right? Is the West being skilfully lured into accepting a carefully-planned Soviet strategic deception and disarming itself, believing that Soviet Russia has now "democratized" and presents no future threat?
The astonishing and little-known expert briefing below may help to clarify these issues more directly than you might expect or feel comfortable with. We would do well to take heed, if belatedly, of General Scherer's clear warnings!
When I was here the last time, six months ago, the situation looked quite different than it does now. Already at that time, one could recognize the Yeltsin group could easily lose its authority. Then, over the course of the summer, it turned out that indeed the Yeltsin group could not continue to exist. This was underlined by two important elements of the situation. First was the slow social collapse, which by autumn had gone over into misery and impoverishment. And on the other side, very gradually there emerged a new enemy image, going in the direction of a majority in Russia once again becoming anti-western. That, of course, is a process which is still ongoing.
Setting out to evaluate the situation today, on Sept. 30, we note that we have a quantum jump, i.e., a very sharp change, which has become evident to all over the past few weeks. This quantum jump shows up in the fact that the revolution from above is over, and that the revolution from below has now begun. This means that the old authorities have essentially been dethroned, and, as is customary in a revolution, new authorities are now coming to the fore. It is no longer possible to focus on individual personalities--you {must} not do that, because if you do, you will make mistakes.
We all have little direct experience with revolutions. It is therefore necessary to glance back into history. We have, for example, the French Revolution of 1789-93; we have the relatively big Russian Revolution of 1905; and then we have the Soviet Revolution from 1917 to 1920-21. When we properly survey our knowledge of this history, we see that Jacobin elements of extreme political persuasion develop, who attempt to push themselves to the fore, and are churned to the top. I recall the current example of what is going on in Siberia: Fourteen governors and heads of provincial authorities in Siberia have sent an ultimatum to Moscow, in order to make it clear that "Either you free the Parliament, or we will cut off your supplies.'' And that means, of course, a withdrawal of industrial products, since a considerable part of Siberia is industrially oriented and sends these goods westward.
The second group--and here I am not talking about parties; indeed, parties don't exist in that sense; parties were permitted and founded in March 1990, but so far they have not gone beyond the formation of core groups--the second group is that of the nationalists: first, the nationalists who want to be normal Great Russians, as it were, and another part which is chauvinistic and believes that the Russians are the world's superior people--i.e., their racism has a certain arrogance, and as a result of 1,000 years of anti-western inculcation, they believe they are basically superior to the West, because in their eyes the West is degenerated. And from that standpoint, this group is considerably larger than 8 million. I estimate that it comprises quite a large number of people, from 30 to 100 million, who can shape thinking in that direction.
Let us for a moment review some overall statistics. The potential magnitudes are: 285 million [in the entire former Soviet Union], of whom 140 million live within Russia's borders, another 25 million Russians in the CIS countries, and the rest consisting of the almost 100 subject peoples formerly under Soviet colonial rule. Therefore our figure of 30-100 million is not unreasonable, and if you compare it with the 8 million old communists, then you see that the latter group is relatively small.
I estimate [the third group], the reformers, to have comprised from 3 to 5 million people at the beginning of their better days. All the others were only onlookers, who were saying, "We'll see.'' Aside from this group are a number of other small groupings which would have been prepared to trust the West, and a majority of them were eager to grasp the opportunities which friendship with the West might bring.
Let me now characterize the fourth and last group. It is basically a grab-bag of numerous different extremist attitudes. In the forefront are the brown-red fascists. Their group has experienced considerable growth, and I estimate their current size to be up to 10 million. Besides them, there are other extremist tendencies, for example those with strong fascist colouring who go way beyond what is normal, wearing uniforms resembling those of the Nazi SS and so forth. And then there is the political emergence of a section of the Cossacks, who want to intervene into politics and are forming large volunteer armies.
I have attempted to point out four groups which play a significant role in Russians' attitudes or which influence them. I am sure that the reformers' numbers will dwindle even further. It is my impression that they will soon be chewed up and spat out. i.e., reform is dead. It has failed, essentially because, first, the Soviet system could not be reformed. We must keep in mind that the Gorbachov group's so-called Great Experiment proceeded in the direction of maintaining the Soviet Union as a non-communist Great Power; and when that was no longer possible, they tried to present it as a new Great Russia. They failed in both these attempts. I would therefore characterize it as a seven-year-long period of experimentation. Its greatest success was the "Gorbymania'' in the West, and the "Gorby magic'' which the western media spewed out on Gorbachov's behalf.
It is not out of place to draw our conclusions from these two opposite courses. Most importantly, the one course--that of demoralization--has been most evident in the Balkans. I maintain that this is where western morality has died a silent death. And unfortunately, in fair-weather democracies, people only come to their senses when a lot of babies are thrown into the well and die. That is a very sad indication of our psychological state, and if we were to judge right now, I would be inclined to predict that we are going to see a relatively great number of dead babies in the well.
