Notes from the translator are indicated by —Trans. at the end of the note.
1. See P. Reddaway, “Should World Psychiatry Readmit the Soviets?,” New York Review of Books, October 12, 1989, 54–58; and for a detailed analysis of the abuse system, see P. Reddaway and the psychiatrist Sidney Bloch, Russia’s Political Hospitals: The Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union (London: V. Gollancz, 1977); and their Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry (London: V. Gollancz, 1984). The U.S. government published a 117-page account of the U.S. delegation’s visit.
1. Ivan A. Bunin (1870–1953) was a Russian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933.
2. Literally, the word perestroika means “reconstruction” (of the entire economic and political system).
3. This book was originally published in Russian: Andrei A. Kovalev, Svidetel’stvo iz-za kulis rossiiskoi politiki I: Mozhno li delat’ dobra iz zla? [Witness from behind the scenes of Russian politics, vol. 1, Can one make good from evil?] and Svidetel’stvo iz-za kulis rossiiskoi politiki II: Ugroza dlia sebia i okruzhaiushchikh [Witness from behind the scenes of Russian politics, vol. 2, A menace to oneself and those nearby] (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2012).
4. MGIMO represents Moscow State Institute of International Relations. —Trans.
5. The Soviets referred to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 as the Caribbean crisis. —Trans.
6. Shurik is a diminutive of Alexander. —Trans.
7. Yury Andropov (1914–84) was then head of the KGB. —Trans.
8. This reference is to the workers’ uprising against the communist regime in East Germany in mid-June 1953 that was suppressed by Soviet military force. —Trans.
9. Fyodor I. Tyutchev (1803–73) was a Russian writer. The quotation is from “Silentium!,” a poem published in 1830. —Trans.
1. Liudmila Alekseeva, one of the old veterans of the dissident movement in the USSR, writes in her unflinchingly honest book The Generation of the Thaw, “I did not know a single opponent of socialism in our country, although we were troubled by the inhumanity of our society. We adopted the slogans of the Czechoslovak reformers [in the Prague Spring of 1968] who fought against Stalinism. We shared the idea that was dear to our hearts of ‘socialism with a human face.’” Liudmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva and Paul Goldberg, The Generation of the Thaw [in Russian] (Moscow: Izdatel’ Zakharov, 2006), 14–15.
2. See Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index, 2015,” January 27, 2016, www.transparency.org.
3. This phrase is borrowed from The Doomed City (1989) byArkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, well-known Russian science fiction writers.
1. Born in 1935 Glukhov became a career diplomat and was later Russia’s ambassador to Estonia.
2. Meaning sent to a correctional colony. —Trans.
3. The term applies to the Eastern Catholic Church, which is affiliated with Rome but has its own liturgy and rites. —Trans.
4. Murashkovites are a sect with Protestant, Judaic, and pagan features, formed by ex-Pentecostal I. P. Murashko in 1920 in the western USSR.
5. Only one doctor had to agree to detain the person—by force if necessary.
6. The oprichnina is the name of the secret police established by Ivan the Terrible. —Trans.
7. In early January 1991 Soviet troops shot and killed several Lithuanians among the thousands besieging the TV and Radio Building in Vilnius.
8. Nikolai I. Bukharin (1888–1938) was a top Bolshevik leader and opponent of Stalin’s who was executed on spurious charges of treason after a show trial, which outraged much of world public opinion.
9. The State Emergency Committee was the group of plotters who sought to overthrow Gorbachev in the August 1991 coup and seize power in Moscow.
1. Otto Skorzeny was a colonel in the Nazi Waffen SS who was skilled in sabotage and special operations. In September 1943 he led a successful German operation to free Benito Mussolini from Allied captivity. —Trans.
