6318
#8
Moscow Times
June 19, 2002
Zdanovich Should Be a Good Listener
By Yulia Latynina
Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT and a columnist for Novaya Gazeta.
"A sexual revolution has taken place in Russia -- the organs have seized power." This old chestnut from Soviet times gulped down an elixir of youth and got a new lease on life recently. The "organs" have definitely seized the RTR television company with the appointment of Lieutenant General Alexander Zdanovich to the position of deputy chairman of VGTRK.
Up to now, Zdanovich, as top FSB spokesman, had been performing an important function in the national economy. With each and every freshly killed field commander or liberated hostage, Zdanovich would pop out, like a cuckoo from a cuckoo clock, with a statement about the FSB's "brilliantly executed special operation."
After which, it would normally transpire that the hostages -- as in the case of Kenneth Gluck -- had escaped themselves, or that the field commander had been shot by a 7-year-old boy avenging the death of his father.
Zdanovich, thus, on a daily basis effectively did his best to convince the public of the FSB's incompetence. So when people like Boris Berezovsky started talking about an FSB operation to blow up several apartment blocks in Moscow, it sounded convincing for about as long as it took Zdanovich to open his mouth again on television. Because once the lieutenant general started talking, any idea that the FSB was capable of performing an operation more complicated than bugging a telephone was immediately banished from people's minds.
One of my friends in the FSB recounted that: "In the 1970s we were tracking one dissident. Every day we wrote reports, wasted a load of gasoline. And then a verification commission arrived and uncovered that the suspect had died half a year before."
But this individual case is not the point. The point is that in Russia an organization that is cruel, closed and unaccountable cannot be effective by definition.
Take, for example, the SORM regulation (System for Operational-Investigative Measures) that was published two years ago. In accordance with the regulation, all Internet providers are obliged, at their own expense, to install equipment that has been certified by the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information allowing the security services to monitor all e-mail traffic.
What a fuss was kicked up. And what came of it? Absolutely nothing. Providers simply don't bother to adhere to the SORM regulations. "No money" and that's all.
In general, communications have always been under the unofficial patronage of the chekists. In this respect it is worth mentioning the holding company Telekominvest, which has shares in almost all St. Petersburg telecom companies and a controlling stake in which was purchased by First National Holding, an unknown Cypriot offshore company.
What a panic erupted among mobile phone providers when Telekominvest top managers were appointed to just about every vaguely important post in the telecommunications sector -- from telecommunications minister to CEO of Svyazinvest. And then when not long after, Telekominvest started expanding at break-neck speed.
For example, two companies -- MTS and Telekominvest -- wanted to buy Krasnodar-based KubanGSM. MTS made an offer, and Telekominvest offered about one quarter of that sum. However, for some reason the top managers of KubanGSM were under the impression that if they didn't sell to the right buyer, then Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman would have their license revoked.
And what happened? MTS won. Because administrative resources are still not everything. Brains and money are sometimes more important.
So returning to the spetssluzhby. They really are capable of a great deal: shooting, imprisoning, spying on people. We know for sure that they are good at listening. But the question is, can they read?
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