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November 18, 2006
KGB's New Legacy - Russia's Top Business School
we come up with better marketing strategy!"
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The KGB's new legacy -- Russia's top business school?
Former spies becoming senior executives
MOSCOW -- The appointment of a former KGB agent to a top post at Russian energy giant OAO Gazprom this week highlights the growing roles former spies have in the country's business world, analysts say.
"Since 2003, there has been a tendency of placing former KGB people in the economy," said Olga Krishtanovskaya, who heads up a study centre on Russia's elites at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Valery Golubyev, who was promoted to become Gazprom's deputy chief executive officer on Wednesday, is one of three out of the 17 members of the management board of the state-controlled company to have worked for the KGB.
Like President Vladimir Putin, who worked as a KGB agent in Germany and later became head of Russia's FSB secret service, Mr. Golubyev also worked for the mayor's office in the northern city of Saint Petersburg in the 1990s.
Gazprom's two other ex-KGB board members, according to their official biographies published on the company's website, are Sergei Ushakov, another deputy CEO, and Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the legal department.
But "many" other employees of Gazprom, which is one of the world's biggest companies and has been taking an ever greater role in European and world markets, also come from the KGB, Ms. Krishtanovskaya said.
"They don't necessarily highlight that in their biographies," she added.
For Yulia Latynina, a political commentator, the new appointment at Gazprom is a sign that the Kremlin is moving to undermine potential critical voices in the business world.
"The most interesting thing about this phenomenon is not so much that so-and-so is from the KGB, but that the authorities are slowly getting rid of anyone not considered as their own," Ms. Latynina told AFP.
Alexander Ryazanov, whom Mr. Golubyev replaces, was seen as too independent.
The Vedomosti business daily yesterday quoted a top Gazprom manager as saying Mr. Ryazanov had "too independent a position on many questions and didn't consistently carry out the leadership's orders."
Ms. Krishtanovskaya agreed that the tendency in Russia in recent years has been towards ever greater centralization of the economy under the watchful eye of the Kremlin.
"Under Putin, there has been a reimposition of a centralizing system, with the Kremlin controlling everything, including the economy," said Ms. Krishtanovskaya, who has written about the growing power of former military officers and spies.
"This control is not 100 per cent like in Soviet times but it concerns the major strategic companies, like Gazprom or Rosneft," another state-controlled firm that is the second biggest oil producer in Russia, Ms. Krishtanovskaya added.
The key figure in this control system, the analyst said, is Igor Sechin, a former KGB agent who is now both deputy head of the presidential administration and chairman of the board of OAO Rosneft.
In another possible sign of the rising influence of the intelligence community, Mr. Sechin hired a young adviser in September, Andrei Patrushev -- son of FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.
Wild Thing's comment....
Sometimes it feels as if the whole last 15 years were vanishing and we are morphing into the 1970's and 1980's! Between this and then the Dems and their calling up McGovern.
Posted by Wild Thing at November 18, 2006 12:55 AM
Comments
You and me too, WT ~
I was so hoping we were over all this and that we had learned from history. Apparently, some of us skipped that class....
Posted by: yankeemom at November 18, 2006 10:39 AM
Time for a new Cold War already? The Dems haven't surrendered this one yet.
Posted by: raz0r at November 18, 2006 02:22 PM
The Russians don't have close to the economy to compete in another Cold War. They are quickly becoming peons on the world stage, remaining relevant only because the have nukes. As far as the Dems go, the Cold War was begun by a Democrat and the torch was carried by many form both parties. Claim victory if you want but it was a long, drawn-out, bipartisan process.
Posted by: Talmadge East at November 19, 2006 12:09 AM
Yankeemom, good way to put it..."Apparently, some of us skipped that class".
Posted by: Wild Thing at November 19, 2006 01:57 AM
razOr, yes and they sure do love to surrender the stinky dems.
Posted by: Wild Thing at November 19, 2006 01:57 AM
