Most Russians knew there was no such thing as a private conversation in the apparent privacy of one’s home. The KGB bugged private residences without hesitation, especially those belonging to men and women holding ranks of power in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even though they suspected their homes could be under surveillance, the occasional slipup still happened, and Abramovich was there to hear it, record it, and use it. A political joke told by a visiting relative, a snide or bitter comment, or just the stating of a simple fact, such as the absence of heating on a cold winter day, could be easily taken out of context, manipulated, and turned into a life-ending report.
Abramovich figured out that once he filed his reports, most of the people in question were never heard from again. Inspired by the newly gained awareness of his secret power, he started building a strategy.
His boss was easy to manipulate and quite indifferent, but his boss’s boss, a man named Konev, was a hardheaded, old-school idiot who disliked him and was never going to let him advance. Abramovich spread the seeds of doubt regarding Konev’s allegiances, and then offered to the right people to bug Konev’s home and spend a couple of weeks recording his conversations.
A few days later, carefully edited tapes played back, in front of a shocked audience, the voice of unsuspecting Konev responding to his wife’s comment about the scarcity of meat in their meals with a phrase expressing angrily that the situation had gone on long enough, was intolerable, and he was going to do something about that. Only Abramovich knew that Konev had said that phrase in the context of his ten year old getting bad marks in school. Abramovich had learned how to cut tape, edit, adjust the sound levels to make it smooth, and recopy the edited pieces onto a brand new tape. He had also learned how to dispose of the fragments, how to destroy magnetic tape without leaving a trace of evidence behind.
Last he had heard, Konev was being shipped to Perm-36, a forced labor camp administered by the GULAG. The GULAG, just as dreaded as it was notorious, was an acronym for the Russian Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements; in short, the forced labor camps management.
Konev never resurfaced; few people who entered the GULAG’s camps ever did. But Konev was not the only one Abramovich had sent to Perm-36; he was just the first.
In recognition for his exemplary work in the identification and capture of an enemy of the people, Abramovich was offered the chance to enter the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. He took the opportunity enthusiastically and started on the path to become a career KGB officer. He was only twenty-two.
At Dzerzhinsky he met both Myatlev and Dimitrov, just as young and ambitious as he was, and their early friendship evolved into a mutually benefitting long-term alliance, forged to help one another propel their careers. They grew to rely on one another, even trust one another to some extent. People like them knew better than to fully trust anyone.
Then Abramovich started ascending to power. His reputation for ruthlessness and his deep knowledge about how to destroy lives parted the crowds in front of him; nothing and no one stopped him on his way up. No one who wanted to stay alive or see his or her family again dared oppose unrelenting Abramovich.
After graduation, he had the choice of service, and he chose to lead a small division within the Fifth Chief Directorate reporting to Lavrentiy Beria, later known to have been responsible for the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR. Fascinated by the incredible power he’d have in that role, he didn’t go for the coveted Foreign Intelligence unit in the First Chief Directorate. Although foreign intelligence was his next goal, he wanted to learn new ways to control opponents, to extract information, and to incarcerate indefinitely without anyone questioning the validity of his decisions. What better place to do all that than the psychiatric unit?
Anyone who was a dissident, who said anything or did anything that contradicted the communist dogma, could happen to have a nervous breakdown. Sluggish schizophrenia was a popular diagnosis at that time. Any such diagnosis required admission for treatment in a special psychiatric ward, bitterly yet unofficially known as psikhushka, a Russian term for what would freely translate as the loony cage. These psychiatric wards were nothing more than psychiatric detention centers, where unwanted dissidents were chemically brainwashed into long-term, quiet obedience, and forgotten there until they drew their last breaths.
Of course, any dissident could have a public nervous breakdown if the right drugs were administered, with or without their knowledge. Abramovich learned a lot about drugs, manipulation with drugs, and information extraction under the influence of drugs. Thus, he became an even more successful, feared, and unstoppable career KGB officer.
He gave punitive psychiatry almost two years of his life. Then he moved on to Foreign Intelligence, where his newly acquired pharmacology knowledge enabled him to get above average results in the extraction of information from both willing and unwilling participants. Seven successful years later, he left Foreign Intelligence, having yet again a choice of careers in front of him. He chose the Second Chief Directorate, dedicating himself to learning the ropes of internal political control. He was thirty-five and a major general, the youngest ever to hold that rank, multiple decorations adorning the uniform he wore with immense pride.
The path opened for Abramovich’s political ascension. He was a general during Gorbachev’s tenure at the Kremlin, and watched in horror how that reckless traitor was dismantling the USSR and selling the parts. Right when he was so close to holding supreme power in his country, the USSR was disappearing right in front of his powerless eyes.
There was no way he could fight Gorbachev and stop his damned glasnost. He tried and failed on multiple occasions. Gorbachev was fiercely pro-West; he strongly believed in all that transparency and reform bullshit that was going to ruin Russia and bring it to its knees. They were all at the mercy of Western puppeteers who had made fools out of Gorbachev and all his followers.
When the KGB dismantled, he was forty years old and more decided than ever to take the Kremlin one day and restore his country’s lost greatness. It took some effort. He had to adapt to a changing political landscape, new entrants in the game, and new political structures emerging all around him. Ultimately, people feared the same things, whether in communism or democracy, and he knew how to master those fears.
The Kremlin was his now and had been for a few years. He was almost midway through his third term as president, proving again that he could achieve the impossible. He had started his path to reconstruct Russia’s fallen greatness. The urgency of his vision kept him up at night, counting the years he had left before he’d win the supreme game of his career.
Few people embraced or even understood his vision, and his tolerance for them was wearing thin. He hadn’t grown any more patient with the passing of years; he often felt he was running a desperate race against time, the world, against everyone.
Abramovich slowed his pacing enough to grab a quick shot of vodka from the readily available bottle of Stolichnaya waiting on ice near his new coffee table. Grabbing ice cubes with his fingers he let them drop in a glass, and covered them with the clear liquid. He took a large gulp, letting out air in a satisfied, audible expression of satisfaction, typical for Russian career drinkers. Then he went to his desk and pressed a button.