2. Yevgeny Dolmatovsky (1915–94) was a minor Soviet poet and lyricist. —Trans.
3. Yury Shchekochikhin, “Odnazhdy ya vstretilsia s chelovekom, kotoryi perevozil ‘zoloto partii’” [I once met a man who was transporting the “party’s gold”], in S liubov’y: Proizvedeniia Yu. Shchekochikhina; vospomonaniia i ocherki o nem [With love: The works of Yu. Shchekochikhin; reminiscences and sketches of him] (Saint Petersburg: Inapress, 2004), 142–43.
4. Sergei Sokolov and Sergei Pluzhnikov, “Zoloto KPSS—desiat’ let spustia: Pochemu ‘novye russkie’ kapitalisty finansiruiut kommunistov” [The CPSU’s gold—ten years later: Why the ‘new Russian’ capitalists are financing the communists], Moskovskie novosti (Moscow news), August 5, 2001.
5. Sokolov and Pluzhnikov, “Zoloto KPSS.”
6. “Zhestkii kurs” [A tough policy], Analisticheskaia zapiska Leningradskoi assotsiatsii sotsial’no-ekonomicheskikh nauk [Analytic notes of the Leningrad Association of Social and Economic Sciences], Vek XX i mir [Twentieth century and the world] 6 (1990): 15–19; and Vladimir Gel’man, Tupik avtoritarnoi modernizatsii [The cul-de-sac of authoritarian modernization], February 23, 2010, http://www.polit.ru/article/2010/02/23/gelman.
7. Vadim Medvedev was a cautious colleague of Gorbachev’s from the CPSU Politburo.
8. V. I. Boldin, Krushenie p’edestala: Shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva [Collapse of the pedestal: Brush strokes for a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Respublika, 1995).
1. A. N. Yakovlev, Omut pamiati [Whirlpool of memory] (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), 461.
2. Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter, trans. Michael Scammel (New York: Viking Press, 1979), 247–48.
3. The OGPU was the Soviet secret police (the Joint State Political Directorate). The quoted material is from Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 90–91.
4. P. Ya. Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma [Complete works and selected letters] (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), 347.
5. See V. D. Topolyanskii, Skvozniak iz proshlogo [A draft from the past] (Moscow: Prava cheloveka, 2009), 182–83.
6. Topolyanskii, Skvozniak iz proshlogo, 190.
7. This decision was taken well before the election of Gorbachev. According to my information, Yegor Ligachev and Mikhail Solomentsev made Gorbachev’s support of this adventure a condition of their support for his candidacy as general secretary of the CPSU.
8. Alexander Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: Ot rassveta do zakata [Boris Yeltsin: From daybreak to sunset] (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 209.
9. This budget-cutting policy entailed nonpayment of salaries and pensions and the impoverishment of the people.
10. According to official data, inflation was lowered from 2,600 percent in 1992 to 11 percent in 1997 and to 4.1 percent in the first half of 1998. In July 1998 inflation was 0.02 percent. The federal budget in 1997 was fulfilled with a deficit of 3.2 percent of GDP as against 3.5 percent in the approved budget.
11. In this connection, Moscow did nothing to preserve its positions in these countries.
12. I was working at the time on the staff of the president of the USSR, was one of the two initiators of the Soviet proposals, and played the role of “battering ram” as we pushed for acceptance of the decision to attend and expand relations. Evgeny Gusarov of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the other initiator of this foreign policy initiative, which came to nothing.
13. Shevardnadze’s failure to attend the Rome session of the NATO Council made it impossible to adopt an official resolution regarding the start of a new stage of relations between the USSR and NATO and had serious consequences for the subsequent development of relations between Russia and the North Atlantic alliance and the West as a whole.
14. As far as the author knows, this statement was not prepared in advance, and Yeltsin’s press secretary had to “correct” the head of state.
15. It was irrational because Moscow was unable to influence the decisions that were taken. NATO’s role in stabilizing the international situation was not taken into account at all. It was illogical because not a single one of the architects or implementers of Russian foreign policy, as well as the pundits who supported this policy, could answer the question of how states that were partners of Russia’s could be united in an alliance that was hostile toward it.
