Yuri Felshtinsky - A Regime of Assassins - How the KGB/FSB Came to Dominate Power Vertical in Russia

[@hereigoagain5050]

Interesting podcast. Jonathan is an excellent interviewer. He obviously knows his subjects, asks open questions, allows his guests to express themselves, and guides them across the arch of a narrative.

[@SiliconCurtain]

That’s certainly what I try to do! Glad you think it succeeds in some of the episodes!

[@hereigoagain5050]

@@SiliconCurtain On every episode I have viewed!

[@secallen]

Open questions? He makes statements and asks the guest to confirm them. He is a propagandist, not an inquirer. Or are there ever any guests putting the Russian case? Look at the titles of his videos. Every one is "Russians bad/losing" and/or "Ukraine/West good/winning". This will not help us understand the reasons for this war - or the twists of human nature generally. It's cartoonish.

[@SurfinScientist]

@@secallen Well, there is a channel for you: Russia Today. Feel free to watch it.

[@juanlucas983]

​@@secallen/ very well put!...the West has no reverse gear...in respect to lies and it's society of evil that is!

[@SurfinScientist]

Yet another great interview on this channel! It really deepened my insight into the backgrounds of the war in Ukraine. Every western politician should watch this interview. It is great to see this channel grow, because it offers exactly what the mass media lack.

[@stellascott4584]

I love your interviews, Jonathan! Your brilliant guests are covering fascinating topics. I'm also glad to see your channel growing. Rightly so. 🙂

[@SiliconCurtain]

Thank you! Yes, it’s growing steadily, and hopefully will increase faster now.

[@77thTrombone]

This channel is really "underpopular." Another fascinating conversation. Thanks, Mr Curtain!

[@anitaandazola2029]

Thanks to you and your guest! It's important for me to think about control of a population, about how its application is complete in Russia.

[@roncollins1046]

A couple of interesting points here: a) the guest points out early on how unprecedented it is that a state security specialist becomes a head of state, and b) the host points out 'a lot of talentless people rising up in society.' Add these two observations together, and I think you have a pretty good hypothesis regarding the phenomenon of Sergei Shoigu. My thinking on this bizarre figure has been developing for some time now, but so far The Insider is the only venue I have seen going in-depth on the matter of Shoigu's longtime mistress, her fabulous wealth attained in defense contracting with the MoD but only after her relocating to Lithuania, her subsequent remarriage to a Lithuanian mediocrity who emerged overnight as an oligarch in his own right, the new husband's assuming custody of Shoigu's two children by his former stewardess, etc. As meanwhile, I have seen only one Australian news outlet dig into the conspicuous personal bond between Shoigu and Putin going back to the former's time in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. My hypothesis for now is more or less as follows: Shoigu coat-tailed his way to a position as head of defense for which he is spectacularly unqualified and is now universally despised (especially with his now being in command of this colossal failure of a war), and along with him came the mistress and her multiple defense contracting ventures, which probably has made them both a lot of money. Hidden in plain sight money, with little more than internal censorship keeping what is now public knowledge in the west (that his old girlfriend has the kids and she and hubby are now blackmailing him lavishly) from becoming common knowledge anyone dares talk about inside Russia. And meanwhile, as Putin becomes more and more isolated and paranoid, everyone in the upper echelons is too afraid of him to ever risk any kind of real colleagueship feelings toward him much less form any sort of off-hours social circle. But the king is just a man: he has become alienated from all his family such as he ever had one, and everyone at the office is terrified of him, which I am sure fills him with contempt and a Stalinesque sense of everyone plotting against him. He is now, in other words, the loneliest old man in all the Russias, with not a friend to his name. Except for Sergei Shoigu. Something akin to a weird reciprocity seems to be keeping Shoigu (alive and) still in office as a total charlatan hated by his subordinates, as well as Uncle Vova from going utterly bonkers out of pure isolation and human unfulfillment. I think they're still buddies somehow, and I think this alone may be the only baling wire/duct tape holding the current Russian state together. For however long that holds up. Just days ago Novaya Gazeta Europe sketched out a plausible scenario for a new Russian civil war: not a regional or ideological conflict, but rather an interagency and inter-factional one from within the state apparatus itself. My sense is that the Putin-Shoigu-Lavrov-Peskov et al Old Guard is a lot more besieged and entrenched than we can see from afar, that they are surrounded by enemies of multiple factions who all have eyes on the top post and the state's assets, that all of these and various shifting combinations of these factions are certain to topple the current regime in the very near future, that none of them has it in mind to end the war but rather to escalate and win it, and that the 'Russian people' have nothing at all to do with any of this nor probably any clue any of it is even going on. Revolutions in Russia tend not to invite this 'popular unrest' nuisance along until some new cabal is ready to weaponize it.

