Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union: Volume 2

David Satter

Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union Volume 2

David Satter

NEVER SPEAK TO STRANGERS AND OTHER WRITING FROM RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION Volume 2

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Table of Contents Introduction............................................................................................ 9 Address to the U.S. State Department Open Forum....................... 13 Questions for Mr. Satter Following Speech ..................................... 21 “The Soviet Union is the most absurd and tragic country in the world...” ................................................................................................ 29 The Foreign Correspondent in Moscow On Manipulation and Deception................................................................................................ 35 Remembering Vyacheslav V. (“Slava“) Luchkov ........................... 47 Darkness at Dawn ............................................................................... 51 The “Russian Idea” of Nikolai Berdyaev ......................................... 57 Russia: Rebuilding the Iron Curtain. Hearing before the Committee On Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives ........... 63 Right and Wrong in Russia The moral and spiritual malaise of a great nation........................................................................................... 67 Symposium: “Russia’s Higher Values” ............................................ 73 Yeltsin: A Life ....................................................................................... 77 Symposium: Remembering the Dissident ........................................ 81 Vlad the Enforcer ................................................................................. 85 “What appeared after the overthrow of the Communist regime?

A Criminal Regime.“ ........................................................................... 89 “Recognize the unacceptable and believe the unbelievable” ........ 97 25 years after the shelling of Parliament. How Democracy Died ..................................................................................................... 103 A new version of the Cold War. Predictions by Kremlinologist Stephen Cohen ................................................................................... 111 A Pioneer Who Witnessed Revolutions ......................................... 119

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Cold from the East. How the West opened up to Russian corruption ........................................................................................... 121 Malfeasance in the Trump case. FBI criticized over “Russian trail“..................................................................................................... 125 How to deal with the Kremlin? Realism, Dialogue or Appeasement of Putin ...................................................................... 131 Putin Can’t Afford to Leave Office When His Term Ends........... 135 Fictitious country. Between Brezhnev’s Russia and Putin’s Russia .................................................................................................. 139 Soviet Politics, American Style ........................................................ 145 The Rhodes Scholarship Turns Against Its Legacy of Excellence ........................................................................................... 149 The Coup That Failed— but Toppled Communism ..................... 153 Happiness in the Absence of Freedom. David Satter in the Land of Mirages ................................................................................. 157 When the Hammer (and Sickle) Fell ............................................... 167 “In America, Russians are not considered enemies of humanity“ ........................................................................................... 171 “Putin will grab anything that is loose.“ The Soviet Instincts of the Kremlin .................................................................................... 181 Weakness at Home Drives Putin to Invade Ukraine .................... 189 How to Break Through Putin’s Propaganda in Russia ................ 193 “He must answer.” “Will Putin end up in the dock?” ................. 197 Russia’s Real Reasons for War with Ukraine................................. 203 From the bombings in Moscow to the invasion of Ukraine.

Could the West have stopped Putin?.............................................. 207 Mikhail Gorbachev’s Undoing Was His Devotion to Soviet Ideas .................................................................................................... 215 Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the USSR.......................................... 219

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Letters to the Editor ........................................................................... 223 Betting on Putin’s defeat. Is peace with Russia possible? ............ 225 How to answer the Stalinization of Russia?................................... 229 “Victim Culture and the Rhodes Scholarship” .............................. 233 Kremlin in Disarray. Prigozhin’s mutiny spells an uncertain future ................................................................................................... 241 Is Putin’s system collapsing? What conclusions are being drawn in the United States? ............................................................. 249 An incomprehensible country. Do American analysts understand Russia? ........................................................................... 253 The Peril of Abandoning Ukraine ................................................... 259 The Realist Who Didn’t Unravel Putin. The Misconceptions of Henry Kissinger ................................................................................. 263 A Century After Lenin’s Death, His Evil Legacy Lives On ......... 269 Acknowledgements ........................................................................... 273

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Introduction The Russia-Ukraine war did not arise out of a vacuum. It was preceded by a series of crimes by the Putin regime to which the West did not react or reacted incompetently. The West’s passivity, which was intended to avoid tensions with Russia, was actually a fatal mistake because it conditioned the Putin regime to believe that it could commit crimes with impunity. This contributed to the belief in Moscow that the regime had nothing to fear from initiating an all-out war.

There is incontrovertible evidence, for example, that Putin and the Yeltsin entourage were responsible for the bombings of four Russian apartment buildings in September 1999 which brought Putin to power. In August 1999, Putin was named Russia’s prime minister. His approval rating, mirroring the hatred in Russia of Boris Yeltsin who selected him, was 2 per cent. There seemed little hope that Putin or indeed anyone associated with Yeltsin could succeed him. But the bombings changed everything. They were used as a pretext for starting a new war in Chechnya. Putin was put in charge of the war and cast in the role of the avenger of terrorist attacks against ordinary Russian citizens. His popularity soared. His association with the corrupt Yeltsin regime was forgotten and he was elected president.

In fact, the role of the regime in carrying out the bombings should not be in doubt. A fifth bomb was planted in the basement of a building in Ryazan southeast of Moscow but was discovered before it could explode. The bombers were captured and turned out to be agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) This means that the bombs in the four successful attacks were also planted by the FSB. The Ryazan bomb tested positive for hexogen; the same explosive used in the four successful explosions. In other words, the Putin regime is and always has been illegitimate.

The importance of the apartment bombings for Russia’s postcommunist history cannot be exaggerated. Despite this, however, until recent years, Western journalists and officials were little interested in them and reacted with rejection and discomfort whenever 9

the subject was broached. In fact, many preferred a world of illusions that the Russians were happy to provide.

One of the instruments for disinforming the West was the Valdai Discussion Club, which for years attracted many of the West’s leading journalists and Russia specialists who were given the opportunity to spend a few days at close quarters with Russian leaders, including Putin. Invitations to the forum were coveted by would be Russia experts and, in some quarters, a person began to be considered a Russia expert because he attended this conference.

In reality, the conference imparted nothing of value and was not intended to. Its purpose was to inject into the political discourse, carefully selected clichés that would be useful to the Russian regime in the future. Russian officials spoke of Russia’s centuries old concern for its security and gave the impression of paranoia. They described Putin as a nineteenth century nationalist concerned with creating spheres of influence among the great powers.

This was also useful in distracting the visitors from the regime’s terrorist acts and connections to organized crime.

When a Western journalist or academic arrived in Valdai, he fell into the Kremlin’s psychological orbit. There was a general desire not to offend the host, not to ask questions that raised basic issues. In the rare cases when someone was brave enough to pose a serious question, it was seldom possible to pursue the matter with follow up questions. The floor could be given to a Russian or foreign plant who would then derail the discussion by changing the subject or even asking Putin how he accounted for his remarkable popularity.

Westerners dealing with Russia often resembled sleepwalkers who could not be persuaded they were not truly awake. But the cost of ignoring uncomfortable truths was very high. Ultimately, it was the use of terror against Russia’s own citizens and foreigners―such as the passengers on the Malaysian MH17 airliner, destroyed by Russian missiles in July, 2014―that confirmed Putin’s regime on the path to its most devastating crime, the war in Ukraine.

The first volume of “Never Speak to Strangers” was a collection of my writing from 1976 when I arrived in the Soviet Union until 2019. This second volume begins with interviews and 10

speeches that I gave about my experiences in the Soviet Union in 1976-82. The experience of the Soviet Union is often forgotten in the West, but it dominated the history of the twentieth century, and it was the incubator of the criminal state that exists in Russia today.

The later pieces are interviews and articles dealing with the Yeltsin and Putin regimes and, especially, Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Most of my energy is devoted to writing but, for four decades, I have given interviews to the Russian language media, in particular, Radio Liberty. A selection of these interviews makes up a substantial part of this book. The interviews show my reaction to events in Russia as they were taking place. They were given in Russian and appear here in English translations. In some cases, they have been slightly abridged.

Taken together, the articles and interviews in this volume and in its predecessor are a chronicle of my long engagement with Russia. There is an emphasis in this second volume on Western superficiality and the need to take account of the distinctive characteristics of Russia. I believe that the outbreak of war in Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of such an emphasis.

I also hope that the detailed record provided in these two books can be a guide for the future. The war in Ukraine will one day end and the West needs to approach Russia with more wisdom in the future than it has in the past. Russians are also not beyond learning from their mistakes. Perhaps some of the material in these volumes will be of help to them.

Russia’s future is, of course, far from clear. Change may come in the wake of defeat in Ukraine, but external events will hardly be enough to divert Russia permanently from the path of aggression and repression. For that, what is necessary is something more fundamental, a recognition of the authority of Western moral values and a rejection once and for all of Russia’s “special way.” That can occur only on the basis of an honest understanding of Russia’s past history and the knowledge of what Russia still has to overcome.

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Address to the U.S. State Department Open Forum October 1, 1982 I have been back in the U.S. for six months, after having lived for almost six years in the Soviet Union. During this period, I have thought a great deal about the differences between Americans and Soviet citizens. The Soviet Union says it created a “new man” and I am forced to acknowledge that this is true. A new type of person has been created in the Soviet Union as a result of sixty-five years of totalitarian rule, and there is justice in using the term “Homo Sovieticus.”

The first characteristic that distinguishes Soviet citizens from Americans is a tendency to live in a world of abstractions and to value these abstractions far more than the impoverished real world which they see around them. This tendency may be present in any country, but I think as a mass phenomenon, I encountered it for the first time when I went to Russia in 1976. I want to read from notes of a conversation I had in Moscow with an elderly lady who was partially paralyzed and who wanted to see me because she had something that she wanted to say to a person from the West. I think that her words reflect rather well the ideological mentality that exists in the Soviet Union and the tendency to value a mythical world over the world of day-to-day reality where, certainly, most Americans live.

I worked for the London Financial Times and this caused a certain amount of confusion. Many people assumed I was a British citizen. She began by telling me that “I deeply respect England for the involuntary decency of the English people.“ I interrupted her and told her I was an American, and she replied that she respected America too. She then added, “But you cannot understand what we understand in Russia. You can know that five or ten million people died in collectivization. That yet another twenty million people died in the war, and yet another twenty million people were people we killed ourselves. But understand me correctly, you can only look 13

on in amazement. You can’t understand what this means because the West—not England, not America—does not have the spirituality to understand what happened here. You devote yourself so completely to material enrichment that you only guarantee your spiritual impoverishment.“ She asked me if she could call me by my first name, and I, of course, said she could. She then gave me a piece of advice. “David, you have to analyze deeply, or you will never understand the spirituality of Russia. People here have suffered, and we have very little, but in our suffering has come understanding, and this is something you Western people will never understand because you haven’t lived as we have had to live.”

What was striking to me about this person and why I selected her admonition to me to illustrate the point about the Soviet preference for living in a world of ideas is the fact that this woman was a dissident who rejected the Soviet system utterly even as she demonstrated the fundamental quality of the Soviet mentality. The tendency to live in a mythical world of one‘s own creation is common to people who support the regime and to people who detest it and it is reflected in the daily operations of the Soviet state.

Another characteristic of the average Soviet citizen which distinguishes him radically from most American citizens is his extraordinary patience. Last October I made a trip to the town of Vologda, which is located 350 miles north of Moscow in the middle of a meat and dairy products producing area. Vologda is known throughout the Soviet Union for Vologda butter which is considered the Soviet Union’s finest butter. But there was no Vologda butter on sale in Vologda. In fact, there wasn’t any kind of butter on sale. The only product that approximated butter that was on sale was a certain type of margarine. And it was interesting to see whether this inspired any anger in people or discontent. And indeed, it did inspire anger but not at the shortages but rather at the fact that two Western journalists had arrived in Vologda to find out about them.

The shortages of butter that had been added to the long-standing shortages of meat, fruits and other products were explained to me as a necessary consequence of America’s aggressive policies toward the Soviet Union and the fact that the Soviet Union had to 14

defend itself in the face of American plans to build the neutron bomb. I was told that America is ready to do anything to arm itself but won’t grant the possibility that other countries have a right to defend themselves as well.

In shops in Moscow, where the food situation is better, when products ran out, salesgirls said, “that’s all right, we’ll stand this, we’ve endured far worse.” and in queues throughout the country— and this is a phenomenon that is so widespread that I think we can talk about something which is typical for the Soviet Union—when someone begins to object that there is no meat in the shops (although that would be asking a lot, insofar as there often is not butter in the shops and milk runs out in the middle of the day), a voice in the crowd, usually that of an older person, will begin to say “Well, at least we ‘ve got bread, at least we ‘ve got sugar, and thank God there is no war.“ This is supposed to silence all criticism, and in fact it does.

Another aspect of Homo Sovieticus which distinguishes him from a citizen of the United States is his instinctive respect for authority. In this country, people, even if they have not done everything possible to inform themselves about an issue, may suspect that they are as well qualified if not more qualified to make policy decisions than those who are responsible for making them. But in the Soviet Union there is widespread deference on this issue. Unlike Americans, Soviet citizens take it for granted that they don’t have all of the secrets of the state. If a conversation begins on a certain policy issue, for example, the invasion of Afghanistan, it will inevitably be ended by someone saying, “How do you know that? You don’t have all the facts. Only the Government has all the facts.“ This mentality is, of course, encouraged by a situation in which every Soviet citizen is well aware that the information at his disposal is limited. What he doesn’t think about, or in most cases what doesn’t occur to him, is that he lives in a system which is specifically designed to limit his access to information.

A consequence of this overall social situation is another defining characterization of Homo Sovieticus, which is his tendency to lie. People who believe that a world of their own ideals and imagination is just as real as the real world can be easily induced to ignore 15

the real world altogether. And this is what happens, with very harmful political consequences. We saw the Soviet tendency to lie at the time of the invasion of Afghanistan. President Carter was struck by this very forcefully when he called President Brezhnev after Soviet troops began moving into Afghanistan and was told that they were going in to prevent an external invasion, when of course, they were the external invasion. But this lie which so shocked President Carter and was a revelation for him would not have surprised any Soviet citizen. On the contrary, he would have been surprised that President Carter expected President Brezhnev to tell him anything else.

Lying is part of the fabric of Soviet life, and it is not just the way in which the Soviets deal with Americans. It is the way they deal with each other. And not just at the highest levels, but at every level. In every situation the recourse of officials is simply to lie, because telling the truth and feeling an obligation to tell the truth is a limit on the total exercise of power.

There was one case in which several leaders of the hippies, who sprung up in Moscow in the early 70s, approached the Moscow City authorities for permission to hold a demonstration. They had gathered almost a thousand people for the demonstration and being young, they had a lot of self-confidence. The leaders went to the Moscow City Council and said that they wanted to register the fact that there was going to be an anti-war demonstration on the following day by Moscow hippies. The people on the City Council said that “in our country demonstrations are only organized by the Komsomol.“ The leaders of the hippies said, “Well, we have come to inform you of the fact that there is a new movement in this country. It is called the hippies, and you are going to have to take account of it.” The city officials listened quietly, and then asked the leaders to describe the demonstration. The hippies began to describe the demonstration, where it would be held, etc. The city officials then agreed to give permission to hold the demonstration but asked for a list of the organizers in case there was property damage.

The hippies, pleased with their victory, gave the Soviet authorities the list and went home. That night everyone on the list was arrested. The next morning the police were out in force and beat up 16

people with clubs and brass knuckles. They had surrounded the entire area where the demonstration was to take place with buses, which were lined up bumper to bumper so that nobody could get near the square.

At one point I made serious efforts to locate a man named Alexei Nikitin, a friend of mine, a coal miner from Donetsk, who as a result of contacting Western correspondents, including me, had been put in a mental hospital and tortured with behavior modification drugs. I made a formal request to the Soviet Health Ministry for information about him. The request was on a stamped piece of office stationery as required and after several delays, I called the Head of Protocol at the Health Ministry and asked him if he had any news. He said, “I have a statement to read to you. I have been asked to inform you officially that citizen Alexei Vasilyevich Nikitin is not in any hospital either in the Donetsk oblast or in the Dnepropetrovsk oblast.” A Soviet citizen, who was with me at the time, an ethnic German who had been trying for thirty-three years to correct the mistake he had made by immigrating to the Soviet Union, said to me, after I described the official response, “that is a lie.“ Three days later, I learned that the Health Ministry’s official notification notwithstanding, Nikitin was being held at the Dnepropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital in the Dnepropetrovsk oblast.

The final important characteristic that I think distinguishes Soviet citizens from people in the West is, of course, fear. There is no longer mass terror, only selective repression. But the memory of the mass terror that did take place is sufficient to make the selective repression highly effective.

I wrote a story in 1980 in which I reported that workers at the automobile factories in Togliatti and Gorky had gone out on strike.

A Soviet friend of mine talked to me about the strike report several days later. He said, “That is absolutely impossible. Soviet workers are incapable of going on strike. They would never have the nerve to do that.“ I asked him why he thought that. He said, “If there had been a strike in Gorky, they would have killed all the people, burned down the entire town and created a lake. And when the American Embassy inquired what happened to the city of Gorky they would have said, ‘What city of Gorky? There was never a city 17

of Gorky. There is only Lake Gorky. There was never a city there. It was always a lake.’”

When I traveled to Lithuania, I talked to an elderly woman and I noticed that a six year old girl in the apartment was terribly distraught. The girl ran into another room and closed the door.

Later I talked to the woman, and she explained that the child had become hysterical and had told her after I left, “Grannie, you are going to be arrested and I will never see you again.“ The grandmother was not arrested but that child will live in fear for the rest of her life. She was born in the middle of the detente era.

I list these characteristics of Homo Sovieticus, and there are others that could be added to them because I think it is important, returning to this country and becoming accustomed again to the life I know here, to stress to Americans that we are dealing with people who are very different from us, who cannot be expected to react as we react, and who must be better understood by us for our own good and for their own.

I want to close these remarks by again reading some notes I made just before I left the Soviet Union. This time, my interlocutor was a man by the name of Leonid Borodin. He has since been arrested. He is a Russian nationalist and he had been arrested once before in the mid-1960s, for participating in a group of young people in Leningrad who, for the first time in Soviet history, had put together a conspiratorial organization which plotted the overthrow of the Soviet Government.

Borodin said that the difference between the Soviet and the American outlook could best be illustrated by imagining a line of people—say twenty or so—walking in perfect formation, tied to each other with ropes or even chains, climbing up the face of a mountain. To an American, those people are prisoners because only compulsion would force people to subject themselves to such terrible discipline. But to a Russian—to a Soviet citizen—those people are mountaineers and ahead of them is Mt. Everest, a glorious mountain peak and a radiant future, and they are accepting a discipline that would be intolerable for anyone else because they will make any sacrifice in order to achieve that radiant goal—which is world communism.

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“People in this country feel colossal righteousness in their behavior,” he said. “Did you ever watch [Soviet foreign minister] Andrei Gromyko when he speaks? For example, at the United Nations? His expressions. There is not a trace of self-doubt. People live badly in this country, but we are sure that we are stronger. If it becomes necessary, we’ll eat the leather off our shoes. Americans won’t eat the leather off their shoes. If Reagan asked them to, he wouldn’t be re-elected. But we will.

“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. And that is evil, and you have to fight that evil. If America builds 100 tanks, we’ll tighten our belts and build 102. This regime doesn’t want territorial supremacy or economic supremacy. It wants the ideological supremacy of Socialism over the whole world. And this is why when you in the West stand on the sidelines and say, ‘You are slaves, bound together, following like animals, why don’t you free yourselves,’ the only answer is an ironic laugh because we are ascending Everest. Before us is the great goal and nothing will stop us.”

In fact, the Soviet goal is a terrible one. The achievement of their goal would surely be the end of civilization as we know it. My experiences in the Soviet Union have convinced me that the formation of an adequate response by our government and our society to the challenge which the mentality of Homo Sovieticus represents is one of the most important challenges facing the United States for the next few years and, perhaps, for the rest of our lifetimes.

Thank you.

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Questions for Mr. Satter Following Speech Accepting what you say as probably very accurate, I wonder how it was possible for you as a foreign reporter in the Soviet Union to get access to people who felt free enough to express their mind to you. Surely you must have been one of the most surveilled and one of the most suspected types of foreigners within the Soviet Union.

Yes, this is certainly true. I don’t exclude the possibility that I and other foreign correspondents were under 24 hour a day surveillance, but we have to bear in mind some of the subtleties of the Soviet legal and political situation. Every Soviet citizen has the legal right to speak about his personal experiences and to express his views. Every Soviet citizen has the legal right to meet with any foreigner, including foreign correspondents. It’s the tremendous fear that has been engendered which prevents many people from doing so, and I think it is true to say that it is also the lack of desire on the part of many foreign correspondents to speak to Soviet citizens, which prevents there being wider contacts. A Soviet citizen who meets with a foreigner risks various forms of bureaucratic revenge, but there are many who are ready to take that risk in order to have contacts with Western representatives or whose lives have been so terrible that they are beyond the point of worrying any longer what the regime thinks, what the regime plans to do. They have what the Russians call a naplevatelsky attitude toward life which means they are ready to spit on everything. And those people oftentimes have had the most interesting experiences of all.

But the short answer to your question is that despite the repressiveness of the situation, there are people who are willing to talk to foreigners. Often, it is the foreigners who don’t want to talk to them.

Would you talk about the place of nationalism. Judging from your comments about Homo Sovieticus, it seems that ideology

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plays a tremendous part in the average Russian’s feelings toward his government. What role does nationalism play?

To answer that question, I’m going to ask if I can use a brief illustration from American Life. We’ve all known people who have a great deal of money and are intent on making more and whose desire to make money far exceeds their capacity to spend that money and who in fact show no desire to spend what they earn but simply to accumulate. What this reflects is a certain social automatism which is peculiar to a commercial society in which people are encouraged to pursue their individual material self-interest. Well, social automatism is not the exclusive prerogative of societies like ours. It exists in the Soviet Union as well, which is organized ideologically. Just as the person who is intent on accumulating wealth in a commercial society may not reflect on why he is doing it, many people in the Soviet Union are so psychologically mortgaged to the ideology of the country that even if they begin thinking about the ideology, they are incapable of divesting themselves of it.

Even for those who free themselves of the ideology, and in this category I think are many of the people we meet in an official capacity—people like Georgy Arbatov, the head of the USA Institute, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador—the situation is not easy. They may understand that Marxism-Leninism is absurd, but they also understand they have no life outside of that ideology, and therefore they haven ‘t the slightest incentive to act on their beliefs. So, whether people believe in this ideology or not, they are going to continue to behave as if they believe in it, and ultimately what you have is a system which operates outside of human intentions, on the basis of the social automatism that can be seen in any society.

But, in the Soviet Union, this social automatism is not under any kind of control.

How aware are the Soviet people of the nuclear arms race between our two countries? And what is their attitude and how do they express it if they do?

They believe that all of the troubles in the Soviet Union are directly or indirectly connected to aggressive American policies, that the Soviet Union is forced to arm itself in order to defend against imperialist aggressiveness as evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union is surrounded by 22

American bases. This is something which is fed to people day after day. On the eleventh floor of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, there are signs on the walls warning people what to do in case there is a chemical attack or in case there is a bacteriological attack.

The Soviets in their external propaganda are always belittling and ridiculing anyone who speaks of the Soviet threat. But inside the country, they constantly propagandize about the American threat, and this is used to justify every repressive measure. The Soviet authorities could not do without that American threat. It justifies the regime of secrecy in which a fifth of the country is closed to foreigners and much of the country is closed to Soviet citizens without special clearances. The whole elaborate system of passes and closed institutes and grades of secrecy and signed pledges not to speak to foreigners depends on this fiction which, in turn, maintains the totalitarian state. No matter how peaceable the behavior of the United States, the Soviet Union will continue to harp on an American threat.

They have no alternative because this is a necessary justification for the Soviet Union’s totalitarian structure.

Could you explain something of your observations of the official and unofficial American community in the Soviet Union and their behavior. Why don’t they talk to the Soviets?

In the case of resident journalists, only a handful speak Russian. And a non-Russian speaking journalist is inclined to develop sources in the USA Institute, at Novosti, the Soviet press agency, among official journalists who speak English. And he will, of course, be forced by the logic of his own behavior to over-value his contacts and to attach credence to the information that he gets from them. And then to add the credibility of his publication to the disinformation he is sending back to the West.

The life of foreigners in the Soviet Union is organized in such a way as to render the foreigner passive. Even the contacts with unofficial Soviets tend to follow predictable lines with people passing on generations of contacts. Many of these contacts are dissidents and Jewish refuseniks. These people are great as people and wonderful as friends, and these relationships are extremely important, but they tend to give the diplomat or resident correspondent the impression that the Soviet Union is a more normal society than it really is. If you are talking to normal people who are well informed, you see other Soviet citizens in their image.

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It is only through a real act of will, going out and speaking to someone who has just gotten out of a mental hospital, for example, rather than the head of the USA Institute, that you can begin to find out what is really going on in the society. It takes a tremendous degree of mental independence to operate outside of the context which the Soviets attempt to impose on you and the Soviets are adept at creating layers of reality. To go from one layer to the next deeper layer and to the next is the challenge that every foreigner who works in Moscow faces. Some of them have certainly met that challenge and others have certainly tried. Many of the journalists have not tried because they didn’t have the language. But, in general, our effort at understanding the Soviet Union both journalistically and diplomatically does leave something to be desired. It is not sufficient to help us understand what we have to understand—at least in my opinion.

I would like to know what is your assessment of what the Soviet people know and understand about the West, about America in particular, but also about some of the values that are in the West.

The reason I ask is that I wonder whether your analysis of Homo Sovieticus brings with it a skepticism regarding the ability of the Soviet people to live in a democracy or is it rather that at present given your observations, they seem to do what they can with what they see to be their choices.

At the present time, I think it is very hard to see how the Soviet Union could transform itself into a democracy given the mentality of the Soviet people. A democracy presupposes a certain capacity for self-restraint and that implies values and values need a foundation. All of that has been ripped up and destroyed there. Individual Soviet citizens who come to the West show themselves to be perfectly capable of living in a democracy, but they come to a society in which democratic values are already rooted.

We should do everything to bring pressure to bear to liberalize the Soviet Union internally because I do believe that this would blunt its imperialistic tendencies to some extent. Internal liberalization always serves as a kind of break, even if it is only a marginal break, on the expansionist tendencies of that regime. But to hope for democracy in Russia under foreseeable circumstances is unrealistic. I think the human destruction is simply too great, On the contrary if that regime begins to disintegrate, as it someday must, it may one day be in the national interest of the United 24

States to prop it up. They have destroyed the basis for an alternative development, and if that country were to explode, if the kind of emotional explosion which takes place in an individual when he learned the truth— and there are various ways to learn the truth—were to be replicated on a mass scale—we would see the worst bloodbath in history. The country would literally explode. That also is not in our interest.

I would like you to follow up a bit on what you think have been the effects of international broadcasts in the Soviet Union in light of the fact that the control of information has been really the key to the whole internal security system in that country and this is just about the only thing that penetrates that on a mass scale.

I think we should consider a person living in a provincial Soviet city far away from Moscow. He has never met a foreigner. This is the typical Soviet citizen. His ideas about the West are confused. The information that is distributed becomes more and more fantastic the further away you get from the center.

This person in the provinces has lived his entire life in a totalitarian society which is organized on the basis of the false reality of the Soviet regime. He operates in a world of complete disinformation with one exception—a foreign radio broadcast which comes to him from a country which he has never seen. He hears the voice of a Soviet emigre, who he has been taught to think of as a traitor. To accept the information in the broadcast puts him in the position of having to accept that everything he is told by his own government is a lie. Let’s say he takes the step of accepting that his whole world is based on lies. He then asks himself, “What am I supposed to do about it?“ He can’t leave the city where he lives because he can’t register in another city. He has no hope of leaving the country. If he is brave enough to face the truth of the situation and—most people just assume that what they are hearing is Western propaganda—he may be pushed to the point where he simply refuses to listen anymore because listening subjects him to undue strain.

The short answer to your question is that in fact the Western radio broadcasts are only effective at the margin. They affect people who are already aware or have some hope of leaving. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t of some use. If that emotional explosion that I described takes place in a person, all of the Western information which has stayed on the surface 25

of his subconscious, that he has never really assimilated, is assimilated instantly and the person immediately understands everything. From our point of view, if we understand the very real possibility that within a generation or within two generations there could be a terrible catastrophe in the Soviet Union, then it is obviously in our interest that the information that is accumulating somewhere at some subconscious level in peoples’ minds be highly accurate information and that it shows the best about this country and the best about democracy.

While you were in the Soviet Union, you saw both the waning days of detente and the advent of the Reagan Administration.

What approach do you think is most likely to mellow the Soviet leadership?

Well, I don’t think the Soviet leadership is going to mellow in either case.

I think the Soviet leadership operates according to its own imperatives.

Generally speaking, I think that Reagan did a great thing when he removed the self-censor. In his first press conference, he said quite frankly and absolutely truthfully that the Soviet Union is ready to commit any crime, to tell any lie. This is the absolute truth. I think it is important for the United States to call things by their proper names.

The whole philosophy of détente was miscast in my view. No web of interlocking relationships is going to restrain the Soviet Union from pursuing its vital interests. And ideological expansion is its vital interest.

I came to Moscow shortly before President Carter took office and I was astonished by some of the things that were done. I thought they were possible only if the administration had no reliable advice about the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, I think that Carter will be remembered for what I think was his enduring contribution, the Human Rights Crusade. I never, during my years in the Soviet Union, saw the Soviets so discomfited, so on the defensive and so really afraid of a step the American government had taken. I think the most valuable thing we could do, would be to pick up on that, not to let it flag and to understand that, where ideas are concerned, you cannot beat something with nothing. If the Soviet Union is competing with us, militarily, strategically, politically, economically and ideologically, and first and foremost ideologically; we cannot fail to compete with them ideologically. We have the means to do that, once we identify what our values are. It is a question of the traditional values of

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humanity that the United States because of the evolution of history is now entrusted to defend.

On this question of Soviet disinformation and the susceptibility of foreigners to it, just recently some dear friends of mine went over there. They are Harvard Ph.Ds. They are wonderful, brilliant, bright, knowledgeable, professional both of them. They came back completely melted by Dr. Arbatov, by everything they saw. And so, if this happens to the best and the brightest that we have in this country, what about the simple ordinary Foreign Service officer?

The Soviets understand that the fatal flaw of Westerners and of Americans, is our superficiality. They realize that the American assumes that what he sees on the surface may not completely, but to a great extent, reflect the essence of a situation. Therefore, we are not prepared for situations in what exists on the surface not only doesn’t reflect the essence of a situation, but in fact directly contradicts it. And it is the Soviet success in creating appearances, in creating the appearance of normality, particularly for the casual visitor to the Soviet Union, which is responsible for this flood of disinformation.

The Soviets don’t want to be like China during the Cultural Revolution. They know that people distrust a society about which they know nothing. They want us to have information about them, but they want us to have information which serves their purposes. To a great extent, the flow of information in this country is shaped by the Soviet authorities themselves. And the challenge is to break out of the framework that is imposed by the Soviet authorities and start giving real information because real information is one of the greatest weapons that this country has against the Soviet Union. Communism is an idea, and the only way that an idea can be beaten is with a better idea. We can arm to the teeth and still lose. I think that we really have got to begin by diagnosing why it is that even a Harvard Ph.D. can go to the Soviet Union and be fooled by Arbatov.

From your prospective, does it make any sense to support an embargo on grain, oil and gas equipment sales to the Soviet Union and should there be a consistent pattern against such sales?

I think consistency in dealing with the Soviet Union is very important.

The Soviet Union reacts to the limits which are placed on it externally.

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Psychologically, it is devastating for us irrespective of the practical arguments, when we first embargo something and then caving into political pressure in this country, lift the embargo. Deeply engrained in the minds of Soviet people and a fundamental tenet of their ideology is that capitalism will sell the rope with which they hang us. I think that it is very important for our security to convince the Soviets that we will not sell them the rope, no matter what the economic cost to ourselves. Remember that the Soviet regime was willing to destroy its entire economy in the service of political ends. So, when they see that we, for what is at best a very marginal economic advantage, are willing to sell out our fundamental political interests; what kind of respect would you have for us in their position?

How necessary do you think it is to achieve Western cohesion in regard to various embargoes against the Soviet Union?

That is fundamental of course, and I think that we can only do this on the basis of an articulated set of common values. We have got to show that we know what the Soviet Union is, what’s going on internally in the Soviet Union. We have to show that we analyze communism outside of the intellectual framework that gave it to us in the first place, and that would be sufficient, I think, to rally countries around us, even those that value their independence like France or others.

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“The Soviet Union is the most absurd and tragic country in the world...”

La Pensée Russe, (“Russian Thought”) —Paris, France— Thursday, August 9, 1984 The American journalist David Satter, who worked in the Soviet Union as a correspondent for the Financial Times, recently visited our editorial office [in Paris]. Satter answered questions from our colleague Y. Kublanovsky The first “question“ is traditional: a few words about yourself...

I was born in Chicago in 1947 and started to study Russian in high school.

Russian was suddenly taught in many American schools after the Soviet Union launched the first sputnik... I started to learn Russian on my father’s advice. But in four years I learned the language very poorly. For the most part, I took it up seriously as a graduate student at Oxford University in England. It was there that I got the idea of travelling to the Soviet Union. At that time, I became interested in the phenomenon of totalitarian regimes. The Nazi regime had been destroyed but I wanted to see something similar, totalitarianism of the Soviet type, with my own eyes. I traveled to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1969 and from that time on continued to study the Russian language and interest myself in the Soviet system.

When did you go to Russia as an accredited correspondent?

I was sent to Moscow as a correspondent in 1976 by the London Financial Times. I spent six years in Moscow before leaving the Soviet Union in 1982.

How did you imagine the Soviet Union at the time when you were appointed a Moscow correspondent?

Of course, I knew that the Soviet regime was a negative phenomenon. But I doubted that everything was so bad and hopeless. On the one hand, I 29

thought that the Soviet regime was very cruel, for example, in shaping its own “reality.“ But emotionally it seemed to me that the negative descriptions of the regime were too fantastic. And at first, during the adaptation period, I behaved in the Soviet Union, as I would have behaved in America.

That’s why I got into trouble several times: for example, in the Baltics, the KGB sent their agents to me under the guise of... dissidents, and I fell for it, spending time with them before I realized who they were in reality.

As far as I know, you were the first journalist to collect a large amount of information about the incident in 1979 in Sverdlovsk where there was an explosion in a biological weapons factory.

Yes, the American State Department reported that there had been an explosion in a weapons factory in Sverdlovsk. I had heard about the disaster earlier, but I had no way to confirm the reports. There were simply rumors that many people had died there. I was told that the newspaper Evening Sverdlovsk had published an article, “What is Anthrax?“ After the State Department released their report, I decided to call Evening Sverdlovsk and ask about the article. A reporter on the paper (perhaps out of surprise that a Western journalist was calling them) said that the paper had printed an article instructing people to avoid contaminated meat. This indirectly confirmed the fact of the explosion. I started looking for (and found) people who told me more about the catastrophe. Unfortunately, I cannot speak more precisely about them because that might endanger them. But I was able to report material on the explosion which greatly irritated the Soviet authorities. I was described in Izvestiya as “a big lover of tainted sensation. “ In general, I think any correspondent could have done no less than I did if he was willing to seek and find Soviet people willing to provide information. Unfortunately, many foreign correspondents, even on an unconscious level are subject to self-censorship and are satisfied with information from official Soviet sources... And they pay for this (in fact, not they themselves but the entire free world which they are obliged to inform maximally about the Soviet regime)—with the paucity of the collected information.

How many people do you think there are in the Soviet Union who are willing to risk supplying information to outsiders? After all, meetings with foreign correspondents are always fraught with extreme danger and for a Soviet citizen. I remember how you and 30

I met almost “conspiratorially “in Moscow in Pushkin Square, looking around for surveillance, hurrying down Tverskoi Boulevard... When they found your business card during a search of my living quarters (January 19, 1982), I managed by some miracle to pull it out from under the pile of already confiscated paperwork, fold it up and hide it.

People, of course, behave differently... But I am sure, even in the present circumstances, many are ready and glad (even at the risk to themselves) to meet with foreign journalists. So, I repeat that correspondents are often guilty of sluggishness and extraordinary wariness. It’s not difficult to find someone for a conversation. It’s only necessary to know precisely what kind of information is necessary... I, for example, tried not to be satisfied with recounts of various events but tried to reach the source of the information. I repeat. Hundreds of people in the Soviet Union are prepared to take a risk only in order to inform the West.

What circles did you frequent when you lived in the Soviet Union?

I tried to cover as wide a spectrum of Soviet people as possible, the dissidents, ordinary people, former inmates of mental institutions, those whose lives had been damaged by communism. And, as you know, I met with the creative intelligentsia—writers, artists.

Of course, the authorities didn’t like this very much. They wanted to expel me in 1979, provoking a nearly physical confrontation. But I did not fall for the provocation. The world’s champions of crudity and rudeness wanted to accuse me of behaving rudely.

How did you feel when you left Russia?

I felt that when I was there, I had done the best I could. And I saw it as my duty to tell the free world in detail what I had learned about the Soviet regime, about life in the USSR. And then I decided to write a book.

Tell us more about your plan: what kind of book will it be?

The title of the book is “The Seventh Proof. Russia in the Age of Detente.“ [The book was eventually published as “Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union.”] The seventh proof of the existence of God, 31

according to Mikhail Bulgakov, [The author of “The Master and Margarita”] is the existence of the devil. The idea of my book is that when people cease to feel the presence of the otherworldly in the universe, they create a diabolical materialistic substitute that destroys the human intellect and free personality. Only the feeling that there is something above us, that there is a transcendent reality makes a person a person.

Of all the books published recently by Western journalists about the Soviet Union, I find Kevin Klose’s book “Russia and the Russians“ to be the most interesting. He tried to understand the inhabitants of the Soviet Union, to analyze the structure of the Soviet system. In general, the weakness of Western books about the Soviet regime is that the authors do not treat Soviet people as equal and full-fledged individuals. They describe Communist society without emotion as indifferent, frequently bemused but superficial anatomists.

I hope my book will be different. And I want it to be of interest not only to Western people, but also to Soviet people; it will be an attempt to explain Soviet society from the inside. The Soviet Union is the most absurd, tragic, and surrealistic country in the world. And even many of those who believe they are immune to Soviet propaganda implicitly accept many of the claims of the regime. The result is that a Western person, even if he reads even the best books about the Soviet Union, may still not be able to grasp the inner logic of the Soviet system.

How do you understand the Soviet regime—as an organic continuation of Russian history or as a muzzle imposed on the nation?

A communist regime, of course, is a muzzle imposed on a nation—Russia or any other. But despite all the distinctive characteristics of the Soviet regime, I gained the impression that in Russia there were specific historical and psychological preconditions for its appearance. For example, the victory of the revolution testifies in my opinion to the fact that Orthodoxy in Russia was spiritually weak. As a result, the Church could not pose a strong and reliable defense against the advancing communist darkness. If there had not been a crisis of faith, the victory of the revolution would have been impossible.

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What do you think: is the Soviet population totally propagandized?

In my opinion, the situation is very sad. The propaganda, of course, is not complete. We should remember, at least, those who were not afraid to inform me. But its impact is very significant. Those who in Russia are internally free often think at a deeper level than the average Western intellectual. But the number of thinking people is in the hundreds and the number of those who are propagandized is in the millions. There are no longer the millions of repressed people but there is psychological repression, and it has a total character.

Do you see some way out of this situation?

We have to establish not only a physical barrier but no less important, a psychological barrier to communist expansion. Communism is first of all an idea and it needs to be met with another idea, a counter idea. The West tries to resist communism with military power, or bribes—technology and commodities—but both approaches in my view are ineffective.

We make practically no effort to resist spiritually, to analyze, think about and counterpose to communism, our traditional religious and ethical values. We need to reformulate and appreciate our spiritual foundations. There are diametrically opposed values in the world—religious values and communist values. These give rise to opposing notions of right and wrong. Communist values are based on atheism and class theory which, in the end, lead to nothing but delirium and crime.

I think that people should work for an understanding of communist ideology. If communism prospers ideologically and expands, the guilt is ours, the guilt of a passive attitude toward its ideas. If we establish a strong barrier to communist expansion, physically and spiritually, I think that this will have an effect on the internal condition of the Soviet regime. Any, even the slightest relaxation of repression in the Soviet Union brings with it entirely positive and intensive spiritual consequences; the reinvigoration of the religious and cultural life, literature, and art... In Russia, any dose of freedom gives immediate and often brilliant results.

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The Foreign Correspondent in Moscow On Manipulation and Deception Encounter Magazine, (U.K.) May 1987 Every week now, sometimes as often as four times a week, the members of the Moscow foreign press corps file into the amphitheater of a modern stone building on Zubovsky Boulevard, fill the s semi- circular rows of orange-backed seats, fasten their earphones and wait dutifully while Gennady Gerasimov, the Foreign Ministry press spokesman prepares to convey the official Soviet message to the world.

The scene, routine enough in a Western capital, represents a startling change from the situation which existed between 1976 and 1982 when I was a correspondent in Moscow. At that time, opportunities to question high-ranking Soviet officials were all but unheard of, and when I returned to Moscow recently, the Press conferences seemed to symbolize an entirely new Soviet attitude toward the Western press.

In the past, the Soviet authorities had tried to control the flow of information by shunning Western journalists; but now Soviet officials are available for interviews up to the level of Minister or higher. If it once was pointless to call the Foreign Ministry with a question, today reporters are calling and getting answers (even on Saturdays when, before, no Soviet official would pick up the phone). In some cases, officials in the Foreign Ministry press department are even volunteering to help journalists set up interviews.

The change is said to reflect the new policy of glasnost (“publicity“ rather than “openness“) that the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, says he wants to use to expose defects in the Soviet system and whose benefits he is ostensibly extending to Western reporters. A closer look, however, shows that despite the appearance of change the Soviets have not abjured the goal of manipulating

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Western correspondents. With the help of glasnost, they have merely learned how to do it better.

The new approach to Western reporters is to some extent, a tribute to the Soviet authorities’ growing sophistication. The great problem with the previous system was that although it limited the amount of damaging information about the Soviet Union in the Western press, it did nothing positive to disinform Western public opinion. The new policy is intended to remedy this lacuna. The goal is now not just to suppress relevant truthful information, but also to insinuate more Soviet propaganda into the Western media and influence the Western political process. The strategy is still young, but it is not too early to say that it is a success. The reason is simple.

Many European and American journalists, startled to find that they now have access to Soviet officials, are showing a readiness to repeat uncritically whatever those officials say.

A striking example of the success of glasnost was given after an attack on Western reporters by the Russian police in Moscow on 12 February.

Demonstrations on behalf of Josef Begun, a Jewish dissident, were allowed to continue relatively unmolested for three days— long enough to convince Western Sovietologists that the Soviet Union was embarking on democratic reform, but not long enough to suggest to Soviet citizens that demonstrating in public might actually be possible.

On the fourth day, the Soviet police moved in and began beating both the Russian demonstrators and the Western correspondents, including Martin Walker, the correspondent of The Guardian (London).

In this situation, elementary common sense should have suggested that the three days of tolerance were intended to create the illusion of liberalization, and that the true situation was reflected in the authorities’ reaction on the fourth day. Mr. Walker, however, relying on Soviet functionaries who, he said, “commiserated“ with him, speculated that the demonstrators were attacked because dissident elements in the KGB had chosen to sabotage Mr. Gorbachev’s liberalization program.

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With a faith in his sources which was rather touching, Walker quoted “a passionate Gorbachev supporter” as saying, “There is a real effort to change the system here, to relax the controls, but these people [the demonstrators]… risk upsetting everything.”

