14 March, 2008

Hard Nosed


Vitaly V. Fedorchuk, Ukraine, circa 1980

It is easy to get swept away with things of the moment. The peccadilloes of the powerful and the machinations of the state security apparatus have preoccupied me of late.

Not that the Spooks are out to get me; far from it. I am still useful to them. But there are some gray bureaucratic functionaries that intrude on my life. For example, the Judge that signed the order commanding my appearance in Courtroom 5B this morning apparently misplaced the order in his in-basket.

It did not arrive in the claw-like hands of Opposing Counsel until Mid-week, though the docket had been scheduled, and my name appeared upon the schedule, big as life, though I had no knowledge of it until the order appeared with the pizza boxes.

The system recognized that it was not a “good service,” which apparently means the little weasel of a process server had not nailed me direct, and thus the “gotcha” moment in court could have backfired.

So it is put off, the moment before the cold eyes of justice, and a year's pay can stay where it is, for the moment.

Vitaly V. Fedorchuk would have known about inefficiency. He was not the Last Soviet, since Mr. Putin has done such a marvelous job of bringing the old KGB back high in the saddle. It is certain, though, that Vitaly represented the last of a special breed of State Security officers.

He left us this week at the age of 89. He was a real thug, a relentless killer and a Communist arch-type. In the days of his power, he continued to employ the undercover tradecraft that had made him one of the most powerful men in the Union of the Republics.

It is said that when he was KGB chief in Ukraine, he became curious about how the common citizen was treated by the system. He donned a suit of old clothes- remember, these are old Soviet clothes- and presented himself at a police station. He asked to see the supervisor, but was kept waiting on the bench for nearly two hours before he left, and returned to headquarters.

There is no report on what happened to the hapless supervisor, but if what happened to the people of Ukraine is any evidence, he probably got a bullet in the back of the head.

Vitaly came up through the ranks of the old KGB. His career spanning the great days of the empire, from the prelude of the Great Patriotic War to the ascension of Mikail Gorbovhev.

He joined SMERSH- “Death to Spies- in 1939, when Hitler was still a friend and the Kremlin needed help in bringing the Ukrainian church in line. He did so with élan and thuggish enthusiasm.

Assigned to help bring order to Ukraine as the German army fell back, he was relentless in the prosecution of collaborators and black-marketeers.

In the context of his job, he was the perfect Communist: incorruptible and implacable. Ambitious but trustworthy.

Committed to perfecting the Soviet system, he rooted out corruption in the transportation business, and in banking and commerce. He had a Puritan's zeal for rousting drunks and incompetents, and all those who failed to toe the party line. He cut the weekend for his men from two days to one, and forced his officers out of jeans and civilian clothes and back into uniforms.

He was a great bear of a man, and someone to be justly feared. In the Brezhnev years, he sought to preserve the system by cracking down. In Ukraine he was known as The Butcher, and widely acknowledged to be the most brutal suppressor of dissidents in the history of the Soviet state.

He was a Ukrainian by birth, like Brezhnev, and perhaps it was familiarity that enabled him to be so cruel to his own people slit throats, hangings, torture.

The FSB, current incarnation of the KGB, announced his passing. At his zenith, Vitaly had commanded the KGB and then the Interior Ministry. He had been a full General of the service, and had exercised the powers equivalent to the American FBI and CIA all in one.   All security forces across the sprawling empire, from uniformed officers to game wardens, reported to him.

Times change. His style did not match that of Mr. Gorbechev, and he finished out his career as a functionary at the Ministry of Defense. Times change again.

In the obituary posted by the FSB, there was no mention of survivors. But of course there wouldn't be, would there?

Copyright 2008 Vic Sococtra
www.vicsocotra.com