[@SiliconCurtain]

A civil war between different parts of the security system is definitely much more likely than a ‘bottom up’ uprising from the people.

[@roncollins1046]

@@SiliconCurtain It really doesn't add up at all to the western mind that a dull-eyed, uninteresting figure like Vladimir Putin was ever able to amass such power and hold onto it for so long. We try to imagine that all things Russian are somehow subordinated to this one man's will, and that whatever he wants from the people, or the state, he gets. I think this reflects only the west's oblivion to how the Russian state has operated since Ivan the Terrible or even the time of the Mongols. The state is all, and at its head is one man whose primary function is to personify it in the popular imagination, but whose capacity to rule is severely limited by the permanent and thoroughly self-serving machinations of the state, and by its traditional lack of any need to deal with the autocrat truthfully, or with the people as though in good faith. Just look at a map: Russia is staggeringly vast, predominantly rural, and even in the 21st century largely made up of far-flung regional populations each living within their own very limited universe. Even the idea that such an enormous place can be thought of as a singular body politic called 'Russia' is largely an outcome of western preconceptions, and the longstanding quest of Russian autocracies to benefit from the bounties of the outside world by creating the illusion that 'Russia' is just another nation among nations, and by extension that its state mechanisms are as legitimate as any other nation's. But this is false. The template of the modern Russian state was first crafted not by western intellectuals or political theorists, but by the Mongols. It was an apparatus not of civic rule or the dispensation of law and order and justice, but of commercial, thoroughly feudal, opportunism. The purpose of the state is to harness each local potentate to the singular purpose of diverting proceeds of Russia's vast wealth in natural resources toward a central entity more resembling the old New York-based Sicilian mob commission than any real state, and only in a ceremonial sense toward the throne. In return, each regional apparatus, in much the same way as a local-boss system of what we grasp as organized crime, receives back just enough from the center to keep the local bosses in wealth and splendor, and the people in ignorance, superstition, hopelessness and ultimately obedience. None of it has anything to do with the will of the autocrat, who is at best a highly-paid government worker with extremely limited authority and even less knowledge of how it all really works. Vladimir Putin may well imagine himself as an autocratic ruler with absolute powers, and of course the bulk of the people across Russia do. But he rules nothing but his own office, and even that in utter oblivion to this place called 'Russia' in which he has been little more than an insular apparatchik and a delusional tourist. When everyone in the western media keeps referring to how Putin does this or Putin wants that or what Putin must be thinking, this just makes me cringe. This war is not Vladimir Putin's war any more than the Russian state was ever Putin's creation. And when one fine day the news comes out that Putin has suffered a stroke or heart attack or what have you, and it will, the west will immediately begin to speculate on what thus must mean regarding some 'succession' as to which upper-level political functionary might succeed in taking his place. And that won't make any difference: whoever does will no more be any true 'dictator' than Putin has ever been, but rather a front man for a vast criminal coalition which has ruled this 'Russia' for centuries and will continue to. 'Civil war' as we imagine it is not even possible in Russia. Gang wars, on the other hand, have always been the one hazard the Russian theory of autocracy and 'spheres of influence' have always been tasked to forestall and contain. And now and then they still break out. The next gang war to determine which imaginary ruler will head up an imaginary state, will be determined by gang rules and gangster tactics, not by any 'popular will.' There is no such thing in Russia and never has been.

[@thomasjamison2050]

couple of interesting points here: a) the guest points out early on how unprecedented it is that a state security specialist becomes a head of state, You mean like George Bush '41? When Bush 43 misspoke and said 'Iraq" instead of "Ukraine,' it was at once the most beautiful and most tragic thing I had heard in a very long time.

[@roncollins1046]

@@thomasjamison2050 OMG: You busted me on a valid point I have thought some about since writing that comment. The difference being that Putin had been a career counterintelligence operative, raised, schooled and trained in the KGB caste, whereas Bush1 had been a middling politician and oil-man who served briefly as a top bureaucrat in intelligence, but was hardly any professional in the field. So my phrasing may have been a tad misleading but the point stands: the Russian state's having been rebuilt from within by the intelligence sector, a powerful political faction in itself, and then led by a career spy for two decades, is unique enough in history to merit an examination of this relative exception in how powers are transferred, seized or maintained within major states.

