Life Under the Watchful Eye: Russia Under the FSB’s Shadow Rule

In contemporary Russia, the quiet hum of surveillance is the background noise of daily life. It is not the overt, brutal totalitarianism of Stalin’s purges, nor the ideological saturation of Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. It is more insidious: a suffocating atmosphere of managed fear where the line between loyalty and treason is invisible until crossed, and where the most powerful force in the country is not the presidency, parliament, or judiciary—but the Federal Security Service, the FSB.

Once merely the successor to the Soviet KGB, the FSB has, over the past two decades, metastasised into the spine of the Russian state. It is a shadow bureaucracy with the ability to monitor, detain, coerce, and eliminate—with near-total impunity. To understand life under the FSB’s dominance is to understand a society moulded not by law or public consensus, but by the cold mechanics of surveillance, psychological control and state violence.

From KGB to FSB: A History of Continuity

The FSB’s roots trace directly to the Committee for State Security (KGB), the most powerful internal security organ of the Soviet Union. Although nominally dismantled after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the KGB was never truly disbanded—it was merely restructured and rebranded. The FSB inherited not just the infrastructure and personnel of the KGB, but its ethos: a belief that the greatest threat to the state is internal dissent.

In 1998, Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer, was appointed director of the FSB. One year later, he became Prime Minister—and then, swiftly, President. From that point forward, the FSB was not merely a tool of state power. It became its foundation.

Since then the FSB has undergone vast expansion, swallowing responsibilities that once belonged to other ministries, and operating with little transparency or oversight. Its agents are embedded throughout the state apparatus—media, business, judiciary, education. Russia, as a result, is governed not so much by laws as by the invisible expectations of a security state.

This continuity between Soviet and post-Soviet security regimes has meant that many Russians see the FSB as a natural, even necessary, part of political life. It is often said that Russia never underwent a process of "lustration"—no national reckoning with the crimes of the KGB, no institutional purge, no Truth and Reconciliation. The security organs, therefore, have remained essentially sovereign: self-regulating, secretive, and answerable only to the Kremlin.

The Mechanics of Control

To live in Russia today is to live under the logic of preemption. The state’s priority is not just to punish opposition, but to discourage the very possibility of dissent. The methods are subtle and pervasive:

• Surveillance: Cameras are omnipresent in cities, facial recognition is deployed in public transport systems and digital communications are routinely intercepted. VPN use is banned or restricted, and state trojans (software allowing state surveillance all activities on an electronic device) have been found on phones of journalists and activists.

  
  

• Self-censorship: The broad criminalisation of "discrediting the army", spreading "false information," or associating with "undesirable" foreign entities has created an environment where words—even thoughts—must be weighed carefully.

  
  

• Extra-judicial threats: From the poisoning of dissidents like Alexei Navalny to the mysterious deaths of oligarchs and journalists, the message is unmistakable: challenge the state, and you may vanish without cause or recourse.

  
  

• Harassment of families: Increasingly, the regime targets not just activists but their relatives. Children are taken from parents accused of anti-state activity; spouses lose jobs; friends are interrogated. The social fabric is mined with consequences.

  
  

It is not merely speech that is suppressed, but the architecture of thought itself. Writers retreat into silence or exile. Independent newspapers are shuttered. Social media platforms are throttled or banned. Even private conversations can lead to denunciations, as citizens grow suspicious not only of their neighbours, but of their own children.

In this world, conspiracy is not a delusion—it is a basic assumption. The most dangerous thing in Russia today is not rebellion; it is unpredictability.

Paranoia as National Atmosphere

In such a system, paranoia is not irrational—it is survival. The FSB does not need to arrest millions to control society. A few high-profile cases, strategically chosen and publicised, are enough to cultivate a nation of silent observers.

Ordinary Russians learn quickly to adopt a dual consciousness. Publicly, they display patriotic conformity—waving flags, repeating state slogans, avoiding sensitive topics. Privately, they might harbour doubts or fears, but they do not share them, not even with friends. This psychic bifurcation erodes the very possibility of civic trust, reducing society to an archipelago of isolated selves.

Informal networks of solidarity that once existed among teachers, journalists, doctors, and students have been broken up. Even within families, the sense of vulnerability pervades. Children in some regions have been instructed to report on "unpatriotic" behaviour by their parents. Entire communities live with the awareness that a single ill-timed remark could invite the knock at the door.

This psychological pressure is not just a byproduct of authoritarianism—it is the point. A society afraid to speak, to organise, or even to imagine alternatives, is a society rendered inert.

Democracy in the Age of Fear

In such conditions, the notion of functional democracy becomes not just implausible, but absurd. Elections in Russia are meticulously choreographed: candidates are screened, opposition parties are co-opted or crushed and media coverage is controlled. The outcome is determined not by popular will, but by the appearance of legitimacy.

Even opinion polling becomes meaningless. Pollsters, no matter how well-intentioned, encounter respondents who fear honesty. In a country where a text message or the like on social media can result in arrest, who would risk admitting dissatisfaction with the war, the president, or the system? The results are invariably skewed—creating a feedback loop in which manufactured consent is cited as genuine.

This creates a paradox: the more repressive the system, the higher the reported approval ratings. Surveys routinely show President Putin enjoying overwhelming support. But such statistics are not indicators of popularity; they are measures of obedience and fear.

True public opinion remains unknowable. It exists in whispers, glances, jokes told in low voices, or in the quiet acts of withdrawal: turning off state TV, emigrating, or simply refusing to participate.

The Destruction of Civic Institutions

The FSB’s dominance has also led to the deliberate dismantling of Russia’s civic institutions. Independent NGOs have been branded as "foreign agents" and forced to shut down. Academic institutions are purged of dissenting voices. The judiciary is no longer a forum for justice, but an instrument of state control.

Civil society has not just been silenced—it has been criminalised. Any form of independent association, from human rights advocacy to environmental activism, is viewed through the paranoid lens of subversion. Even humanitarian aid groups have been accused of threatening national security.

This has left Russians with almost no channels for peaceful political change. Without a free press, independent courts or trusted public institutions, grievances fester underground. The political system, meanwhile, becomes more brittle—highly centralised, opaque, and intolerant of innovation.

Is Change Possible?

And yet, regimes of control are never eternal. History has shown that even the most repressive systems—East Germany’s Stasi state, Romania’s Securitate, the USSR itself—can fall when their structures become too brittle, too divorced from the needs of the people. But the collapse of such systems is rarely predictable, and almost never peaceful.

For now, Russia under the FSB is a society on pause—her civil life frozen, her cultural life suppressed, and her political life hollowed out. The dreams of democracy remain just that: dreams, held quietly, waiting for a time when fear is no longer the master of the citizen.

If change is to come, it will not begin in elections or polling stations. It will begin, as it always does, in the space where fear ends and truth begins: in the conscience of individuals who refuse to lie, even silently.

Conclusion

To live in Russia today is to live in a hall of mirrors, where reality is manipulated and fear is ambient. Under the dominance of the FSB, the state has engineered a society where silence is safer than speech, where loyalty is performance, and where truth is a liability. It is not just a political crisis, but a spiritual one—a society in which the soul of the nation has been rendered suspect, and the very act of thinking freely is an act of quiet rebellion.

For the world looking on, it is essential not to mistake this paralysis for consent. The Russian people are not blind to their condition. But to survive is not to surrender. The memory of freedom, the desire for dignity, and the quiet courage of truth-tellers endure beneath the surface. One day, they may speak again.