Soviet Active Measures

in the
"Post-Cold War" Era
1988-1991
A Report Prepared at the Request of the
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Appropriations
by the
United States Information Agency
June 1992
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary 5
The Role of Active Measures in Soviet Foreign Policy 9
A Typology of Active Measures Themes and Messages 12
How Soviet Active Measures Themes Were Spread 14
"Black" or Covert Active Measures
"Gray" or Semi-Covert Active Measures
"White" or Overt Active Measures
The "Post-Cold War" Era: A New Context for
Soviet Active Measures 18
An Attempt to be more Sophisticated: Disinformation on
Military Spending 20

The Use of Alarmist Arguments 22

"15 Nuclear Republics"
Ethnic Conflicts
The Russian Winter
The Break-down of the "Command Administrative" System
Internal Front Groups: Vladimir Zhirinovsky
and the "Centrist Bloc" 27
The Conciliatory Slogans of New Political Thinking 33
The Thinking Behind "New Thinking": The Ineffectiveness of Force in
Achieving Soviet Goals
The Ideology of "New Thinking"
Military-Related Themes: A Non-Nuclear World, Disarmament,
Reasonable Sufficiency, & Non-Offensive Defense
Eliminating the "Enemy Image"
The "De-ideologization of State-to-State Relations"
The Common European Home
A New Security System in Europe
 Technology Sharing
"New Thinking" in Perspective: the Soviet View
The Soviet View of Compromise and Conciliation
Crude, Anti-American Disinformation
37
"Geheim" and "Top Secret" Magazines: Purveyors of
Crude, Defamatory Disinformation
A Selected Chronology of Crude, Derogatory Soviet
Disinformation, January 1989 to August 1991
44
A Sophisticated Disinformation Operation 51
Conciliatory Disinformation 55
Looking to the Future 59
Conclusion 73
Budgetary Implications 77
Appendix: Recent Revelations about Soviet Active Measures 79
"Black" or Covert Active Measures
'Service A' Organization
'Service A' Operations
Forgeries
KGB Active Measures in India
Agents of Influence
An Example of "Black" Active Measures: Alleged Soviet Agents of
Influence and Covertly Sponsored Publications in Denmark
"Gray" or Semi-covert Active Measures
"White" or Overt Active Measures
Manipulation of the Russian Orthodox Church and the World
Council of Churches: How "Black," "Gray," and "White"
Active Measures Worked Together 98
 Executive Summary

Active measures is a Soviet term that refers to the manipulative use of slogans,
arguments, disinformation, and carefully selected true information, which the Soviets
used to try to influence the attitudes and actions of foreign publics and governments. In
addition to examining disinformation, this report looks at the Soviet use of conciliatory,
alarmist, and derogatory slogans and arguments in order to illustrate the wide variety of
manipulative messages and themes used in active measures operations.
Prior to 1988, one type of Soviet active measure message, crude, anti-American
disinformation, received the lion's share of attention. During the "post-Cold War" years of
1988 to 1991, the use of this type of Soviet active measure decreased markedly, although
it still continued to some extent.
While anti-American disinformation decreased during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
another form of derogatory disinformation increased. As the Soviet Communist Party
loosened its rigid totalitarian grip within the USSR, it tried to compensate for this by
increasing its use of defamatory disinformation against its domestic adversaries,
including Russian president Boris Yeltsin, Lithuanian president Vytautas Landsbergis,
and other democratic and nationalist opponents of the Soviet Communist Party.
During this period, both at home and abroad, the Soviets placed an increasing reliance on
active measures themes that were often very conciliatory, although many also appear to
have been disingenuous. For example, in late 1988, the Soviets launched a major active
measures campaign designed to create a benign, and false, image of the KGB.
In 1990 and 1991, the Soviets spread alarmist active measures themes energetically, as
they attempted to turn to their advantage Western fears about the dangers of a break-up of
the USSR. According to a recent defector who circulated active measures for the KGB
during this period, the Soviet authorities deliberately sought to influence Western policy
by encouraging the belief that if Gorbachev were to lose power or the USSR were to
break up, this would lead to the creation of "aggressive republics with uncontrolled
access to nuclear weapons."
Also in 1990 and 1991, the Soviet authorities set up an elaborate montage of internal
front groups that posed as democratic parties, known as the "Centrist Bloc," led by the
so-called Liberal Democratic Party - which was neither liberal nor democratic. In late
1990, the Soviet government floated the idea of forming a coalition government with
these bogus parties. They, in turn, formed a National Salvation Committee, called for
political parties to be banned, and urged that a state of emergency be imposed in the
USSR. This elaborate charade was presumably designed so that the Soviet authorities
could appear to be bowing to supposedly popular, "democratic" pressure in imposing a
state of emergency. This scheme was partially implemented in the Baltics in January
1991, but soon abandoned. It was resurrected in August 1991 in the form of the abortive
hard-line coup, which the Liberal Democratic Party wholeheartedly supported.
But the most pervasive type of active measure during the "post-Cold War" era was
exemplified by the conciliatory slogans of "new political thinking." The Soviet "new
thinkers" devised 25 to 30 conciliatory slogans with broad, popular appeal, including
defense conversion, non-offensive defense, ecological security, the rule of law, a non-
nuclear world, eliminating the enemy image, the Common European Home, and a host of
others.
The Soviet thinking behind the adoption of "new thinking" was counterintuitive to
Westerners. According to the Soviets, Western economic superiority, rearmament, and the
specter of a Strategic Defense Initiative with which they could not compete forced them
in the mid 1980s to abandon their decades-long effort to gain military superiority over the
West. Rather than abandon their ambitious goals in the world arena, however, they made
the desperate but audacious decision to try to achieve them by conciliatory, political
means rather than the predominately military, confrontational methods of the past. They
designed an international strategy based, as Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze put it, on the "force of politics" rather than the "politics of force."
Soviet active measures and propaganda specialists, elevated to new prominence and
power within the USSR, creatively devised the supra-Marxist ideology of "new political
thinking," which sought to use the worldwide appeal of "all-human" values and concerns
as a vehicle for achieving Soviet leadership internationally. The Soviets designed political
campaigns centered around "all-human" fears about nuclear war, environmental
catastrophe, and the collapse of the world economy, and used the immense resources of
the Soviet active measures apparatus to propagate these themes worldwide.
Whereas Marxist "old thinking" was, in many ways, the politics of confrontation and
envy, with its central paradigm the struggle of the economically oppressed versus their
oppressors, "new thinking" relied much more heavily on both the politics of conciliation
and what might be called the politics of hysteria as its motive forces. The old Soviet
ideology had spoken powerfully to the "have-nots" of the world; the new ideology
sought, in addition, to play on both the highest hopes and the most worrisome concerns of
the "haves."
But the dramatically improved image that the embrace of the conciliatory principles of
"new thinking" won for the USSR on the international scene came at a fatally high price.
By mid 1990, the grand strategy of the "new thinkers" stood in disarray after the
communist regimes in Eastern Europe had collapsed and a supposedly "renewed" Soviet
Communist Party had failed to gain the sympathies of citizens voting for the first time in
free elections in the USSR. Following this fiasco, traditional communist hard-liners
regained their ascendancy in the Soviet hierarchy from the fall of 1990 to the spring of
1991. Allied with Gorbachev, they tried to turn the clock back and reimpose old
totalitarian methods. Crude, anti-American disinformation made a partial resurgence as
the conciliatory slogans of "new thinking" disappeared from the Soviet political scene.
In the spring of 1991, Gorbachev turned back to the policy of "new thinking." The hard-
liners then made a last-ditch, abortive attempt to seize power in August 1991, apparently
hoping that Gorbachev would join them, as he had one year earlier.
Following the collapse of the August coup and the subsequent disintegration of the
USSR, various groups and states contending for power in the Commonwealth of
Independent States continue to use active measures and disinformation techniques in their
efforts to achieve their political aims. The formidable Soviet active measures and
disinformation apparatus, which manipulated world opinion for decades, has
disintegrated. The integrity of its system has been shattered, and many formerly hidden
pieces now lie revealed for examination. But many large fragments of the Soviet active
measures apparatus continue to exist and function, for the most part now under Russian
rather than Soviet sponsorship.
The Soviet Communist Party created what was, in all likelihood, the most formidable
political influence machine in the modern world. Although the Soviets had the
disadvantage of "selling" an enormously unpopular "product," they evolved a great deal
of manipulative and deceptive techniques to try to compensate for this disadvantage. A
close examination of how they sought to influence foreign publics and governments by
orchestrating and spreading carefully selected information, disinformation, and a variety
of crude, sophisticated, derogatory, conciliatory, and alarmist arguments and slogans
contains important lessons for the future in understanding how other totalitarian and
extremist regimes conduct active measures, and how some groups and states within the
Commonwealth of Independent States continue to try to achieve political influence using
these methods.
Communist countries such as Cuba and North Korea have their own active measures and
disinformation apparatuses. States or groups that have been trained by the Soviets, such
as Iraq and the Palestine Liberation organization use these techniques in their foreign
policy endeavors. Highly ideological, anti-Western regimes such as Iran and Libya have
elaborated their own front group structures and actively spread anti-Western
disinformation. Various communist parties around the world continue to use these
techniques. According to the April 21, 1992 New York Times, a recent Chinese
government document speaks of the need for "prudent and active measures ... so that
bilateral [U.S.-Chinese) relations develop in a way that will help us."
Finally, this report tries to make it clear that manipulative actions by foreign governments
do not have to be overtly anti-American in order to be inimical to U.S. interests.
Conciliatory and alarmist themes can be very damaging to the United States, if they cause
the U.S. government to take actions that work to its detriment and which it would not
otherwise have taken if it had not been the target of distorted or false messages
systematically propagated by a foreign government for a political, economic, military or
related purpose.
Given the fact that a number of states continue to engage in manipulative active measures
campaigns directed at the United States, the United States Information Agency (USIA)
continues to monitor, analyze, and counter foreign efforts in this area. USIA continues to
flexibly reallocate its resources devoted to this mission in order to meet shifting demands.
As long as states and groups interested in manipulating world opinion, limiting U.S.
government actions, or generating opposition to U.S. policies and interests continue to
use these techniques, there will be a need for the United States Information Agency to
systematically monitor, analyze, and counter them.

The Soviet union, or rather the totalitarian communist system that once kept 300 million
people in harness and toyed with the maniacal idea of a world revolution, has ceased to
exist.
Commentator Yuri Solton
Radio Moscow
December 30, 1991

We are leaving behind a totalitarian regime, the most powerful totalitarian regime in the
world, which had relied not only on political tools, exploiting the monopoly position of
one party, which was the nucleus of its power, but also on totalitarian domination of state
property. You realize what a monster it was!
Mikhail Gorbachev
address at the Sorbonne, Paris
April 22, 1992

Another group of documents make a terrible impression. They're to do with the creators
of the new thinking: When you read what they were writing in the papers on one hand,
and what kind of secret instructions they were handing on, for example, how to spread
propaganda against the Americans, in all types of international dealings, financing of,
among others, various terrorist organizations even though we had diplomatic relations
with the states in question. These dual standards were obviously an attempt to achieve the
impossible.
Rudolf Pikhoya
Russian official in charge of
Soviet Communist Party archives
June 5, 1992
 The Role of Active Measures
in Soviet Foreign Policy

The collapse of the Soviet communist power structure is leading to many revelations
about how it functioned, although only the first few tantalizing fragments have so far
emerged. one of the more interesting areas is that of active measures, the Soviet term for
carefully crafted influence operations, which the Soviets used, in addition to traditional
Western-style diplomatic and informational activities, to try to achieve the goals of Soviet
foreign policy.
The importance of active measures in the Soviet approach to international relations
derived from the totalitarian nature of the Soviet political system. In the USSR, the ruling
party elite controlled not only the governmental structure and the economy but also all
other formal manifestations of society, including the Russian Orthodox Church, the
media, professional associations, academic institutions, trade unions, youth groups, peace
groups, and so on. Indeed, control by a single party of virtually all the organized entities
of society is the fundamental defining feature of totalitarianism.
The Soviet leaders naturally sought to use all the state and non-state entities at their
disposal in the conduct of Soviet foreign policy. The ruling elite of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was not content merely to exercise its power internationally
through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Trade, and other state
bodies. It also exerted its influence internationally through its control of the international
activities of the Soviet media, professional organizations, trade unions, youth groups,
academic institutions, the Russian Orthodox Church, peace groups, and virtually all other
nongovernmental institutions. The Soviet Communist Party also had extensive ties with
Soviet-aligned communist parties worldwide, both those that had achieved totalitarian
control in their countries and those that as yet only aspired to such a goal.
In the Soviet analysis of international affairs, the various strands of international relations
were divided into three categories: party-to-party, state-to-state, and people-to-people
relations, a hierarchy in which party-to-party relations signified the highest degree of
cooperation and understanding. While in pluralistic, free societies, state-to-state
diplomacy is normally considered to be the most important aspect of international
relations, in the Soviet mind, state-to-state diplomacy was only one of the ways in which
Soviet influence could be brought to bear, and often not the most significant way. As
then-Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze reminded his audience in July 1988,
at a speech at a special "Scientific and Practical Conference of the USSR Ministry of
Foreign Affairs," published in the October 1988 issue of International Affairs (p. 19):
The country's foreign policy is not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs alone. All its practical
achievements of recent years are the fruit of well-coordinated actions by several foreign-
policy departments functioning under the guidance of the party.
Active measures were conducted in the party-to-party, people-to-people, and state-to-
people realms of the USSR's foreign policy. They represented, in essence, the non-
diplomatic component of Soviet foreign policy. The CPSU ruling elite conducted state-to-
state affairs in the sense that the West understands it through the Soviet governmental
structure, but only as one component of Soviet foreign policy. The party-to-party, people-
to-people, and state-to-people aspects were equally, if not more important. It was often
very difficult for Westerners to comprehend this fundamentally different Soviet approach
to international relations and, as a result, the centrality to the Soviets of active measures
operations was gravely underappreciated in the West.
Another important aspect of the Soviet totalitarian approach to foreign affairs is that
Soviet goals in the international arena were much more ambitious and open-ended than
the goals pursued by pluralistic societies, in which the beliefs in limited government and
the sovereignty of the individual led to a foreign policy aimed at achieving more limited
goals.
In contrast to this vision of limited national interests and corresponding respect for the
interests of other countries, the CPSU's totalitarian control within the Soviet Union was
naturally accompanied by a vision of similar goals internationally. Thus, a standard pre-
Gorbachev textbook on Soviet foreign policy, Soviet Foreign Policy: Objectives and
Principles, described "the main objective and supreme principle of Soviet foreign policy"
as follows:
on the day it made its appearance the Soviet state inscribed the world "Peace" on its
banner and made the struggle for peace the objective and highest principle of its foreign
policy. When the new communist social system has triumphed worldwide and a classless
society established, peace, the dream of the greatest minds throughout the ages, will be
the natural situation. (p. 155)
The textbook concluded, "Peace can only be guaranteed through the ultimate triumph of
communism worldwide."
Although such straightforward statements of ultimate Soviet aims were muted during the
Gorbachev era, high-ranking Soviet officials reiterated them on occasion. For example, in
1989, the following statement by Lenin was cited approvingly in a book issued by the
Novosti Press Agency:
The Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and social
development in general along the straightest and shortest road to the victory of Soviet
power and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale. That is an incontestable
truth. (pp. 49-50)
The book, The Problem of Compromise in Politics as Seen by Lenin in the First Post-
Revolutionary Years (1918-1921) was authored by Alexander Lebedev, who was then
deputy head of the Ideology Department of the CPSU Central Committee, in charge of
international information. Lebedev has privately denied authorship of the book, despite
the fact that it appeared under his name. This raises the intriguing possibility that
elements within the Soviet apparatus may have been powerful enough to have a book
issued under false premises and translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Khmer behind the back of one of the most important officials of the Central Committee.
Whether Lebedev actually wrote the book or whether it was issued without his approval,
it represents the views of senior Soviet officials - either Lebedev or those so powerful that
they could cavalierly appropriate his name.
A third aspect of Soviet totalitarian politics that set the tone for the Soviet approach to
international affairs is that the CPSU ruling elite sought to achieve its goals both
domestically and internationally by any and all means at its disposal, including the use of
lies, deception, terrorism, and aggressive force. The CPSU ruling elite used these
methods extensively at home to keep the population of the USSR under control. They
also used such methods in international relations. For example, on May 25, 1992, Sergei
Shakhrai, who had recently resigned as the senior legal adviser to Russian president Boris
Yeltsin, made public the contents of a document that revealed direct Soviet sponsorship
of terrorism against Americans during the height of the 1970s detente. According to the
May 26, 1992 The New York Times:
Mr. Shakhrai cited a "top secret" directive dated May 16, 1975, which reported that "a
shipment of foreign arms and ammunition was delivered by the KGB to the head of
external operations of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on May 14, 1975."
... The weapons were to be used, Mr. Shakhrai said, citing from the document in his hand,
"to carry out operations against American and Israeli personnel in third countries, to carry
out acts of sabotage and terrorism"
Mr. Shakhrai said that "thousands" of such documents had been found in a special file at
the CPSU Central Committee. On June 5, 1992, Russian Information Minister Mikhail
Poltoranin told a news conference that such support for international terrorism had
continued through 1991. Such an ethic made the use of manipulation, deception, and
disinformation standard techniques of Soviet foreign policy as well.
The Soviet totalitarian approach to international relations in terms of the entities utilized,
the goals pursued, and the means employed gave Soviet foreign affairs a fundamentally
different cast and thrust than the approach taken by pluralistic Western nation-states,
which had much more modest goals attuned to limited national interests, and which chose
not to employ techniques such as military aggression, terrorism, or the unscrupulous use
of lies and other deceptive and manipulative techniques. In short, the Soviet approach to
international relations can perhaps best be described as a form of "political warfare," with
the manipulative and deceptive techniques of active measures playing an essential and
important role.
 A Typology of Active Measures
Themes and Messages

One particular type of Soviet active measures operation has received disproportionate
public attention: crude, anti-American disinformation, such as the Soviet campaign that
falsely claimed that the United States had created the AIDS virus in a military laboratory.
In fact, such crude, defamatory disinformation represented only the tip of the Soviet
active measures iceberg. The outrageous and distasteful nature of these claims made them
instantly identifiable to many audiences worldwide as attempts by the Soviets to
manipulate public opinion. But there were many other types of Soviet active measures
operations of equal or greater importance that were only dimly perceived or passed
completely unnoticed. These less well known types of active measures operations were
the ones that were, in fact, the most important during the "post-Cold War" era.
The Soviets spread a wide variety of information, arguments, and slogans in their efforts
to influence foreign publics and governments. The Soviets referred to the information
they spread for the purpose of influencing foreign audiences as "directed information." If
the "directed information" was false or had been fundamentally distorted, it was
disinformation. But accurate information was circulated as well - if the Soviets thought it
would serve their interests.
It appears that the Soviets chose arguments and designed slogans with similar criteria in
mind. They apparently selected them on the basis of whether the Soviets thought the
slogans and arguments would induce their target audiences to take actions in line with
Soviet interests. Thus, the Soviets eagerly propagated arguments and slogans regardless
of whether they were genuinely believed or disingenuous.
The information, disinformation, slogans, and arguments spread by the Soviets can be
further differentiated on the basis of whether they were sophisticated or crude, and
whether they contained derogatory, conciliatory, or alarmist themes and messages. For
example, one Soviet active measures message might consist of a disingenuous,
sophisticated, alarmist argument. Another could be a genuine, crude, derogatory genuine
slogan. A third could consist of sophisticated, conciliatory disinformation.
This framework yields 36 theoretically possible types of active measures messages, as
illustrated by the accompanying chart. The use of conciliatory and alarmist slogans and
arguments was particularly important to the Soviets in the "post-Cold War" era.
 How Soviet Active Measures
Themes Were Spread

The Soviets spread the various active measures themes and messages through a wide
variety of covert, semi-covert, and overt channels that they controlled or influenced.

"Black" or Covert Active Measures

"Black" or covert active measures operations were coordinated by Service A of the
KGB's First Chief Directorate, the part of the KGB responsible for foreign intelligence
operations. According to KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, in his book Instructions From
the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985, in the mid-1980s
Service A consisted of approximately 120 professional officers, including 30 to 40 who
were stationed at the Novosti Press Agency. (p. 3) Its technical staff included a highly
competent group of forgers.
According to recent defectors, KGB active measures received increased attention and
resources during the Gorbachev era. Their information indicates that the size and
importance of Service A expanded during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
KGB active measures techniques included the use of agents of influence, forgeries, covert
media placements, and controlled media to covertly introduce carefully crafted
arguments, information, disinformation, and slogans into the discourse in government,
media, religious, business, economic, and public arenas in targeted countries. These
operations were characterized as "black" because the Soviet role was totally concealed.
These KGB operations were carried out by members of line PR (political intelligence) in
Soviet residencies, the KGB units in Soviet embassies in foreign countries. According to
Gordievsky, line PR officers were supposed to spend about 25 percent of their time on
active measures operations.
The July 22, 1991 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the 60-man
active measures unit of the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS or "Stasi"),
which was patterned on Service A and which worked closely with it, had at least 7
separate sectors, one of which was responsible for economic active measures and another
for active measures against foreign intelligence services. In addition to these functional
sectors, Service A would logically have also had, at a minimum, a functional section on
military affairs, and geographical sectors devoted to the United States, Western Europe,
and the Third World, as well as a separate section for preparing forgeries.
For more information on recent revelations on "black" active measures, see the appendix.

"Gray" or Semi-Covert Active Measures

"Gray" active measures operations were coordinated by the International Department of
the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee. It orchestrated foreign influence
operations in the party-to-party and people-to-people realms, which were carried out by
Soviet-allied communist parties, Soviet-controlled international front organizations, and
Soviet nongovernmental organizations that played a role in foreign affairs, particularly
friendship societies, the foreign policy-related institutes of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, and the Soviet affiliates of the international front groups. These operations were
characterized as "gray" because Soviet control was partially concealed. For example,
Soviet nongovernmental organizations could not deny their Soviet affiliation but they
claimed, disingenuously, to be pursuing an independent line from the Soviet government
and Communist Party.
Recent investigations by the Russian supreme Soviet of CPSU funding of foreign
communist parties have uncovered documentary evidence that during the 1980s the
CPSU provided approximately $20 million per year in direct monetary aid to 98 different
parties and movements on all continents. See the appendix for more details.

"White" or Overt Active Measures

"White" or overt active measures were coordinated by the international information
subdepartment of the Ideology Department (prior to October 1988, Propaganda
Department) of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee. This subdepartment
oversaw the propagation of Soviet active measures themes and messages by the TASS
and Novosti press agencies, Radio Moscow and Radio Peace and Progress, other
elements of the Soviet press, and the information departments of Soviet embassies
overseas.
From 1978 to 1986, the bureaucratic entity that became the Ideology Department's
international information subdepartment was known as the International Information
Department (IID) and had the status of a separate department in the CPSU Central
Committee (CC). In a revealing aside, although it was known to the world as the
International Information Department, this was a cover name, adopted only for dealing
with outsiders. Within the Soviet bureaucratic world and in confidential correspondence,
the department was known as the CPSU CC Department of Counterpropaganda. It
arrogated to itself the most sensitive and complex foreign propaganda tasks, such as
devising explanations for the mistakes or failings of Soviet foreign policy, and dealt with
the most critical foreign policy issues, such as arms control and relations with the United
States, leaving to a separate CPSU CC Propaganda Department the less challenging task
of churning out routine praise for the Soviet Union.
The IID was divided into 6 sectors organized around geographical and functional lines.
Each sector employed about half a dozen professionals, who determined the themes,
arguments, and information used in Soviet foreign propaganda and the treatment of
international affairs in the Soviet press. After these were decided upon, the IID and its
successors would hold regular meetings to issue their guidance on international
information issues to Novosti, TASS, Radio Moscow, Radio Peace and Progress, and
other leading Soviet media.
It is also revealing to note that in the "white" realm, Soviet officials took an active and
direct role in spreading many active measures themes in their public and, undoubtedly,
private messages directed at Western audiences. Mikhail Butkov, a KGB officer who
defected in Norway in May 1991, revealed this in an interview in the December 15, 1991
issue of the British newspaper The Independent, stating: "In his appeals to the West,
Gorbachev used all the arguments that we were ordered to plant." Thus, the Soviet active
measures apparatus had a vast array of covert, semi-covert, and overt channels available
for influencing foreign public opinion and actions in a highly sophisticated way. The
appendix contains more details about "white" active measures operations.
The Soviet active measures apparatus dwarfed, by a factor of perhaps 20 or 30 to 1, the
U.S. governmental apparatus set up to analyze and counter its activities. Given these
limitations, it is only possible to provide an overall conceptual framework and some
illustrative examples of Soviet active measures operations, not a comprehensive report on
their activities. The typology of active measures themes and messages outlined above
provides a conceptual framework for categorizing these themes. By combining the
various types of active measures themes with the various "black," "gray," and "white"
channels through which they were spread, one can construct a matrix that portrays the
different types of Soviet active measures operations. In the accompanying chart, the
different types of themes or messages form the headings for the columns, and the various
black, gray, and white channels for propagating these messages form the headings for the
rows. Although such a schema is cumbersome, it is a useful way to conceptualize active
measures operations in a coherent comprehensive way
 The "Post-Cold War" Era:
A New Context for Soviet Active Measures