[@thomasjamison2050]

@@roncollins1046 Well, OMG, it's the internet. 🙂 You make reasonable points about Bush '41, but I have to confess that he made me very nervous then and perhaps even more nervous after 9/11. I always remind people that it was on Bush '41 watch that the Kuwaiti's busily pulled oil out of Iraq through extensive Texas style side drilling (Carlyle). Also at that time Saddam naturally demanded payment for that oil and was rebuffed by Kuwait. So Saddam had his people contact the state department and ask the state department if the US had any objection to him going into Kuwait to obtain compensation for the oil as well as the cost of gaining that compensation. The state department reply was basically 'just go ahead, we don't care." Saddam went in and suddenly we cared a very great extent...... I won't venture onto the thinner ice around 9/11, but it is very true that even Al Gore gave the president '42 the recommendation that cockpit doors be given greater security in the same fashion that Israeli cockpits were given, but monies donated to presidential campaigns thereafter nixed that one. It is also true that post WWII president's have always had, so far as I know, pretty much unlimited access to CIA information and files, but Bush '41 would certainly know more about that than I would.

[@shaiaheyes2c41]

Reminds me of Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov Blank alias Lenin's Finnish bodyguard that said everyone with talents had to be exterminated, because it was unfair for those with no talents that talented people existed, only that way would all be on an equal level. You know, the New Soviet man, Homosovieticus, force everyone down on the lowest level, cut off a tall mans head if you have to, destroy what is beautiful and pure because it's offensive to that which is ugly and polluted. Of course, they use the same retoric today...

[@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304]

I read a biography awhile ago about Francisco López of Paraguay. He was handed power by his father. Who had worked hard to eradicate potential opposition, to the point where no one with any drive, ambition, or talent held any position of authority. You can imagine the results. Maybe Lenin's bodyguard, who was tasked with protecting Lenin, was less interested in equality and more fearful of potential rivals?

[@shaiaheyes2c41]

@@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304 He was a criminal Bolshevik. The scum of earth. Funny, you made the comment when I was re-listening to the interview :) I hope there will be a new one with him soon.

[@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304]

@@shaiaheyes2c41 Some v interesting people interviewed on this channel

[@nattuglaHK]

Thankyou very much for this enlightening lekture !

[@antiquityart]

Interesting and needed conversation. The simple fact that in Russia the state security controls the state and not vice versa needs to be common knowledge in the west. With all it's implications. It helps a lot with understanding why Putin Is who he is, why he went to wat and why Russia is currently failing so hard in Ukraine. Just recently I read an interview in the New Yorker with J. Mearsheimer (who became famous with his thesis on lobbyism and on the origins of the current Ukraine war) who is still able to claim (although he got a lot of push back) that Putin is basically not lying on the international floor. Understanding where Putin is coming from and how this influences him makes those claims even more ridiculous as they already are.

[@proselytizingorthodoxpente8304]

Mearsheimer is, unsurprisingly, a name pro-Putinists drop when talking to westerners. You can see why. When it comes to Russia, he's a reactionary. Believing that Russia has a right to dominate its near neighbors based solely on military power. Presumably he still believes that, despite evidence that Russian military power is not all its hyped up to be. Mearsheimer either doesn't understand Putin or his motives. Or he does, but chooses to parrot his narrative regardless.

[@nunogonzalez4037]

Great inteview and host. It is not worth talking about Russian military, russian strategy or russian diplomacy in this war if we do not understand that the Russian State is in the hands of a sinister group specialized in killing, torturing, deceiving and mass repressing.

[@alroche13]

Vvvcc

[@gregb3457]

I believe, for me at least, this is one of your most significant presentations Jonathan. Your work is cutting edge - it really is. Again, YOUR WORK IS CUTTING EDGE. Thank you so much to Yuri Felshtinsky in helping us to understand this hellish beast which for centuries continues to prey on the lives of it's captured peoples. They may have had open borders before the war, but how many people are really ready to leave the place of their birth and venture everything on a question mark? Well, now there are many, many more, thanks to Putin. The horror of Russia, what it has become, how much they destroy within and without, reminds me of Hell - it really does, and these words from the rock band the Eagels - Mirrors on the ceiling The pink champagne on ice And she said, 'We are all just prisoners here Of our own device" And in the master's chambers They gathered for the feast They stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before "Relax, " said the night man "We are programmed to receive You can check out any time you like But you can never leave" My sincere and strong hope and prayer is for a bottom up revolution of some kind. I have been "fighting" for this perspective for quite some time. Now I understand more clearly the nature of devilish beast that must be defeated. It is not just the FSB, but it is as well the will and hearts of the people. Somehow, they need hope that they can do something.

