AD Number: ADA366081
Subject Categories: GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL SCIENCE MILITARY
INTELLIGENCE Corporate Author: NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA
Title: Russian Intelligence and Security Services: An Indicator of
Democratic Reform Descriptive Note: Master's thesis Personal Authors:
Muldoon, Thomas C. Report Date: JUN 1999 Pages: 92 PAGES Monitor
Acronym: XB Monitor Series: NPS Descriptors: *INTELLIGENCE,
*INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, *WESTERN SECURITY(INTERNATIONAL), USSR, THESES, RUSSIA,
TRANSITIONS, SECURITY PERSONNEL, COMMUNISM, DEMOCRACY. Identifiers: KGB,
RUSSIAN FEDERATION Abstract: Russia is nominally a democracy, but less than
ten years ago it was a communist state. This thesis gauges the level of Russian
democratic reform by analyzing the nature of its intelligence and
security services. The autonomous and penetrative nature of the KGB clearly
reflected the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union. Now that Russia is a
democracy, it follows that the current intelligence and security forces
should be much less powerful than the KGB had been. Currently, the crises of
regional militant nationalism, corruption, organized crime, and economic turmoil
have allowed the services to retain a higher level of power than one would
expect in a democratic state. Executive, legislative, and judicial oversight is
dubious. Current laws allow the services to conduct penetrative investigations
and surveillance. These same crises have created the conditions for a
demoralized and underpaid security intelligence apparatus that is
susceptible to corruption and freelancing. The conclusion of this thesis is that
Russia's intelligence and security services are indeed less powerful than
in the Soviet era, but they still are not appropriate for a liberal, democratic
state. Russia still has not made the full transition to democracy.
Limitation Code: APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE Source Code: 251450
Citation Creation Date: 04 AUG 1999
