Were Orlov's, Koskov's and Ourumov's Russian Troops Renegades as well?
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,851MI6 Agent
This is a question that has puzzled me for some time now and I can't come up with a definite answer to it, perhaps (quite simply) because there isn't one! 
But anyhow I thought I would ask members and friends here on AJB their views on this subject matter.
It's a given that we know that General Orlov in OP, General Koskov in TLD and General Ourumov in GE are all renegade Russian Red Army Generals in the James Bond films that they each respectively appear in. This of course means they are working on their own renegade agenda which is at odds with that of the rest of the Red Army. In the case of Orlov he wants to detonate a nuclear bomb on an American Airforce base in Allied occupied West Germany thus putting in place a chain of events that will supposedly let the Red Army invade and conquer all of Western Europe due to nuclear disarmament taking place across Western Europe. Koskov wanted to set up General Pushkin, Head of the KGB in a (ultimately bogus) revival of SMERSH operations against British Intelligence in order that he can use arms money to buy diamonds to be converted into opium and sold for a massive personal profit at the expense of the KGB to be shared with American arms dealer Brad Whitaker. Ourumov was ostensibly the General who headed Space Division in the new post-communist Russian Government. Instead, he was a renegade and member of the Russian mafia-like organised crime Janus Syndicate who wanted to use the stolen (and massively destructive) GoldenEye satellite in order to raid the funds of the Bank of England and (to quote his master Alec Trevelyan) have "more money than God."
Whatever their respective evil plans it is clear that these three Russian Generals of the 1980s and 1990s are all acting beyond the interests of Mother Russia or the Red Army more specifically. We see how General Gogol, General Pushkin and Defence Minister Mishkin all try to take action to stop these renegade Generals from succeeding in their nefarious plans.
The one thing I wonder though is:
Are the Russian Red Army troops in their command as Generals in on their plots (i.e. that they are renegades also) or are they believing in the words of another renegade, Colonel Rosa Klebb in FRWL, that they're "all doing it for Mother Russia" or in other words are not part of the respective conspiracies in OP, TLD and GE?
As always, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this subject!
-{
But anyhow I thought I would ask members and friends here on AJB their views on this subject matter.
It's a given that we know that General Orlov in OP, General Koskov in TLD and General Ourumov in GE are all renegade Russian Red Army Generals in the James Bond films that they each respectively appear in. This of course means they are working on their own renegade agenda which is at odds with that of the rest of the Red Army. In the case of Orlov he wants to detonate a nuclear bomb on an American Airforce base in Allied occupied West Germany thus putting in place a chain of events that will supposedly let the Red Army invade and conquer all of Western Europe due to nuclear disarmament taking place across Western Europe. Koskov wanted to set up General Pushkin, Head of the KGB in a (ultimately bogus) revival of SMERSH operations against British Intelligence in order that he can use arms money to buy diamonds to be converted into opium and sold for a massive personal profit at the expense of the KGB to be shared with American arms dealer Brad Whitaker. Ourumov was ostensibly the General who headed Space Division in the new post-communist Russian Government. Instead, he was a renegade and member of the Russian mafia-like organised crime Janus Syndicate who wanted to use the stolen (and massively destructive) GoldenEye satellite in order to raid the funds of the Bank of England and (to quote his master Alec Trevelyan) have "more money than God."
Whatever their respective evil plans it is clear that these three Russian Generals of the 1980s and 1990s are all acting beyond the interests of Mother Russia or the Red Army more specifically. We see how General Gogol, General Pushkin and Defence Minister Mishkin all try to take action to stop these renegade Generals from succeeding in their nefarious plans.
The one thing I wonder though is:
Are the Russian Red Army troops in their command as Generals in on their plots (i.e. that they are renegades also) or are they believing in the words of another renegade, Colonel Rosa Klebb in FRWL, that they're "all doing it for Mother Russia" or in other words are not part of the respective conspiracies in OP, TLD and GE?
As always, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this subject!
-{ "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
office had gone rogue.
Yes, and that certainly would of course apply to someone like General Ourumov who infamously kills one of his own soldiers in the PTS to GoldenEye as he was too trigger happy! The "Fear of God" was put into them early on you could say.
I think in OP it is more implied in OP that at least sections of the Red Army soldiers and officers are in on the bomb plot as some of them set the atomic bomb and guard it. So there's no one clear definitive answer to this one but I certainly look forward to the debate it helps to engender all the same!
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Given my musings in the posts above, I'd say that they most likely were, yes.
That they were renegade by virtue of operating on orders from a renegade general? I'd say they were just following orders, not knowing that the plot they were supporting was unsanctioned. Similarly, Koskov's general friend in charge of the Russian Airbase in Afghanistan thought he was aiding a state-sanctioned mission.
On GE it could have gone either way, that the soldiers assumed they were participating in a state mission (the likeliest scenario) or the slight possibility that they were in on the plot, all the way, including some kind of cut or payment for their services; this is unlikely, based on security alone involving such a sensitive and crucial deception plot. Certainly, this has been discussed on AJB before, but was the shooting of that one guard also faked, to give Bond a false sense of victory in his escape, and given that the same pistol was used with blanks (?) to fake the shooting of 006?
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Yes, he's clearly in on the atomic bomb plot too. This was brought up in the same thread that I created over on MI6 Community where I'm also a member. I think I omitted to mention this in my first post in this thread. There are some shades of grey in this subject and it is what makes it a bit more complicated than just saying "The Generals are renegades and the troops and other officers are just blindly following orders".
Another grey area in this subject is Colonel Feyador in TLD - is he part of the plot with Koskov and Whitaker or not? It's difficult to say but I personally think he's in on it too.
Well I'm glad that that cleared it up for you. Now for Octopussy...
LoL I feel the same way. Thanks Silhouette Man.
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
My pleasure, Firemass. I'm really glad that it helped explain the convoluted plot of TLD!
The Nato navy ,has met up in Gibraltar for an exercise , 3 of the Captain s meet up for a chat , The German captain says "I have the bravest sailors in all Nato ,to wich the other 2 disagree , "Hans " shouts the German captain , "dive off the deck into the sea ,the German sailor ,dives off into the sea , "I told you ,I have the bravest sailors ."That's nothing "says the Italian Captain ," Marco ,dive off the bridge into the sea ,the Italian sailor dives off the great height ,"see I have the bravest sailors he says .Not to be out done
the British Captain shouts out " able seaman Jones" I want you to climb to the top of the highest mast on the ship and dive into the sea" "no bleedin way sir" replies Jones ," see I told you I have the bravest sailors in the navy" says the British Captain
Well that's a given of course (and superfluous to say) and I don't think any members who commented on this thread topic were ever in doubt about that.
This was the mid 80s to mid 90s Russia with the chaotic decline and implosion of the Soviet regime, a troubled era the Janus syndicate fed off of. And Trevelyan and Ouerumov may have made a ton of money from siphoning off the chemical weapons and even the ammo/supplies sent to that Arkhangelsk facility, with the 00 caper blowing the place up covering the tracks of early arms shipping as well as 006's escape into the Eastern Bloc underworld (the selling of chemical weapons snowballing into the Janus organisation).
Discipline may have declined and boredom set in for a lot of Soviet guards posted there...
Blank rounds can injure and kill at close range. And why didn't the pipes and canisters not rupture from all those two dozen or so AKs firing?
Also grossly underpaid Russian (or Ukrainian) soldiers are good fodder for a wealthy arms dealing network like Janus to bribe or recruit.
As for Ourumov(during the teaser sequence anyway) his men are operating under orders to ensure the manufacture of chemical weapons to be used in war with the NATO member countries. John Gardner's novelization of Goldeneye expands greatly on the teaser sequence.
Well the conscripts are there as the complicit muscle, with Feydor and his ranking staff more to blame for going along with Koskov's illicit scheme in trading heroin. But even the Soviet grunts on the ground would've had much to gain from being equipped with Whitaker's black market Western weaponry. And since Bond's interests were aligned with the local Afghan insurgents and they were in a active warzone with the Soviet infantry being hostile combatants, that unfortunately tipped them into being fair game.
The novel also had (according to a wiki source) the nonsensical explanation that the GoldenEye system and the Cuban dish through Ourumov were from the start produced by the Janus syndicate, when it's more plausible the Cuban facility alongside Petya and Mischa were solidly Soviet 1980s projects rendered dormant by the budget crunch and end of the Cold War, then a few years later bought out or outright stolen by the freelance Janus syndicate (an Eastern Bloc equivalent of SPECTRE or HYDRA).
Most of the guards may have had no clue of the weird fake death scheme (with Ouromov's inner staff and the quartermaster being in on the gag) and there's a popular perception Russian officers do not care about the lives of the infantry, however the blowing up of an expensive and vital chemical weapons plant on hindsight reeks of something like a insurance scam when Ourumov emerges later as the No. 2 figure in the world's biggest weapons supply syndicate that had heavy dealings with Iraq's Saddam regime (that loved its chemical weapons and surplus Soviet gear).
And it seems very odd that, although a production facility of WMDs that were a potential threat to NATO members, why did MI6 suddenly have the audacity to launch an aggressive semi-overt commando attack on a key facility on Soviet soil, risking unnecessary escalation in Cold War hostilities? It's likely that Ourumov must've explained the detonation of the Arkhangelsk complex as an unfortunate industrial accident in his report to central Soviet command in order to cover Trevelyan's tracks further and MI6 disavowed him on "death" in Soviet territory, but still.
I remember in TLD Koskov told the garrison commander that he on a mission for the state. So in some cases their deference to authority would not make them a party to the conspiracy.
You do make an interesting point. The writers of the films always had these action as "renegade" as not to clearly point out the Soviet or Russian governments directly. This was a commercial consideration.
Everything, even he could see an end to the cold war.