In 1950, imprisoned Soviet scientists began laying the theoretical and technical foundations for what was meant to become a pervasive surveillance apparatus, allowing the KGB to listen in on any and all conversations, identify any and all voices, and affect near total political control. It was a power that no Soviet leader ever attained. But 65 years after Joseph Stalin launched that project, according to The Red Web, a new book by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Vladimir Putin may be on the verge of completing it.
Continuity is, in many ways, the theme of The Red Web, which, despite its subtitle (The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries) is about much more than the battle for control over the Internet in Russia. Having demonstrated the resurgent power of Russia’s secret services in their first book, The New Nobility, Soldatov and Borogan devote much of The Red Web to tracing the roots of modern Russia’s surveillance programs back to the KGB. It is a convincing effort, as the authors take the reader back to the 1950s and show how, for more than six decades, the Soviet and then Russian state sought to apply its best minds and, eventually, its best technology to the task of knowing who was doing what, when, where and why.
It is worth noting how quickly those two words, ‘Putin demurred’, become surprising.