The coverage in the Guardian of the attack on the February demonstration was not an isolated case of the tendency to place undue trust in the statements of Soviet officials. There is no shortage of other examples.

In September 1985, Time magazine interviewed Gorbachev but although this was the Soviet leader’s first interview with an American publication, Time made no attempt to question him seriously. There were no questions about Afghanistan, the fate of Andrei Sakharov (then still in exile in Gorky), or about Soviet violations of arms control agreements. Perhaps most important, there was no attempt to challenge any of Gorbachev’s statements, although when he said that the Soviet Union did not conduct antiAmerican campaigns, did not “thirst” for American technology, and was trying to break the “vicious circle” of the arms race, he was clearly not telling the truth.

On 26 February 1986 ABC Television invited Vladimir Posner, a commentator for Radio Moscow, to reply to President Reagan ‘s televised speech on defence spending. Although Posner used the opportunity, in effect, to call President Reagan a liar, ABC made no attempt to evaluate his veracity. David Brinkley, Posner’s ABC host, not only did not contest the assertion that the Soviet Union is “not conducting anti-ballistic defence research“, but also, in introducing Posner, asked for his “reactions“ in a manner which suggested that a disciplined Party propagandist was in a position to offer an opinion of his own.

Soviet propaganda is designed to be plausible. For this reason, it is vitally important that Western correspondents learn not to take every statement by a Soviet official literally. It is now clear, however, that uncritical repetition by Western correspondents of the remarks of Soviet officials is likely to be a hallmark of the glasnost era.

The situation has reached the point where, in much Western reporting from the Soviet Union, what is described as an

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“interview” is not an attempt to learn the truth but merely a collection of the latest propaganda for subsequent retransmission.

Bob Zelnick, the former Moscow correspondent of ABC News, explained the mechanics of this type of “interview” when he described his meetings with “academics” in the U.S.A. Institute, a Soviet “think-tank“ whose principal purpose is to disinform Western public opinion.

“With some of these fellows [Zelnick told the Washington Journalism Review] I’ll say, ‘I need a 30-second soundbite on why Reagan’s foreign policy is not working’ and they’ll give it to me.

But Professor Bogdanov [Radomir Bogdanov, the Institute’s deputy director] won’t go along with that. He’s an academician, quite serious. So, I’ll have… to get what I want… by asking the same question several times in several different ways. Actually, I have him scripted: I want a bite on Reagan’s hard-line foreign policy and a bite on the failure of Reagan’s policy in Lebanon.”

In most cases, there is nothing sinister about the failure to question Soviet officials seriously; it is simply a matter of bad reporting. Nonetheless, there are disturbing signs that, in a few cases, news organizations—their appetites whetted by the possibility of exclusive interviews—are tempted to bargain for access to Soviet officials with political compliance.

In November 1985, for example, the American television networks competed openly for Soviet favour before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in the hope of getting an interview with Gorbachev. Network executives, according to the Washington Post, “wined and dined“ Soviet officials and offered “carefully guarded blueprints“ of how Gorbachev would look on “morning television, the evening news, or even in prime time“. When the CBS anchorman Dan Rather asked Gorbachev a question about “political prisoners“ at a press conference in Paris in October, during Gorbachev’s visit to France, the Post said that CBS feared that he had ruined the network’s chances for an exclusive interview. Instead of being impressed with Rather’s integrity, Walt Rogers, the ABC Moscow correspondent, was quoted as saying afterward, “I watched [Rather] shoot himself in the foot. Such attitudes have apparently emboldened the Soviets to feel they have the bargaining 38

power to pressure networks into changing their commercial programming. In December 1985, ABC postponed production of the $40 million mini-series Amerika, which had been produced by its entertainment division and described life in the United States following a Soviet takeover. The network had been warned by Soviet officials that its position in Moscow could be “jeopardized“ if production of the mini-series went ahead. When it became known that ABC had bowed to Soviet pressure, there was a public outcry in the United States, and ABC decided after all to produce the mini-series, which has since been televised. What was astonishing was that ABC at first appeared ready to give in to the outrageous Soviet threat and did not reject it out-of-hand.

The readiness of major American news agencies to serve as transmission-belts for Soviet official information is now widely taken for granted; but it is also dangerous because the Soviet Union is a country which, since its creation, has been characterized by a radical split between propaganda and reality. (The propaganda is intended to show that the Soviet regime is realizing the utopian predictions of Marxist-Leninist ideology.)

In the light of this split, wider access for correspondents to official propaganda does not mean that the American and European public are going to be better-informed. The Soviet authorities are merely making it that much easier for unwary journalists to communicate a deluded view of reality.

Soviet propaganda, in its raw form, is not very credible to the West. It attains credibility when it is repeated uncritically in important European and American publications. With the added verisimilitude that only trusted Western publications can give, the Soviet Union’s ideological lying and officially sanctioned misuse of language may, over time, begin to blur the all-important line between reality and delusion in world politics. Imposing a false view of reality with the help of the Western press is therefore a fundamental Soviet political priority.

The floodgates of disinformation have been opened wider in the Gorbachev era but the tendency of some reporters to transmit disinformation uncritically is not new. Glasnost could not have enjoyed its present success had it not been built on an existing system 39

of manipulation, carefully designed to induce a correspondent to report official propaganda and to cripple his ability to gather information on his own.

The key to the system lies in defining the context in which Western reporters operate and this means making certain that they are isolated from Soviet society. To this end, correspondents’ lives are organized in such a way that their daily experiences are as divorced from the reality they are covering as the disinformation they are expected to transmit.

Western correspondents in Moscow live in walled-in apartment complexes and shop in hard-currency stores, all of which are off limits to ordinary Russians. Their apartments and telephones are bugged. They are watched by the armed guards stationed at the doors of their buildings, by their maids in their homes, and by their Soviet secretaries and drivers in their offices. All of these people report on them to the KGB. They are frequently followed. Unless correspondents make a conscientious and difficult effort to seek out Soviet citizens independently, few will be ready to meet them—and most of those who do so, even if they are dissidents or refuseniks will be implicitly acceptable to the Soviet authorities because are unrepresentative of Soviet society as a whole.

If a correspondent does not try to make contacts on its own, he will not understand the life that is going on around him, particularly if he is one of the majority of Western correspondents who do not speak Russian. The authorities will try to assure that reporting disinformation is the best way for cloistered correspondents to make their career.

In their manipulation of such correspondents the Soviet authorities rely on carrots-and-sticks. A wire-service reporter, for example, can be tipped off to a story five minutes before his competitors; a newspaper correspondent can be sure of having a Soviet official at dinner with his editor, thus demonstrating his “access“. Onthe-record interviews with high-ranking officials are achievable by well-disposed correspondents, regardless of the general policy, and the most cooperative correspondents can aspire.to interview the Soviet leader.

Favoritism costs the Soviet authorities nothing and means nothing to the Western reading public; but the ability to “scoop” 40

the opposition, if only with disinformation, is an advantage that many newspapers value highly. At the same time, a reporter who against all the odds, tries to gather genuine information faces certain dangers. He will be shut out by official sources. He may be accused of “hooliganism“ or “espionage“ or “homosexuality“. He may have his tires slashed or receive unnerving anonymous telephone calls. He may be poisoned, as was Robin Knight (of US News & World Report, during a trip to Tashkent in 1978); or, if he persists in gathering information independently, he may share the fate of Andrew Nagorski of Newsweek and George Krimsky of the Associated Press, who were expelled.

Many correspondents, almost without realizing it, begin to play by the authorities’ rules, competing for official sources, even beginning to identify with them, and becoming so absorbed in the recycling of Soviet propaganda that they lose sight of the fact that what they are reporting is not real.

“This country has a long history of taming and manipulating the West“, said a Soviet acquaintance of mine, “but each reporter arrives here fresh, unprepared to understand this peculiar society.

The result is that he is often not able to recognize the real evil when he meets it.”

Evidence of the success of the Soviet techniques of manipulation is not far to seek. It is evident in the contrast between the incisive Western reporting of real events from most capitals and the sterile repetition of official propaganda from the Soviet Union.

In his recent book, Reluctant Farewell, Andrew Nagorski quotes an Associated Press correspondent as saying that 90% of the stories filed from Moscow by the AP in the early 1980s were simple paraphrases of articles from the Soviet press.

Under Gorbachev the tendency to report Soviet disinformation has, if anything, increased. Correspondents may now receive the propaganda from open press conferences and face-to-face interviews, but the content of what they are told is no different from what can be read in the official Soviet press.

The products of the Soviet disinformation machine can be divided into two distinct categories: the propaganda which is intended to provide the West with false impressions about the Soviet

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Union’s basic motives, and that which is developed ad hoc in response to specific East-West events.

Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the first type of propaganda is attempts by Soviet officials to give the impression that the Soviet Union is “paranoid“. Typically, someone—perhaps an “academic“ at the U.S.A. Institute, like Bogdanov or the disarmament specialist Genrikh Trofimenko will explain to correspondents why the Soviet Union feels it has something to fear. Using standard phrases and gestures, he begins by referring to an increase in American military spending and the ring of American bases around the Soviet-bloc perimeter. He mentions the danger posed by China. He speaks of the 20 million Soviet dead in the Second World War and the fear of another devastating invasion. He may then conclude-as Bogdanov did at one meeting I attended-by saying “... we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other. ...

We need the kind of relations in which we look into each other’s eyes.“ Such meetings generally inspire articles like the one entitled “SOVIET GLOBAL POSITION ERODING“ (Washington Post, 11 September 1980), which, quoting diplomatic sources, referred to renewed fear of “capitalist encirclement“ in the Soviet Union and said that “Moscow sees itself surrounded … and left without friends on the vast Asian continent with the exception of India and Vietnam.“ It was suggested that this feeling of “strategic vulnerability“ lay behind the invasion of Afghanistan.

The idea that the Soviet Union feels threatened is assiduously propagated and is very convenient for the Soviet leaders. If the Soviet Union fears attack, the enormous Soviet military build-up becomes defensive in character and there is even an explanationbased on supposed Soviet “paranoia“ for such overt aggression as the invasion of Afghanistan or the shooting down of the Korean airliner.

Of course, there is no shortage of indications that the Soviet Union is not paranoid, including the fact that the Soviet armed forces are trained for offence, not defense, and that Soviet citizens are told constantly that the victory of Communism is inevitable in every country in the world. But, in part because the West fears doing something to aggravate Soviet “paranoia“, a major debate 42

erupts in the West every time NATO takes some needed step to provide for its own defense.

Propaganda directed toward the West is also intended to frustrate specific Western policy initiatives. While I was in Moscow, one notable propaganda campaign was aimed at discouraging Western economic sanctions after the invasion of Afghanistan. In this case, the Soviets played a shell-game with words. They described the indigenous Islamic resistance as “outside interference“, and then offered to withdraw their troops after the “outside interference“ had come to an end.

To make this campaign work, the Soviets counted on the numbing effect of repetition. First, they said that the Soviet Union would consider withdrawing its troops even if the US did not end 100% of the “outside interference“. Next, the Afghan puppet government of Babrak Karmal offered in April 1980 to open negotiations with Iran and Pakistan (which refused to recognize it), based on an end to “outside interference“. Then, a month later, the two offers were combined and presented as a package-Soviet withdrawal in exchange for American, Iranian, and Pakistani agreement to an end to non-existent “outside interference“.

Each of these “peace-feelers“ received considerable publicity in the West and, what was more serious, the disinformation campaign was in the end a partial political success. By creating the vague impression of Soviet flexibility over Afghanistan, it allowed the Western Europeans to rationalize their failure to impose sanctions against the Soviet Union. Instead, the French and West German leaders held summit meetings with the Soviets in Warsaw and Moscow and signed a 25-year economic cooperation agreement with them in July 1980, just seven months after the invasion took place.

Among the best recent examples of a fully orchestrated disinformation campaign which depended heavily on uncritical reporting for its success was the one in which the Soviets tried to convince the world that President Reagan, who described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire“, was pushing the world toward nuclear war.

Georgy Arbatov, director of the U.S.A. Institute and perhaps the Soviet Union’s premier disinformation specialist, said in an 43

interview with the Washington Post (10 April1982): “We have entered a very dangerous period. Everything looks sinister. In the atmosphere, which is becoming denser and denser, any spark could lead to a crisis.”

Bogdanov (his deputy) told ABC: “The smell of nuclear war is very, very strong in the air.” These themes were reiterated by the Soviet leaders. In a speech, 27 October 1982, Leonid Brezhnev accused the Reagan administration of “adventurism,” and eleven days later warned that Soviet military power could “cool… the hot heads of some imperialist politicians.”

Hundreds of stories appeared in American newspapers and elsewhere which spoke of a “tremendous deterioration,” in U.S.Russian relations. Murrey Marder of the Washington Post wrote in a news-analysis (16 October 1983): “With each side feeling deeply aggrieved by the other, the risks of misjudging what might escalate from a regional crisis to an international flare up have sharply increased.”

And Philip Geyelin, a columnist for the Post (9 November 1982): “If Ronald Reagan can’t bend-if he can’t bring himself to abandon the chest thumping and jungle yells of his ‘Me Tarzan’ approach to the Soviets-you can be pretty certain that Leonid Brezhnev… is not going to risk rejection… by making the first move.“ And Anthony Lewis, the New York Times columnist, quoted a Soviet “acquaintance“ (probably a Soviet official) as saying: “I pray that before Reagan’s term is up, we are not in conflict somewhere in the world.“ With well-known journalists mechanically repeating Soviet propaganda, the idea that Reagan had increased the danger of war began to seep into the consciousness of the West. In fact, there was probably never any “crisis“ in relations, in the sense that something fundamental had undergone a change. The Soviet Union remained expansionist and militaristic, just as it was when US-Soviet relations were “good“ and the USSR invaded Afghanistan.

But the Soviet campaign was a partial success. There was no reduction in the US Defense Budget, but by early 1984 basic moral criticism of the Soviet system by the United States had ceased. The Soviets, who reject Judeo-Christian values (and claim to have a 44

“higher“ morality), actually fear such criticism greatly. Meanwhile, the Soviet ideological attack on Western democratic countries continued unabated.

With the appearance of a new Soviet leader, the need for penetrating reporting from Moscow is greater than ever, but in the vain hope of developing “sources“ of information among Soviet officials-correspondents have become more regimented than at any time in the last ten years.

At the center on Zubovsky Boulevard, press conferences are held constantly. Invariably, they are announced on the day they are held, with no preliminary information about the topic except that it is “a matter of international importance“. Fear of competition inspires almost every correspondent to attend almost every conference; and once a correspondent has devoted his afternoon to attending such a meeting, he feels obliged to write about it, whether it is important or not. There is little appreciation that, in some cases, it would be more professional not to write-or that one correspondent could attend the press conference instead of thirty, freeing the others to do useful work.

One Western journalist in Moscow told me that, in the last three years, he did not know of a single case of an American correspondent travelling unsupervised to a typical Soviet city. “There is a very low opinion of Russians“, said the journalist, who expressed misgivings about the quality of Western coverage. “There was a time when many of the correspondents thought the country was ruled by ‘thugs’ who ‘sucked the blood of the people’, and felt that we should take the side of the people. But now what you hear is that the Russians have the regime they deserve, and that the Soviet system is only an extension of the people…“ A negative attitude toward ordinary people is an excuse for passivity. The situation has gone so far that some correspondents even adopt the Soviet regime’s mentality. In Reluctant Farewell, Andrew Nagorski quoted the Moscow correspondent for a major American newspaper as saying, “If you look at the situation logically ... anyone who becomes a dissident in this society must be a little bit crazy.“ He then complained to Nagorski, “I keep getting calls from these crazy people.“

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The readiness of Western correspondents to accept the limits which the authorities impose on them has not gone unnoticed by Soviet citizens. “The problem“, said a young Soviet painter, “is that many of the correspondents don’t understand and don’t want to understand this country.“ “It is too complex to be covered by someone who doesn’t speak the language and who doesn’t have a wide culture which allows him to see this country in the context of world history. What the correspondents write is broadcast back here in Russian by the foreign radio, so their role is enormous, but inevitably their reporting shows that they relate to their responsibilities formally and egoistically.“ As we enter what some say will be a new period of “liberalization“, we need to review not only our knowledge but also the sources of our knowledge. Reporting from the Soviet Union requires special preparation and an unusual commitment. Because many Western correspondents lack that skill and commitment, the Soviet authorities have been able to influence the stream of reporting on which we base our impressions of the Soviet Union.

The sad fact is that behind the facade of a country which desires nothing so much as “peace“ and “good relations” is an aggressive police state waiting to be discovered. Before making policy decisions based on our impressions, it is important to remember that a great apparatus in the Soviet system is organized to create illusions. It is time to begin to give serious thought to the whole process through which these impressions are formed.

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Remembering Vyacheslav V. (“Slava“) Luchkov “Slava Luchkov v vospominaniyakh,“ Moscow, 2003*1 When I think of Slava, I recall the things he said because he was both very wise and very well spoken. Slava was a curious mix of East and West. He combined Western objectivity with Russian sympathy and compassion. There were times, however, when I think it was his objectivity that prevailed. At one point, we talked about the Russian people, and I observed that Russians were very kind hearted. Slava agreed but he said, “it’s a kindness without principles.“ To this day, I regard this as the best short description of the problem of Russia that I have ever heard.

On another occasion, we talked about Soviet journalists. I said that I did not understand how any decent person could work for the mendacious Soviet press, but Slava said that the Soviet Union’s journalists should not be judged too harshly. There were very few choices in a closed society and people had to work somewhere.

Slava was equally forgiving of naive Westerners. He said that the reason Westerners were so easily fooled was that they had a difficult time imagining how terrible the Soviet Union was. Who could blame them for that? Slava was witty and had a fine sense of irony.

On one occasion, we talked about the inarticulateness of the Soviet leaders and Slava said the reason they spoke so badly was that “they were always able to accomplish what they wanted by force, so they had little need to develop the skills of persuasion”. With those words, he demonstrated his capacity to sympathize even with oppressors who, in a sense, were victims of their own aggressivity.

Despite his ability to empathize, however, Slava always looked for

1

This is a contribution to a collection of reminiscences of Vyacheslav (“Slava”) V. Luchkov, a Russian psychologist who was a close personal friend of the author during his years as the Financial Times correspondent in Moscow. Slava Luchkov died in Moscow at 56 on October 30, 1997.

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the dawn of awareness in people. “Some people die stupid”, he once told me, “Never understanding the harm they have done”. In reflecting on the self-defeating nature of dogmatic self-confidence, he also seemed to express a deeper belief that only in another world would the crimes of many people really be judged.

Slava knew he was taking a risk by meeting with foreigners, but this did not deter him. At one point, he was stopped by the police after visiting some foreign friends. The policeman said to him, “in what language are we going to speak to you?” Slava answered, “Only in the language of the law”. In dealing with the Soviet authorities, he realized that the only defense was to insist on strict legality. The alternative was submission, which, for Slava, was totally unacceptable. His many friendships with foreign journalists and diplomats were a reflection of his determination to decide with whom he would be friends and not to internalize the distorted psychology of the regime.

Slava’s friendships with foreigners and dissidents inevitably drew him into a world which was also populated by informers and provocateurs. Nonetheless, he never expressed fear about meeting some new or exotic person and remained an avid observer of the life around him. This made him an enormous help to me as I tried to write about and understand the nature of the Soviet Union.

Slava’s instincts for navigating in the Soviet situation were virtually impeccable and he gave me two pieces of advice which proved invaluable for me. Once, after I fell victim to a KGB provocation early in my term in Moscow, he said, “You have come into a situation which demands an entirely different set of reactions from those that you are accustomed to”. It was by keeping this in mind that I able to avoid future, similar traps. He also said that all relationships in the Soviet Union were based ultimately on trust. The reality of these words and the importance of knowing whom to trust were brought home to me innumerable times during my six years in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

Slava was a loyal friend, and we spent many hours together in kitchen of his small apartment on Narodnoye Opolchenie discussing events of our lives. Slava often found it more rewarding to listen

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than to talk because, besides being genuinely interested in other people, he also sought insight into another way of life.

When I left Moscow, Slava sometimes accompanied me to the station, and once when I got on a train at the Belorussky Station for Poland, he quoted Pasternak’s line about stations being the “unignitable box of our meetings and partings”. I think that Slava realized that life is a series of arrivals and departures and his final, premature departure, as tragic as it was, left all of us a little better for knowing him.

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Darkness at Dawn Radio Liberty, August 3, 2003 Special Program Vladimir Abarinov: “Darkness at Dawn “This is the title of American journalist David Satter’s book about the Russian reforms and the political processes that accompanied them. In the first part of the program, David Satter talked about how Russian reformers, turning a blind eye to the criminal character of privatization, created oligarchic capitalism. In the course of the 2000 presidential campaign, this system was subjected to its first serious test—the prime minister, Evgeny Primakov began an investigation of facts of corruption at the very top of the Russian political pyramid.

David Satter: The investigation concerned Yeltsin’s closest associates. The prosecutor general, Yuri Skuratov, announced at the time that there was no one among the leaders of the country against whom it was not possible to bring a criminal case. The investigation was also of political significance because Primakov, Skuratov’s boss, was considering running for President.

Vladimir Abarinov: Did Skuratov act out of noble motives, as an official fulfilling his duty to expose corruption? Or was he just doing Primakov’s bidding?

David Satter: I am certain of the latter. There is nothing in Skuratov’s record that would characterize him as a hero. And certainly, his behavior while in office does not indicate that he had a high sense of responsibility. If he had believed that he was fulfilling a high mission, he would not have put himself in a situation in which he could be so easily compromised. [Skuratov was filmed in bed with two prostitutes in a sauna and the video was shown on March 17, 1999 on Russian television.] But in a sense, this does not matter. After all, whatever the motivation of Skuratov, this was the first attempt to uncover the criminal actions of highranking and influential figures in Yeltsin’s circle.

Vladimir Abarinov: In the end, Yuri Skuratov fell victim to his infatuation with ladies of easy virtue. He was removed from his post by presidential decree in connection with the opening of 51

a criminal case against him for abuse of office. Shortly afterward, on May 12, 1999, Yevgeny Primakov resigned as prime minister along with his entire cabinet. His place was taken by the Kremlin loyalist Sergei Stepashin. David Satter states in his book that the operation for the removal of Skuratov was run by Vladimir Putin.

What is the basis for this version?

David Satter: ’At the time of the Skuratov operation, Putin was the head of the FSB. It is clear that the removal of Skuratov was a task of the highest priority for the Yeltsin entourage. They had to find a way to stop the investigations. For Putin, the compromising of Skuratov was an opportunity to prove his absolute reliability—the reliability that Yeltsin was looking for if he expected to avoid criminal prosecution after he left office.

Vladimir Abarinov: It was in March 1999 that the meteoric rise of Vladimir Putin, little-known to the country, began. On March 29, he was appointed secretary of the Security Council. On August 9, the president dismissed Stepashin, who had been prime minister for less than three months, and appointed Putin first deputy prime minister. On August 9, Putin was appointed Acting Prime Minister. Only five days later, on August 16, 1999, the Duma approved his appointment as prime minister. At the same time, Yeltsin declared him his successor.

David Satter: Events, in my view, led directly to the 1999 apartment building bombings. Yeltsin’s popularity fell to two percent. Sociologists know that in any poll, 6 percent of those polled don’t understand the question. So, there is great doubt whether anyone in Russia supported Yeltsin at that time. The same poll concerning Putin after the operation with Skuratov showed that two percent of the population supported Putin. The opposition political bloc of Primakov and [Yuri] Luzhkov, [the mayor of Moscow], which no doubt was allied with other corrupt elements, was poised to destroy the wealth of the oligarchs of Yeltsin’s circle and create a situation in which some, if not all, of them would face criminal charges.

Vladimir Abarinov: You lived and worked in Russia so this chronicle of the events of that period has a distinctly personal character.

David Satter: There was talk of panic gripping the Yeltsin entourage.

There were ominous rumors circulating that there might be terrorist attacks that would be used to justify the declaration of a state of emergency.

And I recalled that there were terrorist attacks in 1996 before the second 52

round of the presidential election. An explosion in the Moscow metro was attributed to Yeltsin’s opponents. But it bore the stamp of the secret services. In 1999, the ominous tension rose after the explosion in the shopping mall on Manezhnaya Square. One person died in that attack. Now, viewing these events in retrospect, I think that first explosion was a test of the public reaction. Then there was the mysterious invasion of Dagestan in August 1999 by Islamic extremists from Chechnya. Shortly before the invasion, the Russian troops guarding the border of Chechnya were withdrawn. The invasion, qualified as an attack on Russia. It was followed by the bombing of residential buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk. The methods were the same everywhere: RDX explosives were used, charges were placed either in or near the basements of buildings. The explosions in most cases took place in the middle of the night in order to claim as many victims as possible and terrorize the country. Before the explosions, there was no enthusiasm in Russia for a new invasion of Chechnya.

But after the bombings, the country rallied in support of a new war.

The authorities said that there was a “Chechen trail.” But no evidence was ever presented. The crime scenes were quickly cleared, although critical evidence can be found in ruins as was the case of evidence in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya which led to arrests. Throughout the country, residents began to guard their buildings at night, and the vast majority supported the new war in Chechnya. This war was initially successful and led to a dramatic surge in popularity of the previously unknown FSB chief Putin creating the conditions for him to become president.

Vladimir Abarinov: The terrorist attacks followed one after another in Buinaksk, Mosco] Volgodonsk. But an incident in Ryazan occupies a special place in this series. On September 22 in that city, bags filled with white powder and an explosive device were found in the basement of an apartment building—luckily before the explosion. {The powder tested positive for hexogen, the explosive used in the four previous bombings. A huge search was launched in Ryazan and the bombers were found and arrested. They turned out to be not Chechen terrorists but agents of the FSB.] The Russian authorities initially announced that a terrorist attack had been prevented. After the arrest of the FSB agents, however, they said that there had not been an attempted terrorist attack in Ryazan but only a drill organized by the FSB to 53

test the residents’ vigilance. They said that the sacks contained sugar and the detonator was fake. David Satter considers this version unbelievable.

David Satter: In a country already in state of panic, it made no sense to panic people further with false alerts. The only result would have been that people refused to react seriously to a real threat. For a short time, the information about the arrests and the claim that the bomb in Ryazan was planted as part of an “exercise” stunned the country. It was then forgotten or almost forgotten. But if the FSB planted a real bomb in Ryazan, this is a clear indication that the other bombs were planted by the FSB as well.

This would mean that Putin took power as the result of acts of terror. And this, of course, makes him a less than perfect partner for our campaign against terrorism.

Vladimir Abarinov: But the accusations of the FSB’s involvement in the bombings remain unproven.

David Satter: The doctrine of presumption of innocence is intended to protect the individual against the abuses of the state. It does not apply to a government that is suspected of committing large-scale crimes against its own population. If the FSB is innocent, it has every opportunity to prove its innocence and dispel all doubts in this regard. To do this, it would have to do very little: show the order to conduct a drill in Ryazan, produce the bomb and produce the executors of the order. Producing the executors would probably be particularly difficult as they are probably no longer among the living.

Vladimir Abarinov: Let’s talk about the policies of the current U.S. administration. Republicans were once implacable critics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who, in their words, “lost“ Russia.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush said that he would not allow the American taxpayer’s money to “end up in the pockets of [Viktor] Chernomyrdin {Russian prime minister 1992-98] and others.” (Chernomyrdin first threatened to sue George Bush, but then dropped the idea.) But when the election campaign ended with the victory of the Republican candidate, the Bush administration turned into one of Vladimir Putin’s most loyal allies.

David Satter: I think there is a growing understanding that the United States did not grasp the nature of Russian society and that we gave Russia bad advice. But Russia is responsible for the policies it has chosen, 54

even if it received wrong and erroneous advice from a country that was then highly regarded by Russians and in which many Russian so-called reformers believed unquestioningly.

Vladimir Abarinov: David Satter’s book had already been published when the general prosecutor in Russia began investigating some of the closest employees of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chairman of the Yukos oil company in connection with abuses committed during privatization.2 The author of Darkness at Dawn considers all Russian privatization to have been illegal and immoral. How does David Satter feel about the Khodorkovsky story?

David Satter: I think this is another attempt to distract the attention of Russian society from the real problems of the country, to find a target for the animosity and frustration that many are experiencing because of the difficulties of life. And Khodorkovsky is a convenient target. He is reportedly the richest man in Russia and he gained his wealth through illegal and immoral business schemes. The problem is that in this respect he is no different from every other oligarch none of whom have been arrested. In addition, he is Jewish, which also makes him a convenient target.

Khodorkovsky also supports the opposition parties. The first target of Putin and his administration was [the oligarch, Vladimir] Gusinsky, who supported Luzhkov in the 2000 presidential election? So it may well be that this [the arrest of Lebedev] is a way to intimidate Khodorkovsky. I think all the oligarchs are acutely aware of their vulnerability.

Vladimir Abarinov: There has long been talk in Russia about a new redistribution of property, or even about the nationalization of property, at least ever since Putin’s team began to feel that the ground beneath their feet was quite firm. For some, it even seems that on the wave of acute dissatisfaction with the

2

On July 2, 2003, Khodorkovsky’s close business associate, Platon Lebedev, was arrested in a Moscow hospital where he was receiving treatment and charged with fraud and tax evasion. The arrest was perceived as a warning to Khodorkovsky to flee the country. He refused to do so and was himself arrested on October 25, 2003 and also charged with fraud and tax evasion

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results of privatization, it would not be difficult at all. Is nationalization of private property possible in today’s Russia?

David Satter: I think it would be difficult. It cannot be done without causing catastrophic damage to Russia’s relations with Western economic institutions and Western investors. Many companies, privatized by dubious methods, are now partly owned by Western owners. In the case of nationalization, the question immediately arises: what to do with the Western partners? In addition, the management of nationalized companies would be a heavy burden on both the government and the country. In many respects, these companies would be in better condition if they remained in private hands. And then, a whole structure of institutions has already grown up around private companies. So this might lead to chaos, and more importantly, it would probably reduce what Russia needs mostforeign investment. Observing the picture of the nationalization of newly privatized enterprises, foreigners will only become convinced that Russia remains a lawless and unpredictable country in which it is not worth investing. Since this opinion is already widespread, it is not in Russia’s interest to encourage it to spread even more widely.

Vladimir Abarinov: The title of Satter’s book, “Darkness at Dawn,“ clearly echoes the title of Arthur Koestler’s famous antitotalitarian novel, “Darkness at Noon.“ The title of the last chapter of Satter’s book is “Does Russia Have a Future?“ How does the author answer this question? Does “Darkness at Noon“ await Russia?

David Satter: I think Russia is facing a systemic crisis. The country is truly in a perilous position both because of economic stagnation and because of an impending demographic catastrophe—right now the country has such an unfavorable death-birth-rate ratio that the trend cannot be reversed without changing the spirit of society. In Russia, they say, “The fate of a drowning man is in his own hands.” Russia’s fate is in its own hands. It only has to understand once and for all that there is no special way, that Russia must embrace universal values. Only in this way will millions of the worthiest people in this country be able to influence the political process and avoid the future disaster that is looming because the current prosperity is inextricably linked to high oil prices, and this will not last forever.

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The “Russian Idea” of Nikolai Berdyaev Hoover Digest, No. 4, 2006 The Hoover Institution Archives in Palo Alto, California contain a large collection of writings by the Russian emigre intellectual Nikolai Berdyaev, many of which were published in obscure Parisian emigre journals. Berdyaev’s writings illustrate the profound paradoxes of Russian messianism, which continue to confound many Russians today.

A SPEECH IN PARIS On December 3, 1944, a strange event took place in newly liberated Paris. Nikolai Berdyaev, a religious philosopher and the bestknown Russian émigré intellectual of his time, made a speech before an audience of elderly Russian émigrés in support of the Soviet Union. A contemporary account of the speech in the Manchester Guardian is among the materials on Berdyaev in the Hoover Archives.

Berdyaev said the messianism of two European nations—Russia and Germany—had an impact on their neighbors. The two, however, were not similar. German messianism was pagan in character, marked by a glorification of race, nature, and the fighting spirit, completely contradicting the spiritual message of Judaism and Christianity. Russian messianism, by contrast, was deeply rooted in Jewish and Christian thought. “The Russian messianic conception,“ Berdyaev said, “always exalted Russia as a country that would help to solve the problems of humanity and would accept a place in the service of humanity.”

Berdyaev concluded that “recent changes in Russia, the changed attitude to religion and to the country’s traditions, make it not only possible but right for Christian Russians to rally to the Soviet government.“

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RUSSIA’S “SPECIAL MISSION” The paradox of those views is striking. Unlike many in both Russia and the West, Berdyaev regarded communism as the total negation of morality, not as an economic system. In a letter to “Miss X” (apparently a convinced Communist with whom Berdyaev corresponded between 1930 and 1939), Berdyaev wrote: “The people of the West are obliged to study a great deal in this experience. The reality has shown that the question of socialism is not an economic or political question but a question about God and immortality.“ Despite his belief in the evil of socialism, however, even though it had triumphed in Russia, Berdyaev continued to believe that Russia had a “special mission“ in the world. This belief eventually led him to approve and support the Soviet Union.

Berdyaev’s writings illustrate the problem of Russian messianism, which is central to Russian political culture. The contradictions that ensnared Berdyaev confound many Russians today who, despite all that has happened, still find it hard to renounce communism completely owing to their belief in Russia’s “special role.“ Viewing the materials in the Hoover Archives, we are confronted with the contradiction between Berdyaev’s analysis in his books of the nature of communism and his political writing in Russian émigré journals. Berdyaev’s logic in the latter emerges as follows: (1) the Russian people have a great universal mission; (2) the Soviet regime was the product of the Russian people; so (3) at a fundamental level, then, the Soviet regime cannot be evil.

In his article, “It Is Necessary to Endure the Russian Fate,“ which was published in 1946 in the Paris émigré newspaper Russkiye Novosti, Berdyaev wrote that many émigrés did not want to recognize that “‘Bolshevism’ was not violence against the Russian people on the part of a small group of people obsessed with a false idea but was a creation of the Russian people, its own fate.“ The issue was not one of approving all the actions of the Soviet regime “but the question of one’s relation to the Russian people, to the Russian earth and to the Russian revolution as an important moment in the fate of the Russian people.”

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If Berdyaev was correct that Bolshevism was an expression of the Russian tradition, one could argue that there is something wrong with that tradition, but Berdyaev took a different view. In an article written in 1948 (but published in 1952, after his death) in the Paris periodical Novyi zhurnal, Berdyaev insisted on the “special mission“ of the Russian people. “The fate of Russia is unique,“ he wrote, “and the Russian people are unique. … The Russian idea entered communism, but it was deformed … and connected with a false spirit … forced collectivism.“ Despite this, Berdyaev believed it important to remember that “the Russian people were the first to make a social experiment, extraordinary in its bravery, and raise a new theme for the whole world. Let it [the Russian people] once in a while make a mistake but that is better than doing nothing and remaining self-satisfied.“

REPRESSION AND FREEDOM Berdyaev was not blind to the mass repression in the Soviet Union, but, given his faith in Russia’s “special way“, he came, in the postwar years, to see it as almost secondary to Russia’s saving mission.

He thus implicitly justified Marxism, which he had condemned in his theoretical works for its readiness to exchange truth for bread.

In a 1946 article in Russkiye Novosti, Berdyaev responded to the campaign then going on in the Soviet Union against the poet Anna Akhmatova and the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, who were criticized for their “anti-Soviet spirit.“ “The basic mistake,“ he wrote, is to assume that it is possible to fabricate souls by means of mandatory organization, that it is possible to have a factory production of people … . The Soviets want to create a society in which there will not be the exploitation of man by man, and they have done a great deal in this direction. The goal is humane, but it is impossible to create a new social system without free criticism.”

Despite the evidence of Stalin’s creation of a system based exclusively on lies, Berdyaev maintained that free speech was possible in the Soviet Union. He argued that Russia would probably not adopt Western-style democracy but instead head toward “real

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freedom“ and that the Russian people should remain true to “Russian universalism.”

Berdyaev’s faith in Russia’s special mission led him to reject the “bourgeois democracy“ in the West, which offered only formal freedom. “The enormous working masses,“ he wrote in Novyi zhurnal, “are deprived of the opportunity to realize their freedom.“ In the process, however, Berdyaev denied the very meaning of political freedom: “The complexity and contradictoriness of the understanding of freedom is that in movement some see the violation of freedom and in the absence of movement or change, they see freedom … . As a result, the great slogan of freedom can become in the capitalist world, a cover for capitalist interests.”

Berdyaev said that the discussion should not be about “formal, stingy and, in essence, conservative“ freedom but about “genuine, deep, permanent freedom“ connected with human dignity.

“Freedom is understood as the opening of collective social activism and the defining of a direction that changes the face of the world.“ In his writing, Berdyaev did not defend the “freedom“ that existed in the Soviet Union. He wrote that “freedom is not only the creative activity of the social person in society, freedom is also independence of spirit and all forms of spiritual life and spiritual creativity from the so-called objective world, from society imposing its will on a person from outside.“ His faith in the “Russian idea,“ however, led him to justify the Soviet Union’s social pretensions, despite his own insistence that the issue of Marxism was moral not economic.

Berdyaev was not blind to the mass repression in the Soviet Union, but, given his faith in Russia’s “special way,“ he came to see the repression as subordinate to Russia’s saving mission.

Berdyaev’s writing gave rise to controversy and disappointment in the Russian émigré community. Berdyaev almost certainly owed his life to being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1922 on the so-called “philosophers’ boat.” Before his expulsion, Berdyaev was interrogated by Felix Dzerzhinski, the head of the Cheka, and he used the opportunity to denounce communism to one of its most sanguinary practitioners.

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Berdyaev’s faith in the “Russian idea“, however, seems to have been the result of an emotional commitment not subject to rational analysis. Moreover, his views were not alien to the Russian political tradition. Communism expressed, in a radical materialist form, a faith in Russia’s special message that Berdyaev would have preferred to see expressed in the form of “religious socialism“. Such a messianic role, however, can only be based on a denial of universal ethics, a fact well demonstrated in Berdyaev’s philosophy and an enduring problem for Russia today.

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Russia: Rebuilding the Iron Curtain.

Hearing before the Committee On Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION MAY 17, 2007

STATEMENT OF DAVID SATTER, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE I wrote my statement with the [five minute] time limit in mind. [I ask that this presentation and my statement be entered] into the record.

Chairman LANTOS. Without objection.

Mr. SATTER [continuing]. And also to give a synopsis of it as best I can in the time that is allowed us.

Chairman LANTOS. Go ahead.

Mr. SATTER. One of the most important questions in the world today is the intentions of Russia. One can only wonder what is motivating Russia to create so many artificial problems in a short period of time.

If Russia were motivated by logical concerns, it would be dedicated to doing three things: balancing Chinese power, guarding against Islamic terrorism, and preventing the emergence of nuclear powers on its borders.

Instead, Russia appears fixated on dominating the countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union and appears willing to sacrifice its vital interests for the empty satisfaction of appearing to give orders to countries it believes it has a right to dominate.

The leaders of a country are usually dedicated to defending that country’s vital interests. Developments in Russia, however, show that there is a real divergence between the interests of Russia and the interests of the small group of people who run it.

The latter, by all indications, are interested in the accumulation of wealth and power irrespective of the consequences for the 63

country. This is what makes Russia an unpredictable factor in international relations and a danger to itself.

It is important to remember that the present ruling oligarchy in Russia came to power accidentally. If it had not been for the massive corruption under Yeltsin and the fact that the Yeltsin entourage was seized by fear of a grand reckoning in 1999, it is highly unlikely that someone like Putin who was the head of the intelligence service, had never run for office and was devoid of obvious charisma, would have emerged as Yeltsin’s successor.

With Yeltsin and his family facing possible criminal prosecution, however, a plan was put into motion to put in place a successor who would guarantee that Yeltsin and his entourage would be safe from prosecution, and the criminal division of property in the country would not be subject to re-examination.

“Operation Successor,” however, required a massive provocation. In my view, that provocation was the bombing of the apartment buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk in 1999 that claimed 300 lives. In the aftermath of this act of terror, which was blamed on the Chechens with no proof, a second Chechen war was launched.

Putin, who had been named prime minister, was put in charge of the effort. His popularity immediately rose. He was elected President on a wave of popular enthusiasm for the war effort, and his first official act was to pardon Yeltsin for all crimes committed while in office. The question of the division of property under Yeltsin was quietly forgotten.

The group of former KGB agents around Putin quickly formed a new ruling hierarchy. Many people thought that the corruption under Yeltsin, which was sometimes referred to as the “Mobutuization of Russia,“ had gone as far as corruption could possibly go.

They were wrong.

After the price of oil rose from $9 a barrel in 1998 to as much as $78, possibilities for corruption exploded, and corruption today in Russia is believed to be worth 10 times what it was worth under Yeltsin.

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The formative experiences for many of the people who run Russia today was the KGB, and the KGB was an organization dominated by spy mania. That means in effect the chase for phantoms.

Under these circumstances, people who acquired wealth beyond the dreams of avarice found themselves in a position where they were desperate to defend that wealth and they considered that the best way to do that was to establish artificial goals in foreign policy that defined the outside world as the enemy and, in that way, distract the population from the corruption and destruction of democracy that was going on inside the country.

So what do we see today? There is near hysteria in Russia over the removal of the Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, although after more than 60 years Russia has not buried its own war dead and has certainly not bothered to memorialize many of the mass graves that contain the bodies of thousands of nameless Stalin era victims.

We see attempts to defend the separatism of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia, although Russia waged a genocidal war to prevent separatism in Chechnya. We see a country that claims to be in favor of free elections, but did everything possible to falsify the elections in Ukraine.

Finally, and most incredibly, we see a country that feels itself threatened by plans for a United States defensive antimissile system in Poland and the Czech Republic while supporting the development of nuclear weapons in Iran.

Russia today is conducting a foreign policy directed against phantom enemies on the basis of artificial issues that have no relationship to the country's real interests, but everything to do with the needs of a small coterie of corrupt officials who treat the country as their personal property.

The problem is in equal parts political, psychological and criminal, and it represents a direct challenge to the West because we should not assume that just because Russian concerns are mythical that they are therefore not being treated by them seriously.

I consider it a sign of the Russian authorities’ perverse seriousness that Viktor Yuschenko was poisoned. Although he has been disfigured, he could have been killed. Russian forces have attacked

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Georgia in the Kodori Valley, and Russians have unleashed a massive cyber-attack against the Government of Estonia.

In conclusion, in dealing with Russia we have a dual task. We have to make clear to the Russian leadership there is no advantage to pursuing the policies they are pursuing, and this means ceasing to mollify them.

Recently Alexander Litvinenko, a British subject, was murdered by being poisoned on British soil. All evidence points to state sponsored murder. So far, the Russian authorities have obstructed the investigation. Is it realistic to think about further cooperation with Russia, including Russian membership in the G-8 and the WTO, until this crime is solved? At the same time, we need to make clear to the Russian people that their real interest and the interest of their country is with universal moral values, one set of standards for all, the Biblical heritage of both Russia and the West.

Unfortunately, in this respect there is a problem. We need to begin to acknowledge the mistakes made by American policy during the Yeltsin period. What we described as the progress of democracy was more properly seen in Russia as the triumph of criminality, and now the United States has been discredited in Russia and democracy is associated with crime.

We are not involved in a new Cold War with Russia, but the traces of a delusionary Soviet mentality are still evident in the behavior of the Russian leadership. That mentality has to be limited by a commitment on our part to universal moral values.