[@SiliconCurtain]

Thanks for the great comment- and the iconic lyrics! I’ll try to keep the conversations coming…

[@ginemginem]

Hope you get a video that gets the alforithm to notice you, and give you the eyes that the channel deserves. I'm impressed time and time again with the caliber of people you get on the show. I know nothing about you or what you do outside of this, but it sure looks like you have quite the cache of, can't find a better word at the moment (eng 2nd lang) authority in the intellectual circles. And it's rather heartening to see so many high status people eager to be on a show that has such, criminally mind you, low viewership, relatively speaking.

[@ginemginem]

KZbin has proven to be quite the platform for informative and intellectually engaging discourse and information. Also, I love that this comment section doesn't have the dehumanising and self-agrandising talk of or "orcs" and "barbarians" - that, in essence, is no different than Russians calling Ukranians Khokhols.

[@ginemginem]

Oh and the buzzy term "Putler". Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a person, not some kind of reincarnation of Hitler. His evil is his own. And individuals in this time and place are completely capable of being evil - evoking and appending this historical spectre of evil onto a person is just a way to distance oneself from the harsh reality that evil isn't an external metaphisical force; evil is a part of humanity, and every single person is capable of it.

[@SiliconCurtain]

That’s kind of you to say! The audience ought to grow in the coming weeks…

[@efanshel]

Absolutely brilliant- this is very persuasive.

[@JCtheMusicMan_]

An excellent and informative conversation! I believe that the world has changed considerably in the last century. The speed of communication with the internet and the sharing of cultures and lifestyles of the average citizen via social media has united a majority of the civilized world. Dictator and terroristic people are still stuck in the past where people were not able to stay informed. The desire to live freely is an inherent and fundamental characteristic of humans and there are enough places in the world where one can live freely. There is no place in this world for murderous dictators and the world should not keep kicking the can down the road for other generations to deal with. The only true solution is for the freedom-loving people of the world to band together to root out any destructive powers. The collective West has proven that working together to help supply the Ukrainians with the needed resources to free themselves can be successful. Leadership of the coalition countries need to grow a spine and be more decisive. There is far too much hesitancy to go all out to help Ukraine achieve victory in an expedient manner. When people are being brutally murdered daily, there should be no hesitation. This problem will never go away until the drivers of the old ways are removed from power.

[@hannesforster1845]

Excellent insights.

[@jonathanpersson1205]

Very enlightening, thanks for this video

[@nickhtk6285]

As the conflict continues and events in russia unfold, its great to revisit this interview. Great work.

[@treesetc3305]

Fantastic interview.

[@RawandCookedVegan]

The fact that you can find these people who are willing to tell the truth is amazing. Of course Putin attempts to intimidate and terrify or kill anyone in his way yet you consistently get these amazing interviews. You and your guests represent the highest form of journalism.

[@SiliconCurtain]

👍 most are operating from outside Russia- but nonetheless take on considerable risk in criticising the regime.

[@joeyfotofr]

Yuri Felshtinsky deserves to be on a short list of contemporary commentators on Russia, who understand Russia. Thank you Silicon Curtain for giving Yuri a platform to share his comprehension of the pestilence that is Poutine's Russia...jt

[@sumiland6445]

The number of Russian related deaths of wealthy Russian business owners is staggering.

[@mattocean9121]

This was a very interesting film, thanks

[@5ty717]

Very good

[@shaiaheyes2c41]

I hope Yuri can come back. Do you know if "Blowing up Russia" is out of print, or simply sold out? People are re-selling it for inflated prices right now.

[@SiliconCurtain]

I don’t know. Shame. It’s a good book.

[@shaiaheyes2c41]

@@SiliconCurtain Yuri Felshtinsky's book "From Red Terror to Mafia State" is "out of stock" too.

[@aaahus4836]

Thanks very good this

[@alinsoar]

Thanks. Would you mind thinking about doing some interview about the influence of Russia in USA ? For example, about Musk's plans to allow Russian propaganda channels behind the "liberty of speech of the freed bird" or about the infiltrated KGB services in churches in USA, everywhere.

