Russia’s FSB Increasingly Playing Ever More Roles Similar to Soviet Union’s KGB

Executive Summary:

• As Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to reimpose totalitarianism on Russia, the Federal Security Service (FSB) increasingly mirrors its Soviet predecessors, including rebuilding a network of camps some are calling “Gulag 2.0,” among other ways.
• The quiet revival of these other functions is likely to be even more important in terms of their impact on Russian society at home and how Moscow behaves abroad.
• This restored behemoth, given the FSB’s ideological flexibility and technical sophistication, may thus prove more dangerous than the KGB from which Putin himself sprung and cast a dark shadow on Russia’s future long after he leaves the scene.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to reimpose totalitarianism on Russia. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is increasingly playing the roles its Soviet predecessors did in the suppression of Russian society. Last week, Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two of the most distinguished investigators of the Russian security services, published an article gaining traction in Russian independent media in which they argued that “Russia’s FSB is working to build a new Gulag” (CEPA, June 23; Agentura.ru, June 24; The Moscow Times, June 25). Because many associate the Gulag more closely with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin than any other institution, their warning is attracting attention in Russia and abroad, far more than the series of steps the FSB has already taken, which have put in place much of the rest of Stalin’s system. These other moves are already having a significant impact on Russian society at home and Moscow’s behavior abroad. Perhaps even more seriously, however, this restored security behemoth, given the FSB’s ideological flexibility and technical sophistication, shows every sign of being even more dangerous than the Soviet security agencies from which Putin himself sprung, both now and in the future.

In their report, Soldatov and Borogan note that the Duma is set to pass three bills this month that will effectively revive the Gulag. One will allow the FSB to set up its own pretrial detention centers, something Moscow promised in the 1990s never to allow. A second directive instructs the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) to schedule “special carriages” that can be attached to regular trains to transport prisoners to the camps. A third gives the FSB “the power to investigate and punish in-house those who cause trouble within detention facilities”(CEPA, June 23; Agentura.ru, June 24; The Moscow Times, June 25). These steps, most of which formalize and extend powers that the FSB had previously arrogated to itself behind the scenes, are making the Russian security service again a law unto itself, with its own agenda that it presses its nominal master in the Kremlin to follow.

The restoration of the Gulag certainly marks an important turning point. It suggests that Moscow is planning for a major expansion in the number of Russians behind bars if not now, then when Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine ends. Both Soldatov and Borogan, along with other investigators, have, however, documented how the FSB has been reclaiming a variety of functions that the Committee for State Security (KGB) and earlier Soviet security agencies had previously played, in ways that merit close attention.

First, the FSB has promoted the idea that Western governments destroyed the Soviet Union rather than its collapse being the result of Moscow’s mistakes. This is a self-serving position that feeds the paranoia and policies of the Kremlin. At the same time, it has been granted more power to control the history of its own predecessors than perhaps any other Russian institution (Sakharov Review, July 25, 2024).

Second, the FSB has taken the lead in penetrating and controlling both traditional and new electronic media in the Russian Federation, using highly sophisticated means, and suborning and/or arresting those who express views different than the ones the Kremlin prefers. It has penetrated all opposition parties and religious groups (Verstka, August 22, 2022; Vazhniye Istorii, June 10).  

Third, the FSB is pushing for a new law, one that the Russian Education Ministry has cleared, that will give it the power to approve or disapprove any plans by Russian scholars to cooperate with their colleagues abroad. This step may presage efforts by the FSB to regain the power Soviet security services had to determine which Russians can travel abroad and which cannot, despite the popularity of among Russians of their constitutional right to make their own decisions in this context (Ekho Rossii, Mach 22, 2022; Vedomosti, February 3).

Fourth, the FSB has been behind the rebirth of punitive psychiatry in Russia, an echo of the horrific practices of the Soviet past (Radio Svoboda, October 16, 2022; see EDM, January 30).

Fifth, the FSB has become the most active player in Moscow’s nationality policy, controlling both the number of nations in Russia and who can or cannot be a member of each (Window on Eurasia, June 26). It has penetrated or closed ethnic organizations, and it has designated 172 of them “terrorist” groups and moved to close them (Mediazona, January 10; Govorit Nemoskva, January 11; Cherta, January 23).

Sixth, the FSB has promoted the use of prison labor to reduce both Russia’s dependence on migrants and the costs of developing and maintaining its own empire within the empire (Radio Svoboda, June 23, 2021).

Seventh, the FSB has expanded its activities abroad to penetrate and even take control of Russian émigré groups with operations that resemble those the Cheka and other Soviet security agencies did in the past (Government of Independent Tatarstan; Anti-imperial Block of Nations, March 25, 2024; Idel.Realii, December 9, 2024).

Eighth, since the start of the war against Ukraine, the FSB has taken the lead in pursuing deserters and monitoring the military, which the Kremlin has long feared might be used against it (Mediazona; Govorit Nemoskva, February 29, 2024; Sakharov Review, July 25, 2024).

Ninth, the FSB has behaved far more brutally toward prisoners under its direct control than have other Russian penal institutions. This pattern suggests that if it gains greater control over the prison population, an ever-greater number of Russians will suffer (Vertska, June 29, 2023).

This list could be expanded almost at will. Lying behind all of these developments, however, are two characteristics that set the FSB apart from its Soviet predecessors and make it even more dangerous now and in the future, according to Aleksandr Skobov, one the last surviving Soviet-era dissidents who is now behind bars for his penetrating criticism of the FSB (Kholod, May 16, 2023; Window on Eurasia, April 6, 2024). He argues that the FSB is especially dangerous because it is not limited by ideology as the KGB was and because its officers are animated by a desire to repress rather than to use repression to achieve any larger goal. Skobov also states that, having survived the demise of the Soviet Union and even flourished in the new Russia, the officers of the FSB are confident that they will be able to do the same in the future (Kholod, May 16, 2023). 

Today, Russian analysts are exploring what this will mean for Russia after Putin. None think the FSB will support liberalization, and most say its officers will support the continuation of an authoritarian, repressive, and aggressive Russia (Window on Eurasia, August 26, 2023). Such predictions seem likely, but Dmitry Khmelnitsky, a Russian investigator with the FSB, argues that its officers may surprise everyone not by becoming liberals, but by playing a role similar to that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) apparatus did in 1991. Some may stay with Moscow, while others may decide that their best course is to move in and dominate any regions or republics that achieve independence (Cyprus Daily News, August 2, 2023). Given the FSB’s desire to repress and its lack of ideological scruples, that possibility is also real. It could mean that the growth in the power of the FSB now may not help keep Russia together as Putin expects, but rather lead to its demise in what would likely be a far more violent way than the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.