There is no sincerity involved in the foreign policy of the Russian Government. By recognizing this and basing our policies accordingly, we have some hope of influencing both the leadership and the Russian population and limiting the quite dangerous Russian tendency to once again live in a world of illusions, a tendency that is becoming more pronounced with each passing day. Thank you.

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Right and Wrong in Russia The moral and spiritual malaise of a great nation Hoover Digest, No. 1, 2008 The editors of Vestnik Analytiki (The Analyst’s Bulletin), a policy research magazine published in Russia, asked Hoover fellow David Satter to write an article on a theme of his choice. Satter posed and answered three questions that focus on ethics and morality in postcommunist Russia.

1. WHERE DOES THE SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS OF CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA LIE? As Russia seeks a new spiritual direction, its most serious problem appears to be not the absence of ideology but the lack of a reliable sense of ethical transcendence. This sense presupposes the existence of a moral standard that stands above society and applies equally to all individuals and all human institutions. It balances the weight of the state and society and provides the moral basis for personal autonomy.

In most Western societies, the sense of ethical transcendence is reinforced by the normal operation of a state based on law. The equality of citizens before the law is justified in the West by the presumed spiritual equality of each individual before God. In Russia, however, the sense of ethical transcendence is compromised by the fact that the individual and the state are not held to the same standards. The individual lacks autonomy, while the state often functions as a substitute for God. The hypertrophied role of the state in Russia is nothing new.

In tsarist Russia, the Slavophiles saw the state’s mission in terms of religion, the Westernizers, in terms of socialism. But both believed that it was the mission of the state to save humanity on the basis of a totalitarian ideology that combined “philosophy with life“ and 67

“theory with practice.“ The victory of communism eliminated all opposition to the notion of the state’s superiority, and, after the fall of communism, no transcendent values capable of limiting the state’s prerogatives ever took root. The result is that Russia today lacks a spiritual framework capable of limiting both individuals and the state. This deprives both of a reliable sense of right and wrong.

Russian foreign policy reflects the ethical void in its disrespect for the independence of other states, particularly those that are weak. Perhaps the best recent example is the Orange Revolution three years ago in Ukraine, where the key issue was the right of the Ukrainians to elect leaders in fair elections without fraud or intimidation. By congratulating Viktor Yanukovich on a victory in an election that he had not won, Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstrated his indifference to Ukrainians’ democratic choice.

Russia showed the same lack of respect for Ukraine’s independence in a crisis over natural gas pipelines in January 2007. Russia and Ukraine share the energy infrastructure built by the former Soviet Union, and Russia needs Ukrainian pipelines no less than Ukraine needs Russian gas. By abruptly canceling a gas delivery arrangement and demanding an almost fivefold increase in price, Russia was not following the logic of the market but, on the contrary, using the forced cooperation of the two countries to interfere with Ukraine’s internal politics.

The lack of a sense of ethical transcendence is evident in other ways. Lawlessness is endemic. Small and medium-sized businesses are forced to pay protection money to criminal gangs or to the organs of law enforcement. This pattern is so ingrained that many Russians treat extortion as entirely normal. In a system where society cannot control the bureaucracy, officials are unrestrained, and bribery is rampant. According to two monitoring services, the amount of bribes in Russia rose steeply between 2001 and 2005, from $36 billion to $319 billion.

Finally, the lack of higher values appears in a disregard for human life. This was nowhere more obvious than in the Beslan school tragedy in 2004. Russian authorities decided to open fire on the school, where 1,200 children and teachers were being held 68

hostage by Chechen terrorists, even though an agreement had been reached an hour earlier with Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov to come to Beslan to try to resolve the crisis. Clearly, the Russian authorities gave higher priority to their political objectives than to the hostages’ lives. This was also demonstrated by the fac long denied—that Russian forces attacked the school with flamethrowers.

2. DOES THE NATURE OF THE RUSSIAN STATE STRENGTHEN RUSSIA’s ROLE AS A GREAT POWER? In the Soviet era, the domination of the state over the individual appears to have offered strategic and military advantages even as it impoverished the country and degraded the population. But the Soviet Union has been dismantled. Can the post-Soviet Russian regime, which operates in a semi-democratic environment, hope to re-establish itself as a great power based on a mentality that derives from totalitarianism? I think that it cannot.

First, Russia’s newfound liberties limit the regime’s freedom of action. Elections are manipulated, but they do exist, and opposition is possible. The press, although controlled, is able to criticize and reveal inconvenient information about those in power. Political control of the population, and the full strategic advantages that come with it, is therefore no longer available to the regime.

At the same time, any attempt to limit existing freedoms elicits the opposition of the West, complicating Russia’s efforts to solidify economic and political relations. Russians sometimes assume that Western protests over human rights abuses are part of a plan to subjugate Russia. The impetus for those protests, however, comes not from Western governments but from Western society, which reacts to abuses whether governments desire this or not. These protests cannot be easily disregarded. The controversy over Russia’s assuming the chairmanship of the G-8 industrial nations and, indeed, its membership in the G-8 at all is a case in point.

Finally, Russia’s lack of a sense of ethical transcendence and the excessive dominance of the individual by the state dooms it, in the long run, to de-modernization. Authoritarian modernization 69

has had limited success in Latin America and South Asia, where it has eased the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, but Russia, which is already industrialized, needs to build a postindustrial economy. The more the regime insists on dominating society, the more it isolates itself from those whose participation in such an economic transformation it desperately needs. Clinging to the Soviet totalitarian model and ignoring society’s need for an ethical framework and the rule of law will bring stagnation and economic degradation.

3. HOW CAN RUSSIA GUARANTEE ITS FUTURE? Russia is part of Judeo-Christian civilization, and its future is with the West. To take its place with the West, however, Russia must recognize the authority of ethical transcendence. Establishing universal values means, first of all, ending the imbalance between the status of the individual and the prerogatives of the state. This will not be easy, but nothing else can rescue Russia from a future of authoritarianism and stagnation.

Ending the Russian authoritarian tradition would take a major intellectual effort. As a result, it depends on the intelligentsia, some of whom prefer nationalist delusions to thinking seriously about Russia’s future. They would do well, however, to remember the German intellectuals who insisted that Germany had been defeated in the First World War only because it was betrayed (the supposed “stab in the back“) and so contributed to their country’s destruction by helping bring the Nazis to power.

It is now argued in Russia that the country’s history should be understood primarily as the story of the Russian state. According to this interpretation, the communist era was just one episode in the evolution of the state structures that were responsible for many past glories. The Soviet period is recalled with nostalgia, as the time when Russia was at the height of its world power. Putin referred recently to the fall of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.“ To establish the authority of higher values in Russia, however, it is necessary to recognize that the state tradition is the source of 70

Russia’s tragedies. It matters little that the Soviet Union established a worldwide empire or that it built a military machine powerful enough to crush fascism, which its own existence helped to inspire.

What matters is that it imposed a materialist concept of man that was soul-destroying and needs to be discredited before a new, more human existence can begin.

It could be argued that breaking with the Russian state tradition means rejecting Russia’s past. This is true, to a degree. But it does not necessarily mean a loss of identity. Rejecting the past never implies a loss of identity if it is done consciously and in light of ultimate values. At the same time, the state tradition, although dominant, was not the only salient feature of Russian history. A long line of Russians has fought for democracy, from the Decembrists to the Soviet dissidents, and all of them played a role in bringing about that degree of freedom that exists in Russia today. Sharp breaks with tradition are also not unheard of in modern history, and they often invoke alternative tendencies in a nation’s own history.

Russia needs a moral framework for its long-term existence.

The life of the nation, however, cannot be based on transcendent moral values if the tendency of its institutions is to crush the individual. Carl Jung said ethical transcendence is the “reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority that acts as a counterpoise to the ‘world and its reason.’“ This relationship locates the true source of moral judgment not in sacred texts or the “special role“ of a race or class but in the individual’s sense of right and wrong.

Russia needs to build a new tradition. The Russian earth is no longer giving forth an unlimited number of individuals to be exploited by the apparatus of the state. It is now necessary for Russia to value the people that it has. Change is likely to be agonizingly difficult, but it is well within the capacity of a nation that tried to create heaven on earth. And it is the only hope for a better future.

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Symposium: “Russia’s Higher Values” FrontPage Magazine, March 10, 2008 FrontPage: Vladimir Bukovsky, Garry Kasparov, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Yuri Yarim Agaev and David Satter, welcome to Frontpage Symposium. David Satter, let’s begin with you. Leading church and state officials in Russia habitually state that there are “higher values“ than human rights. One of these values is the needs of the state. Can you talk a bit about these false values?

What explains this continuing Russian romance with authoritarianism?

Democracy presumes that individuals have spiritual value. In Russia, however, the individual is understood as a means to an end. It is the state that is endowed with spiritual legitimacy. As a result, the base for democratic government does not exist.

In the United States, it would be unthinkable to arrest millions of people in order to have slave labor for massive industrial projects or to starve to death millions more in order to break resistance to the collectivization of agriculture. In Russia, this was possible. And, in the so-called reform period, it was possible to wipe out the life savings of almost the entire population overnight and to embark on an economic transformation that was so exploitive and lawless that it led to five to six million “surplus deaths“ (deaths that could not have been predicted on the basis of existing demographic trends) in less than a decade.

The Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote, “It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of humanity. Human beings have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of something else.“ Unfortunately, this fundamental lesson was never learned in Russia. The government has always claimed for itself supra-mundane authority (either explicitly or implicitly) and the Russian people, having never been empowered, make the fatal mistake of identifying with the aspirations of the government. Instead of claiming individual rights, in whose existence they don’t believe, they draw false pride from the power of the state creating the conditions for their permanent enslavement.

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This situation, of course, puts Russia at odds with the civilized world and this is the reason that there have recently been attempts to work out a new rationale for the country’s disrespect for human rights. The authors of this attempt are the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, many of whom were KGB informers during the Soviet period. Their argument is that human rights must be limited if they conflict with morality and the highest requirement of morality is the existence of the state.

And, instead of being treated with ridicule, this idea has received the support of important elements in Russian society, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

It is now clear that Russia is trapped in a historical syndrome from which it cannot escape. Russians need to limit the state rather than identify with its power. Until they do, a historical configuration that has brought Russia nothing, but grief will continue.

“Instead of claiming individual rights, in whose existence they don’t believe, they draw false pride from the power of the state creating the conditions for their permanent enslavement.“ Powerful words, David Satter, thank you.

I know from experience that many Russians have a democratic outlook. I also believe that, given the chance, Russians are perfectly capable of organizing a democratic society. The problem, I think, is that as matters stand, the value structure of Russian society is based on a complete disregard for the dignity of the individual. Until this is changed, Russia’s democratic potential cannot be realized.

The American Founding Fathers expressed the essence of the problem in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. The Founders wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.“ I emphasize the reference to a creator because without a recognized source of legitimacy that transcends the individual and all institutions that are man-made, the notion of inalienable rights makes no sense. In such a universe, there is nothing to reinforce the dignity of the individual and counterbalance the often crushing pressure of society and the state.

What happened in Russia historically is that the balance between the state and the individual was violated by the assignment of divine attributes to the state. Implicitly this was a rejection of higher values that can 74

only come from a transcendent source. It follows from this that what Russia needed after the fall of communism was the establishment of such values, the transformation of the individual from a means to an end. Such a change is best accomplished not by rushing to put property into private hands (which, in almost all cases, were criminal) but through the rule of law. A system of law is the concrete expression of transcendent values because equality before the law is a reflection of the presumed equality of all believers before God. Unfortunately, the establishment of the rule of law in post-Soviet Russia never took place.

People in the West often lose sight of the moral and legal context of our political and economic activities. But in the West, functioning legal systems and a religious based appreciation of the value of the individual have deep roots. In Russia, it was necessary to foster these characteristics after centuries of authoritarian rule including seven decades of communist totalitarianism. Because this did not happen, Russia had no hope of becoming democratic. First, the country became completely criminalized and then the KGB was given the opportunity to take power in return for protecting the criminals. In this way, the Russian tradition of disregard for the individual was completely reestablished and the subsequent efforts of the Orthodox Church to deny the universal validity of human rights and, of course, justify ideologically the new dictatorship were completely logical.

Is it possible to change the dominant culture in Russia? And, if so, who should do it? I think the answers to these questions are a.) it is possible and b.) it is the task of the Russians themselves, but they need help from the West.

The Putin regime, although completely undemocratic, does allow a large degree of personal freedom. This creates space for the intellectual process which can be directed toward a democratic development. At the same time, despite its oil wealth, Russia, in the long run, faces a systemic crisis caused by demographic decline, the failure of economic development and a ruling group that believes that the best way to solve any problem is by force.

As a result of this situation, at a certain point, as the population drops, the economy stagnates and conflicts break out within the ruling group, Russia may finally have to face the cost of its disrespect for the individual. Russians have access to information, the freedom to travel and greater prosperity. In this situation, they may come to understand that 75

Russia has problems that only democratic institutions can solve. Democratic leaders may then finally get a hearing.

In this respect, the role of the West is important. By insisting on its values, the West helps to nurture and preserve the democratic alternative in a society that is prone to accept authoritarianism as “natural.“ But both Russian liberals and the West need to speak not only about democracy but also about values. Robert Reilly, the former head of the Voice of America, recently quotes Professor Harry V. Jaffa on the traditional weakness of U.S. democracy promotion efforts. “We are telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions,“ Jaffa wrote, “without any reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.“ This is a mistake in relation to Russia that we cannot afford.

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Yeltsin: A Life Johnson’s Russia List, June 3, 2008 This is a review of a biography of Yeltsin by Harvard Professor Tim Colton that was solicited but rejected for publication by The Moscow Times.

For decades, there was one path to success in the Soviet Union: total loyalty. When the Soviet Union entered its death throes, however, the situation changed. Suddenly, opposition was possible and there were great opportunities for careerists who were ready to change sides. No one benefited from these opportunities more than Boris Yeltsin. In a few short years, Yeltsin, who ordered the destruction of the Ipatev mansion where the Tsar and his family were murdered and covered up the leak in a Sverdlovsk biological weapons plant, became a hero of democratic society. By 1991, he had taken power and was in a position to humiliate Gorbachev who had once humiliated him.

In “Yeltsin: A Life,” Timothy J. Colton, a professor of Russian studies at Harvard, tries to assess Yeltsin’s contribution. Colton interviewed key political figures as well as Yeltsin’s family members, classmates and friends. He is the only Western biographer to have gained access to Yeltsin himself. His account is detailed and contains useful information, particularly about the 1991 coup attempt and Yeltsin’s embrace of the privileges against which he once campaigned. It also contains some unintended humor, for example, his comment that the marriage of Yeltsin’s step granddaughter to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska gave that branch of the family financial security.

Unfortunately, however, Colton does not try to understand Yeltsin’s policies or their impact on the Russian people. For Colton, as for many of the officials who shaped U.S. policy in the 1990s, the story of Russia in the Yeltsin period is the story of Yeltsin’s career.

Colton’s writing is hackneyed. Officials “sniff” or “cluck.” The politburo was the scene of a “brouhaha.” Gorbachev considered that Yeltsin was getting “too big for his britches.” The first 77

reformers were “eager beavers.” He also has a passion for irrelevant facts. The Urals are “among the most ancient mountain ranges in the world.” The T-72 tank that Yeltsin mounted at the height of the August 1991 coup was built at the Nizhniy Tagil wagon works in Sverdlovsk oblast. Yeltsin’s home library had “handmade shelves.”

The windows of Yeltsin’s Moscow apartment looked out on a closed Old Believer monastery.

None of this would be critical if it did not reflect a general tendency toward tunnel vision that, unfortunately, pervades the whole work. Colton describes with admiration how, on December 23, 1991, Lev Sukhanov, one of Yeltsin’s aides, pointed to a map of the Russian Federation and toasted Yeltsin with the words, “On this whole territory, there is now no one above you.” As Colton describes it, a radiant Yeltsin replied, “Yes, and for this life has been worth living.”

Millions of Russians soon found that their lives under Yeltsin were not worth living but Colton treats this as unimportant. In his 1996 election campaign, Yeltsin promised to pay Russian workers their salaries. After Yeltsin was elected, wage arrears reached new heights. Colton draws no conclusions from this, writing that “individuals and Russian families made adjustments as well as they could.” In fact, millions of Russians avoided starvation by growing their own food. Colton mentions Yeltsin’s closest colleagues without including what was most important about them. Oleg Lobov, the secretary of the security council, is referred to without a word about charges that he provided the production designs for the sarin nerve gas that was used in the attack by the Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, on the Tokyo metro and Shamil Tarpishchev, Yeltsin’s tennis partner and partner in “rollicking” steam baths is mentioned without referring to his links to organized crime. Pavel Borodin, the head of the Kremlin property administration, is “the best joke teller in the government” but there is almost nothing about the accusations against him of massive corruption.

In his memoirs, Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s former bodyguard, writes that Yeltsin struck and killed a motorbike passenger in a predawn automobile accident after having spent the night drinking. Colton mentions the report but dismisses it as 78

“unconvincing.” He argues that if the accident had happened, the KGB would have learned about it and Gorbachev would have used the incident against Yeltsin. This flimsy dismissal of the charge, of course, in no way demonstrates that Yeltsin was not involved in such an accident. It merely demonstrates that Colton had no interest in investigating it.

There are many other examples of Colton’s lack of curiosity about his subject. He writes that charges of massive corruption against Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, “lack credence” despite the detailed evidence unearthed by a Swiss investigation into the matter. Similarly, he writes that Yeltsin never negotiated over Putin’s decree granting him immunity from prosecution after he left office. His source for this is Yeltsin’s son in law, Valentin Yumashev.

Colton’s most serious misrepresentations, however, concern the two defining events of Yeltsin’s presidency, the suppression of the Russian parliament in 1993 and the Russian apartment bombings that led to the Second Chechen War and the elevation of Putin as president.

In the 1993 events, Colton writes that a skirmish on the street “spun out of control.” In fact, the police mysteriously disappeared, opening the way for demonstrators to march on Ostankino where they were massacred by Special Forces who opened fire with machine guns from entrenched positions. The violence was then used

by Yeltsin as an excuse for attacking the deputies holed up in the parliament building. Colton ignores what happened at Ostankino and the possibility that the killings there were a provocation. This is no small omission because the suppression of the Supreme Soviet was the first step in the elimination of pluralism that continues to this day and was begun not by Putin but by Yeltsin.

Most serious of all, however, is Colton’s handling of the Russian apartment bombings. Colton deals with the question of who was responsible by writing, “the FSB blamed the violence on proChechen fanatics.” He fails to add that there is evidence that those responsible for this terrorist act were not Chechens but the FSB. In Ryazan three FSB agents were caught after placing a bomb in the basement of an apartment building. The bomb tested positive for 79

hexogen, the same explosive that was used in the successful bombings. Insofar as the bombings galvanized the population behind a new war in Chechnya that made possible the election of Putin as president and, of course, the decree protecting Yeltsin from criminal prosecution, a biographer cannot avoid them. Colton could have advanced arguments to show that Yeltsin and the FSB were innocent of any wrongdoing. This he did not do. Instead, he chose to pretend that the most critical question surrounding the Yeltsin presidency does not exist.

Westerners are often amazed that 17 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy is deeply distrusted in Russia. A great deal of the credit for this goes to Yeltsin who did not understand that democracy is not possible without the rule of law. Perhaps an equal share of the blame, however, goes to those in the West who, having grown up with the benefits of law, were not willing to insist on it in the case of Russia. Imbued with the habits of Western careerism, their highest goal was the success of Yeltsin’s career, irrespective of the consequences for the Russian people. Colton’s biography of Yeltsin is an example of the degree to which the lessons of the Yeltsin era still have not been learned.

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Symposium: Remembering the Dissident FrontPage Magazine, December 24, 2008 FrontPage: Natan Sharansky, Pavel Litvinov, Dr. Natalia Sadomskaya, Richard Pipes, Yakov Krotov, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, David Satter, Yuri Yarim Agaev and Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

David Satter, let’s begin with you. What were your thoughts upon Solzhenitsyn’s death?

On learning of Solzhenitsyn’s death, I had a sense of the end of an era. I grew up politically with Solzhenitsyn. As a teenager in the 1960s, I once asked my father whether it was true that there were slave labor camps in the Soviet Union. He said that if they had existed, we would have the accounts of survivors. After Solzhenitsyn and the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,“ it was no longer possible to say that there were no first-hand accounts.

Many people, including millions of Soviet citizens, were deceived about the atrocities of the communist regime. More than anyone else, Solzhenitsyn dispelled those fatal illusions. His contribution to literature and to truth is indelible. I also, however, on learning of Solzhenitsyn’s death felt a sense of sadness that in his later years he strayed from the path of universal values and supported the Putin regime. In this, he demonstrated spiritual weaknesses that were not so evident in the years when he valiantly resisted Soviet totalitarianism.

Solzhenitsyn made a monumental contribution to the destruction of Soviet communism. Many episodes from his books are simply unforgettable—the telephone call in the opening scene in The First Circle, Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to the Butyrka Prison, and the discovery of a prehistoric salamander in an ice lens by starving prisoners in The Archipelago Gulag.

This rare artistic talent was used to bear witness to some of the greatest crimes of the century. In this way, Solzhenitsyn combined great art and riveting political relevance.

In his later years, however, Solzhenitsyn exhibited many of the traits that he criticized in his books. He fought for freedom and told Russians “Live not by lies“ when it was a matter of opposing communism but 81

praised Putin who waged a genocidal war in Chechnya and reimposed censorship. He told the West to interfere in Soviet affairs in the 1970s but when the West interfered too much 30 years later, he joined the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, many of them former KGB informers, in casting doubt on the universal validity of human rights.

I believe that ultimately Solzhenitsyn’s political views are far less important than his work and his contribution to the fall of communism. It is his masterpieces that will be remembered, and his political views will be only a footnote just as Dostoevsky’s bizarre political pronouncements are a footnote to his immortal works. As Russia reverts back to dictatorship, however, Solzhenitsyn’s own political evolution should not be completely ignored. Russia’s great weakness is its failure to value the truth for its own sake.

Almost nothing is known about the polemics between [the writer, Varlam] Shalamov, [author of the “Kolyma Tales,” an account of the labor camps in the far Eastern Kolyma region] and Solzhenitsyn. These polemics are, undoubtedly, essential for our understanding of not only Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, but also of the Soviet regime and, even more so, of the deepest philosophical questions relating to what it means to be human. Can our guests pinpoint the main argument in their polemics? What was their significance and consequence? We know that Solzhenitsyn saw potential redemption in suffering such as that which the Gulag inflicts, while Shalamov saw such suffering as something that only demoralizes and breaks the human spirit and ultimately degrades man, making him sub-human.

I think Solzhenitsyn is far better known than Shalamov because he was much more political. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich“ made him an international celebrity overnight. His novels and “Archipelago Gulag“ were all aimed at exposing the reality of the communist system. Shalamov depicted the depths of depravity and cruelty perhaps better than Solzhenitsyn, but he was less concerned to convey a political message. As it happened, the message that Solzhenitsyn conveyed was very much in demand.

Natan Sharansky (who I last saw in Moscow moments before he was arrested) makes an interesting point about the relationship between identity and democracy. He writes that Solzhenitsyn did not understand that it is possible to be committed to one’s own unique history and also to freedom and democracy. The general point is a good one but in the case of 82

Russia, I’m not sure it’s true. Russia’s political culture, as it has existed traditionally, is not friendly to freedom and democracy. On the contrary, the emphasis in democracy on the value of the individual is missing in Russia. There is not a sense in Russia that the individual has irreducible value. On the contrary, he is seen as a means to an end, usually as defined by the state. I believe that to defend democracy in Russia, it is necessary to reject aspects of the Russian tradition. This is what Andrei Sakharov tried to do. It is what Solzhenitsyn refused to do and this refusal made his final embrace of Putin sadly logical.

Natan also talks about the book, “200 Years Together,“ in which Solzhenitsyn politely suggests that Jews were always a foreign element in Russia and did not share his love for the country that persecuted them.

Highlights of the book are the claims that Jews were overrepresented among the Bolsheviks and the NKVD (true, at least for a while), that they found “soft“ jobs in the Gulag (did someone do a survey?) and that they spent their time during the Second World War away from the front (in fact, Jews had a higher percentage of “Heroes of the Soviet Union“ than any other nationality). This is not the place to dwell on this book. But it is interesting for what it shows about Solzhenitsyn’s attitude toward Russians.

The tendency to blame Russia’s misfortunes on Jews allows Russians to avoid looking at their own tradition. Without the Jews, the West and the other outsiders who ruined Russia, there is a real problem understanding where Russia’s misfortunes come from. In light of the problems of presentday Russia, people who share Solzhenitsyn’s outlook would be better off to forget about the Jews and look for the sources of Russia’s tragedy in aspects of themselves.

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Vlad the Enforcer The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia

By Angus Roxburgh (I.B. Tauris, 338 pp) The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

By Masha Gessen (Granta Books, 314 pp) Although he has ruled Russia for twelve years, Vladimir Putin remains a mystery. His family life is hidden, as is much of his life story. His wealth is the subject of speculation with some insisting he is the richest man in Europe. But evidence is difficult to come by.

His enemies regularly turn up dead and he attaches little value to human life. Yet, he has presided over the sharpest rise in Russian living standards in the last 100 years.

Two recent books examine the paradox of the man. The Strongman by Angus Roxburgh, a former BBC and Sunday Times Moscow correspondent who later worked as a public relations adviser to Putin’s government, tells the story of Putin’s times, while the welltitled The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen, a Moscow-based freelance writer, tries to depict Putin as a personality. Unfortunately, both books are limited by their authors’ lack of access to their subject.

Roxburgh focuses on Putin’s relations with the outside world.

He takes the view that although Putin is not perfect, the problems in US-Russian relations are “due as much to American insensitivity as … to Putin’s stridency in pursuing his legitimate goal of restoring Russian pride and status.” However, Roxburgh cannot avoid including facts that demonstrate both the sinister nature of Putin’s rule and the dubiety of his thesis.

On the subject of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which led to a new Chechen war and brought Putin to power, Roxburgh notes that a bomb was discovered in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan and that the persons arrested were not Chechens but agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). He acknowledges that the regime thwarted all attempts to

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investigate the incident officially and that two members of a commission that tried to determine the facts independently were murdered. But despite the evidence that Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror, Roxburgh draws no conclusions. Nor does he attempt to provide an alternative, innocent explanation.

Roxburgh refers to the reporting on the Chechen war of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist murdered in 2006, including her account of the massacre in Novaya Katayama in which fifty-one civilians, including entire families, were murdered by Russian troops, with many of the victims tortured and beheaded. Despite these and countless other documented Russian atrocities, only one senior Russian officer was ever brought to justice for crimes against civilians in Chechnya. Yet, having cited Russia’s way of waging war, Roxburgh takes at face value Russian claims of offence at being seen as a potential aggressor.

Roxburgh’s experience as a public relations adviser to Putin provides the basis of some of the most interesting passages in the book. Roxburgh and his associates tried to introduce Russians to Western media practices, which included frankness and accessibility. They showed Russians how to track coverage and draw conclusions about what they were doing wrong. The Russians, in turn, assumed it was possible to buy decent coverage, and members of the BBC Russian team were attacked in the street. In the end, the well-compensated Western effort to improve Russia’s image was almost entirely futile. But one can only wonder at Roxburgh’s willingness to become involved in the first place and to believe that he had been hired to change Russian behavior rather than to misrepresent it.

Unlike Roxburgh, Gessen does not suffer from a lack of realism about Putin and the state of Russia today. She has written what purports to be a biography, but in the absence of the kind of information that would allow her to explain the thinking and motivations of her subject, she has filled the narrative with accounts of well-known events and then used them to draw plausible but possibly inaccurate conclusions about Putin.

Gessen writes, for example, in reference to Gorbachev’s release of Soviet political prisoners, that ‘Putin must have felt a hopeless, helpless fury’. Of course, he may have. But when pro86

communist hardliners attempted to seize power in 1991, Putin sided with the democratic resistance and even, according to his own post facto account, resigned from the KGB. The truth may have been that Putin was never furious about anything but was ready to side with whoever was in power.

Gessen’s account also suffers from a tendency to draw a distinction between a bad Putin and a good Yeltsin instead of seeing them as a logical continuum. In her account of how Putin came to power, Gessen speculates that Yeltsin “knew or thought he knew that Putin would not allow the prosecution or persecution of Yeltsin himself once he retired.” Indeed, the first decree issued by Putin after taking office was to grant Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.

Yet instead of trying to understand the efforts Yeltsin and his entourage—made to keep themselves out of prison—, she relies on the account of the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who supposedly argued for the choice of the new president with the words, “He’s a friend, after all.” When the idea of becoming president was broached to Putin, according to Berezovsky, Putin replied, “All right, let’s give it a shot.” Surprisingly, Gessen treats Berezovsky, the outstanding beneficiary of the corrupt privatization of the 1990s, as an objective source, and it leads her into absurdities. To explain why Berezovsky thought Putin was qualified to succeed Yeltsin, she cites an episode in which Putin allegedly declined to accept a bribe for opening a service station for Berezovsky in Leningrad. This supposedly impressed Berezovsky because, in his rich experience, Putin was the first bureaucrat that Berezovsky had ever encountered who did not take bribes.

Both Roxburgh and Gessen provide useful information and Gessen, in particular, deserves credit for bringing Marina Sayle’s account of Putin’s corruption in St Petersburg to a broader audience. But writing about Russia is often a thankless task. Russia is often described as a “mystery.” In fact, it’s not. But Westerners of all types recoil from imagining the political evil of which Russians are capable. It’s a natural reaction and, in a strange way, even speaks well of us. But it does not make us better informed.

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“What appeared after the overthrow of the Communist regime? A Criminal Regime.“ Slon.ru. July 34, 2012 Natalia Rostova The film, “Age of Delirium” by the American journalist, David Satter, premiered yesterday in London. He worked as the correspondent of the Financial Times in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were similar premiers of the film in Washington and in Moscow.

Natalia Rostova: The whole film is imbued with the idea that [the Soviet Union] was a state built on lies. Is this how you formulated the task for yourself?

David Satter: Yes, naturally. It was a lie imposed by the whole system, and people were forced to live according to the lie and pretend that it corresponded to the truth. The Soviet Union became a country of actors, everyone was forced to play a role—the role of a happy member of the most just society in human history. And everyone was the same—enslaved, equally deprived of the most basic human rights. But many people, strange as it may seem, were perfectly willing to act according to these rules and felt perfectly comfortable in the cage that the regime had created.

This shows us something about human nature. The reality is that human beings are weak and capable of adapting to almost any condition.

And the number of those who have the inner resources and ability to resist overwhelming violence and organized delusion that presents itself as ultimate truth, is very limited. To resist, a person must be so well organized internally and so cognizant of his own values that he is willing to act, if necessary, alone. He must be better organized in terms of his contact with his own values than the entire system that is trying to oppress him.

Persons like this are exceptions in any society. The film deals with some of these exceptions. But it shows the background against which they acted, how people were organized in the Soviet Union, how they were forced to live a lie, how many of them were happy to live that way, and 89

what violence was used to create that situation, and for what reasons the country fell apart.

Do you think that the Soviet Union collapsed in the first place because the lies were exposed?

In America especially, there are many people who say that the Soviet system did not work and when people saw this, the country fell apart. This is untrue: the system was viable—but under certain conditions. We can see that even now in North Korea where the population lives under conditions much worse than in the Soviet Union the regime continues to exist and, unfortunately is likely to do so for many more years.

You don’t see Gorbachev’s role in this?

The Soviet Union collapsed because Gorbachev did what he should never have done if his goal was to preserve the system. He allowed free information in a society which was based on lies. Naturally, truth and lies could not coexist; one had to destroy the other.

I was a correspondent [for the Financial Times] in the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1982. Christopher Booker, a visiting British correspondent, and I travelled around Moscow to see how the Soviet Union was preparing for the Olympics. I told Christopher at the time that this regime would not last ten years. He was completely taken aback by this remark. I was off by one year. The Soviet Union collapsed a year later. And Christopher never forgot that conversation.

I was right about the regime but, at the time I could not have imagined that the process would be started by the Soviet leaders themselves. I assumed that the system would be rigid and unchangeable until the eve of its complete collapse. The system had no internal resources to preserve itself and this was obvious even then, in 1980.

This system had certain material consequences for people. Socialism was supposedly dedicated to equality and social justice. There was equality to a certain extent. Soviet officials lived better than other members of the population but not well by Western standards. Many members of the Soviet nomenklatura experienced a hunger for material goods. They knew enough about the West to understand that the average American businessman lived better than a high-ranking Soviet boss. And when the economy 90

began to be liberalized, they realized that they could become the owners of the state property that previously they could only use as members of the nomenklatura. This desire for material goods, which is very characteristic of modern Russia, once it was given an opening in the Soviet Union, proved very difficult to limit.

Who were the leaders of Russia who declared themselves democrats?

There was Yegor Gaidar, [the leader of Yeltsin’s original economic reform team]. In Soviet times, he worked in the newspaper Pravda. Another leading democrat was Vitaly Korotich, who was the politically orthodox editor of the magazine, Ogonyek. They adapted to the communist system, made a career in that system. Ironically, in post-Soviet Russia, many of those who fight against corruption are orthodox Communists. I don’t want to idealize these people, but within the communist system they had at least some sense of honor. They took a few idealistic slogans to heart.

Russia, as always, is a great laboratory of human experience. Russians have done what other people had the common sense not to do. So, the rest of the world can learn a great deal from Russia. We need to pay attention to the Russian experience and maybe even help Russians themselves to understand this experience.

What led you to tell your colleague that the state would not last long?

I saw how they organized the Olympics, saw what they did to exclude the penetration of outside information at an event where so many countries were invited. I realized that it is impossible to resist the pressure of reality forever. It could only be accomplished for a while.

How does this mechanism work—that lying destroys the state?

When the lies were discovered, people lost faith in the system. Without faith in the system, it was impossible to maintain the unity of opinion of the whole country. Don’t forget that in the Soviet Union there was only one opinion, that of the Central Committee. No one could argue with that.

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The official party opinion was repeated at every level, down to the smallest collective in the most remote area.

When did you come to understand the role of lies in the USSR? Was it when you arrived, or later?

I understood it theoretically even before I arrived. At Oxford University I wrote my dissertation on the works of Hannah Arendt. But it is one thing to know about a phenomenon theoretically, and another thing to encounter it in reality. Most of the correspondents at that time did not speak Russian and were not particularly interested in Russia. By comparison, I had a good intellectual background. And I was able to talk to people.

You have a very gloomy view of Russia compared to other Russian experts in Washington.

Most of the more optimistic Russia experts have not spent as much time in Russia as I have. Besides, many of them are more interested in relations between our governments, the nature of Russian society does not directly concern them.

Your prognosis is disappointing. Do you admit that?

Russia is a country that, for cultural and psychological reasons, is virtually doomed to repeat its authoritarian history unless there is a change in the disrespect for individual rights.

So you don’t think Russia is already an authoritarian state?

Yes, it is a mild authoritarian state. But, for those who were killed, like Anna Politkovskaya, it was not so mild. But back to the question of pessimism about Russia. It will only cease to be justified when Russian society realizes that one cannot create democracy and justice by using people as expendable material. But this is the Russian tradition. If someone, knowing these facts, is not a pessimist, it means he is a fool.

What does it mean to be a pessimist? In this situation it does not mean to be an enemy of Russia or an enemy of the Russian people. On the contrary. Russia cannot get out of this situation by telling itself that all is

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well. What appeared after the overthrow of the communist regime? A criminal regime. One might ask oneself—was all this effort to oppose the totalitarian Soviet regime expended in order to create the regime and society that now exists in Russia? It would have been better to have created a regime that finally respected the individual, a society where people have the protection of the law?

Who is the enemy now? During the Beslan [school massacre] in 2004, someone gave the order to open fire with flame throwers and grenade launchers on the gymnasium, where there were hundreds of hostages. They were burned alive. Who could give such a barbaric order? In no civilized country would the leaders do such a thing. In 1995, Yeltsin gave the order, or somebody else gave the order, to bomb Grozny indiscriminately, Russian style. And there, according to various estimates, 20,000 people died under the bombs. It went on for five weeks. Most of those in the center of Grozny were ethnic Russians. Chechens had fled to the mountains and took shelter with their families. What can we say about such a country?

Enemies are not foreigners. They are those who disregard the lives of their fellow citizens. And those who stole billions and hid them in the West?

Those are the real enemies.

You are in favor of the “Magnitsky List“ [visa ban and confiscation of assets for human rights violators]?

Naturally. This is the minimum that must be done.

Why do it, when the State Department, the embassy can already prohibit entry?

Everything must be done publicly, clearly and without exception. It should not be done quietly, for bureaucratic reasons...

Doesn’t it bother you that retaliation will follow?

I don’t really believe there will be retaliation but, even if there is, fear of the reaction should not inhibit us... When I first began working in the Soviet Union, I was asked if I wasn’t afraid of retaliation for writing articles critical of the authorities. And I realized right away that if I started

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thinking about possible Soviet retaliation, I wouldn’t be able to write anything. I decided once and for all not to think about it.

Are you expecting a tightening now in Russia?

It is fair to say that while I think the Putin regime is capable of great crimes and has committed great crimes, against the background of the Russian tradition, it is relatively mild. The people who are in power are more interested in accumulating loot than in terrorizing people. They believe (and rightly so) that if people only talk and do nothing, they will not be threatened. But now in Russia there is a new stage—people are organizing themselves, especially in Moscow. This could be dangerous for the regime because, as in the case of the Soviet Union, the regime could find that, in a crisis, no one is ready to defend it.

What do we see in Russian criminal gangs? When they’re stealing together, they’re brothers for life. But when they need to divide up their ill-gotten gains, they begin killing each other.

I think this situation exists in the ruling circles of Russia, too. These people are greedy. There are no rules, no moral limits. All of this can cause quite serious tension if a crisis of power develops. And it seems to me that it will.

But what is important to say is that the situation is not hopeless.

There is a way out. People must understand that, finally, it is necessary to tell the truth about everything. It is absurd to say that it all started with Putin. What existed under Yeltsin was no better than what exists now. I think Russia needs the equivalent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that existed after apartheid in South Africa.

And people need to understand that corruption is only a symptom of a deeper ill in society. The deeper problem is the idea that man is a means to a political end. It is tragic, but society shares this point of view; otherwise, it would have reacted differently to Beslan, the apartment bombings, the murder of journalists.

Meanwhile, America was helping Yeltsin.

Yes, we encouraged destructive tendencies. But the Russians did a lot to themselves. In general, Russians see everything as a conspiracy.

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Yes! But I assure you that it was not a conspiracy, but a superficial approach to Russia. They just did not understand what was happening in Russia.

But even if American specialists and officials had been brilliant, I don’t think they could have prevented the way Russian society developed in the 1990s.

What makes you so sure it’s not a conspiracy? Could it be a conspiracy?

No, our people are incapable of conspiracy; it’s a characteristic of another culture.

Is there any basis for hope?

Now in Russia there is a new stage—people are organizing themselves, especially in Moscow, which is the most dangerous from the point of view of the regime. There will be a second chance for democracy in Russia now [in the wake of mass protests in 2011 and 2012], but in order not to lose it, people need to understand that if after the collapse of the Soviet Union they could not establish a democratic society, there is something that needs to be changed in themselves.

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“Recognize the unacceptable and believe the unbelievable” Rufabula.com, June 17, 2016 Yuri Terekhov Yuri Terekhov: Mr. Satter, you were the first American journalist since the Cold War to be banned from entering Russia.3 Is the Russian media afraid to talk to you?

David Satter: The Russian media want to talk to me, even representatives of Russian television call me and ask for an interview. However, they would like me to talk to them from the United States at a time when I am banned from Russia. I explain to them that I will only give an interview to Russian television in Moscow. Of course, appearing on state television in Moscow is not a good idea either. They want to create the impression of being open to various opinions, but no one can guarantee how they will handle an interview once it is given. They can edit an interview in such a way as to distort what was said by the interviewee completely. But I am willing to grant an interview for the ban on me entering the country to be lifted.

How would you characterize the current regime in Russia: hybrid, dictatorial or something else?

Regarding the term, “hybrid,” I think it is one of those terms which when used in relation to a regime or a conflict instead of clarifying the situation only confuses it. I would say that the present Russian regime is a dictatorship based on manipulation and selective terror.

3

I was expelled from Russia, where I was accredited as a correspondent of Radio Liberty, in December 2013. A note from the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that the “responsible organs”—a reference to the intelligence services—had determined that my presence on the territory of the Russian Federation was “undesirable.” I thus became the first American correspondent to be expelled from Russia since the end of the Cold War.

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There is no mass terror now, but Russia is not immune to it in the future. A person in Russia today who oversteps loosely defined boundaries can share the fate of Boris Nemtsov and Anna Politkovskaya. The example of these political murders definitely has an intimidating effect on everyone.

Your new book, “The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep,” is filled with facts about the Putin regime’s crimes against its citizens. It contains, in fact, a ready-made list of charges for trial.

These facts are known for the most part to Russian opposition activists. To whom is your book addressed? What kind of reaction do you expect from readers?

First of all, I cannot agree that the facts which are set out in the book are well known to the Russian public and the Russian liberal opposition. The opposition has a lot of work to do in terms of recognizing the truth about the history of Russia since 1991. The dissolution of the Russian parliament in 1993 was a crime and Yeltsin was responsible for the massacre of civilians at the Ostankino television tower. The massacre was the result of a provocation. This is neither widely known nor acknowledged.

In fact, Yeltsin was no better than Putin. Yeltsin was responsible for the 1995 carpet bombing of Grozny. He was responsible for the bombing of the apartment buildings in 1999 even if he did not know about them, which is far from certain. The provocation took place while he was in charge. His responsibility is not accepted by the opposition which idealized Yeltsin.

The book is addressed to the Russian public, and also to the American public. Of course, the Russians know much more about what is going on in their country than the Americans do. But the fact is that the Russian liberal opposition is trapped in misconceptions and their own unwillingness to face the truth about the Yeltsin period. We should not just be talking about Putin’s dictatorship, but the Yeltsin-Putin regime. Yeltsin created the foundation of the regime that exists today by facilitating the criminalization of the country.

In your book, post-Soviet Russia is not just a corrupt crony state, but a brutal mafia structure based on lies and violence. How

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should the West behave toward such a bloody, nuclear-armed power?

We must base our relations with Russia on a clear understanding of what Russia is. Americans do not want to understand that Russians have a different psychology, a different set of values and a completely different society. So, the book I wrote will impress many Americans as a message from outer space because when we talk about election campaign abuse, we are referring to Donald Trump exploiting the theme of Bill Clinton’s infidelity, it would never occur to us that Trump or Hillary might blow up civilian apartment buildings in order to blame the deaths on their political opponents. But once you dare to accept the unacceptable and believe the unbelievable as a first step in understanding Russia, then you have the feeling that something must be done to rein Russia in.

Speaking the truth, not censoring ourselves in relation to the Russian authorities is a way to deter aggressive behavior. If they know that the other side really understands them, they will think twice before launching aggressive actions because they will fear that a psychologically well-prepared opponent will be determined to confront them. They are indeed dangerous, and this is something the United States does not understand well.

In your opinion, if Putin had not invaded Ukraine, would the West still consider Russia a normal power despite all the atrocities inside the country?

It took something like the invasion of Ukraine for many to wake up. In addition, there is an army of propagandists, including Americans, who work officially or unofficially for Russia, helping to spread disinformation.

People have been confused about Russia’s motives. In this respect, the invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea taught even naive people a lesson and it has become more difficult to justify Russia and Russian behavior.

