“To grasp the reality of Russia,” writes David Satter, “it is necessary to accept that Russian leaders really are capable of blowing up hundreds of their own people to preserve their hold on power. They really are capable of ordering an attack with flamethrowers on a gymnasium full of defenseless parents and children.”
The Less You Know the Better You Sleep is an uncompromising account of Russia’s failed democracy and the birth of a criminal state. An American journalist and historian, who had written extensively on Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, Satter witnessed the end of Yeltsin’s era and beginning of Putin’s.
In September 1999, 300 people in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and Buinaisk were killed in several apartment bombings. The FSB blamed the carnage on Chechen terrorists, but provided no proof of their involvement. There was no proper investigation and none was possible: the authorities swiftly bulldozed crime scenes and destroyed evidence.
Putin, a former head of the FSB and recently appointed as prime minister by unpopular President Yeltsin, rose as a strongman. He promised to fight terrorism and re-launched the war on separatist Chechnya, which Yeltsin lost, to the nationalists’ chagrin.
Satter makes an important point: from Yeltsin, Putin inherited “a criminalized economy” and authoritarian political system. Russia’s first democratically elected leader, Yeltsin had no grasp of democracy or “understanding of the need to establish the rule of law.” His pro-capitalist reformers conducted the largest privatization in history without legal oversight, producing “an economy dominated by a criminal oligarchy.” By the end of Yeltsin’s second term his corrupt family lived in fear of criminal prosecution and sought a reliable successor to provide immunity.
In 1999, Moscow was awash with rumors: it was widely believed that Yeltsin would not peacefully yield power. Three months before the apartment buildings were blown up, a Swedish correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet wrote that a faction in the Kremlin considered staging “terror bombings that could be blamed on the Chechens.” Satter’s source, a political operative with links to the Kremlin, also told him in confidence that unless a suitable successor was found, “Moscow would be the scene of a huge provocation.”
The first detailed account of the conspiracy behind the apartment bombings was made in Blowing up Russia, the book co-written by the former FSB officer and defector Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky. The authors accused the Kremlin and the FSB of organizing the terrorist act. But the book was sponsored by the exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who had been part of Yeltsin’s corrupt entourage. In contrast, Satter’s account is highly credible. He later testified about his findings before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Blowing up the apartment buildings, writes Satter, “provided a justification for a new war in Chechnya.” Putin, put in charge of the war, had achieved overnight popularity.
Satter amasses strong circumstantial evidence revealing that the FSB had masterminded the bombings. “The only reason there is no direct evidence,” he writes, “is that the Putin regime has concealed it.” The authorities blocked several investigation attempts. Thus, hexogen, a powerful military explosive used to blow up the buildings, was produced by a single factory “tightly guarded by the FSB.” The explosives were placed in precise locations to collapse the buildings; destroying the critical structure required special training available to the military intelligence (GRU) and the FSB.
In the city of Ryazan, where the crime was averted, the FSB agents were caught red-handed. The sacks they had installed in the building’s basement tested positive for hexogen. Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s long-time ally and the head of the FSB, later claimed that the bags contained sugar. This contradicted the initial testing results. Additional controversy arose when a speaker of the Duma with links to the FSB “had announced the bombing in Volgodonsk … three days before it occurred.”
Thus, Putin came to power through a massive provocation. But events moved fast: Russia entered the new war on Chechnya. Putin persuaded the West that in Chechnya he was fighting his own war on terror.
When Russia’s federal army became bogged down in Chechnya and Putin needed to legitimize the prolonged war, the Kremlin launched new provocations: the 2002 theater siege in Moscow and 2004 school siege in Beslan. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya first revealed that the FSB was complicit in the hostage siege at the Moscow Dubrovka theater: she had interviewed a double agent with links to the Kremlin administration who led the terrorists into the theater. Satter provides further details and analysis.
In 2002, armed Chechen militants were lured to Moscow and helped secure accommodations. Their demand was ending the war in Chechnya. The Kremlin refused to negotiate. A military gas was pumped into the theater ahead of the assault. When special forces stormed the building, they executed the terrorists, most of whom were unconscious. “This made no sense if the Russian authorities hoped to learn about the organization of the attack… It was logical, however, if the authorities wanted to make sure that there could be no public trial,” writes Satter.
There was no attempt to save the hostages’ lives. Composition of the lethal gas was concealed (Putin claimed that the gas was harmless) and doctors could not administer an antidote. The authorities did not prepare logistics to rescue the hostages, and 120 people died unnecessarily. A proper investigation was blocked. The Kremlin used the crisis for political advantage, to install the Kadyrov puppet government in Chechnya.
In 2004, during the tragic school siege in Beslan, flamethrowers and grenade launchers were used on the building with 1,128 hostages inside. When the fire broke out, the FSB general in charge forbade extinguishing it for two hours. As a result, 186 children burned alive. In all, 334 hostages died and many more left severely injured. Once again, the authorities maximized the number of victims and promptly cleared the crime scene. A formal investigation was turned into a farce: the police and security forces were cleared of any wrongdoing.
The terrorist attack in Beslan, writes Satter, “was also the result of a Russian provocation.” Warned about the impending school siege, the authorities did not react to stop it. Instead, they lifted roadblocks to provide safe passage to the terrorists. “The Nord-Ost and Beslan hostage takings were immensely helpful to Putin’s efforts to depict himself as a foe of terrorism and to legitimize the war in Chechnya to both Russia and the West.”
Well documented and written with narrative tension, the book raises important issues. Refusal to believe that the Kremlin was capable of murdering their own citizens made western policy towards Russia “naive and ineffectual. From the moment Putin took power, the West maintained an image of Russia that bore no relation to reality.” Although published in 2016, The Less You Know the Better You Sleep remains a vital reading for our time. It emphasizes Russia’s disregard for the value of human life and establishes a pattern of the country’s crimes and impunity.