Konstantin Preobrazhensky – author of the new book 'KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent'

October 4, 2010 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

Our guest today for this interview on FrontPageMagazine.com is Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB officer who became one of its most outspoken critics. He is the author of seven books about the KGB and Japan. His new book is titled KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent.

Mr. Preobrazhenskiy, welcome to Frontpage Magazine.
Thank you for giving me the chance to speak to realistic‑thinking people.
Tell us about your professional background and the circumstances that led you to start working for the KGB.
I graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow University in 1976. Before that I interned at Tokai University in Japan. I am a Japan specialist and I speak fluent Japanese. I love Japan very much, and that love brought me to the KGB.
What is it you like so much about Japan?
Japan is a fairy‑tale country. In its ultra‑modern society you can see, as if through a magic telescope, the medieval society of the samurai. This incredible combination gives Japan a magical charm that is hard to put into words.
All right, so tell us how you ended up in Japan.
Well, if you were a Japan specialist, you had to go to the country you studied. And that was possible only if you worked for the KGB. Incidentally, Soviet specialists in the United States were in the same situation. They were all connected to the KGB, and most of them were officers of that organization. There was only one way to avoid working for the KGB: become an official of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a member of the top elite. But that was very difficult to do.

So I had only one choice: either become an associate of the KGB, in a position that was very dependent, or turn into a career officer with shoulder boards and a high salary. The second option was far better.

But it was very hard to accomplish. In the end, my father, deputy commander of the KGB Border Troops, ‘pushed’ me into KGB intelligence, which was the most privileged and best‑paid job in the USSR.

My espionage work in Tokyo from 1980 to 1985 was very successful. I worked under cover as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS. But for me it was not a cover; it was real work, because I am a born writer. My KGB colleagues in Tokyo, chuckling, called me ‘a writer working under a spy’s guise.’ And they were right.

While working for the KGB, I published a couple of books about Japan: The Sports Kimono (1985) and The Bamboo Sword (1982). Both publications were successful. Two of my novellas, Karate Begins with a Bow and A Very New Old Pagoda, were published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1987, in the academic anthology Soviet Authors on Japan, 1917–1987.

In Tokyo I spied on China. I recruited a Chinese scientist there, but Japanese counterintelligence somehow found out and intercepted me in 1985 as I was on my way to meet that new Soviet agent. It became a spy scandal. The KGB forcibly returned me to Russia and blamed me for the scandal, although nobody knew its real cause. That tragically cut short my career as a Japanologist.

So when did you turn against the KGB?
Journalists who interview me always ask when I became disillusioned with the KGB. My answer: never, because I went into it already disillusioned. Unlike most young officers, I knew about the criminal and inhuman activities of the Committee from my father’s colleagues. That is why I started writing a tell‑all book about the KGB from my very first day on the job. It was first published in Tokyo in 1994, soon after I left the KGB in 1991. The book was called The Spy Who Loved Japan and became a bestseller.

When I left the KGB in 1991, the organization was falling apart, although under Putin it has since revived. I immediately went to representatives of the Japanese press in Moscow and began publishing interviews, articles and even books exposing the KGB. I became a security columnist for the Moscow Times, which made me known around the world. The book The Spy Who Loved Japan greatly angered the KGB, but in 1994 they could do nothing to me: it was that brief period of Russian democracy. In the end, however, my anti‑KGB activity forced me to flee Russia.

Under what circumstances did you come to the United States?
After Putin came to power in 2000, he began persecuting all KGB dissidents. In 2002 Oleg Kalugin, who was accused of disclosing KGB secrets, was sentenced to 15 years in absentia. Unfortunately, I was not absent at that moment; I was in Moscow. Being a professional, I sensed that I would be arrested very soon. I hurriedly left on a private trip to the United States, where I requested political asylum. Now I am a permanent resident of the U.S. This dramatic story is described in my new book, KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent.
The American press and literary circles have ignored your book. Why has that happened?
My book was ignored. Only a few religious writers reviewed it, as it is about the KGB’s infiltration of America through the Russian Orthodox Church. It tells how the KGB managed to seize control over Russian Americans by merging the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia with the Kremlin-controlled Moscow Patriarchate. Most likely, this is why amateur journalists did not want to write about such a sensitive topic. How can one assert that the church is a tool of espionage? That would be politically incorrect. Political correctness helped Putin keep his spy activities in America secret. Moreover, political correctness facilitated this activity. Putin knows perfectly well about American political correctness and that American counterintelligence cannot monitor clergy. In Russia, the KGB very aggressively monitors clergy, despite the fact that the state and the church are also separate there.

So, we have a situation where Putin openly spies on the U.S., while Americans are afraid to write about it. This idiotic paradox is a symbol of the existing U.S.-Russian relations, which will only bring profit to Russia.

Only recently, the wall of silence around my books has been broken. My book was reviewed by Professor Clare Lopez, whose works are published by Gerard Group International.

Professor Clare Lopez came to a conclusion that is very important to me: ‘For those who think the ‘cold war’ ended in 1991, this book will make you think again. Konstantin Preobrazhensky wants Americans to wake up and see the intentions of the Russian regime. According to him, under Putin and the KGB, Russia has returned to the state of a repressive state where security services rule.’

Can you tell us a little about the spread of left-wing ideology in America and how the KGB influenced it?
Well, today the KGB has no special need to influence American leftists. Their predecessors in Stalin’s time did it for them. They sowed left-wing ideology among American intellectuals, and today’s KGB simply harvests this crop.

On the other hand, many American leftists were recruited by the KGB in Soviet times. They still work for the Russians. There are many KGB collaborators in this country.

