To most of us, the first words of the new president seemed reassuring, a categorical reaffirmation that he would continue the open, West-friendly policies of his predecessor so that Russia would remain on the path of liberal, free-market democracy. ‘I assure you there will be no vacuum of power,’ Putin pledged. ‘The Russian state will stand firm in the defence of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the media, private ownership rights and all the fundamental elements of a civilised society. Russia has opted irrevocably for democracy and reform and we will continue to pursue those goals … New Year is a holiday when dreams come true, and that is certainly the case this year. I believe the hopes and dreams that all of us cherish will undoubtedly come true.’
Putin’s promises were comforting; most of us went to bed relieved. But we might not have done so if we had known what had occurred earlier, behind doors. When Yeltsin told Putin on 14 December that he was about to become the leader of a superpower, the ‘strong man’ replied that he ‘wasn’t ready’ (at least, that is what both Yeltsin and Putin wrote in their account of the meeting). But it wasn’t long before the ‘strong man’ allowed himself to be persuaded. A meteoric rise from obscurity had whisked him from an undistinguished career in the lower echelons of the Soviet Union’s intelligence service, the KGB, via civil service posts in St Petersburg and then the Kremlin, to a surprise one-year stint as boss of the KGB’s successor organisation, the Federal Security Service (FSB), before three months as interim prime minister and, finally, the commanding heights of power.
Having received the news of his elevation, Putin knew exactly who he must report to; a day or so later, he went straight to his old stamping ground – the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the FSB and formerly that of the KGB. At a gala evening in honour of Lenin’s punitive organ of repression, the Cheka secret police,3 Putin raised a glass to his former FSB colleagues. ‘Comrades,’ he had just declared in a speech of welcome, ‘I wish to inform you that the group of FSB colleagues despatched by you to work undercover in the national government has succeeded in the first phase of its mission!’
At the time, it may have seemed a harmless joke – if somewhat tasteless, given the brutality and suffering dished out in the basements of the Lubyanka over the years – but in retrospect, the story has acquired distinctly sinister overtones. Putin’s braggadocio at the secret policemen’s ball needs to be seen in the context of the time. By 1999, the Soviet Union had been dead for nearly a decade and its brutal enforcers, the once dreaded KGB, were no more. The collapse of the USSR had left all Russians dazed and confused, but for members of the security services the upheaval had been even more painful. The event that signified the downfall of the USSR and the end of seven decades of communist rule was the shambolic attempted coup of August 1991 to halt Gorbachev’s liberalising reforms and return Russia to socialist orthodoxy. When the hardline communists’ putsch was defeated, the plotters were vilified and sent to jail. Prominent among them were the leaders of the KGB, including its then chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov. For the secret police, the consequences were immediate and ultimately catastrophic. The KGB, already held in dubious regard by many Soviet citizens, was now identified in the minds of millions as the malevolent force behind an attempt to seize control of their country’s future and deprive its people of the freedom and prosperity that Gorbachev’s reformers were promising.
On 22 August 1991, as it became clear that the coup had failed, thousands of people gathered in front of the Lubyanka. Demonstrations, long banned in the USSR, had been tolerated under Gorbachev, so it wasn’t surprising to see people on the streets. But the events of the hours that followed were so iconoclastic, in their most literal sense, that I will never forget them.
In the centre of Lubyanka Square, the lowering statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, was a very visible symbol of KGB repression. The crowd daubed its pedestal with slogans – ‘murderer’, ‘tsar-killer’, ‘antichrist’ – while chanting ‘Freedom!’ and ‘Down with the KGB!’ Someone managed to wrap a rope around Dzerzhinsky’s neck, like a hangman’s noose, and attempt – unsuccessfully – to topple him with the help of a bus. Dusk began to fall. From somewhere – at the time, no one knew from where – three mobile cranes rumbled into the square, led by a group of construction workers who ushered them through the crowd. One of the men was hoisted high in the basket of a cherry-picker, until he came face to face with ‘Iron Felix’. The rope was replaced with a metal hawser attached to the jib of a crane. Shortly before midnight, the 15-tonne statue rose uncertainly into the air, swaying like a hanged man. Fireworks exploded. The crowd cheered. People kicked and spat on the toppled statue. In the Lubyanka itself, not a single light burned in any of the windows. The once-untouchable KGB had been humbled, its fearsome reputation for omnipotence destroyed. It felt like a seminal moment.
Protesters celebrate after toppling the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka Square, 23 August 1991
A view of the Lubyanka, and the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky before it was toppled
In the climate of freedom that came with the collapse of the USSR, the new Russian leadership strove to ensure that the country could never return to the police state of the past. A reformist chairman, Vadim Bakatin, was appointed to dismantle the KGB monolith, declaring, ‘The traditions of Chekism must be eradicated.’ Bakatin introduced measures to curtail the security services’ extrajudicial control over society: the KGB would be broken up and replaced by independent agencies, competing with one another as equals; they would be transparent, subject to the rule of law and respect for human rights; and their focus would henceforth be the fight against crime, not the policing of political opinion.
The next decade was a hard time to be a secret policeman. The KGB’s successor organisation, the FSB, was a pale shadow of its predecessor, having been restructured and seemingly neutered, operating with greatly reduced budgets and only half its previous staff. It meant that 200,000 former KGB employees, people accustomed to wielding unchecked power over their fellow citizens, were made unemployed. Thousands of them found work in private security, as bodyguards, analysts and enforcers, assisting politicians, businessmen or – in many cases – shady figures from the increasingly prominent world of organised crime. The nexus of KGB and mafia would become a phenomenon of national concern. Even those agents who were retained by the FSB found their wages uncertain and frequently unpaid. As a result, they, too, were vulnerable to recruitment by private business and criminal gangs, using their inside knowledge and authority to make money on the side, learning to serve the state and their own private interests at the same time.