Paul Goble
As Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to reimpose totalitarianism on Russia, the Federal Security Service (FSB) increasingly mirrors its Soviet predecessors, including rebuilding a network of camps some are calling “Gulag 2.0,” among other ways.
The quiet revival of these other functions is likely to be even more important in terms of their impact on Russian society at home and how Moscow behaves abroad.
This restored behemoth, given the FSB’s ideological flexibility and technical sophistication, may thus prove more dangerous than the KGB from which Putin himself sprung and cast a dark shadow on Russia’s future long after he leaves the scene.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to reimpose totalitarianism on Russia. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is increasingly playing the roles its Soviet predecessors did in the suppression of Russian society. Last week, Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two of the most distinguished investigators of the Russian security services, published an article gaining traction in Russian independent media in which they argued that “Russia’s FSB is working to build a new Gulag” (CEPA, June 23; Agentura.ru, June 24; The Moscow Times, June 25). Because many associate the Gulag more closely with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin than any other institution, their warning is attracting attention in Russia and abroad, far more than the series of steps the FSB has already taken, which have put in place much of the rest of Stalin’s system. These other moves are already having a significant impact on Russian society at home and Moscow’s behavior abroad. Perhaps even more seriously, however, this restored security behemoth, given the FSB’s ideological flexibility and technical sophistication, shows every sign of being even more dangerous than the Soviet security agencies from which Putin himself sprung, both now and in the future.
In their report, Soldatov and Borogan note that the Duma is set to pass three bills this month that will effectively revive the Gulag. One will allow the FSB to set up its own pretrial detention centers, something Moscow promised in the 1990s never to allow. A second directive instructs the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) to schedule “special carriages” that can be attached to regular trains to transport prisoners to the camps. A third gives the FSB “the power to investigate and punish in-house those who cause trouble within detention facilities”(CEPA, June 23; Agentura.ru, June 24; The Moscow Times, June 25). These steps, most of which formalize and extend powers that the FSB had previously arrogated to itself behind the scenes, are making the Russian security service again a law unto itself, with its own agenda that it presses its nominal master in the Kremlin to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment