Spymaster, page 44
Chubais clearly was skeptical about why such a high-ranking KGB officer would want to join the democratic movement and speak at the upcoming convention. I briefly told him about my career in the KGB, explained my motives for wanting to address Democratic Platform, and outlined the substance of my talk on what needed to be done to break the awesome power of the KGB. By the end of our walk, he seemed convinced I was genuine. He said I could speak at the conference, though we both agreed that no one was to know of my speech in advance, otherwise the KGB might try to prevent me from appearing on the grounds that I was divulging state secrets.
As I sat in the October Theater with people streaming in all around me, I was nervous and excited. The crowd slowly quieted down, and the procession of speakers (we Russians love a good political speech) began. After the third orator, someone from Democratic Platform took the microphone to announce that a former KGB general was now going to address the group about reforming the secret police agency. The audience went wild. They had no idea who I was, but they stood up and applauded thunderously, searching the room for this convert from the KGB. No high-ranking KGB officer had ever stayed in the country and taken on the agency, and the thought that someone of my stature and experience was coming over to the democratic side was enough to send the audience into rapture. Somehow I made my way to the stage, and when I looked out at the crowd—still on their feet, cheering and applauding—my heart leapt. It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. Finally I was free, and assaulting the KGB head-on.
The audience fell silent. Struggling to steady my voice, I told the gathering, “Some people may think that I have jumped on the democratic bandwagon with evil intentions. I understand that there may be suspicions in your minds, but let me tell you that you’re wrong. I am from the KGB. I worked in that organization for more than thirty years, and I want to tell all of you how the KGB works against the best interests of democratic forces in this country.”
There was utter silence in the hall as I talked about myself and explained why the KGB must be radically reformed and the number of agents drastically reduced:
“We cannot begin a serious restructuring of society until we rid ourselves of the restraints imposed by an organization which has penetrated every sphere of our lives, which interferes with all aspects of state life, political life, the economy, science, arts, religion, even sports. Today, just as ten or twenty years ago, the hand of the KGB is everywhere. And any talk of perestroika without reforming the KGB is nothing but a lie. All the much-ballyhooed changes in the KGB are cosmetic, a disguise on the ugly face of the Stalin-Brezhnev era. In fact, all the elements of the old dictatorship are still in place. The chief assistant and handmaiden of the Communist Party remains the KGB. In order to secure genuine changes in our country, this structure of violence and falsehood must be dismantled.”
My brief speech was greeted with roars of approval, and again the crowd was on its feet. I could scarcely make my way off stage as dozens of Soviet and foreign journalists attending the conference crowded around, peppering me with questions about my life in the KGB and soliciting my views on every conceivable subject. KGB officers had defected before, but no officer, even in the Gorbachev era, had remained in his homeland and launched such an attack on the secret police. My criticism of the KGB was not terribly new and certainly what I said was no secret to those in the hall or in the West. But the fact that I, the youngest general in the history of the KGB and a former chief of foreign counterintelligence, was making these statements in the middle of Moscow, in broad daylight and to a conference of reformers . . . well, it was, by the standards of the times, a sensation.
I returned home that night exhausted but elated. I hadn’t known how I would be received by Democratic Platform, and the reaction was beyond my wildest dreams. I understood that I had embarked on an entirely new path in life and was being accepted into a community of people with whom I could finally feel comfortable.
The weeks after that first public appearance are a blur, a time filled to overflowing with interviews and speeches and meetings. I was, for a brief time, the hero of the democratic movement, and everyone, from foreign journalists to leaders of the reform camp, beat a path to my door. I was invited to the Kuzbass coal region in Siberia, where miners were preparing to go on strike. I met with the miners and addressed a street rally of thousands of people in Novokuznetsk. The theme of that speech, which was received enthusiastically, would be repeated frequently in the months to come: The fledgling democratic rights we had already won could be destroyed if we didn’t bring the KGB under control.