I said before that we now have a shift from the revolution from above, to the revolution from below. And I said and emphasized that on the one hand, this has a social origin in misery and poverty, and on the other hand is based on the overturning of an image of the outside world, namely, the originally positive view of the West, and then the slow process of its poisonous transformation into an attitude of confrontation and rejection. The previously indicated four groups essentially all share an anti-capitalist bent--including the reformers. That is, ideologically they have left communism behind --Marxism-Leninism-- and have switched over to this new posture of so-called anti-capitalism, as a substitute secular religion. And as I said above, this has very deep historical roots. One can say that we are seeing the result of almost 1,000 years of rejection of private property and a collective society, a society which developed the so-called {mir} principle, according to which the fields and houses belonged to all, and no one was allowed to hold private property. All this, of course, developed into a full-blown, modern anti-capitalist ideology under Soviet communist pressure.
The reason why I emphasize this psychological side so strongly, is because it is one of the root-causes, and also one of the driving forces behind developments to come. And that is also why I mentioned the potential magnitudes of the various groupings, in order to show you how I believe the revolution will take its course.
In the French Revolution, 1,119 people were brought to the guillotine, most of them members of the nobility and intriguers from within the Jacobin camp itself. The Russian Revolution of 1905, on the other hand, was a mass revolution, a reaction to the Japanese victory and the defeat of the Russian czarist forces. You may recall that time historically, around Port Arthur and the China Sea: The czar's great Baltic fleet sails halfway around the world, and within a mere two days is pulverized. People are aware that they have to put up with huge losses in order to support the empire's eastward expansion. But at the same time, serfdom still had not been abolished, and the masses went into the streets. There are considerably more casualties than in the French Revolution; and then in 1917-20, the numbers climb into the millions.
My prognosis is that the modern revolution from below which has now gotten under way, will claim the greatest number of victims in comparison to all these other revolutions. The power of the great forces at work which I have described, can only be evaluated correctly when we take the Russian mentality into account. The Russian mentality is the product, on the one hand, of this 1,000-year anti-western, religious influence emanating from Constantinople--the old Byzantium--and second, in addition to this purely Byzantine, anti-western Third Rome mind-set, comes the rejection of all other possibilities in the wake of the Mongol invasion. The 240 years of Mongol occupation--from 1240 to 1480--brought with it the mass experience of Mongol terrorism, and thence derives the hardening of the Russian mentality in its fight against this highly oppressive domination. You have to be aware that whenever a village had not paid its tribute, they would immediately burn down all the houses, hang the women and treat the men accordingly, and also kill all the children.
Thus we have two moments within Russian history which are crucial: Orthodoxy versus the western Rome, deriving from the schism between the Latin and Byzantine churches--both of them Christian, but completely differently constituted. The western Roman pope is rejected, and with this, the East is cut off from the West. And from then on, there was no new opening until the short period under Peter the Great, and during the brief reigns of some other czars. But in every case, they were always pushed back by Orthodoxy, i.e., by the Orthodox Church: "Shut the windows, close yourself off! This is a hostile world, and we can only conquer it by destroying it.'' This ideological heritage was carried forward. In 1904, Lenin developed these ideas while he was in Switzerland--already by then he had fled into the underground to become a super-agent--and from his station he acted to play on the powerful force of anti-western sentiment, using it to drive his strategy.
First [pointing to a map of Eurasia], here is Ukraine. In the Don River Basin there is a rather strong Russian contingent. We have 54 million people living in Ukraine, and 12 million of those are Russians. The preponderance of the Russian population is located to the east of Kiev, and as one proceeds westward, the proportion of Russians gets progressively smaller. Thus, the Russians have a claim there, and can insist that "we're going to liberate our 12 million Russians.''
Second, some 60% of the coal reserves of the former Soviet Union are located in this Don Basin area. The Russians can convince their various people that "we just can't do without this territory. We can't leave it in Ukrainian hands.''
Third--something which immediately convinces everyone, wherever they may be, whose heart throbs for Russia, especially members of the older generation--is the return of Crimea and the Black Sea coast. It is a convincing argument when these new revolutionaries say, "This is what Peter the Great took back from the Turks! So we have a right to be back on the Black Sea coast. And the Ukrainians have no right to say that this stretch of land shouldn't be Russian!''
These are three quite convincing backdrops to the prospect that misery at home will be recompensed by moving outward. Thus we can assume that the Ukrainian war--Russians against Ukrainians--must be coming very soon, because it is a signal for all Russians: "We are recreating the union, and we're going to make our western front, our western territory, whole again.''
This means that with this recreation of the western territories I am also including the Baltic states. For four years now--you can read it anywhere in the newspapers--it has been clear that all national Russian forces have been demanding the Baltic states back. The little countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are really quite sparsely settled. None of them has more than 4 million people--one has only 2.5 million--and they are heavily russified, hence a good proportion of their residents are newcomers. All retired officers of the Baltic fleet and the Western Army have settled in the old villa neighbourhoods formerly owned by western-oriented local citizens, especially in Estonia and Latvia. They're living there now, and they are demanding that this keep on being Russian soil. They are complaining that they have to learn the old language, or to put it better, learn what for them is a new language.
