Catherine Belton and Joshua Yaffa: National Book Festival 2021

[Music] sponsored by the james madison council and the institute of museum and library services and the national endowment for the humanities hello and welcome to the 2021 national book festival my name is rob casper i'm the head of poetry and literature at the library of congress our schedule moderator jeff pigues chief justice and homeland security correspondent for cbs news was called into work today so i will be here as your moderator with our amazing pair of authors catherine belton author of putin's people how the kgb took back russia and then took on the west and joshua yaffa author of between two fires truth ambition and compromise in putin's russia joshua and catherine welcome to the program and to the national book festival thank you for having me so my first question is for you catherine tell us what prompted you to write this book about vladimir putin yeah that's a good question i began it a long time ago when i was still working for the ft as moscow correspondent um it seemed to me that then i was in a position of of great privilege where we had access to lots of government officials and the russian billionaires and it seemed to me that it was time really to kind of leverage those contacts and the relationships that we've been able to build over the years to try and really delve into how it was that putin came to power and answered the question of what really happened to the security services at the soviet collapse and and and how it was they were able to accumulate so much power once putin rose to the presidency um so these were the aspects that i really wanted to spend time uh delving into sort of a systemic look at the rise of the security services under putin uh what do you think enabled putin to hold on to power for so long and maybe how those security services help enable that um obviously ever since he he rose to the presidency in 2000 what we've seen has been a systemic power grab by the uh security services by the former kgb around him uh former kgb man around him in the kremlin and we've seen first of all this cowing of the yeltsin era billionaires who were once known as the oligarchs because they wielded so much power in yeltsin boris yeltsin's administration in the 90s and uh putin essentially cowed all of them by putting the richest and most powerful one of them michael jordakovsky in jail for 10 years and then taking over his oil company piece by piece and in doing so he was subverting the russian court system to the the kremlin's will and essentially signaling to all the other oligarchs that they had to tow the kremlin's line otherwise they would face the same fate and this is a system which is now extended further and further into the russian economy he put his loyal allies in charge of most strategic sectors of the economy and when you have a law enforcement machine and a court system that's fully under control of the celia the key of the former kgb men uh then essentially you know they everything is is now a putin's command um as one former ktb ally put it to me that putin can access the cat the whole cache of the the entire cache of the country so you know it's it's quite an effective system that they've managed to build but it's based on fear and it's based on having control of the the law enforcement organs let me turn to joshua but first let me remind you in the audience that you can ask questions if you go to our website llc.gov bookfest and click onto this program you'll see on the right hand side a q a so please do ask questions we'll get to your questions towards the end of this 30 minutes segment so joshua given what catherine just said about survival in russia can you talk about what motivated you to write your book and um how that system works if you do want to survive and even thrive in contemporary russia what interested me about russia as i came to see it in my years of reporting here i moved to russia in 2012 and began reporting on the country at a time of protest um this was in advance of putin's third presidential uh term there was a season of protest that was meant quite harshly reminiscent of the protest we've seen of late but starting in that time and moving forward i was struck by how the dichotomy that i often brought to the story and we often saw reflected in western news coverage of russia wasn't entirely didn't entirely capture the full or most nuanced nature of reality here in other words the story in russia isn't always one of a cruel repressive state versus uh you know brave dissident uh protesters or opposition movement that dichotomy exists it's real it's not that that doesn't reflect reality but that uh most of reality most of the reality i observed in the people i interviewed and the people i met in just my personal ties in russia existed somewhere in the middle in a kind of gray zone where people adjusted their lives adjusting their ambitions and goals uh according to the ever changing uh demands of the state the shifting uh interests and requirements of the state and people oftentimes set out with virtuous understandable ambitions and goals for themselves and what they wanted to achieve in life people with very recognizable to me and i think recognizable to you and to american readers uh of what they wanted uh to see uh for themselves and their careers and their private lives but they had to go out and construct those realities and pursue those realities in the shadow of a state that was becoming increasingly uh demanding increasingly intrusive and repressive and it was that dance of compromise that really fascinated me uh because i understood or could see myself reflected in it these were very human