The Return of the KGB.

[Michael K.]

http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/d ... 0_2007.pdf

The Return of the KGB.  

The former KGB Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky writes: "After the democratic reforms of the 1990s the KGB officers managed to get everything back. All the Directorates of the Soviet KGB are reunited now in today's FSB, except two of them: the First, which managed intelligence, and the Ninth, which guarded the highest Communist bureaucrats. Both are formally independent, but keep close connections with the FSB...The former First Chief Directorate of the KGB is now called the Foreign Intelligence Service. It is successfully managing the operation 'ROCOR'" – that is, the absorption of ROCOR into the MP.

The intelligence experts Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhinconfirm this assessment: "Ridiculed and reviled at the end of the Soviet era,
the Russian intelligence community has since been remarkably successful at reinventing itself and recovering its political influence. The last three prime ministers of the Russian Federation during Boris Yeltsin's presidency –Yevgeni Primakov, Sergei Stepashin and Vladimir Putin – were all former
intelligence chiefs. Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin as President in 2000, is the only FCD [First Chief Directorate] officer ever to become Russian leader. According to the head of the SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service], Sergei Nikolayevich Lebedev, 'The president's understanding of intelligence activity and the opportunity to speak the same language to him makes our work considerably easier.' No previous head of state in Russia, or perhaps anywhere else in the world, has ever surrounded himself with so many former intelligence officers. Putin also has more direct control of intelligence that any Russian leader since Stalin. According to Kirpichenko, 'We are under the control of the President and his administration, because intelligence is directly subordinated to the President and only the President.' But whereas Stalin's intelligence chiefs usually told him simply what he wanted to hear, Kirpichenko claims that, 'Now, we tell it like it is'.

"The mission statement of today's FSB and SVR is markedly different from that of the KGB. At the beginning of the 1980s Andropov proudly declared that the KGB was playing its part in the onward march of world revolution. By contrast, the current 'National Security Concept' of the Russian Federation, adopted at the beginning of the new millennium, puts the emphasis instead on the defence of traditional Russian values: 'Guaranteeing the Russian Federation's national security also includes defence of the cultural and spiritual-moral inheritance, historical traditions and norms of social life, preservation of the cultural property of all the peoples of Russia, formation of state policy in the sphere of the spiritual and moral education of the population...'

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Soviet intelligence system from Cheka to KGB was its militant atheism. In March 2002, however, the FSB at last found God. A restored Russian Orthodox church in central Moscow was consecrated by Patriarch Aleksi II as the FSB's parish church in order to minister to the previously neglected spiritual needs of its staff. The FSB Director, Nikolai Patrushev, and the Patriarch celebrated the mystical marriage of the Orthodox Church and the state security apparatus by a solemn exchange of gifts. Patrushev presented a symbolic golden key of the church and an icon of St. Aleksei, Moscow Metropolitan, to the Patriarch, who responded by giving the FSB Director the Mother God 'Umilenie' icon and an icon representing Patrushev's own patron saint, St. Nikolai – the possession of which would formerly have been a sufficiently grave offense to cost any KGB officer his job.

Though the FSB has not, of course, become the world's first = intelligence agency staffed only or mainly by Christian true believers, there have been a number of conversions to the Orthodox Church by Russian intelligence officers past and present – among them Nikolai Leonov, who half a century ago was the first to alert the Centre to the revolutionary potential of Fidel Castro. 'Spirituality' has become a common theme in FSB public relations materials. While head of FSB public relations in 1999-2001, Vasili Stavitsky published several volumes of poetry with a strong 'spiritual' content, among them Secrets of the Soul (1999); a book of 'spiritual-patriotic' poems for children entitled Light a Candle, Mamma (1999); and Constellation of Love: Selected Verse (2000). Many of Stavitsky's poems have been set to music and recorded on CDs, which are reported to be popular at FSB functions.

"Despite their unprecedented emphasis on 'spiritual security', however, the FSB and SVR are politicized intelligence agencies which keep track of President Putin's critics and opponents among the growing Russian diaspora abroad, as well as in Russia itself. During his first term in office, while affirming his commitment to democracy and human rights, Putin gradually succeeded in marginalizing most opposition and winning control over television channels and the main news media. The vigorous public debate of policy issues during the Yeltsin years has largely disappeared. What has gradually emerged is a new system of social control in which those who step too far out of line face intimidation by the FSB and the courts. The 2003 State Department annual report on human rights warned that a series of alleged espionage cases involving scientists, journalists and environmentalists 'caused continuing concerns regarding the lack of due process and the influence of the FSB in court cases'. According to Lyudmilla Alekseyeva, the current head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which has been campaigning for human rights in Russia since 1976, 'The only thing these scientists, journalists and environmentalists are guilty of is talking to foreigners, which in thenSoviet Union was an unpardonable offence.' Though all this remains a far cry from the KGB's obsession with even the most trivial forms of ideological subversion, the FSB has once again defined a role for itself as an instrument of social control..."

