Acting President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. has signed a decree restoring the so-called special departments (counterintelligence cells — Ed.) in the army. In Soviet times, the activities of these structures created an abyss between the secret police and the Ministry of Defense. The military did their best to ward off the watchful eye of the Lubianka (Moscow’s KGB headquarters — Ed.). And now they are returning.
Frankly speaking, Mr. Putin finds it hard to trust the military, and it is known that he will have to end the Chechnya War sooner or later, but the army problems will remain. Hence he creates conditions to keep the army environment under the control of people he can trust, that is, his former colleagues from the Federal Security Service (FSB).
More and more former FSB officials are making their way to various ministries and agencies from the Ministry of the Press to the Ministry of Defense, from the government staff to the Kremlin. This is Mr. Putin’s future team.
A different thing is how other coercive agencies will view the formation of this team. It is common knowledge the Internal Affairs Ministry has been precisely the main enforcer agency in Russia in recent years. Now its head Vladimir Rushailo assures the Acting President of his loyalty, but observers say the Minister of the Internal Affairs will do his best to weaken Mr. Putin’s position. Fair enough! Can one be indifferent to a police state turning into a KGB one?
Of course, the main struggle of the those exercising coercion remains in the future. But it can hardly be stopped. The reinforcement of the FSB is too demonstrative not to tease others in uniform, especially, those with general’s stars. These people will launch their main struggle after the presidential elections. And, incidentally, the future of Russia depends to a large extent on the outcome of this struggle. For the victory of, say, the “security officers” will mean a very specific atmosphere of societal development in the Putin era. The victory of the policemen will mean a weakened Kremlin power and inevitable resignation of new President in a year or two. And the victory of the military will mean permanent war in the Caucasus.
The choice is, of course, not the best. However, Russian society, which at the end of Boris Yeltsin’s rule was offered, one by one, three cloak and dagger politicians — Primakov, Stepashin, and Putin — could hardly expect a different course of events.