The "post-Cold War" years of 1988 to 1991 were a time of extraordinary, unprecedented
change in Soviet affairs, change that was reflected in the form and content of Soviet
active measures operations. Some overall observations may help explain the dramatic
shifts in Soviet active measures practices during this period.
First, as the Soviets moved away from a reliance on coercive, military instruments in
their foreign policy, the political instruments of active measures and traditional state-to-
state diplomacy took on added importance for them. As mentioned earlier, according to
Soviet officials who defected in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the resources devoted to
active measures actually increased substantially during this period, contrary to the
popular perception that these types of activities had virtually disappeared. From the
Soviet viewpoint, this was entirely natural. If reliance on military power was to be
lessened, political methods for making Soviet influence felt in the world had to be
bolstered, and this is precisely what occurred. Many Western observers failed to perceive
this fact because, as Soviet active measures operations became less anti-Western and
instead more conciliatory or alarmist, the new themes fit more closely with Western
perceptions of the world, making it much more difficult for Westerners to distinguish
between genuine and disingenuous actions.
Second, the Soviets have always used the concept of the "main adversary" or "main
enemy" to guide their conduct in foreign affairs. After 1945, following the defeat of Nazi
Germany, the Soviets considered the United States to be the USSR's "main adversary,"
which automatically made it the primary target of a wide variety of hostile active
measures operations. During the late 1980s, when Soviet leaders were undertaking
extraordinarily difficult and risky reforms in their effort to refurbish the Soviet ability to
compete with the West, they no longer could afford to engage in an overtly hostile anti-
American policy. Although the United States remained the USSR's main adversary, many
active measures operations took on a conciliatory tone, as the "main adversary" was
disingenuously courted as a prospective "main partner." Crude, anti-American
disinformation was dramatically scaled back, so as not to antagonize the United States,
and much more conciliatory, although not always more truthful, themes and messages
were substituted.
Furthermore, as the Soviet political system underwent democratization, long-suppressed
domestic political opponents began to pose challenges to the communist ruling elite. By
1990, it must have appeared, in Soviet eyes, that the independent democratic and
nationalist forces in the USSR had become one of the CPSU's new "major adversaries,"
along with the United States and NATO. As the harsh "administrative measures" of the
totalitarian past were discarded as instruments of internal political control, Soviet leaders
placed-increasing reliance on active measures and disinformation as ways to
outmaneuver and defeat their domestic political rivals. Thus, the "post-Cold War" era
gave birth to a whole new arena of active measures and disinformation operations within
the USSR. But precisely because they concerned internal Soviet matters, the details of
which were often not known or verifiable in the West, it was often very difficult for
Westerners to discern when the Soviet authorities were being truthful or deceitful on such
matters.
Finally, as the specter of the disintegration of the Soviet political system began to emerge
as an increasingly real possibility from 1990 onward, Soviet disinformation and active
measures operations naturally took advantage of concerns in the West about the
unpredictable effects that such a course of events might have in an effort to forestall this
eventuality. Soviet active measures themes became increasingly alarmist in tone, with
predictions of supposedly apocalyptic events that would accompany the removal of
Gorbachev or the disintegration of the Soviet Union reaching a crescendo just before both
events occurred in December 1991.
 An Attempt To Be More Sophisticated:
Disinformation On Military Spending

In the November 1991 issue of the USSR's Military Historical Journal, then-chief of the
Soviet general staff Vladimir Lobov referred to Soviet military spending as one-third of
the Soviet gross national product [GNP]. During the same month, in issue no. 44 of
Moscow News, Soviet President Gorbachev placed Soviet military spending at the same
level, stating, "If this (the Soviet military-industrial complex) is not half of society, then
it's at least a third of it." Just two months earlier, the U.S. government had estimated
Soviet military spending at half this figure, 15 to 17 percent of GNP, in the publication
Military Forces in Transition.
In comparison, the United States spent 13 percent of its GNP on defense at the height of
the Korean War, 9 percent at the peak of the Vietnam War, 6 to 7 percent during the
military buildup of the 1980s, and 42 percent during the maximum World War II
mobilization during 1943 and 1944. The Soviet figure of one-third of GNP spent on
defense during peacetime is truly staggering. As Soviet Academician Oleg Bogomolov
stated in Moscow News, number 20 of 1990: "For decades we lived ... in conditions of a
wartime economy."
Some estimates of Soviet military spending are even higher. In the March 26, 1992 issue
of Izvestia, Russian presidential adviser Anatoly Rakitov stated:
Over the last six decades, 80 to 90 percent of our national resources - raw material,
technical, financial, and intellectual - have been used to create the military-industrial
complex. Essentially, the military-industrial complex has absorbed everything that is
good and dynamic that Russia has to offer, including its basic economic capacity and its
best technology, materials, and specialists. Consequently, the military-industrial complex
is virtually synonymous with our economy.
The May 21, 1992 issue of the Washington Post reported Senator Bill Bradley's comment,
after a recent trip to Russia and Ukraine, that, "In St. Petersburg, 70 percent of the people
have jobs directly tied to the military. ...Nationwide, it's over 50 percent of the people."
For decades, Soviet leaders sought to deceive the world about the monumental extent of
their military spending with a conciliatory disinformation campaign. Prior to Gorbachev,
the disinformation was crude and simplistic. Until 1989, the Soviets claimed that they
spent only a tiny amount on defense, which hardly varied from year to year. They
presented only a single total figure for defense spending, with no further elaboration or
breakdown.
Then, in May 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev stated that the Soviet Union would spend 77
billion rubles on defense that year, a dramatic increase from the prior official figure of 20
billion rubles in 1988. The 77 billion figure represented some 9 percent of Soviet GNP,
which was more accurate than the earlier absurd claim that the Soviets had been spending
only 2 to 3 percent of their GNP on defense, but still not an honest figure.
In an April 1990 speech, Gorbachev revised this figure upward, stating that Soviet
military spending was 18 percent of Soviet national income, or approximately 15 percent
of gross national product. Awkwardly, the official Soviet figure for military spending
remained 77 billion rubles for 1989, with no real effort made to explain the discrepancy
between Gorbachev's speech and the official government position. In October 1990, in a
triumph of thoroughness over logic, the Soviet government released a detailed breakdown
of Soviet military spending, completely ignoring Gorbachev's figure and adamantly
sticking to its official position on total military spending. Commenting on this, Soviet
Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky proudly stated: "Glasnost is reaching out
into that once closed sphere, the military budget."
Gorbachev's unexplained revelation in his April 1990 speech undercut this attempt to
concoct more credible, sophisticated disinformation on this issue. soon, even higher
unofficial estimates began to appear in the Soviet press, capped by Lobov's and
Gorbachev's statements in November 1991 that the real figure for military spending was
one-third of GNP, if not higher.
As mentioned earlier, U.S. estimates of Soviet military spending were off by
approximately 100 percent, even as late as 1991. The USSR was able to successfully hide
from the world the fact that their "supermilitarized economy," as Gorbachev put in it in
Moscow News, was placing unsustainable strains on the Soviet economy and citizens, a
situation which eventually led the Soviet leaders to adopt the policy of perestroika.
Inaccurate Western estimates about the burden of military spending on the Soviet
economy were not caused by Soviet disinformation efforts but by Soviet secrecy and the
inability of most Western analysts to comprehend the emphasis the Soviets placed on
military strength. Pre-Gorbachev disinformation was crude and ineffective, and the more
detailed and credible deceptions of the era of glasnost were overtaken by the collapse of
the Soviet system. But the "post-Cold War" era did witness fabrications that were of a
much higher quality than prior deceptive efforts.
 The Use of Alarmist Arguments

One of the most important but difficult-to-discern aspects of Soviet active measures was
the use of seemingly logical arguments. A number of these were formulated for virtually
every significant foreign policy issue of concern to the USSR. These arguments were
then spread via all the methods available to the Soviet authorities - overt media channels,
agents of influence, front groups, covert media placements, diplomatic channels,
nongovernmental organizations, and so on.
Many of these arguments were quite appealing and logical-sounding, and they often
played on genuine concerns, fears, and perceptions. For example, a September 19, 1991
Kuranty article on the functioning of the KGB Service A officers posted to Novosti Press
Agency, excerpted at length in the appendix, highlighted several arguments used by
Soviet active specialists. It pointed out:
What is important is that these objectivist materials pushed the same ideas directed at
Western politicians and ordinary folks: to boycott the Soviet market means to prolong
unemployment; American grain sent to the starving people of Africa is poisoned by
pesticides; the Soviets really do not have a superiority in tanks and missiles, the
Americans are just about to strike a deal with the Russians behind Western Europe's
back, ... and so on.
Similarly, Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky has pointed out, in a January 5, 1992 article
in the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet (excerpted at length in the appendix), that the
Soviets gave an alleged agent of influence in Denmark, Jorgen Dragsdahl, "facts and
arguments" to use in his columns.
During 1990 and 1991, as the disintegration of the USSR became an ever more real
prospect, Soviet active measures specialists began to craft alarmist arguments that sought
to prey on these fears, for the purpose of convincing Western publics and governments to
support the continued existence of the USSR as a unitary state. To support this line of
thought, arguments were crafted that sought to convince observers that the disintegration
of the Soviet Union would pose grave hazards for the world. Given the natural fear of the
unknown, this line of argumentation found a ready audience in many countries.