Moreover, many Americans were educated in the left political tradition in left-wing U.S. universities. Their professors had ties with the KGB in the 1930s or were ‘useful idiots,’ as Lenin cynically called Western intellectuals who faithfully worked for Russia. Their successors now teach in universities. Graduates of such universities go to work in the most important state institutions, and this can greatly influence America’s political course.

But there is another reason for the spread of leftist ideas. Many people become disillusioned with capitalism. Many Americans are still convinced that socialism is better. When I tell them that socialism inevitably leads to the Gulag, they don’t believe me.

The Russian intellectuals of the 19th century made the same mistake, but they were severely punished for it by 70 years of terrible communist rule. Americans have not yet experienced such disillusionment.

Leftism does particular harm to America. Let’s not forget that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg handed over the secrets of the American atomic bomb to Russia not for money, but because they were leftists.

The widespread leftism in the U.S. softens Russian influence here, because Russia is a leftist country.

What is the extent of Russian influence in the U.S.?
It is very great. The Russian mechanism of disinformation and manipulation includes the use of some American political scientists and ‘think tanks.’

Democratic states are much more vulnerable than authoritarian ones. That is why Putin’s lie machine not only deceives America, but also creates an inadequate, embellished image of Russia, which makes America make wrong decisions regarding this country.

One such example is the decision to close the Russian service of ‘Voice of America’ in 2007. Perhaps Americans consider the Russian service a relic of the ‘cold war’ that is no longer needed in a free Russia, but in reality it remained one of the last sources of independent information for Russians. It irritated the Russian authorities. Putin managed to close it with American hands.

But the Russian propaganda TV channel Russia Today actively operates in America. No one is going to close it or move its broadcasting to the Internet!

The obvious one-sidedness of U.S.-Russian relations is also clearly visible in the work of the Russian lobby. Open lobbyists of Russia work in America, such as the company Ketchum and others. But are there lobbyists of America in Russia? Of course not.

Any Russian who agrees to become an American lobbyist will be declared a traitor to the Motherland. Putin calls such people ‘jackals in foreign embassies.’ Russian tycoon and former president of NK YUKOS Mikhail Khodorkovsky was, according to rumors, something like an American lobbyist. And where is he now? In prison, from where he is unlikely to ever get out. In Russia, it is considered unpatriotic to lobby on behalf of America.

‘Don’t criticize Russia, because that will strengthen the positions of opponents of the pro-Western course.’ This phrase is often used by both Russian and American authors. This is very sophisticated disinformation. It is based on the claim that not all members of the Russian elite are opponents of America, and that they have freedom to argue against Russian anti-Americanism. Such a view of the situation is understandable to Americans. But the truth is that there are no pro-American people left in the Kremlin. Hatred for America is a symbol of loyalty there. If you love America, you cannot work in the Russian government.

Sometimes this myth is told differently: ‘Don’t criticize Russia, or they will become friends with China.’ But they are already friends. It’s too late to warn about that. This is a disinformation thesis invented by Directorate A of the Foreign Intelligence Service. Using this thesis, the SVR disinforms public opinion in America and the West. Many journalists reproduce these false theses without knowing who invented them. But recently some American politicians have begun uttering an even more dangerous thesis: ‘Let’s give Georgia and Ukraine to Russia, and the Russians will help us in Iran.’

What are the chances that Putin will help the US in Iran?
Zero. The Russians will never do that. They will never help the US in any Muslim country. They have developed their own special relationship with the Islamic world, a relationship based on anti-Americanism.

Russia has four centuries of experience of coexistence with Islam, and it does not want to share that experience with America. Moreover, Russia’s strategic goal is to make the US the scapegoat for militant Islam instead of itself.

What are the methods of Russian influence?
In 2004, Putin revived the Stalinist tradition of inviting Western writers to Moscow, where he charms them personally. Putin founded the ‘Valdai Club’ for them. The club’s meetings take place in Golitsyno, one of Putin’s residences in the Moscow region, as well as in other places. There Putin holds lavish receptions at which he charms American intellectuals.

Putin is a good actor. He presents himself as the only liberal taken captive by the conservative KGB entourage. They paint the following picture: they (the KGB officers) persuade him to deviate from the democratic course, so the West should not criticize him too much, or else he will have to surrender completely to the KGB.

Andrei Piontkovsky, who works at the Hudson Institute, called the members of the Valdai Club ‘the collective Feuchtwanger’.

Leon Feuchtwanger was a famous German writer of the 1930s who admired Stalin’s regime. Today the ‘collective Feuchtwanger’ spreads a prettified image of Russia that influences American policy towards Moscow. All these mechanisms of Russian influence in America will be revealed in my new book ‘How Russian Federation is Ruling United States’.

What can Americans do to protect themselves from these Russian threats on their own territory? And what policy toward Putin do you recommend for the US?
America must end the current abnormal situation in which Russian intelligence openly operates in the country, because Americans believe they cannot afford to create a spy scandal against a supposed ‘ally’ in the war on terrorism.

America must stop tolerating Russia, making concessions and offering apologies that only provoke laughter from the Russians. Americans must understand that Putin and other Russian leaders have a criminal psychology, as they are building criminal capitalism. From the mafia’s point of view, those who make concessions are losers and fools. They deserve further pressure, which is exactly what Russia demonstrates. America must deal with the Russians firmly. Only then will the Russians respect America.

America must get rid of false expectations about Russia, the most dangerous of which is the following: ‘We need each other to stand up to China and militant Islam.’ America is not at all needed by Russia for this. Russia tolerates both China and Islam by collusion, behind America’s back and out of spite.

America must finally understand that Russia does not share American values. Russia is not a democracy. America must treat it the same way as China and other non-democratic countries.

Mr. Preobrazhensky, thank you for answering the questions of Frontpage Magazine.

22/06/2009

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