Thus, my evaluation proceeds first from the assumption that warfare will shortly begin against the Ukrainians, because otherwise no revolutionary group will pull through or succeed; and they must be successful, even if the people are starving. Second: There are now opportunities to copy from the experiences in Serbia. Western civilization's worst mistake was when it raised the flag of cowardice in the Balkans, because now the copy-cat criminals are entirely justified in saying in all sobriety, "Nothing can happen to us. The West is too weak. They are basically degenerate, soft, cowardly.''
To that extent we can assume that both territorial changes will soon get under way with warlike means. I am not a soothsayer who can tell you the exact day, but a serious analyst, one who says what could happen in five to six weeks--that would be in November--what would be {possible.} I can briefly describe what it would look like. A standard winter war would not be necessary, and so it would be possible any time from November up to next spring. This will depend on how strong the Russian military forces are which allow themselves to be turned in the revolutionaries' direction.
It is extremely important in evaluating this development, to know that the Russian Army is especially trained in unswerving obedience; the usual punishment for disobedience is death, and acts of disobedience are avoided, insofar as volunteer and career soldiers are concerned. A big distinction must be made between them and the draftees. Some 70% of all draftees run away within three to four years. They can always disappear somewhere into the vast countryside, and no one notices them, because the normal structures have crumbled. There is still a huge bureaucracy, but it's not the same as it once was. Now there is no militia, and thus no police who can go after people with the old harshness. There are mafia conditions, and there is the black economy.
Thus, as I said, we are confronted with a destroyed society, and from this standpoint, it is quite an easy matter to roll up the entire society and lead it into dictatorship, in effect.
What we need to think about now in order to see correctly into the future, is: What options could actually be carried out under the circumstances I have described? I repeat: The Army, the last element of order, is now forced by a poisonous call to consider where it and its loyalties lie, and within the coming weeks will have to determine which way it will go. To put it even more precisely: The Army--the infantry, the Air Force, the Navy, the border troops, and the so-called OMON troops (these are domestic security troops responsible to the Interior Ministry)--are all being subjected to a process of fragmentation set off among them by the most highly decorated officer of the Afghanistan war. I'm an old soldier myself; I know what's at stake here, and for 40 years and longer I have studied the Russian or Soviet Army and so forth. This is an {absolutely} new development, whose consequences we will only first experience in the coming days and weeks.
It would be tea-leaf reading for anyone to say right now which way the various parts of the Army are going to go. It is certain that there will be widely divergent paths: the Air Force, the tank corps, the missile troops, the Navy--for example, those in the Black Sea fleet, large numbers of whom have sworn oaths of allegiance to the Ukrainians, but who are now saying, "What are we Russians doing, sticking with the Ukrainians? We want to go back!'' We will have to watch this development very carefully.
I advise you especially to watch the military developments, not because I'm a former soldier, but because this is the key to the period ahead. For, here we are dealing with the last apparatus which remains more or less intact. And it will be of crucial importance where it lets itself be led--with or without disobedience. It is what will decide which politicians will wield power, and which revolutionaries will end up seducing the people.
Thus I have attempted to lay out to you a comprehensive picture of the great quantum leap this autumn, of the beginnings of the revolution from below, and of the poisoning of the last organizational apparatus which up to now has staved off anarchy. And now I come back to the reason why there are only two options for the Russians.
You must know that the Russians were initially quite ready to accept the West; in fact, they wanted to kiss the Americans' feet. This was a most fortunate state of affairs immediately following the shift in 1985. As I said before, they had a great curiosity toward this superior western civilization. It was similar to what the Russian soldiers experienced when they first came to Germany [at the end of World War II]: For the first time they saw houses which were not made of wood, and saw superhighways, subways, etc. Despite Germany's destroyed condition, they become convinced that "this is something entirely different from what we have at home.'' These same respectful and curious glances toward America, toward the American way of life, this basic attitude regarding the outside world, to what exists, was quite compelling.
And what remains of this today? This friendship, this respect, this openness and readiness to acquire new beliefs after the old belief had failed, this development has been slowly reversed--after all, it has been eight years now, during which Russians have gone through unbelievable changes. And their most significant impression now is, "Things were better under Stalin than they are now, even though that dog cost us 40 million lives.'' And that, of course, is a disappointing development indeed.
But so far, no one has been purged. All revolutions have always stormed the previous elite and removed them, imprisoned them, or put them in front of a firing squad. But this has not happened, and thus we must assume that we will have to reckon on great difficulties coming up in this conflict. That is, the Russian mentality in this form--in its conflict with the outside--will assume incredibly harsh forms, and as I already estimated, it will mount into the millions. I am assuming it will be over 40 million, and that there will be 20 million refugees who will flee over the Polish border.
And to that extent I have also considered it necessary to urge representatives of the U.S. Congress that they politically intervene to ensure that four states in eastern Europe (which really is now Central Europe, since these are nations with ancient cultures), namely the four former satellite states Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia--that they need backup and security for the times ahead. They must be immediately accepted into NATO. And I say there is no way around accepting this demand and implementing it.
I know that some NATO states will not want to do that. But if this demand, this basic necessity, is not implemented, it will set western civilization on a course toward oblivion. This also means that the pent-up negative effects of all the challenges which are now being responded to dishonestly, will then play themselves out. One example: If nuclear weapons are used in the conflict between the Ukrainians and the Russians, this means that our loss of will has come to roost. It is possible that this region will become uninhabitable for the next 40-100 years. It is possible that other forms of warfare will also be found. Do not forget that the Russians are able to conduct war with B and C [biological and chemical] weapons.
