Chapter from Konstantin Preobrazhensky's New Book: 'The KGB in the Russian Diaspora'
A new book by Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy has been published. If you are interested in this book, please visit:
https://www.mgraphics-publishing.com/catalog/193488188/193488188.html
We offer a chapter from Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy’s book about how the FSB–KGB discredited U.S. President George Bush in the eyes of the American people.
What a Rabbit Can See in a Boa’s Eyes
Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy is a former KGB lieutenant colonel, Soviet intelligence resident in Japan
Americans still cannot rid themselves of the illusion that Russians think as they do. One often encounters a profound misunderstanding of the Russian mentality in America under the most unexpected circumstances. For example, in some private schools here, a form of punishment is practiced that bars careless students from attending school for several days. They are forbidden to come to school. Naturally, for the Russian boys studying there, this is a real holiday!
- “Well, what kind of punishment is that!” the mothers exclaim, “You’d better keep him after school—that would really get through to him!”
- “No, he should feel ashamed that he wasn’t allowed to attend school!” the American teachers counter.
Like the Civil War, the schism of the Church Abroad in 2007 cut through many families and even children’s circles of friends. Now some parents take their kids to new churches independent of Moscow, while others have stayed in the old pro-Moscow parishes. The children are experiencing a break with their friends and say: “But they explained to us at school that in 1991 the Russian people overthrew the power of the communists, and now there’s the same freedom there as we have in America. How can there be a schism?”
Unfortunately, many adults here think exactly the same way. They still live with the illusions of our nineties and glorify Russia for its transition to democracy. Who is to blame that its Russian century turned out to be so short? But consciousness lags behind being, as Marx maintained, and some Americans haven’t been able to readjust.
For example, I learned that in the nineties, inspired by the apparent collapse of communism, Americans quite sincerely offered Russia help in creating a contract army. After all, it’s advantageous to have one!
It is far more rational than a conscript army, and don’t Russians and Americans now think alike in Western categories of rationality, right?
But for some reason this venture came to nothing, which the Americans recounted with some bemusement on their faces. This happened at the conference “The Catastrophe in Chechnya,” convened in Washington in December 2003.
Naturally, in the American tradition, they took the blame upon themselves. They said they had failed to explain to the Russian generals the advantages of a contract army. This American manner of thinking was described by the well-known Sovietologist Richard Pipes in his memoir “I Lived. Memoirs of a Non-Joiner”:
“For most Americans, the axiom that all people are equal leads, willingly or unwillingly, to the belief that they are all alike. By this they mean that people are, at heart, just like them, and that if given the chance, they would behave as Americans do. If some country displays aggression toward the United States, the reason must be some offense. Reasoning this way, they blame not the aggressor but the victim. Such logic is entirely unwarranted but psychologically understandable. Throughout all the years of the Cold War, a considerable portion of educated, prosperous Americans felt guilty that America had provoked the Russians, and therefore demanded concessions, so that the Russians might feel more secure.” [Richard Pipes, “I Lived. Memoirs of a Non-Joiner,” Moscow, Moscow School of Political Studies, 2005, p. 204]
Such logic is also familiar to us Russians. It characterized the Russian educated class of the nineteenth century, which considered itself somehow guilty before the common people. This logic led to the 1917 revolution and the collapse of the Russian Empire. And then the common people “repaid” the intelligentsia for its pity and compassion so harshly that it forgot any sense of guilt whatsoever.
Soviet leaders were mostly children of peasants—Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Chernenko, Gorbachev. Putin comes from the working class. He understands the psychology of the proletariat very well and feels no guilt toward it.
This feeling has been transferred to foreign policy: Russia is guilty before no one and owes nothing to anyone! Such boldness disconcerts the soft-hearted West.
“The Russians exploited such views of Americans with consummate skill,” Pipes continues. “They fashioned the image of a country striving to become another America—if not as wealthy, then at least more socially just. Americans fell for this cynical propaganda ploy because they have a faith in human virtue and that the world seeks to emulate the American way of life.” [Ibid.]
By that time I had already developed the habit of speaking at press conferences and symposiums with a brief, sobering statement, framed as a question and sometimes undercutting the entire agenda.
