Maybe it's the romantic in me, but I can't help shuddering every time I walk past the Lubyanka. For much of the Communist era, the forbidding walls of KGB headquarters cast a sinister pall across the Soviet Union.From its windows, Russians used to joke, you could see Siberia — the destination for tens of thousands once held in the Lubyanka's prison. When communism died, the KGB was quietly shelved. For a while, it seemed as though Russians could speak freely without the fear of who may be listening in.
But six years into the presidency of Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer, much of the democratic progress that Russia made in the early post-Soviet years has evaporated. Russians scurrying through the winter cold today could be forgiven for casting an apprehensive glance at the Lubyanka's grim façade, behind which lies the nerve centre of the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Service or FSB.