I assume you know that up to 1984, Marshal Ogarkov for his part wanted to launch his war-planning efforts against the West on the level of the three great weapons of those types. And he was recalled and fired, because the political leadership in Moscow had become convinced that it would not be able to survive such a war, because the exhaustion of human resources was too great, the possibilities for capital investment had been exhausted, and thus that the necessary financial means and resources could not be deployed, because this war would last a good deal longer than 50 days, and the Soviet Union did not seem up to it.
This Ogarkov plan demonstrates that B weapons are available. There hasn't been any disarmament; the C weapons are likewise still there, and Ogarkov, along with his general staff, was convinced that the cheapest war would be one fought with B weapons. That means we can assume that if the coming civil war enters a terrible phase, B and C weapons will also be deployed. And perhaps right after that, we'll see what might be possible in other theatres.
I repeat, I'm no trombone-player in the panic orchestra. For 40 years I have attempted quite honestly to do clean, serious forecasting, relying on years-long examination of over 100 different factors. Otherwise you aren't doing anything, and it is merely tea-leaf reading. And thus I earnestly endeavour to ascertain where the worst consequences could arise--{could,} because they {must} not arise. Prognoses are made in order to make people smarter, give them pause for thought, and to assist the leadership in making decisions. And that is why I have come here. I wanted to make sure these four essential requirements are met--I repeat: an absolute guarantee of peace and security for Ukraine's borders; second, the same for the borders of the Balkan states, all three of them; then the acceptance of these four former satellites into NATO, so that their eastern borders become NATO's western line of defense. This red line [the eastern borders of Ukraine, Poland, and the Balkan states] would be the border.
When you consider that Poland, Hungary, etc. had already issued their requests for NATO membership quite early on, this demonstrates that they have a better feel for the way things are going. These populations have always known from their own political experience with the Russians, how to tell the difference between playing above the board and having an enemy underneath it. And so they quite readily recognized the Russian strategy in this direction as psychological warfare.
In addition to these two proposals, I had two others. I requested that henceforth no more false signals be sent in Russia's direction. That means no more talk of disarmament. Disarmament was a bit of wishful thinking following the accession to power of General Secretary Gorbachov, and seasoned observers recognized that he was developing a deception strategy, since the entire period was overshadowed by the heavy demands of the KGB. The more than six-year reign, the experiment of maintaining the Soviet Union without giving up the Communist Party, was all aimed toward this goal. And thus one can say that we are now being forced to completely reexamine all of our assumptions, all of our fundamentals. We must recognize that in the revolution, Russia will and {must} influence the world far beyond its own domestic domains.
I wanted to indicate to you what we can expect if things go completely awry. And that is why I have raised the demand: Let's stop sending false signals! Let's stop talking with words alone; {there is no peace.} There is also no disarmament at the present time; that is the wrong answer to our dangerous challenge. And anyone who does not acknowledge the existence of that challenge, will surely fail. And secondly: The truly difficult financial conditions in the western nations must not by any means, as a consequence of these terrifying changes, result in further reductions in the defense budget. It is clear to me, of course, that a significant number of politicians will say, "This Scherer is crazy. What do we have left? We don't have any more money, and besides, that's the only way we can make further cuts.'' These cuts, in my view, mean the possibility that we will be overtaken by a Third World War much sooner than we would like.
Second, the Russians will insist on the right to resume great power status, with all the privileges of a superpower, even though domestically it remains a second-rate country, if not a third-rate developing country, unfortunately, under conditions of misery and impoverishment.
Now come the difficulties: If the revolutionary leadership groups run out of domestic successes--let us assume they have already taken Ukraine, they have reeled in the Baltic countries, they have been relatively victorious in the civil wars, but their domestic economic position is very unfavourable and they cannot provide for their people--therefore their only option is not only to force the West to deliver, but also they will utilize the hostility which the West will exhibit under such circumstances, to prove to their own people that they are serious about changing the world. In my forecast I put it this way: The group will come and say, "If the West sends us into Hell, we're going to take them with us.'' That is the great danger lurking in the background if we continue our acts of cowardice in the Balkans.
Today I had the opportunity to meet with ten congressional representatives or their aides. Eight of them were convinced that I am right, but two were less convinced.
And I believe the great majority in this Congress will not go along with it at all. No, these proposals of mine will not be adopted, and thus the danger of World War III is much greater.
And now to Europe. It is no better there. First, Germany, which is first in line, currently has {one-third the number of combat-ready brigades in Central Europe that it had three years ago}--one-third! You ask why. It's quite simple: The Two-Plus-Four Treaty forced Germany to reduce its troop strength from 500,000 down to 370,000--including the NVA [the army of former East Germany], small portions of which we had to absorb. That means Germany as a whole had to reduce its troop strength from 750,000 down to 350,000. At the same time, because of the new strategic developments--because the Soviet Union was dead, and because people were counting on peace from then on--a reorganization of strategic forces had to occur, and for financial reasons this has now only just begun. That means concretely, without hiding any secrets, that only one-third of Germany's former military war-fighting potential is available for some time to come.
