In late 1999, as the frail Boris Yeltsin searched for a successor among the ranks of the security services, a bleak joke circulated in Russia. “Why are communists better than the KGB?” went the setup. “Because the communists will scold you, but the KGB will hang you.”
It was less a joke than a warning. Unfortunately, most Russians didn’t get it.
That year, Vladimir Putin — a KGB man now leading its successor agency, the Federal Security Service — was appointed prime minister. Soon after, he allegedly quipped to his former FSB colleagues, “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished.” This, too, should have set off alarm bells — not least because Putin had long admired Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief who had, for two long years, ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist.