Counterintelligence state (sometimes also called intelligence state or spookocracy) is a state

State (polity)

A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...

 where state security service

Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....

 penetrates and permeates all societal institutions including the military. The term has been applied by historians and political commentators to the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, the former German Democratic Republic, Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 under Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

, and modern Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 under Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

.

According to a definition, "The counterintelligence state is characterized by the presence of a large, elite force acting as a watchdog of a security defined as broadly that the state must maintain an enormous vigilance and enforcement apparatus... This apparatus is not accountable to the public and enjoys immense police powers... Whether the civilian government is able to control the security bodies

Civilian control of the military

Civilian control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the civilian political leadership, rather than professional military officers. One author, paraphrasing Samuel P...

 is an open question; indeed the civilian government is so penetrated by the apparatus that there is no clear distinction between the two."

Soviet Union

There was a massive security apparatus in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 to prevent any opposition, and "every facet of daily life fell into the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

's domain."

Undercover staff of the KGB included three major categories: the active reserve

Active reserve (KGB)

The active reserve of the KGB are members of the organization who work undercover "either pretending to assume various jobs or using as cover professions in which they are actually trained"....

; the "trusted contacts" (or "reliable people"), and "civilian informers" (or "secret helpers").

The "active reserve" included KGB officer

Officer (armed forces)

An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...

s with a military rank who worked undercover. "Trusted contacts" were high placed civilian

Civilian

A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...

s who collaborated with the KGB without signing any official working agreements, such as directors of personnel departments at various institutions, academics, deans, or writers and actors. Informers were citizens secretly recruited by the KGB, sometimes using forceful recruitment methods, such as blackmail

Blackmail

In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...

. The precise number of people from various categories remains unknown, but one of the estimates was 11 million "informers" in the Soviet Union, or one out of every eighteen adult citizens.

Russian Federation

A "Law on Foreign Intelligence" adopted in August 1992 provided conditions for penetration by former KGB officers to all levels of the government and economy, since it stipulated that "career personnel may occupy positions in ministries, departments, establishments, enterprises and organizations in accordance with the requirements of this law without compromising their association with foreign intelligence agencies." "All big companies have to put people from the security services on the board of directors... and we know that when Lubyanka

Lubyanka (KGB)

The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...

 calls, they have to answer them", said a Russian banker http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2008-28-3.cfm. A current FSB colonel explained that "We must make sure that companies don't make decisions that are not in the interest of the state" http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9682621 http://www.finrosforum.fi/?p=513.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites, has found in the beginning of 2000s that up to 78% of 1,016 leading political figures in post-Soviet Russia have served previously in organizations affiliated with the KGB or FSB. She said: "If in the Soviet period and the first post-Soviet period, the KGB and FSB people were mainly involved in security issues, now half are still involved in security but the other half are involved in business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

, political parties

Political Parties

Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...

, NGOs, regional governments, even culture... They started to use all political institutions."

"Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, an "FSB State" composed of chekists

Chekism

Chekism is a term used by some historians and political scientists to emphasize the omnipotence and omnipresence of secret political police in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia...

 has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country. Its closest partners are organized criminals

Organized crime

Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

. In a world marked by a globalized economy

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

 and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence

Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is Russia's primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB since December 1991...

 collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous.", said politologist Julie Anderson.

Historian Yuri Felshtinsky compared takeover of Russian state by silovik

Silovik

Silovik is a Russian word for politicians from the security or military services, often the officers of the former KGB, the FSB, the Federal Narcotics Control Service and military or other security services who came into power...

s with an imaginary scenario of Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 coming to power in Germany after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He noted a fundamental difference between the secret police

Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....

 and ordinary political parties

Political Parties

Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...

, even totalitarian ones, such as the Soviet Communist Party

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

. The Russian secret police organizations used to various violent active measures

Active measures

Active Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...

. Hence they killed Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....

 and directed Russian apartment bombings

Russian apartment bombings

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and...

 and other terrorism acts in Russia to frighten the civilian population and achieve their political objectives, according to Felstinsky.

Former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy

Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy

Konstantin Georgiyevich Preobrazhenskiy is a former KGB officer, an intelligence expert and the author of several books and numerous articles about Russian secret police organizations....

 shares similar ideas. When asked "How many people in Russia work in FSB

FSB (Russia)

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...

?", he replied: "Whole country. FSB owns everything, including Russian Army

Russian Ground Forces

The Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. The formation of these forces posed economic challenges after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and required reforms to professionalize the force...

 and even own Church, the Russian Orthodox Church‎... Putin managed to create new social system in Russia" http://www.voanews.com/russian/archive/2007-02/2007-02-02-voa3.cfm.

"Vladimir Putin's Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, or the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

- all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia - were as top-heavy with intelligence talent", said intelligence expert Marc Gerecht.