I asked the American military officers why they were so certain that Russia needed a contract army. Maybe they didn’t need one at all?
In a nutshell, I explained that our generals are accustomed to a conscript army of disenfranchised slaves and have no intention of changing their convictions. They cannot and do not want to remake themselves. For the American presenters this was news.
But tell me, dear compatriots, hand on heart: who in Russia cares about the fate of ordinary soldiers? Especially those who died or were taken prisoner? No one but their relatives, and sometimes only their mothers. And above all, the state does not care, because it doesn’t want to spoil the statistics on the dead. Just look, to this day the remains of millions of soldiers from World War II lie scattered in the forests, and no one rushes to bury them, except a handful of enthusiasts.
Soviet military commanders were raised for generations with the belief that a private’s life is worthless. For Americans, by contrast, it is very important, which seems strange to us.
Even after death, an American soldier is of interest to his authorities: his burial site must be precisely determined, and if possible, his remains repatriated.
In the US, even those who fall into enemy captivity are considered heroes! In our country, that is not the case at all. On the contrary, Soviet POWs from World War II were declared traitors, and upon returning home they were sent to camps for betraying the motherland. And to this day, the status of a service member taken prisoner remains unclear. The old Soviet view continues to exert a psychological influence on society. For example, during the war in Chechnya many Russian soldiers and officers were captured by the Chechens. Does anyone in Russia consider them heroes?
We, former Soviet people, cannot understand the Americans’ veneration of their prisoners of war. Russian military men know about this American peculiarity. It elicits both mockery and envy. I have discussed this more than once with GRU officers, military intelligence.
For Americans, this is a matter of national pride. From their point of view, no one should go missing in action or remain in captivity.
In Russia, however, as is well known, young soldiers die in great numbers even in peacetime, and no one is interested except the volunteer organization “Soldiers’ Mothers,” which exists on terribly precarious terms and is subject to attacks by the military.
And among the civilian population of Russia, about 40,000 people go missing each year, and this too draws no public attention. [Demographic Crisis in the Russian Federation] Alas, human life in Russia comes cheap…
“The state has no interest in searching for the missing,” confirms the internet forum “Soldiers of Russia.”
“Strictly speaking, the search for missing soldiers in Russia became a concern only in 1992,” it continues. “The initiators were, oddly enough, the Americans. After a meeting between Boris Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush, a Russian-American commission for the search for POWs and MIAs was established. This commission primarily searched for American service members who had gone missing and were buried on the territory of the USSR after World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 1994, a Commission on POWs, Internees, and Missing Persons was created under the President of the Russian Federation, which then searched for Soviet service members. Its creation was initiated by the head of the Institute of Military History, Dmitry Volkogonov. Prior to that, no such structure had existed in the USSR. The search and burial of our soldiers’ remains was conducted only by volunteer search teams. According to the Commission, at that time about 4 million people were listed as missing. The majority—3.5 million—disappeared during World War II. Another 274 went missing in Afghanistan, 228 in Tajikistan, 2 in Mozambique, and 12 in Angola.” [“The Search for the Missing Is of No Interest to the State” Forum “Soldiers of Russia”]
The very interest in its missing soldiers is completely uncharacteristic of Russia. That is why the well-known war journalist and Chechen war veteran, “Novaya Gazeta” correspondent Arkady Babchenko, began his interview with the head of the Moscow office of the aforementioned Commission, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Ohara, with a puzzled question:
“Michael, how do you understand your work for yourself? After all, a lieutenant colonel who is part of the military machine and at the same time personally searching for his country’s soldiers—that’s not how we do things…”
“The state has a debt to its soldiers. And the number of missing doesn’t matter. If there is even one, we need to look for him. No one should be forgotten,” the American officer replied.
I don’t know whether Lieutenant Colonel Ohara guessed that Russia’s participation in this Commission is a sham, just like Russian democracy itself. However, his answers were precise:
“Would it be correct to say then that the American side of nine people accomplished eight times as much as the Russian side of 48?”
