The clandestine Soviet Union

[Dover]

Should Russia reclaim the USSR in the form of a parallel, clandenstine state?


....The centerpiece of Kalashnikov's project is the "organizational" wonder. He proposes creating a clandestine state behind the facade of the Russian Federation, a country he sees as "incurably ill and destined to perish". He describes the clandestine state as "a network that combines the features of a party, an army, a secret service, the mafia, a church, and a business community ... This kind of networked brotherhood should exist alongside the official Russian state, never openly warring with it," Kalashnikov writes. "The brotherhood should form a strategic union with the Russian president."

Kalashnikov argues that such a parallel state will be able to act where the official state cannot. Utilizing its covert status, it will be able to operate wherever there are Russian communities - in Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and even Europe and the United States. One of the first tasks of this secret state will be to regain control over financial resources controlled by the oligarchs and, more broadly, by the entire class of "new Russians". "Using psychological and other special methods, we will turn them into zombies, obedient to the will of the secret state and investing their money where the state tells them to," Kalashnikov writes in the foreword to Forward to the USSR-2.

"Superficially, nothing will change and the current business community, with its assets in Russia and abroad, will continue to operate," Kalashnikov writes, "but in reality, control over financial flows will be recaptured by the secret state. In this way, we will avoid accusations of violating civil and property rights and other such nonsense. There will be no mass arrests, no demonstrative transfers of confiscated money into state funds." He writes that it is sufficient to apply pressure successfully to one or two oligarchs in order to bring all of them into submission.

Leaving no doubt as to whom he has in mind, Kalashnikov writes in his latest book, Ride the Lightning (2003), about an oligarch named Samuil Modorkovskii and a company called Sokos, clear allusions to embattled oil giant Yukos and its former chief executive officer, Mikhail Khodorkovskii. Kalashnikov describes Modorkovskii as smart and energetic, but as someone who sees no future for Russia and who is looking to transfer the money gained from exploiting Russia's oil to the West. "Coercion and levers of fear should be used" against such people, Kalashnikov writes, seeming to justify the campaign against Khodorkovskii that was about to unfold. "God himself allows us to fight them with sophistication and acute cruelty."...cont'd

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH06Ag02.html