- The Russian Bear Hasn’t Changed Its Spots

The Russian Bear Hasn’t Changed Its Spots

Written by Warren Mass

Wednesday, 20 August 2008 13:21

Yes, the common expression is “a leopard can't change its spots,” but neither, apparently, can the Russian bear.

Condoleezza Rice The bear has been used as the personification of Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and the present post-Soviet Russia alike, and one trait common to all of these regimes has been heavy-handed, autocratic rule. Expansionism has also long been a characteristic of the Russian bear, examples of which include Peter the Great’s war against Sweden and subsequent annexation of land on the Gulf of Finland; Catherine the Great’s domination of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and war against the Ottomon Empire, extending Russia’s border to the Black Sea; and, of course, the Soviet Union’s brutal liquidation of the Kulaks of the Ukraine and domination of Eastern Europe for several decades following World War II.

What prompts this discussion at this particular time is the current Russian incursion into the sovereign nation of Georgia. Though the dynamics of this ongoing crisis will undoubtedly change on a daily basis, this Russian intrusion should serve to hammer home an important point: Despite their pretense of casting aside the oppressiveness of the Soviet era, the leaders of present day Russia are cut from the same bolt of cloth as Leonid Brezhnev, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

When we take a look at the current Russian political leadership, continuity with Russia’s Soviet past is not surprising. For starters, it is important to recognize who is really calling the shots in Russia. An article in the Washington Post for August 14, “Conflict Makes Clear Who Rules in Russia” asserts — with much credibility — that President Dmitry Medvedev is merely a dutiful servant to his predecessor and patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. To bolster its case, the article quoted Alexander Golts, deputy editor of the Moscow-based Daily Journal. Golts had reported that when Putin returned from Vladikavkaz, a Russian city near the Georgian war zone, Russian TV showed Putin giving orders to President Medvedev.

“One scene was very clear, when Putin began to tell the president what to do. It was not a private conversation. Putin wanted to show that he was in charge,” said Golts. “Everybody was shocked.”

Showing that separation of powers was not a strong point of the Russian political system, Golts observed that the conflict also highlighted the redundancy of the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. “No one thought about a session of Duma. No one even bothered,” Golts said. “The Duma has simply disappeared from Russia's power structure.”

Another significant quote in the Post article came from Tatyana Parkhalina, director of the Center for European Security. The article noted: “Parkhalina said the Russia-Georgia conflict put an end to the perception that perhaps there was some genuine competition between Medvedev and Putin’s clique of former KGB officers whose views were shaped in the Cold War era.

Putin's people ‘have won for the moment,’ she said. ‘This is very bad for the Russian Federation.’ ”

However, the problems with the Russian Federation are not new. While some of the most visible signs of oppression disappeared from view with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old Soviet-era apparatchiks hardly handed over the reins of power to the modern Russian equivalents of Madison and Jefferson.

While researching a 25th anniversary retrospective article entitled “KAL Flight 007 Remembered” for The New American magazine, this writer recently spoke with a man named Bert Schlossberg, founder of the Jerusalem-based International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors. (For those too young to remember, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet off the coast of Siberia in 1983.) Mr. Schlossberg was a very close associate of the late Avrahim Shifrin, a Soviet emigreé who authored the 1980 book The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union, and also founded the Israeli-based Research Center for Soviet Prisons, Psychprisons and Forced labor Concentration Camps of the USSR. Mr. Shifrin was once the chief legal adviser in the Soviet Ministry of War Equipment.

One of the questions we asked Mr. Schlossberg was whether he believed that the idea accepted by many in the West, that the Russian Federation is a much more free and open society than the old Soviet one, is fact or fiction. He replied:

“The KGB may not be there under the [same] name, but other people operate the same way. Avraham Shifrin made this comment to me: “Of course they’re there, of course the KGB still exists, forget about the name. What you do look at is the benefit, they’re on the benefit role, the same people that were on the KGB are under a new name getting the same benefits, the same personnel.”

Given the background of the present leaders of Russia, there is little need for speculation as to whether former KGB personnel have any influence in that government. A biography of Vladimir Putin posted on the New York Times website notes that Putin “joined the K.G.B. and served as a counterintelligence officer in East Germany from 1985 to 1990. He retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.” Furthermore, “Mr. Putin moved to Moscow in 1996, holding a series of posts in Mr. Yeltsin's government, including head of the K.G.B.'s successor, the Federal Security Service [F.S.B.].”

As Avraham Shifrin observed, “the same people that were on the KGB are under a new name getting the same benefits, the same personnel.”

It is interesting that while President Medvedev can easily be recognized as a mere pawn of his mentor, Putin, (and probably a caretaker president keeping the seat warm for Putin’s eventual return to the position) unlike Putin, Medvedev has no background in the K.G.B., or its successor, the F.S.B. That may explain why Putin personally visited the theater of operations in Georgia and was shown on Russian TV talking with military commanders near the front. During the onset of the conflict, Medvedev made no significant statements and continued his vacation on the Volga River with his family. This was too important a mission to be handled by anyone other than Putin, himself.

Some of the language that emanated from the Bush administration during this crisis harkens back to the days of the Cold War. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced at a news conference at the State Department: “This is not 1968, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”

Secretary Rice did not specify if the things that have changed pertained to Russia or the United States. Russia, like the Soviet Union of old, is still controlled by a secret intelligence clique — former members of the KGB. And the U.S. State Department, as in the days of old, is still headed by a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.