I spoke at mass rallies in Moscow, addressing a crowd of several hundred thousand people at one of the biggest pro-democracy demonstrations ever held in the Soviet capital. As I surveyed the cheering throng just outside the Kremlin walls, I could scarcely believe what was happening: A KGB general was standing before a sea of humanity in Manezh Square calling for the dismantling of the KGB. It was a heady time, and the entire country seemed united in destroying the old Communist system. We thought that just by nudging Gorbachev a bit farther to the left we could decisively rout the old guard and bring real democracy to the Soviet Union. In our naïveté, we didn’t realize that the reserves of the totalitarian state were far from exhausted and were in fact regrouping and preparing to counterattack. The crackdown in Lithuania in January 1991 and the coup in Moscow the following August would be the result.
My phone rang nonstop as some callers offered encouragement or sought advice, while others would scream that I was a traitor and threaten my life. In my building, an old woman, the widow of a KGB general, would attack me every time she saw me. “You CIA man!” she would hiss. “Traitor!” This went on for quite some time, until one day, unable to listen to her any longer, I barked, “You old bitch! Get out of here before I break your neck!” I had never in my life spoken to an elderly person like that. But there’s always a first time, and in this case it felt great. She never bothered me again.
Within days of my speech, the inevitable KGB attack began. The KGB press office released a statement saying, in part, “The KGB is going to have its say about Kalugin, who he is and what he stands for.” Then on July 1, two weeks after the speech, Gorbachev issued a decree stripping me of my rank of major general, revoking all my KGB awards, and cutting off my pension. The KGB hauled in numerous Soviet reporters who had printed interviews with me, and demanded to see their notes and listen to their tape recordings.
At first I was shocked that Gorbachev, whom I had once viewed as a bold reformer, would take such a step. But as the heat was turned up, I realized that Gorbachev had become a timid reformer and had no intention of tackling the problem of the KGB. He was under enormous pressure from Kryuchkov and others in the security services, and he wasn’t about to alienate them by coming to my defense. Gorbachev was undeniably a great figure who helped set our country free, but his actions against me were typical, and showed that as time wore on he became increasingly timid, a man of half steps and half-baked reforms. Gorbachev believed he could outsmart Kryuchkov and the KGB by going along with them for a while and then ultimately exerting control over the agency. But as the months wore on in 1990 and early 1991, the Soviet leader grew more reluctant to stand up to the hard-liners surrounding him, which emboldened reactionary forces in the KGB and the Communist Party. He became, in effect, their hostage. By August 1991, the hard-liners thought they could depose Gorbachev and that he would scarcely protest. Thankfully Gorbachev finally stood his ground.
About the time Gorbachev issued his decree stripping me of my rank and pension, my friends in the KGB told me that Kryuchkov had pulled my medical records from agency files. I was trying not to be paranoid, but the only reason I could see for his move was foul play. Perhaps, as had been done with Solzhenitsyn and other troublemakers, the KGB was planning to drug or poison me. I had no idea. But in my speeches and interviews, I always mentioned the KGB’s “special operations” and efforts to physically harm dissidents, and said that if anything happened to me, it would be clear who was responsible.
Later I had a call from the KGB medical clinic, and my physician told me that Kryuchkov wanted her to fabricate documents that I was mentally unstable and needed psychiatric treatment. She refused.
“If a brick should happen to fall on my head, I feel certain you will know who the culprit is,” I told people. Ludmilla was worried about my safety. Meanwhile, I operated on the principle that the more visible I was, the more difficult it would be for the KGB to do me harm.
The KGB also launched a bitter attack on me in the press. The rather liberal Leningrad newspaper Smena published a full-page article which said I was still working for the KGB and was part of an elaborate plot to infiltrate the democratic movement. The story was reprinted around the country. Pravda weighed in with an article saying I was an ambitious, incompetent officer, and hinting darkly that I may have worked for the CIA. The story clearly was written by the KGB, though Pravda said one of its correspondents (a man named V. Ivanov, the Russian equivalent of John Doe) penned the piece.
“We are not at all sorry that we got rid of Kalugin,” an anonymous KGB public relations person was quoted as saying. “It is very unfortunate when an officer embarks on the path of illegal actions, behaves immorally, or commits treason.”
