed five happy drunks sitting on an earthen berm around a Russian hut. Their faces were haggard; they looked stupefied, with vacant eyes and many missing teeth. They were terribly dressed and were singing something to the accompaniment of an accordion. Other poor huts were in the background with sheets drying on a clothesline. The caption underneath said, “If this is Heaven, then what is Hell?”
After cutting off the flow of “harmful” information, what follows is hypnosis itself. Perfected during Soviet times, very few were able to resist it. Starting from kindergarten, one had drilled into one’s head that the USSR was the best country in the world, where, due to the concern of the party and the government, the happiest people lived while all around were only enemies.
Membership in the Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) was a necessary condition for entry into many institutes and universities. The Komsomol conducted its hypnosis séances in the guise of regular and obligatory meetings and “volunteer work.” In their institutes and universities, in the first instance, humanists, historians, philosophers, jurists, and journalists attended a practically continuous series of séances. Students in technical schools were not exempted, however. Everywhere the falsified history of the USSR, the history of the CPSU, and the philosophy of Marx and Lenin were required subjects of study. The great pianist Sviatoslav Richter said that his name was not engraved on the marble plaque honoring the best graduates of the Moscow State Conservatory because he had problems with the subject of scientific communism. Students who were Komsomol activists, to say nothing of those who were members of the CPSU, enjoyed special privileges with regard to taking exams and work assignments. Such was the upbringing of the so-called elite “builders of communism.” Some elite they were!
Everyone without exception was continuously exposed to Soviet propaganda in the form of television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Incidentally, it was no accident that the second-ranking person in the CPSU and, therefore, in the country was in overall charge of this propaganda. The propaganda mechanism was simple and well defined. The newspaper Pravda (Truth), which reflected the “general line of the party,” provided guidance for the country’s entire press. The television program Vremya (Time) played the role of auxiliary guide. More fundamental questions fell within the sphere of responsibility of the journal Kommunist (Communist). Other mass media had almost no chance of changing the interpretations of these publications and reports.
The duo of the CPSU and the KGB kept their eyes tirelessly fixed upon the “ideological purity of Soviet society.” Moreover, in Soviet times there existed a very real vertical structure of power. In one way or another this duo existed almost everywhere throughout the country in the form of primary party, Komsomol, and trade union organizations in even the most remote and underpopulated villages. In the absence of other information, the endless repetition from daybreak to night of one and the same message over a period of years and decades throughout one’s life compelled the overwhelming majority of the people to believe the reports, contrary to all the evidence.
During Gorbachev’s reformation, the hypnosis initially weakened and then ceased entirely. But people who had become addicted, as to a narcotic, found doing without it difficult. Therefore, the revival of hypnosis under Putin, however deplorable, was objectively desired. In fact, it had already begun to reappear under Yeltsin. In brief, here is how the evolution of the hypnosis unfolded.
In the final years of the USSR, the system of secrecy assumed relatively normal dimensions. In the first post-Soviet years, it was in a shaky position. (There were many leaks of sensitive information.) But it later revived with new strength. Even the archives that had been opened after the breakup of the USSR were closed again. Instead of the Soviet censorship that had been done away with by perestroika, there came the telephone calls from on high, the intimidation and killing of journalists, and the elimination or transfer of the mass media to other more reliable owners.
A lot happened to freedom of speech under Yeltsin. The story of the rise and fall of the Media-Most Group and of the telecommunications company NTV are most revealing in this respect. Their chief Vladimir Gusinskii and his closest associate Igor Malashenko, making wide use of the telecommunications company NTV, played a significant role in Yeltsin’s victory in the presidential election, after which NTV took off. At the same time, NTV sharply criticized the war in Chechnya and several of Yeltsin’s closest associates, including the all-powerful Alexander Korzhakov, who then headed Yeltsin’s personal security guards.
The thorough suppression of Media-Most and NTV occurred after they supported the electoral bloc headed by former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov. Either one of them might have had a real chance of winning the 2000 presidential and 1999 parliamentary elections against the Unity Party whose electoral platform proclaimed unconditional support for Putin. The suppression of NTV and Media-Most was clearly the first step in smothering freedom of speech in Russia. Additional steps soon followed.