universal dilemmas and impulses and situations that uh people often face and i wanted to bring that world to life in a way that i thought maybe wasn't always reflected in the news coverage maybe even in my own news coverage of russia and i wanted to bring that interesting to me that really fascinating um gray world of compromise and these nuanced moral dilemmas uh to the page because and to answer the second part of your question i think that the putin state uh from its outset 20 plus years ago uh you know the the rise of that system and the construction of that system is something that catherine so um eloquently and with such uh repertorial um firepower brings uh to life in in her book and one of the ways that it's proved so durable is that it's brought so many people on board it's found ways i guess you could say to co-opt some people to entice uh some people to um whether it's business people or theater directors human rights workers it's found ways uh to to attract many of the best and brightest uh into working with the system and along the way making small compromises that oftentimes turn into big compromises and that allows uh or at least is one of the factors that has allowed the putin system to remain um externally stable for so long and that is as i said it's brought so many people uh under its kind of big tent and found ways to keep them there either through uh carrot uh or stick in your book you delve into the lives of a number of quote unquote drivers can you tell us about those folks how you found them and what you learned from them sure some of the people i found uh or wrote about in the book or relatively public figure someone like constantine ernst who is the head of channel one uh the national or federal um uh television channel with the most uh reach in russia in in so his position effectively makes him a kind of minister of propaganda of the russian state and certainly carries out that duty both with great loyalty but also with great uh creative flair i would say and that's because ernst uh at his core or at least in his past was a kind of uh arthouse auteur he had tastes that really swung uh toward the offbeat and left field at least in terms of you know compared to what else was available on soviet and post-soviet mass culture he's a person with really refined cultural and creative tastes and who uses the channel as a platform to indulge those tastes and interests and to air programming on channel one that you won't find on other russian state channels and i don't think you would find on channel one if it wasn't for ernst and his very particular uh creative and aesthetic vision but at the same time he also uses his channel as a very uh willing and effective instrument in propagating all of the official messages and signals that the state wants to transmit to the public and doesn't transmit what the state doesn't want the public to know so he's very much a loyal member of the putin system while also using the channel and using the resource under his command to indulge his own uh personal as i've said you know art house sometimes odd uh interest that certainly would not be the kind of thing that the rest of russian officialdom would be interested in uh airing or is transmitting to the public or maybe even know about airing the american uh you know black humor series fargo uh for example uh putting that on on channel one i don't think that's the kind of thing that you know otherwise you'd see on russian state television but it's the kind of thing that ernst was interested in and therefore he put uh on the channel ernst was also in charge of the i think quite successful uh opening ceremonies of the sochi olympics in 2014 a really rich um pageant that displayed uh russian history and russian art and russian science uh through through the years and he did that with really great creative and aesthetic aplomb but again that was in a way that the quintessence of ernst ernst his most concentrated someone who both displays real creative and aesthetic vision but also uses that creative and aesthetic vision in the service of the kremlin interests and does so with great energy and loyalty catherine let's turn to you um i'm curious to know what you would say putin's ultimate ambition is and this is a question that came from marion that i'm throwing to you a little bit early i'm also just curious to understand how his ambitions may have changed uh and what they may be looking forward from now yeah i'm afraid um his sole ambition by now unfortunately is to hold on to power and we see this in the kind of the deepening power of his regime and i'm kind of interested as well in um you know josh's book very much does uh portray incredibly well this system in which uh kind of a whole cohort of the elite have been forced to adapt to this group of security service men who've acquired power and are gripping onto it by all means necessary and they must adapt to survive and they can also seek opportunity through working through and in that system like constantine ernst who uh josh has just got described so well now but it's it's kind of interesting i think i feel like the system has now reached this kind of point of inflection where you had like this sort of two systems the group of kgb men around putin who are intent on acquiring and accumulating power and this sort of more liberal moderate moscow elite who were sort of thinking hang on we'd like to hold on to our wealth uh we must adapt and somehow seek opportunities through working with these security service men who have uh so much power in the kremlin and for a long time many of them have been able to do so and acquire vast wealth uh through doing so and through adapting and demonstrating