Though most members of the democratic movement welcomed me, a minority remained hostile and suspicious. The most painful attack came from Yelena Bonner, wife of the physicist and human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov.
“It’s very strange,” Bonner said in an interview with a Soviet newspaper, “when KGB generals join the democratic movement.”
When Bonner criticized me a second time, I felt I had to respond.
“What is so strange?” I asked in a newspaper interview. “Her husband is the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. He was a total Stalinist in his time. Look at his diaries—he absolutely adored Stalin. But he changed, because he understood the fallacy of this system that might use the weapon of mass destruction he had invented. He also discarded Stalin, who had been his idol. Am I not allowed to change? Is this the right of Sakharov only? Everyone can change, and the sooner we do it the better. Maybe I was late, but I don’t feel ashamed. Better late than never.”
That summer, as I came to grips with my role as chief adversary of the KGB, an event took place in Russia that was to have far-reaching consequences. Boris Yeltsin, the blunt, bearish reformer, was elected chairman of the Russian parliament. I knew at the time that Yeltsin’s election, which he won by just a few votes, was a momentous occasion. But none of us knew just how crucial it would prove to be. Yeltsin’s victory in parliament cleared the way for him to become, in June 1991, the first popularly elected president in Russia’s thousand-year history. That victory, in turn, gave him the legitimacy to stand up to the August 1991 coup. After that, Yeltsin began the historic reforms that led the country to yet another stalemate.
As it turned out, my fate was linked with Yeltsin’s victory. Yeltsin’s opponent in the race for chairman of the Congress of People’s Deputies was a short, unpleasant, hard-line Communist named Ivan Polozkov. He was the Communist Party boss of the notoriously conservative Krasnodar region in southern Russia, and in order to run against Yeltsin, he had to give up one of the three legislative seats he held. Polozkov was a deputy in the regional legislature, the Russian parliament, and the Soviet parliament; he chose to forfeit his seat in the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. That left a vacancy in the Soviet parliament from Krasnodar, a vacancy I would be asked to fill.
The call that launched my political career came one evening in July 1990. The phone rang in our Moscow apartment, and when I picked up the receiver a man said through the static of a long-distance Soviet line, “I am sorry to disturb you . . . My name is Veligodsky. I am calling you at the request of our colleagues at a scientific research center in Krasnodar. We have decided to put your name forward as a candidate to fill the vacant seat in the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. We hope you’ll accept our offer.”
I was flabbergasted. I had barely begun my public crusade against the KGB, yet here I was being asked to run for a seat in the Soviet Union’s highest legislature. I didn’t know what to say. Under Soviet law, anyone from Russia was eligible to run for the Krasnodar seat. I hesitated for a few moments, but then realized what a terrific opportunity had come my way: I was being given a chance to venture into one of the Soviet Union’s Communist strongholds and capture the seat vacated by one of the staunchest Party members in the land. My candidacy would be a challenge to the old order—a system that had sought to publicly demolish my dignity as an officer and a human being by stripping me of the awards, rank, and pension I had earned in many years of honest work.
I couldn’t resist.
“Yes,” I said into the phone. “I agree!”
I had a week to get down to Krasnodar to be officially nominated and register for the election, which was scheduled for late August. I had passed through the region once years ago, and knew it to be a bizarre and backward place. Before the Russian Revolution, the Krasnodar region had been home to the fierce Kuban Cossacks. In the Soviet era, Krasnodar, with its relatively balmy southern climate, was one of the most fertile areas in the Soviet Union. And also one of the most corrupt. A long succession of Party officials in the region had been involved in bribery and black market deals. Some Party bosses had been arrested; others had escaped conviction. In any case, the Party apparatus was one of the shadiest and most powerful in Russia, perhaps because Krasnodar bordered on the unruly Caucasus Mountain region. I never heard accusations against Polozkov, whose seat in parliament I was seeking. But this man, who looked like a Russian version of Richard Nixon, was as zealous a Communist as there was in the Soviet Union.