"15 Nuclear Republics"

In this regard, one of the most successful Soviet active measures campaigns of the "post-
Cold War" era sought to stimulate fears in the West that the disintegration of the USSR
would lead to the establishment of 15 nuclear states, with unpredictable and, it was
intimated, quite possibly extremely dire consequences for the entire world.
There is evidence that the Soviet authorities may not have been as concerned about this
issue as they claimed to be. For example, in the December 8, 1990 issue of Rabochaya
Tribuna, Gorbachev's military adviser Marshall Akhromeyev stated that "Under no
circumstances will centralized control over nuclear weapons and ammunition, including
strategic, or over the control systems for these weapons be lost."
At the same time, numerous Soviet spokesmen were systematically stimulating fears of
1115 nuclear states" in communications aimed at foreigners. By stoking these fears,
Soviet propagandists sought to exploit understandable Western concerns about nuclear
safety in order to try to achieve their own policy goal of preserving the USSR as a unitary
state.
Mikhail Butkov, a KGB major who defected in Norway in May 1991, told the British
newspaper The Independent (December 15, 1991) that these scare tactics were used
covertly by the KGB at the same time that Soviet leaders pushed them publicly. The
Independent summarized Butkov's remarks as follows:
Other active measures involved spreading the idea in the West that Gorbachev's
disappearance and the breakup of the Soviet Union would lead to the creation of a
number of aggressive republics with uncontrolled access to nuclear weapons. Mr. Butkov
observes: "In his appeals to the West, Gorbachev used all the arguments that we were
ordered to plant."
The "15 nuclear states" theme was spread systematically by the Soviets starting in 1990,
and became especially prominent after the abortive August 1991 coup attempt. In the
wake of the failed coup, two prominent Soviets of widely varying reputations - Col.
Viktor Alksnis, known for his extremely hard-line views, and Yevgeni Velikhov, the
erudite scientist and Gorbachev adviser who was viewed as much more 'Liberal - both
warned of this alleged danger in interviews on Cable News Network (CNN) on August
28. Velikhov floated a sophisticated version of this argument, calling for the international
community to become more involved in examining the issue of the control of the Soviet
Union's nuclear arsenal, while Alksnis' arguments sought to fan hysteria more directly,
warning against independence for the republics by claiming they would soon be dropping
nuclear bombs on each other.
Similarly, in July 1991, shortly before he joined in the plot to overthrow Gorbachev, then-
Soviet Vice President Gennadi Yanayev lectured U.S. journalists, according to the
recollections of one of those present, that "it would be a nightmare if the Soviet union
turned into 15 states, each with its own armed forces and nuclear weapons." (Washington
Post, August 19, 1991) Sergei Rogov, then deputy director of the USSR's Institute on the
United States and Canada, made this same argument to U.S. journalists and policymakers
in October and November 1991. An interview with Rogov in the Washington Post
(October 29, 1991) reported his arguments:
... it is also in the interest of the West to support [Gorbachev's) efforts to maintain some
union structure as the Soviet Union's republics spin away, said Sergei Rogov, an arms-
control expert in Moscow.
That interest is most compelling when it comes to Gorbachev's efforts to maintain control
over the Soviet arsenal of 27,000 nuclear warheads, which are dispersed across several
republics. "A civil war in a nuclear superpower is not in the interest of anyone in the
world," Rogov said.
Two weeks later, Rogov and a fellow academician from the USA Institute, Andrei
Kokoshin, traveled to Washington to deliver the same theme in person to U.S. senators.
The Washington Post of December 1, 1991 reported:
The ... two told a small meeting ... that in a "worst case scenario," which they said was
not implausible, nuclear weapons could become the focus of struggles for power among
the Soviet republics. This was a very volatile, dangerous situation, the senators were told:
"America has to wake up."
Despite their seemingly independent and widely varying views, the hard-liner Alksnis,
the soon-to-be coup plotter Yanayev, the scientific adviser Velikhov, the academicians
Rogov and Kokoshin, and KGB Major Butkov in Denmark each pushed the same active
measures theme in their own respective ways to Western audiences. Each was acting as a
part of the Soviet active measures and disinformation apparatus, run ultimately by
Gorbachev, which orchestrated messages through varying channels in order to influence
foreign opinions and policies.
In a related ploy in the waning days of the Soviet Union, the Soviets sought to stimulate
fears about catastrophic accidents involving nuclear weapons that might occur if Soviet
central authority lapsed. In late December 1991, a high-ranking Ukrainian official,
Yevgeni Marchuk, told the Washington Post (December 25, 1991) that these fears were
vastly overblown and that he believed they had been deliberately exaggerated by Soviet
authorities as part of an active measures campaign. The Post reported:
Marchuk, chairman of Ukraine's new National Security Service, said he is barely troubled
by the nightmare scenario of a lost or stolen nuclear warhead that has dominated Western
anxieties about the breakup of the Soviet Union.
"With me knowing all the security precautions, this is a fantastic ... [and) entirely
implausible" scenario, he said during a lengthy interview....
He said Western anxieties about a nuclear-equipped artillery shell being lost in transit, a
tactical rocket being stolen from a truck or a nuclear bomb exploding by accident are
greatly exaggerated.
"These rumors were circulated deliberately by the center ..."I he said, suggesting that
officials in Moscow tried to create alarm as a means of bolstering support for the former
Soviet Union.

Ethnic Conflicts
In a similar way, Soviet officials had earlier warned Westerners that support for nations
seeking to secede from the USSR, such as the Baltic states, could lead to an explosion of
ethnic grievances in Western Europe and elsewhere. Such arguments played on well-
known Western concerns, and may have seemed plausible to the casual observer. But it is
unlikely that they were made out of altruistic concern about the possibility of civil strife
in the West. It is more likely that such arguments were formulated and spread in order to
achieve the purposes of Soviet foreign policy.

The Russian Winter

A perennial, although seasonal, alarmist theme spread by the Soviet active measures
apparatus was "How are we going to make it through the coming winter? Every year, as
the weather turned cold, the impending arrival of the Russian winter was used by Soviet
active measures specialists as a vehicle for stimulating fears that catastrophic events
might occur in the USSR during the long, cold winter months if more Western aid were
not forthcoming, or some other concession made to Soviet preferences. Despite its
crudity and simplicity, or perhaps because of these characteristics, the "Russian winter"
theme was probably one of the more effective Soviet alarmist themes. It struck a
responsive chord within people worldwide and at a basic level seemed intuitively obvious
and correct. In addition to its simplicity, it was also a very low cost manipulative tool.
After all, anyone could master the use of such a simple theme without any special
training, and it no extensive research was needed to formulate the theme.