Second, almost half of the German population is unwilling to allow so-called "out of area'' deployments. This attitude can be traced back to the western "re-education'' following the 1945 surrender, which of course led to a pacification, creating a new, egoistic state of mind. Young people generally only think about themselves; they no longer want to serve their country. Germany today has the greatest number of conscientious objectors in its history. And from this standpoint, the possibilities for defending the country do not exist in the event that there's more in the East than we expect, and that there's an incursion.
Let us briefly review the French situation. It is fraught with special difficulties. They have only a 12-month period of military training. Now, how are you going to train a modern soldier in 12 months? And that includes vacation time--and sleep! It's impossible. (The Italians have an even shorter stint: nine months!) So this is basically only a visitor's pass, which is invalid. France is able to put a single corps into the field--three divisions. The most combat-ready is the Foreign Legion--and most of its soldiers are Germans or Russians.
I forgot earlier to mention the Cossacks. It occurs to me at this point, because we are talking about military potentials. Let me quickly insert it here. We must recognize that the formation of private volunteer armies has been in full swing on the Russian scene for about the past year. I don't know who pays them, but they're there, and they're growing strong, and there is an intention to form at least ten divisions of them.
I don't know if you are familiar with the history of the Cossacks. I can only briefly outline it here. In the Middle Ages, the Cossacks were runaway sons who were unwilling go to into serfdom. From their villages they fled southward and formed so-called hetman domains--that is, they elected a hetman as their leader, built great war camps, grew their own food, bred horses, had a large cavalry force, and then offered their war-fighting services to the czar or to other potentates. They made a living this way, and they were successful soldiers. In World War I, over four divisions of Cossacks were set up, and they excelled in their conduct of crucial parts of the war, while the Russian Army had to suffer serious defeats because of their outmoded strategy.
Now Cossacks have turned up in Serbia; they turned up in Tajikistan, they are in Azerbaijan, and are fanning out over Russia's entire territory--also in Georgia. That is, we can assume that the Cossacks' readiness to hire themselves out as soldiers and to take on any assignment having to do with Russia, will force a change in the way the fighting will proceed in the civil wars.
I also had the opportunity to speak with Ukrainians about this, and I know--I won't name sources--that strong power formations are also developing among the Kuban Cossacks, who want to build their own section, or more precisely, one to two divisions {for the Ukrainians.} Whether this happens in time for the war ahead, I can't say. But in any case it also provides the Ukrainian side a strong Cossack organization.
Now back to France. As I said, their military potential is relatively paltry, and is in no way sufficient for fighting an actual conventional war.
The British are even worse off. They have an all-professional army, a significant part of which is stationed in Northern Ireland, another part on the Lunauneburg Heath [in northern Germany], and other big parts spread throughout those parts of the world which remain British-oriented. This means that the British, too, are never able to come up with more than one corps.
If we think back to World War I or World War II, all sides had far more than 150 {divisions.} And back then, divisions consisted of 20,000 men, whereas today's divisions have only 10,000. And if you consider that the French now have three, the British four, the Germans two, and the Italians perhaps two, we immediately get the point. It's really not a laughing matter; it is an absolutely terrible starting position, and the Russian general staff, of course, knows this all too well.
The only advantage for Europe, is that if the Russians go to war, they are not going to want to strike at Europe. They need lands beyond their own borders in order to build up their own industry. This investment can only be provided by Germany, France, and northern Italy--perhaps a little from Spain, too. Thus we can assume that Europe, at any rate will not be engulfed by war, but nevertheless will have to absorb the previously mentioned huge numbers of refugees, which in turn will cause boundless impoverishment and a loss of security which there is no way we can quantify at this point.
The previously cited possibility that a group of madmen gets into the revolutionary leadership, and that the West begins to strangle the East, because the West says, "You've done this, and this, and this; we're not going to supply you anymore''--this can actually lead them, in the midst of their civil war, to conclude: "So, we'll take the West along with us.'' And this, in my view, would occur on the level of the most modern weaponry, and on the level of the cheapest forms of warfare. I therefore believe that entirely new weapons, above and beyond those of the current nuclear age, can come into play.
At the same time, however, it is both possible and probable that the Russian submarine fleet will be unleashed, to the extent that its units are war-ready and deployable against the United States. The statistics: There are 228 nuclear submarines and eight ultra-modern submarine cruisers. Each one of the submarine cruisers has 120 warheads on board. That means 1,000 of these ultra-high-power warheads on those eight ships alone. And it is the sworn duty of the crews of those eight ships, that they agree not to come back alive if they fire the first shot. Thus, they are prepared to accept their own deaths. It is a variation of Japanese kamikaze warfare.
I wanted to indicate this in order to make you aware of the dangers under which we will live if we give out the wrong answers, and also to question how we can forge ahead so blithely into a period which will be confronting us with by far the most difficult challenges.