their loyalty and fealty to putin's kremlin but now we've reached this point of inflection where uh you know the economy hasn't been growing now for a long time people's real disposable incomes are down 10 from eight years ago uh i think people are now looking around and wondering do we share putin's vision putin has been proclaiming this vision of of returning russia to its great power status on the world that he wants to kind of try and attack the west who he still sees as as the main adversary and do so through undermining democracies and boosting russia's stature that way uh but it seems the the people in particular the elite and moscow are no longer on board for this and you can also see them now beginning to chafe at uh the increasing reach of the security services because as the economy stops growing the pie is smaller and those who've kind of bent this way and that to kind of fit in with the kremlin and sort of work and do favors for the kremlin are now finding that their businesses are being seized from them too that it's not enough anymore to be just loyal to the putin regime you actually have to be one of them you have to be one of putin's closest allies from the kgb or for instant petersburg you have to know him personally in order to keep your business safe there's been a whole string of businesses and banks that have been taken over in the last couple of years that were owned by precisely these type of people that joshua has been describing the ones who really tried to adapt and fit into the system so at this really interesting inflection point now in the power structure and the dynamic because it has been sort of quite stable but i think now there are growing numbers of the elite who uh may not uh be able to see ways to survive anymore and fit into the system and i think putin also feels that and you can see the growing paranoia of the regime you've seen that in in what happened to alexei navalny last year with his poisoning with novichok i think the kremlin was looking with ever greater fear at the events in belarus where the largely apathetic a political population suddenly shed its fear of the security services and amassed against luka alexander lukashenko's re-election there and putin was also facing unprecedented protests in the far east and navalny was busy uh kicking up resistance in siberia so you know we saw him get poisoned and then immediately jailed when he did dare to return to moscow in january this year and then we've seen this very brutal crackdown on the protests that that followed his his jailing and it was uh the case that in in previous years the kremlin sought to modulate and adapt its response to kind of fit in with the more liberal moscow elite and adapt to their wishes but they're no longer paying lip service to kind of trying to uh have an image of anything remotely democratic anymore and all we've seen is this crackdown and we'll continue to see that following the elections where they've certainly eradicated any chance for the opposition to to move in on their power so i think yeah unfortunately putin only has one aim in life now and that that's to hold on to power i think he would continue to like to divide and disrupt the west um obviously he faces a bit of a different picture now that uh there's uh joe biden in in the us obviously he's he's less pliable than donald trump though he is still making some overtures to the kremlin following the geneva summit in june so i guess i guess we we have to see but i'm afraid it's quite simple for for putin now he just wants power if at first when he first came to the presidency he might have been a little bit reluctant president but the security service men around him certainly wanted to make sure he held on to power and accumulated it as much as possible and then went to to a degree that stability would be returned uh to the russian political scene and then they could remove all opposition and once that reached a critical mass once the command over the economy had reached a critical mass they were able able to divert uh cash flows to uh begin undermining uh democracies in the west and corrupting officials and and so on as we've seen and uh what happened in in with trump in in the u.s and in and the funding of the far left and the far right uh across europe so um those the the ambitions of of putin and his men did change and expand in trying to sort of boost russia's standing on the world stage not through creating a competitive economy but through trying to undermine rivals but now it's all about just holding on to power thank you for that um before i turn to my question for both of you i just want to let our audience know that in addition to asking questions in our chat uh on loc.gov slash book fest you can see the connection we are making not only with this event but with all of our adult national book festival events uh to the library of congress collections we have a link you can click on to read more about uh putin's 2008 election in the library's russian election ephemera guide um jack asks what you will think will happen after putin obviously he can't live forever and it's apparent that he isn't grooming anyone in particular to uh follow him so what do you think will happen both in terms of leadership and in terms of the country well i think uh as catherine has um laid out very convincingly the whole plan uh for the near and medium future is to prevent exactly that outcome or at least to project outwardly both to uh political elites close to the kremlin the public at large and to western governments that putin is here to stay and and putin would like to as it were kick the can down the road as long as possible to avoid just exactly