16. Regarding the priority of republic legislation over federal laws, in the constitutions of Sakha (Yakutia) Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia, procedures were included for the ratification of federal laws by the republics’ organs of state power.
17. For example, see those of the Republic of Adygeia, the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Karachaevo-Cherkessia Republic, the Krasnodarskii and Stavropolskii territories, and the Voronezh, Moscow, and Rostov regions. In the republics of Sakha (Yakutia), Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Komi, and Tuva, voting rights were accorded only to the citizens of these republics. The right to be elected head of state or of the legislature was likewise restricted exclusively to citizens of these areas.
18. As far as I know—I took part in behind-the-scenes efforts at a peaceful resolution of the Chechen problem in 1997–98—the Chechens themselves, including their chief negotiator Movladi Udugov, had a very imprecise notion of Chechen sovereignty. According to participants in the negotiations, the Chechens did not envision for themselves any sort of sovereignty except within Russia. They did not grasp that the concept of sovereignty meant something else. Thus, without understanding its actual content, the Chechens’ clumsy use of a term that Yeltsin had uttered was far from being the least of the reasons for the discord between Moscow and Grozny. This, in turn, obviously demonstrates that Russian politicians ascribe much more meaning to words than to actions.
19. Violations of the rights of Russians living in Chechnya, an allegation that the Russian authorities love to point to as the main reason for launching the war, cannot be taken seriously.
20. This agreement was signed on August 30, 1996, by Secretary of the Security Council Alexander Lebed and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Chechnya Aslan Maskhadov. What was envisioned was a cessation of military hostilities and the holding of a democratic general election in Chechnya. Resolving the question of the status of Chechnya was put off for five years, until 2001.
21. I was a supporter of granting Chechnya the right to self-determination, including the right to secede from membership in the Russian Federation, combined with the unconditional restoration of the educational and health care systems and the industry of the republic. In my opinion, this not only was a moral imperative but also was dictated by the purely pragmatic consideration of strengthening the Russian state system even in the event that Chechnya proclaimed its independence and actually seceded from Russia. Without question, such an option had to be provided. This was especially necessary because the actual rebuilding of the republic, not just in words, would have been the surest way to keep Chechnya in the Russian Federation.
22. According to the estimates of specialists, constructing one kilometer of border fencing would cost about $400,000 and one entry and exit point about $4 million. Further, to all appearances, this option must have been understood in the Kremlin, in the presidential administration, and in the government when the decision was taken to begin the Second Chechen War, but I cannot bear witness to this as I was hospitalized at the time.
23. The leading human rights defender Sergei Kovalev told me he had established the facts for certain that Russian troops had committed atrocities that were ascribed to the Chechens. For example, in his words, to raise the “fighting spirit of the troops,” the successors of the red commissars placed mutilated corpses and genitals severed by the Special Forces on the armored troop carriers but asserted that it was the work of the Chechens. Generally Moscow cultivated hatred toward the Chechens and toward residents of the Caucasus as a whole.
24. Many believe that these incursions were operations by the special services with the goal of legalizing the start of the Second Chechen War. This is indirectly confirmed by Sergei Stepashin’s pronouncement that the Kremlin began planning the military operations in Chechnya in March 1999. Additional evidence is the close link between Shamil Basaev and Boris Berezovsky. See, for example, J.-M. Balencie and A. de la Grange, Mondes rebelles: Guérillas, milices, groupes terroristes (Paris: Éditions Michalon, 2002), 1444.