At the same time, I would like to add that I am not interested in painting monsters on the wall. The Russians are definitely no worse a people than we are. But they have a very unfortunate history, and they have always had an elite which has kept them down and imprisoned as slaves, and thus they cannot so quickly grow into western civilization. It's not enough to simply drink Coca-Cola or eat certain hamburgers, or wear these ridiculous pants; rather, it's a question of developing the underlying culture. And the Russians already have their very own high culture, on their own level. And we, in our western eyes, believed they could simply absorb everything--that they would simply throw their old mentality overboard and become westerners the next day. Both in the Congress and in policymaking circles, people simply expected that "the Russians have to think the way we want them to.''
Scherer: That is a typical signal of the continuing weakening of the Yeltsin group. In my opinion, the Yeltsin group is pretty much finished. And here the developments demonstrate that this is indeed so.
Q: What is the possibility of the Russians' use of electromagnetic pulse weapons, which they have been researching?
Scherer: I already indicated earlier--I can't do more than that--that on this level, for security reasons, the Russian leadership and general staff does not want to reveal what weapons it possesses. This past July, they made a genuine offer to cooperate with the United States to develop so-called antimissile missiles in such a way that the primacy of nuclear weapons would be displaced. And America said "no.'' In my view, it was an earnest attempt by the Russians to ascertain just what they could actually believe about the Americans, and what was merely deception. And they decided it was all deception. This will have the effect of poisoning future developments for the revolutionary leadership. I can't give any particulars on the possibility of electromagnetic weapons, because I don't have the sources to substantiate that. [NOTE: we will be giving a brief outline of the astonishing progress reportedly made by the Russians in the development of these astonishing weapons in a near-future issue of the NEW WORLD ORDER INTELLIGENCE UPDATE]
Q: What is happening in Georgia with the Abkhazian forces, which are supported by forces inside Russia? It would appear that Shevardnadze is part of the {nomenklatura.} So it might not necessarily be that they are trying to depose Shevardnadze.
Scherer: We must keep in mind that there are no more than 540,000 Abkhazians. The Russian side has in effect painted them into the rejection corner: "Don't get upset, settle down. You don't want to belong to Georgia? We'll help you.'' And the Russian Army is being very quiet about it, but is deploying there. Shevardnadze, former KGB major general, then Politburo member in the Georgian Communist Party, then becoming a reform politician and getting installed as foreign minister of the Soviet Union and of the transition. From there, his warning [in December 1990] about the coming conspiracy, and his resignation from the leadership. Suddenly without any assignment, he allows himself to be summoned back to his homeland Georgia, and fights against the elected government there. Civil war comes. The Russians see their chance: "This is where we can apply our lever.'' And the lever was, on the one hand, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, on the other, the 540,000 Abkhazians. And along with that came the opportunity in Sukhumi--a beach resort on the Black Sea, surrounded by industrial areas--to show: "Hey you Ukrainians! Watch this! This is how we're going to get our coasts back.'' And so all the developments in Georgia are many-faceted, and I have tried to present them so.
Q: Can you tell us anything about how the black economy is functioning?
Scherer: At the moment, it's the black economy which is making it possible to survive. You must realize that. The fact that it's not a good thing, everyone knows, but it is only because it exists that people can survive. A college-educated Russian citizen makes about $15 a month--for him and his family! What is he to do? So either he has a few old pictures hanging on the wall and sells them, or else he moonlights as a taxi driver during the time when he really ought to be studying--just to take the example of a college professor. It's even harder for the worker, since he has to deal with the bodily exhaustion of working his regular job all day, and on top of that he now needs a second job. The best thing is for him to go to the black market, bringing along a few dollars, and buy whatever he can through this dollar economy.
To repeat: The black economy is helping people get through these catastrophic things, but the high price is the mafia and the rate of criminality. So we have a morally totally destroyed society. The police are on the road to corruption. If you press some foreign money into their hands, you can have anything you want: All eyes will be closed, a car stolen in Germany can get a new registration and license plate, etc. And so, if there hadn't been any black economy, someone would have had to invent it.
It's a crazy situation, but that's the way it is. You can't keep the heads of 140 million Russians above water otherwise--and the majority of them are living in the big cities. As a result of industrialization, the megalopolis has become the centre of criminality and of dangerous living. In the big, wide countryside you can still grow vegetables in your garden, you can keep a couple of chickens, a goat, or a turkey, or a cow, depending on whether you have a pasture, and you can survive. Or in vast Siberia you can shoot a couple of nice foxes or bears, and you can even get dollars for the pelts.
I've simplified it a bit here, but just in order to indicate to you that your question is pertinent. A society whose structures have been destroyed always will find some way to survive. And it doesn't enter into people's minds that they should forgo something which they need simply to survive--even if they get it at the price of panic.
Q: Of the four countries that you suggested should be immediately accepted by the West into NATO, Poland, of course, has just had a change of government, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have just been formed, but their applications for joining NATO were made before those governments changed. Where does it stand now?
Scherer: Following the elections, we have a basic trend toward the left, this is true, and thus have arrived at a stronger anti-western attitude [in Poland]. But don't forget that this leftward slide is to a significant degree conditioned by the growing impoverishment and misery. So these were elections which went left out of frustration. That, however, doesn't mean that people don't know anything about their basic security interests.