News of the direct involvement of Minister of the Press Mikhail Lesin provided supplementary evidence of the “impartiality” involved in the suppression of Media-Most. Specifically, he signed the document attesting that the deal to sell Media-Most was arranged in exchange for the freedom and security of Most Group chieftain Vladimir Gusinskii and his partners. According to Malashenko’s testimony, during negotiations for the deal, Lesin repeatedly contacted Vladimir Ustinov, procurator-general of Russia, to coordinate the details and inquired especially how—according to which statute, for how long, and so on—criminal charges against Gusinskii would be deferred. Moreover, Lesin proposed that he receive a commission of 5 percent for arranging the deal.
The scandal concerning the liquidation of NTV is revealing but not unique. It suffices to recall that Boris Berezovsky, who was riding high during Yeltsin’s presidency and who had done a lot to bring Putin to power, was soon deprived of his control of Russian television’s Channel One with the Kremlin’s active involvement. The “sixth channel,” where a large part of the staff from NTV went in the summer of 2001, ceased to exist in its previous form, thereby signaling the final suppression of independent television and other mass media outside the Kremlin’s control. From then on, as in the Soviet era, news, social, and political programs turned into apologias for the authorities. The mass audience no longer had access to an alternative point of view. Other media such as Novaia gazeta (New paper) and the radio station Ekho Moskvy, which appeared to maintain their independence from the Kremlin, had such small audiences—at least in 2001—that they could hardly hope to compete with pro-government sources of information.
In 2000 even prior to Putin’s inauguration, the pro-Kremlin youth movement Idushchie vmeste (Going Together) was founded and became the forerunner of movements such as Nashi and Molodaia Gvardiia (Young Guard), established in 2005. These were not merely revivals of what, by comparison with them, was the inoffensive Komsomol but also the creation of an aggressive Putinjugend (Putin Youth), which was above the law. Everything was done to encourage membership in these movements. Moreover, students in a number of universities were compelled to participate in their projects, and those who refused were discredited and expelled.
Dragging youth into these political intrigues is extremely amoral per se, yet the amorality of the Russian authorities went much further. This was revealed in the winter of 2009 when Anna Bukovskaia, the former commissar of the movement Nashi, publicly acknowledged that this pro-Kremlin youth organization had created a network of paid agents to keep tabs on the opposition. She said that in 2007, on the orders of Nashi, a secret project was launched called Presidential Liaison that was aimed at infiltrating its paid agents into the opposition: first of all into Yabloko, then into the United Civic Front, Defense, and the National Bolshevik Party. The information collected went directly to the Presidential Administration.21
There is one more little-known but extremely important element of hypnosis. In the USSR there existed a phenomenon known as “active measures” (in professional jargon, aktivka), which was later renamed “purposefully conveyed information.” This very specific phenomenon is critically important for understanding what is going on in Russia. It is a set of top-secret measures worked out and implemented on instructions from the highest state authorities to achieve concrete political goals for which the participation of the special services is required. A wide variety of persons and organizations, perhaps unable even to guess what this is all about, may be involved in achieving these goals. (For example, as part of the aktivka, a journalist may be deliberately fed information.)
This extremely sharp and effective means of conducting foreign and domestic policy is used to achieve the most important and delicate of goals. Everything connected with aktivka is a deep secret. Consequently, its planners and implementers can act with complete impunity.
Establishing political parties; discrediting or, on the contrary, praising someone or something; creating a mood in society that serves those in power—all this and much more may be the result of aktivka. When investigators encounter something in Russia that benefits the authorities but is difficult to explain from any perspective, they must ask, is this not aktivka in action?
For example, wasn’t the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London a case of active measures? On the one hand, too many absurdities characterize his killing. For example, traces of radioactive polonium-210 were left behind, and Andrei Lugovoi, the suspected killer of the former special services officer, was quickly elected to the Duma, which gave him immunity. On the other hand, it looked very much like a ritualistic murder, so one could not help but wonder whether it was planned and carried out as a way to get rid of an opponent of the regime. Particularly noteworthy is that Andrei Lugovoi was selected for the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) headed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who feigned madness but was really a cynical KGB officer.
