Another deception was the earlier attempt to portray Russia in the 1990s as a democratic country, even though it was in that era that the current authoritarian system has its roots. As Mr Inozemtsev points out:
The quasi-authoritarian ‘superpresidential’ Russian political style arose in the ‘democratic’ period of the mid-1990s, when then-President Boris Yeltsin forcibly dissolved the legitimate Parliament and pushed through a new constitution under which the powers of the President were not balanced by any restraints. Indeed, his status resembled that of the Führer of the German nation, as… determined by the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) of 23 March 1933. Later, Yeltsin’s inner circle orchestrated his victory in the 1996 presidential elections. This derailed the country from the natural path of alternating power between liberal and socialist politicians that, however improbably, led Eastern Europe to its often anxious but successful development in the 1990s and 2000s. From that time on, the idea that ‘there is no alternative’ to the current leader or to his chosen successor has become a vital part of Russian politics.
It is true that Yeltsin’s inner circle turned deplorably to election-rigging and the use of illicit money in politics as its popularity waned. They created the system, at least in embryo, that Mr Putin and his friends were later to develop and exploit. The continuity between the Yeltsin years and the Putin era that followed is no coincidence. It was a last desperate throw of the dice by Mr Yeltsin’s family in 1999, when impeachment (and possibly jail) was looming, to turn to the ex-KGB for help. But for all his own faults (and the much worse ones of his family members and hangers-on), Mr Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected president, had strong principles. He was determined not to muzzle the media or lock up the opposition. He distrusted the intelligence and security services and encouraged competition between them. By contrast Mr Putin has given the FSB a near-monopoly.
Just after the collapse of the Soviet system, the Russian reformers’ plan was quite different. The FSB was intended to be a kind of beefed up FBI, responsible for fighting organised crime and for counter-terrorism, plus spy-catching as required (in that era many Russians saw Western countries, and their spy agencies, as friendly partners, not rivals). Those times are long gone. The FSB is now a sprawling empire, with capabilities ranging from electronic intelligence-gathering to controlling Russia’s borders and operations beyond them. Its instincts are xenophobic and authoritarian, with heavy doses of paranoia, ignorance, religiosity and nostalgia for the Soviet past. As a result, it now is like no other spy service in the developed world. The best analysis of its role comes from a hard-working (and brave) Moscow-based husband-and-wife team, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.12 They liken the FSB to the Mukhabarat religious police of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries: impenetrable, ruthless and brutal. They argue: ‘The intelligence bureaucracy considers itself above criticism, impervious to the demands of democracy.’13 In their arbitrary power and incompetence, the officials of the FSB and its sister agencies epitomise the lawlessness and corruption that plague Russia and menace the outside world. But those inside the agency see themselves rather differently, as the ultimate guardians of Russia’s national security, thoroughly deserving of the rich rewards they reap. Nikolai Patrushev, who succeeded Mr Putin as the agency’s director in 2000, characterised his colleagues in startling terms:
Our best colleagues, the honour and pride of the FSB, don’t do their work for the money. When I give government awards to our people, I scrutinise their faces. There are the highbrow intellectual analysts, the broad-shouldered, weather-beaten Special Forces men, the taciturn explosives specialists, exacting investigators and the discreet counter-espionage operational officers. They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality. It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new nobility.14
That is true in one sense: the old nobility in Russia were mostly capricious, extravagant, incompetent and cruel. They set the scene for the Bolshevik revolution that brought them exile, death, destitution and imprisonment. But presumably Mr Patrushev did not have that in mind.
It would be wrong to term the FSB and its sister agencies simply as rebranded versions of the old KGB. Despite a narrower scope, they enjoy a far freer rein. The tactics are less brutal, certainly compared to the years of totalitarian terror under Stalin. They do not practise mass murder (and resort to assassination only on rare occasions). Russia is not a police state, in which the KGB, acting on behalf of (and tightly controlled by) the Communist Party, exercises rigid control over everything from foreign travel to people’s sex lives. Nor is Russia a closed society, in which every foreigner is suspect, and every trip abroad a potential security risk. The old KGB spent a lot of time worrying about currency speculation (the rouble’s official exchange rate was grotesquely overvalued). It vetted every application for foreign travel, and devoted vast resources to monitoring mail. The new regime is different, and not only because the Party is over. Instead of steaming open letters, the FSB uses powerful computers to scan emails. Instead of forcing all foreign visitors to stay in a handful of closely monitored hotels under the watchful eyes of Intourist guides, it focuses only on outsiders acting suspiciously.
To say that the regime in Moscow is suffused with the unpleasant ideology, values, habits, attitudes and behaviour of the Soviet era does not mean that it harbours communist or collectivist sympathies. Even its most diehard figures do not hanker after the planned economy or the one-party state, or for the costly and brittle apparatus of bureaucracy and control that went with them. They mourn the Soviet Union’s power, not its politics. They recall growing up in a great country – a superpower – defined by the size of its nuclear arsenal, its global reach, and its wartime sacrifice. In their lifetime, all that disappeared. The Soviet system became the butt of jokes – for the senility of its gerontocratic leadership, for the poor quality of its consumer goods and for the omnipresent shortages. What came next was worse: the humiliating retreat from the old empire, the acceptance of German reunification on the West’s terms, and playing second fiddle to America in global politics.
All of these things are associated in Russian minds with the 1990s. But what they disliked about that era was the weakness and chaos, not the capitalism. Many in Russia think, wrongly, that outsiders exploited the political disintegration to push through NATO expansion (of which more later) and to buy up Russia’s natural resources cheaply. Their driving concern now is to restore Russia’s standing in the world, and to prevent the West from ever again exploiting its weakness. The agenda is of stark competition for resources, status and power, against a background of perceived injustice and humiliation.
Opinions about the past are not monolithic. Few if any would defend Stalin outright. Some, particularly in the human-rights council set up by Mr Medvedev, actively argued for a radical break with the whole murderous and criminal system that the dictator inherited, developed and bequeathed.15 They want memorials to his victims, and to rename streets called after communist heroes, paving the way to reconciliation with the European Union and a strategic alliance against China. Such nuances are a welcome contrast to the early Putin years, when any criticism of Stalin or Soviet power brought a knee-jerk and allergic response. But it would be premature to say that any real shift is under way. Polls show that the majority of Russians do not want ‘de-Stalinisation’.16 Mr Putin, set for twelve years more as Russian president, dislikes the whole idea. Unknotting the threads of pride and shame will take many years. The regime remains ready to use the pomp of the Soviet past when it suits it, even if some privately find the associated jargon, ideology and priorities anachronistic and perhaps outright distasteful. What does define it unambiguously is an enthusiastic adoption of the crudest forms of private enterprise. Russia’s spookocrats like the new system not out of any close reading of Friedrich von Hayek or Adam Smith, but because it works for them. Whereas in the Soviet era the rewards of leadership were at best access to foreign goods and a luxurious dacha, the spoils of office now are colossal. No longer cloistered in the pretend austerity of Party discipline, they can enjoy the best the world has to offer, when, how and where they want it.