New Nobility

In this riveting investigation, two intrepid journalists who have covered Russia's security services for more than a decade penetrate the secret world of the FSB to illustrate how the security services have become, in the worlds of former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Russia's 'new nobility.' Andr [...]
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In this riveting investigation, two intrepid journalists who have covered Russia's security services for more than a decade penetrate the secret world of the FSB to illustrate how the security services have become, in the worlds of former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Russia's 'new nobility.' Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan lead us behind closed doors to illustrate how the security services, abetted by their most famous alumnus - Vladimir Putin, first as president and later as prime minister - were given unprecedented license, and emerged a more shadowy (although powerful) force than the Soviet KGB. The Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry our assassinations overseas. Unlike its predecessor, Russia's modern security service operates independent of parliamentary oversight, beyond public accountability. The security services have played a central - and often mysterious - role at key turning points in Russia during the tumultuous years following the Soviet collapse: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya, and the Beslan school massacre.The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But as "The New Nobility" illustrates with alarming clarity, while the West has refocused its gaze away from the Kremlin to more immediate terrorist threats in the post September 11th era, the successors to the KGB have evolved as a ruthless, violently powerful force - inextricably woven into modern Russia's fundamental makeup.