The central figure in this "spiritualization" but at the same time "resovietization" of Russia was Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Coming to power on January 1, 2000, he presented himself as "all things to all men": a chekist to the chekists, a democrat to the democrats, a nationalist to the nationalists, and an Orthodox to the Orthodox. Putin's propagandist Yegor Kholmogorov has written: "Putin's power was, from the very beginning, non-electoral in origin, it was not a matter of being 'appointed by Yeltsin', but of what the Chinese call 'the mandate of heaven', an unquestioned right to power... " Putin was indeed resembling a Chinese emperor more than a democratic politician, not only in his political style, but also in his fabulous personal wealth, calculated at $40 billion...

Putin is no believer. On September 8, 2000, when asked by the American television journalist Larry King whether he believed in God, he replied: "I believe in people..."  Moreover, as George Spruksts writes,

"1) he lights menorahs when he worships at his local synagogue;
"2) he has worshipped the mortal remains of Kin Il Sung in North Korea;
"3) he has worshipped the mortal remains of Mahatma Gandhi;
"4) he 'believes not in God, but in Man' (as he himself has stated);
"5) he was initiated into an especially occult form of 'knighthood' (read:
freemasonry) in Germany;
"6) he has restored the communist anthem;
"7) he has restored the bloody red rag as the RF's military banner;
"8) he has not removed the satanic pentagram from public buildings
(including cathedrals);
"9) he has plans of restoring the monument to 'Butcher' Dzerzhinsky [now
fulfilled];
"10) he has not removed the satanic mausoleum in Red Square nor its
filthy contents."

Preobrazhensky points out that Putin "began his career not in the intelligence ranks but in the 'Fifth Branch' of the Leningrad Regional KGB, which also fought religion and the Church. Putin carefully hides this fact from foreign church leaders, and you will not find it in any of his official biographies... The myth of Putin's religiosity is important for proponents of 'the union'. It allows Putin to be characterized as some Orthodox Emperor Constantine, accepting the perishing Church Abroad under his regal wing.  For his kindness we should be stretching out our arms to him with tears of gratitude..."

"For those who claim," writes Professor Olga Ackerly, "that the 'CIS is different from the USSR' and Putin is a 'practising Orthodox Christian', here
are some sobering facts. The first days and months Putin's presidency were highlighted by the reestablishment of a memorial plaque on Kutuzovsky
Prospect where Andropov used to live. The plaque was a symbol of communist despotism missing since the 1991 putsch, bearing Andropov's
name – a former head of the KGB, especially known for his viciousness in the use of force and psychiatric clinics for dissidents. On May 9, 2000, Putin proposed a toast to the 'genius commander' Iosif Stalin and promoted many former KGB officers to the highest state positions...

"Important to note is that the Eurasian movement, with ties to occultism, ecumenism, etc. was recently revived by Putin, and a Congress entitled 'The All-Russian Political Social Movement', held in Moscow in April of 2001, was 'created on the basis of the Eurasist ideology and inter-confessional [sic!] harmony in support of the reforms of President Vladimir Putin.' The movement is led by Alexander Dugin, a sexual mystic, National Bolshevik Party member, son of a Cheka cadre, personally familiar with the so-called 'Black International', advisor to the State Duma, and participant in Putin's 'Unity' movement."

Banking on the high price of Russian oil, Putin began to rebuild Russia's economic and military might. But the corruption (often State-sponsored) within the Russian economy hindered the diversification of the economy that he needs. From 2003 Putin moved to reverse the main gains of the liberal 1990s – religious freedom, and a more open and honest attitude to the Soviet past. Churches were seized from True Orthodox Christians and their websites hacked; elections were rigged, independent journalists were killed, and independent businessmen imprisoned on trumped-up charges. New history books justifying Stalinism were introduced into the classrooms. Youth organizations similar to the Hitler Youth were created. Putin's Russia began to resemble Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The MP has shown complete loyalty to Putinism, and takes an enthusiastic part in the criminal economy. This is illustrated by the activities of the recently elected patriarch, Cyril Gundiaev, who imports tobacco and alcohol duty-free and is now one of the richest men in Russia.  And so it is Putin who personally brokered the union of the MP and ROCOR, an idea first mooted by Archbishop Mark in 1997 and by Archbishop Laurus on July 17, 1999...