“A century of alliance and crime”. Since the creation of the Cheka in 1917, which became the KGB during the Soviet Union, then the FSB in contemporary Russia, the Russian secret services have never ceased to want to seize power by all means, says the historian Yuri Felshtinsky in a book co-authored with Vladimir Popov, From the Red Terror to the Terrorist State: The Russian Secret Service Conquering the World published by Cerf.
But since the arrival of Vladimir Putin at the head of the country, the control taken by the FSB is sprawling. To the point that Russia has become the only state in the world where the secret services have a monopoly of power. The war in Ukraine and the aborted rebellion of Yevgueni Prigojine nevertheless reveal Putin’s weakened position, analyzes this Russian-American historian, expert on the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. Interview.
L’Express: When, in the history of the Soviet Union and Russia, did the secret services take power?
Yuri Felshtinsky : Since the revolution of 1917, there have been many attempts by the secret services. Throughout the period of the Soviet Union, they tried, under different names and organizations, to take control of the state, without succeeding. It’s kind of a tradition. The first successful attempt dates back to the presidency of former KGB chief Yuri Andropov in 1982, who also held the chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet. But he died quickly and the KGB was removed from political power.
The second successful attempt dates back to 1999, when Vladimir Putin became interim president to succeed Boris Yeltsin, before being legally elected president of the Russian Federation. The election of this former KGB officer, who became a young director of the FSB, confirms the seizure of power by the security services over the State, and continues to this day.
Can we say that the FSB is today, under Putin, more powerful than the KGB during the Stalin era?
Yes. The KGB was, of course, a very powerful and influential tool within the state, but it did not have political control over the Communist Party. When the USSR fell in August 1991, the Party lost its monopoly of power. For the first time, the KGB, then the FSB, had free rein. The FSB takes advantage of this to infiltrate all areas of society. At present, we do not know exactly how many people work for this institution, but we believe that the number is several hundred thousand. You find them everywhere: in banks, radio stations, publishing houses… It’s a much bigger network than you can imagine.
In Russia, there is a market economy in principle, but it is totally corrupt. Politically, there is no real opposition party. The State Duma – Russia’s parliament – is a powerless institution. Everything is in the hands of the FSB, the rest is just facade. It is impossible to fight against them.
How did the FSB impose itself?
It took several years for the FSB to consolidate its power and build a certain ideology. The first stage took place in 2004, with Putin’s economic takeover of the oligarchs, such as the forced exile of Boris Berezovsky in 2000 or the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky…
In 2005, Putin declared that the end of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” and a “drama” for the Russian people. Already, he indicates that there will be problems with Ukraine, then later with Belarus and Kazakhstan, countries in which many Russians lived and still live. Putin then constructed the idea that Russia has the right to defend its Russian-speaking population, regardless of where they live. This is the policy of “Novorossiya”.
On the international scene, his remarks are not taken seriously, especially when he makes it clear that Russia wants to recreate its old empire. It was in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Ukrainian Donbass, that we understood that Putin did not want to stop at Ukraine: the project was indeed to rebuild an empire. And part of the world population began to believe this and to think that after all, the Russians had the right to do so, because historically Russia only existed in the form of an empire. It is the same discourse as that of Hitler in the 1930s, but also that of the 1917 revolution. The USSR did not succeed, because if Stalin wanted to take control of Europe, his ideology however, was not developed enough.
If the FSB is so powerful, how can one explain that the “rebellion” of Prigozhin, a blow to Putin’s image, could have happened?
It is a part of the story of which it is still difficult to understand all the ins and outs. First of all, we must ask ourselves the following question: how could a former prisoner approach President Putin so closely? It would be crazy to think that a Russian citizen not linked to the FSB could serve food to the president or create a military organization! It therefore appears obvious that Wagner is a parallel structure created by the FSB. There were already, in the Soviet Union, organizations of this kind created from scratch by the KGB, such as trade unions, which of course had nothing to do with labor law…
Did the FSB want to oust Putin?
I think that Putin, although having come to power as a representative of the interests of the FSB, is beginning to have problems with this organization. Some are fed up with the war, which has lasted for more than a year and a half, especially since there is no one in Russia who is satisfied with the military progress. Moreover, the president has engaged in nuclear blackmail with the West, as shown by the publications of a very serious Kremlin adviser, Sergei Karaganov, who pushes for the use of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Europe. This very radical speech coincides with the transfer of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The turn that Russian foreign policy is taking may frighten part of the FSB. Putin being afraid of a conflict with this institution, he decided to diminish the role of Wagner, forcing Prigojine to merge his troops with the Ministry of Defense, and depriving him of the budget. And when Prigozhin decided to make his displeasure known by organizing his “march on Moscow”, he was actually following instructions from people like Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, or Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council.
As of June 24, we know that Putin has lost power: he apparently left Moscow during the rebellion, and not a single person made a comment to defend him. The situation resembles that of the August 1991 coup, when the communists tried to take control of the country. The attempt failed, but the leader of Perestroika came out of it very weak, which precipitated his resignation in December 1991. It is not known the nature of the negotiations between Putin and Prigojine, nor how long Putin will remain in power. He could resign later this year, do like Boris Yeltsin and transfer power. Or else not run for the presidential election of 2024.
Contrary to purges in the army, there is none in the FSB. How do you explain it?
Since Putin was in the KGB, he knows that friends in the FSB don’t exist. It is a very tough organization, which kills when necessary. As for the army, it is, by tradition, politically neutral in Russia. There will be no military coup. Putin can therefore use it to restore his image, because he has nothing to fear.
From now on, the Wagner group is based in Belarus. What can happen?
The situation is becoming very dangerous, because there are now nuclear weapons in Belarus. It’s a small country, and there are ten thousand soldiers from the Wagner group. The possibility that Russia is preparing an intervention from Belarus to Ukraine, and attacking kyiv for example, is materializing. In the worst case, Wagner can take control of nuclear weapons, in the interests of Russia. The Kremlin will insist on the fact that Belarus is an independent state and that Wagner is not linked to Russia… In my opinion, Belarus will become the major geopolitical point.