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

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.

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.

Larry Press, professor of computer information systems at California State University, has posted these messages on a website at the California State University, Dominguez Hills. See som.csudh.edu.

Larry Press, interview with authors, October 2014.

Vladimir Bulgak, interview with authors, August, 2014.

The account is based on the authors’ copy of the indictment of the general prosecutor of the Russian Federation No. 18/6214–01 (the case of the attempt of the coup d’état), 158.

Gennady Kudryavtsev, who had fought so hard to expand the international phone lines into the Soviet Union in 1980, was named communications minister of the Soviet Union in March 1991 by Gorbachev. He was flying to Belgrade on August 19 when the coup attempt began. On his plane a crew commander told Kudryavtsev about the putsch. But he ordered the pilot not to change course. Kudryavtsev apparently decided it was not his fight—he was obviously not Yeltsin’s man, as he was a Gorbachev appointee, and the Union’s ministers were of higher status than members of the republican Russian government. Nor did Kudryavtsev want to support the putsch led by the KGB. As Moscow was gripped in uncertainty, Kudryavtsev remained far away in Belgrade. Kudryavtsev, Nepridumannaya Zhizn [Not Invented Life] (Moscow: self-published, 2009).

Kalgin’s testimony before the internal investigation conducted by the KGB, published in: Urushadze Georgy “Izbrannie mesta iz perepiski s vragami” [Selected Passages from Correspondence with Enemies] (St. Petersburg: European House, 1995), 347.

Vladimir Bulgak, interview with authors, September 2014.

Bulgak, interview with authors, September 2014.

When Bulgak presented the same question to his predecessor, Kudryavtsev, he got a truthful response. Technically it could have been done, Kudryavtsev told Bulgak. The real obstacle was not money or technology but rather pressure from the KGB.

Larry Press, interview with authors, November 2014.

Anatoly Levenchuk, interviews and communications with authors, August and September 2014.

Mikhail Elistratov, interviews with authors, October 2014.

Joint order of the MGB, MVD, SVR, GUO No. N165/211/29/81, “On Approval and Enactment of the Temporary Instruction on the Organization and Tactics of Operational and Technical Measures,” June 22, 1992; also, Order of the Communications Ministry No. 226, “On the Use of Means of Communication for Search Operations of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation,” June 24, 1994.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of the Russian Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010).

The prosecutor’s jurisdiction was limited by a stipulation in a February 1995 law, “On Organs of the Federal Security Service in the Russian Federation,” Article 24: “Information regarding people who provide or have provided FSB organs with confidential assistance regarding the organization, tactics, methods, and means of implementing the activity of FSB organs shall not be subject to oversight by the prosecutor’s office.”

The statement of the State Duma on the publication of Sergei Parkhomenko, April 8, 1995, www.bestpravo.ru/rossijskoje/lj-akty/f9r.htm.

Sergei Parkhomenko, interview with authors, November 2014.

Mikhail Shevelev (chief of the political department at the time), interview with authors, October 2014.

Ibid.

Sergei Parkhomenko, “Bashnya Merlina” [Merlin’s Tower], Moscow News , April 25, May 3, 1995.

Based on authors’ conversation with an officer who was put in charge of “supervising” Segodnya .

Vika Egorova, interview with authors, August 2014.

Anatoly Levenchuk, interview with authors, August 2014.

The document, in Russian, can be found at www.libertarium.ru/l_sorm_sormprojo.

Anatoly Levenchuk, interview with authors, August 2014.

Only one company resisted, in the southern city of Volgograd. The chief executive, Nail Murzakhanov, came under intense pressure. Eventually he left Volgograd and moved to St. Petersburg.

Gusev, communications with authors, August 8, 2014.

Decree No. 252, Ministry of Communications, the Russian Federation, signed by Vladimir Bulgak, minister of communications.

Boris Goldstein, interview with Borogan, September 2014.

Sergei Mishenkov, interview with Soldatov, August 2014.

We found several articles online by Vitaly Vekhov about SORM in journals close to the secret services, Zashita informatsii Inside [Protection of Information, Inside] and Operativno-Rosysknoe Pravo [Operation-Research Law: The Volume of the Volgograd Academy of the Interior Ministry]. Vekhov is a criminologist from Volgograd with a long and successful career in Russian law enforcement agencies, ending at the central apparatus of the Investigative Committee of Russia in Moscow. In all his work he repeats that “the formal emergence of SORM took place in the mid 1980s when one of the KGB’s Research Institutes finalized its tactical and technical guidelines.” When we contacted Vekhov, he replied to an e-mail, confirming that development of SORM started in the 1980s. When we asked what particular KGB research facility he meant, he replied simply, “Kuchino NII of the KGB.”

In August 1955 the chairman of the KGB, Ivan Serov, turned the Kuchino laboratory into the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Special Equipment, or, by its Russian acronym, TsNIIST.

KGB agents posing as laborers bugged the US Embassy in Moscow during its construction in the 1970s. When discovered in the early 1980s, it was found that even the concrete columns were riddled with bugs, and the eight-story, cubic monolith became known as an “Eight-Story Microphone.” The building was abandoned and the case seemed to have no solution until 1991 when Vadim Bakatin, the head of the KGB at the time, gave an order to present US Ambassador Robert Strauss with the blueprints for the embassy bugs. In July 2000, after a complete renovation, including a new top to the building, it was finally opened.