David Satter - Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Content

Abbreviations and Administrative Delineations Abbreviations and Administrative Delineations FSB — Federal Security Service FSO — Federal Guard Service IMF — International Monetary Fund KGB — Committee for State Security RUBOP (formerly RUOP) — Regional Directorate for the Struggle with Organized Crime SVR — Foreign Intelligence Service Krai — Province or territory Oblast — Region Raion — District Okrug — Administrative subdivision, for example, of Moscow or military district

Introduction

Never Speak to Strangers

Impressions of Moscow: Beyond the Looking Glass

Soviets’ Long Queue to Nowhere

Angry Russians Can’t Understand Inflation

The Dissidents Who Strive for Western Freedoms in Russia

The Ghost in the Machine

The Price of Respectability

Taking a Healthy Rest

The Price of Soviet Achievements

A Burning Issue

From Russia Without Love

Trials of the Workers

The Price of Calling the Helsinki Bluff

Shaken, but Ready to Rise Again

Soviet Dissent and the Cold War

Why Moscow Has Georgia on Its Mind

Angry Nationalist Struggle Against Soviet Power

Afghanistan’s Rocky Road to Socialism

Russia’s ‘Civilised North’

Moscow Yields to ‘Interference’

Tensions Between Systems Show at Summit

Bitter-Sweet Search for Ancestors in Ukraine

The Crime That Can Only Exist Behind Closed Borders

Planning and Politics Strangle the Soviet Economy

Josef Stalin’s Legacy Leaves Soviet Leaders in Dilemma

Sakharov’s Arrest Links Dissidence with Detente

The Limits of Detente

200 Soviet Officials Held

Fighting a War of Shadows

Moscow Starts ‘Phoney War’ Over Peace

Why the Russians Think They Have Taken Schmidt for a Ride

Russia Through the Looking Glass

View from Middle Russia

How the Kremlin Kept Moscow Under Wraps

Russia Keeping Its Hands off Poland

Where Some Miners Are More Equal Than Others

Moscow Weighs Gains and Losses Against Dictates of Ideology

Soviet Defeat in Poland

Few Goods in Grocery Store 7

The Soviet View of Information

A Match for the Soviets

The KGB Puts Down a Marker

The System of Forced Labor in Russia

The Soviets Freeze a Peace Worker

What Russia Tells Russians About Afghanistan

The Legacy of Leonid Brezhnev

The Soviets Slam the Door on Jewish Emigration

Soviet Threat Is One of Ideas More Than Arms

Treating Soviet Psychiatric Abuse

The Kremlin Tortures a Psychiatrist

Yuri Andropov: The Specter Vanishes

Private Soviet Screenings of Forbidden Films? Insane!

In New Gulag, Soviets Turning to Murder by Neglect

Don’t Talk with Murderers

Moscow Feeds a Lap-Dog Foreign Press

Moscow’s ‘New Openness’ Illusion

A Test Case

Why Glasnost Can’t Work

A Journalist Who Loved His Country

Response to Fukuyama

Winter in Moscow

Setting the Sverdlovsk Story Straight

Moscow Believes in Tears

The Seeds of Soviet Instability

The Rise of Nationalism

Yeltsin: Shadow of a Doubt

A Tragic Master Plan

The Failure of Russian Reformers

Rude Awakening

Yeltsin: Modified Victory

Organized Crime Is Smothering Russian Civil Society

The Wild East

The Shadow of Aum Shinri Kyo

The Cost of the Yeltsin Presidency

The Rise of the Russian Criminal State

David Satter interviews Ida Milgrom, the mother of Jewish dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky, outside the courthouse in Moscow where Shcharansky was tried in July, 1978. In the background (center) is Kevin Klose, Moscow correspondent of The Washington Post (photo by Robin Knight).

