Siloviks & Scoundrels

A couple of weeks ago, at the height of the Pussy Riot hubbub, I was speaking to a colleague who assured me that Russia today had proportionately as many secret police officers as Stalin’s USSR. Really? What was the source? Ah, said my interlocutor – a smart and thoughtful individual, but a specialist in culture, not coercion – that’s what all my friends in Moscow say.

Conversely, last week a businessman enthusiastically talking up the opportunities in Russia reassured me that the political police had been dismantled. Instead, they just fought jihadist terrorists and gangsters.

Neither, needless to say, was right. Each simply reflected their own preconceptions and those of their Russian friends: disgruntled intelligentsia versus government officials. One reason for such widely and wildly differing perceptions is the lack of much hard data on the government’s security apparatus. There are some journalists who cover these issues well – Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan deserve particular credit – but there are also a great deal of myths and secrecy.

© RIA Novosti. / Sergey Pyatakov

Andrei Soldatov, security forces expert

Leaving aside the baton-wielding enforcers, who are the spooks, agents provocateurs and informants whose job is to control the rising protest movement?

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is Russia’s lead internal security agency. Its Service for the Protection of the Constitution and Struggle against Terrorism plays the lead role in monitoring and suppressing anti-government activism but at present is relatively quiet. It seems to believe that too heavy a hand now will just radicalize protest. Conversely, Alexander Bastrykin’s Investigations Committee, the driving force behind recent inquiries involving Alexander Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak, among others, is pushing a tougher line. The Committee is not specifically tasked with political crimes, but seems eager to stake out this turf.

The majority of the work on the ground against activists is actually done by the police, though. Since 2008, the Interior Ministry has run a nationwide network of “E Centers” – e for extremism – which have acquired a reputation for their emphasis on results over the detail of the law. I have heard activists contrast the FSB favorably with the thuggish officers of these centers. The trouble is that there is no clear definition of extremism, which comes to mean whatever the cops choose. Second, like other police, they have arrest and prosecution quotas. In other words, where no extremism exists, they must go out and find – create – some.

In Russia, there seem to be intelligence agencies and paramilitary special forces wherever you look. The Federal Protection Service is responsible for the physical security of key government figures and buildings and its Presidential Security Service investigates any potential threats to them. Even the Foreign Intelligence Service seems increasingly keen to assert a role monitoring external support for domestic anti-government forces. Maybe they believe all the nonsense about U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul and the State Department trying to foment regime change? And given the close ties between politics and business, the security departments of some state corporations like Gazprom and Russian Technologies are taking an interest in the political activities of their employees.

Every country has internal security agencies – and often several. But Russia is not well served by having so many whose roles are unclear and who are engaged in a struggle for authority and resources. From the Investigations Committee and FSB articulating rival strategies to E Centre grunts looking to meet their quotas, the spooks are put in a position in which they need to seem more aggressive than their rivals. Where no constitutional threat exists, they need to find it. Where there is dissatisfaction, they need to present it as active conspiracy. The Kremlin is not only getting the dissent it deserves, but also the dissent it creates. 

Mark Galeotti (Twitter: @markgaleotti) is Professor of Global Affairs at New York University’s SCPS Center for Global Affairs. His blog, “In Moscow’s Shadows,” can be read at http://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress. com. The views expressed here are the author’s own.