U.S. Hires Company With K.G.B. Link to Guard Moscow Embassy

poweRob said:

I'm wondering... in what universe does this make any ****ing sense whatsoever?

U.S. Hires Company With K.G.B. Link to Guard Moscow Embassy

Under a $2.8 million no-bid contract awarded by the Office of Acquisitions in Washington, security guards at the American Embassy in Moscow and at consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok will be provided by Elite Security Holdings, a company closely linked to the former top K.G.B. figure, Viktor G. Budanov, a retired general who rose through the ranks to become head of Soviet counterintelligence.​

... as opposed to this republican party...

Reagan Decides to Raze New Moscow Embassy

President Reagan said today that the United States had no option but to raze the new American Embassy office building in Moscow, which has been riddled with Soviet eavesdropping devices, and to put up a new building in its place. Mr. Reagan's decision followed long engineering and security studies and a recommendation by Secretary of State George P. Shultz that rebuilding the embassy chancery is the only way to provide the security and the space needed for official American operations in Moscow.​

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Harshaw said:

. . . ? What exactly do you think this does for you?

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Uprooting the Chekists was never a priority in post-Soviet Russia. There would be no equivalent of de-Stasification there. The West never considered it. Indeed, the government of Boris Yeltsin preserved Chekist structures and co-opted them, relying on them instead of a political party as a core component of Yeltsin’s personal political machine, an anchor for the new oligarchy of rulers. It also preserved the Chekist symbolism, keeping the sword-and-shield crest of the renamed components of the KGB, as well as of the MVD and the state prosecutor’s office.

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When deputies, including Yeltsin, openly challenged KGB Director Kryuchkov from the floor, Gorbachev tried to shut down the proceedings, but the lawmakers resisted him. Yeltsin called for a “radical restructuring” of the KGB, demanding that Russia and the KGB release the details of past repression and calling for the KGB to be split into separate services. This also was an outrageous proposal for the time. But the democratic politicians seemed uncertain about their newly found freedoms. Despite the applause, only six people of the 542-member body could bring themselves to vote against Kryuchkov, and twenty-six, including Yeltsin, abstained.

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But the changes would not go far. They were not a revolutionary break, but merely reforms of an institution that was inherently unreformable. All the decision makers were products of the political system that had had the KGB as its eyes, ears, and backbone; all had been compromised in one way or another. The KGB, in their view, was “normal.” Not a whisper of encouragement could be heard from abroad to do what the Czechs and East Germans had done and were still trying to do. Alone and inundated with advice, Bakatin proceeded slowly, , firing a single senior officer, but dithering a week until he could survey the landscape. He identified more senior officers to be cashiered, choosing reliable replacements, usually subordinates of those dismissed, and passing on his decisions as
decrees for Gorbachev’s signature. The first wave of firings took place after seven days; the second occurred two weeks later. Bakatin pledged hundreds, even thousands, of firings over a period of months but never followed through.

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Looking back in the third person, Bakatin stressed that his work to reform the KGB had made little impact: Everyone keeps saying that Bakatin has torn down the KGB structure. For goodness’ sake, this is not so. If you come to Kazakhstan, not a single hair has fallen from the head of any official in Kazakhstan. Or to Kyrgyzstan—I just got back from there, everything is still as it was there. The situation is the same in the Moscow department, and in the Kemerovo one. That is, all the capillaries at the bottom and the structures have remained the same.

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In a separate interview, he reflected on the changes—or lack thereof—in the Russian security services: It must be plainly said here that success was not achieved. I do not believe that it was possible anyway to significantly reform anything in such a short time in the conditions that actually exist. . . . Nor do I think that the incipient Russian service, like the others, achieved great success in ideological restructuring equal to the building of a democratic state. This still has to be achieved. Thus I do not think that our special services have already become safe for our citizens. There are no laws, no control, no professional security services.

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The state security system in Russia is no longer the centralized, monolithic force of the USSR KGB, but it has preserved a bureaucratic ideology that reveres the Bolshevik Cheka secret police as its lineal ancestor and maintains a cult-like devotion to Cheka founder Feliks Dzerzhinsky. Leaders who tried to sweep away the old KGB and start a fresh course toward democratic and market-oriented society found themselves cast aside or killed. Paradoxically, the policies of 1991 to 1999 strengthened the Chekists as the
frustrated and demoralized Russian public viewed the former KGB as their best chance of liberation from the hardships and failures of disastrous economic reforms. The Russian people, through their votes for president, came to view the Chekists in the twenty-first century as they had been raised to view them through most of the twentieth century: as the main protectors of their country and the curators of their national aspirations.

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Rogue Valley said:

Beyond your cherry-picking.....

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