Russian Notes: From Russia with death

The diabolical professional sophistication evident in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko makes it absolutely clear that this was not the work of amateurs.

This leaves only two logical possibilities: journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko were flagrantly murdered in the center of Moscow and in the center of London for purposes of intimidation by the Russian intelligence services on orders of the president of Russia, or they were "liquidated" by breakaway groups within the intelligence services that are engaged in a merciless power struggle within the Kremlin.

If it is the first case, fascism has already triumphed; the situation portrayed in Vladimir Sorokin's novel, "Day of the Oprichnik," is already here; and all of us for whom such a regime is ethically unacceptable and aesthetically repugnant are going to be killed with varying degrees of brutality no matter what we now do or say.

So let us look at the second possibility, no matter how improbable it may seem. This scenario suggests that Chekist fascism is barging its way to power and that the only obstacle in its path is a president who does not want to wreck the Russian constitution and find himself marooned indefinitely in the Kremlin as its puppet.

It would be entirely reasonable to comment that, even so, President Vladimir Putin bears moral and political responsibility for the situation that has developed, and to scornfully denounce those gangsters fighting it out in the Kremlin that have been maddened by all the oil and gas billions they have gotten their hands on. That would oblige us to revert to scenario No. 1.

However, it seems that there is still a chance to save our country. But for this we will need an exceptionally broad coalition of politically active citizens rallying to the defense of the present constitution. We will also need a legally elected president who enjoys the trust of the majority of the Russian population.

We will need something else: The political will of the president himself and his readiness to put his trust in this coalition and in the belief that the Russian people have in him. Only if he will do that has he any prospect of facing down forces that he is evidently no longer able to control within the top-down structure of the "administrative vertical" that he and his ever-obliging political advisers have created.

By a broad coalition I mean more than those parties that are traditionally classed as "democratic" and "liberal" and that have representatives in the Citizens' Congress; more even than the oppositional parties on the left. In today's highly volatile situation, the success of an anti-fascist coalition requires also the participation of a significant section of the "party of government""people who are loyal to Vladimir Putin but who are not prepared to accept that the intelligence services should be unaccountable and unchallengeable. It requires the involvement of a business community that wants to be free to work in Russia and not constantly to feel under threat. It needs to include those civil servants in the bureaucracy who retain a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the state, as well as many leading figures in the mass media.

The viewpoint of people like these was persuasively articulated about a year ago in the renowned "Letter to the Congress" signed by18 prominent members of the ruling United Russia party. They specifically warned at that time that "the security ministries and services are becoming an independent political force." The letter was hushed up, and its authors and their like-minded colleagues opted for a behind-the-scenes struggle rather than defending their political views in public. They redirected their energies into the dead-end policy of trying to come up with a "liberal successor."

It should be cl