Eastern Radar #6
Le Carré's incompetent spies, Siberia's death row, escaping Ukrainian prisons, Soviet radiological weapons and a lot more
Just two days passed between the death of British espionage author John Le Carré on December 12 and the stunning revelations made by Bellingcat about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, so it’s not too surprising that people would use the former to comment on the latter.
Two examples caught my eye: in an excellent op-ed for the Moscow Times, analyst Anna Arutunyan points to Le Carré as “the chronicler of the kind of spy we want to believe in: intelligent, competent, brooding,” as opposed to “the real one,” the FSB medical doctor pranked by Navalny into admitting to the entire poisoning operation on an unsecured phone line. Same tone on a podcast featuring Peter Pomerantsev about how “we've gone from Le Carre's Soviet superspies to goons washing y-fronts.”
This surprised me, because Le Carré actually excelled at depicting the kind of incompetent spies that reality brought us last year. Bellingcat’s investigation reminded me, in particular, of “The Looking Glass War,” Le Carré’s second book, published in 1965.
The Looking Glass War doesn’t tell the story of the epic battle of wits between Soviet spymaster “Karla” and its British counterpart George Smiley, Le Carré’s most famous characters. The story, rather, revolves around a small British intelligence agency at the onset of the Cold War. “The Departement” lost its relevance along with most of its budget, and is now desperate to regain the prestigious status it held during World War 2. It’s the story of a futile, entirely pointless spying operation that ends with a poorly-trained Polish agent sent to his death in Eastern Germany to find evidence of a missile launch site that never existed in the first place.
There are turf wars between intelligence agencies, operational incompetence, a longing for the glory days and other things that can remind you of Russian intelligence in 2020. In the novel, the Polish agent is arrested after forgetting to limit its radio transmission to under two minutes, making it easy for East German intelligence to triangulate his location. It’s hard not to think of the way Bellingcat found out about the FSB’s involvement in Navalny’s poisoning — because agents involved in the operation sent text messages that could be used to ping their location.
The analogy isn’t perfect — The FSB’s ruthlessness in Navalny’s poisoning do not exactly match the pretentious cowardice of the men from “The Departement” — but goes to show that spectacular incompetence in espionage isn’t new. Le Carré did after all say that, of all the books he wrote, “The Looking Glass War” was among the closest to his real spy experience.
Beeps
Hello everyone and first, happy new year! I know it hasn’t been great so far for a lot of people but… let’s hope for the best. Since I’ve been absent during the holidays, I’m making it up in this issue with a whole lot of great stories and articles published in recent weeks.
And because you seemed to enjoy it in the last issue, I thought I’d start by mentioning some cool podcasts released in late 2020 and early 2021: the BBC dives into Stalin’s million-dollar wine cellar, Meduza talks to researcher Yuval Weber about how Russia is ruled across its town and cities, Lithub explores Anton Chekhov’s play “Three Sisters,” journalist Francis Scarr speaks with architect and activist Polina Ivanova about her work conserving the constructivist White Tower in Yekaterinburg and, finally, Sean Guillory interviews historian Trevor Erlacher about Dmytro Dontsov, a major figure of Ukrainian nationalism.
Under the Radar
The fall of the “Black Eagle” — Why 30 guards are watching over three prisoners on death row [RU]
Igor Pushkarev | Znak | December 28
Lost in the taiga, the corrective labor colony 56 ("IK-56") "Black Eagle" is the only penal colony in the Sverdlovsk region for prisoners sentenced to life. It was officially disbanded in 2018, but has continued to operate since. There, three dozen officers from the Federal Penitentiary Service guard three “prisoner settlers”, who keep the local boiler house going and the general area clean. Near the ghost colony, the village of Lozvinsky is struggling for survival. It should have been resettled, but the authorities simply burned and razed the lower half of the village. Znak.com reports on how people live in this strange and unaccounted for Russia.
Digging, bribes and shootings. Four stories of Ukrainian prisoners who escaped penal colonies [UKR/RU]
Aleksey Arunyan | Graty | December 25
Every year in Ukraine, dozens of prisoners managed to escape. Some are caught immediately, some manage to hide for several months. In 2019, the prosecutor's office opened 38 cases against fugitives, and 17 last year. And of all the prisoners who escaped since the beginning of independent Ukraine, 37 are still wanted by the police.