that kind of discussion that's a conversation he doesn't want to happen inside his own kind of palace quarters as it were he doesn't want a russian elite to begin to think about a post-putin future that would make him as we call it in america you know a lame duck right it would see his uh power lesson immediately were people to begin to look toward the future and what future centers of power might be um nor does he want the russian public i think um to begin to contemplate in a post-putin future because he wants to retain the singular role as the system's figurehead and its chief arbiter of the internal uh clans and factions that katherine has talked about and documents um in in her book and so i think you know all resources have been directed towards exactly this question we saw this with last summer's constitutional referendum the point of which really at its essence was for nothing more than to give putin the right uh to run again in 2024 and even in 2030 um after that so at least projecting the air of a kind of in eternal unquestioned hold on power is fundamental to putin keeping uh power today in other words projecting power into the future is what allows putin to retain power in the here and now and in the russian political system surviving until tomorrow really is the um the chief goal it tends to be a system uh a very tactical system not a strategic uh one so for putin to uh survive another night uh in the kremlin as it were he needs um both the elite around him and the public at large to think he'll be here another five ten or however many more uh years that said before turning it over or to catherine and listening with interest to what she might say about this hypothetical or or is it not hypothetical at all right for a dint for reasons of biology if not politics there will be a post-putin future uh for russia at some point but the question you know i'm interested in and i um address in the last chapter of my book is is what will this transition this generational transition that the passage of putin from office will represent it won't just be putin leaving the political scene but it'll be this whole generation of men and largely uh men first and foremost uh who occupy positions of power in the political system what happens when they fade from the political stage and young people the so-called putin generation people who were born already under the putin presidency that's uh putin's rule has been going on for you know 21 plus years so there's now a whole generation of young people who've known only putin as their leader what happens when they ascend to positions of power in not just politics but an economy in the economy business society and you know will they have the same habits uh and and adaptive habits of compromise those that i write about uh in my book will they be uh as willing or kind of thinking first and foremost about how to attach themselves and insert themselves and um adapt uh to the rules of the game and to try and benefit from those rules of the game or will they have um uh a more kind of demanding attitude will they insist that the demand that the system and somehow reflects their values and their uh ideals rather than adapting themselves to the system will they expect the system to adapt itself to them you know that's still really an open question this putin generation is quite young but as i've said for you know reasons just of uh you know brute human biology at some point um you know putin his generation will fade from the scene and this younger generation will take over and it'll be an interesting sociological experiment to see whether they can transcend some of these uh habits of mind and sort of socio-political uh habits and ways of operating that very much came out of the last years of the soviet system the um kind of the doublethink and the cynicism that were very much the kind of lingua franca of those late soviet and early post-soviet years this is a generation that doesn't have that first-hand experience so you know will they conduct themselves differently and that's a really interesting question that i think will only see the answer to when it happens right it's it's sort of a game that has to run itself um uh out for us to understand um the outcome yes catherine what do you think and i'm curious especially in terms of those uh that sort of security apparatus that has controlled so much of russia for so long i mean this is exactly the the key question the one that josh is is asking i mean i guess the and in a way that it's it's split because on the one hand you have a whole new generation who've only known sort of putin who've only known the putin era and many who've also grown up in the ranks of the security services they're incredibly motivated very well educated but they also uh continue to perceive the west as the main adversary as their enemy and their sort of they've grown up in an era where the security services have had this all encompassing reach and power so in a way that's quite dangerous if if one of them say were to come to power because we've seen sort of situations where kind of like the fsb or kind of member other members of their cohort can sort of go in take over businesses raid them and carve up the proceeds for themselves without any oversight or scrutiny or kind of any uh resistance from society so you know if it's one of that contingent that comes to power then probably we're going to be in trouble but then on the other hand i mean if you look at attitudes among across the the population then i mean there was a recent poll by uh levada which showed that that kind of almost a majority i think 44 wanted uh russia russia to treat the west as an ally rather than a rival and