Anna Chapman and Co. may have seemed silly, but they were actually carrying out Putin's master plan: re-creating the KGB
BY ANDREI SOLDATOV AND IRINA BOROGAN
For many, the arrest of 12 Russian spies in the United States was a signal that the drama of the Cold War had returned as farce. Much fun was had examining the activities of the "illegals" in the United States (they seemed to have accomplished little more than garnering invitations to think-tank lunches). But as innocuous as those details seem, the West would do well to pay attention to just how closely the methods and intentions of Russia's current intelligence agency, the SVR, replicate those of Soviet-era intelligence agencies.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran, has concertedly molded the SVR in the image of its Soviet-era predecessor, most of all in its relentless focus on spying on the West. Indeed, the Russian spy ring wasn't an aberration, but a reflection of precisely the way that Putin wants his intelligence agencies to operate.
Before Putin took office, that wasn't the direction the Russian spy services were heading at all -- indeed, it was quite the opposite. When the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, the KGB was divided into several independent agencies, with the intention of preventing the emergence of another all-powerful security state. The KGB's former foreign intelligence directorate was transformed into a new espionage agency called the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR by its Russian initials.
Yevgeny Primakov, a well-known Arabist who spent years in the Middle East and had earned a reputation as one of the Soviet Union's leading experts on the region, was chosen to lead the now-independent bureau. After bringing in a fleet of new deputies -- all of whom were also primarily familiar with the Middle East -- Primakov's primary focus was on cleaning house. He wanted to distance the SVR from its KGB past as quickly as possible.
Primakov's first step was to open a press office; he also encouraged SVR officials to present themselves in the Russian media as the most Westernized, liberal representatives of the Russian secret services. The effort was aided by the fact that the SVR was located in a Moscow suburb, far from the other intelligence agency spinoffs. Primakov also insisted that the agency have nothing to do with Russian internal affairs so that it wouldn't be tainted by any potential future suppression of domestic dissidents.
Primakov retained some nefarious covert Soviet intelligence practices, such as the disinformation campaigns that were called "active measures." But he was keen to present the SVR as something more akin to a think tank or research institution. From 1993 through 1998, he had the bureau publish four open research reports on international issues, including the proliferation of chemical and nuclear weapons. It was an effort obviously inspired by the CIA; he even renamed the intelligence operatives "reviewers" or "analysts".
Foreign Policy