25. During his presentation at the Kennan Institute in Washington on April 24, 2002, Sergei Yushenkov emphasized “the virtual lack of any system of civilian control over the activities of the special services in Russia” and “the absolute unwillingness of Russian authorities to pay attention to this and to carry out a truly objective, independent investigation” of the explosions in the apartment houses in Moscow and Volgodonsk, as well as of the events in Ryazan. According to the official version, the FSB was conducting exercises in Ryazan, but according to a widely disseminated view, shared by Yushenkov, a terrorist act was averted. He presented a version of events according to which a coup d’état took place in Russia on September 23. Here is why: On September 23, a group of governors of twenty-four persons, with the initiator of the group being the governor of the Belgorod region, Yevgeny Savchenko, demanded that the president of the Russian Federation turn over all power to Prime Minister Putin. And that same day, September 23, the president issued a secret decree that was the basis for the start of military actions in Chechnya, the beginning of the Second Chechen War. These actions and steps were taken precisely because of the view in Russian society that the explosions in Volgodonsk, Moscow, and of the house in Ryazan had been perpetrated by Chechen fighters. On September 24, Putin gave the order to the troops to commence military operations in Chechnya. Incidentally, this was the prerogative of the president. Moreover, in accordance with our constitution, armed force could be utilized only in three situations, none of which was present.
26. The exact number of wounded was not provided. Some observers believe the terrorist acts in the fall of 1999 that, without evidence, were ascribed to the Chechens were actually the work of the Russian special services.
27. Putin called for finishing off “the terrorists in the john.” The staff of the Security Council devised its own glossary according to which the Chechen fighters were called bandits. Banditry, according to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, is considered a criminal offense; thus someone may be labeled a bandit only by a court of law.
28. Speaking of Wahhabism, although I am using Moscow’s official terminology, I am fully aware that the definition is extremely controversial.
29. According to approximate data, there were more than twelve million Muslims in the North Caucasus, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia, and the Mari-El Republics; in Siberia; in Ulyanovsk, Samara, Astrakhan, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, and Ryazan regions; and in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and elsewhere. At the time, there were 2,739 registered Islamic religious associations (24 percent of religious associations registered in the country). Moreover, the actual number of functioning Islamic organizations was significantly higher, since in a number of regions they arose spontaneously and were not registered.
1. Andrei Illarionov, “Reformy 90-kh v Rossii proveli vo blago nomenklatury!” [The reforms of the 1990s in Russia were carried out for the benefit of the nomenklatura!] Komsomolskaia pravda, February 9, 2012.
2. The ministry that Adamov then headed was (and is) located near the Kremlin on Ordynka Street.
3. Sergei Dovlatov (1941–90) was a Russian writer who achieved success as an exile in the United States. —Trans.
4. One wise chief, the target of many denunciations owing to his position, would store accounts in a specially designated file without reading them and take them outside of town and burn them.
5. See, for example, chapter 5, p. 211.
6. Anatoly Kovalev, Iskusstvo vozmozhnogo: Vospominaniia [The art of the possible], (Moscow: Novyi Kronograf, 2016), 202–3.
7. This is a reference to their novel Monday Begins on Saturday (1965). —Trans.
1. Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 8.
2. Bukovsky, To Build a Castle, 247–48.
3. Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 11–12.
4. Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 358.
5. Hélène Blanc and Renata Lesnik, Les prédateurs du Kremlin, 1917–2009 (Paris: Édition du Seuil, 2009), 127.
6. Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 166–99.
7. Academician Georgy Arbatov was in his day an intimate of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin; his is a record for political longevity among intimates of top leaders in the USSR and Russia. Arbatov wrote, “If we still possess in some form democratic procedures and institutions, elections, transparency, the rudiments of a lawful state, then for these we must thank not the ‘liberal economy’ connected with [Yegor] Gaidar’s ‘shock therapy,’ nor Yeltsin’s actions as president. This is what remains from the Gorbachev Era, that his successors have been unable to weed out or stamp out entirely.” G. A. Arbatov, Yastreby i golubi kholodnoi voiny [Cold War hawks and doves] (Moscow: Algoritm & Eksmo, 2009), 104.
8. N. A. Berdyaev, Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma [Sources and meaning of Russian communism] (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 99.
9. Berdyaev, Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma, 100.
10. Alexander Men (1935–90) was a prominent Russian Orthodox theologian and author who was murdered on September 9, 1990, by an unknown assailant under conditions that raised suspicions of the KGB’s involvement in his death. —Trans.
