One particular part of the communist "nomenklatura" - the KGB - is of special interest to us. The Soviet secret police/intelligence service, originally called VChK, was defined by Lenin as an "armed detachment of the Party," and remained as such throughout Soviet history, while changing its name every few years (VChK, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB, FSB...). Its prime task was to safeguard the interests of the Party and of its ideology, both at home and abroad.
By the 1970s, like anybody else, they came to resent the ideological supervision of the Party which they perceived as hampering their efficiency. They vigorously supported Gorbachev in his "perestroika" campaign, and he, in turn, has heavily relied on their services. Their task, (as it was the task of Gorbachev's leadership), was to salvage the remnants of the Soviet system, not to abandon it.
- Vladimir Bukovsky, 2004
"Today the Soviet system can no longer seriously strive toward the spectre of Communism - but at the same time it cannot yet abandon the grandeur of its tasks, for otherwise it would have to answer for fruitless sacrifices which are truly innumerable. But in what then can the Soviet system find its justification? Only in the consciousness that it was unconsciously in the past, as it is now quite consciously, God's instrument for constructing a new Christian world. It has no other justification, and this is . . . a genuine and great justification. By adopting it, our state will discover in itself a truly inexhaustable source of Truth, spiritual energy and strength, which has never before existed in history . . . The old pagan world has now finally outlived its era . . . In order not to perish with it we must build a new civilization - but is Western society, whose foundations have been destroyed, really capable of this? Only the Soviet sytem, having adopted Russian Orthodoxy . . . is capable of beginning THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD."
(Passage written by Russian nationalist G.M. Shimanov quoted in Yanov's The Russian Challenge, p.236)
