Russia’s Intel Serv: Net Asses

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course examines Russian intelligence as both a professional security apparatus and a durable system of rule. From the Cheka to the FSB, SVR, and GRU, Russian intelligence services have served several overlapping purposes: protecting the regime, penetrating adversaries, manipulating political environments, compensating for conventional weakness, disciplining domestic elites, and shaping the strategic perceptions of Russia’s rulers. We will contrast the Russian services with their Western competitors, focusing on how the Kremlin has historically granted them greater operational latitude, while keeping them on a tighter analytic leash. The course is organized around a central net-assessment question: Have Russian intelligence services, in the fullness of time, made the Russian State more secure or less secure? Russian and Soviet services have achieved extraordinary tactical successes: penetrating Western governments, sustaining illegals programs, conducting active measures, assassinating perceived enemies, and enabling Moscow to project influence far beyond its economic and military base. Yet those same services have also reinforced paranoia, distorted perceptions, overpromised the power of covert action, and contributed to catastrophic strategic misjudgments, most notably in the Soviet collapse in 1991 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Throughout students will explore how a system built to protect regime power can ultimately undermine national security.