Putin's Spies to Keep An Eye on Military / Move to counter Russian army's influence

2000-02-17 04:00:00 PDT Moscow -- With a war on in Chechnya, the Russian army has been enjoying unparalleled clout within the government. But now Vladimir Putin has reminded his generals who's boss.

The acting president -- and onetime chief spy -- has put units of the Federal Security Service back to work within the Russian military, to keep an eye on its officers and men.

In a decree signed last weekend, Putin re-established the "special departments" that existed in Soviet times, made up of untouchable counterintelligence officers whose main job is to seek out and expose any political disloyalty.

They also are charged with counteracting the intrigues of foreign espionage agents, uncovering corruption and curbing any activities that might be to the "detriment of state security."

Neither army commanders nor the prosecutor's office have the right to interfere in their work.

"This is a real throwback to the past," Nikita Petrov, a historian of the KGB and its successor agencies, said yesterday. "It's unworthy of a civilized society."

Stanislav Terekhov, a retired army officer and chairman of the Officers Union, said the move is rooted in the understanding that the government has to keep the army under its control.

"The authorities understand only too well that their very existence depends on the subordination of the army," he said. "And the army is far from what it used to be in the Soviet era. With bad conditions and low salaries -- this causes dissatisfaction among the servicemen. And this is a threat."

The "special departments" were first created in 1918, when the army was warily absorbing officers who had served under the just-deposed czar. The Communist Party didn't trust them. But long after the last of these old veterans had died off -- or been sent to prison camps -- the counterintelligence units continued to thrive.

Army officers and soldiers could find themselves heading to the Gulag for an ill-considered wisecrack or a vodka-fueled outburst of frustration. It happened to Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the end of World War II, and to thousands of others. There was no appeal.

Boris Yeltsin freed the military from the grip of the special services in 1993, although there was not a complete break. The agency now known by its Russian initials as the FSB continued to have a much-reduced presence and sharply curtailed powers.

Since then, as Petrov pointed out, the army has done a poor job combating corruption, theft, hazing and other serious failings. It is riding high now because of its relative success in Chechnya, but it is still racked by intractable problems. And perhaps it is precisely because of the army's newfound prowess that the Kremlin felt the need to put it back under control.

Putin's decree re-establishes the autonomy and wide-ranging brief of the spy agency to ferret out trouble.

"It could be," said Terekhov, "that, as in the old days, people who think differently will not only have to resign but will have criminal proceedings instituted against them."