ANALYSIS: KGB veterans' head has high hopes for Putin (07/23/00)

ANALYSIS

KGB veterans' head has high hopes for Putin

by Sophie Lambroschini
RFE/RL Newsline

MOSCOW - Former KGB officers want to see the statue of their founding father, Felix Dzerzhinsky, standing again in Lubyanka Square.

Dzerzhinsky founded the KGB's predecessor, the Cheka, and is credited with launching 70 years of fear and purges, as well as founding the gulag camps in which millions died. When his statue outside the KGB headquarters was torn down following the failed August putsch in 1991, its collapse symbolized the end of the Soviet Union and of the repressive KGB system.

The State Security Veterans Association, a club for former KGB officers, has made an official request to another former KGB officer, President Vladimir Putin, to resurrect the statue. Valerii Velichko, the association's president, said Mr. Putin may be receptive to the idea. "The thing is that the figure of Dzerzhinsky is not a simple one. You can't paint him just one color - all black, white, red, green, as you like," he argued.

Mr. Velichko worked for the KGB's economic counterintelligence unit, tracking down alleged saboteurs. He is especially proud of the five years he spent from 1980 to 1985 hunting down Soviet citizens who fled the country. Using language not often heard in Russia these days, Mr. Velichko said the defectors were "traitors to the fatherland." He speaks with obvious disgust of people like the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who he says wanted money more than freedom.

Among current and former secret police officers, Mr. Velichko says, the mood since President Putin's election is one of cautious optimism. "Today, a majority of veterans are in the process of observing [Putin]," he commented. "We are watching what his next steps will be. And if in the next three to four months or half a year we are convinced that what he does serves the state, then he will have many supporters among the veterans. Yes, we did help him during a first stage, during the election campaign. But now, it's time to wait. Putin can go one way and continue working for the Family [the influential entourage of former President Boris Yeltsin].... Or he can work for the state. Or he can work for himself. For the moment, he hasn't shown anything yet."

One sign that Mr. Velichko interprets as encouraging is President Putin's appointment of officers of the KGB successor service, the Federal Security Service (FSB), to top posts. For many years under President Yeltsin the secret police were politically sidelined, although they have slowly regained influence in the past three years. For example, Mr. Putin has appointed Viktor Cherkesov, his FSB colleague from St. Petersburg who used to track dissidents, as governor-general for the Northwest region.

Mr. Velichko praised President Putin for "not letting himself be bothered by the fact that, for obvious reasons, this appointment won't please the city's intelligentsia."

Mr. Velichko said he hopes the new president's reliance on secret police officers will lead him to call back to service many of those who left their posts - or were fired - after the Soviet Union broke up.

"The authorities are now considering the question of bringing back the veterans. ... If a year ago, someone had suggested I become an adviser to Yeltsin, the idea wouldn't have crossed my mind. But now I and many of my comrades say that we would be ready to put on our uniforms again, if we see that it would be good for the state," stated Mr. Velichko. "The thing is that, for me, going back to serving [the state security organs] would mean losing a lot financially. Nevertheless, if I see that it's in the state's interest, I am ready to give up my businesses and receive whatever an FSB general gets paid nowadays."

Mr. Velichko said he is not talking about the restoration of the Soviet system. While some Communist KGB officers are nostalgic for the Soviet era, his generation of KGB officers has seen the benefits of the market economy, Mr. Velichko noted, adding that the annual revenues of his companies total millions of dollars.

According to Mr. Velichko, the security service was the first to understand - under the brief tenure of Yurii Andropov, a former KGB head - that the regime was doomed and had to be changed. But then, he argued, things got out of hand.

"Believe me, the KGB had enough power to crush any opposition movement at the time," he said. "But we, the officers, were Chekists who adhered to the Andropov school. We understood perfectly well ... that serious changes were necessary, but we didn't expect the changes to take such a sharp turn. The ideal scenario is China's evolutionary course. It is slowly developing a market economy, while at the same time maintaining the state regime."

Mr. Velichko also argued that the FSB has an important role to play in President Putin's attempts to re-establish central authority over the regions, where local leaders have frequently gained the upper hand over police, courts and other federal bodies.

The FSB, Mr. Velichko said, is the only federal institution that has resisted the governors' influence and, therefore, is the perfect engine to establish top-down authority.

Sophie Lambroschini is an RFE/RL correspondent based in Moscow.

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