“No, that’s not right. The Commission is a higher-level body, and technical staff work under it. We are the support office that does the day-to-day work. When a similar office existed on the Russian side, there were also not very many staff, but they did a great deal of work—both in our Joint Commission and in the Russian Presidential Commission on POWs, Internees, and Missing Persons. When Colonel General Volkogonov was co-chairman on the Russian side, we had very good relations. Now I can’t say anything about the work of the Russian side.”
“Why?”
“The whole problem is that such an office on the Russian side no longer exists. It turns out that Russia is not represented in the commission at all. After President Putin was re-elected for a second term, an administration reform was carried out, as a result of which the Russian support office was disbanded. Two years ago we were told it was a mistake. A year ago we learned that General Shamanov would head the Russian side of the commission. However, the presidential decree on the composition of the commission never appeared. Subsequently we received information from the Foreign Ministry that Mr. Neverov would head the Russian side. We were told that the documents for financing the work of the Russian side were already being approved by the Ministry of Finance. A month and a half ago we learned from Mr. Neverov that the Russian co-chairman would still be General Shamanov.”
“So in Russia the search is carried out on a volunteer basis; the state is not involved—do I understand correctly?”
“I can only speak about the work of our commission. In the recent past, the Russian side had a structure analogous to the American one… At present, such a structure does not exist.” [Arkady Babchenko, “The State Has a Debt to Its Soldiers,” Novaya Gazeta, No. 61, August 14, 2006]
So why did Russia join the American commission on the search for POWs and MIAs, when such work is of no use to our country whatsoever? I think with only one goal: to prevent the Americans from conducting an independent search inside Russia. After all, back in the nineties, some of the former archives of the CPSU Central Committee were temporarily opened. Particularly valuable was the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History, the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee. It is located in the very center of Moscow, by the monument to its founder Yuri Dolgoruky. At the request of Japanese journalists, I dug up a great many interesting documents there about the work of the KGB in Japan and neighboring countries. But I had no contacts at that time with American correspondents in Moscow. Otherwise, I quite likely could have found references to American POWs in the CPSU Central Committee documents. After all, the Central Committee received reports on the activities of the KGB, which interested me most of all.
In the late eighties, as an assistant to the chief of the KGB’s scientific and technical intelligence, I myself repeatedly took part in drafting them. I quickly mastered their euphemistic style. These reports were of a general political nature and did not disclose operational details. Moreover, they were tendentious and sought to embellish the KGB’s activities. But ninety percent of them was true.
In Stalin’s time, however, these rules had not yet become established, and the Central Committee documents contained quite a lot of operational information. It was there that I was able to find traces of a correspondent of the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri named Oba, who perished in Soviet camps in the thirties. I am certain that if the Japanese had approached some official commission of ours for the search for missing persons, they would have learned nothing.
Here in Washington, in 2003, I met one of the American staff of the Commission on POWs. He showed me its glossy promotional brochure, in which I first of all looked for the list of Russian participants. Sure enough—I was looking at faces familiar from television, inveterate communists, and first of all State Duma member from the CPRF faction General Nikolai Bezborodov. He is now forgotten, but in the nineties he thundered in the Duma with his pro-Soviet, anti-American, and mendacious speeches. For some reason, the Russian government chose to present precisely such partners to the Americans.
In general, among former Soviet generals there are extremely few who hold political convictions close to the Americans. One of those few was General Eduard Vorobyov, former First Deputy Commander of the Russian Ground Forces. He was also elected a Duma deputy from the anti-communist Union of Right Forces party.
General Vorobyov is known for refusing to take command of the operation in Chechnya in December 1994 due to its complete lack of preparation, and for submitting a report of resignation from the Armed Forces. For that, then Defense Minister Pavel Grachev put him on trial, but the prosecutor’s office did not approve the minister’s decision.
Of course, such a progressively minded general could have provided real assistance in the search for Americans missing in Russia. So he was not included in the Commission.
“Do you even understand that these people will not help you but will only do harm?” I asked my American interlocutor. Naturally, he did not know all our subtleties, and I had to explain them at length.
The promotional brochure also contained descriptions of certain joint investigations, reminiscent of a game of “cat and mouse.” That sent me into an attack of laughter. The next day I passed my acquaintance a memo in English: “How the Russian side deceives the American side on the POW Commission.” I don’t know if that memo was acted upon…
I also got to know female American officers who visited Russia on inspections. Presumably, they were checking how the Russian army was complying with arms reduction agreements.