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In your book, you accuse Yeltsin and Putin of reproducing a system that considers the individual as expendable material for the needs of the state. Is this a legacy of Historical Russia?

These tendencies go back centuries. Russia is a country organized like a movement and in a movement, people are interchangeable. The individual personality does not matter, only the goal of the movement. Under the Tsars, Russia’s goal was to spread the Russian version of Christianity. In Soviet times, it was to spread Marxism-Leninism and the proletarian revolution. There is no such ideology now, but as the country has been overrun by criminals, the historical attitude toward the value of the individual persists. The individual remains expendable, and his life can be sacrificed freely in the service of a political goal.

You know Russia and the Soviet Union well. In your view, what changes have taken place in Russian society?

There have been huge changes. Russians have discovered money and fallen in love with it. They have become more capable as individuals, more selfconfident. They value their freedom more and are able to use it. They explore the world around them and have become more sophisticated. They have acquired middle-class habits. But the moral structure that existed even under communism—the notion that one should not steal, that one should help other people—has largely disappeared. This is especially important for those who have become successful in various ways, including the members of the new urban middle class. They have little with which to resist the pressure of a criminal regime that forces people into illegal activities, deprives them of opportunities, limits their freedom and intimidates them.

Doesn’t it seem to you that the country is an empire at the stage of half-decay, and in the case of its inevitable crisis it will collapse under the weight of its moral and economic degradation?

A country’s stability is not measured by its external calm (which we see in Russia) but by its ability to withstand external and internal shocks.

Russia is not very promising in this respect. It has a parasitic ruling class that does not identify with the rest of the population. There is a great sense of grievance on the part of the population against those who have been able 100

to appropriate wealth at the expense of the rest of society through illegal means. A key part of the economy is based on mineral extraction, and the regime’s aggressive behavior leads to international sanctions. All of these factors contribute to instability. At the same time, lawlessness is widespread. With each passing year, the discontent in society grows.

I liked your idea about the need to convene a Constituent Assembly. This idea means the establishment of a new legitimate reality and a new state. What should be the basis of this new state?

What Russia needs is a separation of powers, and it must give up its imperial ambitions. Those parts of the country which want to live separately should have the right to follow their own path. Conditions should be created so that the country does not rely on repression but has a mechanism which can prevent the political system from descending into tyranny. This mechanism was destroyed in 1993 with Yeltsin’s dissolution of the parliament and creation of a system that strengthened presidential power.

Russia needs a Truth Commission, which would be able to investigate all the crimes committed in the post-Soviet period, as well as in the Soviet period. The country must realize the consequences of the disregard of the individual. This can best be understood by studying real history. In this respect, the apartment bombings are extremely important because they are the quintessence of the attitude that the individual has no value, and it is acceptable to kill 300 people if what is at stake is the hold on power.

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25 years after the shelling of Parliament How Democracy Died Radio Liberty, September 22, 2018 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Was the 1993 crackdown on the Supreme Soviet a crushing blow to Russian democracy? Why did Washington support Boris Yeltsin’s questionable actions? Were Western analysts and politicians wrong in their assessment of Boris Yeltsin and his intentions? Is Vladimir Putin a loyal successor to Boris Yeltsin? On the 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the first parliament of post-Soviet Russia, we talk to the American journalist David Satter, whose article “When Russian Democracy Died“ has just been published by the Wall Street Journal.4 On September 21, 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued Decree Number 1400 “On Gradual Constitutional Reform in the Russian Federation,“ the first paragraph of which called for the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet and the Council of People’s Deputies, the country’s highest legislative body. The decree triggered a crisis that continued for two weeks and ended on October 4 with the shelling of the White House, where many deputies of the Supreme Soviet had barricaded themselves inside. Western capitals did not condemn Boris Yeltsin’s crackdown on the parliament, contenting themselves with his assurance that free elections would soon be held for a new Russian parliament. David Satter believes that this was a serious mistake by Western leaders who did not realize that this event put an end to the short-lived democratic experiment in Russia.

4

“When Russian Democracy Died,” The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2018.

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Yuri Zhigalkin: David, why do you believe that the events of October 1993 doomed Russian democracy?

David Satter: When Yeltsin abolished the Supreme Soviet and then used the army against the people’s deputies, that was the end of the separation of powers in Russia. Without the separation of powers, it is impossible to have a democratic system. Yeltsin showed that Russia did not have the mentality that is necessary in a democracy and is displayed in an ability to compromise for the sake of democracy itself. Any democracy is based on the clash of interests. Its survival is only possible because the participants value democracy over the tactical victory of the moment. We saw in Russia in 1993 that the will to preserve the ability to solve disputes by compromise, was not there. Yeltsin skillfully mobilized a people who had emerged from a totalitarian system and destroyed one of the most important conditions for Russia’s continued progress.

David, you seem to be putting the blame on Yeltsin for the events of ‘93 and Russia’s retreat into authoritarianism. But you yourself say that there was no democratic mentality in Russia. After all, his opponents weren’t democrats either. Don’t you see them as also to blame for creating the situation that led to the dispersal of Parliament?

Both sides were to blame, no doubt. But it was Yeltsin, who violated laws, who violated the constitution. It’s good to say ex post facto that the constitution which existed at that time was the communist constitution. Certainly, the constitution was flawed, but there was a process going on to change the constitution. In any case, it was the only structure of law that existed in Russia. Yeltsin had no right to unilaterally violate it. The country paid a very high price for this.

Do you think a different course of events was possible in 1993?

It’s hard to imagine.

I think another course of events was possible. We have to remember that it was this parliament that chose Yeltsin, creating the conditions for him to become president. It was the parliament that approved the Belovezha Agreement that ended the Soviet Union. It was this parliament that gave special powers to Yeltsin to carry out reforms. This parliament was not his 104

enemy, at least at first. But Yeltsin wanted to run the country completely without legislative interference. When everything he proposed, everything he did was either ineffective or wrong, the people suffered. Naturally, people in parliament who had contact with the population began to protest, began to resist. Yeltsin ignored the Supreme Soviet. This led to a situation of conflict. Parliamentarians didn’t know how to behave either. But here the culprit was Yeltsin. It was Yeltsin who provoked the crisis with parliament, which, by some miracle, did not turn into a civil war in the country.

David, but Yeltsin was not alone. Consider the letter from the 42 cultural figures who supported the dissolution of parliament.

They were on his side.

This is a tragedy for the Russian intelligentsia. It is with great disappointment that I read the names of many of my friends who supported Yeltsin very fervently. Among them were people who later suffered and even were killed as a result of the system that Yeltsin created. At this point people just weren’t thinking. There was a mass psychosis.

It is fair to say that most analysts in the West saw in Boris Yeltsin quite a democratic leader who deserved support. I remember the answer of historian Richard Pipes to my question during the presidential elections in Russia in 1996—whether it is time for Yeltsin to go. He said: no, it’s not time, because Yeltsin is a democrat at heart.

Yeltsin managed to look like a democrat, but his anti-democratic character was obvious to many people in Russia who wanted to see this. For example, when he was threatened with impeachment in the spring of 1993, there was already a plan to disperse the Supreme Soviet, even to use poison gas to smoke out the deputies from the Supreme Soviet building.

Yeltsin, in any case, started a war in Chechnya. Why did he do that?

One of his advisers, Oleg Lobov, said that the president needed a small victorious war to raise his rating. He said this to Sergei Yushenkov, a member of the Duma who was later assassinated, apparently because he was investigating the 1999 apartment bombings. It seems not to have occurred to anyone that raising Yeltsin’s rating was not a good reason to

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start a war. The facts were available, if we wanted to look for them, wanted to part with romantic ideas about Yeltsin. His role as the supposed vanquisher of communism caused people not to see his real character.

The process of privatization, to say nothing of the impoverishment of the people, was accompanied by criminalization on all levels of society and the tolerance of the criminals who easily seized important resources was all a result of Yeltsin’s rule and mentality. By the way, to this day, the support by the West, by the United States of Boris Yeltsin in that situation is one of the serious complaints of many Russians against the U.S. Why, they ask, did you blindly bet on the man whose reforms led to the impoverishment and plundering of the country?

The West also did not know the extent to which Yeltsin used provocations. The most important example was the massacre near the Ostankino television tower when internal troops opened fire on a mostly unarmed crowd. Yeltsin used this incident to convince or order the army to attack the White House.

What happened at the Ostankino TV Center? The most important facts we already know, there were thousands of riot police in Moscow. They were beating people every night. They were beating demonstrators who supported the Supreme Soviet. Suddenly, on October 3, the police disappeared from the center of Moscow, leaving only trucks and buses with keys in the ignition. People got into these cars and drove to Ostankino, where hundreds of internal troops with automatic weapons were waiting for them. When the fascist elements, who were marginal in that situation, opened fire on the door of Ostankino, there was an explosion inside the building, for which the demonstrators were not responsible. The internal troops then opened fire on them with a barrage. It was a real massacre.

Yeltsin later said that there was a “red brown” attack on Ostankino, on freedom of speech. Ostankino broadcasts were interrupted, supposedly by this attack. In fact, the interruption was not caused by rioters. The Ostankino executives who were allied with Yeltsin simply disconnected the channel. This was done simply for effect to create the impression that a mob was trying to seize the building. The goal was to deceive the whole world. And they did it effectively. Those who were not familiar with provocations and did not know Russia or Yeltsin naturally fell into a trap. The U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that normally we don’t support abolishing parliaments, but this was a special situation. What special situation, he himself did not understand. Yeltsin, after Ostankino 106

developed a taste for provocation. I think the 1999 apartment bombings had their roots in these very events. The communist attachment to provocation was characteristic of Yeltsin. This is one of the reasons why he never dismantled the KGB or FSB. He saw how they could be used to retain power.

David, your interpretation of Boris Yeltsin makes him look like a distinctly negative figure. I would say, defiantly negative.

What do we have now? The country is freer than during the communist regime. In some ways it is better than it was. But if we take a normal democratic leader as the standard for comparison, we have to acknowledge that Yeltsin was absolutely a negative character in the history of Russia. Because of him the chance to develop normally, democratically, was lost.

Was there another alternative, bearing in mind the character of the post-Soviet Russian people and the legacy of communism?

There was a chance to take a different path. Yes, it was a country that had no tradition of respect for the law, but the fall of the Soviet Union was still a turning point in the history of Russia. It was the collapse of the empire, it was the collapse of the old ideals. It was a moment, but it required someone who was completely different than Yeltsin.

But such theoretical conclusions contradict real experience After all, Russia was one of the fifteen countries that inherited the Soviet Union, and in none of them, with the exception of the Baltic States, was there a democratic leader who could assert and act within the framework of democratic institutions.

There were communist regimes in Eastern Europe, where democratic regimes were established. There were communist regimes in the Baltics, where there are democratic systems now. Georgia is more democratic, at least than Russia, and even Ukraine, despite huge problems is more democratic. The problems you point out are certainly very serious, because communism left its mark on people’s souls, deprived them of individual conscience, of the idea that a person is responsible for himself, must respect himself and respect others. Without such a deep conviction, it is very 107

difficult to have the kind of tolerance and respect for others that will allow society to operate on democratic principles. But here you also have to keep in mind that there have been democratic periods in Russia. I’m talking about the period of the Provisional Government in 1917. There was a democratic government in the Far East, in Primorye. The problem is the lack of people in power in Russia who are essentially democrats. Russia has been catastrophically unlucky with leaders, and not just in the last century, often at key moments in its history, when it was decided in what direction the country would go.

Yeltsin strongly reinforced this tradition. He had every opportunity to become a very positive historical figure. Popular adulation, support from the outside world, new horizons of opportunity, the support of the Supreme Soviet, which he subsequently abolished. All of this was there.

But in character he remained the communist boss who gave the order to destroy the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, then Sverdlovsk [in which the Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks] because it became a place of pilgrimage for many people. It was Yeltsin who gave the order to demolish this house. He later simply adopted a new identity and became a democrat because that was the path to power.

To understand history, we should do away with the idea that there was a good, wonderful Yeltsin, and then came an evil, terrible Putin. No one wants to remember that it was Yeltsin who chose that terrible Putin.

No one wants to consider the possibility that the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power were actually the work of Yeltsin who was in power at the time. The lesson for Russia is to understand what happened, why it happened. We can’t do that if we don’t acknowledge the truth about Yeltsin and what happened in 1993.

Do you think this legacy of 1993 determines the future of Russia?

After all, there is already talk about changing the country’s constitution to suit Putin, creating a constitutional format that would allow him to rule in some new role.

There are different conversations, but the most important thing in this situation is to change the spirit of the people, which is impossible without an understanding of history. The truth about one’s own history can be a great engine of political progress. We saw this during perestroika, when attention to history was perhaps the most important element in the 108

transformation of the country. And under the influence of this understanding, we can finally think about steps in the direction of real democracy. For example, to create a new Constituent Assembly, to create a new constitution. You say that I am very negative about Yeltsin. But I think we should not be shy in assessing his activities. Russia deserved better than what it got and what it is getting now.

Well, many argue that a nation gets the leaders it deserves.

People are wrong about a lot of things. The Russian people have given the world much that is positive. The world is changing around Russia and Russia is changing. The middle class in Russia is developing, people are traveling, a lot of Russians live abroad. They have relatives in Russia.

Putin’s system itself is inherently unstable, a system that is based on lies cannot be stable. Stability is the ability to withstand external and internal shocks. Tsarist Russia looked stable before World War I, but the war set the stage for a social revolution. People in Russia are too educated and too evolved for the political system they now have. This is an artificial situation where people live in a world of lies. I think that there are still opportunities for the recovery of this talented people.

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A new version of the Cold War Predictions by Kremlinologist Stephen Cohen Radio Liberty, April 28, 2019 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Are the U.S. and Russia on the brink of a crisis comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis? Has the U.S. launched a new Cold War with Russia? Anti-Russian sentiments in the U.S.: reality, fiction or deception? Why is an honored professor who defends the Kremlin marginalized? We discuss these and other questions with Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton University and New York University, and American journalist David Satter.

“War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate “ is the title of a book recently published by one of America’s leading Kremlin scholars, historian Stephen Cohen, at Princeton University. The book, as its author makes no secret, is an attempt to challenge the American political, academic and media elite, which, in his view, for various reasons, far from always justifiable, refuses to objectively review U.S.-Russian relations and whose mistakes, in his opinion, may lead to war with Russia. Over the past decade and a half, Professor Cohen, in his attempts to explain the Kremlin’s behavior as a reaction to reckless U.S. actions, has been perceived by most observers as a misguided fringe figure who suggests that there is a moral equivalence between the U.S. and Putin’s Russia. Cohen believes that Washington is making a dangerous mistake by demonizing the Kremlin. At a meeting with readers at New York University, Stephen Cohen made no secret of his feelings: As I was drawn into working on this book, I became increasingly anxious, feeling that for the first time in my life, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I do not remember very well, we were faced with the growing possibility of war with Russia. That is why I put a question mark in the title of the book, “War with Russia?“

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Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, Stephen Cohen has been ringing all the bells, figuratively speaking, saying that we may be on the brink of war with Russia, calling on the American establishment to change its attitude toward the Kremlin. What do you think about that? Do you sense a military thunderstorm in the air?

David Satter: A war between NATO and Russia, I believe, is not that likely. Naturally, one should keep this possibility in mind and guard against it. I still think that Russian leaders are not interested in war. I read that Igor Sechin has a new wife and has named a yacht after her. On the one hand, this is evidence that we are dealing with a corrupt government.

But on the other hand, it is a firm guarantee that Sechin would prefer to stay with his wife on the yacht rather than go to war. You could say the same about many in the Russian leadership. I don’t think that corruption and greed are positive qualities, but the corruption of Russia’s leaders suggests that they are not going to fight if their ability to lead the country and live well is not threatened.

Are Sechin’s young wife and the homes of Sechin’s colleagues in London the main guarantee against war with Russia?

In and of themselves, they are a weak guarantee, but they testify to a mentality. People of this type want to steal more and consume more. They also try to impose their will. But to start a destructive war? For what? Any aggression in the direction of NATO is extremely risky. One has to keep in mind that the Kremlin went to war in those situations where the Russian leaders thought they could fight and win without risk. Naturally, they misjudged the situation in the case of the Chechen wars, but it is quite another matter to go to war with NATO. Let them occupy, say, the Baltic republics. The result would be a big guerrilla war, which could destabilize power in Russia itself. It is much easier to vacation in the Baltics, “launder“ money in Baltic banks and generally live peacefully. I think that the danger emanating from Russia is of a completely different nature. It is that Russia, with its enormous military potential, could experience a systemic crisis. In such a situation, an unstable Russia could present a danger to everyone, itself and the outside world.

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David, this argument that the Russian leaders have something to lose in the event of war with the West—and that they and their families are deeply rooted in Western countries—has become a commonplace for Western analysts. But an overwhelming majority of them do not remember or have erased from their minds the Caribbean Crisis. Or maybe Stephen Cohen is right that most people don’t have that memory and don’t notice a threat comparable to what existed at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If there is a crisis, it will be because Russia created one. NATO has no aggressive intentions; NATO has always been and remains a defensive alliance. The Russians are well aware of this. At the same time, they’re capable of respecting limits. A huge number of Soviet tanks were concentrated on the border with West Germany during the Cold War, and nothing happened. And this was at a time when the Soviet Union wanted to dominate the world. It wanted to spread the blessings of communism everywhere. Russia has no such ambitions. The leadership simply wants to retain power.

The Kremlin saw external conflicts as a tool to consolidate power?

Everything conforms to the logic of maintaining power. Why did the war start in Ukraine? Because the example of Maidan was very threatening for Russia. People organized spontaneously and rose against a kleptocratic government. This can happen in Russia, and it is very important for the Putin regime to divert the attention of Russians from this example and direct it into support for military aggression. It was the same, by the way, with the Chechen wars. The first Chechen war was undertaken in order to boost Yeltsin’s rating with a quick victory. The second Chechen war was designed to put Putin in place as president with the help of successes in Chechnya. In Ukraine, war was also intended to divert the attention of the Russian population and prevent them from imagining that something like the Maidan revolt in Ukraine could happen in Russia. I think the Syria war was also a distraction. Because, after all, the project in Ukraine stalled, it was logical to divert attention with a new adventure.

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It would seem to you, as you said, that there is a reason for new adventures, given the declining standard of living in Russia and Putin’s plummeting popularity.

We must bear in mind that any new military adventure is very risky. To attack the Baltics would mean not only a long guerrilla war but the resistance of the Baltic republics and NATO as a whole. The Russians in the past have attacked countries that were vulnerable, like Ukraine, which was not a member of NATO, or Georgia.

This seems obvious, though not everyone is sure how determined the U.S. and other NATO countries will be to defend, say, Estonia. But Stephen Cohen adds another gloomy touch to his grim prewar picture: he says that, unlike in Soviet times, when Kennedy had complete freedom of action and could have prevented a nuclear war by contacting Khrushchev, Trump has no such freedom of action due to different circumstances while Putin acts alone.

The responsibility for foreign policy in the American constitution is vested in the executive branch. So, I think Trump is quite capable of responding to threats if he chooses to do so. As for Putin, I have no reason to doubt that he can make any decision, especially on foreign policy, that he wants.

David, let’s hear Stephen Cohen’s own arguments: Many U.S. observers say Putin must change his behavior to get a response from Trump. Do you agree?

No. Because we provoked this situation. The most important thing we can do now is to pull NATO troops away from the border, because we have been building up forces.

But they will tell you that in reality it was a response to Russia’s actions!

Total nonsense. The NATO alliance wanted to increase the budget, Obama wanted to show his power and now we have soldiers on the border with

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Russia within artillery range. Someone will be killed eventually. Artillery fire from NATO positions could reach Petersburg. This is unacceptable.

If you were to give advice to the Kremlin on how to improve relations with the United States? What would you advise?

I have already given them advice: Give Americans the opportunity to adopt Russian orphans. Because they need to soften the Russian image in America. A huge number of American families want to adopt these children. Let Russian orphans go to America, These are, indeed, uncharacteristic assessments for an American observer. David. The strongest or most controversial, in Professor Cohen’s own words, is his claim that not only are we in a Cold War with Russia, but the US is also to blame for starting it. The point of view is absurd to most American observers. It has turned the professor into a marginal person even among professionals, which, as I understand it, causes him to complain about restrictions on free speech and debate. In your opinion, is this a Cold War? If so, who started it and who should end it?

The Cold War took place in the absence of many of the contacts between Russia and the West that now exist. Of course, during the Cold War, Soviet leaders did not have houses in the West, did not keep money in Western banks, did not send their children there. Despite everything that is going on now, Russian people travel to the West, we travel to Russia. I am one of the exceptions, I cannot travel to Russia, unfortunately. I would say that rather than a Cold War, there is a conflict between a world which lives by rules, and Russia, which wants to give the impression that it can live by the rules, but in essence cannot. Because everything that exists in Russia is the product of organized lawlessness.

And yet, David, a prominent American historian says: America is to blame, it must change behavior, the American elite is making

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a big deal out of nothing with the so-called Trumpgate. And this view seems to be bought in Moscow.

This is an issue that has several parts to it. If we’re just talking about Trumpgate, the accusations against Trump that he worked with Russia in order to win in 2016, I agree with Stephen that the charges are nonsense.

Trump was never a Russian agent. But I believe, paradoxically, that the false information that Trump was an agent, including the famous “Steele dossier,” was provided by Russia. The Russian leaders want America to deal with its own problems, its own disputes, and not pay too much attention to important issues in U.S.-Russian relations, such as the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the destruction of the Malaysian airliner and many other terrorist attacks and acts of aggression. Keeping America embroiled in bogus controversies furthers that objective.

But, objectively speaking, Russia and Russian meddling in U.S. affairs have indeed been on the lips of leading American politicians for the past two-plus years, and not just those close to the Democratic Party. At times it seems as if nothing else matters to them. Cohen calls it hysteria, a conspiracy of the elite. How do you explain this phenomenon?

Americans hate each other right now. Trump deprived us of a female commander-in-chief, many people think. And that’s something many people can’t forgive. So, they are looking for a scapegoat, they see it in Russia.

And Russia is helping to organize this so that American society is more divided. This, of course, is hard for many people, especially Americans, to comprehend, but that’s the way it is.

David, how would you answer the question I asked Stephen Cohen: Is there anything the Kremlin can do to improve relations with the United States? Many in the Russian elite say that no matter what Moscow does, Washington will remain dissatisfied.

This is reminiscent of what the KGB used to say to Soviet dissidents: we are not against you, if you change your behavior, our attitude toward you will change too. In fact, I’m sure that those in the Kremlin have absolutely no interest in improving relations with America. There could have been 116

some positive steps on their part, such as identifying those who were responsible for the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing almost five years ago. They could seriously investigate the murder of Boris Nemtsov. But they might thereby expose themselves, so it’s unlikely. When it happens, it will be a reliable sign that Russia is ready to live in a world of civilized people. Until that happens, Russia will have an enormous internal need to create problems for a world that lives by the rules.

Stephen Cohen, on the other hand, says that he has even recommended that the Kremlin allow Americans to adopt Russian orphans, which would dramatically improve Russia’s image in the United States.

I think they should do that but the fact that they punished their own children depriving them of the opportunity to live in normal conditions—this also shows their criminal thinking. The problem is not the individual actions, but the mentality itself. That has to be changed. When this happens, there will be no problems between our countries.

David, the phenomenon of Professor Stephen Cohen is interesting. Until the late nineties, his texts were in high demand in the American media, he was a commentator on a major TV station.

Now he’s actually out of print, he’s putting out a book to address his audience directly, as he told me, only four people in Congress agree with him, two of whom are not ready to admit it publicly.

I should say that Steve is an old friend of mine, although I haven’t spoken to him in a long time. We disagreed in our assessments of the Russian situation. But I think he makes a positive contribution because he forces us to consider alternative possibilities. The court of history will decide who was right and which direction it was necessary to take.

In that case, what is your prognosis for U.S.-Russian relations?

They will be bad, in the sense that American society in particular will not welcome much of what is going on in Russia. This is normal for a democracy. Russia will try to somehow settle relations with the Western world, but exclusively on its own terms, which will inevitably lead to conflicts 117

with the West. I don’t think there will be war, but there will be some tension and mutual caution, especially on our part. We will just hope that the situation in Russia will evolve. It’s ultimately up to the Russians themselves.

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A Pioneer Who Witnessed Revolutions The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2019 Columnist Georgie Anne Geyer began at the women’s page but didn’t stay there long.

‘We have to exterminate the patrones, the bosses of the big estates,” a left-wing activist told Georgie Anne “Gee Gee” Geyer who was in Chile in 1970 to report on President Salvador Allende, the world’s first freely elected Marxist leader.

Geyer, who died May 15 at 84, had gone to the southern city of Concepción, where leftists were seizing land, to try to learn whether Allende intended to keep his promise to respect democratic liberties. “The legendary free air of Chile hung with new fear,” she wrote. “The two sides no longer argued, drank and laughed together because one side no longer respected the rules.”

She quickly learned that Allende’s Socialist Party was behind the violence. “Soon the fight will not be for land,” the young activist told her. “We are preparing for civil war.”

Geyer’s writing career spanned six decades and at least five continents. She interviewed revolutionaries, terrorists and world leaders, achieving global fame in 1966 by interviewing Fidel Castro in Cuba. There she saw that communism demanded not just the body but the soul. “Every decent person has to support the revolution,” Castro told her. “Not journalists,” she replied. “Nothing is so perfect that it does not need people who stand apart … and outside.”

Gee Gee was a pioneer. When she joined the Chicago Daily News in 1960, women in the newsroom were as “rare as teetotalers,” as Mike Royko wrote in the introduction to her memoir. She was assigned to the women’s page, and she wrote to a Chicago lawyer, “I am covering high society, the ins and outs of which I don’t give a hang for.” The lawyer was my father.

She didn’t remain mired on the women’s page. She learned Spanish and in 1965 threatened to quit if the paper didn’t send her 119

to cover the popular revolution in the Dominican Republic. Her outstanding coverage turned her into a globe-trotting reporter whose enthralling reporting riveted Chicagoans. Young writers tried to emulate her—eventually including me.

In the 1960s and 1970s, she operated in a virtually all-male world. To maintain her integrity as a journalist and a woman, she resolved never to use her sex in any way and to remain true to her beliefs regardless of pressure. She understood the dangers of meeting terrorists and revolutionaries. “You have to realize that you as a human being are nothing to them,” she wrote, “because the cause is everything.”

She became a columnist after more than a decade on the road.

After the Cold War, she watched with distress as the U.S. descended into identity politics. “The grievance activists,” she wrote, “create sovereignties that compete with the sovereignty of the nation.” In one of her last articles, she argued that America needed to develop a renewed sense of common purpose.

While she advanced the cause of women in journalism, her career is an example to men and women alike that what really counts is courage and talent.

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Cold from the East How the West opened up to Russian corruption Radio Liberty, November 9, 2019 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin What did the fall of the Berlin Wall mean for the United States?

Why did the U.S.-Russian friendship fail? Is the Kremlin creating its own equivalent of the Berlin Wall? Has the Western liberal order found itself unprotected against the threat of corruption from the East?

We discuss these and other issues with David Satter, an American historian and former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, the fall of the Berlin Wall is forever linked to President Reagan’s call two years earlier at the Brandenburg Gate: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!“ We can assume that the fall of the wall for Reagan symbolized the end of the confrontation with the Soviet Union.

David Satter: It was effectively the end of communism. Because a communist system cannot exist without closed borders and control of information. Without the Berlin Wall, no communist empire was possible.

And that meant an end to fear. It’s hard to imagine, but several generations of American schoolchildren were taught during special classes how to behave in case of a Soviet nuclear attack. I was one of them. I was 5 or 6 years old, we had exercises, we had drills, what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. That was the nightmare that children of my generation grew up with. The presence of the Soviet Union had organized the thinking of Americans, at least when they thought about the outside world. That all disappeared.

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This sentiment was reflected in Francis Fukuyama’s famous book “The End of History“ about the final triumph of Western liberal democracy. Not so long ago, Fukuyama was forced to adjust his ideas.

He was right to say that the main ideological threat is no longer there. But I think that the second part of his book where he wrote that there is a consensus about the superiority of liberal democracy over other systems, is not justified.

Perhaps this can partly explain why the American-Russian love affair did not take place?

We always identified communism with state control over property. But this was only one of the aspects of the system and not the most important.

What mattered most was that communism was a false religion based on the replacement of the most fundamental Western values. We didn’t realize this and because we did not grasp the essence of the former communist regime, we gave the Russians a lot of erroneous advice.

The priority should have been to establish the supremacy of the law, to respect the individual. But those who came to power in Moscow were blind to these moral criteria. The Americans, meanwhile, treated Russia very superficially. If the Russian so-called reformers were blind to the need to establish a moral framework and law-based practices in society, the Americans in their naiveté assumed that all this already existed. There was American money, for example, that advertised the privatization voucher.

No one in America imagined that corrupt groups would seize property with these vouchers.

When Americans looked at Russia, they did not see Russia but rather a peculiar version of the United States. The American side had no intention of bankrupting Russia or destroying the Russian economy, but the advice they gave had exactly that result. Jeffrey Sachs, Gaidar’s chief American advisor, explained the Americans’ astonishment when they found that Russians did not react as Americans would. He said that we operated on a terminally ill patient, and when we opened him up, we saw that all his internal organs were not where we expected them to be. We failed or were unwilling to familiarize ourselves with the real character of this country. But what can we expect from the Americans if the Russian reformers themselves did not understand what a well-established market 122

economy requires. It is not only an economic mechanism, but also laws and ethical practices.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new, at least virtual, wall is being erected around Russia. Just now, the law on the sovereign internet has come into force. The Kremlin says: we have to defend ourselves against numerous enemies.

The Kremlin regime is certainly responsible. To keep this gangster capitalism going they have resorted to a whole series of crimes, created a situation where they do not trust their own people and do not trust the western world, but have to rally the Russian people around them despite their abuses.

Can the Kremlin shut itself off from the world, or at least its information space, what do you think?

They are capable of psychologically isolating Russia for a while. In fact, they have already done so, because they are skillfully using in their own interests the nationalism which is traditional for Russia. During the Soviet period, people were comforted by the notion that even though they lived badly, the whole world was afraid of them. Naturally, one of the secrets of Putin’s popularity is that he has recreated the image of Russia as a country that can threaten, that others should fear. The new Iron Curtain is a psychological curtain, and part of it is with the consent of the population. But I don’t think that in the context of an open world and without ideology, without terror, it can work, isolating people forever.

David, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, not only Russia opened up to the West, but also the West to Russia. And much has been written recently about how this flow from Russia: dirty money, criminal gangs and, of course, Kremlin interference in political processes in Western countries—is nothing less than a threat to the Western liberal order. Do you agree?

I think the liberal order will survive. There are various threats, there always have been. But the regime that exists in Russia now is primarily a threat to Russia itself. Because a system based on propaganda, corruption and manipulation is inherently unstable. We don’t know what will happen 123

as a result in Russia, and that is the biggest problem. I don’t think that the ability to threaten or even disorient the West poses a serious threat to the West’s democratic system. I think the most serious threat that comes from the Russian regime is internal destabilization in Russia itself. If there is a crisis of power in Russia or a crisis of Russian society as a result of these events, we could be dealing with a real threat.

And what do you think of the Kremlin and not only the Kremlin complaining that the bilateral problems are largely caused by the fact that the United States political class needs Russia as an enemy—it is used to it, it is easier that way.

This is partly true, because people were used to thinking that the Soviet Union was an enemy, a threat. So, when Russia behaves in a way that is hostile in the eyes of Americans, it triggers some old memories, old associations. Napoleon said there are two nations in Europe—Russia and everyone else. So, Russia very easily becomes an object of suspicion, not hatred, but fear.

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Malfeasance in the Trump case FBI criticized over “Russian trail“ Radio Liberty, December 21, 2019 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Did the FBI illegally wiretap a Trump staffer? How did the dubious Steele dossier come to the attention of the press and the FBI? Was Putin trying to divide the American political class? Will Trump improve relations with the Kremlin? Who in America is on Putin’s side? We discuss these and other questions with American journalist David Satter.

On December 17, the secretive federal court that oversees foreign intelligence cases issued an unprecedented statement. The head of the court publicly questioned the reliability of the data presented to the court by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Among other things, the court issues wiretap warrants for Americans suspected of having ties to foreign intelligence. It was this court that authorized the 2016 wiretapping of Carter Page, an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, that was one of the first steps in the investigation of potential collusion between Trump’s staff and the Kremlin.

But three years later, in December 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded from his investigation of the FBI’s actions that there was no basis for authorizing the wiretapping of Page. The FBI officials, according to Horowitz, committed about two dozen irregularities in drafting their wiretap warrant requests. They failed, for example, to mention information that clarified and justified Page’s seemingly suspicious actions. Horowitz’s report gave rise to an unprecedented public reprimand by the judge to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “The frequency with which the presentations prepared by FBI officials were not corroborated or contradicted the information in their possession raises questions about the credibility of the other documents presented to the court,” the judge said, and demanded that the FBI submit by 125

Jan. 10 a plan to reform the system for preparing warrant requests for wiretaps of suspects.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, how do we explain major faults in the work of the FBI. Was it sloppiness?

David Satter: There is a very serious problem with the FBI. I suspect it’s a reaction on the part of many people to Trump. I think there is enough evidence, including the negative statements that have been made by FBI officials about Trump, to suggest that this was deliberate harassment of the Trump campaign—in the same sense that the harassment of Martin Luther King was deliberate in its day.

There are quite a few strange characters in this story, such as the mysterious Professor Mifsud, who allegedly told [George] Papadopoulos, a Trump aide, that the Kremlin had dirt on Clinton. But it was the [Steele dossier] that played the key role in starting the investigation.

When I first read the Steele dossier, I knew immediately that it was disinformation prepared by the FSB. In 2017, two and a half years ago, I wrote that the “dossier“ was a Russian provocation.5 But the question is, why didn’t the FBI and the CIA realize the same thing? The problem is that everything right now is determined by attitudes toward Trump. If you hate Trump, the investigation was justified; if you love him, it was not justified. And that’s the biggest problem—the lack of objectivity. I think you have to give Horowitz credit that he was able, as much as he could, to present the facts honestly. What do we have? The Democrats paid very dubious intermediaries to pay the FSB for compromising information about their opponent.

Let’s make it clear that this is the Steele dossier which was funded

by Democrats close to Hillary Clinton in hopes of compromising Trump.

Steele’s Orbis organization claims to have some high-level connections in Russia. But in fact, Steele and his organization are not needed by the Russians except as vehicles for spreading FSB disinformation.

5

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“The ‘Trump Report’ is a Russian Provocation,” National Review Online, January 12, 2017.

By the way, curiously enough, the “Steele dossier” circulated for a long time in Washington, D.C. and no reputable publication took up its sensational claims until BuzzFeed posted it online.

BuzzFeed took the liberty of publishing a completely unverified document.

So, they actually broke the most fundamental rule of journalism which is that you don’t publish unverified information.

Nevertheless, the press close to the Democrats picked up on the dossier. The Wall Street Journal called the Horowitz report an indictment of the press and recalls that the Washington Post described the dossier as a serious source of information and said that Page may have been recruited by Russian agents.

It wasn’t just the Washington Post. All the prominent political figures who were against Trump promoted the version that Trump was the Kremlin’s pawn. Because the most important allegations in that dossier were that Trump has been working for Russia for a long time, and the Russians had compromising information about him. But when we talk about a responsible journalist, it’s a person who doesn’t spread unchecked information. This is a fundamental aspect of his professional work. He should only disseminate what he believes and what he has tried to verify. In the case of the Trump dossier, you had to be at a primitive level in terms of knowledge of Russia to believe it, and after that because of the absence of real verification, you had to be totally irresponsible to spread it. The episode is really a black mark on the reputation of American journalism.

It is also curious that a gigantic number of leaks in the press during the Russian investigation by prosecutor Mueller pointed, as I recall, to Trump’s culpability.

Absolutely. It was interesting, I remember that a few days after the Steele dossier came out, CNN did a big report: “Some of the facts in the Steele dossier are confirmed.” Naturally, part of any dossier that is produced by the FSB will be corroborated so that you believe the rest of it. It won’t be 100 percent false, it’s only false in relation to those important aspects which they want you to believe. Truthful information is put there for you to believe the fake information.

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In that case, David, in your interpretation, Vladimir Putin has been an amazing success in bringing the American political class to this state.

No doubt about it. He exploits these deep American weaknesses: careerism, superficiality, unwillingness to think about serious issues. The Russian, of course, know about them, see them and exploit them.

David Satter, what do you predict for the foreseeable future for U.S.-Russian relations?

I think the Russians will come up with a new move. The Trump collusion hoax was so successful, from their point of view, that they will want to come up with something else. They’ll find ways to pit Americans against each other. This is a very promising situation for them.

During the course of our conversation you are just pouring balm on Putin’s soul, presenting him as the biggest troublemaker in America.

He is using the existing conflicts in America to his own ends. But since we can’t become more principled and objective, we give him that opportunity.

David, let’s not completely write off the Mueller investigation; it uncovered serious Russian interference in the U.S. election process. The reason for the ongoing political squabble is the figure of Donald Trump. It’s understandable.

Trump is certainly a huge contributor to this, but he’s not alone. We are seeing unethical behavior by the FBI. Trump is disliked and is behaving inappropriately. But those who hate him behave even more unethically than he does. And so, we have the situation that we have.

David, what is your final word on the role of the Putin figure in the American political space?

Putin is more of a problem for Russians than for Americans. But he is capable of creating problems here as well. The U.S. is deeply divided. Putin 128

is simply using this situation. It would be surprising if he behaved differently, because disinformation about the U.S. political situation distracts attention from his abuses in Russia, the U.S. and everywhere else.

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How to deal with the Kremlin?

Realism, Dialogue or Appeasement of Putin Radio Liberty, February 29, 2020 AMERICAN ISSUES February 29, 2020 Yuri Zhigalkin How can the U.S. respond to Russia’s new interference in the American electoral process? Allow Russia to be Russia? Why do “realists“ call for overlooking the past? Is dialogue with the Kremlin possible? Has Vladimir Putin paid a price for the annexation of Crimea?

We discuss these and other issues with David Satter, author and former correspondent for the Financial Times in Moscow.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David, how do you feel about calls from Western foreign policy “realists” for a dialogue with the Kremlin without, so to speak, preconditions?

David Satter: We can talk. The question is what you are going to talk about. We should talk about the annexation of Crimea, the killing of dissidents in Western Europe, there’s a whole epidemic of contract killings in Europe that are being ordered from Russia, political murders in Russia itself, for example, it’s now five years since Boris Nemtsov was killed, no progress in solving that murder. So, there’s a lot to talk about. But if we’re going to talk, we should talk about things that matter. This is something our realists don’t understand or don’t want to understand. Their realism is realism in an unrealistic context. So, it becomes unrealistic, a kind of anti-realism.

It’s possible to have good relations with Russia. But the Russians understand good relations as a relationship on their terms. Accordingly, if Putin decides to eliminate someone, say, Sergei Skripal or Alexander Litvinenko, we should not object—that’s his right. If he wants to organize a provocation against his own people, we shouldn’t interfere—it’s just his idea of normal political competition. If he wants to take pieces of the

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territories of neighboring states for himself, he must also have the right to do so. If you accept these conditions, you can have good relations. When you meet with Putin, everything will be friendly. There won’t be any problems.

And in principle, do you think it is possible to have normal relations with Vladimir Putin when the image of America as an enemy is an obvious tool of Russian domestic politics?

A good relationship with Putin is one in which he understands that no aggression will be beneficial to him. We have to deal with the Russian leaders, but we have to instill in them the understanding that there are limits on their behavior not only in foreign policy, but also in what they can do inside the country. We can hope that as a result of these externally imposed limits, the world will become safe and there will be a chance that the Russian people will one day be free.

How, in your opinion, does the idea of some kind of recognition of the annexation of Crimea look?

Any recognition would look like giving carte blanche to Putin to do anything he wants. It’s an open invitation to further aggression. I know this suggestion comes from Henry Kissinger, who is a very educated, intelligent man, but unfortunately, has little idea about Russia, especially the internal situation in Russia. He demonstrates this all the time. He demonstrated it even more during the Soviet period. No, recognition of Crimea cannot work. The only thing that can work is pressure, so that in the end Russia understands that it is necessary to eliminate the consequences of their aggression. This, too, will probably not happen in the near future, but the refusal to accept an obvious act of aggression creates some conditions for the further development of the situation in a positive direction.

America did not recognize the annexation of the Baltics for many decades and this, for the people in the Baltics republics was a very important source of moral support. They never stopped thinking of themselves as occupied territory. If we talk about Crimea, we have to keep in mind that the seizure of Crimea is a direct violation of the laws and the consensus on the inviolability of borders that was established after the end of World War II. So, we can’t just leave it at that.

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But doesn’t such an approach guarantee a state of permanent conflict with Moscow?

On the contrary, it suspends the conflict. As Clausewitz said when he wrote about war: you must first of all know the nature of the war in which you are involved. This is not possible without knowing the character of the Russian regime. The approach that works for the Americans, for the Norwegians, for the Australians, does not work for the Russians, especially the present regime. The current regime requires a different approach—deterrence, warning. Those in the Kremlin need to know that aggression is not in their interests, because they have no moral principles to restrain them. They can be limited only by an understanding of likely external resistance.

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Putin Can’t Afford to Leave Office When His Term Ends The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2020 Surrendering power would endanger his cronies and subject him to a grim historical reckoning Vladimir Putin is prepared to run for a fifth term as Russian president. “What’s the point of being subtle?” asked close Putin ally and parliamentary deputy Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in proposing to abolish term limits. “This is about us and the future of the country.”

But Mr. Putin left himself with little alternative. If he wants to protect his cronies and avoid a grim historical reckoning, he cannot surrender power.

According to Karen Dawisha, author of “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” 110 individuals control 35% of Russia’s assets, one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world. Many of Russia’s billionaires worked with Mr. Putin in the St. Petersburg city government, practiced judo with him, were members with him in the Ozero dacha cooperative, or served with him in the KGB. With no visible previous experience, they began amassing riches after Mr. Putin became president in 2000 and promised support to those guided by “government interests.”

What this meant quickly became clear. Gazprom, the Russian natural-gas monopoly, was put under the control of Dmitry Medvedev and Alexei Miller, Putin colleagues from St. Petersburg.

Under their leadership, the transfer of skimmed profits to company insiders cost Gazprom at least $60 billion, according to a report by Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who was assassinated in February 2015 and Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister. At the same time, 6.4% of Gazprom’s shares, with an estimated value of $20 billion, disappeared from the company’s books.

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Another Putin friend, Leonid Reiman, the minister of telecommunications, was found by a Zurich tribunal in 2007 to have used his position as chairman of the state-run telecommunications holding company to acquire assets worth $6 billion. Brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg were Mr. Putin’s judo partners as teenagers.

They received approximately $7 billion in contracts to build infrastructure for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

At the same time, the Putin leadership ravaged private industry. The first round of privatization in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin was won by Soviet-era managers, criminals and former party officials. The second round involved finding flaws in the first round so that an asset could be returned for redistribution by the state. When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the Yukos oil company, showed political independence, he was accused of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to a long labor-camp term. Yukos was dismembered and sold off cheaply to Mr. Putin’s cronies.

In the third stage, local officials, inspired by what happened to Mr. Khodorkovsky, began seizing property all over the country.

Typically, a businessman would be charged with a crime at the behest of competitors who used money and connections to suborn law enforcement. The businessman then was held in pretrial detention until he was ready to accept a below-market offer for his property.