it was a much smaller number i think 33 percent that wanted uh the russian regime to treat the west as as as a rival so i mean attitudes are changing in the wider population but it depends sort of how deep now is the grip on power by the security services and certainly putin in and those around him in the kremlin in an effort to ensure some kind of uh stability once the biological uh clock runs out on them they've been promoting their own children to positions of importance in the economy and in the the power structures themselves they have you know their sons are all in charge of like the country's biggest banks and other kind of big state institutions you know without some of them having any business experience at all they've certainly been been getting a rapid grooming in it in these positions so they are trying to sort of create this this transfer from within their own ranks and if if that happens then again that's not great for the country but it may be that uh you know we see somebody more moderate from the moscow elite who is intent on reestablishing relations from the west and that we will see one of these swings because i guess what we have seen in the history of russia over those centuries is that there can be sort of quite those sharp swings from kind of anti-western autocratic systems to more liberal pro-western ones and and they do kind of occur with quite regularity it's just that the countries never seem to find anything in between yet thank you uh and for my last question i'd just like to talk about your comment catherine uh before we started this session that russia follows you and what is it meant for both of you to write about russia both from inside russia and from the west yeah i'll answer quickly so i left russia in uh in the summer of 2014 and i left to to finish my book and it was the case then that my many of my sources in moscow uh were more and more uncomfortable in speaking with me there because the ukraine crisis was at its height the west had just imposed sanctions on russia but uh and so i moved back to london thinking i'd be able to finish the book uh quickly but it turned out the story had really followed me into the west this was a stage where so the putin regime had already accumulated so much power within its own country it was now seeking to acquire influence in the west and begin its influence campaigns to try and uh undermine democracies in the west and and stoke the rise of the far left and the far right so it became almost for me a never-ending story i couldn't just leave and kind of uh write up the the notes that i'd i'd had for my kind of time reporting in russia but it became a much bigger story about how russia was was seeking to expand its influence beyond its borders and indeed many of my sources also followed me into london whether into forced exile or whether they were just visiting and more free to speak without looking over their shoulders so yes the story does follow you whether that's for good or for the bad joshua what about you i've been really fascinated to to follow the characters in my book not just through the period that i was reporting on them uh and then writing the book but after and that's you know it's of course expected that something like this you know the moral gray zone of compromise with the putin system especially as it's become increasingly uh repressive and increasingly inflexible that's not a process that has an end point to it necessarily i'm thinking of someone like the theater director karil sorenko who's one of the main characters of my book someone a really extravagant experimental theater director really renowned in moscow cultural circles for his cutting edge productions for a while he was able to bask in the large s of the state even though he himself is clearly someone with liberal leanings who creates really avant-garde works nonetheless for a while he was able to receive state support for that work at a time when the state was interested in having this kind of at least appearance of supporting or sort of flirting with the experimental avant-garde he then fell out of the state's favor in this crisis moment that catherine described after the ukraine standoff and uh fell from grace he was eventually charged with fraud and a clearly politically motivated case uh but then he wriggled out of those fraud charges as the mood changed again and he was uh released first on um house arrest and then given a suspended sentence that seemed to suggest he was again in the state's favor and then after all of that after the book had already come out he was then removed from his post uh as the head of a high profile theater in moscow so following the twists and turns of someone who at a time had found a way to insert themselves into the putin system then had had found themselves on the outs of the putin system then back in then out again you know following the twists and turns uh of the characters in the book is something that's been uh really fascinating to me and i think is a reflection of what's going on with the putin system uh at large well thanks to you both unfortunately we're out of time uh there are many more questions i'd love to have you answer but um instead i just want to say thank you to both of you uh catherine belton author of putin's people how the kgb took back russia and then took on the west and joshua yaffa author of between two fires truth ambition and compromise in putin's russia thanks to you both thanks to our audience and i hope you all continue to check out the book festival at lot.gov bookfest [Music] you

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Length: 31min 26sec (1886 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021