The Ability of Russia’s Federal Security Service to Influence the Executive Through its Apparatus of Seconded Employees

Abstract

The French statesman Count Mirabeau once said about then-state Prussia that it “is not a state that has an army, it is an army that has conquered the nation.” 1With some irony, we can apply this statement to the situation in modern Russia by modifying it in this way: Russia is not a state that has a security service; it is a security service that has been ruling the nation. Russian Federation as the successor of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), takes much from the latter in terms of the instruments and the means used by its security agency – the Federal Security Service or the FSB ( Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti). Despite formally proclaiming a democracy, Russia has saved many of the USSR’s “best practices” in state governance, which cannot be considered genuinely democratic. In this article, we look at the FSB’s historical prerequisites and present-day legal bases for using its officers seconded to other government entities and conclude its role concerning Russia’s executive branch. 1“Honoré-Gabriel-Riquetti de Mirabeau,” Drouot Group, accessed July 10, 2023, https://drouot.com/en/l/16525755--mirabeau-honore-gabriel-rique.