CIB

The Battle over Felix Dzerzhinsky Returns to Lubyanka

Date: 05/04/22

Author: Kent Moors, Ph.D.


I had just about finished a Spy Tale entry addressing an episode involving the rereading of intelligence history, KGB style.

But then “mother” had some questions about a few of the things I was writing in the intended piece. “Just some matters about declassification,” was the way it was put. Last time that comment was made it took me several months to get a Tale to print.

Fortunately, another matter has emerged. This one also involved intelligence history, a hectic time, centered about the founding of the KGB (or its predecessors at least). It also addressed a current controversy about the way history is being reinterpreted in Moscow.

And since the body of this one has already seen print – as an entry in my wife Marina’s Moscow Diary ­syndicated newspaper column – there is nothing mother can do about it.

However, a few words are warranted before we move into the meat of this one. Marina waited almost nine years before recounting the following story. One reason had to do with her involvement in an act that could have gone very wrong. Another was an occasion she felt required comment (from personal experience I would say watch out when a trenchant writer like Marina makes such a decision).

Today, amidst the din of war, an opinion is once again surfacing in Moscow. It involves the resurrection of a statute that some believe will give Russia some backbone and restore national resolve. The current environment involves Western opposition to its invasion of neighboring Ukraine. However, others still see this intended move as a return to a dark past.

It remains a controversy surrounding the founder of the KGB. Actually, this is all about his statue that came down one evening in August 1991. Marina knows the events well. She was there and expected the worst.

Almost nine years later, an earlier attempt to put the statue back up surfaced. It was then that this Moscow Diary installment appeared. Once again, I have added photos and notes.


Moscow Diary

Diary Entry for Sunday, July 16, 2000

There are no signs on the front. If it were not for the beefy security guards wearing blue berets standing in the doorway you would never notice. But this otherwise forgettable Stalin-era architecture building has become the center of a symbolic fight which may say as much about the future of Russian democracy as anything else.

This is the location of the KGB Veterans’ Club.

The Club was located here in what is now an apartment building. Photo: 123rfl.com

It sits near the Oktayabrskaya metro station in south central Moscow…

Oktayabrskaya Metro Station

[Note from Kent: this is just a few minutes from where my apartment was when I lived in Moscow.]

…just across from the city’s most famous towering sculpture of Vladimir Lenin.

The famous statue of Lenin, Kaluzhskaya Square, Oktayabrskaya Photo: Moscow-photos.com

The Club is leading the latest attempt to return the most dreaded statute to the streets of Moscow. They hope once again to have the likeness of Felix Dzerzhinsky gracing the square in front of the Lubyanka.

Dzerzhinsky was Lenin’s chief of the Cheka, the forerunner of the agencies that would eventually become the KGB. For years, the statute (referred to as the “Iron Felix,” both in devotion and fear) symbolized the power behind the throne. Inside the Lubyanka, both KGB headquarters and infamous prison, that kind of power made people disappear.

“Iron Felix” Photo: tass.com

The KGB has now given way to a new organization called the FSB [Note: this is the current internal intelligence agency, earlier the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB; the foreign intel is run by the SVR, which had been the KGB First Chief Directorate. The FSB still conducts its business out of Lubyanka. SVR is headquartered in Ostankino on the outskirts of Moscow]. But the mindset is the same. These days it occasionally moves in strangely legal circles.

Headed by retired Colonel General Vladmir Pirozhkov, the KGB veterans are using an otherwise obscure local ordinance to return Dzerzhinsky to his pedestal. It is a law governing historic landmarks, requiring the preservation of “culturally significant” parts of the city.

A few years ago, some stupid politician thought the statue would return a sense of order to Moscow and we had the first contest about putting Felix back up. This time the battle is going to be more difficult. It also remains for me a personal fight. Because I happened to be there when Felix went down. He fell one evening in late August 1991, following a popular outcry against a coup that tried to oust then-president Mikhail Gorbachev.


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Moscow lost a number of statues back then, but something important took place with this one. With KGB personnel looking on, a crowd tried to topple old Felix. Unfortunately, the weight of the figure and its location in the center of a busy street, made matters dangerous.

A loudspeaker told us the army had been called in. A confrontation appeared inevitable. We had no choice, we just stood there.

So uneasily did Felix.

A friend dryly observed when the troops started arriving, “They won’t let us have our way here, not in front of the Lubyanka.” We expected the worst. A colonel who was apparently in charge approached.

After surveying the situation, he asked, “What do you intend to do with him?” There was a deafening silence. “Sir, we think it’s time the fellow retired,” somebody finally yelled. I remember closing my eyes and swallowing hard.

But these were unusual days and the unexpected had an almost miraculous way of happening. The officer looked at us and then looked at his soldiers. Slowly a smile appeared on his face, followed by a laugh. “Well, it looks like you need some help,” he said.

Some military engineers and a crane were dispatched. In a magical moment, at the dawn of a new Russia, soldiers and civilians worked through the night to ease long suffering.

Felix comes down. Lubyanka in the background. Photo: dw.com

Felix was exiled to the scrap heap of Bolshevik figures piled behind Moscow’s House of Artists.

The base of the statue remained with an improvised inscription that talked about freedom and honoring millions of forgotten victims. Somebody perched the new Russian tricolor flag unevenly at the top. I would drive buy it, remember the officer, and usually end up smiling myself.

But my opinion hasn’t changed over the years. If that butcher is put back up, the bastard is just coming right back down again. Perhaps we will create the “Veterans of August 1991” to do just that.


The saga continues today. Sometime during the last two weeks, a member of the Duma (the more powerful lower house of the Russian Legislature) introduced the latest motion to return Felix to Lubyanka Square. The card-carrying KGB Veteran’s Club member now sitting at one end of a very long table in the Kremlin may have had something to do with that.

Here’s hoping there are still folks in Moscow who remember August 1991…and a smiling colonel…and his crane.

Dr. Kent Moors


This is an installment of Classified Intelligence Brief, your guide to what’s really happening behind the headlines… and how to profit from it. Dr. Kent Moors served the United States for 30 years as one of the most highly decorated intelligence operatives alive today (including THREE Presidential commendations).

After moving through the inner circles of royalty, oligarchs, billionaires, and the uber-rich, he discovered some of the most important secrets regarding finance, geo-politics, and business. As a result, he built one of the most impressive rolodexes in the world. His insights and network of contacts took him from a Vietnam veteran to becoming one of the globe’s most sought after consultants, with clients including six of the largest energy companies and the United States government.

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