Ownership became highly monopolized, stifling competition and guaranteeing huge profits for those with connections. Mr. Putin was the ultimate arbiter of disputes, and his departure from office would set off a struggle for power throughout a pyramid of lawlessly acquired wealth.

He would also be personally vulnerable. At the time he became president, Mr. Putin was the subject of two active criminal investigations in connection with his work as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. One case involved the barter of raw materials in 1992 for badly needed food supplies, which never arrived. The other concerned the use of city funds to build private residences in Spain.

In August 2000, four months after his election, both cases were quietly dropped.

At the same time, there is considerable evidence that Mr. Putin himself profited from corruption. In 2007 Russian political analyst 136

Stanislav Belkovsky told the German newspaper Die Welt that Mr. Putin’s secret assets were worth $40 billion and that the president was in effect the beneficial owner of 75% of Gunvor, a private trading company responsible for a large share of the export of Russian oil. Mr. Putin and Gunvor denied the claim three months later. But Mr. Belkovsky’s estimates tracked closely with those of Western intelligence.

More serious than his vulnerability for economic crimes, however, is the possibility that, if he is no longer president, Mr. Putin will be held responsible for political crimes, including assassinations and acts of terror. His decades in power have been marked by numerous crimes, including the 1999 apartment bombings that brought him to power, the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the assassination of Nemtsov, and the shooting down in 2014 of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Eastern Ukraine.

In every case, there is evidence that the crimes were ordered

by Mr. Putin but in each instance, the regime organized massive disinformation campaigns to confuse world opinion and intimidate those trying to establish the truth.

In the Litvinenko murder case, however, an independent British inquiry, taking advantage of Western investigative resources, concluded that Litvinenko was murdered at the direction of the KGB’s successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the killing was “probably” approved by Mr. Putin. On Monday the trial of four defendants implicated in the shooting down of MH17 opened in The Netherlands. The court heard testimony Tuesday indicating that the crew of the Buk antiaircraft battery that shot down MH17 was Russian, and that the operation was carried out in the presence of agents of the FSB. If Mr. Putin were to lose power, new leadership could reveal vast amounts of information about the crimes of the past two decades, with devastating consequences for him and all who supported him.

Ms. Tereshkova said that allowing Mr. Putin to run again will have a stabilizing effect on Russian society. She is right in one sense.

It will certainly prolong the present stagnation. The only question is for how long.

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Fictitious country Between Brezhnev’s Russia and Putin’s Russia Radio Liberty, April 4, 2020 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin What did Vladimir Putin borrow from Leonid Brezhnev? Do Russians need an illusory world? Did Washington know the details of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings? Did the U.S. help make Vladimir Putin a leader for life?

We talk to author, journalist David Satter who has written about Russia for more than four decades.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David, what struck you most when you came as a Western correspondent to the Soviet Union in the mid-seventies?

David Satter: The most striking thing was the creation of a fictitious reality which everyone was forced to act out. For me, this was extremely interesting. I was very interested and fascinated by Soviet life. First of all, I was interested in people’s stories. I always tried to talk to people about their personal experiences. I looked for people who had had stories to tell, especially those who had been incarcerated for political reasons in mental institutions. They were often among the most interesting people in the Soviet Union. In a country that imposes a false version of reality, those who insist on genuine reality, often end up in mental hospitals. I wrote about this in some detail in my book “Age of Delirium.”

Okay, the most interesting people, from the journalist’s point of view, were normal people who were put in mental hospitals, but was the vast majority of the country zombified or is this a more complicated case? It’s curious that quite a few of the characters in your articles from the Soviet era speak in the language of today’s

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Russia: Russia defends a just cause, it is threatened by enemies and so on.

I would say that people were infantilized. Under Brezhnev, for the average citizen, there were no conditions of terror. The Soviet citizen had a job, maybe not the most interesting job but he had work. He had medical care, education, and in his old age, a pension. Soviet citizens liked to say, “I have no concern for tomorrow.” Or they said, “I have an apartment, I have a car, I have everything.” In fact, they had everything except human dignity and a sense of moral responsibility. But for Soviet citizens that was not such a priority. So, people lived. Yes, they could not travel, they could not buy luxurious Western goods. On the other hand, nobody particularly demanded that they work hard. They were freed of personal responsibility which suited many people very well.

David, what strikes you most about the difference between the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia?

In 1976 I was in Rome at a flea market where Jews who had left the Soviet Union and intended to go to America, not Israel, were selling their belongings. I asked one of the people there why he decided to go to America instead of Israel. He said: “I’m not Jewish.“ I was surprised. I asked him, “If you’re not Jewish, how did you manage to leave the Soviet Union?“ He told me: “You know, for 40 years they fooled me, but once I fooled them, I convinced them that I was a Jew and left.“ In the Soviet Union, the regime was good at deceiving people. But now in today’s Russia we see something different. We see, on the contrary, self-deception, people deceiving themselves. They don’t want to see everything that exists around them. Life is not so terrible for many, they are content, they are satisfied with the level of well-being that they now have. And with the idea that Russia is now becoming a formidable power.

This conclusion of yours promises little good for Russia and the countries around it.

I think the situation is not hopeless. The psychology of people can change, even dramatically. With the fall of the Soviet Union, people no longer live completely without freedom and without the ability to express their 140

opinion as in the past. But people in Russia are not protected by the law and many would like to have rights. They live in a situation where the authorities can do whatever they want with them. The idea of freedom based on law will cause some positive shifts in Russian history in the future.

You say that Russia is a modern country, but multiple opponents of Vladimir Putin complain that the roots of Russian society lie deep in the Soviet past. For example, for the sake of the supposed greatness of the country most Russians seem to be ready to sacrifice the good life.

Putin’s Russia has its roots in Brezhnev’s Russia. Today’s Russia is much freer than the Soviet Union. But Russians have no more protection of the law than they did in Soviet times. The authorities commit crimes with impunity, for example, the 1999 bombings, continuing with the terrorist acts, in which the FSB, based on the evidence, was also involved: [the 2002] Nord-Ost [theater siege] and [the 2004] Beslan school massacre. The authorities acted with impunity in the murders of prominent people like Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Nemtsov. For democracy, for progress, you need civil society which is capable of holding the regime to account. But the Russian regime repeatedly commits crimes, offers an absurd false explanation and the crimes are ignored. This guarantees that the crimes will continue.

David, could Russia in the 21st century have taken a different, democratic path?

I think so. What was required was a different person, not Boris Yeltsin, who was in fact a typical product of the communist system and the degradation of cadres of the last years of the Soviet Union. At a time of great upheaval, Russian liberal society was not capable of seeing Yeltsin for what he was. The moment that was fatal, in my opinion, was the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet in 1993 and the use of tanks to shell the [seat of parliament], the White House. Yeltsin basically demonstrated to the whole country that there was no law.

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You argue that the Putin regime is partly criminal.

I would not say partly criminal, I would say completely criminal. I begin, of course, with the 1999 bombings. I don’t think that a regime that came to power by such methods can be anything other than criminal. I think that the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing, by the way, is a direct consequence of the fact that the world didn’t react to what happened in 1999.

I’m not saying that there is Stalinist terror in Russia. For many people, political terror plays no role in their lives. They live normally. But if you look at the situation as a whole, first, how Putin came to power, second, what crimes were committed after he came to power, the role of corruption in maintaining this system and the falsification of historical and current events, not to mention the Kremlin’s external aggression, I think it inevitably leads to the idea that we have a criminal state.

Speaking of specific facts. In one of your articles, you wrote that the U.S. may know a lot more about the Russian authorities’ involvement in the apartment bombings than it has revealed.

We have a freedom of information law in America. I made an inquiry, I wanted to know what our CIA and the State Department knew about these explosions. The CIA refused to answer. The State Department did give me some documents. These were mainly reports from the American embassy in Moscow about these explosions, including reports of interviews with various informants. These informants said that the explosions were highly suspicious, and that the truth could not be told about them, because that would destroy the country. This coincided, by the way, with information in the articles that appeared in the Russian media at that time. At the time, there was relative freedom of the press. There were many articles that argued that the explosions were organized by the authorities. Only now no one dares to say so. Interestingly, our diplomats and our State Department showed no interest and asked the Kremlin no questions about what happened there. Even after the Ryazan incident, when three FSB agents were caught after putting a bomb in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan, we did not raise any questions.

But the reluctance was understandable. The very idea that the authorities could have set off explosions and killed their own 142

citizens must have seemed absurd in Washington. The question is, was the American administration aware of incriminating facts concerning the Russian authorities?

I think they knew more than they were saying at the time. But because the bombings were not marked as an important event, their significance was lost to public awareness.

Going back to this tradition of creating an illusory world, inherited by Vladimir Putin from his predecessors. How dangerous do you think this world is?

Putin’s ambitions are more modest than those of his predecessors. If the animating factor that guided the Soviet Union was the drive to realize the communist ideology, in the case of Putin the raison d’être of the system is the preservation of power by a small group of people. He uses propaganda to justify himself and to rally the population around a leadership that does not act in the interests of that population. The Soviet Union wanted to create an illusory world. Putin recognizes the real-world 99 percent of the time.

David, you have written that the U.S. helped make Vladimir Putin, as you put it, “a dictator for life. Aren’t you exaggerating?

When I say that America played a role in creating Putin’s regime, I first of all mean that America played a role in strengthening Yeltsin’s power, because Yeltsin created Putin. We have to keep in mind that the criminalization of Russia was the achievement of Yeltsin. The U.S. relied on clichés: Yeltsin is the embodiment of democracy so we should support Yeltsin. It did not matter if he disbanded the parliament or criminals ran the country. He was our symbol of democracy. When the apartment buildings were blown up, the U.S. had the opportunity to demand explanations, to declare that something was wrong The need to do this was especially clear after FSB agents were arrested putting a bomb in the basement of the building in Ryazan. When we did not react, we gave the regime the impression that whatever happened, we would not react.

But aren’t you demanding too much from the U.S.? After all, the Kremlin’s aggressive actions have been met with a harsh response: years of sanctions, the “Magnitsky Act.” You say that 143

Moscow should be punished for destroying the Malaysian Boeing, for killing Nemtsov. How can this be done?

In the case of the destruction of the Malaysian Airliner, MH17, we should ban Russian state aviation until the circumstances of this disaster are clarified. By the way, this case is now ongoing in the Netherlands. Quite serious information will yet emerge. And the question is not closed. The same thing, if a murder of an opposition leader is organized, I am talking about Boris Nemtsov, we also have an obligation not to accept false explanations.

The Russian authorities are adept at providing false explanations for their various crimes.

Do I understand you correctly, you think that Vladimir Putin has carte blanche, which he has secured for himself through his own dexterous actions?

We have to make sure that he doesn’t have carte blanche. This is in America’s interest. It is in the interest of the West. It is most of all in the interests of the Russian population. The key to the future is a truth commission in Russia, modeled on the truth commission in South Africa. This commission should uncover all the crimes from the post-Soviet period and, of course, the Soviet period. In the wake of this, a new Constituent Assembly could be convened which could lay the basis for a system capable of acting on the basis of true democratic principles. Russian society now has a fairly large middle class. Russians are traveling; Russia is much more open than it was. It has now, I think, outlived the forms of government that were traditional in Russia.

You, David, are an optimist. Perhaps the creation of illusory reality is a property of the national character?

This is the essence of the Russian state system-it is not the essence of Russia. It is necessary to change the state system, and the illusory reality will disappear. False facades exist when there is something to hide. We have seen how Japan became a democracy, how Germany got rid of Nazi ideology and became a reliable democratic country. Russia is also capable of development. I think the kind of freedoms that existed in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union can still contribute to the positive development of Russia.

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Soviet Politics, American Style The Wall Street Journal. Dec. 22, 2020 A propagandistic press, the crushing of academic freedom and the shattering of family loyalties.

On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, gave his farewell speech and more than seven decades of Russian revolutionary socialism came to an end. A generation later, the spirit of the Soviet Union has re-emerged with mass support in the U.S. When I arrived in Moscow in 1976 to begin a six-year stint as a correspondent, I was struck by the red flags flying from government buildings and the somber streets devoid of advertising except for garish posters showing workers with clenched fists demanding an end to the arms race.

When the Soviet Union fell, it seemed the Soviet attempt to impose a deluded version of reality had died with it. Francis Fukuyama, in his 1989 essay “The End of History,” said that MarxismLeninism was doomed as an alternative to liberal democracy. I argued at the time that the drive to make a religion out of politics had not disappeared.

For the past four years, potted histories have warned about the rise of fascism in the U.S. But the real danger is the transformation of “tolerance” into an ideology with its own courts, informers and punishments, all of them reminiscent of the Soviet Union.

One of the pillars of the Soviet Union was a controlled press in which all coverage was organized to confirm a mendacious ideology.

A friend of mine in Moscow, Vladimir Fyodorov, went to work for the TASS news service, which offered readers not news but a “correct” depiction of events, especially regarding the U.S. and the “ulcers of capitalism”—racism, crime and unemployment.

On his first day at TASS, Vladimir was handed a United Press International story about a U.S. company that was promoting a 145

high-quality tire and offered to replace older tires free of charge.

Vladimir wanted to kill the story, but his boss rewrote it. The new version read: “In the crafty capitalist market, firms frequently offer low-quality products. This is why a well-known American firm was forced to replace tires that were of inferior quality.” The headline was “Deception of Buyer.”

A few weeks later, Vladimir was given a report that prisons in Fiji were so comfortable that people preferred to stay there than to be at liberty. He produced a report that life in Fiji was so unbearable that people preferred to live in prison. His colleagues congratulated him. He told himself: “I’m going to go out of my mind here.”

Soviet practices would have once been unthinkable in the U.S. media. But in August 2016, Jim Rutenberg, media columnist for the New York Times, wrote that if journalists believed that Mr. Trump was a “demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalist tendencies,” it was necessary to “throw out the textbook of American journalism.” The Times started to characterize Mr. Trump’s statements as “lies” in news stories and suppress news that worked to Mr. Trump’s advantage, such as the Hunter Biden story this fall.

The Times also advanced an ideological account of U.S. history, according to which the American Revolution was undertaken to defend slavery and promoted it over the objections of historians and the paper’s own fact-checkers.

The Soviet system also relied on the complete liquidation of academic freedom. Marxism-Leninism was treated as a perfect science. But the ideology raised obvious questions: In a “classless society,” why were there special stores for officials? If socialism ended war, why did the Soviet Union and China go to war in 1969 over Damansky Island?

If a student tried to raise these questions, he was expelled from the Komsomol, the communist youth league. That ended any hope of a career. I knew a young man in Moscow who refused to be intimidated and continued to ask questions. He was committed to a mental hospital.

The Soviet style has become a reality in the U.S. Speakers are routinely canceled on ideological grounds: In July the College of the 146

Atlantic in Bar Harbour, Maine, canceled a virtual talk with Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society because of “the moment of reckoning our society is going through.” At my alma mater, the University of Chicago, the English department announced that it would “only accept applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.”

The Soviet Union finally counted on the readiness of people to betray even family and friends. The regime held up Pavel Morozov (1918-32) as a martyr. He lived in a village in the Urals when the regime was collectivizing agriculture. When Pavel learned that his father was helping peasants hide grain, he walked 35 miles to the nearest town to report him to the secret police. His father was arrested and Pavel was stabbed to death by relatives.

I thought of Pavel Morozov when I read a June op-ed in the New York Times by Chad Sanders, a black writer. He told his white friends that he didn’t need their “love texts” and suggested that instead they cut off contact with family members until they sent money to Black Lives Matter or joined their protests.

When Mr. Gorbachev began the reforms that destroyed the Soviet Union, he said, referring to the U.S.: “We’re going to do something terrible to you. We’re going to deprive you of an enemy.” Twenty-nine years later, it’s clear he was right. Without the ideological challenge of the Soviet Union, we have become immersed in internal conflicts and have made an ideology out of them.

It is true that Marxism is a more coherent system of thought than “wokeism.” But even an intellectual hodgepodge can engender totalitarian habits if it fulfills an emotional need and becomes a device of interpretation.

The antidote is fidelity to higher values. But that requires a moral seriousness that a world at peace and in thrall to superficialities does not inspire. “The West does not know and does not want to know what shaped it,” writes Cardinal Robert Sarah, a Guinean prelate. “This self-asphyxiation leads to new barbaric civilizations.”

The Soviet Union is dead, but its ghost wanders an unsettled world. Finding a lodestar for society’s moral development is the most important challenge facing the U.S. today.

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The Rhodes Scholarship Turns Against Its Legacy of Excellence The Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2021 It rejects its civilizing mission as ‘obsolete’ and favors the trendy notion of ‘radical inclusion.’

The Rhodes Scholarship stood for more than 120 years, through cataclysm and world war, as a symbol of individual excellence. But since 2019, under the shadow of a supposed reckoning with racism, the scholarships have been corrupted from within.

Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), the imperialist and financier who founded the scholarship, wanted Rhodes Scholars to be “the best men for the world’s fight.” The Rhodes Trust rewarded those who survived a withering competition with three years at Oxford University, all expenses paid. (Women were made eligible in 1977.)

Neither Rhodes nor many of those who over the decades benefited from his bequest would recognize the Rhodes Scholarship today. The scholarship, in the words of Edgar Williams, a former warden of Rhodes House, was “an investment in a chap.” A much-admired ideal was the German Rhodes Scholar Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was hanged for his role in the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.

While at Oxford, I studied Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism and the Russian language and traveled to the Soviet Union. Classmates studied Arabic and Chinese and became respected experts in their fields. The U.S. Rhodes Scholars in 2021, however, were praised not for worldliness but for their demographics.

Twenty-one of the 32 winners are “students of colour” and one is “non-binary,” according to the Rhodes Trust’s announcement.

More important, diversity is often their preferred academic specialty, along with sexual harassment, racism, and the status of prisoners. The winners are described as “passionate” or motivated by “fierce urgency.” The notion that Rhodes Scholars are defenders of universal values and destined to have careers that benefit their

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countries has been replaced by training them for conflicts with their fellow citizens.

Elizabeth Kiss, warden of Rhodes House, wrote that the Rhodes Trust today rejects Rhodes’s goal of educating young men for a civilizing mission as “wrong and obsolete.” Oxford itself, she writes, is a place where “racism in all its forms—structural, overt and implicit—remains rife.”

The Rhodes Trust has embarked on a program to expunge the scholarship’s “racist and sexist” past. One feature is a mandatory workshop led by members of the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement, which is campaigning to remove Rhodes’s statue from Oxford’s Oriel College. There is also inclusion training for all Rhodes staff, outreach to black colleges (but not other schools), and data processing to improve the diversity of the selection committees.

The goal, according to a recent statement, is “radical inclusion.” That means racial preferences, which violate Rhodes’s will.

Its 24th point states: “No student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.” The phrase “no student shall be qualified” is particularly important. I don’t see how the trustees have the right to change this condition.

There has long been discomfort in the Rhodes community over Rhodes’s role in forging Britain’s African empire. But neither Oxford nor Rhodes House, where his archives are held, has ever blocked the objective historical evaluation of Rhodes’s activities.

The transformation in the Rhodes Scholarship has its roots in two more recent developments: changes in the way the scholarship is administered and the spread of political correctness.

For decades, 50 U.S. state committees chose American finalists for the scholarships and eight regional committees selected four scholars each from the finalists. In the early 2000s, the trust scrapped the two-tiered system in favor of a single tier, in which 16 regional committees choose two scholars apiece. This removed an important internal check. The regional committees no longer choose from finalists sent by the states, which tended to emphasize individual excellence.

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At the same time, the atmosphere of “antiracism” has become overwhelming at the universities that have traditionally produced the most Rhodes Scholars and devote great effort to preparing candidates. Yale removed the name of Vice President John C. Calhoun from a residential college because he defended slavery. At Columbia, separate graduation ceremonies were announced for black students. At Amherst, students walked out of class to show solidarity and stress “the importance of Black students’ mental health.”

The tragedy of this situation is that many of those who call for special conditions for black students and thereby implicitly treat them as incapable of competing on an equal basis, do not know black people as people. The proliferation of “Black Lives Matter” signs in wealthy white neighborhoods instead of where the killing is taking place shows that what is actually at stake is self-serving demonstrations of virtue by whites, in which blacks play only a peripheral role.

The creation of unequal conditions for winning the Rhodes Scholarship can only destroy the scholarship as a respected institution, even if the name is preserved. The best white applicants won’t take part in a competition that is unfair, and the best minority students will reject a competition if they believe it is rigged in their favor.

Former Rhodes Scholars rely on the warden and the trustees to manage the trust in keeping with the conditions spelled out in Rhodes’s will. The changes of the past few years took me and other scholars by surprise. It is imperative that they be withdrawn. The Rhodes Scholarships were important not only to those who received them but to those who aimed high because they aspired to them. Their corruption must be stopped for the institution’s sake and for that of the U.S. and the rest of the world.

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The Coup That Failed— but Toppled Communism The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 18, 2021 Soviet hard-liners could have crushed the resistance 30 years ago, but they lacked the will.

As dawn broke on Aug. 19, 1991, tanks and armored cars converged on Moscow and Soviet citizens received the stunning news that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been overthrown in a coup. At 6:06 a.m., the news agency Tass announced that he had been removed for reasons of health, and power was in the hands of a shadowy group calling itself the State Committee for the Emergency Situation.

For the next three days, the fate of the world hung in the balance. Four thousand troops, 350 tanks and 300 armored personnel carriers poured into the capital. The coup leaders ordered 250,000 pairs of handcuffs from a factory in Pskov and printed thousands of blank forms authorizing administrative arrest. A protester scrawled on a wall: “Communism will not be saved by martial law.” He was arrested by KGB agents and told, “From today on, it is not allowed to write any slogans.”

The coup leaders counted on a massive show of force and a quick victory. But the Soviet Union was no longer the totalitarian society that existed before Mr. Gorbachev initiated the policy of free information known as glasnost.

As soldiers took up positions on Tverskaya Street, members of the intelligentsia rushed to leave the country, and there were bread riots in the stores.

In a fatal display of unjustified overconfidence, however, the coup leaders didn’t arrest Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, then a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin turned the seat of the Russian government, known as the White House, into a center of resistance and made a speech from the top of a tank denouncing the coup as an illegal seizure of power.

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As the first day of the coup wore on, resistance on the street began to grow. By nightfall, 15,000 civilians surrounded the White House. Twenty-four hours later, the crowd had swelled to 100,000, with armed defenders circling the building and floodlights illuminating the facade.

The coup leaders prepared to storm the building. Their plan called for riot police to clear the square using gas and water cannons. The KGB’s elite Alpha unit would come in after them, fighting their way into the building, seizing Yeltsin and arresting the entire Russian leadership. Gen. Alexander Lebed, who was to lead the operation, warned that there would be “an enormous bloodbath.”

Members of Yeltsin’s government, meanwhile, were glued to their telephones, calling Soviet military officers and the leaders of the coup. His supporters traveled out to military units on the streets of Moscow in an attempt to persuade them to change sides.

Yeltsin’s supporters were communist reformers. The coup plotters were communist hard liners. In previous years, the plotters had supported at least some of the reforms. This greatly undermined their resolution as the crowd around the White House steadily grew.

As the hour for storming approached, the coup leaders received reports on the extensive measures being taken to defend the White House. The cordon in front was well-organized and manned by veterans of the Afghan war. The entrances were blocked and gunmen with automatic weapons were posted on each floor. The attackers were going to have to fight their way up.

No one in the Alpha unit doubted that the White House could be taken in 15 to 30 minutes, but the fighters feared the death toll would be worse than the thousands killed in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. They also were aware that many former colleagues had rallied to Yeltsin’s side. After tense deliberation, they informed their superiors they wouldn’t attack the White House. It was the first time in Soviet history that a military unit had refused to carry out a direct order.

With the refusal of the Alpha unit, the coup began to collapse.

The plan called for coordination between the army and the internal 154

forces, neither of whose rank and file were committed to doing what the coup leaders wanted them to do. Each set of commanders looked warily at the others trying to decide how to proceed. At 12:45 a.m. on Aug. 21, three civilians were killed in a confrontation with troops near the U.S. Embassy. An aide warned Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, one of the coup plotters, that if the White House was stormed, there would be a “sea of blood.”

Yazov had hoped the coup would succeed without mass casualties. He said to tell the other coup plotters, “The army is pulling out of the game.” Shortly afterward, Gen. Boris Gromov, leader of the internal troops, said that his men were also refusing to take part in the storm. KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov said: “In that case, the operation has to be cancelled.”

The coup set the stage for the post-communist epoch. The coup leaders didn’t lack the ability to prevail in August 1991, but, faced with the determined non-violent resistance of the population, they lacked the will. After five years of free information and liberal reforms, faith in communist ideology was gone. In the end, the coup plotters weren’t ready to commit mass murder, and the Soviet Union couldn’t be saved without it.

Thirty years have passed, and Russia is again an authoritarian state. But the lessons of the August coup still apply. Vladimir Putin’s regime may face mass protests and may decide to use force.

But its success will depend on its legitimacy, which could hinge on the degree to which the regime is able to suppress information about such crimes as the 1999 apartment bombings which brought Mr. Putin to power, the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and the 2015 assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

As in the past, Russia is imprisoned by lies. As in the past, truthful information can set it free.

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Happiness in the Absence of Freedom David Satter in the Land of Mirages Radio Liberty, November 12, 2021 INTERVIEW Andrey Shary The name of American journalist and political analyst David Satter is well known to regular listeners of Radio Liberty and readers of our website. An excellent expert on post-Soviet realities, he willingly shares his views on what is happening in Russia and U.S.Russia relations on the airwaves of Radio Liberty and on our digital platforms. Satter has been following events in Russia uninterruptedly for nearly half a century, making him one of the patriarchs of American political Russian studies. Satter began his journalistic exploration of Russia with contacts with Andrei Sakharov and a critique of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev and he now describes with the same thoroughness and passion the developments in Putin’s Russia.

In “Never Speak to Strangers,” [volume 1] a book recently published by the German publisher ibidem Verlag, Satter has selected a hundred and fifty of his texts about the Soviet Union and Russia, written over decades of journalistic work. It is an enlightening, and, in some places, downright fascinating read: correspondence from Moscow and Leningrad—St. Petersburg, from the Soviet Baltics and Transcaucasia, reports on trips to “backwoods,“ places like Chernobyl and Shadrinsk, accounts of meetings with dissidents and politicians, analyses and commentaries, in other words, a multi-genre, meticulous chronicle of the life of a vast country at the most critical moments of its history. These articles by Satter have appeared in major American and British publications, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Forbes, Readers Digest and Foreign Affairs. The title text dates from February 1977, the final text from July 2019, but the texts are perceived as almost equally fresh fragments of a larger mosaic.

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Andrey Shary: David, are there any other journalists in the U.S. who have dealt with these Russian issues as long as you have?

David Satter: I think I’m just about the main “veteran“ now. When I first came to work in Moscow in 1976, I was one of the youngest accredited Western correspondents in the USSR. I can’t tell you which of my colleagues who were working on Russia 45 years ago are still pursuing their journalistic careers... I guess I am the record-breaker in terms of the length of time in the “Russian field“, at least as far as I know.

Over the years, do you get the feeling that Russian political history is developing in a circle, or that much of what you saw in the Soviet Union is slowly making a comeback in today’s Russia?

Yes, many Russian historical characteristics that were evident in the Soviet Union have reappeared in post-Soviet Russia. There are differences, of course. One thing to keep in mind is that the ideology that dominated the Soviet Union shaped public consciousness in a very peculiar way. In Soviet times, citizens were fooled, but it was easy to see why: they simply did not have access to information that could give a correct picture of reality.

Now Russians are more or less able to get a correct picture of reality, but most do not want to receive it.

You note several times in your book that Russian reality is forever out of sync with Russian ideology. Do you think this is a national way of perceiving the world or just the result of specific political circumstances?

This is a peculiarity that foreign visitors noticed when they traveled through Tsarist Russia. They wrote about the tendency to create a false reality for the population, for foreign visitors and for the rest of the world.

Only a fictional reality could legitimize the existence of absolute power.

Russia is not ruled by force alone. Every Russian regime—Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet- has tried to make people feel happy in the absence of freedom. Moreover, the authorities have always attempted to turn people into active supporters of their own lack of freedom. In order to succeed in this, one must necessarily create a fictional reality; one must use ideology. In this regard, Soviet ideology was a radical example: an invented reality was 158

extended to all spheres of life, and it was imposed by force. In a certain sense, we see the same tendencies in post-Soviet Russia. I am referring primarily to the intensive use of propaganda and disinformation. This is an effective way to ensure the loyalty of citizens to a regime that actually acts against their interests.

Your book contains much criticism of Soviet and Russian politicians. But you do not spare American leaders either, reproaching them for Washington’s failure to develop an effective strategy to influence or contain Russia. Where do such harsh assessments come from?

The government of any country is responsible for the safety of its citizens.

Part of the responsibility of the American authorities to their own citizens is to understand Russia. It is not acceptable to say Russia is hard to understand so we are not obliged to understand it. Moscow creates problems for the West because people in the West assume that external appearances reflect underlying reality. They are not prepared for a situation in which a system of mirages is created, the purpose of which is to suppress reality and surface appearances not only do not reflect reality but directly contradict it.

Russia is a country where the supposed parliament is not a parliament, where what is purportedly a judicial system does not deliver justice and where the task of the media is to provide disinformation. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry once publicly expressed surprise that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov looked him in the eye and lied to him. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I asked how it was possible that the U.S. Secretary of State expected anything different.

The fact that Kerry was surprised by Lavrov’s lies is a demonstration of the effectiveness of the Russian disinformation system and the degree to which the Russians know how to make Americans think and react to appearances instead of reality.

This is what my criticism boils down to. The U.S. first welcomed the Yeltsin-era shock therapy, which was carried out with total disregard for law and massive corruption. In 1993, we accepted the dispersal of the Supreme Soviet as if Boris Yeltsin and his government had the right to dissolve the parliament and shell the White House from tanks. In 1996 we paid no attention to the irregularities in Yeltsin’s re-election as president.

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In 1999, when apartment buildings in Russia were blown up, we didn’t express our indignation even when it became known that FSB officers had planted explosives in the basement of a building in Ryazan. What state of mind does all this reflect?

After the murders of Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, our foreign policy experts announced a reset in U.S.-Russian relations, as if Washington was to blame for the deterioration of relations. The bottom line is that the American political class is superficial and naïve. This is one of the reasons why Russia has so much room to maneuver.

Am I correct in assuming, David, that you are not overly optimistic in your assessment of the current American administration’s understanding of Russia as well?

I am not optimistic. The current U.S. administration is staffed by people who have made political careers and have no real understanding of Russian reality. The problem lies deeper than the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. In order to understand Russia, you have to understand its culture, understand its history, understand its philosophy, but above all you have to understand that a society can in principle be organized quite differently than the way Western society is organized, Napoleon once said: ‘There are only two countries in Europe—Russia and everybody else. The problem comes down to the fact that many in the West are not prepared to rethink their views on political reality just so they can understand one country. They are wedded to an approach that worked in the world they are familiar with.

Well, you are an experienced expert with half a century of experience in studying Russia. Give me some advice on how the West should deal with Vladimir Putin if he does not behave according to the scheme within which Western politicians operate? You probably know the Russian term “gopnik“—petty criminal, hooligan, perpetually aggressive, who, by rejecting accepted norms of behavior and disobeying them, achieves practical success

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because no one else is willing to play by his despicable rules.

Putin seems to succeed in just such a way.

There is a general approach, and there is a case-by-case approach. My main prescription is this: Western leaders must speak the truth openly; they must not allow Putin and the Kremlin regime a right to deceive. For example, if the British government concluded that the Kremlin was responsible for the Litvinenko poisoning, then London’s position should have been firmly supported in Washington and other Western capitals, and we should not have hesitated to say that Putin and his regime committed the crime.

We are witnesses to a number of acts for which the Russian leadership was responsible that were shocking to the highest degree. Take the Beslan tragedy. We know, thanks in part to the investigations by Novaya Gazeta, that the school’s gymnasium was stormed with grenade launchers and flame-throwers at a time when it was full of hostages, and that as a result, many parents and children were burned alive. There is probably no other country in Europe in which hostages would be “rescued“ in this way.

Why is Western society incapable of paying closer attention even to such obvious things? Until this attitude changes, we can say that the West is de facto conniving with the Russian authorities.

We saw approximately the same thing in the situation with the destruction of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 over Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

There was abundant evidence that the Russian authorities were behind the crime and that it was not a case of mistaken identity but an act of political terrorism because at the time MH-17 was destroyed, there were no Ukrainian air force fighters in the sky, only civilian flights. Time after time, we pass up the opportunity to ask the obvious questions about Moscow’s political behavior and to draw the obvious conclusions. The result is a situation in which the people you describe as “gopniks” take advantage of their impunity and violate the norms of behavior that are natural to Western society.

Russia is highly dependent on Western financial institutions and organizations, so there are significant opportunities to put pressure on the Kremlin. The most important thing, just as in Soviet times, is to tell the people of Russia the truth. Individual people—experts, journalists, and politicians do this—but the governments of Western countries as a whole do not. If Western expertise and knowledge about Russia is combined with 161

the courage to describe the situation adequately, then forces in Russia itself, which also seek a better future for this country, will take cognizance of this support.

From your perspective“ which U.S. administration has been most successful in containing Russia?

Ronald Reagan’s administration, of course, and they managed to make great strides. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union all U.S. administrations, without exception, were phenomenally naïve and did not use the opportunities that they had to influence the situation in Russia. In the first post-Soviet years Washington’s influence on Moscow was enormous.

If Washington had had the knowledge and the will to help correct the direction of reform, Moscow might have moved in the right direction.

Let’s turn to your personal memories, David. You first came to the Soviet Union in the very late 1960s as a student. As I learned from your book, Ukraine was the land of your ancestors. Did you have any family sentiments, did you intend to study the historical homeland of your forebears, or were you just a young American in an unfamiliar country?

Rather the second. My mother’s family left Kyiv in 1913. My grandparents knew Russian but did not speak Russian in their American lives. So, it wasn’t mainly the family ties to Russia that influenced me. It was the Cold War environment. The Soviet Union at that time presented itself as a Utopia and socialism as the sure path to universal justice, an alternative to capitalist evil. The Soviet Union was an incredible, utterly absorbing, and unknown country. I had the fortunate opportunity to begin studying Russian while still in high school. Among my teachers was a Russian emigre who taught the language. So, I started studying Russian at the age of 13. Then I went to Oxford University and the USSR was unexpectedly close, it was possible to get on a train and go to Moscow. I took that opportunity because I wanted to find out what the socialist world was really like.

Of course, when I arrived in Moscow, I was struck by the same things that struck every foreign traveler in the Soviet Union: long lines, the impossibility to buy the basic necessities in the stores, darkness in the streets, the gloomy atmosphere, the standard architecture. Even the width 162

of the avenues in the city center seemed to me inhuman, streets so wide that it was impossible to cross them without using the underpasses.

I met a lot of Soviet people and used my knowledge of Russian, which was imperfect at the time, but still allowed me to communicate. Every foreigner who came to the USSR in 1969 was treated very well by the local people as an envoy from another world. It was a fascinating but surreal atmosphere.

Well then, surely you know all this talk about the Russian soul, which foreigners are supposedly incapable of understanding, the idea that there is a bad government but wonderful people? Do you see any connection between the qualities of the society and the political system that it allows to be established in the country?

Well, of course, this political system was imposed on the people. One of the things I realized in Russia was this: the essence of what was happening was often completely misunderstood by ordinary people, the very people who were experiencing the effects of historical change in their own destinies. Many people experienced real cataclysms, including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dramatic events that followed, without fully understanding what was going on around them, without understanding what forces were involved in these changes.

The problem, I think, is that over decades and centuries of political repression, over centuries of ideological indoctrination, Russians have gotten used to evaluating themselves just as the authorities evaluated them: as raw material to achieve some, often completely crazy, ideological goals.

During the Soviet period, such goals were the construction of communism and the extension of its blessings to the entire world. For this, Soviet people were supposed to sacrifice their well-being, their lives and, if necessary, the lives of others. Even Putin said in one of his speeches: what our country has achieved is the result of the sacrifices of entire generations, and we have no right to forget this. In other words, the people of Russia exist for the good of the greatness of the Russian state. The trouble is that the Russian state is ruled by a collection of miscreants. So, it turns out that the Russian people exist for the sake of the criminal elements that have come to power.

Well, let me put it this way: there is not enough respect for the individual, and this has all sorts of outward manifestations. Take, for example, 163

the transition from socialism to capitalism. According to demographers, in the 1990s, the excess loss of population in Russia was 6 million people. In other words, 6 million more people died than would have been expected based on demographic trends. The price of the “transition“ period—as a result of disease, crime, and a general atmosphere of hopelessness—has been absolutely horrendous. But the people who benefited from the change—a small group at first, but over time it grew—remained completely indifferent to the enormous human cost.

The methods used by Yegor Gaidar’s government in implementing economic reform would have been unacceptable in a civilized country because they imposed too high a cost on ordinary citizens. But when one assesses these human tragedies, and also when one assesses the crimes of the Soviet era, one is struck by the relative indifference with which Russian society treats such losses. Alas, in your country the individual is not considered a value in himself but is seen as a cog in the political process, and as such is deprived of the ability and capacity to make moral judgments. I see this as one of the reasons why Russia remains a highly corrupt country, and the answer to the question of why corruption is, nonetheless, an effective device of governing. But corruption and authoritarianism do not help the institutions of a democratic society to develop, just the opposite.

Is your system of arguments accepted by those who are engaged in the development of U.S. strategy toward Russia?

The situation in American expert circles is discouraging. Here’s an example. A popular question that has been discussed for two decades now is: “Who is Mister Putin?” Books have been written about this, the question is studied in universities, but the answers boil down to the search for a paradigm that Americans are familiar with. The idea that Putin is a product of a completely different society, that his worldview and psychology are fundamentally different from what we are used to in the US, is not discussed at all. This has an impact in practice: the U.S. has reacted to Russia’s actions according to the logic of American behavior. They attribute American characteristics to Russia, including negative ones. The Russians, by the way, do everything in their power to reinforce this misperception in the U.S. Putin is described in a way that makes sense to Americans on the basis of American political experience, rather than as a man formed in the conditions of Russia’s criminal semi-underground, as a man

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who has been brought to power in order to consolidate the massive theft of property under the guise of privatization that was committed in post-Soviet Russia.

The future of Russia in your view appears bleak and foggy?

It is a bleak prospect, but not a hopeless one. In some respects, I am more optimistic than many others, in particular, more optimistic than many Russians who now look at their country from the outside as they have been forced to emigrate. My late friend Vladimir Voinovich told me shortly before his death that change would come to Russia. His opinion should be taken very seriously. In 1988, in Paris, I met with Voinovich and the French Sovietologist Alain Besancon. We discussed Gorbachev’s first reforms, which Alain and I were very skeptical about. And Voinovich argued: no, there will be great changes in the USSR. He was right and we were wrong. So, I take Voinovich’s prediction that changes are imminent in Russia very seriously. Russia is too modern, too far advanced in its understanding of freedom, too globally integrated to remain forever constrained by a political system of the Putin type. But the truth must be revealed, not only about the crimes of the Soviet regime, but also about the atrocities of the post-Soviet period. The story of the bombing of the apartment buildings in 1999 deserves a special place. These explosions were necessary for the consolidation of the Yeltsin regime and the transfer of power to Putin. And if the truth about what happened then and in many other cases becomes known, the attitude of the majority of the population toward the government may change just as glasnost during perestroika changed public attitudes toward the Soviet experience.

Russia needs a “Truth Commission,“ similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the consequences of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Yes, this South African commission faced enormous problems, but at least it tried to deal with the past. I think that under certain circumstances, the Russians are capable of responding to the revealed truth. The truth can have a disarming effect on the authorities.

This is what happened in 1991 during the attempted coup d’état. All kinds of accusations can be made against the coup leaders for their desire to overthrow the government, but we must admit that at the crucial moment, faced with the prospect of a repeat of the bloody events in Tiananmen Square, they did not resort to the use of force. Yeltsin, on the other hand, was not so humanitarian in 1993.

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So why did it happen this way in 1991, and not otherwise? One reason is that the Soviet ideology was discredited. The coup leaders lacked the ideological faith they needed in order to carry out mass murder and without a massacre, they could not prevail. I believe that in the future a similar situation may arise in which the Russian authorities will face a choice: either to yield to the democratic demands put forward by peaceful protestors, or to suppress the protestors by force. Knowledge of the truth could be an important factor in society’s willingness to resist and in reducing the authorities’ ability to resort to force. This is my hope. Under certain conditions, great political and socio-cultural shifts are possible in any country, and Russia is no exception.

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When the Hammer (and Sickle) Fell The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 2021 Thirty years ago, the New Year’s midnight bells also ushered out the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

At midnight on Dec. 31, 1991, the chimes rang out from Savior Tower in the Kremlin and fireworks lit up the sky, marking the final end of the Soviet Union, which claimed to have created heaven on earth.

During its 70-year life, the Soviet regime killed at least 20 million of its citizens for political reasons. It also had the mesmerizing quality of a mirage. Its citizens were forced to be actors, playing the part of inhabitants of a new utopia in keeping with the infallible predictions of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

As history showed, however, the Soviet Union wasn’t indomitable. In 1988 the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev allowed a space for free information in Soviet society, creating a contradiction between free speech and a system based on lies. When glasnost wasn’t repressed, it led to the collapse of the system. In the end, only a false reality could justify total power.

Two forces led Mr. Gorbachev to begin the reforms that sealed the Soviet Union’s fate. The first was the dissident movement, which offered a moral alternative even under conditions of totalitarianism. The second was the West’s firm opposition, despite missteps and hesitations. Both challenged the Soviet Union at the level of values.

The dissidents were important because they insisted that words have meaning. The Soviet regime promulgated “democratic rights,” then used terror to make sure citizens never exercised them.

The dissidents demanded that the regime take its own laws seriously.

In August 1975, the Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Accords, which recognized the division of Europe but included promises to respect human rights and the free flow of information. The 167

dissidents created committees to monitor the regime’s compliance.

These committees became the best and often the only source of information for the West on the Soviet violation of its Helsinki pledges. The Soviet regime reacted with mass arrests, but the dissidents’ courage in defying the regime and their readiness to face labor-camp sentences became an example for the whole country.

The Soviet Union was characterized by monolithic censorship.

Everything that was published, broadcast or pronounced in a public forum was subject to Communist Party control and had to affirm the validity of Marxism-Leninism and the heroic leadership of the party.

Dissidents began to circumvent the censorship by typing out banned literary and political works in four or five carbon copies and circulating them secretly. The authorities reacted to this self-publishing, or samizdat, with arrests. The dissidents publicized the arrests, often in the underground journal Chronicle of Current Events, nurturing a subculture that rejected submission and soon included a significant part of the intelligentsia. Samizdat sustained a sphere of intellectual freedom that defied totalitarian control.

The Soviet Union also faced a West whose integrity and institutions were still largely intact. The giant Soviet SS-18 missile was highly accurate, shocking Central Intelligence Agency analysts who had believed the Soviets couldn’t develop such an accurate missile within 10 years. The Soviet nuclear stockpile reached 45,000 to 60,000 bombs and warheads. In seeming preparation for war, the Soviets also built a 217-mile second subway deep under the Moscow metro and 2,000-foot-deep shelters to protect the party elite.

