You Can't Change Us: Russian Security Services in the Age of Reform

In 1992, the Russian Federation was a state in flux. Amidst an historic territorial breakup, a collapsing economy, and the formation of a new political society, some Western observers hoped that Russia would gradually arrive into the ranks of liberal-democratic states out of the ashes of the Soviet Union. In Russia itself, several vocal reformers created the impression that this dream could soon be within the country’s grasp. And yet, Russia did not start with a clean slate. The legacy of authoritarian Soviet politics still cast a long shadow over the new country. The facade was crumbling, but the fundamentals remained.
One key totalitarian institution that survived the initial onslaught of reforms and reorganizations was the security services, namely, the Committee for State Security [Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti—KGB]. In the eyes of optimistic reformers, the fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of an independent Russian state provided the ideal opportunity to rein in the security services and transform them based on the models of Western intelligence services—especially the American, British, and French.
In fact, despite these preliminary stirrings of liberal thought and condemnation of the Soviet security services, Russia’s first years of independence did not see their dismantling. To the contrary, besides some cosmetic organizational reshufflings, these institutions remained an integral part of the state’s operations. Scholars such as Yevgenia Albats have noted that the power of Russian security services, especially the Federal Security Service [Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti—FSB], has outpaced those of the KGB and or its predecessors, as they are now subject to the oversight of neither the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) nor any other government institution, such as the State Duma. They are answerable only to the Russian President. The question must then be asked: why did the security services—built to stabilize a totalitarian regime—grow, not contract, during Russia’s first years?
During this period, Russian security services used perceived state emergencies to validate their continued existence and expansion. Chechen separatism and the domestic terrorism that followed throughout the 90s fed on an unstable political and economic environment, giving the security services a new raison d’être and producing a key public rationalization used at first to survive and then to consolidate power. Widespread condemnation of low pay and attrition within security services’ ranks, corruption, economic crime, drug trafficking and consumption, and the perceived influx of Western intelligence agencies into Russian territory during this period all served as justifications to expand their budgets and legal capabilities.
When actual crises were not enough to vindicate power consolidation, security services personnel and institutions used past triumphs to remind the public of the meaningful role they played in Soviet history. Furthermore, the active mythicization of past notable leaders like the Cheka’s founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, rehabilitated the ethos of the “noble chekist.” This essay studies aspects of these rationalizations—both actual and mythological—in memoirs produced by ex-chekists as well as the propaganda of the security services to better understand the persistence and growth of security services during the Russian Federation’s early years.