The story of the founding of the LDPR clearly illustrates the meaning of active measures. According to the testimony of Anatoly Kovalev, who was present on the occasion, the “decision” to establish the LDPR “was adopted” during a dinner break at a meeting of the Soviet Communist Party Politburo. Vladimir Kriuchkov, the head of the KGB, took the floor and made the proposal. Gorbachev, who either did not understand or was confused about what was going on, had already lifted a spoonful of borscht to his mouth, paused, and then silently swallowed it. But by no means did his silence indicate approval.22 Kriuchkov’s proposal became the basis for a resolution of the Soviet Politburo. The result was that a multiparty system was proclaimed in the USSR, and a former officer of the KGB soon firmly settled in somewhat higher on the slope of the political Mount Olympus. It speaks volumes that such a party headed by such a leader took under its wing someone who was the prime suspect in a murder.
Responsible, if not necessarily clever, authorities were always very cautious with regard to active measures, even though they still committed unbelievable mistakes and allowed themselves to be deceived. As already noted, everything connected with active measures was highly classified and, therefore, hidden from view. But, for example, I can assert without fear of being contradicted that the revival of Nazi and fascist organizations in the USSR was the result of precisely such activities.23
We must draw a clear distinction between the active measures that are possible only with the approval of the highest authorities and those provocations carried out by the special services and other coercive agencies. For example, the clubbing and teargassing in Tbilisi and Vilnius of demonstrators who were also run over by tanks, as well as other crimes aimed at stopping Gorbachev’s reforms, are examples of such provocations. No one can be sure, however, that orders to that effect were not issued by, for example, Yegor Ligachev, who was the second in command in the CPSU at the time and often in charge when Gorbachev traveled abroad or was on vacation.
Given the progressive seizure of power by, and final victory of, representatives of the special services, the following question arises: are not all of Putin’s policies nothing other than purposefully conveyed information? In other words, has there not been an inversion between ends and means? Especially since under Putin an immense number of myths have arisen that are directly tied to purposefully conveyed information.
This is not the place to delve in detail into Soviet communist dogmas; however, those that resonated or were reanimated under Putin deserve attention—for example, the postulate of the unity of the party and the people under whose weight the Soviet people were crushed. Naturally, a return to Soviet communism in pure form was impossible and unnecessary. The pro-Putin party, United Russia, like the CPSU before it, literally occupied both houses of parliament, and membership in it was virtually obligatory for a successful career in government service. It was financed by businessmen, thus allowing it to be relatively secure from the state. Moreover, United Russia created its own Komsomol, or pro-Kremlin youth movements. The proclamation that the parliamentary elections of 2007 were a “vote of confidence” in Putin not only made a farce of them, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the slogan “The people and the party are one,” but also effectively eliminated parliamentary democracy in Russia.
To create his own cult, Stalin turned Lenin into a god. Putin took a different route, inciting others to proclaim him as the national leader. It took considerable effort to ensure that a majority of the population would accept this myth. Acting as Kremlin puppets, the mass media began to sing the praises of the incumbent president in every possible way. Meanwhile, Putin did everything possible to transform all his activities into media events. He turned every working session with a state official into a mini spectacle that was widely covered by television and other mass media. A large part of the population also lapped up the television shows in which Putin appeared in a variety of theatrical roles and costumes, mostly highlighting his patriotism and machismo.
The restoration of the dictatorship of ideology in Russia sometimes assumes grotesque forms. In February 2009 Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, absolutely outside his sphere of competence, asserted that persons who denied the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War should be held criminally responsible. At first glance, this initiative is absolutely senseless, for the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition in the Second World War is a historical fact. But this attempt at verification conceals a dirty trick. From the time of Stalin, the role of the USSR’s allies was invariably denigrated. Reflecting upon the tragic results of the war for the country’s people now became subject to criminal penalties.