The Break-down of the

"Command Administrative" System
Another argument frequently put forward during the "post-Cold War" era sought to
explain the food shortages that were then affecting some Soviet cities by putting forth the
very reasonable sounding proposition that this had been caused by the fact that the old
"command-administrative" economic system had been destroyed, but the new market-
oriented system of distribution had not yet had a chance to take hold. In his book
Eyewitness, the prominent Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner stated that he believed this
theme was propagated by hard-line Soviet officials in order to mask what he believed was
their deliberate economic sabotage of the popularly elected mayors of Moscow and
Leningrad (Gavril Popov and Anatoly Sobchak):
Soon after Popov and Sobchak were elected to office in 1989, both Moscow and
Leningrad began to suffer badly from a lack of food. Dairy products, meat, vegetables,
even bread were not reaching the stores. The explanation for this - or at least the one
usually trotted out when journalists made inquires - was that the old mechanism had been
destroyed, while no new one had been set up to replace it. That sounded plausible
enough, but it was not the truth or, at least, certainly not the whole truth.
What was really going on was economic warfare. The Moscow and the Leningrad oblasts
(administrative areas) were under control of their respective Party secretaries who, in
turn, controlled the many regional secretaries of each oblast. ... I have very good reason
to believe that the food shortages in Moscow and Leningrad (as well as in Volgograd and
Sverdlovsk, where democrats swept the old guard out of office) had very little to do with
the breakdown of the old system or the absence of a new one. They had to do with a
calculated effort on the Party's part to starve out the democrats, to artificially make the
food situation even worse that it was by slowing down deliveries, decreasing production
and creating other such nuisances. (pp. 178-179)
In this way, a very plausible and perhaps partially true argument was used to divert
attention away from the machinations of hard-line CPSU officials to try to discredit their
democratic opposition. This argument was widely repeated in foreign media analyses of
Soviet economic difficulties.
 Internal Front Groups:
Vladimir Zhirinovsky and
The "Centrist Bloc"