These officers were delighted! They were won over by the friendly manner of communication of the Russian guys—their informality, their uninhibitedness, ample libations, witty toasts, cheerful conversations late into the night. Such conviviality does not exist in the American army.
“Do you even understand that this was a specially cultivated tactic for receiving American delegations? That they tried as quickly as possible to shift you to a level of friendly interaction so that you wouldn’t see anything you weren’t supposed to? After all, we Russians are Asians, not Europeans!” I explained to them.
My interlocutors frowned. They were far more disposed to hear that Russians are Americans.
At one military reception in Washington, an active American major general, the commander of a large military unit, came up to me. He started talking about North Korea.
“What do you think,” he asked, “should we conduct joint exercises with the Russian army in your Far East to frighten Kim Jong Il?”
“Our comrades would be much happier to hold such exercises with Kim Jong Il to frighten you!” I replied.
My words prompted general laughter, tinged with surprise. After all, the West seriously assumes that Russia fears North Korea’s nuclear ambitions just as much as Japan, the US, or South Korea do. It seems I had once again demolished one of their concepts! But in reality, North Korea is a friendly country for Russia, and there is absolutely nothing to fear from it. It is no coincidence that both Putin and Kim Jong Il equally revere Stalin!
And from my acquaintance at the POW Commission I was surprised to learn that a retired Soviet general had been appointed its chief researcher of Russian archives. And a totally unknown one at that—it was unclear why precisely he had been assigned to archival work.
Like any other Soviet general, he was surely a fanatically devoted communist and a hater of the USA, the country of the main enemy. And therefore the outcome of his archival research was always the same:
“Negative! No traces of American POWs in Russia have been found!”
“Why didn’t you hire some young Russian historian of democratic convictions, as the Japanese do?” I asked in amazement. “He would certainly have found much of interest in the archives. After all, America is not his enemy. On the contrary, his enemies are the communists…”
“Alas, the law forbids us to spend money on that!” my American interlocutor sighed.
But we were talking about a paltry sum of some three hundred dollars, nothing more! In Russia in the early nineties, that was a great deal of money. Could none of the American generals have pulled it out of their own pocket for the holy cause of disgracing communism? And if all the American members of the commission had chipped in twenty dollars each, for them it would have been a mosquito bite…
And still it didn’t happen! It simply didn’t occur to the Americans, even though in the nineties the question of abolishing communism in Russia was far from settled. I remember how we feared a military coup back then!
The very next year after the creation of the bilateral Commission, in 1993, the communist putsch took place. In 1996, the real danger of a communist president—Gennady Zyuganov—hung over Russia, supported by the people, the army, and the security services. It was only with great difficulty that Yeltsin’s supporters managed to avert that danger, for which they are now cursed. In today’s Russia, the Soviet regime has been resurrected under cover of a powerful propaganda machine. Despite the decorative trappings of democracy, the whole life of the country is controlled by the state, just as under Lenin.
It is astonishing that the American commission members did not sense the danger upon learning that a retired communist general would conduct the archival research for them. They did not gather for an internal secret meeting and shake their heads:
“That Soviet general is a bastard. He’ll deceive us!”
No, they sacredly trusted in the reliability of their Russian military partners, who may already have been contemplating a communist putsch. Alas, over two hundred years Americans have developed a firm concept of honest business, which leaves no room for the ways of the Lubyanka. The Russian side very cleverly exploits this…
In the nineties, I repeatedly came across mentions in the Russian press of American POWs seen in camps and prison hospitals. Journalists from the newspaper Izvestia, Andrei Lebedev and Nikolai Khorunzhy, also write that such reports number in the dozens. [Andrei Lebedev and Nikolai Khorunzhy, “Just to Find Them,” Izvestia, March 11, 2011.]
The Americans hoped they would manage to get hold of at least one of those who had survived. Did they understand that this was impossible? Because their compatriots would relate such things about what they saw in Soviet camps that many people in the West would go gray with horror, and all the efforts of our foreign-policy propaganda would come to nothing. Not to mention all kinds of lawsuits! Therefore the Russian side will lay down its bones but will not hand anyone over.
