The New Nobility - 9781586488024

"Little of note has been published on the Russian intelligence services in the past decade. And never before has anything like this been written by Russian journalists for publication in English. For anyone who wants to know the ins and outs of Russia's secret service explained by two people with an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, this book is highly recommended."-Nick Fielding, from the foreward

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the dissolution of the KGB, a new security service rose from the ashesùthe FSB, or Federal Security Service. Its role? To protect the Russian state.

In this riveting investigation, two intrepid journalists who have covered Russia's security services for more than a decade penetrate the secret world of the FSB to illustrate how the security services have become, in the words of former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Russia's "new nobility." Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan lead us behind closed doors to illustrate how the security services, abetted by their most famous alumnusùVladimir Putin, first as president and later as prime ministerùwere given unprecedented license, and emerged a more shadowy (although powerful) force than the Soviet KGB. The Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. Unlike its predecessor, Russia's modern security service operates independent of parliamentary oversight, beyond public accountability.

The security services have played a centralùand often mysteriousùrole at key turning points in Russia during the tumultuous years following the Soviet collapse: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya, and the Beslan school massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But as The New Nobility illustrates with alarming clarity, while the West has refocused its gaze away from the Kremlin to more immediate terrorist threats in the post-9/11 era, the successors to the KGB have evolved as a ruthless, violently powerful forceùinextricably woven into modern Russia's fundamental makeup.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are cofounders of the Website Agentura.ru. Soldatov and Borogan worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006 to November 2008. Agentura.ru has been reported on and featured in the New York Times, the Moscow Times, the Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, the Federation of American Scientists, and the BBC. The New York Times called it "A Web Site That Came in from the Cold to Unveil Russian Secrets."