11. Sergei L. Loiko, “Russian Orthodox Church Is in Spiritual Crisis, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2012.
12. Italics mine.
13. Italics mine.
14. Here and further the italics are mine.
15. Italics mine.
16. Italics mine.
17. Mikhail Yur’iev, “Vnutrennii vrag i natsional’naia ideia” [The internal enemy and the national idea], Komsomolskaia pravda [Komsomol truth], June 11, 2004.
18. Yur’iev, “Vnutrennii vrag.” Italics mine.
19. Nina Andreeva, a Soviet chemistry teacher and political activist, published an open letter in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya [Soviet Russia] in March 1988, denouncing Gorbachev and perestroika and giving heart to the old guard communists. —Trans.
20. Shchekochikhin, “Odnazhdy ya stal deputatom” [I once became a deputy], in S liubovyu, 39.
21. Nina Petlyanova, “Shpionashi” [The Nashi spies], Novaia gazeta [New paper]), no. 16 (February 16, 2009).
22. A similar story about this episode can be found in the book by A. N. Yakovlev: “I recall that during a break in one of our regular meetings, we sat down to eat. Mikhail Sergeevich was sullen, silently eating borscht. Suddenly Kriuchkov stood up and said roughly the following: ‘Mikhail Sergeevich, carrying out your instructions, we have begun to found a party; we will give it a contemporary name. We have selected several candidates to lead it.’ Kriuchkov did not give specific names. Gorbachev was silent. It was as if he hadn’t been listening and had really withdrawn into himself.” Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 382.
23. Yakovlev also writes that, during Soviet times, the Russian Communist Party engendered “various sorts of nationalist and pro-fascist groups under the supervision of and with the help of the KGB.” Yakovlev, Omut pamiati, 383.
24. Vladimir Tol’ts, “Fal’sifikatsii: Spiski podozrevaemykh i podozrevaiushchikh” [Falsifications: Lists of suspects and those identifying suspects], Svoboda Russian News, July 1, 2009, http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1766749.html.
25. Yury Afanasyev, “Ya khotel by uvidet’ Rossiyu raskoldovannoi” [I would like to see Russia released from its spell], Novaia gazeta, no. 55 (May 27, 2009).
26. Greenpeace Russia, “Data of the World Center for Monitoring Fires,” Forest Forum, August 13, 2010, http://www.forestforum.ru/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7613&view=unread&sid=828475e4f49dd9ad8ff4c6ef3ce14bc#unread, http://www.fire.uni-frieburg.de/GFMCnew/2010/08/13/20100813_ru_htm.
27. Dmitry Pisarenko, “Klimat prevrashchaetsia v moshchnoe oruzhie: V chem prichina zhary?” [Climate turns into a powerful weapon: What is the cause of the fires?], Argumenty i fakty [Arguments and facts] no. 29 (July 21, 2010).
28. Svetlana Kuzina, “Zhara v Rossii—rezultat ispytaniia klimaticheskogo oruzhiia v SShA?” [Are the fires in Russia the result of an American climate weapon test?], Komsomolskaia pravda, July 29, 2010.
29. Vasily Boiko-Velikii, “For facilitating repentance in our people,” address to employees of Russian Milk and all companies in the group Your Financial Guardian, August 9, 2010, http://rusk.ru/st.php?idar=43371.
30. “Orthodox enterprise: Life by their own rules?,” Discussion, Culture Shock, August 14, 2010, http://echo.msk.ru/programs/kulshok/703023-echo/.