President Reagan rejected the idea that the West had no alternative to accommodation. In the words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, he took the offensive “ideologically and geostrategically.” The Pentagon budget nearly doubled, from $158 billion in 1981 to $304 billion in 1989. Money devoted to research and development doubled between 1981 and 1986. As for his strategy, Reagan said it was simple: “We win. They lose.”

Soviet efforts to force the West to back down were unsuccessful. The Soviets installed movable multiwarhead SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe. The U.S. responded with plans to deploy 168

Pershing missiles of a similar range in West Germany and Tomahawk ground-launched nuclear cruise missiles in three other North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states.

The Soviets launched a massive propaganda campaign against the deployment. German novelist Günter Grass compared it to the Nazis’ Wannsee Conference, which prepared the Holocaust. The Red Army Faction in Germany carried out terrorist attacks against U.S. and NATO facilities with weapons and training from the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. Despite huge protests, the West held firm and the missiles were deployed.

At the same time, the U.S. rearmament drive began to bear fruit. In June 1982, Israeli pilots—flying American F-15 and F-16 jets and taking advantage of the latest advances in microelectronics and computer technology—destroyed 81 Soviet-made Syrian MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets over the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon without losing a single plane. On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, aimed at making it possible to intercept Soviet missiles in space.

Stunned by these developments, the Soviets eventually decided to take the risk of major reforms.

Thirty years later, we no longer face an adversary like the Soviet Union, which threatened to overrun Europe and was capable of making its influence felt in every corner of the globe. Yet the perseverance and sense of honor that defeated the Soviet Union are still needed today.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a painful reminder of how far we have come. Communism and radical Islam are ideologies that divide the world into the elect and the profane, deny individuality and suppress free will. Both treat man-made dogma as infallible truth and seek to impose it by force.

Against this background, the Afghan war was lost the minute Americans began repeating “no more endless wars” and cynically disregarding those we would leave behind, announced we were heading for the exits.

The Soviet Union is part of the past, but our task is to draw the proper lessons from its demise. Instead, the U.S. has turned inward.

The defense of universal values has been replaced with internal 169

political fights over such issues as climate change and gender identity. This is a tragic and dangerous situation. Soviet communism was defeated, but history moves in cycles. It is foolish to think we will never face an ideological challenge again.

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“In America, Russians are not considered enemies of humanity“ Business Online, February 5, 2022 Valery Bereznev “Putin once said that he was the only pure democrat in the world and that since the death of Mahatma Gandhi, there has been no one for him to talk to. But his St. Petersburg gangster humor is not widely understood in the United States.” American journalist and writer David Satter in an interview with Valery Bereznev, the head of the Russian daily newspaper “Business 0nline,” explained what scenarios for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are being considered in Washington and whether a major war can be avoided.

Satter belongs to a once-glorious tribe of Western Sovietologists who were demoted to Russia specialists after the Soviet Union collapsed. Meanwhile, during the Cold War, Sovietologists were very influential people in the U.S. They were like divers who occasionally plunged into the ocean of the socialist camp and brought back scant news about how the builders of communism really lived.

For the Sovietologists, there was no Iron Curtain: they passed through it, landing in the streets of Moscow and Leningrad and providing generous fodder for rumors and spy stories.

Satter first came to the Soviet Union in 1976 with an accreditation card from the Financial Times in his pocket. Having grown up in Chicago and started his journalistic career there as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, David looked like a typical American, with whom virtuous Soviet citizens were advised not to have contact. So, he quickly developed a specific social circle: dissidents from the capital and outsiders of all stripes who dreamed of the “free world“ on the other side of the ocean.

I met Satter on a long trip to the United States and have known him for about 20 years. I never had any illusions about his views: he has always espoused the so-called universal human values, “exporting democracy,“ “fighting the bloody regime“ and other ideas of American hawks. And yet, against their “hawkish“ background, 171

David always stood out favorably. He had an excellent knowledge of Russian classical culture and, unlike many Americans, read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the original.

Moreover, visiting Russia in the 1990s, David repeatedly reprimanded U.S. congressmen and White House officials when they applauded Russian market reforms. He wrote that these reforms had become a mass grave for many former Soviet citizens, and that the bourgeois “end of history“ announced by Francis Fukuyama (David’s colleague at Johns Hopkins University) had nearly turned into the apocalypse of Russian civilization.

In 2013, in the early days of the Kyiv Euromaidan, Satter was banned from entering Russia. In principle, this should have been expected a long time ago, given his relationship with the Russian authorities. But now that relations with the Kremlin have finally deteriorated, not just for Satter, but for the United States as a whole, I wanted to see him again. Modern means of communication were helpful. The main question that rolled around on my tongue was, “David, will there be a war? Is it even possible?“ We “met“ by video link, and on the other side of the screen the windows of David’s house overlooked some Washington courtyard, where a dog was barking in a perfectly mundane way. Satter recalled the experience of the Chechen wars, drew parallels with a possible “hot conflict“ in Ukraine, and assured me that Moscow should not fear “quantitatively insignificant“ NATO contingents in Poland and the Baltics. But neither should it forget about them.

Valery Bereznev: David, is the topic of the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine being discussed in the United States right now? Or is it of no interest to anyone outside the Washington elite?

David Satter: We can say that the problem of Ukraine has penetrated the public consciousness of Americans, which, by the way, is not typical for us, because the U.S. population is usually completely focused on the problems of domestic life. But, of course, now we are talking about the possibility of a large-scale conflict, and this is what attracts attention. At the same time, the level of understanding of what is going on, I would say, is rather 172

low, which is to be expected—not many Americans have experience with Ukraine or Russia, and even fewer have been there and are able to speak at least a little bit of Russian or Ukrainian.

The Russian or Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S. should be excluded from this generality (according to various estimates, there are 2.5-3 million Russians and Russian-speaking citizens in the United States today— Ed. note). Because of their family ties, language skills and direct experience they follow the situation very closely and very seriously. However, most people, as I said, are just engaged by the fact that there may be a big war somewhere in the world. And war is always bad: huge casualties may follow, so more and more people are paying attention and rushing to express their opinions-usually uninformed ones. One can hope that in government, where professionals are supposed to work, the level of opinion is a little higher, but it’s impossible to rely on it, because officials also reflect general societal trends.

Does the present situation affect attitudes toward Russia and Russians?

Americans always distinguish between the “government“ and the “people,“ and often assume that a government can be the enemy of its own people. You and I may realize that, in the case of Russia, this is an oversimplification, but it is a stereotype, which, incidentally, stems from the experience of the Cold War. Americans in those times were used to seeing communism as a yoke imposed on a people. There was a widespread belief that no one really believed in communism and that everyone was just paying lip service to the doctrine. Very few people attempted to grasp the psychological complexities of life in the Soviet Union or the Soviet camp. Incidentally, when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, many former Communist officials became ardently anti-Communist, it was a confirmation to ordinary Americans that Communism had been forced on people against their will.

Now, as war looms, one should not expect the U.S. population to have a sophisticated understanding of the situation. There is a widespread belief that Russians, like any other people, want freedom (as we Americans understand it), but for some reason do not have it. According to my observations, however, there is practically no bitterness against the Russian people, and Americans even continue to hold on to certain romantic 173

notions about Russia—in the popular perception it is an interesting, deep, mysterious country: Russians play chess, drink tea and vodka, are very hospitable, all women are beautiful, the streets are full of snow, and it is very cold.

It’s just amazing, David! I just looked out the window, and it’s snowing and bloody cold, but there are beautiful women walking on the sidewalks. And there’s a cup of tea on my desk. So, it’s all true...

But I can tell you for a fact that in America, the Russians are not considered enemies of humanity. During World War II, there were such attitudes toward the Germans and Japanese. But there is no such negativity toward Russians. Students in American colleges and schools read Russian literature and are familiar with the achievements of Russian culture. And this is not only true of educated Americans but also of average people. Of course, if there is an attack on Ukraine, the attitude to the political rulers of Russia will begin to deteriorate sharply. Even now it is not very positive.

But I think that even in this situation, the attitude toward the Russian people as a whole will not change.

As for the “bad“ Russian political elite... You know history and remember how in 1941-1945 the Soviet people united around the figure of Joseph Stalin despite the arrests and deportations. The terror did not prevent a general consolidation around Stalin, because the enemy at the door looked a hundred times more dangerous. So why do Americans think that in the case of a new major war no such consolidation will take place around the figure of Vladimir Putin, who, incidentally, has no deportations or mass political repressions under his belt? No one will go to die for the oligarchs, but they will fight for Russia. Most people might perceive this as some kind of holy war against the West.

Here, Valery, we are looking at what is happening from different perspectives. We should not forget that the situation on the conflict line in Donbass has been stable for many years. Of course, there are new outbreaks of violence and, unfortunately, new victims, but compared to 2015, the number of victims is quite small. And right now, in my opinion, there is not 174

much reason to change the situation. To justify an invasion, they will have to come up with something like the bombings of the apartment buildings in 1999. But such a provocation would have to be at least minimally convincing. And it can only serve as a temporary justification for the invasion and the huge losses that are sure to result from it.

I talked to people from the Russian secret services about the 1999 explosions. Their version: the attacks could have been organized by people from the FSB, who left the service and worked for [exiled Russian oligarch] Boris Berezovsky. He, in turn, was in close contact with Chechen rebels, and was playing his own game in order to maintain his power and capital. This was a sinister combination. But it seems that the Russian state had nothing to do with it.

I have heard this version too. We do not know exactly what kind of internal intrigue led to this tragedy. A few years ago, in America, some transcripts of conversations between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin were made public (591 pages published by the Bill Clinton library—Ed. note). On September 8, 1999, Yeltsin told Clinton that Vladimir Putin would be the next Russian president. “He’s a good man, and you’ll have a good relationship with him,“ were roughly the words. [Literally, “he is thorough and strong and communicative. He will be able to establish good relationships and contacts with partners very easily. <...> He is tough, he has an inner core.

And he will win. You will do things together. He will continue Yeltsin’s line on democracy and the economy and expand Russia’s contacts.] At the time of these conversations, Yeltsin’s electoral rating was 2 percent. The rating of his nominee, Putin, was the same. Where did the first Russian president get such confidence that it was Putin who would win? Almost no one knew Putin at the time. On September 9, the day after this conversation, the building on Guryanova Street in Moscow was blown up...

I understand that even among the most hardened Chekists there are very few who want to blow up their own people. The perpetrators were undoubtedly very specific people. And I believe Boris Berezovsky was involved in this. After losing power he assumed the posture of “whistleblower “and exposed Putin’s role in the bombings, although not his own.

This does not excuse him, to put it mildly.

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The second Chechen war was very well prepared, especially compared to the first. But even the effect of such a high-profile event as the bombing of the apartment buildings, was short-lived. Meanwhile, taking over Ukraine is a big project. There are about 40 million Ukrainians, and many of them fight just as well as the Russians. They shared with Russians the experience of serving in the Soviet army.

It should be remembered that Donetsk and Luhansk were centers of pro-Russian sentiment even before 2014. But such favorable conditions for “occupation“ as Russia has in these enclaves do not exist in the rest of Ukraine. So, there could be a very serious battle. The Russian army has obvious superiority over the Ukrainian forces in the air and at sea. But a guerrilla war could break out on land—a very unpleasant, protracted, and bloody war.

Again, I would like to refer to the experience of the first Chechen conflict. When Russian servicemen entered Chechnya, they were told that they were freeing Chechnya from the “bloody clan of Dudayev”, and they would be treated as liberators. But when they saw the level of resistance, they began to have doubts. In that case, the conflict that unfolded was between Slavs and people from the Caucasus. Both groups had been Soviet citizens but they had different mentalities and national traditions. In Ukraine, the fight would be between two closely related Slavic nationalities. Many Ukrainians have relatives in Russia, many Russian citizens have Ukrainian roots, and vice versa. Sustaining Russian morale will be that much more difficult.

Of course, now we sit back and talk quietly about it. However, if things go according to the worst-case scenario, after two years of fierce guerrilla warfare, things will look different.

After World War II, the so-called Forest Brothers operated in the western territories of the Ukrainian SSR until 1954-1955. Ten years after 1945! And in the end, they uprooted them.

We don’t know how things would turn out now. But, according to the most conservative estimates, the Russian Armed Forces would need at least 500,000 servicemen to keep the entire territory of Ukraine under control and to change the government there. And what will Russia get out of this? Severe economic sanctions, total world isolation, guerrilla warfare, and economic ruin.

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Does America seriously believe that we are ready to go to war with our brothers and sisters? Where does this belief that Russia will invariably attack Ukraine come from? We accept that the Ukrainian forces troops may move into the territories of the DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LNR [Luhansk People’s Republic], where Russian people traditionally live, and this will be perceived by us as an invasion. In that case we will respond. We will respond, but we will not attack!

I doubt that there will be any invasion by Russia. Why? Because in this case the potential for destabilization of the corrupt regime in the Russian Federation is very serious. I don’t count on the common sense of the Russian leadership but simply on their instinct for self-preservation.

The USSR had a “holy war“ in Afghanistan, which ended very badly for them. World War I seemed even more “holy“ at first for Tsarist Russia: the crowd on Palace Square was infused with patriotic fervor, the crowd sang “God Save the Tsar.“ We remember what happened afterwards. And now, despite the degree of artificial hysteria, which can be provoked in Russia, the Russian authorities risk entering a period of great uncertainty.

War is always a black box. If a conflict happens, Ukrainians will defend their own land, just as the Chechens did and Putin has given them plenty of time to prepare for this. The feeling that “these are our Slavic brothers“ can be lost if the war becomes too fierce and protracted.

Let’s remember that General Alexander Lebed6 said during the first Chechen War that 30 percent of Russian soldiers were ready to turn their weapons against those who sent them there, and another 10 percent were thinking about it. Incidentally, Boris Yeltsin drew conclusions from this: he realized that he had no chance of winning the 1996 presidential election unless he stopped the war.

As for the current moment, yes: now the situation, though unpleasant, is stable. Stably unpleasant, so to speak. The DNR and LNR also function stably, like South Ossetia or Abkhazia,7 and the Ukrainian command is aware of the fact that the local population is under the influence

6

7

The commander of the 14th Army stationed in the Transdniestr region of Moldova who negotiated an end to the first Chechen War. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are breakaway regions of Georgia, supported by Russia.

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of propaganda. Russia does not need any invasion to preserve its hold over the DNR, LNR, and Crimea. This goal has long been achieved.

But now we are talking about something else. In America, some consider it possible that Russia will content itself with another small piece of Ukrainian territory. But then, as the Russians say, the game is not worth the candle.

Putin once said that he was the only pure democrat in the world and that since Mahatma Gandhi died, he has had no one to talk to. But his St. Petersburg gangster humor is not understood by everyone in the U.S. The withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan sent a signal to the world that America has a very weak leadership, and that American society is mired in a host of internal problems. We are not discussing what these problems are right now, but an outside observer might think that the United States is incapable of any reasonable action at the moment Biden’s rating continues to fall, and it is becoming clear to many that he was elected to the presidency simply as an alternative to Trump. The Ukrainians are determined enough to act without American help if necessary.

However, such assistance will surely be provided to them.

Since 2014, U.S. aid to the Ukrainian armed forces has been estimated at around 3 billion dollars. This includes assault grenade launchers, anti-tank missile systems, drones, and so on. I assure you, David, it’s not just Putin ‘s concern. When the Russian president demands that NATO provide security guarantees, he’s not just speaking for himself. No one in Russia wants the creation of a heavily armed enclave. Isn’t this the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse? Aren’t the Americans together with the NATO bloc now (with the hands of the Ukrainians) digging trenches near Russia’s borders?

I don’t think that’s entirely accurate information. The situation has not changed for several years. The last change occurred, by the way, under Donald Trump in 2017 when anti-tank weapons were delivered to Ukraine. In 2014, the Ukrainians fought well, but they were poorly equipped. At one time, the U.S. Congress approved the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine, but Barack Obama did not let it happen so as not to, as he said, “provoke Russia.“ When the front line stabilized and the possible use of tanks lost its former importance, anti-tank weapons began to be 178

supplied to Kiev. They are still stored in warehouses, although potentially they could be used. Apart from this, no other serious steps have been taken.

Of course, there are NATO instructors in Ukraine, but the alliance works this way with many countries.

Another change is the appearance of NATO military contingents in the Baltics and Poland. But these groups are so insignificant (there are 10,000 NATO troops in the Baltic states and Poland together—Ed. note) that it is not worth talking about them as a decisive military force. They are deployed there to prevent a possible Russian invasion—so that Putin knows that, if he attacks, he will have to deal with American or NATO troops. This is a tripwire as in the case of South Korea, where the American contingent is also quantitatively negligible. North Korea must understand that if it starts a conflict with its neighbor, it will inevitably drag the U.S. into it. Of course, Russian propaganda portrays this as a ubiquitous NATO presence, but people can judge for themselves.

You know, this is already Western propaganda, not Russian propaganda. Yes, our country has strengthened in recent years, but still not so much as to gobble up Poland and the Baltics. Why do we need them? We can’t even afford them economically, given that the Baltic States are mostly bankrupt. A multibillion-dollar infusion into the infrastructure of Crimea is quite enough for us.

Ukraine is another matter. You have recently created a new alliance, an alliance of the United States, Britain, and Australia. This is your Anglo-Saxon core. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine are traditionally considered to be our civilizational core. You have set your sights on destroying this triad. Do you think anyone in Russia, other than fringe groups, would like that? We may have many claims to Putin, but there are even more claims to the West.

Nevertheless, Ukraine separated itself as a result of the December 1991 referendum, where more than 90 percent of those who voted supported the independence of the republic, by the way, including the Russian population of Crimea and residents of Ukraine’s eastern regions. This was an internal process. The West had nothing to do with it. Ukraine has existed as a sovereign state for 30 years. In 1997, a treaty on friendship, cooperation and partnership was signed between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which, among other things, provided for respect for the territorial integrity of both countries. Plus, in 2010, the agreement on the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s basing on Ukrainian territory was renewed in Kharkov.

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In exchange, Moscow gave Kiev a 30% discount on Russian gas. This was very profitable for Ukraine. But if Crimea was already considered “inherently Russian territory,“ why did the Kremlin conclude such an agreement? Incidentally, this document still has legal force, although subsequent events have de facto invalidated it.

Belarus, too, is still a separate state. If Moscow really wanted the three Slavic countries to be friends with each other, they would not speak in the language of force and military coercion.

I remember the days of the Soviet Union. Who were the leading people after the Russians? Ukrainians, of course. Together with the Russians, they were in the first ranks of the builders of communism. They were like brothers, but then they quarreled.

This does not mean that the brothers will never reconcile. For example, the violent division of Germany into Eastern and Western Germany lasted 45 years.

In Germany it was, after all, one nation. With respect to Ukraine and Russia, the ethnos is the same, I agree. The historical and religious roots are the same, yes. But the historical experience of Russians and Ukrainians is very different. A large part of Ukraine remembers the time of the PolishLithuanian domination. Three regions were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In addition, much of present-day Ukraine never had serfdom, but Cossacks flourished there. And the language of Ukrainians itself is different.

Now we are speaking in Russian. But sometimes I get interviewed in Ukrainian. I can’t hold a conversation and I usually answer in Russian, because the two languages are not the same.

As for a possible war between Russia and Ukraine, I intuitively feel that there probably won’t be one. I don’t want to overestimate the Putin regime, but I want to give Putin’s entourage some credit for having enough common sense to try to achieve their goals by peaceful means And that, in my opinion, would be more effective for everyone.

David, I want to ask you one last thing: are you still banned from entering Russia?

Yes, I was told, “Russia is not waiting for you. “But I miss the country and my friends who stayed there, and I would like to go there again.

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“Putin will grab anything that is loose.“ The Soviet Instincts of the Kremlin Radio Liberty, February 05, 2022 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Does instinct or calculation dictate the Kremlin’s actions? Is Putin waving his fists to back down? The purpose of Vladimir Putin’s actions in concentrating significant military forces on the border with Ukraine remains, by and large, a mystery. Many, but not all, observers believe that the show of force is just a bluff aimed at obtaining concessions primarily from the United States, from Joe Biden’s administration. Its first steps were likely interpreted in the Kremlin as a sign of weakness—the hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the White House’s agreement to the U.S.- Russia summit last June, after a very similar concentration of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. But what is the Kremlin really trying to achieve? We discuss the situation with American writer and journalist, David Satter.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, what do you think is Putin’s goal?

To expel the U.S. from Europe, to overhaul the European security structure, to recreate an empire, as American analysts have warned.

David Satter: I think his goal is to strengthen his own power, to ensure its stability. I do not think he has big strategic plans. First of all, it is not clear why he should have them, what Russia would like to achieve. If he were to rearrange relations in Europe, what would change from that? After all, he won’t annex European countries. Occupying someone else’s territory is dangerous; it entails the risk of guerrilla war. I think it’s likely that he will use this opportunity to give the impression to Russians, to his entourage and to himself that he is very important, that he can frighten others. Unfortunately, this is a tradition in Russia. Russia likes to frighten others and demonstrate power. Even if Putin is finally denied his demands, he

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has still forced Western countries to focus their attention on him, to organize negotiations, he is on the lips of the whole world right now. I think this is a plus for him in any case.

So you think that Putin is simply trying to create an impression?

Any demonstration of force must have its justification. So, they came up with various justifications in advance, never mind that they don’t make sense. Now Putin says that Ukraine threatens Russia’s security. How can Ukraine threaten Russia’s security? They are not concentrating troops on the border with Russia. So, Putin is dragging in the problem of missiles that no one is going to install there. But, according to him if missiles ever appear there, they will threaten us. He says that we will ensure in advance that there are no missiles in Ukraine. He is simply looking for excuses for his actions, and the real purpose of his actions is to maintain his personal power. Because of this, I am skeptical of the idea that he intends to start a war. It is not in his interest, and it is not in the interest of the members of his entourage. The people in the Kremlin, I think, have studied enough from the experience of the Chechen war, where they found themselves in a situation where a small people, defending their own land, actually defeated them.

However, respectable analysts trying to propose a strategy for dealing with Russia look for and find a deeper meaning, a strategic idea, in Vladimir Putin’s actions. For example, Lilia Shevtsova writes in the New York Times that Putin’s goal is to reorganize the international order that emerged after the end of the Cold War in order to ensure the safe survival of Russia’s individual system of government by legitimizing zones of influence. It is Russia’s place as the dominant power recognized by the United States that is at issue, in her view, now.

Putin is already in a situation where no one in particular can dictate conditions to him from the outside. No one can force Russia, for example, to release the enclave in eastern Ukraine, to stop supporting the actions of the separatists there. No one can force Russia to give up Crimea. No one can force Russia to give up South Ossetia to Georgia. So, I don’t know what exactly Putin has to fear. In this situation, without any additional 182

aggression, he is already in a position where he can intimidate and attack his neighbors, alas, with virtually no consequences. He does not need protection from a Western diktat, since no such diktat exists. As always, he is using the foreign policy crises he creates to consolidate his personal power, not to achieve any grandiose geopolitical goal. He is also testing the strength of the new American president, who showed signs of weakness and disorganization in his decisions to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

When a man at the helm of the most powerful country in the world shows such weakness, as America did in Afghanistan, it is practically an invitation to aggression.

David, it has recently been 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Many people say that in assessing Vladimir Putin’s behavior, we should proceed from the Soviet mentality. The problem with the West is that they have never understood this mentality. In their approach to relations with the Kremlin they have always proceeded from the concepts accepted in Western society. You are one of the few American journalists familiar with Soviet psychology.

Certainly, there are traditions of behavior. I think we can recall the moment when Putin stole the expensive ring of Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots football team. His behavior was similar to the behavior of Leonid Brezhnev many years earlier who took the watch of Kissinger’s aide, Helmut Sonnenfeld. In both cases, these leaders saw something they liked, asked to take a closer look, and then simply put it in their pocket. This is a striking similarity in behavior that demonstrates that Russian leaders have a Soviet psychology, even though conditions have changed.

David, it seems to me that you are drawing serious conclusions from an anecdotal episode.

Stealing was typical of the Soviet man. In a situation of common ownership, no one respected the personal property of anyone else. In the Soviet Union, stealing was an epidemic, people stole at work, they stole whenever and wherever they could. So, when Brezhnev, for example, took and did not return Helmut Sonnenfeld’s watch during one of his summit

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meetings, he acted like the typical Soviet man in the street not a head of state. When Putin took Robert Kraft’s ring, he effectively continued this inglorious tradition. If Putin is a Soviet man deep in his heart, this means that he will naturally grab anything that is lying loose. If there is any opportunity to scare someone like Biden, he will use it to try to see what he can get out of it. I believe that’s exactly what he’s doing now. Intimidation, creating the appearance of war, is quite different than starting a war.

Yes, most American observers do not seem to believe that the Kremlin will dare to attack Ukraine, although several research organizations have even published speculative scenarios for such an invasion.

If war breaks out, the situation will become very complicated and unpredictable. It will no longer be a no-lose situation, as it was when he only threatened, especially if the Kremlin nurtures the idea of occupying Ukrainian territory, because that would ensure a guerrilla war. We should also keep in mind that not every Russian soldier is enthusiastic about risking his life to expand Russia’s sphere of influence in Ukraine. I hope Putin is rational enough to understand all this. But the fact that he threatens and creates this spectacle comes from the fact that he and the people around him are deeply Soviet.

David, what can we add to your picture of Vladimir Putin’s behavior as a result of his professional background as a KGB officer?

A KGB man simply by tradition looks at people as expendable. He is completely indifferent to the loss of life and the suffering it will bring. He is a product of a system that disregards the value of human life and in planning for war will not take it into account. What Putin will consider, and consider very carefully, is how much the consequences of military aggression might threaten his own power. If he looks at things rationally, he will understand that he will not get any benefit and the consequences could be very serious. Because, after all, underlying discontent in Russian society exists, it can erupt under the right conditions.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan offered a figurative interpretation of Vladimir Putin’s actions: he wants to reap the 184

fruits of victory in the war without starting a war, she said. Indeed, by moving his troops to the Ukrainian border, he has won everyone’s attention, negotiations with the U.S. president, some promises, and continues to insist on the main trophy: the West’s refusal to expand NATO. In this interpretation, he is, by and large, already winning the upper hand and receiving the dividends.

That’s what he’s trying to do. But I’m not sure that the dividends will be as grand as he desires. In any case, he will win with the Russian population if there is no war. If he generously decides to simply end the confrontation, everyone in the West will express gratitude for this, he will once again show what a great leader he is. In the eyes of many Russians this will be a plus: he will have demonstrated strength. In addition, Western countries will have given him something. The weakness of the West’s position is that it immediately went to negotiations instead of simply arming the Ukrainians and giving them everything necessary to defend themselves in the event of a Russian attack.

What is the lesson of interactions with the Soviet Union? After all, almost all of Brezhnev’s twenty years were marked by the socalled détente.

There was a slightly different approach. Moscow assured us that we were friends, then they behaved differently. They tried to expand their sphere of influence in the Third World without direct confrontation. But such direct threats as we hear now, coming from Putin and especially from unofficial persons in the press, were not characteristic of the Brezhnev period. This may be explained by the fact that Russia has a rather limited number of instruments of pressure now. Putin partially compensates for the weakness of his strategic position with these threats.

What do you think is the most appropriate strategy for dealing with Russia today? So-called realists talk about the need for dialogue, critics of the Kremlin in the U.S. establishment, demand

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toughness. Do you think a Reagan-like approach, a ruthless confrontation with Moscow, is required today?

I believe that a strategy of truthfulness with respect to Russia is relevant.

A strategy of speaking frankly to the Russian leadership about the crimes that have been committed. Especially the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing, MH17. All evidence points to it being a deliberate act of mass terrorism against a civilian aircraft by Russia. Russia must also be reminded of the murders of political figures like Boris Nemtsov and journalists like Anna Politkovskaya. Naturally, we need to discuss the bombing of the apartment buildings in 1999. I think this is what will prove to the Russian leadership that the Western world and the outside world understands them and knows what methods they use. This will have a good effect on the atmosphere of relations with Moscow. The Kremlin needs to know that their lies will not go away, that their motivation is visible.

What you’re talking about is a long-term agenda, but how do we act today?

The Baltic States are already supplying modern weapons to Ukraine—this is a good approach. By the way, no one in the world is more vulnerable to Russian aggression than the Baltic States. But they do understand that the more ready Ukraine is to defend itself, the lower the threat of external aggression will be. Western countries are afraid to provoke Putin, not understanding his mentality. If Ukraine becomes more combat-ready, it will give him food for thought about the risks he himself runs if he starts a senseless war.

Can negotiations yield a positive result? After all, everyone seems to agree that talking is better than fighting?

I believe that nothing will come out of these negotiations. If Putin decides not to start a war, it will not be because of negotiations. Negotiations are simply an opportunity for him to profit in some way from a crisis he himself has created. I would deal with containment specifically. First, arm the Ukrainians, give them large-scale aid, and second, start sanctions against Russia on the grounds that they threaten a neighboring state.

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Strictly speaking, the Kremlin is not threatening Ukraine. On the contrary, one hears from Moscow statements that we are not going to go to war with Ukraine.

This is a matter of interpretation. Putin can say whatever he wants, but we are free to interpret the concentration of troops on the border with Ukraine as a threat and act accordingly.

Do you think it is possible in theory to solve this crisis?

I don’t think anything will be resolved. If there is no war, it just means that tensions will continue in another form. Putin will resort to other tactics, or a similar situation will arise in a few months. He has a great interest in creating and maintaining tensions. I think that even if there are some concessions from the West, if the current crisis is at least temporarily resolved, there will be new pretexts. Because, after all, the Russian leadership feels its moral and psychological isolation and the unreliable support of the population. Russia is unpredictable. Public opinion can change very quickly. This is why the leaders will create these problems—in order to preserve themselves.

If I understand you correctly, you believe that Vladimir Putin will emerge almost in any case, if not a winner, then at least gain an advantage as a result of this crisis he has created. Is it possible for him to turn into a loser?

Since he provoked this crisis, he is in a sense in control of the course of events. For him to lose in this situation, he must lose in a real war. This is something that no one in the West wants. But Putin has created a situation where even the weakest American president cannot give in to his demands. There are some fundamental American principles that the American president cannot sacrifice.

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Weakness at Home Drives Putin to Invade Ukraine The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2022 He’s trying to re-create the “Crimea effect,” in which Russians felt strong and “forgot their worries.”

Russia’s preparations to invade Ukraine and threats of nuclear war should come as no surprise. Vladimir Putin is ready to resort to a level of blackmail not seen since the days of the Soviet Union because threatening war is the most effective way for him to consolidate support for his senescent regime.

The use of foreign aggression to rally support for the regime is not new in Russia. For many Russians, the idea that they were citizens of a powerful state was historically a vital part of their identity. The 2014 annexation of Crimea was presented as a return to Russian greatness, and, in its wake, Mr. Putin’s approval rating rose to 80% from 60%. The annexation inspired a wave of euphoria and mass celebrations that lasted five years.

Many believe Mr. Putin wants to re-create the Soviet Union, but it is much more likely that in threatening Kyiv, he wants to recreate the “Crimea effect,” in which, according to Nikolai Petrov of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Russians “forgot their worries and felt everything was allowed and anything was possible.”

Consolidating Russians around the regime is almost certainly a priority because, despite appearances, Mr. Putin has created an unstable structure of power. There are signs that the population’s patience with massive corruption is waning. On Jan. 23, 2021, protests broke out all over Russia in reaction to the arrest of anticorruption blogger Alexei Navalny and the contents of his film “A Palace for Putin,” which describes the ruler’s 190,000-square-foot residence on the Black Sea, built in part with funds taken from a $1 billion program to improve Russia’s healthcare system.

Popular discontent with corruption has been building for years. A 2011 survey by the Russian Academy of Sciences found 189

that 34% of Russians “always” wished “they could shoot down all bribe-takers and speculators,” while 38% said they “sometimes” did. Much of this corruption is associated with Mr. Putin. In 2017, after accusations that the then-Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev had embezzled $1.2 billion, demonstrators in Moscow blamed the president as well, shouting: “Putin is a thief.”

Besides anger over corruption, there is exhaustion and a sense of insecurity in Russia generated by the system’s overall lawlessness. According to Tamara Morshchakova, a former judge of the Russian Constitutional Court, “Any official can dictate any decision in any case.”

One reflection of the situation is that Russians file more complaints with the European Court of Human Rights than the citizens of any of the 46 countries that make up the Council of Europe, 13,645 complaints in 2020. The figure for the U.K. was 124.

The regime must also deal with its own history, in particular the bombings of four buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk that killed 300 people in September 1999 and were used to justify the war in Chechnya that brought Mr. Putin to power. When three people were arrested on suspicion of placing a fifth bomb in the basement of a building in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, they weren’t Chechen terrorists but agents of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. The apartment bombings were followed by other terrorist acts in which there was evidence of official involvement, including the 2002 Dubrovka Theater siege in which the terrorists’ explosive devices were prepared by a retired major in Russian military intelligence and the Beslan school siege, in which the Chechen terrorists had just been freed from Russian prisons.

The crimes of the post-Soviet era are not the subject of active attention, but their exposure would threaten the regime. It was the revelations about the crimes of the Soviet era as a result of glasnost that brought down the Soviet Union.

During my years of living and writing in Russia, I frequently encountered the readiness of Russians to identify with the power of the state. On a spring day in 1980, I was standing in line for potatoes when a fight broke out in the queue. A man began shouting, “These 190

lines are a disgrace. How can we live like this?” The crowd became animated and an old woman said, “Never mind—the whole world is afraid of us.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there were decades in which it seemed that no one was afraid of Russia anymore. This led to the syndrome of “Weimar Russia,” a longing for past greatness, which the right demagogue could exploit.

A liberal Russian journalist who reported on organized crime in the 2000s told me that when Mr. Putin massed troops on the Ukrainian border, even Russians who had quarrels with the regime were ready to give it their support. The situation evokes memories of a powerful past. There is furious diplomatic activity and Russia becomes the center of attention. The danger for Mr. Putin is that, in his drive to protect his corrupt regime, he will underestimate his opponent and go too far.

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How to Break Through Putin’s Propaganda in Russia The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2022 Tell the truth about the fate of Russian soldiers, the kleptocrats and the 1999 apartment bombings.

President Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be removed from power. But only Russians can remove Mr. Putin. That is why, in addition to supplying arms to Ukraine, the U.S. needs to take steps to reach the Russian people.

Mr. Putin understands that to prevail in Ukraine he must maintain the support of the Russian public. He uses state television to inundate Russians with reports of supposed atrocities by U.S.backed Ukrainian Nazis against ethnic Russians, particularly in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics which the Russian army is said to be defending.

The Putin regime, however, is isolated in its own country. According to Karen Dawisha, author of “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” 110 people control 35% of the country’s assets. It is this group that is waging war against Ukraine and manipulating Russians.

America may have more power to influence Russians than we realize. The U.S. should begin by creating a database, independent of the existing Ukrainian site, to help Russians learn the fates of missing soldiers. The Russian Defense Ministry announced on March 25 that 1,351 Russian soldiers had died. The Ukrainians placed the number at 16,100. Valentina Melnikova, secretary of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, has said that Russian commanders often don’t retrieve the bodies of soldiers and list them as “missing in action.” This provides an excuse for not paying compensation to families and lowers the official death toll.

Many parents don’t know what happened to their sons and are told by the Defense Ministry that there is no information. Death notices sporadically appear in the regional Russian media. A U.S. database, accessible through Radio Liberty and other sites, 193

wouldn’t be exhaustive, but it could provide more information than is available from Russian officials.

The U.S. and its allies should also announce that proceeds from the property confiscated from oligarchs linked to corruption will be returned to the Russian people. Russia’s superrich can afford yachts and villas because they made fortunes appropriating the money of the state. The Russian oligarchy has its roots in the 1995 “loans for shares” auctions, in which Russia’s giant resource companies were transferred to corrupt businessmen in return for support for President Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign.

A good example is Roman Abramovich, now shielded from sanctions because of his role as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. He and his partner, Boris Berezovsky, bought Sibneft, a vertically integrated oil company, in 1995 for $100.3 million in an auction from which competitors were eliminated. Sibneft soon had a market capitalization of $1 billion. In 2005 Mr. Abramovich, who had parted company with Berezovsky, sold it for $13.1 billion. Mr. Abramovich owns two yachts, each worth more than $600 million.

A bill styled the Yachts for Ukraine Act, which would allow the U.S. to sell seized assets and use the cash to aid Ukraine, has been introduced in Congress. Although aiding Ukraine is a good idea, it wouldn’t move opinion in Russia. A promise to transfer money that originated in Russia to a future democratic Russian state would be a public acknowledgment by the U.S. that justice for Russia’s ordinary citizens is long overdue.

Finally, and most important, the U.S. should reveal everything it knows about the September 1999 apartment bombings that brought Mr. Putin to power. The four bombings were blamed on Chechens and used to justify a new Chechen war. Mr. Putin, who had just been named prime minister, was put in charge of the war and catapulted into the presidency on the basis of early success.

But a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of a building in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, and the bombers were captured.

They weren’t Chechen terrorists but agents of the Federal Security Service. In another incredible development, Gennady Seleznev, speaker of the State Duma, announced on Sept. 13, after a building

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was blown up in Moscow, that a building had been blown up in Volgodonsk. That building was actually blown up three days later.

The story of the apartment bombings is critical because the signs of official involvement are the most powerful evidence of the Putin regime’s true attitude toward the Russian people. The bombings are Russia’s most taboo subject, but interest is strong. An interview with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Duma deputy, about the Volgodonsk incident received 15 million views on YouTube.

Despite the regime’s attempts to stifle thought in Russia, the signs of dissent are unmistakable. Maria Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One television, staged an on-air protest denouncing the station’s lies. In the North Caucasus on March 20, soldiers’ mothers blocked a bridge demanding to know the fate of their sons. Most important, there is opposition in the Russian military, which alone can remove Mr. Putin from power.

Shortly before the invasion, Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who leads a group of retired officers, warned that an attack on Ukraine would be the end of Russia. He said the planned invasion was the attempt of a corrupt regime to hold on to power. He called on Mr. Putin to resign. His statement was supported by a majority of the board of his organization.

One month into the war, Russia’s generals are almost certainly unsettled by the mass deaths of Russian soldiers. After 15 months of war in Chechnya in 1996, Gen. Alexander Lebed said that 30% of the Russians soldiers were ready to turn their guns on the people who sent them there.

Despite the regime’s attempts to isolate Russians, information is still getting through with the help of cellphones, Telegram, YouTube and word of mouth. That creates an opening for the West.

Besides aid to Ukraine, we have to engage the Russian people. Despite the grimness of the present situation, opinion can shift dramatically in Russia, as it has in the past.

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“He must answer.”

“Will Putin end up in the dock?”

Radio Liberty, April 9, 2022 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Is Vladimir Putin likely to be prosecuted for war crimes? Could the Russian president be banned from entering many countries? What sanctions would be disastrous for the Kremlin? Is peace with Vladimir Putin impossible?

Yuri Zhigalkin: On April 4, U.S. President Joe Biden called for the collection of evidence for the trial of Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes. David Satter, how correct and productive would an attempt to prosecute Vladimir Putin on war crimes be.

David Satter: Right—yes, productive—it’s hard to say. Absolutely right, because it was established at the Nuremberg Tribunal that it is a crime to start a war of aggression. It was one of the crimes the Nazis were accused of. No such crime existed before the Nuremberg Tribunal. In addition, the fact that there were various attacks on civilians during this war also adds to the gravity of the charges against Putin. In terms of morality and justice in the world in general, of course, you have to judge him.

This could eventually affect public opinion in Russia. Russians are used to the idea that war criminals are Nazis, whom they themselves judged. They have been accusing the Ukrainians of various atrocities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for years. And now it turns out that their government has become a war criminal in the eyes of the world. This, together with other factors, can naturally shake their confidence in this government. The main factor in forcing an end to the war, however, will not be this accusation. More important will be if part of the army or the security services conclude that Putin has to be removed because he is destroying Russia’s future.

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Do you dismiss the idea that the top generals might be afraid to act against Putin if they carried out potentially criminal orders?

We have the Khrushchev precedent. Khrushchev understood that he had taken an active part in Stalin’s crimes, but when the moment came to disassociate himself from Stalin, he did so and with a certain passion. These generals, who are now carrying out criminal orders, understand that if they disassociate themselves from Putin, their guilt will most likely be forgotten.

David Satter, do you think any of this vast array of sanctions could really affect Putin? Or are sanctions powerless here, Ukrainian cannons and missiles should do the trick?

The most important sanction that can be imposed is, of course, an embargo on the import of Russian energy. This would be weightier than sanctions against any person, even the head of state. Russia gets a lot of money every day from the sale of its energy. An embargo on oil imports is the most important step for the West: it could end this war faster than any other because the Kremlin will simply not have the money to wage war.

But if the survival of Vladimir Putin’s regime depends on its ability to sell oil and gas, it is likely to survive. It is very difficult to imagine the European Union refusing to import Russian energy resources in the near future.

We don’t know that. Still, many things that were difficult to imagine are already taken for granted, for example, disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system. Psychology is changing in the West quite rapidly. If there are more events like [the Russian atrocities in] Bucha, I think the desire to impose such an embargo will be quite serious.

We now see a clear emphasis on personal sanctions. Vladimir Putin and his family are no longer taboo. The likelihood of his criminal prosecution is increasing, Putin’s daughters, Peskov and Lavrov are all subject to sanctions. We are trying to turn the top

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Russian officials into pariahs, dismissing previous objections and insisting that we need to deal with these people.

This is most likely a demonstration of the seriousness of the West’s intentions. Most importantly, they are a sign that the West is not done taking measures that can break the Russian economy. This should be done in the current circumstances and should be done as soon as possible in order to limit the bloodshed in Ukraine. The most important thing now is to stop this war. And this will depend on quite specific things, including the West’s ability and willingness to give Ukraine the weapons it needs, and even more importantly, its willingness to simply shut down any money flow to Russia.

Do you think there is a high probability that the war will end Putin’s system, as his opponents hope?

If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, Putin could be forced out. At the same time, he might try to save himself and the system he created by treating defeat as a victory.

Treating defeat as victory will not be easy. Even Russian people, who are very susceptible to state propaganda, will, I think, have problems with believing that defeat, including the evacuation of presently occupied territory is a victory. They did not interpret the defeat in Chechnya as a victory.

The defeat in Afghanistan was not interpreted as a victory. We can speculate on what Russian propagandists might concoct, but Russia has suffered colossal losses that are impossible to conceal. This is a situation that does not look like a victory.

David, still, the anxiety about how Putin will act is evident in the comments of U.S. experts. No one wants a nuclear conflict.

If he uses tactical nuclear weapons against the Ukrainians, this will not save him, it will only create such hatred for Russia that Russians will lose in the end anyway. If Putin tries to attack NATO countries, there will be a serious response. This, too, is a losing card.

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You say that the Russians will eventually demand an end to the war. But there is a lot of evidence that public support for this war is quite high.

The most important thing here is not the attitude of the Russian people but rather the attitude of certain groups that have the ability to remove Putin.

I’m talking about the armed forces, the security forces. There are people there who genuinely care about the country and do not want a new generation of young men to be destroyed for nothing.

What makes you think that such sentiments exist? On the contrary, members of the elite tell journalists how united they are by this war.

General Leonid Ivashov tried to thwart plans to attack Ukraine. Ivashov is a nationalist and conservative military analyst, a retired general. He is head of an organization of retired military and security officers. He correctly, in my opinion, explained the reason for the war, saying that it was an attempt to save a regime that was incapable of dealing with the important issues of the country and only thought about its own survival. If he said this, if other people, such as retired FSB general Yevgeny Sevastyanov and members of the board of the organization, supported him, then this is quite serious.