One of the most striking initiatives of the CPSU under Gorbachev was its willingness to
permit a multiparty system in the USSR, a move that quickly led to the demise of the
CPSU when Soviet citizens were able to choose among alternative parties. This is not the
outcome the Soviet leaders presumably wished, however. They stated on numerous
occasions that they wanted the CPSU to be invigorated by competition with democratic
groups, but it is doubtful that they wanted it to be challenged to the extent that it lost its
power.
In the attempt to maintain CPSU control while still allowing the trappings of a
democratic system, the CPSU used active measures techniques to form bogus parties that
were themselves front groups for the CPSU. It then attempted to make a show of "sharing
power" with these bogus parties, using them as its supposedly "democratic partners" in a
ploy aimed at denying power to the authentically democratic parties that were genuinely
popular with the Soviet electorate. The so-called Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headed
by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the so-called "Centrist Bloc" of parties that united under its
leadership were key elements in this ultimately unsuccessful strategy of deception and
manipulation.
In February 1990, the CPSU took a major step toward multiparty politics, when it
decided that it would relinquish its constitutional monopoly in power, an event that
formally transpired in March. A few weeks after this, the founding congress of the Liberal
Democratic Party was held, an event that was announced on the front pages of all major
Soviet newspapers on April 1, 1990, in marked contrast to the scant media attention that
had accompanied the prior foundings of other parties.
The chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who, in
contrast to the leaders of the other parties, was a political unknown. A journalist familiar
with his background termed Zhirinovsky's appearance on the political scene "an April
Fools' joke." He wrote in the July 17, 1990 issue of Komsomolets Uzbekistana:
It seems that somebody was desperate to show - following the relevant decisions of the
CPSU CC and the USSR Supreme Soviet - how fast political pluralism has developed in
the Soviet Union. At the same time, they do not want to advertize the real competitors of
the CPSU. Therefore, the bubble of the Liberal Democratic Party was inflated.
In June 1990, the LDP and 20 other small parties joined together to form a coalition
called the "Centrist Bloc." Radio Liberty research analyst Julia Wishnevsky's description
of this development, in the November 23, 1990 issue of Radio Liberty's Report on the
USSR, shows that it included several of the manipulative techniques characteristic of
Soviet front group operations:
With one exception, all the other parties involved were completely unknown to the
public. Since, however, some of them bore names suspiciously similar to those of
established parties, this ploy was bound to confuse the unwary. Two parties - one called
the Democratic Party, and the other the Russian Democratic Party - joined the Centrist
Bloc, but neither had any connection with the Democratic Party of Russia led by Travkin
and Kasparov (a genuine party].
In a further indication that this was an active measures operation, the founding of the
Centrist Bloc was announced at a session of the Soviet Peace Committee, one of the
major internal Soviet front groups.
The Centrist Bloc included parties with impressive sounding, seemingly liberal names
such as the Andrei Sakharov Union of Democratic Forces, the Peace Party, the
Conservative Party, the People's Constitutional Party, the Russian Popular Front, and the
League of Independent Scientists of the USSR. These inspiring names often disguised
unsavory characters, however.
For example, according to issue number 45 of Moscow News in 1990, the head of the
Andrei Sakharov Union of Democratic Forces, Vladimir Voronin, was hardly a liberal.
He had written a dissertation on "U.S. Psychological War" and had been arrested in 1976
for misappropriating state funds. Andrei Sakharov's widow, Yelena Bonner, denounced
the use of her husband's name by this group.
Ominously, one of the member organizations of the Centrist Bloc was Soyuz, the hard-
line group of People's Deputies in the USSR Supreme Soviet founded by reactionaries
Viktor Alksnis and Nikolai Petrushenko, who were active in late 1990 in spreading
disinformation about an alleged CIA plot to dismember the USSR by setting up a so-
called Black Sea-Baltic Sea confederation. The inclusion of Soyuz in the Centrist Bloc
was an indication of its true nature.
In October 1990, Zhirinovsky made the revealing statement that he considered the CPSU
to be the Liberal Democratic Party's best ally. Shortly after, some LDP members accused
Zhirinovsky of being a KGB agent and tried to expel him from the party but failed. In this
regard, Moscow News, issue number 45 of 1990, reported:
It is maintained that while a student of the Law Department at Moscow University,
Zhirinovsky faced an inquiry into currency speculation. He was exonerated when he
agreed to work for the KGB.
After being carefully groomed and politically positioned as supposed "liberals" and
"centrists," the LDP and the Centrist Bloc suddenly moved from the periphery to the
center stage of Soviet political life in late 1990. On October 29, 1990, the leaders of the
Centrist Bloc met with then-Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov to discuss the
formation of a "coalition government of national accord" with the CPSU. This was
absolutely unprecedented. The CPSU had not shared any power with other parties since
the earliest days following the 1917 revolution. Now, it appeared to be taking a
revolutionary step toward sharing power.
Shrewd observers of the Soviet political scene were quick to see through the ploy,
however. Moscow News analyst Len Karpinsky, in his article "Coalition or Collusion?" in
issue number 45 of 1990, characterized this event as the CPSU's attempt to mount a
"political coup." He stated:
Have you heard the news? At a confidential meeting between the government and an
obscure group of unofficials, the possibility of forming a coalition government on a
multiparty basis was discussed.
What is it? Another farce or a serious event concealing its purposes behind a farcical
mask?
... a so-called Centrist bloc has been singled out from the entire gamut of democratic
parties and movements to make it responsible for all democrats.
A coalition government set up democratically could promise headway. A coalition
arranged behind the closed doors of the former cabinet head's office, even with the
assistance of extras from the democratic public, can promise nothing but political coup.
Instead of preparing to genuinely share power, the CPSU was only going through the
motions of this process, choosing as its coalition partner not a genuine democratic party
but a front group set up by the CPSU and KGB. If this ploy had worked, the CPSU could
have claimed to have relinquished its monopoly on power in the USSR and to be ruling
as part of a coalition formed with supposedly democratic elements. It was an audacious
scheme.
By this time, in late 1990, the hard-liners had the political momentum in the USSR, in
alliance with Gorbachev, and events began to move very quickly. The supposedly
independent but, in reality, covertly controlled Centrist Bloc was assigned a key role in
this sequence of events as a "cut out." It floated proposals that the CPSU wished to put
forward, so the CPSU could then respond positively, as scripted, to these supposedly
".democratic initiatives."
For example, in late November 1990, the spokesmen for two Centrist Bloc parties called
for the imposition of presidential rule in the USSR and asked "the armed forces, the
KGB, and the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] to take control of all critical points" in
the country. Zhirinovsky proposed that "from January 1, 1991, the activities of all
political parties and organizations be halted, and the rights of nations to self-government,
which was proclaimed in 1917, be repudiated."
On December 5, 1990, the Centrist Bloc announced that it was setting up a National
Salvation Committee. It called for the imposition of a state of emergency in the USSR, a
ban on all parties and movements, and for local Soviet authorities to be replaced by
branches of the National Salvation Committee. These suggestions foreshadowed the steps
that were taken by CPSU hard-liners in their abortive coup attempt eight months later.
The Centrist Bloc also demanded that the parliaments of Russia, Georgia, Lithuania, and
Moldova be disbanded.
TASS reported that "the program surprised journalists and even some members of the
Bloc, who were already disagreeing with some provisions during the press conference."
The Centrist Bloc's call for the formation of a "National Salvation Committee" and a state
of emergency appears to have been part of a carefully orchestrated sequence of events. At
this same time, the liberal head of the MVD, Vadim Bakatin, was forced to resign and
was replaced by Boris Pugo, who later emerged as one of the eight members of the hard-
line August 1991 attempted coup. On December 11, six days after the Centrist Bloc's call
for a state of emergency, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov addressed the nation on
Moscow television, noting that he was "speaking on the instructions of the USSR
president." Kryuchkov gave an extremely hard-line speech, in which he claimed that
"foreign special services," "organized crime," "dealers of the shadow economy," and
unnamed forces that he claimed were "whipping up ... national chauvinism" and
"provoking ... mass disturbances and violence" were joining together to "ultimately
undermine our society and our state and to liquidate Soviet power." "The threat of the
collapse of the Soviet Union has emerged," Kryuchkov warned, and "a keen struggle has
developed" around "the issue of power." The KGB chairman vowed to defend the Soviet
order against all internal and external attacks and called on "all honest citizens" to aid it
in unmasking such threats. Kryuchkov's speech was a throwback to the rhetoric of the
days of Stalin. A few days later, on December 20, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze
resigned, warning that dictatorship was approaching.
Several weeks later, in January 1991, in line with the stated wishes of the Centrist Bloc,
"National Salvation Committees" were formed in Lithuania and Latvia and moved to take
power. These allegedly spontaneous actions by supposedly independent, ad-hoc
organizations won immediate support from the Soviet central authorities. Special KGB,
MVD, and Ministry of Defense forces seized facilities from the local authorities, killing
18 innocent people and wounding almost 600 in the process.
In late January 1991, the C PSU role in orchestrating events in the Baltics was revealed
when the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta published an August 29, 1990 secret
resolution of the CPSU CC Secretariat on the subject of Lithuania. It called for
communists in high positions in law enforcement organs in Lithuania to organize
criminal and administrative prosecution of "leaders of ... nationalistic and anti-Soviet
political formations" in Lithuania. In order to aid in this, a KGB military group was
assigned to work with the pro-Moscow faction of the Lithuanian communist party.
For reasons that are unclear, the plan to stop the democratic process in the Baltics and
institute dictatorial power in the name of phony "National Salvation Committees" never
came to fruition. Colonel Viktor Alksnis, known as the "black colonel" for his reactionary
views, later claimed that Gorbachev had approved the orchestrated "National Salvation
Committee" coups in the Baltics but failed to follow through because he lost his nerve.
By April 1991, Gorbachev was again making common cause with liberal communists
such as Alexander Yakovlev. The Centrist Bloc itself stopped functioning at the end of
March 1991, according to an April 21, 1991 broadcast of Radio Rossiya. It apparently no
longer served the CPSU's purposes. Zhirinovsky then ran for president of the Russian
federation in June, and stunned observers by finishing third after Yeltsin and former
Prime Minister Ryzhkov, with 6 million votes - 8 percent of the votes cast. A key plank in
his electoral platform was his pledge that, if elected, he would sell vodka "at every
corner, around the clock, and without any interruptions." Radio Liberty's Report on the
USSR of January 24, 1992 cited unconfirmed reports that KGB employees had been
instructed to vote for Zhirinovsky.
In July 1991, Zhirinovsky told Novosti that he was forming a "third force" centered
around the LDP to challenge Gorbachev in the 1992 elections for the USSR presidency.
He also stated, intriguingly in light of subsequent events, that at the beginning of August
1991 a new powerful movement, combining the LDP, Soyuz, and similar organizations,
would be founded and joined by millions of people. Zhirinovsky stated that the new
movement would distance itself from communists and even more from democrats.
In August, of course, communist hard-liners tried to seize power in the name of the State
Committee for the State of Emergency. Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party was the
only. political party to publicly support the coup, and it was subsequently banned by
Yeltsin for this action. Despite this setback, Zhirinovsky brazenly continued to call for the
imposition of emergency measures, the establishment of a new State Committee for the
State of Emergency, the closure of all newspapers, and the disbanding of all political
parties.
In December 1991, as the USSR was collapsing, the phony nature of Zhirinovsky's
Liberal Democratic Party was officially confirmed. On December 25, Alexander
Kichikhin, an expert from the Russian parliamentary commission investigating the
August coup, stated that the LDP had no local branches, as it had claimed, and that, in
fact, its membership did not exceed 500 to 600 people. Kichikhin stated that the list of
5,300 signatures appealing for the LDP's registration had been forged. He also stated,
according to the TASS account:
the CPSU actively supported and financed the LDP. Special Purpose Militia Detachment
subunits guarded the LDP leader on his trips. Links have been established between
Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the former USSR KGB leader Vladimir Kryuchkov. According
to Kichikhin, when Zhirinovsky would arrive in a town he would first meet with KGB
staffers and make use of their services. This makes it possible to conclude, Alexander
Kichikhin said, that the LDP is not an autonomous political party, "but sort of a wing of
the CPSU."
Thus, multiparty democracy as the Soviet leaders envisaged it was to have the KGB
create bogus front groups that could pose as noncommunists, enabling the CPSU leaders
to join with them in a phony coalition government, while excluding genuine democratic
parties. This elaborate scheme failed miserably, however, when Gorbachev apparently
withdrew his support for it after the bloodshed in the Baltics in January 1991.
After the failed August coup and the collapse of the USSR, Zhirinovsky continued to
posture and plot on the Russian political scene. His extreme nationalistic rhetoric grew
increasingly shrill. On December 30, 1991, the Washington Post reported his speech
before a Moscow crowd:
Zhirinovsky went on and on for hours, claiming that when he finally gained power he
would invade Afghanistan and make it a Russian "province." He would sell off western
Ukraine to Poland and take the rest for Russia. He would fill the universe with "space
weapons" pointed at the United States.
"I'll bury radioactive waste along the Lithuanian border and blow the stuff across the
border at night," he said. "They'll get radiation sickness and die of it. When they either
die or get down on their knees, then I'll stop it. I'm a dictator. What I am going to do is
bad, but it is good for Russia!"
In March 1992, Zhirinovsky told Armenia's Armenpress "we must immediately begin a
siege on Georgia and Armenia, strangle every moving thing there, impose Moscow's rule,
and sign a treaty with Turkey declaring that region as a passageway for Russia."
In December 1991, Zhirinovsky joined Viktor Alksnis, Alexander Nevzorov, and other
hard-liners to form a group called "Ours." The group took its name from a television
program of the same name made by Nevzorov in January 1991, in which he made the
outrageous disinformation claim that the people who had been killed by Soviet forces in
the assault on the television tower in Lithuania were actually victims of heart attacks and
traffic accidents. This new organization will presumably do its best to push its views by
all means possible on the Russian political scene.
(For more information and analysis on Zhirinovsky, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the
Centrist Bloc, see these excellent articles, from which much of the preceding material
was drawn: "Multiparty System, Soviet Style" by Julia Wishnevsky in the November 23,
1990 issue of Report on the USSR, "The Leadership of the Centrist Bloc," by John
Dunlop in the February 8, 1991 issue of Report on the USSR, and "Is Russia Likely to
Turn to Authoritarian Rule?" by Vera Tolz and Elizabeth Teague in the January 24, 1992
issue of Report on the USSR.)
 The Conciliatory Slogans
Of New Political Thinking

