In view of our recent discussion on the future of Russia, there is an interesting item in today's Financial Times. Unless Putin is checked fairly soon it's looking to me as though he's another Stalin in the making. The fact that he's already acted with the utmost savagery in Chechnya suggests that he could be capable of anything in the future.
Keith Hudson
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PUTIN OVERSEES BIG RISE IN INFLUENCE OF SECURITY APPARATUS
Arkady Ostrovsky
Moscow -- A coalition spanning the Federal Security Service -- the successor organisation to the KGB -- the military and the police has become the dominant force in Russian politics and the economy during Vladimir Putin's presidency, according to an independent research report.
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Russia's leading sociologist and author of a study on Mr Putin's elite, says the proportion of so-called siloviki (a mixture of police, military and security servicemen) has increased twelvefold across the spectrum of Russia's political system over the past 15 years.
The arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the seizure of Yukos shares, and the very spirit of the attack on the oil company testify to the shifting balance of power in Russia from liberals in the mid 1990s to siloviki under Mr Putin, himself a former KGB officer. "For the first time in Russia's recent history, different power structures are acting as one force," Ms Kryshtanovskaya says.
According to her research, the proportion of siloviki in the top echelons of power increased from 4.8 per cent during the time of Mikhail Gorbachev to 58.3 per cent in the middle of Mr Putin's first term. She says more than half of Mr Putin's informal 24-member politburo consists of people affiliated with the former KGB.
However, Ms Kryshtanovskaya says it is not just the question of numbers but the spirit of power that has changed in Russia over the past four years.
"We are witnessing the restoration of the power of the KGB in the country, from the regions to the top of the Kremlin," she says. The most marked increase in the power of the siloviki has been at the regional level where five out of seven presidential representatives are former KGB or military men. Each presidential representative has a staff of 1,500 people, 70 per cent of whom have links to the security services or the army.
Ms Kryshtanovskaya says the influence of the siloviki has been spreading from the army and the FSB to economic ministries, media and telecommunications and is penetrating all spheres of social, economic and political life.
Four out of 12 deputies in the ministries of telecommunications, economic development and industry are affiliated with the special services. "These people have not really left the special services but had been 'seconded' to the government," Ms Kryshtanovskaya says.
This represents a drastic turnaround in the fortunes of the security services.
The KGB, one of the most powerful buttresses of Soviet power, was a big loser from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 1991 and 1993, 300,000 officers - almost half of the KGB - left the organisation, some in search of private income. Many set up their own private security companies and some were hired by the powerful business tycoons - the oligarchs.
Ms Kryshtanovskaya estimates that as many as 20,000 former KGB officers ended up working for the oligarchs, their jobs ranging from drivers and bodyguards to heads of security and intelligence. Ironically, Yukos itself was and continues to be one of the main employers of the ex-KGB officers.
In the early 1990s the KGB had been split up into different organisations, including external intelligence, secret police and the special communication service. "The KGB had been dispersed for most of the 1990s until Mr Putin came to power," Ms Kryshtanovskaya says.
The election of the former KGB officer as Russia's president restored the self-esteem and social status of the impoverished and humiliated officers. "All the different elements of the former KGB have come together in their support for Putin," she says.
"The siloviki are a very homogenous group in terms of their social status and mentality. They think they act in the interest of the state and their aim is for Russia to be feared again," she says.
Ms Kryshtanovskaya, who conducted numerous interviews with the siloviki, says most are driven by the interest of the state rather than personal gain.
"They would rather be in Mr Putin's team than take a bribe."
Russia's oligarchs, on the other hand, who gained control over the country's natural resources through the controversial privatisations of the 1990s, have acted against the state's interests, as far as the siloviki are concerned, and should therefore be squeezed out of the country or crushed.
"They call it patriotism and statesmanship. The trouble is that the notion of a strong state is inseparable in their mind from fear," Ms Kryshtanovskaya says.
Financial Times -- 1
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