Let’s not forget that there is also information that circulates within the country, produced by Russians like [Alexei] Navalny8 showing the massive corruption of the authorities. Corruption in Russia is no secret.

If, on top of this, it becomes obvious that the man who, among other things, was a symbol of the might of the state has catastrophically miscalculated and dragged the country into a meat grinder for nothing, all the examples of corruption will be re-examined, they will play their part.

So, you think that Putin, by rashly invading Ukraine, is actually creating what Lenin called a revolutionary situation?

8 Navalny, Russia’s best known opposition leader, was jailed on politically

motivated charges. He died in an Arctic labor camp on February 14, 2024 under mysterious circumstances.

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I would say the following: I do not see the possibility of a complete Russian victory here. All the options that I see are, to varying degrees, a defeat for the Kremlin. And in this situation, of course, the future of the regime will be under threat. This is a regime that is inherently unstable, it’s based on corruption, it was created through provocations, it uses terror against its own people, it relies on large-scale lies that are fairly easy to refute. So, I don’t think it can be long-lived. Putin seeks perpetual rule. Any regime that wants to rule forever must at least have an ideology, which, by the way, Putin does not have, and, in any case, will tend to degenerate.

David Satter, you speak of worst-case scenarios for the Kremlin.

But suppose Putin decides to concede something, the grateful Western capitals loosen sanctions, and, lo and behold, Vladimir Putin becomes more or less acceptable again. Western democracies are known to have a short memory. They always prefer smiles and agreement to hostility.

I think he will be treated like other outcasts. Because the war in Ukraine, among other things, has finally exposed Putin to the West. Before this invasion, many people in the West did not understand Putin. We can attribute some of this to the influence of the “Valdai syndrome.” Many of our specialists participated in the so-called Valdai Discussion Club, Putin’s premier instrument for disinforming the West. Naturally, those whose opinions were shaped by the “Club” should now understand how they were used. They cannot admit this publicly, but they will have this feeling all the same. By the way, these people often advised our government, which will also treat Putin with considerable apprehension after this.

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Russia’s Real Reasons for War with Ukraine The Washington Times, June 9, 2022 As Ukrainian forces mount a last-ditch defense of Severodonetsk in the Donbas region, it is more important than ever that Americans ignore the advice of self-described “realists” that Ukraine should surrender territory to Russia to achieve peace.

On May 23, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Davos called on the Ukrainians to demonstrate “wisdom” and not try to liberate all occupied territory. He said the defeat of Russia would have “disastrous consequences” for the long-term stability of Europe.

But an outcome that looks like a Russian victory will not lead to stability. The regime put in place by former president Boris Yeltsin and consolidated by Vladimir Putin fears its own people. It uses foreign aggression to strengthen its hold on power.

In late 1994, Yeltsin faced a crisis as a result of the economic collapse that resulted from his policy of “shock therapy.” His solution was an invasion of the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Oleg Lobov, the head of the security council told Sergei Yushenkov, chairman of the Duma defense committee, “We need a short, victorious war to increase the President’s rating.” He compared such a war to the recent U.S. invasion of Haiti. Yushenkov said, “I was not able to convince Lobov that Chechnya was not Haiti.”

The first Chechen war, in the end, proved neither short nor victorious but it set a pattern of sending barely trained and uncomprehending troops to die in the thousands to reinforce the leaders’ hold on power.

On September 8, 1999, Yeltsin told President Clinton in a telephone call, that Vladimir Putin, his newly appointed prime minister, would be Russia’s next president. Yeltsin’s rating at the time was 2 per cent. It would have seemed that Yeltsin had no ability to name his supposedly democratic successor.

On September 9, however, an apartment building on Guryanova Street in Moscow was blown up in the middle of the night.

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It was the second of four apartment bombings in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk that claimed 300 lives. The bombings were blamed on Chechens and used to justify a new invasion of Chechnya. Putin was put in charge of the war. His popularity soared and he was elected president. A fifth bomb, however, in the basement of a building in Ryazan was discovered and defused. The bombers were caught and turned out to be not Chechen terrorists but agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Once in power, Putin benefited from an extraordinary economic recovery. A surge in world energy prices as well as the first benefits of the economic changes under Yeltsin and huge pent-up demand launched an economic boom that gave Russia its first taste of Western prosperity and led to a sharp rise in Putin’s popularity.

In the meantime, the institutions of the state were steadily strengthened and the open criminality under Yeltsin was centralized under the control of the government. Between 2001 and 2005, bribes to government officials increased nearly tenfold.

Putin’s maintained his popularity throughout the 2000s but as economic growth slowed in 2010, there was growing discontent over the regime’s corruption. In December 2011, the parliamentary elections were openly falsified, and Putin announced that he was running for a third term as president. This gave rise to a protest by more than 100,000 persons in Moscow on December 24 and demonstrations in Perm, Samara, Kazan, Ekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.

They were the largest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The demonstrations unnerved the regime. The regime’s system of bureaucratic control was difficult to challenge except by mass popular protests which were now a reality. Leading businessmen and bureaucrats began seeking safe havens, laundering their money and shipping their assets abroad. The government, however, introduced crushing fines for taking part in unsanctioned meetings. The opposition split and the protest wave largely dissipated. But in 2013, a much more massive wave against Viktor Yanukovych, a leader supported by Putin surfaced in neighboring Ukraine.

The Euromaidan revolt in Ukraine overthrew Yanukovych and was a blueprint for the overthrow of the regime in Russia. Putin 204

responded by diverting attention with the annexation of Crimea and a war in Eastern Ukraine.

The strategy was a success. A wave of euphoria over the seizure of Crimea and “restoration of Russian greatness” swept the country. Putin’s popularity reached 89 per cent. But the underlying problems of Russian society; corruption and economic and demographic decline had not been eliminated. This created the need after eight years again to rally the Russian population which, as in the past, was best achieved with the help of a new war.

There was no reason for Russia to attack Ukraine at the time that it did. But Putin may have concluded that Ukraine could be attacked without risk after the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan which had the status of major non-NATO American ally, a status to which Ukraine had aspired.

In his statement at Davos, Dr. Kissinger referred to a “proper place” for Russia in the European balance of power. But it is doubtful that the Putin regime agrees on the place that Dr. Kissinger has in mind for it. In 1993, well before the expansion of NATO in 1997, Russia was already laying the groundwork for future aggression. It defined as a threat to Russia “acts against the Russian population” in any neighboring countries. When Putin became president in 2000, he promised to defend Russians “beyond Russia’s boundaries.”

Only the Ukrainians can decide on their war aims and how long to keep fighting. But if they follow Dr. Kissinger’s advice and cede territory, they will not satisfy Russia’s appetite for war. We should have no illusions. For Russia to pursue peace, it must be finally convinced of the futility of war.

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From the bombings in Moscow to the invasion of Ukraine Could the West have stopped Putin?

Radio Liberty, September 10, 2022 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin The Guryanova Street terrorist attack: A misunderstood warning about the nature of Vladimir Putin’s regime? Was Washington’s reaction to the bombing of the apartment buildings in Russia inadequate? Will Putin accept defeat for the sake of self-preservation? We discuss these and other questions with American journalist and writer, author of several books on Russia, and former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow David Satter.

On September 9, 1999, shortly after midnight, a device placed in the basement of a nine-story apartment building on Guryanova Street in Moscow exploded. The blast killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 700. According to the Russian authorities, the explosion was one of a series of terrorist attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities by terrorists based in Chechnya. The Russian government responded by starting the second Chechen war. On September 23, the Russian army began a massive bombardment of Grozny.

My interlocutor David Satter wrote about these events in his book Darkness at Dawn. He believes that the September 1999 attacks were a lesson about the ruthlessness of the Russian leaders that Western leaders failed to learn. He sees a clear link between the Guryanova Street bombing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yuri Zhigalkin: Remind me again, David, what make you believe that the 1999 bombings were the work of the Russian secret services?

David Satter: The Putin regime was on a path of crime from the beginning.

The victims of these bombings were not enemies of the Russian state or 207

Putin’s regime, they were targeted entirely at random. This disregard for people’s lives has become characteristic of the Putin regime. A regime that is capable of treating its own people this way is naturally willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of young men in a senseless war in Ukraine. The way of thinking that was demonstrated by these bombings has led to numerous victims over the course of 23 years. It is very important to emphasize this now because the Russian leaders are trying to organize large-scale support for this war which demonstrates once again that people are just expendable material for Putin and his associates.

But there was an investigation, the perpetrators were found, some of them, by the way, are serving their sentences.

First of all, there was no investigation. There were several trials of people who played a minor role as transporters of explosives and did not know what they were involved in. Proposals for a parliamentary investigation were rejected in the State Duma which Putin controlled. Attempts at an independent investigation ended badly for those who tried to pursue the matter objectively and impartially. Yuri Shchekochikhin, Sergei Yushenkov, Alexander Litvinenko, and Anna Politkovskaya were murdered.

Therefore, it is impossible to say that these events were investigated. Moreover, even known material evidence and witness testimony was concealed.

Are you referring to the foiled terrorist attack in Ryazan?

There were four explosions—in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk. But there was also an unsuccessful attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan.

This attempt failed because residents who were already in a state of panic and extremely observant reported to the police that unknown persons were putting some very strange sacks in the basement of their building. The police found not only bags which contained a substance that tested positive for hexogen, a high explosive used to top off artillery shells, but also a military detonator and timer.

The bomb was defused, and the police and local FSB started looking for those who had planted it. When the bombers were found and detained, they showed their FSB identification and shortly afterward, FSB agents from Moscow intervened and took the detainees into custody. They then disappeared. To this day, we don’t know who they were. This was followed

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by an official statement that there had been no attempt to blow up the building and what had taken place was only a drill. They said the bags contained sugar.

This story is simply unbelievable. According to the law, the local authorities should have been warned in advance about such an exercise. In fact, no one in Ryazan knew about it. One of the sappers from the Ryazan police used a gas analyzer to test what was in the bags. He determined it was hexogen, the explosive that had been used in the four previous bombings. If it were possible to investigate these events objectively and thoroughly, there would be no doubt that this was an act of terrorism, carried out by the FSB to ensure that Vladimir Putin came to power.

Still, it is incredibly difficult to imagine that the government could commit terrorist acts against its own citizens. One can understand those who do not believe in such a version. It just doesn’t fit in the mind of a normal person.

The use of provocations in Russia to create tension and gain political advantage is not new. The Communists used provocations from the very beginning. The assassination of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party leader, gave Stalin a pretext to purge the Communist Party. Provocation also played a role in the October 1993 confrontation between Yeltsin and the parliament. Protestors were massacred after an attack that was clearly provoked by the pro-Yeltsin forces. In 1996 there was an explosion in the Moscow subway before the second round of the presidential election. It heightened the atmosphere of crisis in the country. It was blamed by Yeltsin on his political rivals but it almost certainly was the work of the security services which Yeltsin controlled.

Provocation is a tried and tested way to stay in power in Russia.

There is nothing extraordinary about it. But on such a scale as in 1999, of course, it had never happened before. The population did not want a new Chechen war. Something had to be done so that the population would support a new war.

In other words, you think that the mistake of the Western countries was that they did not want to build their relations with the

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Russian leadership on the premise that they were dealing, roughly speaking, with a criminal group?

I have written about this. The title of my book is “Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State.“ It is not enough to say that this is a criminal group. This is a criminal group whose proclivities have been shaped by the Soviet communist mentality. Take the Italian Mafia: they kill those who get in their way, to do business. A criminal with a communist mentality, on the other hand, will kill persons who are completely uninvolved because he needs to terrorize. Did Stalin really believe that everyone destroyed during the Great Terror was an enemy? It’s hardly likely. But he needed to destroy so many people in order to crush the country beneath him. This legacy, of course, remained in the state security organs in Russia. It was necessary to urgently dismantle and reform the security services in 1991-92, when it was possible, but Yeltsin realized that the ability to organize provocations was very convenient for those who held power, and quickly abandoned this idea.

Do you think that Boris Yeltsin is partly responsible for what happened by betting on Putin and the FSB? We cannot justify Yeltsin. The question remains unanswered: could the apartment bombings have been organized when Yeltsin was president, without his knowledge? It seems unlikely. The conversation with Bill Clinton on September 8, 1999, suggests that Yeltsin was fully aware of the plot to make Putin president, approved it and helped carry it out. We can’t say that Yeltsin had nothing to do with it. The information points in a different direction. And this may even be one of the reasons why the Americans did not want to say anything about these explosions.

In your interpretation, did this criminal/ KGB mentality lead to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Yes. This mentality manifested itself repeatedly after Putin came to power.

Many have now forgotten, but there were various international attempts to resolve the situation in Chechnya, one of them under the auspices of Zbigniew Brzezinski. These attempts created certain foreign policy problems for the Kremlin regime. But after the terrorist attacks on the Dubrovka theater in 2002 and the Beslan school in 2004, this pressure 210

disappeared. The Russian authorities at the time did not spare the hostages, because their main concern was to destroy the terrorists, who, in a certain sense, were their accomplices. And the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in England using the nuclear isotope polonium, which not everyone can get their hands on? We know that a thorough investigation in Britain led a court to conclude that Putin must have been involved. There were also the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov, people who could have played a very significant role in the future of the country, the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing with hundreds of people on board, of course, the current war against Ukraine when tens of thousands are killed...

The mentality of the Russian rulers is obvious: the lives of innocent people have no value to them. There is only one goal, to consolidate the personal power and wealth of themselves and their circle. We must remember the example of the first Chechen war. Why did they start this war?

Oleg Lobov, who was then head of the Security Council, explained to Sergei Yushenkov—and he repeated this point many times—that Yeltsin needed a “small victorious war“ in order to strengthen his rating. Putin also uses war to improve his rating.

It’s understandable that when the West was confronted with a man with such mentality, such instincts, it was not ready to respond. Why do you think Western politicians did not see the danger in time, and up until the annexation of Crimea, generally regarded Putin as a partner?

They found it hard to believe that Putin could carry out a terrorist attack against his own people. Earlier, they insisted that Yeltsin was a symbol of democracy. If it turned out that Putin was a terrorist and Yeltsin was also a criminal, it meant that during eight years of Yeltsin’s rule, they did not understand anything. And it was difficult for them to admit this simply for personal career reasons. Another important factor: they may have been afraid that the truth would destabilize Russia and an unstable Russia would threaten the entire world. They probably overestimated the influence of the truth on the Russian population. Still, the idea must have been that it was very risky to talk about the bombings because that might destabilize Russia.

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Documents from the State Department that I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act include a report from one of the main confidential sources of the American Embassy in Moscow, who said that the “training exercise” in Ryazan was very suspicious and the truth could destroy the country. The embassy received similar warnings from other sources. It was enough just to read Novaya Gazeta to understand the whole situation. But it was easier for people in Washington to turn a blind eye.

You reproach the White House. But what, in fact, might the U.S. administration have done, since it most likely had no documentary evidence of the versions you speak of?

They could have demanded an explanation of why three FSB agents were arrested after they planted a bomb in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan. Putin, by the way, was not yet president, the election was in the spring of 2000, and this could have influenced the outcome. Also, they could have demonstrated a very different attitude toward Russia, more cautious, more reserved. I believed at that time that Putin was capable of killing innocent Russians, accusing the Chechens and starting a war. At first, people did not believe this was possible. Now, many people more or less understand that he came to power this way.

Mainstream Western publications now, while not admitting their earlier mistakes, are nevertheless talking more and more about these bombings.

This raises a serious question: how do you stop a man who can, as you say, do anything, but who also has a nuclear button?

First of all, we must understand that it is possible to create conditions in which he will not see any personal interest in continuing the war or the use of weapons of mass destruction. The situation requires firmness and unity among Western allies, despite the difficulties that will be created by the interruption of energy supplies. The current regime in Russia is a very dangerous example of rule in Russia by people with criminal goals, superimposed on the mentality of the Soviet Union and the security services with their typical contempt for human lives. If we understand this, I think

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people in Western Europe will still be willing to sacrifice something to deprive Putin of victory in Ukraine.

The question is whether defeat is acceptable to Putin.

A person who is capable of such crimes also has a hypertrophied instinct of self-preservation. If Putin considers that his survival depends on it, people will be amazed at his readiness to end the war and withdraw troops.

But he should understand that continuing the war is dangerous for him personally, more dangerous than ending it. In addition, the people around Putin should also understand the senselessness of this war. The real character of this regime is best of all illustrated by the blowing up of the apartment buildings in 1999. With this regime, it is possible to speak only in the language of pressure and it should continue until we can be sure that the aggression will not be repeated.

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Mikhail Gorbachev’s Undoing Was His Devotion to Soviet Ideas The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 31, 2022 He was unable to preserve the Soviet ideological structure, but it wasn’t from lack of trying.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s goal, according to his associates, was “socialism with a human face.” The belief that communism was reformable was what led him to risk introducing fundamental change. Soviet citizens were allowed to speak and demonstrate without fear of arrest, to open businesses and to travel abroad. Gorbachev put an end to the Cold War, renounced the Marxist idea of class struggle as the driving force of history, and refused to intervene to save communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

In the end, Gorbachev couldn’t save his own power or create democracy. He defeated totalitarianism but didn’t destroy it. He clung to socialist beliefs and fought to preserve the Soviet Union’s ideological structure. When he was removed on Dec. 25, 1991, and the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time, the moral and legal vacuum he left behind spawned a criminal oligarchic regime in Russia that used terror to stay in power and launched a full-scale war against Ukraine.

In 1985, when Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party, the Soviet Union was at the height of its power.

But it faced problems with economic growth and military technology. In 1982 Israeli pilots flying U.S. jets destroyed 81 Syrian-piloted Soviet MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets over Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley without losing a single plane. On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative program, which would make it possible for the U.S. to intercept Soviet missiles in space.

In response to these perils, Gorbachev initiated measures to increase productivity. These included a campaign to tighten workplace discipline and an anti-alcohol campaign. Both were 215

ineffective. Gorbachev tried next to decentralize the economy. This was resisted by Communist Party officials. To overcome this resistance, Gorbachev agreed to liberalization. The regime freed hundreds of political prisoners and began to allow the release of truthful information. This was glasnost. The regime also instituted competitive elections to bodies where deputies could express opposition.

The result of this change was that long-concealed social problems began to be discussed. More important, newspapers and television published facts about the mass murders during the Stalin period, including victims’ names and the sites of mass graves.

The publication of truthful information led to a nationwide crisis of faith. “Our generation was brought up under socialism and without belief in God,” a 33-year-old mother of three wrote to Pravda on Jan. 18, 1988. “As a result of glasnost, the idea of socialism has been discredited. I cannot speak for everyone, but my faith has been shaken.”

The Soviet Union gave the outward impression of being monolithic, but its stability actually depended on three factors: the successful suppression of nationalism, the passivity of the working class, and the unity of the party. All these were guaranteed by the ideology, which was beginning to collapse under glasnost.

As millions changed their attitude toward communism, Gorbachev took steps to create a power base for himself independent of the party. In March 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies, the parliament Gorbachev’s reforms had created, voted to elect him the Soviet Union’s first president. Despite the forces he had unleashed, Gorbachev remained loyal to socialism and the Soviet Union. He also didn’t risk a popular election for the post of president. This put him at a serious disadvantage in dealing with Boris Yeltsin who in June 1991 was directly elected president of the Russian Republic, formerly only an administrative unit of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union needed to create fully democratic institutions and prepare for a peaceful breakup on the basis of law. But in part because of Gorbachev’s determination to preserve the essential Soviet structure, the level of confrontation in society steadily rose.

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In 1991 Gorbachev aligned himself with the army, police and KGB and sent troops into Lithuania to suppress the independence movement. On Jan. 13, soldiers opened fire on a crowd at the television tower in Vilnius, killing 14. A week later, 500,000 people gathered in Moscow to protest the killings.

Gorbachev prepared to sign a union treaty decentralizing the Soviet Union but preserving it as a state. On Aug. 19, 1991, however, he was isolated in his vacation residence in Crimea and his closest associates staged a coup to preserve the Soviet Union in its existing form. Yeltsin organized the resistance. Three days later the coup collapsed. When Gorbachev returned to Moscow from captivity, he had already been eclipsed politically by Yeltsin. On Dec. 25, the Soviet Union ceased its existence and Gorbachev, its first and only president, was forced to resign.

In the years that followed, Gorbachev continued to be honored in the West for ending the Cold War and for his contributions to freedom. He was much less popular in his own country. In 1996 he ran for president of Russia and received less than 1% of the vote.

During the campaign he attracted a huge audience at Novosibirsk State University but the students had come to see a historical figure, not a future leader. One said, “He didn’t use the chance he had.”

Gorbachev made a profound contribution by accepting that the Soviet Union had to change. His failure to fight for a full transition to democracy, however, left Russia to carry out the transition from state ownership to capitalism without the rule of law. The consequence was bandit capitalism, terror and dictatorial rule in a new form.

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Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the USSR The Wall Street Journal. Dec. 29, 2022 The Soviets reassembled the Russian Empire on the basis of ideology.

Putin seeks to duplicate that feat.

A hundred years ago, on Dec. 30, 1922, representatives of the “Ukrainian socialist republic” initiated a formal agreement with Russia and the republics of Belarus and Transcaucasia to create a new nation, the Soviet Union.

The agreement was puzzling because Lenin had said repeatedly that the goal of socialism was the fusion of all nations, and his slogan was: “The proletariat has no fatherland.” But agreement to a new country, which defined itself as a union of independent national republics each with the formal right to secede, was a tactical move to contain Ukrainian nationalism. It held together for 69 years. But it couldn’t last forever because it was based on lies.

Today’s Russian spokesmen insist that Ukraine is an “artificial nation.” Yet the only artificial nation was the Soviet Union, which re-created the Russian Empire on the basis of socialism. Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Yakuts and Uzbeks were citizens of one country, but the only thing they shared was the false reality of communist ideology. When that ideology collapsed in 1991, the result was the emergence of 15 historical nations, including Russia and Ukraine.

The Soviets defined class as the motive force of history and subordinated national culture to ideology. Each Soviet republic had its own government and parliament, but their only responsibility was to carry out the edicts of the Communist Party leadership in Moscow. The regime promoted national languages and cultures, but everything that was printed or performed had to treat each nation’s history as an upward struggle that culminated in becoming part of the Soviet Union.

In the 1920s, the communists needed Ukrainian-speaking cadres to strengthen their position in Ukraine, which had been the 219

scene of peasant uprisings in 1919. Ukrainian language instruction, Ukrainian newspapers and lectures to miners in Ukrainian all increased.

Nothing, however, could protect Ukraine from the horror that was visited on the Soviet Union as a whole and reached its apex with the creation of the Gulag, dekulakization (the destruction of the most industrious peasants) and the famine of 1932-33. The last was caused when the Soviet government confiscated grain to feed the cities and for export, imprisoned peasants in their villages and left millions to die from starvation. Ukraine, the agricultural breadbasket of the nation and a potential center of national resistance, suffered disproportionately. Of the seven million victims of the famine, more than half were in Ukraine.

For more than 50 years, it was forbidden to mention the famine, but with the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and the policy of glasnost, what had long been whispered began to be discussed openly. Memorial services were held in Ukrainian villages for the victims, and Rukh, the Ukrainian movement for national independence, used the memory of the famine to rally support for an independent Ukraine.

On Dec. 1, 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, 90% of Ukrainian voters voted for independence. In the heavily ethnic Russian Donetsk oblast, almost 77% supported independence. In proRussian Crimea, the vote for independence was 54%. A week later, Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich—respectively the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus—met at a lodge in Belarus’s Belovezh Forest and signed a statement certifying that the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Gorbachev resigned on Dec. 25, and the upper chamber of the Soviet Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, ratified the union’s dissolution the following day.

The birth of an independent Ukraine realized the national aspirations thwarted after the Bolshevik revolution. But there would be no peace for Ukraine because the moral damage inflicted by the Soviet regime outlived it. That was particularly true in Russia, where property was seized by insiders, gangsters and ex-communist officials and the leaders used war to rally the population around a corrupt regime.

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The First Chechen War, in 1994-96, was started, according to a high official, because President Yeltsin needed “a short, victorious war” to increase his approval rating. The Second Chechen War began after the bombing of Russian apartment buildings in 1999 that took some 300 lives. According to all evidence, the bombings were carried out by the Federal Security Service, or FSB. They were used to justify a new invasion of Chechnya, which made it possible for Vladimir Putin to become president.

In 2014, the seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine distracted Russians from the meaning of the democratic Maidan revolt in Kyiv. As a result of the annexation of Crimea, Mr. Putin’s popularity reached a high of 82%, and Russia was swept with chauvinistic euphoria. The present attack on Ukraine resulted from the perception of U.S. weakness after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Mr. Putin’s desire to restore the “Crimea effect” that buoyed his regime for five years before beginning to wane.

Some foreign-policy “realists” in the U.S. blame the present war on the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but Russia’s desire to dominate Ukraine isn’t new. On Aug. 27, 1991, while the Soviet Union still existed, Pavel Voshchanov, Yeltsin’s press secretary, warned that Russia would re-examine its borders with any republic that didn’t want to be part of a new union.

There were reports in the Moscow press based on leaks that in the event of a conflict, the Russian leadership was considering tactical nuclear strikes against Ukraine. In 1993, well before the first expansion of NATO into the former Eastern Bloc in 1997, Russia was laying the groundwork for future aggression, defining as a threat to Russia “acts against the Russian population” in any neighboring country.

When the imaginary world of Soviet ideology collapsed, all that was left in Russia was rule by criminals and the drive to dominate Russia’s neighbors to guarantee their hold on power. It is against this background that we need to weigh support for Ukraine.

Russia’s inability to rid itself of the Soviet legacy is the underlying cause of the war. If Ukraine cedes territory, the Soviet imperialist mentality will survive intact. Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56) led to the emancipation of the serfs, and defeat in the 221

Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) led to Russia’s first constitution. We need to support a decisive Ukrainian victory to punish aggression—and to free Russia from the burden of its past.

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Letters to the Editor The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2023

Are We Willing to See Russia as It Really Is? The idealization of Yeltsin and then Putin did the world no good.

In his letter “Russia Was Never Predestined for Putinism” (Jan. 12, 2023; see https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-ukraine-putin-boris-yeltsin-chechen-war-11673407136), responding to my op-ed “Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the U.S.S.R.” (Dec. 30, 2022; see above), Leon Aron argues that history is filled with “zigzags and hairpin turns” and the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin represented a radical break with the policies of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. There is no sign that this is true.

Yeltsin’s corruption needed terror to protect it and all evidence shows that Yeltsin and Mr. Putin were linked by common crimes. In September 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were blown up in the middle of the night and more than 300 people were killed. The bombings were blamed on Chechens and used to justify a new invasion of Chechnya. Mr. Putin, the newly appointed prime minister, was put in charge of the war. His rating soared and he was elected president.

For 23 years, I had no doubt that the bombings were carried out by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in cooperation with members of Yeltsin’s entourage. But I was uncertain of the guilt of Yeltsin himself. Documents recently released by the Clinton Presidential Library, however, show that Yeltsin actively aided the operation to make Mr. Putin president. In a telephone call on Sept. 8, 1999, he informed President Bill Clinton that Mr. Putin would be the next president. “I am sure you will have good relations with him,” Yeltsin said. Mr. Putin’s rating at the time was 2%. On the next day, the first Moscow apartment building was blown up in the middle of the night.

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The idealization of Yeltsin and Mr. Putin did the world no good. The war on Ukraine could have been prevented if the U.S. had seen Russia as it is. But Russia does not reveal her secrets willingly, and none are so blind as those who will not see.

David Satter Washington

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Betting on Putin’s defeat Is peace with Russia possible?

Radio Liberty, January 21, 2023 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Could the Western countries have prevented Russian aggression?

How to free Russia from the burden of imperial mentality? Does the road to NATO open for Ukraine?

Yuri Zhigalkin: David, do you think Russia, to put it crudely, is genetically predisposed to an imperial view of the world and is therefore dangerous?

David Satter: I would not use the word genetically. I believe that the imperial past has created a mentality in Russia where people psychologically compensate for their lack of rights and helplessness before the state with the idea that they are, after all, part of a great nation that can instill fear in others. This is not true of everyone, of course, but it prevails. This was the psychology that the Soviet Union inherited, amplified and passed on to present-day Russia. It doesn’t mean that it will exist forever and in all circumstances. Russians are able to adapt to other conditions. They behave in a completely democratic way in different settings. They are absolutely capable of normal ethical standards.

David, you are polemicizing with those who hold Vladimir Putin solely responsible for reviving Russia’s expansionist instincts.

For example, Barack Obama, in conceiving the reset, according to his advisers, assumed that then-President Medvedev was a person who could be dealt with. You insist that Putin has built on what was created under Yeltsin.

Post-Soviet Russian imperialism has been obvious for a long time, since the war in Abkhazia in 1992, when Russia tried to destabilize Georgia.

Russia also occupied parts of Moldova and intervened in Tajikistan. The military doctrine adopted under Yeltsin obliged Russia to protect the Russian-speaking population everywhere—this already created a pretext for 225

future aggression. Not to mention the wars in Chechnya. The second Chechen war was started solely to preserve Yeltsin’s corrupt ‘family’, to put Putin in the Kremlin as a leader, to make him president. During Yeltsin’s rule, property was privatized, the Soviet system was destroyed, but the foundation for a democratic society was not created. Yeltsin was a communist boss at the regional level with a corresponding mentality. Putin was the perfect candidate to preserve his legacy.

It is probably difficult to expect a show of mass opposition to the war in Russia.

Russians supported the first Chechen war, but after 18 months of senseless losses, public opinion in Russia had changed. Most people wanted to get out of Chechnya at any cost.

We should not forget that Russia had a relatively free press at that time.

Yes, the propaganda machine is working at full capacity now, but there was no mobilization then. A second stage of mobilization is expected, maybe larger in scale than the first—it affects everyone. The number of people killed is monstrous. Progress in this war is uncertain, to continue it forever, I think, will be difficult. A lot depends on whether the Russians realize that they are being used as cannon fodder. I think such feelings exist. Many people have grievances against Putin’s regime, but it will be difficult for the atomized masses to organize opposition. But nevertheless, this process is developing beneath the surface. I think we need to try to find a way to explain to Russians what is happening in Ukraine, that in fact there is no denazification, there is no war with the West, there is an attempt by a small group of people to keep power in Russia for themselves.

Do you see Ukraine’s victory as inevitable now?

We can judge from the experience of this war. It is clear that the Ukrainians are fighting well, that the West is delivering them more and more modern weapons. We don’t know how sanctions will affect Russia economically in the long term. But we can assume that Russia will still soon be in need of high technology. Analysts say that with the help of mass mobilization Russia will manage to hold on to its current positions in Ukraine.

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This is possible, but the price for this will be very high. The war will not end because there will be guerrilla warfare in the occupied areas.

David, you’re speaking to Western audiences, convincing them that helping Ukraine is in the interest of global security and that this confrontation with Russia must be brought to a victorious conclusion. Do you have confidence that the West will give Kyiv the weapons it needs for victory?

They have already gone further than I expected. I tend to think that events will force Western capitals to support Ukraine with offensive weapons.

Because we see what atrocities Russian troops are committing in Ukraine—Ukraine needs to make up the difference in army size with offensive weapons.

The other day Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most prominent apologist for of Ukraine’s neutral status announced that Ukraine now deserved NATO membership. Can we say that this is a major symbolic defeat for the Kremlin, where Kissinger has been received with great honor in the past?

I think a lot of the so-called realists“ have actually become more realistic.

After all, rewarding Russia for aggression by ceding some territory to it is encouraging the next war. We see how problems can be created by a small North Korea, despite its isolation. Imagine what Russia could do if it wins in Ukraine and turns itself against the whole world.

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How to answer the Stalinization of Russia?

Radio Liberty, April 29, 2023 AMERICAN ISSUES After the start of the open Russian invasion of Ukraine, the American press began to write extensively about the Stalinization of Russia. The inability to win a quick victory and the prospect of a protracted war forced the Kremlin to resort to measures borrowed from the arsenal of the Stalinist era. The 25-year sentence to which Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced for anti-war statements was seen as confirmation of this conclusion.

What we’re witnessing now, is this re-Stalinization or is that still an exaggeration?

I think this is an attempt on the part of the authorities to limit protests and the spread of information. It could, naturally, get worse. But in this situation, the Kremlin wants to support certain public sentiments despite the defeats on the battlefield. They are trying in this way to maintain calm in society, to prevent some critical voices in the public space. They are tightening, certainly, the legislation. But so far, I assume that the goal is limited. They want to keep society in the passive state it is in now.

Do you think that prison sentences for anti-war speech still fits into the strategy of controlling the information field, it’s not the beginning of mass persecution?

One thing leads to another. If they put certain people in jail, it is to instill fear in society, to convince everyone that it is better that they keep any doubts to themselves, I have the impression that so far they are doing it successfully. Now, it seems to me, the goal is not to create a rigid dictatorship, but, on the contrary, to keep society passive, so that people in general will sit quietly and not try to organize opposition to the war.

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David, how do you explain the phenomenon of informers in Putin’s Russia, another Stalin-era phenomenon?

This is partly the result of state propaganda which says that those who are against the war, are traitors, because this war is in the interests, as the Putin regime explains, of all Russians. Informing reflects a certain trait of Russian society. During communist rule, informing was encouraged; those who informed on others were standing up for the achievements of the socialist system. Now these old instincts are at work, Russian society is always hungry for some new mission. Now this mission is victory in the war. All the old psychological mechanisms are activated, people want to show loyalty, volunteers appear, they will denounce their neighbors, those who doubt. If the authorities feel the need to rev this up, we will even see a tsunami of denunciations. People want to do their civic duty, as it seems to them. Although, I hope most people will still avoid it. But a small number of hyperactive people ready to denounce day and night are enough to really terrorize society.

What direction do you think the current Russian regime is heading in?

The question is how vulnerable Putin and his associates feel, it all depends on the regime’s assessment of its viability under the new conditions. If they lose this war, one of the priorities will certainly be to intimidate the population in order to suppress any opposition. We have the example of Iraq after its defeat in the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein retained power, but he used mass terror, especially against the Shia population, to achieve this.

It is possible that something similar will happen in Russia. We cannot predict now what will happen in Russian society in the event of a military defeat. I don’t rule out that if the Ukrainians win, some forces will encourage mass protests. But the fact that so many people have fled the country will weaken the forces ready to act for democratic change.

David Satter, do you think the United States can have any influence on these processes? For example, getting international attention, imposing sanctions on the people responsible for the persecution, letting the same judges who are handing down harsh

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sentences for anti-war rallies and speech know that they will be punished.

Right now, it is unrealistic to expect that we can exert political influence inside Russia. But if the Kremlin is defeated, I think a lot could change.

We can help those in Russia who would like to restore Russia’s pro-Western orientation. Maybe not by punishing those who participated in the repression, but by helping to explain to many Russians what really happened, what events led to the national catastrophe, and, of course, by demonstrating a willingness and ability to help.

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“Victim Culture and the Rhodes Scholarship” June 30, 2023 Speech, Oriel College, Oxford University As we gather in Oxford to renew old friendships and mark the 120th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship it is impossible not to notice the changes that now dominate the scholarship and the activities in which we are taking part. In the first place, we are not here alone.

We’re celebrating, in addition to the 120th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship, the twentieth anniversary of the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship and the fifth anniversary of the Rise program, created

by Eric Schmitt, the billionaire former CEO of Google.

The Mandela Rhodes Foundation was created with the help of John Rowett, the former Warden of Rhodes House who, unsurprisingly, became the new Foundation’s director. Rowett successfully transferred $16.6 million to the Mandela Rhodes Foundation to support education in South Africa although there is nothing in Rhodes’s will to suggest that this was what he intended. The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, without authorization describes this money as “reparations.”

The Rise program provides lifetime support for high school students between the ages of 15 and 17 from any country who were “never discovered, became isolated at a young age, lacked access to opportunities to develop their ideas, or faced social and economic barriers.” These goals have nothing to do with the Rhodes Scholarship. As Dennis Blair, the co-chairman of The Alliance of Rhodes Scholars, wrote in a letter to the Rhodes Trust, “Attempting to identify future leaders among those who have not demonstrated potential by other means in high school is an experiment the Rhodes Trust has no responsibility to conduct.” This is, however, far from the only deviation from the Scholarship’s historically stated purpose.

The Warden of Rhodes House, Elizabeth Kiss and the chairman of the trustees, Sir John Bell, leave little doubt that victim culture is now the Rhodes Scholarship’s animating philosophy. “We 233

cannot reconcile or heal if we do not acknowledge and see,” they write. They state that “racism and other forms of exclusion have played a significant role in the history of the Rhodes Trust” and conclude that the Scholarship must fight to eradicate them. They offer no examples of the racism that supposedly played a role in the history of the Trust (beyond the fact that it operated in the U.S. when there was legal segregation) nor do they mention the real purpose of the Rhodes Scholarship as described in Rhodes’s will, which is to foster excellence and leadership. They state that, although they accepted their positions voluntarily, they are driven to confront the Rhodes Trust’s legacies of “slavery, imperialism, and white supremacy” and to play “a proactive role in the realization of racial justice”.

The Trustees’ drive to be proactive has not been without consequences. In the first place, it has had a devastating effect on the selection process. The Trust insists that balance and diversity are not factors in selection. But in their statement on “equity and inclusion”, Elizabeth and Sir John vow to “assess the diversity of application pools across all constituencies, diversify and train our selectors and reach out to students from historically marginalized communities or overlooked institutions”. In the press releases announcing the selection of a new class, demographics—gender and skin color—are given pride of place. The press release for the 2020 U.S. Rhodes Scholars, for example, stated: “Twenty-one of the 32 are students of color; ten are Black, equal to the greatest number ever elected in one year in the United States. Fifteen are first-generation Americans or immigrants; and one is a Dreamer with active DACA status. Seventeen of the winners are women, 14 are men, and one is non-binary.”

The publicized emphasis on giving Scholarships to women and minorities is apparently accompanied by discrimination against candidates who are politically conservative. Glenn Loury, an (African-American) economist at Brown University said he was “disgust[ed]” by the failure of a student he described as a “once or twice in a lifetime talent” to make any headway in the Rhodes competition. He attributed the student’s lack of success to his conservative politics. A former Rhodes Scholar who recruited for the 234

Scholarship at a small conservative college, similarly, wrote that: “None of those we nominated received an interview. Some were absolutely superb, and on a number of occasions we had people interviewed for the Marshall Scholarship. I do not doubt that we are blacklisted. I do not expect this to change anytime soon.”

This apparent discrimination against politically conservative applicants does serious damage to the quality of the intellectual experience of Rhodes Scholars as a whole. Rhodes Scholars need to be able to defend their views and they will not gain this experience in a situation in which persons who hold one set of views are a priori excluded. Victim culture dominates most college campuses and identifying as a conservative, if nothing else, demonstrates the capacity to stand up to pressure and resist dominant clichés. But, in place of an emphasis on achievement and in the service of diversity, the Rhodes Trust has encouraged trauma narratives. The predictable consequences, notably a scandal last year, have damaged the Scholarship’s reputation, perhaps for a long time.

In January 2022, Mackenzie Fierceton, a Rhodes Scholar who claimed she grew up poor and in foster care, lost her scholarship after officials at the Trust learned that she had, in fact, grown up in a comfortable middle-class home and had attended a $30,000-ayear private school, enjoying such pastimes as horseback riding. In her application, Fierceton told a story of adversity, being shuttled from house to house while in foster care with only her clothes which she carried with her in garbage bags. She identified herself as “queer”, “low income” and a “first generation student”. Only the first term was true. She was exposed after articles about her winning the Rhodes appeared and angry residents of her hometown wrote to Rhodes House to reveal her fabrications. The Warden took credit for taking the lead in identifying the problem of the prevalence of “trauma narratives” in the personal statements accompanying Rhodes applications. But, in reality, the Trust has been encouraging such narratives for decades.

In a letter to The American Oxonian, Elliot Gerson, the former American Secretary, said that the decision on a Rhodes Scholar might come down to a choice between a person who has “glided through life with no turbulence” and a “person of modest 235

background who has overcome substantial obstacles” and would receive “life changing opportunities” as a result of the award. In fact, the selection committees are not equipped to evaluate the life experiences of the applicants. The attempt to do so in the interests of diversity eliminates deserving candidates and creates a massive incentive for all candidates to falsify their backgrounds as was done in the case of Mackenzie Fierceton. Fierceton was reckless enough to make statements that could be checked, but as far as content is concerned, she gave the Rhodes selectors exactly what they were seeking.

After her fabrications were exposed, Fierceton received the support of 89 Rhodes Scholars, 65 of whom had come up in the preceding four years. They protested the action of the Trust on the grounds that it had not grasped the scale of her suffering. Their arguments were seconded by a Penn professor who recommended Fierceton and said that her only crime was that she had not “suffered enough”. The 89 Scholars accused the Trust of confining itself to “narrow questions of fact” and expressed their “outrage” over the role of the Trust in “undermining Mackenzie” and “her truth.”

They issued a demand that the Trust apologize to Fierceton and “all survivors both within and outside of the Rhodes community”.

The petition in support of Fierceton is a more damaging indication of the harm that has been done to the Rhodes Scholarship than the original lies themselves. In the past, Rhodes Scholars rallied to the support of one or another political cause. But by the evidence of this petition, there are now 89 scholars who reject the absolute value of truth.

Besides the damage to the selection process, victim culture takes a toll on the experience of Rhodes Scholars once they get to Oxford. The Trust has created a “code of conduct” for Rhodes Scholars that covers a broad range of prohibited conduct including lying, fraud, harassment, discrimination, sexual violence, and the misuse of the Rhodes Trust brand. There are already laws in Oxford that cover most of these topics and victims can make complaints to their colleges. It is not clear why someone thought a third level of enforcement directed specifically at Rhodes Scholars was called for.

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Rhodes Scholars also now participate in various “retreats” in which members of the Rhodes staff opine on what are deemed to be important personal and political issues. In one such retreat, led

by Doyin Atewologun, the dean of the Rhodes Scholarships, the topic was “No One Way to Lead in Uncertainty”. Dr. Atewologun is described as an internationally recognised expert on leadership, diversity, and intersectionality and the Rhodes Scholars at the retreat were fully exposed to her views. According to the Rhodes Scholar magazine, the retreat “disrupt[ed] the assumption of the ‘heroic’ model of leadership that draws on the white male as the normative form of leadership”. It challenged the notion that “dominance, heroism, and leading from the front are the only legitimate forms of leadership”. According to the magazine, resident Rhodes Scholars grappled with “the ethics of leadership as verb not noun”, contended with uncertainty and leaned into community instead of adopting an individualistic style of leadership. They celebrated the idea of leadership as “everyday acts of service… rather than single visible acts of heroism”.

Overlooking the fact that Dr. Atewologun clearly thinks in unacceptable racial categories and a dean in charge of diversity is unnecessary if the Rhodes Scholarship is based on fair competition, as the Rhodes leadership insists, the notion of leadership propagated by her is the opposite of what has always been expected of Rhodes Scholars and is still expected from almost everyone who is familiar with the concept. From my decades of work in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union, I am aware that moral leadership is almost always embodied in a single individual. It is because of the importance of outstanding individuals that Rhodes insisted on non-discrimination by race and religion and the Scholarship sought the “best men for the world’s fight”. If Volodymir Zelensky had not shown leadership and “led from the front” when he returned to Ukraine to direct Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, the country’s resistance would have collapsed.

As we consider the future of the Rhodes Scholarship and the threat posed to it by victim culture, it is worth considering the history and experience of Russia, where a form of victim culture

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transformed into an ideology has taken a terrible toll the 20th and 21st centuries.

