On the Russian-language Internet you can often come across a phrase about $500 billion of the Russian elite stored in American bank accounts, allegedly said by the former national security adviser to the US president. We checked whether he actually said these words.

“Russia can have as many nuclear suitcases and nuclear buttons as it wants, but since $500 billion of the Russian elite lies in our banks, you will still figure it out: is it your elite or is it ours? I do not see a single situation in which Russia will use its nuclear potential. <…> How are Putin’s going to respond to what they believe is an American challenge to Russia?” Words about the money of the Russian elite, allegedly said by Zbigniew Brzezinski, still pop up in Russian media and social networks to this day. They can be found in publications in Russia and the CIS (Forbes Kazakhstan, "New newspaper", "Echo of Moscow"), independent blogs and social networks ("Yandex.Zen", LiveJournal, "VKontakte", Facebook, Twitter). Moreover, "Wikiquote" also attributes this quote to Brzezinski.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is an American political scientist of Polish origin who served as National Security Advisor to the President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Born in Poland in 1928, Brzezinski from childhood listened stories from my father, who served as a diplomat in Soviet Ukraine, about terrible purges and show trials in the Soviet Union. As a ten-year-old child, Zbigniew left his homeland when his father was transferred to Canada for service. After fascist and then Soviet troops entered Poland in 1939, Zbigniew’s father refused to return to communist Poland. So the family remained in Canada.

Zbigniew Brzezinski (right) with Charles Schulz and Jimmy Carter, 1976

Despite the fact that Brzezinski received US citizenship only at the age of 30, he became one of the leading ideologists of the country's foreign policy. In Russia it called Russophobe, the most devoted enemy of Russia and the ideologist of the confrontation between the USA and the USSR. He truly was a vivid symbol of the ideological confrontation between the two camps. He had a good understanding of how the Stalinist style of governance worked, and he saw in the USSR a force that threatened the existence of democracy in the world. Brzezinski devoted many years of his life to containing the USSR, and perhaps that is why his discussions about Russia were disassembled into quotes and have such weight.

On the day of Brzezinski's death in May 2017, program “Echo of Moscow” “Your personal” guest of the program and editor-in-chief of “Echo” Alexey Venediktov gave a selection of his favorite quotes from the American political scientist.

A. Venediktov: “You can consider this historical optimism, but I am sure that Russia’s rapprochement with the West is inevitable, and as a result of this rapprochement, Russia will receive enormous benefits, enormous profits.” This is Brzezinski. There are other statements: “Russia can have as many nuclear suitcases as it wants, but since $500 billion of the Russian elite lies in our banks, you will still figure out whose elite it is. Yours or already ours? And this is Brzezinski.

Presenter S. Buntman: And this is Brzezinski.

Searching for a quote in English did not bring any clarity. English-language portal OpenDemocracy is the only non-Russian source that quotes in English. It is worth noting that the author of the article is Russian activist and independent journalist Andrei Kalikh, who most likely heard this quote from Russian-language sources, and took the English translation from books Russian Doctor of Technical Sciences Vladimir Chabanov.

The first mention of the quote in Russian was found in Maxim Kalashnikov's blog, a futurist writer (as he positions himself in his numerous blogs). In June 2009, Kalashnikov quoted report by Russian mathematician Georgy Malinetsky, head Department of Mathematical Modeling of Nonlinear Processes of the Institute of Applied Mathematics named after. M.V. Keldysh RAS, during which the mathematician allegedly quoted Brzezinski about the Russian elite: “This is the main idea of Georgy Malinetsky’s report. It’s called: “Innovation is the last hope of Russia.” Delivered at a seminar at the Institute of Dynamic Conservatism, the report had the effect of a bomb exploding. (The seminar was held under the title: “Real innovations and their imitations in Russia.”) <…>“What is happening now?” says the scientist. “Today we have lost the Soviet legacy, and the Russian Federation is not really working on new trump technologies. Nuclear weapons are no longer a trump card for Russia. Not so long ago, the famous Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke something like this: Russia can have as many nuclear suitcases and nuclear buttons as it wants, but since $500 billions of the Russian elite lie in our banks, you will still figure it out: is it your elite or ours? “I don’t see a single situation in which Russia will use its nuclear potential,” Brzezinski quipped.”

We were unable to find a transcript or video of the workshop, so we were unable to verify that the quotes from the report were correct. We have requested comments from Maxim Kalashnikov and Georgy Malinetsky, but have not yet received responses.

After being mentioned in the blog, the “Brzezinski quote” spread across the media and other blogs and began to accumulate details. Several publications stated that the American politician uttered his phrase during a conversation with Russian scientists about missile defense (“Military Review", Forbes Kazakhstan). Social network Uralistica.com, which refers to "Wikiquote”, claims that the quote is taken from Brzezinski’s interview with a correspondent of one of the Western media. But, based on the above facts, Zbigniew Brzezinski did not say the phrase about $500 billion of the Russian elite in the United States. Apparently, the author of the pseudo-quote was either the writer Maxim Kalashnikov or the mathematician Georgy Malinetsky.