1. On March 19, 2003, material was posted on the site for WPS–Russian Media Monitoring Agency that said the decision to strengthen the FSB was adopted in the first instance to “enhance management of the election process.” As a result of the reform of the coercive agencies, the Russian Federation Automatized State Election System (RFASES) passed from the Central Elections Commission (CEC) to the FSB. According to information from Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technologies Dmitry Orlov, even before this the CEC was only the corporative user of this system. A special subunit of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information exercised control over receiving and supplying data from the very beginning of the system’s operation. The work of the RFASES was wholly closed to outside observers. It was impossible to verify the reliability of information provided for open access—for example, accusations that were posted on the Internet. For precisely this reason, in the view of the authors of the publication, the capable hands of the RFASES had many means of rigging the data as 99 percent of the observers only received copies of the final results. This facilitated, for example, not only routine alterations to ballots and the “throwing in” of additional ballots (ballot stuffing) but even the creation of virtual voting precincts on the computer network. In general, the RFASES was something like a “black box”; you put in the ingredients (information) and out came the results (the name of a deputy). The publication summed it up as follows: “Control over the process of transformation lies in the hands of the increasingly powerful FSB.”
2. In June 1962 Soviet troops forcefully suppressed worker demonstrations in the southern Russian city of Novocherkassk, resulting in dozens of killed and wounded. See Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). —Trans.
3. In saying this, I am not in the least absolving other countries of their share of responsibility, but here I am speaking of Russia.
4. In the period between 1901 and 1911, about 17,000 persons became victims of terrorist acts.
5. According to several estimates, more than 25 million people were exterminated in the course of intra-party struggle, civil war, collectivization, and industrialization.
6. Nikolai Berdiaev et al., Smertnaia kazn’: Za i protiv [The death penalty: For and against] (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia Literatura, 1989), 104.
7. Berdiaev et al., Smertnaia kazn’, 110.
8. It was reported that 94 persons died in the first incident, and 121 died in the second.
9. Vyacheslav Izmailov, “Ne vosplamenyaetsia, ne gorit, ne vzryvaetsia” [It does not ignite, doesn’t burn, doesn’t explode], Novaia gazeta, no. 82 (October 30, 2006).
10. Anna Politkovskaya, “Polgoda posle ‘Nord-Osta’: Odin iz gruppy terroristov utselel. My ego nashli” [Six months after “Nord-Ost” one of the terrorists has survived. We found him], Novaia gazeta, no. 30 (April 28, 2003).
11. Politkovskaya, “Polgoda posle ‘Nord-Osta.’”
12. For example, in August 2000, Order No. 130, signed earlier by Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman, was registered in the Ministry of Justice and went into force. This was “An Order to Introduce a System of Technical Means to Secure Operational-Search Measures on Telephonic, Mobile, and Wireless Communications and Publicly Used Personal Communication Devices.” Publishing this notice, the newspaper Segodnia [Today] asserted that in line with this document all Internet providers as well as operators of telephonic, network, and paging services were obliged to draw up and coordinate with the FSB a plan to establish listening devices, initially providing the special services with all passwords, and then at their own expense install the listening devices on their networks, inform the FSB on how to employ them, and train agents in their use. It was specially stipulated that this work be kept secret.
According to Segodnia’s August 22, 2000, report, the order said, “Information about the subscribers who were being subjected to surveillance as well as the decisions on the basis of which surveillance was being conducted would not be provided to the network operators.” Such a formulation gave the special services practically unlimited opportunity to listen in to everyone and everything.
13. Igor Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy: Spetssluzhby sozdali paralellel’nye struktury dlia ispolneniia vnesudebnykh prigovorov” [Reserve organs: The special services created parallel structures to carry out extrajudicial sentences], Novaia gazeta, January 11, 2007.
14. The acronym GUBOP stands for Glavnoe upravlenie po bor’be s organizovannoi prestupnost’iu (Main Administration for the Struggle against Organized Crime). —Trans.
15. Maxim Lazovsky (1965–2000) headed a criminal gang whose members were implicated in various domestic acts of terrorism. He was shot to death in April 2000. —Trans.
16. The acronym SVR stands for Sluzhba vneshnei razvedki (Foreign Intelligence Service). —Trans.
17. The acronym OPG stands for Organizovannaia prestupnaia gruppirovka (organized criminal gang). —Trans.
18. Italics mine.
19. I am following the previously cited Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy.”
20. This is another example of how they take care of their own. Ul’man vanished into thin air without a trace. Another instance speaks for itself: the jury found the murderer innocent.
