Russian Roulette

Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

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Title: Russian Roulette
Author: Sam Vaknin

Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4779] [This file was first
posted on July 3, 2003]
Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RUSSIAN
ROULETTE ***

(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.

Russian Roulette
Russia's Economy
In Putin's Era
1st EDITION
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska
Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2003
First published by United Press International - UPI
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.
(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or
reproduced in any manner without written permission from:
Lidija Rangelovska - write to:
[email protected] or to
[email protected]
Visit the Author Archive of Dr. Sam Vaknin in "Central Europe
Review":
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Visit my United Press International (UPI) Article Archive

ISBN: 9989-929-31-9
http://samvak.tripod.com/guide.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html
http://economics.cjb.net
http://samvak.tripod.com/after.html
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
C O N T E N T S
I. The Security Apparatus
II. The Energy Sector
III. Financial Services
IV. The Russian Devolution - The Regions
V. Agriculture
VI. Russia as a Creditor
VII. Russia's Space Industry
VIII. Russia's Vodka Wars
IX. Let My People Go
X. Fimaco Wouldn't Die
XI. The Chechen Theatre Ticket
XII. Russia's Israeli Oil Bond
XIII. Russia's Idled Spies
XIV. Russia's Middle Class
XV. Russia in 2003
XVI. Russia Straddles the Euro-Atlantic Divide
XVII. Russia's Stealth Diplomacy
XVIII. Russia's Second Empire
XIX. The Author
XX. About "After the Rain"
The Security Apparatus
Shabtai Kalmanovich vanished from London in late 1980's. He
resurfaced in Israel to face trial for espionage. He was convicted and
spent years in an Israeli jail before being repatriated to Russia. He was
described by his captors as a mastermind, in charge of an African KGB
station.
In the early 1970's he even served as advisor (on Russian immigration)
to Israel's Iron Lady, Golda Meir. He then moved to do flourishing
business in Africa, in Botswana and then in Sierra Leone, where his

company, LIAT, owned the only bus operator in Freetown. He traded
diamonds, globetrotted flamboyantly with an entourage of dozens of
African chieftains and their mistresses, and fraternized with the corrupt
elite, President Momoh included. In 1986-7 he even collaborated with
IPE, a London based outfit, rumored to have been owned by former
members of the Mossad and other paragons of the Israeli defense
establishment (including virtually all the Israelis implicated in the
ill-fated Iran-Contras affair).
Being a KGB officer was always a lucrative and liberating proposition.
Access to Western goods, travel to exotic destinations, making new
(and influential) friends, mastering foreign languages, and doing some
business on the side (often with one's official "enemies" and
unsupervised slush funds) - were all standard perks even in the 1970's
and 1980's. Thus, when communism was replaced by criminal anarchy,
KGB personnel (as well as mobsters) were the best suited to act as
entrepreneurs in the new environment.
They were well traveled, well connected, well capitalized, polyglot,
possessed of management skills, disciplined, armed to the teeth, and
ruthless. Far from being sidetracked, the security services rode the
gravy train. But never more so than now.
January 2002. Putin's dour gaze pierces from every wall in every office.
His obese ministers often discover a sudden sycophantic propensity for
skiing (a favorite pastime of the athletic President). The praise heaped
on him by the servile media (Putin made sure that no other kind of
media survives) comes uncomfortably close to a Central Asian
personality cult. Yet, Putin is not in control of the machinery that
brought him to the pinnacle of power, under-qualified as he was. This
penumbral apparatus