[@SiliconCurtain]

If I can find experts on these topics, I will invite them! Future episodes will look at propaganda in China and the Middle East too!

[@alinsoar]

@@SiliconCurtain Hi, one of the experts on this topic was Ion Mihai Pacepa who died of Covid recently, but he had a collaborator, researcher of history, collaborator in his work of documenting the KGB internals. You can find his collaborators, one of them being en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_J._Rychlak

[@bjrnhjortshjandersen1286]

It really is Games of Thrones....so sinister it seems unreal.

[@geoffsimpkins7650]

I think it would be illustrative to graph per capita incomes/living standards of former USSR and Warsaw Pact states from 1946 to the present, taking particular notice of the changes after 1991. The rapid changes to former Soviet states and vassals to double ( minimum) above the Russian per capita incomes and modernization of entire infrastructures should serve as a complete humiliation of the Russkiy Mir and show it as a cancer retarding all it touches.

[@geoffsimpkins7650]

In Russia, is there a difference between organized crime and state security, or is it truly synonymous?

[@ginemginem]

Criminal organisations are just street level tools of state security. They're used as informants, brownshirts, as revenue streams, and as one of the vectors of access to black markets.

[@stevebeer3324]

How do you think Putins chef aka founder of Wagner group founded his empire of assassins and murderers? M anaged to leave prison and in short measure be running top restaurants in St Petersburg, serving meals to heads of state? From a start on a Burger stall? By the way access to cheap meat was also a business controlled by KGB/FSB gangsters. Got the picture?

[@jamespetyrycia4214]

Are they(FSB) causing people jump out out of windows unwilling?

[@SiliconCurtain]

Russians are not stupid people - I doubt many willingly toss themselves out of windows…

[@jamespetyrycia4214]

@@SiliconCurtain They had help!

[@ravindersingh-uk5xf]

Very nice speakers u have on . I think your camera Is a bit too close to u .

[@davidb6576]

A prescient conversation, looking at it from early July, 2023. With Wagner now in Belarus, and putin having moved tactical nukes into the country recently, the reality of the Z-Plus Wagner commanders using them is frighteningly possible. I hope I don't come back to this comment some time later saying "yes, that happened"...

[@ChuckAmadi]

Hope Georgia are doing their homework.

[@williambunting803]

That was an excellent talk. It adds up well. I had a few thoughts. One is are the Oligarch super yachts utilised as a “spy” navy? I had the thought as US Republicans were doing unbelievable ideological spins on the spot whether Trump was using the Skripal’s high profile assassination attempt as an “if you don’t fall into line with my plan, did you see what happened to the Skripals, this could happen to you at a moments notice”, as its obvious that Trump wants to be Russia version 2? And the third thing I want to know is does Yuri think that there was any message to Trump in the football handed to him by Putin on the world stage?

[@SiliconCurtain]

I think it’s more perniciousness than this. The oligarchs bought their way into our societies and we’re able to persuade the elites not to clean up our financial markets and not to impose sanctions on Russia. They earned their millions while saving Russian state billions …

[@williambunting803]

@@SiliconCurtain I’ve said many times that our best defense against the conservative march to autocracy is to create a “super PAC” for all of the normal people to donate $100 per year into called “In The Public Interest”, where the fund is to bribe the politicians we vote in to office to do the job we elected them to do, in OUR interest. When you look at the sums politicians sell out for, they are pretty cheap. For the US that would be 200,000,000 times $100 to yield $20 billion, which should be more than enough to get some control back.

[@bikramsen9952]

Reminds me of Pakistan and its one security organisation called the ISI

[@LewisSkeeter]

Coronate? Not English. (Great video. Thanks.)

[@zapfanzapfan]

How many of the bankers, oil-execs etc are actually FSB? How many of the yacht owners? So, confiscate all of it.

[@awatsycamorefarmnearsiouxf7526]

When Ukraine wins, the war, Siberia would declare their independence too

[@robertmccarrick8410]

Gotta speak up or increase the sound

[@Ohunene234]

What can make a nation great is knowing God, the development of the country , great peace and the well being of her citizens.

[@SiliconCurtain]

Er, no.

[@checktheplaylist101]

“When Stalin was premier, he did not run the Soviet Union, the KGB did, and the Jews ran the KGB.” -interview with SERGEI Khrushchev - son of Nikita