The Federal Security Service (FSB) is in several ways more powerful and more of a threat to individual rights than the KGB was during the Soviet era. The KGB took its orders from the Communist Party, which always kept a close watch on its operations. In contrast, although both Putin and Medvedev have influence over the FSB, it is in many respects its own master. (US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates observed in a secret cable, released recently by WikiLeaks, that Russia was “an oligarchy run by the security services.”)

By Amy Knight, New York Review of Books