Many in the West believe that Putin, a former KGB operative, came out of nowhere and built the tyrannical security state by himself. However, most of the work had been done long before he became president of the Russian Federation.
In 1978, the State Security Committee was renamed to the KGB and raised to the level of a union ministry. The chairman and Putin’s hero Yuri Andropov became a member of the Politburo. This was the first time that the head of the political police rose so high after the downfall of Stalin’s henchman Beria.
Security forces grew in power in lockstep with the rapid deterioration of the economy and the decline of the ruling elites. This should be a cautionary tale to every country that faces a social and economic decline.
There was a competition between branches of the alphabet agencies (KGB, GRU, SVR, MVD), persisting in the strategy of “divide and rule.”
The competition was fierce and the employees of agencies used “kompromat” and “falsified cases” against each other to tap into finite resources.
Corruption was widespread in every agency. Police (MVD) and secret police (KGB) kept the most profitable sectors of shadow businesses under their control. Trials that resulted in death sentences were a form of legal elimination of witnesses.
In 1975, the USSR joined the Helsinki Accords and committed to respecting fundamental human rights and freedoms. The KGB now had to correlate its actions with the new norms.
In 1977, a new Constitution of the USSR was adopted, which ditched the concept of "dictatorship of the proletariat" and established the country as a "people's state.”
The KGB could not be guided by "instructions of the Central Committee" but by the legislation, i.e. the law.
Victims of the KGB’s illegal actions could refer to the law, the Constitution, and the Helsinki Accords. Torture and murder of opponents of the regime had been common, but now they were replaced by psychological pressure, the so-called "preventive work".
To this day, the FSB (successor to KGB) operatives apply psychological pressure to the critics of the regime. Only when tough talk does not change the dissident’s behavior do they exert physical force: poisoning, defenestration.
At the end of the 1970s, when Putin joined the KGB, communist fanaticism disappeared among the agents, and the former zeal for carrying out repressive orders was gone. KGB agents listened to the music of the banned musicians, bought Western merchandise, and traveled abroad at the first opportunity.
There was an unprecedented amount of bureaucratic routine and paperwork. Putin is a stickler for bureaucratic processes because he made his career in that milieu. Operatives compiled reports on the contents of suspicious speeches of liberal comedians, musicians, and movie directors. The KGB registered any manifestation of discontent, sharply reducing the effectiveness of operational work.
There was no analytical department to process all the cases, find patterns, and identify their causes, where the Americans excel. There was big data and the KGB did not know how to use it or what to make of it.
The result was that the leaders knew very little about anti-Soviet and separatist activities in the republics and Warsaw Pact countries.
The KGB is responsible for the Politburo's disastrous decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Yury Andropov convinced Brezhnev that "it won't last long" and that the Afghans were waiting for Soviet soldiers with joy.
The FSB agents committed the same mistake convincing Putin that the Ukrainians would be waiting for Russian soldiers with flowers based on the accounts of a few Ukrainians who didn’t represent the majority.
The KGB failed to give the Politburo a clear answer about the background of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan. Despite the opinion of Soviet scientists that the Americans were bluffing, it was decided to respond with a huge military program that would bankrupt the state.
In 1989, during the acute political crisis, the KGB failed to provide a consistent strategy for emerging from it. In the same year, the KGB became a law enforcement agency transformed from a structure guarding communism into an agency to protect all citizens regardless of political beliefs.
Ironically, the agency filled the ideological vacuum by first protecting the fortunes of oligarchs and after an FSB coup orchestrated in 1999, began to guide their interests zealously as the new rulers of Russia.
This happened because the job of the new KGB formed in 1989 did not change. They continued to go after the same “ideological saboteurs.” Today it’s the political opposition, “nazis” in Ukraine, and Collective West.
Putin and his buddies have never changed old habits.