“The result of the investigation conducted by the Russian side was the firm statement by the president of Russia that no American citizens, either military or civilian, were held on the territory of Russia against their will (although archival research carried out after 1995 and the questioning of a number of eyewitnesses among Russian citizens testify to the contrary),” notes Professor Alexander Smykalin of the Urals State Law Academy in his article “The Commission on POWs and Missing Persons,” without a trace of irony. [5. Smykalin A.S. Joint Russian-American Commission on POWs and Missing Persons / Alexander Sergeevich Smykalin // Voprosy Istorii. - 2003. - No. 7. - pp. 133–135.]
In the early nineties, the former Soviet dissident Sergei Melnikov very nearly found an American POW in one of the Russian camps, but they were prevented from meeting. The American vanished.
He recounted this in the article “Who Is Searching for American POWs,” published in the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo in September 1992:
“A telephone call to my office caught me in Belarus. The duty operator reported that he had just spoken with Mr. Viktor Pugantsev, a resident of Ukraine, who said that in one of the camps in the north of Russia, to this very day, there was a former American pilot named Davin Markin or Marvin, handed over to the USSR by North Korea more than 30 years ago.
Two days later I flew to Kiev to meet with Pugantsev.
At our meeting Viktor related that he had been imprisoned together with David for many years, knew his story from David’s own words—since David speaks Russian, albeit with a noticeable accent—and, most importantly, parted from him several years ago when he was released from camp PL 350/5 in the city of Pechera.
Having recorded Pugantsev’s account on video and given him, just in case, the phone numbers of the US Embassy in Moscow, I went with this recording to the Moscow bureau of CNN. The bureau chief of the largest news company in the US did not deem it necessary to hear me out or watch the interview with Pugantsev, refusing via one of his many employees, even though I explained to the latter what had brought me there. Not everyone is given the gift of being a journalist.
I had to present the Russian authorities with a fait accompli at once, without giving them time to collect themselves; otherwise they would have turned Markin’s case into just another unconfirmed rumor.
Paradoxically, I failed to interest the US information services in this matter, and I approached several more of them. The only acceptable option left in this situation was to request a personal audience with my old acquaintance, and, I would note, a good acquaintance, Mr. V. Stepankov, the Prosecutor General of Russia. I was received immediately, and spent the entire lunch hour talking with Valentin Georgievich, since his other time was filled.
I handed the Prosecutor General of the country an official inquiry on behalf of my corporation regarding the fate of the imprisoned American in camp PL 350/5, who appears in documents under the name “Dodik”—so Pugantsev told me. I also requested archives on eight other POWs from 1948–50 who had been in camp P/Ya 235/10-2 at Reshoty station in Krasnoyarsk Krai. This information was given to me by another witness who had been in that camp together with the Americans.
At the same time I sent my reporter to the area of camp PL 350/5 in Pechera, with instructions to find out how the administration and security of that camp reacted. For reasons I will explain below, I do not disclose the name of this reporter, since he is a Russian citizen.
The reporter told me that by the end of that same day on which I had my appointment with V. Stepankov, reinforced security had been introduced at camp PL 350/5, and the sole nine-kilometer road connecting the camp to the town was blocked by military patrols. For two days not a mouse could slip through to the camp. Then the additional security and posts were removed.
I never received the promised official letter from the Russian prosecutor’s office, despite repeated inquiries. Instead, a reply unexpectedly appeared in the pages of the newspaper Izvestia on July 1, 1992.
Izvestia correspondent Inga Prelovskaya, while covering the work of the Russian-American commission I have already mentioned, somewhere in the middle of the article, for some reason shifting to the tone not of a journalist but of a commission member, writes with poorly concealed sarcasm:
‘True, the source is not always reliable. Commission representatives checked one of the rumors in Pechera. There, in the camp, they tried to answer all questions, but no traces of David Markin’s presence were found.’
Forgive me, but may I ask how documents from the desk of the Prosecutor General of Russia, handed to him in person, ended up on the pages of a newspaper? Or how they wound up in the commission,
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