Let me emphasize that the Poles have always been anti-Russian--always! There is no greater attitude of hatred in the East, than the historic hatred between Poles and Russians. Partitioned three times between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, they have no sympathy for the Russians. Do not forget that Marshal Pilsudski and his troops marched all the way to Kiev in 1920, and took the city (it was Russian then, not Ukrainian). The Poles had to put up with Marshal [Konstantin] Rokossovsky as their first Polish leader. The nobleman Felix Dzerzhinsky, before World War I, was an agent of the czarist underground organization. When Lenin arrived on the scene, he joined up with him and became head of the Cheka. I bring this up in order to indicate that a small part of Poland's elite went over to the Russian side--a spat-out minority--whereas the Poles themselves (and the Russians know this, too) can't be turned around.
On top of this, of course, comes the fact that their religious attitudes diverge. The Poles are Catholic, western-oriented, loyal to the pope, Mary followers--i.e., they are very strong proponents of the religious orientation toward the Virgin Mary, not so much Jesus, but rather Mary, putting an emphasis on the female. So from this one can assume that a return to the Russian fold will not be coming along with the leftward slide.
The Czechs are a western nation. They have never drawn the Russian card. In 1918 they founded their own state, and especially cultivated their relations with France. They were anti-Austrian. They were friendly to the Russians. There was a Czech brigade in World War I; this grew into a big division, and they fought on the Russians' side in Siberia--that is true. But despite that, the Czech Republic is more strongly oriented toward Europe. They have the highest industrial standard, and the best prerequisites for providing a normal life. And so I cannot imagine that they would draw the Russian card.
The Slovaks are absolutely anti-Russian--they're Slavs, but they are basically alpine Slavs, mountain people, like the Armenians. (Karabakh is also a large region of alpine meadows and mountains.) And so they have a certain basic attitude of independence. So no one in Bratislava is going to start up anything with the Russians.
And now we come to Hungary. In 1919 the Hungarians went along with the red revolution. They poisoned those politicians shortly thereafter. They've got 1956 under their belts. They are the most anti-communist-oriented society of all. And in 1989, they also were the first to muster the courage to pull down the barbed wire. Indeed, it was they who in effect sparked the liberation of east Germany, their basic attitude is anti-Russian, and long before the Russians did, they had asked to join NATO.
Q: On the situation in Germany: The Russians have said they are going to withdraw troops earlier than originally promised. Is this particular situation that you are describing, and also the West's failure to coherently develop an economic program for eastern Germany, going to have an impact on this area in a negative sense?
Scherer: The withdrawal of the Russian elite division is two-thirds complete. What remains is the command staff and about a third of the troops, about 110,000. The KGB is also still there. This presence is supposed to end (provided Germany makes the extra payments) on July 31, 1994. You are right to ask whether the military presence of a rump of Russian elite troops creates problems in Central Europe. I can't exclude it. I do not know how the soldiers will react individually--i.e., their officers. If the revolutionary upsurge begins to resonate in their heads, it could be that some of them will leave the service, quit, flee, and present themselves to German officials, saying, "Take us, give us asylum.'' You have always had small numbers who have done that, but it could become a mass movement.
On the other hand, they are excellently equipped. They are therefore an operative element with which you could do a lot against the Poles on their rear flank, and could influence Germany. But I do not dare make a hard forecast. I must and would like to wait until sources indicate which way the majority is tending to go, i.e., it must be preceded by a further marked change in the Russian heartland.
One thing is sure: These troops would prefer three times over to remain in Germany instead of going back home. If you had witnessed how these people say their goodbyes, how the wives weep, how the officers express their disappointment that they have to go back to Russia, then you could believe me that a good number of them, once the revolution and the civil war are under way by spring of next year (if it gets to that point), they would rather flee, throw away their weapons, and say, "We can't go on. Take us.'' Similar things happened with soldiers of the warring powers during World Wars I and II when they got to Switzerland. They would flee there and say, "Take us in, then we'll be able to survive.'' And the same thing can happen here. But I'm not sure; it could be quite different. There could be divisions that say, "Tanks, ho! And now we'll show those Poles who calls the shots in Warsaw!''
Q: Before the Polish elections, I had some indication that Poland had put an ultimatum forward, that NATO should come forward and accept them by January, or else they would look for other strategic alliances. And there was another strategic alliance offered by Ukraine earlier, but it was rejected. Are there any possibilities for these types of strategic or raw material alliances in terms of Ukraine and Poland?
Scherer: There are indications in both directions. First, the ultimatum is certainly not meant seriously, in terms of a threat. {There are no other alliances,} and if there were such, they would be illusions. I know from the Ukrainians that they are only prepared to seek temporary assistance from Poland in the event that they--the western Ukrainians--are attacked. Whether Poland is ready to do that, I doubt.
There exists a certain state of enmity, or to put it better, a state of rivalry between Poland, the Ukrainians in the south, and the Lithuanians in the north. What is the basis of this? There used to be a great Lithuanian empire, and there was a great Polish empire to which more Ukrainians belonged than to their own nation. And in view of that, I would venture to say they would only approach each other in a time of dire emergency, when actual war had broken out. That is possible.