As I prepared in mid-July to fly to Krasnodar, several incidents occurred which showed that the KGB had me under constant surveillance. Over the phone, I agreed with the editor of the progressive New Times magazine to meet with him and some German correspondents. No one followed me as I drove to the New Times offices, but when I arrived, several carloads of KGB surveillance men were waiting for me. They followed me and the Germans as we drove away after the interview.
On another occasion, while riding on the Moscow subway, I noticed a man who appeared to be following me. I got off at the Arbat station, and he stayed right with me as I walked out of the Metro. I decided to toy with him and picked up my pace, dodging in and out of the crowds along the Arbat pedestrian mall, then finally ducking into a nearby movie house. I looked through the window of the movie theater as the surveillance man stood near the Arbat frantically jerking his head left and right in an effort to spot me. I approached him from behind, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Hello, my friend. Here I am. What are you looking for? Perhaps next time you should be more diligent.”
He slowly backed away, a sheepish, almost frightened look on his face. I knew he was not alone, since KGB surveillance officers usually work in groups of twos or threes. As I boarded a bus on Kalinin Prospect, I glanced around and saw a woman who looked suspicious. I got off at a stop and she did too. Then, just before the bus moved out, I hopped back on board. She followed me. Knowing she was KGB, I continued on to the massive Hotel Rossiya just off Red Square. She followed me inside. The sprawling hotel is a maze of corridors and stairwells, and I led her through the labyrinth, hopping on and off elevators and striding down the long, dimly lit hallways. In a matter of minutes I lost her and walked out again.
On the day I was to fly to Krasnodar, a strange incident occurred that may have been a coincidence or may just as well have been the work of the KGB. When I arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, I was informed that the afternoon flight to Krasnodar had been delayed indefinitely. The deadline for candidates to register was the following morning, and if I failed to make it to Krasnodar, I would not be eligible to run for office. I decided to try to get on the evening flight, but was told the airplane was grounded with engine difficulty. Aeroflot said both flights would be delayed at least sixteen hours; I knew our Soviet air service was bad, but it seemed strange that on the day I had to get to Krasnodar both flights had been canceled. The KGB, after all, knew my plans, right down to the flight I was taking. I went to the airport administration building, where officials confirmed that all flights to Krasnodar were suspended. Not knowing what to do, I informed the airport bosses that I was not flying to Krasnodar. But I held on to my ticket and decided to wait at the airport just in case. Strangely enough, within forty minutes Aeroflot announced that the flights to Krasnodar had been reinstated, and I was on my way to southern Russia.
That afternoon, I strode into the auditorium of the Gas Processing Institute in Krasnodar. In front of me were the three hundred people who had decided to nominate me for the Soviet parliament. They applauded warmly as I entered, and cheered me after my twenty-minute speech. All but a handful voted to nominate me, and on July 17 the Krasnodar Electoral Committee accepted me as one of twenty-one candidates running for the seat vacated by Polozkov.
That same day, the USSR state prosecutor filed criminal charges against me, alleging I had divulged state secrets. Friends in the KGB told me that I had nearly been thrown in jail, but apparently Kryuchkov balked at the last moment because Gorbachev didn’t want to incur the displeasure of the West by taking such an antidemocratic step.
And so the campaign began. It was a grueling and inspiring ordeal, carried out in the brutal heat and dust of a southern Russian August. The campaign was my first real taste of the democratic process, and it was a heady experience. Nearly everywhere I went I was greeted by large, enthusiastic crowds who reveled in a chance to participate in the burial of the old regime and the creation of a new one. In those days, the Soviet people were united in their hatred of the Communist Party bosses who had made life for the masses squalid and joyless. Krasnodar may long have been a Communist Party stronghold, but in the summer of 1990 the Party’s once unassailable position was crumbling. On the surface, the power structures that had ruled Krasnodar and the Soviet Union were still in place, but in a little over a year, the old regime would be swept away forever. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the moves by the Krasnodar Party bosses and KGB to discredit me were the last, desperate gasps of a dying order.
