"This book explores the mythology woven around the Soviet secret police and the Russian cult of state security that has emerged from it"--

In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse. The security services have played a central -- and often mysterious -- role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.

This book explores the mythology woven around the Soviet secret police and the Russian cult of state security that has emerged from it. Tracing the history of this mythology from the Soviet period through to its revival in contemporary post-Soviet Russia, the volume argues that successive Russian regimes have sponsored a âe~cultâe(tm) of state security, whereby security organs are held up as something to be worshipped. The book approaches the history of this cult as an ongoing struggle to legitimise and sacralise the Russian state security apparatus, and to negotiate its violent and dramatic past. It explores the ways in which, during the Soviet period, this mythology sought to make the existence of the most radically intrusive and powerful secret police in history appear âe~naturalâe(tm). It also documents the contemporary post-Soviet re-emergence of the cult of state security, examining the ways in which elements of the old Soviet mythology have been revised and reclaimed as the cornerstone of a new state ideology. The Russian cult of state security is of ongoing contemporary relevance, and is crucial for understanding not only the tragedies of Russiaâe(tm)s twentieth-century history, but also the ambiguities of Russiaâe(tm)s post-Soviet transition, and the current struggle to define Russiaâe(tm)s national identity and future development. The book examines the ways in which contemporary Russian life continues to be shaped by the legacy of Soviet attitudes to state-society relations, as expressed in the reconstituted cult of state security. It investigates the shadow which the figure of the secret policeman continues to cast over Russia today. The book will be of great interest to students of modern Russian history and politics, intelligence studies and security studies, as well as readers with an interest in the KGB and its successors.

This is an anthology of papers presented at a conference titled "Russian National Security: Perceptions, Policies, and Prospects" conducted from 4-6 December 2000. The book organizes the papers into six sections - The Russian National Security Community, Russia and Europe, Russian Policy Towards the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russia and Asia, Russia and the United States, and Russia's Military Transformation.

This book examines the evolution of Russia’s security policy under Putin in the 21st century, using a critical security studies approach. Drawing on critical approaches to security the book investigates the interrelationship between the internal-external nexus and the politics of (in)security and regime-building in Putin’s Russia. In so doing, it evaluates the way that this evolving relationship between state identities and security discourses framed the construction of individual security policies, and how, in turn, individual issues can impact on the meta-discourses of state and security agendas. To this end, the (de)securitisation discourses and practices towards the issue of Chechnya are examined as a case study. In so doing, this study has wider implications for how we read Russia as a security actor through an approach that emphasises the importance of taking into account its security culture, the interconnection between internal/external security priorities and the dramatic changes that have taken place in Russia’s conceptions of itself, national and security priorities and conceptualisation of key security issues, in this case Chechnya. These aspects of Russia’s security agenda remain somewhat of a neglected area of research, but, as argued in this book, offer structuring and framing implications for how we understand Russia’s position towards security issues, and perhaps those of rising powers more broadly. This book will be of much interest to students of Russian security, critical security studies and IR.

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH RUSSIA’S 21ST CENTURY TSAR Vladimir V. Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man’s riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt. Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin’s often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection. In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has traveled throughout Russia to report on modern Russian politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power, and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin.