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In this text, I will examine the main trains of thought in the narrative of the historical memory of the Russian Federation's special services, which demonstrate the attempts to reconcile the traditions of the Tsarist-era services with those of the Soviet services. I will proceed from the assumption that the history of the special services is part of the history of the state apparatus, and more broadly, of the state's political systems. In this context, the work of Russian historiographers focuses not only on combining these two, in many respects contradictory identities of Russia - the Tsarist and the totalitarian - but above all on the creation of parallels between the historical and contemporary situations. This is because the historical legitimisation of the services is an important factor that gives legal validity to the current ruling elite, whose roots largely lie in the KGB, and which operates under the conditions of a new system of governance based on state capitalism.

Secret service. --- Politics and government. --- Intelligence service.

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It is generally believed that one sign that the secret services are doing their job well is that the media says nothing about them. In this respect, Russia is a special case: the services receive an excess of media coverage. This is only partly due to the media’s natural interest in an attractive subject, as well as the services’ own selfpromotion (although that is increasingly true around the world). In fact, it is a symptom of Russia’s information warfare, in which the special services’ public image is just one block in building the appearance of a strong state and a strong government. It also justifies and legitimises the high position which the services and elite members of the institutions of force enjoy in the Russian Federation’s political system. However, this artificial, mythologised image of the services conflicts with their non-public practices. These are revealed when their cover is blown, when journalists investigate criminal scandals involving the services, when controlled and uncontrolled leaks of compromising information take place, and when the opposition publicises cases where the special services violate fundamental rights and civil liberties – something they often do under the pretext of fighting the ‘fifth column’ of the West, international terrorists and foreign spies. This produces two different images of the services: the official one and the common one. The former presents the services as professional, patriotic and a stronghold of traditional values, Russia’s ‘sword and shield’; the latter shows them as pampered by the regime, lawless, corrupt and undisciplined, involved in brutal competition with one another, bureaucratised and criminalised.

Secret service --- Disinformation --- Information warfare --- Russia (Federation) --- Politics and government --- Politics / Political Sciences --- Politics --- Social Sciences --- Media studies --- Political Theory --- Communication studies --- Government/Political systems --- Security and defense --- Politics and communication

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Information warfare has a long tradition in Russia. Over the past few years it has been redefined, using geopolitical theory as its foundation. According to this theory, information warfare is a means used by the state to achieve its ends in international, regional and domestic politics and also to gain geopolitical advantage. Geopolitics has also provided Russia with ideological arguments in its strategy for rivalry with the West. As opposed to the ideology of liberalism, it promotes a “neoconservative post-liberal power struggling for a just multipolar world, defending tradition, conservative values and true liberty.” It provides an explanation for the internal crisis in Ukraine and grounds for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in the context of rivalry between ‘Eurasian civilisation’ and the ‘US-led Atlantic civilisation.’ // This text is an attempt to reconstruct an outline of the information warfare theory based on the writings of the leading representatives of Russian geopolitics, Igor Panarin and Aleksandr Dugin, and also its applied use during the operation in Crimea.

Politics / Political Sciences --- Politics --- Geopolitics --- Corruption - Transparency - Anti-Corruption --- Crimea (Ukraine) --- History