The Human Rights Situation in Russia

Anatomy of a Massacre

The Shadow of Ryazan

Not so Quick

Death in Moscow

Stalin’s Legacy

A Low, Dishonest Decadence

Terror in Russia: Myths and Facts

Ordinary Monsters

The Murder of Paul Klebnikov

The Tragedy of Beslan

The Communist Curse

Stalin Is Back

What Andropov Knew

G-8 Crasher

Nikita Khrushchev’s Hard Bargains

Who Killed Litvinenko?

Boris Yeltsin

Russia on Trial

Land for Peace

Putin Changes Jobs—and Russia

Poisonous Patriotism

Obama and Russia

Who Murdered These Russian Journalists?

Obama’s Outreach to Muslims Won’t Achieve Its Goal

Putin Runs the Russian State —and the Russian Church Too

Mission to Moscow

Obama’s Russian Odyssey

Psyching out U.S. Leaders

The President’s Mission to Moscow

The Summit: Day 2

Natalya Estemirova

A Wounded Bear Is Dangerous

Pining for Authoritarianism

Remembering Beslan

Afghanistan: Lessons from the Soviet Invasion

Yesterday Communism, Today Radical Islam

A Passion to Relive the Past

Road to ‘Zero’

Symposium: Is Hannah Arendt Still Relevant?

Women Who Blow Themselves Up

A Hollow Achievement in Prague

Symposium: When Does a Religion Become an Ideology?

That Russian Spy Ring: The Broader Meaning

Never Forget: New Fanatical Ideology, Same Prescription: Defeat

Khodorkovsky’s Fate

Putin’s Facade Begins to Crumble

Why Putin Is Tottering

The Character of Russia

Obama’s Open Microphone

Russia’s Chance for Redemption

Russia and the Communist Past

Awaiting the Next Revolution

Clinton in the WSJ Strays on Russia Relations

Punk-Rock Authoritarianism

The Long Shadow of “Nord Ost”

Russia’s Orphans

David Satter on Life in the Soviet Police State

Russians Arrest CIA Agent

The NSA and the Soviet Union

Obama Defends Putin

Russia’s False Concern for Children

Putin and Obama in St. Petersburg

The Curse of Russian “Exceptionalism”

Snowden’s New Identity

Did Putin Insult the Pope?

Why Journalists Frighten Putin

Open Letter to Margarita Simonyan, Chief Editor of Russia Today

My Expulsion from Russia

Putin’s Shaky Hold on Power

The Russian State of Murder Under Putin

Putin Is No Partner on Terrorism

Russia Questions for Rex Tillerson

The ‘Trump Report’ Is a Russian Provocation

Trump Gives a Boost to Putin’s Propaganda

From Russia With Chaos

Trump Must Stand Strong Against Putin

How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life

Who Killed Boris Nemtsov?

100 Years of Communism —and 100 Million Dead

A Christmas Encounter With the ‘Russian Soul’

How to Answer Russia’s Escalation

Putin’s Aggression Is the Issue in Helsinki

The Satirist Who Mocked the Kremlin —and Russian Character

When Russian Democracy Died

Contribution to “We Need Sakharov”

Collusion or Russian Disinformation?

A Pioneer Who Witnessed Revolutions

Hold Russia Accountable for MH17

Afterword to English Language Edition of Judgment in Moscow

Acknowledgements

FSB — Federal Security Service

FSO — Federal Guard Service

IMF — International Monetary Fund

KGB — Committee for State Security

RUBOP (formerly RUOP) — Regional Directorate for the Struggle with Organized Crime

SVR — Foreign Intelligence Service

Krai — Province or territory

Oblast — Region

Raion — District

Okrug — Administrative subdivision, for example, of Moscow or military district

The Marquis de Coustine, writing in the early 19th century, said that it was possible for a foreigner to travel from one end of Russia to the other and see nothing but false facades. In June, 1976, when I arrived in Moscow as the accredited correspondent of the Financial Times of London, I was confronted by a country that resembled nothing so much as a giant theater of the absurd.