21. The arrest of Aleksei Pichugin, an employee of the Internal Security Department of YUKOS, was somewhat unique in this story; therefore, it is put into this footnote.
22. “Tezisy vystupleniia pervogo zamestitelia ministra inostrannykh del SSSR A. G. Kovalev na zasedanii Politburo, 13 August 1987” [Bullet points of the speech by First Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR A. G. Kovalev at the meeting of the Politburo, August 13, 1987], from the author’s private archive.
23. Galina Mursalieva, “Mezhdu strakhom i nenavist’yu” [Between fear and hatred], Novaia gazeta, no. 130 (November 19, 2010).
1. USSR minister of foreign affairs Andrei Gromyko never tired of saying, “We need to cut the bottom off the Third Basket.” [He was referring to the section of the Final Act dealing with human rights. —Trans.]
2. Needless to say, the collapse of the USSR was the result of the coup of August 1991, but the coup was also an attempt to put an end to perestroika.
3. Although I stood at the periphery of this scandal, I knew, first, that everything connected with it was personally controlled by Putin; and, second, from the very start it was clear to me that the Pope affair was groundless and the result of a provocation.
4. Italics mine.
5. In Azerbaijan there were 340,000 ethnic Russians (including immigrants from the republics of the North Caucasus), 15,000 in Armenia, 1.2 million in Belarus, 400,000 in Estonia, 200,000 in Georgia, 4.5 million in Kazakhstan, 685,000 in Kyrgyzstan, 900,000 in Latvia, 307,000 in Lithuania, 600,000 in Moldova, 65,000 in Tajikistan, 200,000 in Turkmenistan, 11.5 million in Ukraine, and1.2 million in Uzbekistan.
6. Zurab Imnaishvili and Yury Roks, “Poboishche v tsentre Tbilisi: V popytke noiabrskogo perevorota Gruziia obviniaet Rossiyu” [Carnage in the center of Tbilisi: Russia is accused in the November coup attempt in Georgia], Novaia gazeta, August 11, 2007.
7. Anatoly Adamishin and Richard Schifter, Human Rights, Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009), 170–71.
1. Andrei Volnov, “Nostalgiia po pesochnitsa: Psikhonevrologicheskoe issledovanie povedeniia rossiskoi vlasti” [Nostalgia for the sandbox: A psycho-neurological study of the conduct of Russian power], Novaia gazeta, February 7, 2007. [Andrei Volnov is a nom de plume of the author.]
2. Yury Afanasyev, “My ne raby? Istoricheskii beg na meste: ‘Osoby put’ Rossii” [Are we not slaves? Historical running in place: Russia’s “special path”], Novaia gazeta, Tsvetnoi vypusk ot [color edition], no. 47 (December 5, 2008).
3. According to Daniil Granin, this is how the outstanding biologist and geneticist N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii (1900–81) characterized the reason for many disasters.
4. I knew this from working on the staff of the Russian Security Council.
5. Konstantin Gaaze and Mikhail Fishman, “Sluzhili dva tovarishcha” [Two comrades served], Russkii Newsweek [Russian newsweek], December 22, 2008.
6. Anatoly Chernyaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod: Dnevnik dvukh epoch, 1972–1991 [Combined outcome: A diary of two epochs, 1972–19910] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008), 280–81.
7. Yevgeny Schwartz (1896–1958) was a Russian playwright and author of The Naked King (1934), which is partly based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. —Trans.
8. Telegraph Video and AP, “Watch: Vladimir Putin ‘Probably’ Ordered Alexander Litvinenko’s Murder, Concludes Chairman Sir Robert Owen,” The Telegraph, January 21, 2016, www.telegraph.co/uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12112046/Watch-Vladimir-Putin-probably-ordered-Alexander-Litvinenkos-murder-concludes-Chairman-Sir-Robert-Owen.html.
9. Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie, 478.