On May 15, 2009, President Medvedev, concerned about the “correct interpretation” of history, including the history of the Great Patriotic War, issued decree number 549 that established the “Presidential Commission to Counteract Attempts to Falsify History that Damage Russia’s Interests.” The title of the commission was revealing as it is impossible to falsify history exclusively to damage the interests of Russia. From the beginning apparently no consideration was paid to the fact that over a period of centuries and in Lenin–Stalin times as well as during the period of stagnation, history (including the history of the Second World War) was repeatedly falsified. It is typical, though not unexpected, that the composition of the commission copied Soviet ideological structures. It included representatives from the FSB, the General Staff, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the State Duma, the Council of the Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, the Ministry of Culture, the Russian Archives, the Federal Agency for Science and Innovations, and, for the sake of appearances, the Institutes of Russian and of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Naryshkin, a mechanical engineer by training and secondarily an economist, led the commission.
But this was not all. In the summer of 2009 a new scandal erupted. Radio Liberty obtained a scurrilous letter that had been sent by Academician V. A. Tishkov, the director of the History Section and the academic secretary of the Division of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to some of his colleagues. This letter made it clear that the bureau had adopted an official resolution, “On the Tasks of the Division of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” in connection with the Russian Federation president’s decree number 549 and the presidential commission. That such an official resolution exists is remarkable. The “scholars” had rushed to serve the powers that be.
But even this can be done in different ways. One can limit oneself to a formal reply, or one can prostrate oneself before power. The leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences chose the second path. It arranged to provide an “annotated list of historical-cultural falsifications . . . (indicating the original sources, persons or organizations that created or disseminated the falsifications; and the potential danger of a given falsification to Russia’s interests).” Moreover, the scholarly institutes are instructed to report on how they uncovered these concepts and provide a contact person or list of scholars to cooperate with the aforementioned commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences.24 All of this is very reminiscent of both the methods by which Stalin destroyed Soviet science and the system of denunciation that existed in Soviet times.
Different things are permitted to persons with a different system of values and with a different degree of self-respect and of respect toward others. At a session of the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vilnius on July 3, 2009, a resolution was adopted designating August 23, the date when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. In addition to appeals to study history so as to avoid similar crimes in the future, the resolution called upon participating states, including the Russian government and parliament, “to ensure that any governmental structures and patterns of behaviour that resist full democratisation or perpetuate, or embellish, or seek a return to, or extend into the future, totalitarian rule are fully dismantled.”
It was not difficult to predict Russia’s reaction. The Federation Council and the State Duma called this resolution “an attempt to ruin the developing dialogue between Russia and the West.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also took notice, drafting some sort of vague recommendations in response. What is the problem with historical truth? There was not a single negative word about Russia or its people in the resolution, only a condemnation of a criminal regime and of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had already been censured in Soviet times.
All this forces one to remember that there has probably never been a country in the world where the discipline of history has been subjected to such prolonged and systematic outrages as in Russia. History not only fulfilled the “social demand” of preserving the existing order of things but also was widely used by everyone who could to advance his or her personal, narrowly egotistical goals. A rather narrow but powerful circle of ideologues vanquished history and established a monopoly over historical “truth” or, more accurately, “pseudo truth.” They did not engage in scholarly research or value objectivity but indulged in dogmatism embellished with only two colors—black and white. As everyone knows, mixing these produces only the color gray, albeit in different shades. Many of these ideologues had no goal other than to conceal the truth and transform it into a lie.
