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| Moscow is silent: Putin in 1989 East Germany |
| 2015-03-29 |
| An excellent article about a part of Russian president Vladimir Putin's life as a KGB agent in Germany in 1989. I will excerpt only a small portion here: Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response. It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it. The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life. "We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila. "My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers." One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had helped him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990. This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #7 Putin could've times been easily killed in East Germany - fortunately, the CIA prioritized or wanted somebody else at the time. He was recognized via sniper scope. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-03-29 23:28 |
| #6 Well I think I know more about Putin than Obama. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2015-03-29 19:13 |
| #5 Putin immediately set about dismantling the brief flower of Russian democracy and putting in place the Soviet police-spy system. He marginalised the democrats. More than 150 people died in the Moscow theatre terror attacks not because they were shot but because they choked on their own vomit after russian paramilitary used knockout gas, dragged them out of the theatre and lay them on their backs. They put them in buses and drove them miles to hospitals in the middle of Moscow instead of to the nearest medical centre then refused to tell the hospitals what chemical they used so they couldn't treat the victims. Some died up to a week later, in comas - because they didn't know what was used. Worse, a Russian secret police agent Khanpash Turkibaev was one of the chechen terrorists to hold the moscow theatre seige. he boasted of having a detailed map of the theatre, and having led the terrorists there through checkpoints in chechnya and police outposts on the way to Moscow. He left the theatre shortly before russian troops stormed it. Information on Terkibaev was given to Sergei Yushenkov, involved in the parliamentary investigation of the theatre siege. He was shot two weeks later in Moscow, in broad daylight. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya tracked Turkibaev down and interviewed him. He admitted working for the Russian secret services. She was killed. Her boss was poisoned. came down with mysterious symptoms. a burning sensation. in a week he was in a coma, skin peeled off, hair fell out. died of multiple organ failure from an unknown toxin. Alexander Litvinenko, former KGB who became a whistleblower to say how the former KGB was interfering in politics was poisoned by polonium in London Make no mistake the KGB runs Russia like a police state. No democracy should EVER let the spies and police take over. Be warned. |
| Posted by: anon1 2015-03-29 13:38 |
| #4 I am reading "The Man Without a Face: the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin" by Masha Gessen, a journalist who will no doubt be shot or poisoned in the next few years for writing it. Today I learned that when Putin became acting president in 1999 his second directive established a new russian military doctrine abandoning the old no-first-strike policy regarding nuclear weapons and emphasizing a right to use them against aggressors "if other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted or deemed ineffective". |
| Posted by: anon1 2015-03-29 13:24 |
| #3 Angela Merkel seems to have an extreme dislike for Putin. I thought it was because of his Alpha ways but more likely Putin's roll in East Germany being her homeland. |
| Posted by: Dale 2015-03-29 08:58 |
| #2 'Vaterland' wasn't taboo in East Germany either. "DDR, unser Vaterland!" ("GDR, our fatherland!") was an officially sanctioned party slogan that was chanted at pro government demonstrations under Gensek Honecker up to and including 1989. |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2015-03-29 05:21 |
| #1 "... and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response." "Vaterland" had never been a 'taboo' term in West Germany. The East German demonstrators quoted a line from the East German national anthem "Deutschland einig Vaterland" - "Germany united Fatherland". |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2015-03-29 02:36 |