The ultimatum that they would not enter NATO if they are not accepted by January, only tells me that the Poles know all too well about the timing they're talking about.
That is my evaluation--theirs, too; namely, they have a better feel than do the Germans, the Americans, the French, for which way the horses are running in Russia, and where the next meadow will be where they'll graze.
Q: In the list of the emerging groups in Russia, you mentioned the red-brown coalition which is growing fast. Could you discuss that a little more?
Scherer: It's basically a very strongly fascist train which is leaving the station. There are "old communists,'' young and old, there are also war veterans, especially from Afghanistan, the so-called Afghantsi. They have of course been let down by their own country, because the majority of those returning had been severely wounded, and so are now poor handicapped people drawing scant pensions. Therefore you can assume that they will be sustainers (I know this, too) of these extreme groups which are rebelling.
The guiding principle of these groups is rebellion against society. And among them is one further group which is absolutely anti-Semitic, because they claim, with no justification, that the Jews have always been on the side of the criminals and those in power. That is absolutely not true: A substantial proportion of Russian and Ukrainian artisans are Jews. You can see this in Odessa, you can see it in Kiev in the Ukrainian region, and you can see it in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and even in Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), only to mention a few major regions. Thus, the anti-Semitic attitude, propaganda, and agitation is a thoroughly racist, fascist attitude. And you know that the majority of Russian Jews have already fled--they have emigrated, the majority to Israel and the next greatest number into Germany.
Q: You talked about the first groups, the communists on the one hand, and the chauvinists on the other, and you talked a lot about what they have in common: the anti-capitalism, the pro-collectivist mentality, the chauvinism, the anti-western tendency. Aside from the question, perhaps, of the Orthodox Church, what are the other major things that separate them?
Scherer: First, the old communists are basically only interested in being readmitted into the leadership elite and in rebuilding the old structures. They have plunged from their former paradise of perquisites. That is an essential element of what motivates them. We see the same in eastern Germany: A significant number of former SED [East German communist party] functionaries have sworn not to make any statements to the courts; they won't give up, and they are just waiting for the day when Moscow calls them back into service. And this group in Russia is likewise waiting to be called, without knowing by whom. It is a despairing group on the way down, which, if it cannot get anything palpable beyond its own wishful dreams, will make up its own illusions.
That is the essential difference with the Great Russians, the nationalists and chauvinists. These don't want any return to the past. Lenin is dead. Marxism-Leninism is a secular religion which led them to the firing squad. They want to positively intervene and shape society according to their ideas, into a dominant group in Europe. Concretely, a significant portion of them harbour the illusion that they can resurrect Great Russia. Another portion would be satisfied with just a {big} Russia, and not a Great Russia. That is an important distinction. The common roof mentioned is the attempt to gather together as many forces as necessary among old communists, the orthodox--orthodox doctrinaires, not churchmen--and on the other side the nationalists and chauvinists.
As for the Orthodox Church, it is in the middle of all groupings. Their leaders were [KGB] agents, and their top functionaries have still not emigrated. They're not very good shepherds, and right now are looking around for new alliances. The pope has only given a very few of them permission to show their faces in Rome; the others aren't allowed to come at all.
The Orthodox Church has two important hierarchical levels, which do not correspond to any western archetype. The priesthood, which emerged from the Orthodox-Byzantine monastic orders, is not educated in a theological university sense; rather, they have so-called brotherhood status. They have no specialized education, as do our priests and theologians, but ply their trade close to the people, weaving in mystical elements. Above them is a small, elite group of church leaders, extending up to the patriarch, and in this church there are many intrigues and internal struggles, alongside a convincing zeal unknown to us in the West. I expect that a significant portion of the younger generation will go back into the church. But this is a long process; one must never forget that they all grew up as atheists.
[AS A POSTSCRIPT TO THIS INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE: The Washington Times of April 11, 1996 carried an article "Prospects as bleak as Siberia in winter," by Alexander Yanov, retired professor of politics at City University New York, and a "leading expert" on Russia's ultranationalists. In the article, Mr. Yanov deplores the Russian Duma's recent vote in favour of reconstituting the Soviet empire.Mr. Yanov examines the position of Gennady Zyuganov, who is a leader in the movement; from the WASHINGTON TIMES:
To quote Mr Zyaganov, "The centuries-long, unalterable geopolitical interests of the West require the weakening of Russia, and, if possible, its annihilation." That is why, "the struggle against Russia has become the priority of Western policy." All the more so since, in Mr. Zyaganov's view, "the Jewish diaspora holds the controlling interest in the entire economic life of Western civilization."
In other words, the West is seen by these people as a Jewish colony and they see Russia as the bastion of the global resistance to the Jewish cosmopolitan New World Order. Is it any wonder then that, anti-Semitic as it is, the Russian imperial opposition is at war with the West? Or that it perceives the West exactly the same way as the Islamic Hamas perceives Israel? . . ."
There is the true face of the new Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. - anti-Semitic, implacably hostile to the "decadent West", nationalistic to the point of xenophobia. There is none of the smooth and glossy coating of "glasnost" about that quote...and we would do well to take warning, for this is the Russia of the future speaking through the mouth of one of its most powerful men]
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