Educated society in Russia in the 19th century was gripped by an idealization of the peasantry and a desire to atone for past oppression. The collective fever was nearly eschatological. After the liberation of the serfs in Russia in 1861, young people flocked to the countryside to raise the consciousness of the peasants and incite them against the rule of the Tsar.

The peasants, however reacted to the young populists with extreme suspicion and often turned them into the police. This led to their further radicalisation and the birth of the modern world’s first terrorist movement. On January 28, 1878, Vera Zasulich, a young radical shot Fyodor Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg while he was receiving petitions in his office. She told investigators that she shot Trepov because of his brutal treatment of political prisoners.

In fact, reports to this effect had been exaggerated.

Zasulich expected to be hanged. Instead, she was acquitted after a speech by her lawyer that emphasized not her innocence but her idealistic motives. With the announcement of the verdict, there was pandemonium in the courtroom. The notion of trial by justice, as the radicals and their liberal supporters understood it, triumphed over trial by law and a precedent had been set for the right to shoot someone out of your convictions. At that moment, according to Russian historian, Edward Radzinsky, “the clock of revolution began to tick”.

In its overwhelming sympathy for the oppressed, Russian society had lost its commitment to fairness and truth. When, in 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in a violent coup, supposedly on behalf of the underprivileged, the moral values capable of inspiring resistance had been destroyed. The Bolsheviks proceeded to inflict a holocaust on the entire population.

As the Russia-Ukraine war continues, we stand amazed at the readiness of the Russian population to support an unprovoked war of aggression that is costing tens of thousands of lives. But we should not be surprised. Individual conscience was destroyed in Russia by wave upon wave of murderous assaults carried out by a lawless regime. The tragedy of Ukraine is the distant legacy of a 238

situation in which sympathy for the underprivileged and hatred of Tsardom was more important than morality and truth.

Fortunately, there is little danger that countries like the United States and the United Kingdom will repeat the Russian experience.

But this is because our systems are rooted in a pre-existing commitment to universal values. The victim culture that is now sweeping the U.S. and the U.K. will not destroy those institutions but it will corrupt them from within. This is what is happening with the Rhodes Scholarship.

I spent some of the best years of my life in Oxford but I did not follow the affairs of the Scholarship because I assumed that the Warden and the trustees would administer the scholarship on the basis of Cecil Rhodes’s will and not make political statements or seek to “reimagine” it. This is all the more so when their statements appear to reflect little in the way of serious thought.

In his book Sapiens, the Israeli writer, Yuval Noah Harari, claimed that “Today, humankind, has broken the law of the jungle.

There is at last real peace and not just the absence of war… Never before has peace been so prevalent that people could not even imagine war.” In light of the Russia-Ukraine war, I hope Mr. Harari will revise his conclusion.

In periods of peace, it is indeed difficult to imagine war, just as in periods of health, it is hard to imagine being ill. But, as events in Russia and Ukraine demonstrate, catastrophic conflict is an everpresent possibility. This is why leaders who have been exposed to the best in Western civilization are important for the future. It was the purpose of the Rhodes Scholarship to cultivate such leaders.

They are just as necessary now as they ever were in decades past.

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Kremlin in Disarray Prigozhin’s mutiny spells an uncertain future National Review, July 31, 2023 The dramatic but short-lived mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group, on June 23–24, has left Russia in disarray. In recent months, Russian leaders have been preparing for a long war, confident that they can “out suffer” Ukraine and exhaust the commitment of the West. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s security council and the country’s former president, during a visit to Vietnam in May said: “This conflict will last a very long time, decades for sure. This is a new reality.”

The Wagner revolt, however, suggests that Russia’s internal situation is not as stable as it seemed and that the time at its disposal is not unlimited. This actually heightens the dangers of a wider conflict. If a war of attrition against the Ukrainians threatens to spark an internal revolt capable of threatening the regime and dooming the war effort, Russia may decide that the only alternative to defeat is to use its nuclear arms.

On June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, announced on the group’s Telegram channel that his men had been shelled and he was going to “settle” with the Ministry of Defense. His forces entered Rostov-on-Don, Russia’s ninth-largest city, and captured the Russian Southern Military Headquarters without firing a single shot. He then dispatched thousands of Wagner fighters north to Moscow to seize Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, whom he blamed for actions costing “tens of thousands of lives.”

After the convoy had covered 470 miles in one day, Prigozhin suddenly agreed to halt his forces and return them to their bases.

They were 120 miles from Moscow. The Kremlin announced that Prigozhin would not be prosecuted and that he could leave for Belarus. Prigozhin later said he had given a “master class” in how to conduct an invasion.

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The unexpected end to the mutiny avoided bloodshed and restored the Russian political status quo ante at least temporarily. But in several important respects, Russia has been seriously weakened.

In the first place, the Kremlin can no longer sustain the impression of massive support for the government. The mutiny created an opening for the venting of long-suppressed anti-government feelings. In areas the Wagner forces passed, the population appeared to support the insurgents. In Rostov-on-Don, the majority of the people who gathered in the city center cheered the mutineers and took selfies with them and their equipment even though Putin, in a televised address, had called them traitors. According to Prigozhin, in cities along the M4 highway to Moscow, people welcomed his forces with Russian and Wagner Group flags. Military units offered no resistance and expressed their support.

The only direct conflict took place when the Wagner columns were attacked from the air by the Russian air force near Voronezh.

Wagner shot down six helicopters and one Ilyushin Il-18 airborne command center, killing as many as 30 Russian airmen. The Il-18 is used to transmit commands to airplanes and helicopters operating at ultra-low altitudes. Russia has only twelve of these planes, and the loss of even one could undermine its ability to coordinate its forces during high-tempo operations.

Even in this operation, however, the only reason the pilots fired (again, according to Prigozhin) was that they were told that the Wagner column was a Ukrainian army unit that had broken through and was on its way to attack the Kremlin. A military observer in Moscow said he believes that the Wagner forces would not have met resistance if they had tried to enter Moscow.

The Wagner Group has since shown the ability to set its own rules. According to the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Prigozhin met with Putin in the Kremlin on June 29, five days after the mutiny collapsed, and assured him of Wagner’s unconditional support. Prigozhin has had belongings that were seized in a search of his residence, including $150 million in cash, gold bars, and an arsenal of rifles and pistols, returned to him. A week after the rebellion, Wagner was continuing to recruit fighters to join the war against Ukraine, and, according to journalists who called its 242

recruitment hotlines, new members sign contracts with the Wagner Group itself and not with the Russian Defense Ministry.

In Moscow, there are many, including “patriotic” war bloggers, who find Putin’s treatment of Prigozhin almost fantastical.

They point out that making anti-war remarks in a social-media post can result in a prison sentence for “discreditation of the armed forces,” yet Prigozhin is not being punished for armed mutiny and the destruction of vital military aircraft.

The danger inherent in mercenaries’ being able to dictate terms to the government is aggravated by the fact that the Wagner Group is not Russia’s only autonomous militia. The Kadyrovtsy, the praetorian guard of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, are a militia of 12,000 members, and they were supposedly on their way from their base in Donetsk to engage the Wagner Group on behalf of the regime when the mutiny was called off. In any serious crisis, however, their loyalty is to Kadyrov, not the Kremlin authorities.

Additionally, Gazprom, the giant Russian gas-and-energy conglomerate, has five private armies. They function, for the most part, to guard oil installations, but they can serve other functions.

Potok, the Gazprom military company, was seen in April fighting alongside the Wagner Group in Bakhmut. Several oligarchs have their own well-paid and well-armed security forces, and even Shoigu, the defense minister, has a mercenary group, Patriot, fighting in Ukraine. All of these groups, under the right circumstances, are capable of becoming a law unto themselves.

Finally, as a result of the mutiny, the ban on official discussion of the reasons for Russia’s war against Ukraine was violated. The Kremlin over many years had directed an enormous media effort toward convincing Russians that Ukrainians were a threat to Russia and had to be “denazified.” But Prigozhin, who is a celebrity in Russia, said publicly that the official justification for the Russian invasion was nothing but a lie. In a June 23 video released by his press service, Prigozhin said that the Defense Ministry deceived both Putin and Russian society when it claimed, in February 2022, that the country faced an imminent threat from Ukraine. Ukraine was in fact not a threat, he said, and had no plans to join NATO in an attack on Russia.

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“The war was only necessary,” he said, “so that a bunch of lowlifes could rebel and promote themselves.” He said the war was important for oligarchs “who are actually controlling Russia right now.” These remarks will inevitably be passed on by civilian relatives to soldiers at the front.

For Russia, the military situation was unfavorable even before the mutiny. But the Kremlin leaders must now weigh actions in the field against the possibility of further destabilization of the regime.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in April that Russia had suffered 200,000 casualties, including 40,000 dead, in Ukraine. This toll is partly a consequence of human-wave attacks intended to overwhelm a defending force. In an interview with Current Time, the U.S.-supported Russian-language television network, a Ukrainian soldier on the front lines in Bakhmut described the horror of Russia’s frontal assaults. “The Russian soldiers face certain death in these attacks,” he said, “but they are not retreating.

You can shoot a soldier’s head off but his comrade will keep coming. Their own commanders will kill them if they don’t attack.”

The use of human waves allows the Russian military to hold its more experienced soldiers in reserve, sending them into battle to exploit weak spots in the Ukrainian defenses as they emerge. The soldiers used in human waves are usually convicts or recently mobilized troops and have little leverage with their commanders.

Signs of resistance, however, are beginning to appear. Starting in late January, a steady stream of videos on social media showed groups of recently mobilized soldiers protesting against suicidal tactics and heavy casualties and asking to be redeployed to rear areas. Russian troops have also produced videos saying that, after their units suffered huge losses, they were prevented from withdrawing by blocking units tasked with shooting anyone who tried to retreat.

The Russian media outlet Verstka reported that, since early February, Russian soldiers from at least 16 regions of the country have recorded video messages in which they criticize their commanders for using them as cannon fodder. There are videos of soldiers—for the most part, newly mobilized and sent into battle with minimal training—refusing to follow orders. According to NATO 244

estimates, in the battle of Bakhmut, in which Russia gained territory with frontal assaults, Russia lost five men for every Ukrainian killed.

There is now concern over how the Prigozhin mutiny will affect the Russian ability to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive. On Russian Telegram channels, military bloggers have urged Russian soldiers to stay focused on the war. “Brothers! Everyone who holds a weapon at the line of contact, remember that your enemy is across from you,” read one message.

The disarray in Russia has boosted the morale of the Ukrainians. A video of a well-known Ukrainian drone commander, known as “Magyar,” watching the revolt while eating large amounts of popcorn went viral. At the same time, however, a weakened Russia is dangerous because it could easily be pushed closer to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Chinese president Xi Jinping warned Putin during their March summit meeting in Moscow against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a sign that he takes the possibility seriously. At the same time, Russia’s nuclear threats have increased. In his statement predicting a long war, Medvedev also threatened Ukraine with a preemptive nuclear strike. On June 13, Sergey Karaganov, a Putin security adviser, called for using nuclear weapons against Ukraine’s Western supporters.

The Russians also have other means short of using nuclear weapons to inflict catastrophic damage on Ukraine. On June 6, an explosion tore a hole in the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which spans the Dnipro River in Russian-held territory, leading to a massive water surge that forced the evacuation of thousands of people on both sides of the river. The flooding destroyed an irrigation system vital for maintaining much of Ukraine’s fertile land along the Dnipro that now might be transformed into a desert.

The Kakhovka dam was built to withstand almost any type of attack from the outside, leading independent experts to conclude that the explosion was carried out by the Russians, likely by mining the dam’s generating room. The Russians had access to records of the dam’s engineering characteristics, kept in Moscow from Soviet 245

days. As a result of the explosion, the Ukrainian army lost positions on the Dnipro’s many islands, which would have served as a base for a future landing operation, thus all but eliminating the possibility of an offensive in the Kherson region.

The mining of the Kakhovka dam may, in turn, be followed by other war crimes. Russia has controlled the Zaporizhzhia nuclearpower plant, the largest in Europe, since March 4, 2022. In June, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the Russian military had placed “objects resembling explosives” at the plant with the possible intention of blowing it up and blaming the disaster on Ukraine. Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Russia’s state nuclear-power company, said in a statement to the Russian news agency TASS that Ukraine’s armed forces were preparing to attack the plant.

In the wake of the Prigozhin mutiny, Putin thanked Russia’s forces of law and order for having “stopped a civil war” that was about to plunge the country into “chaos,” saying, “You have defended the motherland and the lives, liberty, and security of our citizens.” The Kremlin also issued a set of guidelines for how the mutiny was to be described in the state media. A copy was obtained by the Russian news site Meduza.

According to the guidelines, mercenaries who took part in the insurrection were to be called “false patriots,” “rebels,” and “traitors.” Although Russia’s security forces and law enforcement took no action during the insurrection, they were to be described as “Russia’s real defenders.” It was recommended to emphasize that the “warriors” of Russia’s armed forces consider Putin to be their “true leader,” while he, in turn, sees them as a “reliable backbone of the state.”

It remains to be seen how effective this propaganda treatment will be in light of the fact that millions learned of the mutiny and witnessed its astonishing progress firsthand. A Moscow journalist said that people were in a state of total shock when they realized that the Wagner columns were advancing on Moscow, and no one was trying to stop them. “Half of Moscow was in horror, but others waited with joy in the hope that something would finally change.”

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The Putin regime is good at propaganda and manipulation, but Russians were never before confronted with such a graphic demonstration of the regime’s impotence. There are serious dangers ahead, but there are also some grounds for hope that the Putin machine, created in 1999 with the bombings of Russian apartment buildings and exemplified in the forcible human-wave attacks in Ukraine, may finally be nearing its end.

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Is Putin’s system collapsing?

What conclusions are being drawn in the United States?

Radio Liberty, August 5, 2023 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Drone raids on Moscow: what conclusions does the United States draw? Is Putin ready to withdraw from Ukraine to retain power?

How do mafia regimes collapse? Can the United States bring the end of Putin’s system closer?

Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, do you think that the Putin system is close to collapse?

David Satter: I think it is weakening, certainly. But the Kremlin has an important advantage: it can count on the passivity of the population. And that passivity extends to the army. Of course, we don’t have exact information, but the fact that the authorities can play such a bloody game without a reaction from the public, without a reaction from the army in conditions of mass deaths of soldiers, is evidence that both the population and the army feel that they are deprived of the ability to influence the situation.

But that could change. In a situation where there is no unity among those who control the levers of power, as was demonstrated during the Prigozhin mutiny. It is hard to wage war successfully. So anything can happen. The only articulate things that Prigozhin said were that the government is sacrificing soldiers for nothing, the leadership is incompetent, and those who benefit from this war are not involved in it, their children are not at the front. Such statements at the top of power in Russia are dangerous for the stability of the regime.

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But does Putin have anything to fear from the people? Or is the biggest potential threat, his entourage?

Russian people are traditionally quite indifferent to losses. If you look at its official military history, Russia has been victorious because supposedly they were “ready to suffer more, to endure more.“ I tend to think that somewhere in leadership circles there are those who see the senselessness of this situation. They may act if there is movement among the people. I don’t believe there will be street riots or that there will be a Russian Maidan. But if inflation spirals out of control, if the economic situation deteriorates dramatically, those in the leadership who have long known that this war is pointless, that Putin is a thug surrounded by thugs, may use this as a reason to act.

Prigozhin’s precedent is important. Even if he is part of this mafia group, even if he is no better and maybe even worse than many of them, he still performed and showed that it is possible to act independently, that there will be no resistance on the part of the population, and that there will be no resistance on the part of the soldiers either. Those in the army, in the special services, in the power ministries, who are dissatisfied with this war naturally took note of this. Plus, there is another factor that could be determinant—the progress on the battlefield of the Ukrainian troops. It seems to me that the combination of these factors may finally deprive Putin of his control over the levers of power and lead to a change in the system.

What do you think of the suggestion that Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is not fatal for Putin and that he might even withdraw troops from Ukraine and keep the population under control with an expanding repressive apparatus? And threats to use nuclear weapons are bluffs.

If Putin comes to believe that the only way for him to save the regime and, possibly, his own life, is to use nuclear weapons, he can use them. He has no sense of morality that could stop him. The situation is becoming dangerous because it is becoming dangerous for Putin. The whole problem of Russia is the moral qualities of those who lead the country. Given the character of these people, we cannot rule out extreme actions. They can blow up a nuclear power plant, and they have already blown up the Kakhovska hydroelectric power plant. Power in Russia, because of Yeltsin, because of 250

the corruption of the 90s, fell into the hands of a man who should never have had it, especially when it comes to nuclear power.

David, can and, by the way, should Western countries, the United States, play a role in efforts to dismantle Vladimir Putin’s regime? So far, they have emphasized that they are not taking a swing at Putin’s regime.

If there will be negotiations, the West will participate, indirectly or directly, but I think that their role will be secondary, because Putin will have to negotiate with Ukraine, with Ukrainians. Regarding free elections in Russia, we know what “free elections“ mean there. We saw how free the elections were in 2000 after they blew up the apartment buildings in 1999.

I don’t think the West is going to become involved in that. The most important thing for us is that the war stops, and Russian troops are withdrawn from Ukraine. Naturally, what will happen to the regime afterwards, what will happen to Putin, is a matter for the Russians. I practically exclude the idea that the West has enough knowledge, strength, and firmness to influence this.

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An incomprehensible country.

Do American analysts understand Russia?

Radio Liberty, September 9, 2023 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin Why did a Russian oppositionist and an American Kremlinologist disagree? What prevents Western analysts from understanding the Kremlin? How did Jimmy Carter figure out the essence of the Soviet regime after a great delay, in five minutes?

We discuss these and other issues with David Satter, an American writer and the former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow.

Alexei Navalny’s recently released manifesto on the reasons for the rise of Putin has provoked reactions in the United States.

“Who is to blame? And what needs to be done?“—that’s the headline. In response, the site, “Meduza“ published an interview with Timothy Fry, a prominent U.S. expert on Russia in which he takes issue with Navalny, who has labeled the 1990s the breeding ground for the rise of Putin’s regime. Fry believes that the main problem was that Yeltsin, for objective reasons, failed to establish institutions that would have ensured Russia’s democratic development.

The path of authoritarianism, Fry believes, was Vladimir Putin’s individual choice. This view, according to David Satter, is characteristic of the American view of the Putin era, but it does not reflect reality.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David, Alexei Navalny gives a caustic assessment of Russian reformers in his writing. He speaks of “the swindlers we used to call reformers.”

David Satter: The reformers started with good intentions. But they very quickly became swindlers because they had no moral criteria. They thought materialistically: we have to change the economy, we have to put property in the hands of private people, take it away from the state. All this 253

mechanical reasoning took precedence. When they saw that the easiest way to bring about the transformation they were seeking was with the help of corruption and organized crime, they did not have enough internal resistance or moral principle to resist. So Navalny is more right than wrong.

Creating a market economy in Russia was a good idea. But the way it was done—without the benefit of law—created all the conditions for a criminal authoritarian system, which is what we have today.

Timothy Fry, responding to Alexei Navalny’s manifesto, says that Russia’s return to authoritarianism was due to a failure to create democratic institutions in the country, Boris Yeltsin had no way to overcome the obstacles.

We need to understand how Putin came to power. Western experts do not want to understand this, so the results of their analyses are wrong. A man who came to power as a result of an act of terror against his own people— I mean the 1999 bombings of the apartment buildings in Russia—cannot create democracy. Putin was not a random choice. As Yeltsin said in Vitaly Mansky’s documentary, “Putin’s Witnesses,” Putin was chosen out of 20 candidates. This happened at a time when there were two criminal cases against him, for fraud and bribery. Of course, it is disappointing that people with access to all the information—there are no secrets here— can simply turn a blind eye to the facts of history. But Putin’s criminality was obvious.

So you disagree with Fry’s assertion that Yeltsin should not be blamed for Russia’s move toward authoritarianism?

Western observers and experts on Russia often don’t understand how much the moral criteria that exist in more law-abiding countries were destroyed as a result of communist rule in Russia. The idea that it was possible to create democratic institutions and that Yeltsin wanted to but was unable assumes that there was some normal population there, a normal society, normal ideas of morality. In fact, there was no normal society. No normal people, no normal moral criteria. Western observers proceed from the concepts of countries where the moral context for action has long been established. It was not a question of how difficult it was for Yeltsin to create institutions. The reality is that he did not even try. Everything that 254

happened in the ‘90s took place in the absence of law, which led to the rise of criminal power. How to preserve criminal power? Only by terror, provocation. Now the Russian opposition is beginning to talk about the significance of the 1999 bombings, but the role of those terrorist acts in bringing Putin to power was obvious from the very beginning, 23 years ago.

David, I know you’re skeptical of Boris Yeltsin’s historical legacy.

Skeptical is not the right word. I would say that Yeltsin created a criminal system in Russia. Putin only saved that system and naturally strengthened it. We see that Putin is not sparing of the lives of Russians and Ukrainians. But Yeltsin showed the same qualities. In 1993, during the confrontation with parliament, Yeltsin ordered tanks to shell the White House. This was evidence that he was willing to kill without limit to hold onto power.

This, naturally, was not obvious to Americans. To be honest, there were many Russians who didn’t grasp what was happening either. Yeltsin, [Alexander] Korzhakov, [his security chief] and the people around them managed to organize a provocation and create the impression that the Ostankino Television Tower was the object of an attack. They then reacted with a massacre at the television tower and, on the following day, the shelling of the parliament. It is not by accident that a dictatorship has formed in the country and people are dying in unbelievable numbers to protect the total power of a small, criminal group. It happened naturally from the very beginning, when the “reformers” tried to build a new society on the basis of a moral vacuum.

In Yeltsin’s defense, I can say that Richard Pipes, a major expert on Russia, when asked in 1996 whether it was time for Yeltsin to retire, replied: it was not time, because Russia needs a man who is a democrat at heart.

Richard Pipes is a man who deserves respect. I published the book “Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State,” in 2003. The idea that there is a criminal state in Russia was controversial at the time, many people objected. As for Richard Pipes, he was one of those who recommended the book. He made it clear that for him a lot of what was written in the book was eye-opening. Richard Pipes was not in Russia during the 255

1990s. He was at Harvard. To understand the atmosphere of the 1990s, one had to have been there. The example of Pipes shows that even the most informed people can be wrong, and the example of those Russians who signed a petition in support of Yeltsin after he shelled the White House in 1993, also shows how easy it is to be misled.

David, for all the Kremlin’s accusations of America’s Russophobia, in reality Americans have a surprising characteristic. Virtually all American presidents of recent decades have tried to forge a friendship with Moscow after entering the White House. We remember at least Bush Jr. with his immortal phrase about looking into Putin’s soul.

American presidents are always trying to find some appreciation of God in the Russian leaders. In 1979, Jimmy Carter embraced Brezhnev at their summit meeting in Vienna after Brezhnev whispered to him, “God will not forgive us if we fail.” In response, Carter embraced Brezhnev and a photo of this appeared the next day on the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Carter became convinced that he had established a personal relationship with Brezhnev. But when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Brezhnev explained on the hotline that the Soviets were defending against a foreign invasion. Carter said he grasped more about the essence of communism as a result of that five-minute conversation with Brezhnev on the hotline than he had realized in his entire previous lifetime.

Most U.S. presidents realize too late the nature of Russia. By the end of the Bush presidency, Russia had invaded Georgia, and at the end of the Obama presidency, which began the so-called reset, Russia had launched a military operation in Syria.

Reagan was an exception because he had personal experience with the Communists in Hollywood. As a result of that personal experience, he understood who he was dealing with. Other presidents, of course, did not have this experience and they lacked imagination, so the same syndrome repeated itself with each president. Only at the end of their term did they usually realize something about the character of Soviet or Russian leaders.

Absolutely amazing things are said about Bill Clinton’s attitude to Boris Yeltsin. According to a friend of Clinton’s, the U.S.

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president was painfully eager for Yeltsin’s victory in the 1996 presidential election.

The leader of a system where there is no real democracy, where there is corruption, where people settle scores by murder, should be treated with justifiable apprehension and restraint. But the Clinton administration did not do that. President Clinton had built everything in his life on personal relationships, on charm, on connecting with people. He decided to do the same in this case.

One can assume that the intuitive desire of all American presidents to be friends with Russia includes recognition of its importance, if only because of its size and its nuclear arsenal.

Subconsciously, Americans realize that Russia is dangerous and a very powerful country in the military sense. Even now, despite the failures in Ukraine, Russia is still a serious power. There is a proverb: if all that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For Americans and the West generally, their hammer was charm, friendship. They interpreted the problems in U.S.- Russian relations as difficulties that with enough charm could be solved. But relations with Russia must be built in such a way that the Russian leaders understand decent behavior is in their interest because there will be an enormous price to pay for violating civilized norms.

In his so-called manifesto, Navalny expresses his belief that the fall of Putin’s regime is inevitable, as is the building of a parliamentary republic. But one wonders whether this dream is not naïve.

Navalny failed to oppose the annexation of Crimea. In other words, he is fighting corruption but accepts imperial aggression, which is inextricably linked to lawlessness within the country. Navalny is good at exposing corruption. But I’m not sure he understands that Russia cannot be both imperialist and democratic.

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What do you think, how may the United States’ relationship with post-war Russia play out?

If Russia is defeated, it will need the cooperation of the West to restore the economy and create the basis for normal life inside the country. If the people who come to power understand this, normal relations are possible in principle.

David, to summarize our conversation, can we say, by and large, with reservations, of course, that Russia remains incomprehensible to American political scientists, specialists on Russia?

I think distinctions have to be made. There have been people who have understood Russia well, Alain Besançon, who died recently, Robert Conquest, Paul Hollander, to name just a few. But countless others have failed to understand Russia because they did not understand the moral destruction in Russian life which explains a great deal of what otherwise seems bizarre or incomprehensible. Besancon and Conquest were former communists. They grasped the consequences of communist rule from firsthand experience. Those who are dealing with Russia today, because of their age, do not understand the destruction of a moral framework in Russia as a result of communism. Because of this, they automatically rely on various Western stereotypes. And the Russian authorities try to reinforce their misconceptions with the help of disinformation and manipulation, often with considerable success.

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The Peril of Abandoning Ukraine The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2023 If Congress Forces Kyiv to accept a Russian victory, the result won’t be peace but a new war.

With money for Ukraine running out, there is much talk in Congress about the U.S. southern border but scant attention to menacing developments inside Russia. If aid is cut off and Ukraine is forced to accept a Russian victory, the result will be not peace but Russian preparation for a new war.

The war in Ukraine has activated the Soviet totalitarian psychological inheritance in Russia which was semi-dormant but never disappeared. Freed of the restraints imposed by Western ties, Russia is more dangerous than it has been since the height of the Cold War because militarization is being matched by a surge in nationalist fanaticism.

The budget for the next three years (2024-26) which was signed Monday by President Vladimir Putin increases defense spending for 2024 by almost 70 per cent. Industries related to the war have seen spectacular growth. But it will be difficult to sustain this without a fall in living standards while any reduction in military spending will lead to a massive structural shock.

In an interview on Rossiya-1 television, Putin said that 99.9 per cent of Russians would be willing to sacrifice their lives for the country. In a televised message to schoolchildren, September 1, the first day of school, Putin said that he “understood why we won the Great Patriotic War (World War II). It is impossible to defeat such a people with such an attitude. We were absolutely invincible and still are.”

Once the invasion began, Russian liberals were stunned by how easy it was for the Putin regime to change Russia’s entire direction of development.

The death toll is rising but Russia is celebrating. The once insignificant budget for “military patriotic education” has been 259

dramatically expanded and is being used for constant patriotic meetings in schools and stadiums. On September 30, Putin announced a new holiday, the “Day of Unification,” to mark the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizha regions of Ukraine. Russians are celebrating flag day, and the day of National Unity, November 4, which marks the previously ignored liberation of Russia from the Poles in 1604. It was celebrated this year for several days in major cities.

Inflation has taken a toll, but Russians are accustomed to growing food and bottling it for the winter. At the same time, for many, the war has also created new opportunities. The pay for soldiers in Ukraine is 195,000 rubles or about $2,100, nearly 14 times the median salary in the poorest regions of Russia. When a soldier is killed, his family receives a payment of some $55,000, a fortune

by Russian standards.

Historian Sergei Chernyshov described what he saw when he visited the small city where his parents live, “Tens of thousands of soldiers did not return from the front, but hundreds of thousands returned and with so many millions of rubles that they previously could not have imagined it. In the villages of Russia, there are constant funerals but there is a sense of taking part in something great, defeating Nazism in Ukraine and finally settling the score with gays, Jews, and the collective West.”

In one year, the Wagner mercenary group recruited 49,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine. The late Evgeny Prigozhin, the group’s leader, told prisoners, “We need your criminal talents” and said that he preferred convicts who had committed more than one murder. The recruits were used in human wave attacks, but the survivors returned as “heroes” to the communities they previously terrorized. According to the BBC Russian Service, former Wagner fighters are suspects in 20 serious offences, including rape and murder. The real number is probably much higher because many crimes aren’t recorded.

History, meanwhile, is being rewritten. Russia is depicted as a besieged fortress, defending not just itself but all of civilization. In new Russian textbooks for the 10th and 11th classes, it is explained that when Russian forces entered Ukraine, they found evidence of 260

the mass murder of the civilian population, It is claimed that the U.S. and other Western countries are using Ukraine as a “clenched fist” aimed at Russia and that the idea fixe of the West is the destabilization of Russia.

Military instruction in the schools is being introduced as early as kindergarten. The training includes teaching children to kill “enemies” using weapons. Morning rituals in schools include patriotic talks by soldiers who have returned from the front and the opening of memorial plaques for those who were killed.

At the same time, reminders of Russia’s real history are being eliminated. Since May, dozens of plaques put up in Russian cities marking the last residences of persons who died in Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s have disappeared and at least 18 monuments to victims of Soviet repression have been reported stolen or vandalized.

In the town of Velikiye Luky, the private Russian Knight Foundation inaugurated a 26-foot-high statue of Stalin and argues on its web sites that the monument is crucial in that Russia is fighting a “real patriotic war.”

The transformation of Russia into a military machine presages future conflict. In the first place, no agreement will be honored by Russia. In 1997, Russia signed a peace treaty with Chechnya. Two years later, in September 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russian cities and Russia launched a new invasion of Chechnya. All evidence shows that the buildings were blown up not by Chechens but by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) as part of an operation to bring Putin to power.

Perhaps more important, Russia is looking for any sign that the West will not defend its principles. In this respect, references in Congress to an unwillingness to support a “forever war,” are not just disgraceful but dangerous.

In a television show marking the “Day of Unification,” Sergei Mardan, a Russian propagandist, said that the annexation of Ukrainian regions was the start of Russia’s journey to restoring its empire. He said Russia’s existence after the fall of the Soviet Union had no purpose. But with the war in Ukraine, the country has been reborn. This, he said, is “something wonderful, something frightening.”

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Russia’s position in the world is defined by the personal interests of its rulers. But under wartime conditions, they have made national fanaticism the key to their hold on power. A Russian victory will reinforce a war psychology that has gripped the population and cannot be abandoned without the leaders themselves being threatened. Allowed to win in Ukraine, they will look for new conquests, creating a massive and long-term security threat for the West.

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The Realist Who Didn’t Unravel Putin.

The Misconceptions of Henry Kissinger Radio Liberty, December 09, 2023 AMERICAN ISSUES Yuri Zhigalkin The Kremlin reacted to the death of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in an emphatically respectful manner. Vladimir Putin sent condolences to Kissinger’s widow, and the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke about the numerous meetings between Vladimir Putin and Henry Kissinger, emphasizing that during these meetings they had very deep conversations about Russian-American relations and the future. Putin, according to Peskov, appreciated the wisdom and phenomenal diplomatic talent of his interlocutor. The Tass agency recalled that Kissinger called for treating Russia as an important element in the new system of global equilibrium and, according to Tass, repeatedly expressed the opinion that Washington needed to recognize Russia’s hegemony in the former Soviet republics.

Yuri Zhigalkin: David Satter, how would you assess Henry Kissinger’s views on Russia?

David Satter: Kissinger thought in terms of relations between great powers, but he didn’t pay attention to the character of those powers. He had little understanding of ideological issues and did not take Russia’s ideological character into account. Because of this, he treated Russia as any other power and assumed that Russia would act according to principles that are typical of other countries. Here it is appropriate to recall what Napoleon said about Russia: Europe, he said, consists of Russia and everyone else.

What did Kissinger want? He wanted to analyze Russia according to rules that would be valid only if applied to “everyone else.” This is the reason for his frequent miscalculations. In general, he made no great attempt to understand Russia. If we look back at the Soviet Union, for

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example, he was against the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which tied trade privileges with the United States to the free exit of Jews from the Soviet Union. That amendment played a very large positive role both in détente and in Jewish emigration. But Kissinger predicted at the time that it would be simply disastrous for both. In addition, he advised President Gerald Ford not to receive Solzhenitsyn in the White House. He did not understand the symbolic importance of Solzhenitsyn as a fighter against the totalitarian regime. All he understood was that if there was a balance of power, it would protect against war. What he did not realize was that Russia did not act solely on the basis of the balance of power, but under conditions of strategic stability, always tried to undermine the West psychologically and to prepare it for further subversion.

What was at the heart of the affection that the Kremlin had for Henry Kissinger in both Soviet and post-Soviet times?

Russia very much wants to be perceived as a normal, traditional power with traditional interests. This is why Kremlin spokespersons speak constantly of “geopolitics” as did Kissinger. The Russians talked about it because they wanted the West to see them as normal and to disguise their underlying intentions. Kissinger talked about it because he saw it as the motive spring of international behavior. So, of course, the Russians couldn’t help but like Kissinger.

Kissinger said that Russia is a traumatized country in search of an identity, and it needs to feel its significance. He called for a relationship with Moscow in which the West would respect Russia’s individuality. What do you think of these theses?

I do not think signs of respect are needed. We need, on the contrary, to understand who is in charge in Russia and what crimes they are committing. We do not suffer in the West from a lack of formal respect for Russia as a country; we lack an understanding of the criminal nature of the current regime. Russia is an aggressive country that lacks moral criteria and has a population that can be manipulated and places no value on human life. If a person looks at such a country through rose-colored glasses, a socalled realist, but in fact a pseudo-realist, he will not see the most

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important things about Russia. One can live with Russia calmly, peacefully, but one cannot live in total ignorance.

Kissinger did try to analyze Soviet and Russian leaders. He writes of Vladimir Putin, with whom he met many times, that he is a character out of Dostoevsky, who has a mystical faith in Russian history, who, in the spirit of Russian leaders, perceives a threat to Russia from outside, including from NATO’s eastward expansion.

That phrase about resembling a character from Dostoyevsky is used by American leaders to describe a Russian leader they don’t understand.

Putin is not that complicated. He resembles all others who wanted to plunder without restraint. During the 90s, when there was a complete absence of rules, veterans of the KGB developed a mentality of complete cynicism.

The luckiest of them came to power. Now, they are using the population for their own purposes. Their main goal is enrichment and self-preservation. When Kissinger made this reference, he was trying to hide the fact that he could not explain Putin’s real motivation.

Kissinger called the decision to invade Ukraine, Putin’s biggest mistake. He declared that Ukraine’s place is now in NATO but insisted that the war should not lead to a serious weakening of Russia. The point, according to Kissinger, is that a decisive defeat of the aggressor should not be allowed, as this would risk the disintegration of Russia, a change in the centuries-old balance of power, and untold problems.

Kissinger exaggerates the centrifugal tendencies in Russia. If Ukraine wins the war, the maximum that will be achieved is the restoration of the situation that was established in 1991, which the Russians themselves endorsed many times in various treaties and in public statements. Putin himself in 2002 at a press conference together with Leonid Kuchma, the president of Ukraine, said that he was not against Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, because Ukraine was an absolutely independent country and therefore free to form whatever alliances it wanted.

Only in 2013, when the Russian leaders saw that demonstrations in the Maidan Square in Kyiv were capable of overthrowing the pro-Russian 265

Ukrainian government did they begin to talk about the threat from “Nazism” in Ukraine. I think that Ukraine’s victory and Russia’s defeat will be, on the contrary, good for Russia’s future. Many progressive shifts in Russian history have occurred after defeat in wars. Kissinger’s name is associated with realpolitik, but sometimes he has rather unrealistic ideas about Russia. The Russian imperialist war in Ukraine can be compared to the Russo-Japanese war which led to Russia’s first constitution. There will be no disintegration of Russia in the wake of defeat in Ukraine, but the possibility of new political opportunities is certainly there.

By the way, it is curious that Vladimir Putin spoke of Kissinger with respect despite the fact that he welcomed NATO’s eastward expansion. Was Kissinger a realist at all or the kind of realist that he was taken for in Moscow?

According to many “realists,” we should give Russia a sphere of influence in those regions where it has traditionally dominated. In keeping with this view, NATO enlargement was dangerous or, at least, counterproductive.

In reality, NATO expansion was a move that was justified by the lack of democracy in Russia. People in the Baltic republics wanted to join NATO because they realized that if their countries remained in the area that Russia regarded as its sphere of influence, future aggression was more than likely. They wanted security guarantees. They were proved right, because Russia attacked not Estonia or Latvia, but Ukraine, which did not have NATO protection. Kissinger was correct in his assessment of the situation at the time. But that position was inconsistent with his overall view of the world and many of the things he said.

David Satter, this confusion or contradiction in the perceptions of Russia that you speak of is not unique to Kissinger. The respected historian Richard Pipes, who understood Russia, once opposed NATO expansion because he feared it would awaken phantom fears on the part of the Russians. He supported Yeltsin’s decision to launch the first Chechen war as necessary to prevent Russia’s disintegration. Former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Matlock was calm about Russia’s seizure of Crimea and said in one of our interviews that Putin would not go any further. It

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seems that this view of Russia as part of the world balance, without which everything will collapse, persists no matter what.

Yes, it remains, of course. This argument persists and finds support because it is natural for people in the West. We take the view that we have our interests, they have their interests, so it’s necessary to negotiate. This is everyday Western life, where we solve problems this way. We are incapable of understanding the level of cynicism and aggressiveness that exists in Russia, which is perfectly expressed in Putin’s character.

David, in your interpretation Putin’s Russia is a hopeless case.

How do you see the future?

We do not know what is going on in the Kremlin or in the leadership circles in Russia, in the military, in the security services. We can only guess. My guess is that there are still people who are patriotic enough to not want this war to continue and completely ruin Russia. There is a chance that there could be a change in Russia that happens suddenly, without warning. If such forces manage to end this war, a lot of things immediately become possible for Russia. Because the choice will be pretty clear: either submission to China or restoration of ties with the West. And that’s what sane Russians will be thinking about.

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A Century After Lenin’s Death, His Evil Legacy Lives On The Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2024 Believing that the class struggle justified any means, he glorified murder as a moral obligation.

Vladimir Lenin has been gone for a century, but the evil he did lives on. The first leader of the Soviet Union died on Jan. 21, 1924, in the Moscow-area village of Gorki, after repeated strokes. His legacy is a world whose moral equilibrium he helped to destroy.

The Soviet Union was based on Marxism, a secular religion, and Lenin was the architect of its system of antimorality. For Lenin, as he said in his speech to the Komsomol on Oct. 2, 1920, morality was entirely subordinated to the class struggle. An action was right not in light of “extrahuman concepts“ but only if it destroyed the old society and helped to build a new communist society.

The effect of this theory is felt today in post-Soviet Russia, where the legacy of communism’s blanket rejection of universal morality destroyed the hope for democratic reform. Lenin’s theory also inspired modern terrorism and contributes to the weakness that leads many in the West to condone ideological crimes.

Lenin was born in 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), the son of a senior school inspector. In 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist party and published a book, “What Is to Be Done?“ (1902), in which he described a plan for seizing power by a disciplined “vanguard“ party of professional revolutionaries.

The unacknowledged model for this party was the Russian People’s Will, which was founded in 1879 and in 1881 carried out the assassination of Alexander Il, the “Czar Liberator,“ who 20 years earlier had freed the Russian serfs.

In February 1917, Lenin’s party, the Bolsheviks, had 24,000 members. It was able to triumph in a country of more than 100 million because it was a machine of concentrated power that accepted 269

murder and glorified it as a moral obligation. Isaac Steinberg, the non-Bolshevik justice minister in the first revolutionary government, objected to summary executions. He sarcastically asked Lenin: “Why bother with a Commissariat of Justice? Let’s call it the ‘Commissariat for Social Extermination.“‘ Lenin’s face lit up, and he said: “That’s exactly what it should be, but we can’t say that.“ The combination of dedication to Marxism and total contempt for ethical norms made it possible for the communists and their successors to establish totalitarian regimes in the 20th century that ruled more than one-third of the world’s population. Although most of these regimes no longer exist, the damage they did is likely to be felt for many years to come.

Russia today is noncommunist but no less lawless than under the Soviets. Arbitrary rule, once codified in Marxist-Leninist ideology, is now justified by the prerogatives of the state, which take absolute priority over the lives of individuals.

Russian officials interpret the purpose of Russian history as the strengthening of the state. In a 2008 speech, Vladimir Putin said that maintaining Russia’s place as a “mighty nation“ calls for “enormous sacrifices and privations on the part of our people.“ In other words, his ambition is the same as Lenin’s: for Russians to suffer indefinitely for the state.

Russia has suffered an estimated 360,000 casualties in Ukraine.

That hasn’t persuaded Russian leaders to stop the war. In a recent speech, Mr. Putin said the solution was for Russian women to give birth to more potential soldiers. “Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight or even more children,“ he said. “Let us preserve and revive these excellent traditions.“ When the Soviet Union fell, Russia dismantled the socialist economy but didn’t restore the moral framework Lenin destroyed.

The result was the rise of a criminal state no less dangerous than its predecessor—one that has engaged in assassinations, shot down civilian airliners, and even bombed apartment buildings to bring Mr. Putin to power.

Lenin’s influence is also evident in the terror perpetrated in the name of political Islam, like Marxism a system of total explanation. The savagery of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel 270

reproduced almost exactly the Bolsheviks’ tactics against suspected non-sympathizers and other civilians during the Red Terror (191822).

One of Lenin’s last writings was a set of recommendations for deceiving “deafmutes,“ his term for Western capitalists who were ready to ignore Soviet crimes in their pursuit of profit. His plan was to promote the fiction of a legitimate government in the Soviet Union separate from the Communist Party and establish relations with as many countries as possible to create a false impression of normality.

Lenin’s plans were adopted by the Soviet regime and inherited by post-Soviet Russia with its fixed elections, controlled Parliament and “outreach“ through such institutions as the Valdai Discussion Club, which after its founding in 2004 played an important role in misleading Western officials and experts about Russia’s intentions.

Lenin’s mausoleum is visited annually by an estimated 2.5 million people, but his popularity in Russia has declined compared with Stalin, who is credited with the victory in World War II. The figure of Lenin, however, stands as the symbol of history’s first rejection of universal standards on behalf of a political movement that claimed a monopoly on truth.

Lenin viewed the past with a degree of detachment in the last months of his life, but there is no indication that he regretted anything. For Lenin, the end always justified the means. This is why he stands as a warning—not only to the countries he directly affected but to all of mankind.

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Acknowledgements As in the case of the first volume, I would like to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation for their support. I am also grateful to Christian Schoen, the director of ibidem-Verlag, for his desire to expand the collection of my writing with this second volume.

I would also like to thank Nadezhda Kutepova, Gershon Braun and my sons, Raphael and Mark for their encouragement and help.

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