This need to forget the truth in the name of immorality, lies, falsehoods, and justifications for intellectual and political weakness is characteristic of certain individuals and certain associations. Under Putin it revived in the form of a state policy directed, as the Russian historian Yury Afanasyev rightly noted, “toward cloaking one’s rule in quasi-juridical form, to surrounding the self-reproduction of Putinism legally on the basis of preserving its immutability, relying, as has always been the case with the Russian authorities, on patriotic traditionalism and Russian archaism.” The establishment of the commission is “only an episode in the sequence of well-thought out and logical actions of the Putinists to perpetuate their regime. However, these well-thought out actions are menacing and nonsensical.”25
A glaring example of how hypnosis operates in practice came in the summer of 2010 when Russia was subjected to a siege of fire. Forests, villages, and vacation settlements burned, and the fire destroyed two military depots and came close to the nuclear centers in Sarov and Snezhinsk. According to data from the Global Fire Monitoring Center, from the start of 2010 through August 13 of that year, on the natural territories of Russia fires consumed an area of 60,575 square miles. These figures differ from the data provided by the Ministry of Emergency Situations (26,977 natural fire sites on a total area of 3,213 square miles) by an order of approximately nineteen times.26
The Russian and regional authorities must have known about the impending disaster. The weather forecasters had predicted a hot, dry summer; however, nothing was done to avert the disaster. The professional Chekist Putin was too distracted by the collapse of a Russian spy network in the United States and even found time to meet with the exposed agents and sing with them a popular Soviet song, “What Does Our Homeland Begin With?” Nor did he pass up the opportunity to appear at a gathering of rockers and talk about the feeling of freedom that riding motorcycles provide. The mayor of Moscow, a city that was choking on the heat and smoke from the burning forests and peat-bogs, safely waited out the fire by going on vacation.
The reaction to what was going on, although unofficial, was wholly in the spirit of the Cold War: the Americans were said to be deploying a climate weapon, although more sober-minded specialists said that normal human activity was quite enough to provoke such a cataclysm.27 The popular Russian “yellow journalism” paper Komsomolskaia pravda (Komsomol truth), citing the words of retired, former military, weather forecaster Capt. Second Class Nikolai Karaev, asserted that there was absolutely no doubt that the fires occurred as the result of intentional testing activity of what was supposedly a powerful new weapon at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program station located 250 miles northeast of Anchorage. By way of confirmation, it noted that “on the eve of the current weather cataclysm a new American pilot-less spaceship, the X-37B, capable of carrying a powerful laser weapon, was launched into space. The mission of the X-37B was highly classified.”28 This is a publication devoted to disseminating that kind of hypnosis.
It is true that in every joke there’s a dollop of jest. When the head and co-owner of the company Your Financial Guardian, the Russian Orthodox entrepreneur Vasili Boiko, decided to put an end to confusion about his surname—many so surnamed were rather important people—and changed it to Boiko-Velikii (Boiko the Great), this action was viewed either as a joke or as a marker of his vainglory. How could one distinguish between them? There is as yet no answer to this question, but to make up for it Boiko-Velikii made the following demand of his employees.
1. In the course of the coming academic year all employees of all enterprises during work hours or after work must take the instructional course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture.” . . .
3. All employees who undergo an abortion or who assist in performing one are subject to dismissal for cause;
4. All employees who are cohabiting, but not married, unless they become married by October 14, 2010—the Feast of the Protective Veil of the Holy Mother—will be subject to dismissal for cause;
5. Newly hired employees who are cohabiting, but not married, must get married within their probationary period (three months).
I appeal to you to pray more at home, away from home, and in places of worship for forgiveness of our sins and for sending down rains on the fields and our villages and pastures. And for God to bestow his grace upon our hearts.
I appeal to you to pray that the conflagrations subside and the fires cease.
I request that the enterprise accountants organize a collection of contributions from employees who wish to assist those suffering from the fires.
President OAO Russian Milk Vasili Boiko-Velikii.29
I think any commentary is superfluous, although I should note that there were enthusiastic responses. For example, speaking of this order, another entrepreneur, German Sterligov, in a broadcast on Ekho Moskvy, linked it to the fires: “Everyone says that the firemen are guilty, that the governors are guilty with respect to the fires, the heat, etc. Of course, this is due to our sins, and, ultimately, they are at least pointing in the right direction, so there is something to consider. Otherwise, it is utter nonsense.”30
There’s something for everyone. There are those who accuse the Americans; others say it is God’s will, that the fires are punishment for sins. The main thing is to shift responsibility away from the authorities. Hypnosis has been elevated to a new and even higher level than it had attained under “socialism.”