| Is there anything good in these decrees? [presidential
decrees on reshuffles in the security agencies]. A business friend
said, "They’ve lost their minds and their protection! [as in
protection racket – the money businesses have to pay to be protected].
The creation of multiple security agencies (twelve at present) with
search and investigative rights, i.e. phone-tapping, surveillance,
etc. led to the criminalization of these agencies. The tax police,
like the militia, began to act as protection rackets for small,
medium and large-scale businesses that were competing to have the
best "protection". The Federal Agency for Government Communications
and Information was transformed into a commercial organisation:
you merely need to take a look at their business proposals available
on the Internet (decryption and encryption services…).
The sale of telephones of governmental communications turned
Kremlin negotiations into a laughing stock. The abundance of print-outs
of conversations between high-ranking executives has become a
method of blackmail and black PR, to say nothing of the fact the
Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information,
formed out of three departments of the KGB of the USSR with 22
generals, turned into a federal monster with over 200 generals.
I am afraid that, in view of his warm feelings for generals, President
Putin will have to find new places for all of them (including
the Federal Tax Police).
The return of the border guards in the FSB (the Federal Security
Agency) may improve protection of the borders for one reason alone.
Today the budget of the FSB exceeds the budget of the Federal
Border Service by two times. May be the elder brothers will share
[some money] with them?..
That is the good news. And now let us turn to the dubious developments.
The creation of the State Committee for the Control of Narcotics
and Psychotropic Substances is a long-anticipated event. It will
have a projected staff of 40,000 people. But who will these people
be? If we throw all the staff of the Federal Tax Police into the
fight against narcotics, it may transpire that some of them end
up protecting the drugs barons.
Chance individuals in power are a scourge for Russia. People
who are not doing their work (and the Department for the Control
of Narcotics under the interior ministry has always been one of
those) may discredit the authorities themselves. We have already
let the steam engine pass ahead, forgetting to attach the train
cars. That is the danger of hasty decisions.
I see that Viktor Cherkesov (former presidential plenipotentiary
in the North-West district, and now Head of the State Committee
for the Control of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances) is a
friend and university class-mate of our president. But I can recall
only one episode of his experience in fighting narcotics: it was
the Fifth Department of the Leningrad KGB, where Cherkessov worked
in 1980s, which hid five grams of anasha (marijuana) on a well-known
writer Konstantin Azadovsky, who was then sentenced and spent
two years in the Kolyma prison camp (subsequently all the sentences
were repealed and Azadovsky was rehabilitated and the whole secret
operation of the fifth department of the Leningrad KGB was exposed)…
And now let me turn to the threat. I don't believe that the FSB
of the Russian Federation can at present become the same political
monster as the KGB of the USSR. We know many examples when heads
of the FSB, at different levels, were more engaged in their own
business than in protection of some new national idea. Therefore,
from this angle they are less dangerous than they appear.
However, there is another threat- total control over the economy.
Often they push out with their iron elbows anybody who tries to
enter business without an epaulet under their stylish jackets.
And there is another even more serious threat - the loss of civil
control over the control of the secret agencies. Even the State
Duma has today to backdate the new laws which in status turned
out to be inferior to decrees.
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