In 2018, the prosecutor's office accused Vitaliy Surzhan of firing at the car of a businessman from the Kirovohrad region, and of trying to rob a currency exchange office — unsuccessfully in both cases. In 2020, Surzhan decided to escape. On June 26, during a break in the court hearing, he asked to go to the toilet. He was taken to the bathroom by a guard, Mykola Horobets. There, the detainee offered him a thousand hryvnias (about $35) for giving him some time alone with his wife the next day. Horobets agreed, and Surzhan handed him the money. The following day, Maria (his wife) came to court carrying a pistol, 24 rounds of ammunition and 2 grenades in her purse. During the break, Horobets pretended to take Surzhan to the toilet, but guided him to the back entrance, where his wife was already waiting. Horobets removed the handcuffs, stepped aside, after which Maria took out a loaded pistol from her purse and handed it to her husband.
Stories from Belarus’ hinterland, about a 270 rubles salary, hope, and a strong chairman [RU]
Nikolay Kozlovych | Onliner | December 28
Almost ten years ago, a man by the name of Proleskovsky worked as Minister of Information. During one of his meetings, he told reporters about an agrotown that had just appeared in the country, and which locals had built with their own money. It sounded incredible, and soon articles about it were published in the Lukashenko-friendly press. It was about the village of Verkhnee, in the district of Hlybokaye.
“In 96 days, using the methods of “people's construction,” the 16th agrotown was built” one article read. “The house of culture was overhauled. The roof, floors and doors were replaced. They established a park of culture and recreation, renovated the church, school, post office and the village’s administrative building. They also repaired the road.” But something went wrong. And in December 2020, our car bounced on potholes to get to Verkhnee and witness its death.
The Chinese Project Faces a Referendum [RU]
Konstantin Groshin, Ernest Filippovsky | Kommersant | December 29
A project by a Chinese company to build the world's largest methanol plant in the Khabarovsk region is facing opposition as deputies of the Ayano-Maisky district insist on holding a local referendum. Fear of environmental damage and over the arrival of about 6 thousand foreign workers led to a significant part of the 1,800 locals to oppose the projects, while local elites remain divided.
Research & General Nerdistry
The gendered iconography of the Belarus protest 🔓
Elizaveta Gaufman | New Perspectives | January 2021
This forum contribution offers an analysis of four examples of gendered iconography of the Belarusian protests after the elections in August 2020. I argue that a clear gender division between the oppositional leaders Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Veranika Tsapkala and Marya Kalesnikava versus Alyaksandr Lukashenka produced several visual cultural artifacts that creatively re-appropriated a gendered iconography familiar in the Post-Soviet cultural space.
Articulating Networked Citizenship on the Russian Internet: A Case for Competing Affordances 🔓
Tetyana Lokot | Social Media + Society | December
The Russian government’s crackdown on free speech online has seen social media users jailed and fined for publishing critical content. Digital rights activists have cautioned Russians to delete their accounts on platforms that cooperate with law enforcement. How do these actions inform emergent articulations of networked citizenship in Russia? I find that the networked authoritarian Russian state embraces the ideal of the dutiful networked citizen online as visible, vulnerable, and controlled. Instead, Russian digital rights activists advocate for a self-actualizing networked citizen who exercises agency online by becoming less visible, often ephemeral, and therefore, more secure.
Death Dust: The Little-Known Story of U.S. and Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons 🔒
Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, William C. Potter | International Security | October
Since September 11, 2001, most expert commentary on radiological weapons has focused on nonstate actors, to the neglect of state-level programs. In fact, numerous countries in the past have expressed interest in radiological weapons; a number have actively pursued them; and three tested them on multiple occasions before ultimately deciding not to deploy the weapons. Why is so little known about these false starts, especially outside the United States? A comparative analysis of the previously underexplored cases of radiological weapons programs in the United States and the Soviet Union illuminates the drivers and limitations of weapons innovation in one specific nuclear sector.
Christopher Lander, Brian Kuns | Europe-Asia Studies | January 2021
This article examines the factors that have contributed to the recent divestment of three ‘flagship’ Nordic investors from the Russian agricultural sector. These factors include corruption, pressure from regional administrations and the economic downswing arising from geopolitical tensions related to the Russian annexation of Crimea. The companies all sought to project calm as geopolitical tensions rose. This calm, however, belied a concern for the impact of the crisis on corporate operations.