Read the full essay here.
The origins of today’s Russian intelligence services suggest that their transition to real democratic civilian control—which has yet to happen—is likely to be anything but easy. While the last months of the Soviet Union’s existence saw the splitting of the KGB into several agencies, there has been no basic change in either the personnel of the state-security establishment or the its broad scope of responsibilities. Nothing about the underlying situation will change until the Russian people face the malign role that spies and secret police responsible only to some supreme leader have played in their country’s history.