Chekists vs. the State Department

After twelve years of teaching political science at a university, I unexpectedly received an invitation to the United States from the State Department’s political section. That was how the FSB and the U.S. State Department unexpectedly crossed paths in my life: counterintelligence officers also wanted to know why I had been invited to Washington and what connections I had with Americans.

Tula, 2016–2017

I had been teaching political science at the university for twelve years when I received an invitation to travel to the United States as part of a small group of Russian political scientists and sociologists for a professional exchange program.

I had never applied for anything. The political section of the U.S. State Department found me on its own — among the winners of a nationwide competition on electoral law organized by Russia’s Central Election Commission in 2015–2016.

At least, that was how it was explained to me by an official from the political section who came to Tula to meet me and perhaps to make sure I was reasonably sane.

He spoke Russian fluently. Our conversation went smoothly, and the invitation was approved. In September of that year, Russia’s Central Election Commission presented diplomas to the winners of the competition.

My meeting with an American impressed more than just me. It also caught the attention of the counterintelligence department at the Tula regional office of the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service. They wanted a meeting of their own and to know exactly what had made me interesting to the U.S. State Department.

That was how I met an officer named Gryzlov.

In Russia, security-service officers have long been called Chekists, after the Cheka — the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission established in December 1917. The modern FSB considers itself part of that institutional lineage. Other terms include gebeshniki, derived from the KGB, and the more contemptuous collective term gebnya.

But Chekist is the most common term. The officers themselves use it, often with pride.

They are much less fond of gebnya.

Naturally, that is the word I prefer.

Gryzlov, our resident gebeshnik, had a cozy office on the ground floor of the university’s main building. He was the university’s Chekist: he monitored faculty behavior, kept an eye on international contacts, and held “preventive conversations” about the hostility of the “collective West.”

He seemed particularly fond of having those conversations with young female lecturers from the foreign languages department.

Gryzlov wanted to know why the Americans had invited me specifically and what connections I had with the U.S. State Department.

I had no answers he was likely to enjoy.

Eventually, frustrated, he began trying to persuade me not to go.

He warned that American intelligence services might plant drugs on me and have me sent to prison so I could later be exchanged for a prisoner held by Russia. He assured me that I might be forced to spy for the United States after being falsely accused of a serious crime.

At first, I found his attention amusing.

Then I found it boring.

I had read Alexander Solzhenitsyn and had a fairly good idea of the Chekist style. It had hardly changed since the Stalinist repressions.

I was not tortured, of course.

Not yet.

But everything else was there: the quiet voice, the friendly tone, the solicitous warnings, the performance of concern, the scanning gaze, and the insistence that enemies were all around us.

A few days later, it became clear that Gryzlov had failed at his assignment.

Another Chekist called me.

His name was Alexander Kuznetsov.

We had been lovers for a while when we were students. I was sixteen; he was three years older. One day he left for an archaeological field trip and slept with one of his classmates.

We broke up and never saw each other again.

And now he was calling me, inviting me to a café for an “important conversation.”

I already knew what it would be about, but I agreed out of unhealthy curiosity.

It turned out that he was now an FSB major. Counterintelligence.

Kuznetsov sat across from me with a serious expression, chewing a croissant and washing it down with tea that had gone cold.

“I came to warn you. As a friend,” he said.

Where had I managed to acquire so many friends in the gebnya?

He proceeded through essentially the same circuit of threats and warnings as Gryzlov.

I quickly became bored.

“Sasha, this is all very interesting,” I said after about twenty minutes. “But this meeting is dragging on. Are you going to arrest me? If not, I’m going home.”

“There are no grounds to arrest you at the moment,” he replied, hesitating. “But we can invite you in for a conversation somewhere other than a café. At the Directorate.”

“So what exactly are we doing today?” He was beginning to irritate me. “Do you at least have handcuffs? I’m into that sometimes.”

Kuznetsov froze, put his cup down, and looked at me calmly.

“You haven’t lost your sense of fun,” he observed. “I don’t have handcuffs, but I can get a pair from any police officer on the street.”

“Alexander, you’re an FSB major. Running around town asking cops to lend you their handcuffs hardly seems dignified. They’ll laugh at you.”

Apparently, he understood that the conversation was over.

Once upon a time, Kuznetsov had been a history student. He studied hard, practiced karate, and wrote me love letters in Old Russian.

Then he became a Chekist.

Life is merciless.

A surprising number of future FSB officers studied in the history department. They emphasized their institutional continuity with the Cheka and the KGB, and they were proud of it. In the courtyard of the Tula FSB headquarters stood a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka.

December 20 is observed in Russia as Security Agencies Workers’ Day — commonly known as Chekist Day.

April 18 marks the anniversary of the founding of the Tula provincial Cheka.

For decades, these institutions terrorized the country, devastated intellectual and scientific life, dispossessed peasants, and executed political prisoners. Today they are feared and revered at the same time.

Russians have grown accustomed to violence.

For some young people, service in the security apparatus carries a romantic aura of power and impunity — membership in a special caste.

The Chekists’ bloody record was hardly a secret to history students. They knew it from lectures and textbooks.

And some of them liked what they knew.

Recruitment was convenient.

The FSB headquarters stood directly across the street from the university campus.

I often saw Chekists at city events, party meetings, press conferences, and public lectures. They always worked in plain clothes, but I could easily pick them out of a crowd.

They carried with them the chill of basement interrogation rooms.

I could feel their gaze — the way people sometimes sense that someone is watching them and instinctively turn around.

The typical Chekist, as I came to recognize him, was of average height, thin, with closely cropped hair and narrow features.

But the most distinctive thing was the gaze.

Empty and cold.

It seemed to pass straight through you, somewhere beyond you, toward an internal manual on how the perfect Chekist was supposed to behave.

Among the Chekists I knew personally, many had grown up without their fathers or with stepfathers. Perhaps it was nothing more than coincidence, but I encountered this pattern often enough that I could no longer ignore it.

Orphaned Chekists have a way of making orphans of others.

Two Chekists tried to talk me out of going to the United States.

The university administration refused to authorize the trip as official university travel.

That only made the journey more appealing.