Андрей Солдатов: The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

But it was not a just any department; it was the KGB’s telephone eavesdropping center. Underground cables ran from there to a neogothic, red-brick building two hundred meters away on Milutinsky Lane, Moscow’s central and oldest phone station. [10] The headquarters of the Twelfth Department on Varsonofyevsky Lane was first described in Boris Gulko, Yuri Felshtinsky, Vladimir Popov, and Viktor Kortschnoi, “The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown,” Russell Enterprises, 2010.

In mid-August 1991 the building saw feverish activity. Similar frantic movements were also happening at the central phone station, where the Twelfth Department [eavesdropping] occupied a few rooms.

On August 15 Kryuchkov urgently summoned Yevgeny Kalgin, head of the Twelfth Department, from his summer vacation. Kalgin was promoted through the ranks of the KGB primarily for his personal loyalty to the chairman. Initially he had been Andropov’s driver and later was made his personal assistant. When Kryuchkov, a close pupil of Andropov, had been appointed chairman of the KGB, he entrusted Kalgin, now a major-general, with running the Twelfth Department. [11] Andrei Bykov (deputy director of the FSB from 1992 to 1998), interview with authors, September 2014. Kalgin went to KGB headquarters and received classified instructions from Kryuchkov to listen in on the phone conversations of people around Boris Yeltsin, who in June had been elected president of the Russian Federation, then still one of the internal republics of the Soviet Union, thrusting him into the forefront of the reform movement and into competition with Gorbachev for leadership. The KGB instructions were to eavesdrop on members of Yeltsin’s government and friendly members of the parliament—both their offices and home lines. Kalgin was told to learn how Yeltsin’s people reacted to events and to control their contacts. This eavesdropping was illegal even by Soviet standards: the KGB could not spy on high-ranking officials. However, in late July the KGB had overheard Gorbachev speaking with Yeltsin, and they had agreed to dump the head of the KGB. Kryuchkov intended to get rid of Gorbachev first.

Kalgin agreed to make preparations. That would require a lot of work for the sixth bureau of the Twelfth Department—the “controllers” in KGB slang—mostly women in headphones whose work was to listen to and record telephone conversations. The next day, on August 16, Kalgin briefed the female colonel in charge of the bureau, and she in turn recalled her subordinates from summer leave.

On August 17 Kryuchkov personally called Kalgin and ordered him to put Yanayev’s phone line “under control” to make sure he stayed loyal to the cause. On August 18 Yeltsin returned to Moscow from Kazakhstan, and Kalgin was then told to put all of Yeltsin’s phone lines “under control.” [12] Kalgin’s activities are described in a report of the KGB internal comission investigating the events of August 1991 under director Vadim Bakatin. The report, made public in 2000, is available at http://shieldandsword.mozohin.ru/documents/solution.htm . A photocopy of the report of one of the women, Tatyana Lanina, was published by Yevgenia Albats in the Russian version of her book, Mina zamedlennogo deistvia. Politichesky portret KGB (Moscow, 1992), later published in English as The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994). The bureau chief explained to the hand-picked controllers that information from intercepted calls was to be reported via the internal phone line personally to Kalgin. They were given 169 phone numbers. The fifth bureau of the Twelfth Department, in charge of listening to foreigners, were given 74 numbers. [13] The account is based on the book written by Urushadze Georgy, “Izbrannie mesta iz perepiski s vragami” [Selected Passages from Correspondence with Enemies] (St. Petersburg: European House, 1995), 348–349. After the putsch Urushadze was given access to the documentation of the internal investigation of the KGB and put copies of employees’ reports of the Twelfth Department in the book. With that, the eavesdropping operation had begun. [14] T. A. Lapina, E. B. Kuznetsova, E. V. Timofeeva, and E. A. Volodchenko reported personally to Kalgin and the head of the controllers. Then, at Kalgin’s orders, they put the information of interest in the reports to be delivered to Kryuchkov. See Novaya Gazeta , August 6, 2001, http://2001.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2001/55n/n55n-s14.shtml . The same day Gorbachev was locked away in Crimea.

On August 19 the plotters declared emergency rule and took charge of the country, but Yeltsin and his supporters slipped through KGB security cordons and made it to an enormous white government building on the Moscow River, where they barricaded themselves inside. The building, which became known as the Russian White House, housed the Yeltsin government.

Andrei Soldatov, then fifteen years old, was in his last year of school before university when he heard the news of the coup. Ever since he was young Andrei had been interested in political history. His grandfather had been a Soviet Army colonel and a deputy commandant in Moscow whose duty was to march before the gun carriage bearing the body of a Politburo member during a state funeral, leading the procession to the Kremlin wall. Andrei remembered seeing his grandfather in full uniform on state television broadcasting the funerals of Brezhnev and Andropov. The advent of Gorbachev’s perestroika —reform movement—had provoked vigorous arguments and debates in Andrei’s family. His uncle was an Air Force colonel who had served in Afghanistan and was outraged by dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov’s opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Soldatov’s father, Alexey, the nuclear physicist, was a prime but cautious source of information about the Chernobyl nuclear accident, as the Kurchatov Institute remained the leading atomic research center of the Soviet Union. Andrei and his mother, a physician, were always the most liberal voices at the table.

On hearing news of the putsch, Andrei rushed to Manezhnaya Square, a traditional place for rallies by democrats and the reform movement. Tanks were lined up on the square, facing the Hotel Moskva. On the opposite side, close to the old Moscow State University building, students had gathered, shouting, “To Presnya, to Presnya”—the district where Yeltsin’s supporters had taken their stand. Andrei and his schoolmate walked over to the tanks, trying to engage the soldiers in conversation. The soldiers, surrounded by civilians, were obviously confused. Their officers, also confused, did not interfere.

The last thing Andrei Soldatov was thinking about was calling his father, Alexey Soldatov; his parents had divorced when he was eight, and his relationship with his father was strained. Andrei decided to collect every piece of evidence he could. He saved issues of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets , the most popular liberal daily in town. He grabbed a cover from a smoke-grenade discharger on the turret of the tank and took it home. He collected one of Yeltsin’s leaflets.

“The country is in mortal danger!” it declared. “A group of Communist criminals has carried out a coup d’état. If today citizens of Russia do not counter the activities of the putschists with conscience, determination and courage, then the dark days of Stalinism will return!”

If you do not resist the state criminals—

—you betray FREEDOM!

—you betray RUSSIA!

—you betray YOURSELF!

At home Soldatov’s mother had the radio tuned day and night to Echo Moskvy, the radio station founded by democrats on the Moscow city council and a primary source of information about the events unfolding.