"Blowing Up Russia": Hear the Axes Grind Between the Lines

Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, "Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror." (Encounter, 2007.)

For those die-hard cold warriors who miss the good old days and a Beast in the East for projecting self-righteous paranoia, this book is right up their alley.

Interesting that a man who denounces the Russian FSB as a nest of intriguers and liars asks us - as a career KGB/FSB officer - to accept his words in this book at face value. After all, if FSB officers are such masters of deceit, why should anyone believe him now?

I don't doubt that much of the book may well be true, especially the blowing up of Russian apartment blocks in 1999 to kick off the second Chechen War. It's not just Russian intelligence agencies capable of such black operations, as the "P2 conspiracy" in Italy back in the 70s attests. The problem lies with the clandestine nature of Litvinenko's sources, which come across like mere shop gossip. Reader/listener beware.

There are inconsistencies galore. Yeltsin is painted a great democrat, even though he sent tanks to blow holes in the Russian Parliament building. The adoration of General Pinochet is attributed to Putin, though anyone who knew Russia in the '90s well remembers the love for Pinochet's Chile evinced by Yeltsin's staff. It was also Yeltsin who created the authoritarian Russian presidency after his destruction of Parliament in October, 1993 - not Putin.

The fact is, that Yeltsin created the FSB, as he did the oligarchs. Putin did not get where he is by being part of the anti-Yeltsin opposition. After Yeltsin it seems there was a power struggle for Russia between the FSB and the oligarchs, and the former won. But they could not have done so without Yeltsin's patronage. Yeltsin needed immunity from prosecution by the Russian Duma when he stepped down; a strong FSB guaranteeed this protection. Perhaps also he was afraid of the oligarchs whom he created in 1996, and wanted a counterforce to keep them in check.

The real grind of Western axes against Putin's - now Medvedev's - regime echoes in the fact that Westerners have lost their strategic political input into "reforming" Russia along lines complementery to Western strategic interests. But it's merely spoilsport naivite to believe the leadership of Russia would forever play second fiddle to the West, and not wish to again assert its own independent status in the world. Putin and his successor have, for all their faults, widespread support for exactly this reason. Western fulminations over "neo-Stalinism" only underscore the Russian critique of Western peevishness.

At any rate, this book comes off like some internet conspiracy theory. While the core of its argument of FSB black operations may well be true, keep in mind that it was commissioned by Boris Berezovsky - another darling of the West but no angel himself, and possibly responsible for assassinations in his own right.