Don't Mention the KGB!

Next month, April 8–9 and 12, the Cato Institute is hosting a conference in Moscow and St. Petersburg entitled “A Liberal Agenda for the New Century: A Global Perspective” and co-sponsored with The Institute of Economic Analysis and The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, will give the opening address. My guess is that he was invited to speak in order to provide legitimacy in Russian eyes and so boost attendance at the conference. Why else invite the Autocrat of all the Russias to address a Cato conference? What is remarkable, however, is how Cato describes or, more accurately, doesn’t describe the Russian president. “Putin graduated from the law department of the Leningrad State University in 1975. After graduation he worked at the Foreign Intelligence Service and in Germany. After his return to Leningrad, Putin became an aide to the vice-president of the Leningrad State University in charge of international issues.”

The reader would not realize from this that the Foreign Intelligence Service was a branch of the KGB for which Putin worked for sixteen years. Perhaps we shouldn’t expect Cato to provide this sort of detail in this context except that even his official biography explains that “After graduation, Mr. Putin was assigned to work in the KGB. From 1985 to 1990, he worked in East Germany.”

As I fully expected, the irony is that the public broadcasters National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation publish more complete biographies of Vladimir Putin than does the Cato Institute. The NPR website carries a detailed account of his career in the KGB. There we are informed that in 1975 he “graduates from the law department of Leningrad State University” and “joins the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence Service.” In 1985–90 he “is assigned to work for the KGB in East Germany” and in 1990 “becomes assistant rector for international affairs at Leningrad State University.” Finally, on August 20, 1991 he “resigns from the KGB” but later, July 1998–August 1999, he “serves as director of the Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the KGB.”

Or the inquiring reader can turn to the account on the BBC website. I should point out that the BBC is the organization which Tom G. Palmer, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, demonizes as the Ba'athist Broadcasting Corporation. He claims that it is “afraid to assert the universal value of freedom and surrender[s] when faced with renewed anti-Semitism, hate-mongering, violent attacks on the innocent, and a frontal assault on civilization itself.” (See his comments for January 17 and 25, 2004) I must say I find this a bit overwrought, to say the least. Indeed, all this talk about “renewed anti-Semitism, hate-mongering, violent attacks on the innocent, and a frontal assault on civilization itself” reminds me of nothing so much as the KGB itself. And certainly the BBC is a more reliable source of information about Putin’s career than that available at the Cato website. The BBC states:

“Born in Leningrad, six months before the death of Stalin, the young Putin experienced a poverty-stricken childhood tempered by a good education. He developed lifelong passions for judo and spy novels, and first applied to the KGB at the age of 17. When they told him to go away and come back with a degree, he complied with an efficiency that would later serve him well.

“Golden boy

“Putin’s duties for the agency, including economic espionage in Germany, brought him swift promotions and a reputation for integrity. But the downfall of the Soviet Union brought him back to his hometown where, as deputy mayor, he pursued reform and eventually to Moscow, where he became the Kremlin’s golden boy.

“Chosen, to great surprise, by Boris Yeltsin as his successor, Putin used his KGB training, plus his own discipline and common sense, in a series of jobs that included running the security service.”

The lesson I draw from all this is that you’re better off visiting NPR or the BBC than the Cato Institute – at least when it comes to checking the credentials of the criminal class.

March 9, 2004