Although there were many interesting developments in the post-Cold War era as Soviet
disinformation and active measures became more conciliatory, alarmist, and focused on
domestic political rivals, the most far-reaching and intriguing event, indeed, in many
ways, the defining mark of the post-Cold War era, was the development of "new political
thinking." Under "new political thinking," the Soviets sought to replace confrontation
with cooperation, great power politics with reliance on the United Nations, and the arms
race with disarmament. This was a mind-boggling turnabout of historic proportions.
The architects of "new thinking" have stated that their new policy was adopted under
duress in the mid-1980s when it became unmistakably clear to the most farsighted Soviet
thinkers that their decades-long Cold War policies of trying to extend Soviet power
through a massive military buildup, coercive diplomacy, and confrontation had failed.
The Soviet leaders knew that the Soviet economy would have collapsed if they had tried
to respond militarily to the U.S. defense buildup and particularly the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI). As Sergei Rogov of the USSR's Institute on the United States and
Canada explained in his 1989 monograph Is a New Model of Soviet-American Relations
Possible?:
The endeavor [SDI], as conceived, seemed to be without risk: if the USSR were to
respond to the U.S. challenge, the Soviet economy would collapse in trying to compete
with the stronger economic, scientific and technological potential of the United States
and its allies; and if, on the other hand, the USSR did not follow suit, the United States
would gain an overwhelming military superiority. (p. 24)
In this dire situation, a fundamentally new, non-military method of seeking to achieve
Soviet goals had to be found. "New thinking" was the bold, creative, ingenious, and,
ultimately, disastrous result.
The Soviet rationale for adopting the policy of "new thinking" was amply explained in
numerous Soviet publications from 1987 to 1989. The basic concepts were very simple:
• military might is no longer the main method of achieving power in the modern
world; instead skill at devising political campaigns is much more important. As
Shevardnadze put it in his 1991 book The Future Belongs to Freedom, the Soviet
"new thinkers" believed in "the primacy of the force of politics over the politics of
force." (p. 50)
• the growing interconnectedness of the world and the growing concern about
global problems would mean that, in waging political campaigns for hearts and
minds worldwide, "common human values" and "all-human" concerns would
have much more appeal than the outmoded ideology of communism.
In the minds of the Soviet "new thinkers," ending the Cold War did not mean that the
systemic struggle between the "two social systems" would stop. Instead, it would shift
from the Cold War arenas of the arms race, confrontation, and coercive diplomacy to
new, primarily political areas of struggle. The Soviets needed to end the Cold War
because their weak economy put them at an impossible disadvantage vis-a-vis an
awakened West in an arms race which, if it continued, would mean their inevitable defeat.
In order to avoid this and best preserve their power, the Soviet leaders needed to induce
the West to abandon the arms race, while at the same time positioning themselves to
wage a new form of political warfare against the West: one that sought to achieve power
by conciliation rather than confrontation, the appeal of "all-human" values as opposed to
"class" values, assigned a key role to the manipulation of international organizations,
particularly the United Nations, and sought to use international law as a subterfuge for
Soviet attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries rather than the heavy
hand of military power and coercive diplomacy.
As part of the shift to "new thinking," the Soviets did the unthinkable. They deliberately
jettisoned the outmoded ideology of communism and embraced a new ideology based on
"all-human" values and concerns. They did not do this because they had become converts
to the democratic cause. Instead, the Soviet "new thinkers" came to the conclusion that
governments, countries, and peoples could be more effectively manipulated by
universalist, non-Marxist concepts than by Marxist ones, and set about trying to devise
ways to use non-Marxist concepts to achieve traditional Soviet goals. "New thinking"
was consciously designed as a communist foreign policy for the post-communist era. It
was as if the "chameleons," not the "doves," had triumphed over the "hawks" in the
Soviet foreign policy debate.
"New thinking" was conceived by the boldest, most creative and cosmopolitan
communist propagandists and ideologists. It was adopted in desperation, as the reality of
looming Soviet defeat in the Cold War became unavoidably clear. Nevertheless, it was
not a defeatist policy. Its goal was to devise a technique that would eventually enable a
restructured USSR to establish preeminence globally.

The Thinking Behind "New Thinking":

The Ineffectiveness of Force in Achieving Soviet Goals
The Soviets adopted "new thinking" in the mid 1980s when it became clear to them that
their policy of force in the international arena, which ultimately relied on the threat posed
by Soviet nuclear missiles, was not succeeding because of the resistance of the United
States, NATO, and other countries to Soviet expansionism and hegemony.
In his 1987 book Perestroika: New Thinking for our Country and the World, Mikhail
Gorbachev stated bluntly that the "fundamental principle of the new political outlook is
very simple: nuclear war cannot be a means of achieving political, economic, ideological
or other goals." (p. 140) Gorbachev explained, "Nuclear war is senseless; it is irrational.
There would be neither winners nor losers in a global nuclear conflict: world civilization
would inevitably perish." (p. 141)
Although such observations may seem to be belaboring the obvious to Westerners, the
idea that a nuclear war could not be fought and won was, as Gorbachev put it, a "truly
revolutionary" conclusion for Soviet leaders. (Perestroika, p. 140) Senior Gorbachev
adviser Vadim Zagladin reiterated this point in his 1989 book To Restructure and
Humanize International Relations, stating unambiguously that, "Even comparatively
recently, we believed it was possible to survive and even win a nuclear war." (p. 68)
Zagladin explained that, under "new thinking," "the first change in our foreign-policy
doctrine is the total rejection of the idea of a nuclear war and affirmation of the absolute
necessity to prevent it." (p. 68)
It is shocking to realize that until the mid 1980s Soviet policy accepted the idea that it
was possible to fight and win a nuclear war. Yet that was precisely the case. This explains
the reason for the enormous, decades-long Soviet military buildup, which was consuming
approximately one-third of Soviet gross national product by the late 1980s.
In addition to discarding the policy option of nuclear war, the Soviet "new thinkers" also
discarded other, less apocalyptic variants of their policy of force. As Gorbachev observed
in Perestroika:
Military technology has developed to such an extent that even a non-nuclear war
(between major powers] would now be comparable with a nuclear war in its destructive
effect.
...Thereby, an altogether different situation has emerged. A way of thinking and a way of
acting, based on the use of force in world politics, have formed over centuries, even
millennia. ...Today, they have lost all reasonable grounds.
...A new dialectic of strength and security follows from the impossibility of a military -
that is, nuclear - solution to international differences. Security can no longer be assured
by military means.... Attempts to achieve military superiority are preposterous. ...The
only way to security is through political decisions and disarmament.
...For the first time in history, basing international politics on moral and ethical norms
that are common to all humankind, as well as humanizing interstate relations, has become
a vital requirement. (p. 141)
Serious reservations about the utility of force in the modern world had been brewing in
the Soviet leadership for several years prior to the advent of "new thinking," according to
former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. In his book The Future Belongs to
Freedom, Shevardnadze stated that as early as 1980 the Soviets recognized that military
force had not been effective in Afghanistan and, in light of this, were extremely reluctant
to use force in Poland. Shevardnadze wrote:
Before 1979 the use of force by the Soviet union in neighboring countries had helped to
stabilize the situation at a relatively low (as it seemed at the time) political, military, and
economic cost. This quick "solution" did not work in Afghanistan. The invasion of that
country provoked a strong negative reaction that grew daily in our society and abroad.
Whereas only a few people in the Soviet Union openly protested the sending of troops
into Prague in 1968, after 1979 the majority condemned the Afghan adventure, either
directly or indirectly.
In those circumstances the political leadership was compelled to take seriously the risk
involved in any action on our part in Poland. Many had come to realize that the armored
fist could not strike. Here is an example: On one of those days I happened to be in
Mikhail Suslov's office. Someone phoned him to report about the worsening situation in
Poland and to insist, as I understood it, on an "activation of forces." Suslov repeated
firmly several times, "There is no way that we are going to use force in Poland." (pp.
120-121)
In short, between 1980 and 1985, the combination of Afghan, Polish, Western, and other
resistance to the Soviet use of force convinced the Soviets to dramatically de-emphasize
nuclear war, conventional war with the West, the arms race, and the use of force in
international relations as viable instruments of "class warfare," a breathtaking departure
from previous Soviet policies. The policy of force and all that flowed from it, including
the Cold War and the panoply of Soviet confrontational policies, were abandoned, not
because the Soviets believed it was wrong to try to impose their will on others, but
because they now believed military force was not an effective way to do so. This was an
extremely radical, fundamental shift in Soviet thinking.
Something had to substitute for military force as the prime mover in international affairs.
In adopting "new thinking," the Soviets attempted to make political campaigns against
what Shevardnadze has called "the real enemies of humanity: thermonuclear war,
environmental catastrophe, and the collapse of the world economy" the new levers with
which they would try to achieve their goals. (The Future Belongs to Freedom, p. 48)
Whereas Marxism was, in many ways, the politics of confrontation and envy, with its
central paradigm the struggle of the economically oppressed versus their oppressors,
"new thinking" relied much more heavily on the politics of conciliation and alarmism as
its motive forces. The old Soviet ideology had spoken powerfully to the "have-nots" of
the world; the new ideology sought, in addition, to play on both the highest hopes and the
most worrisome concerns of the "haves." As Gorbachev stated in Perestroika, "For the
first time in history, basing international politics on moral and ethical norms that are
common to all humankind ... has become a vital requirement." (p. 141)
 Crude, Anti-American
Disinformation

In the "post-Cold War" era, the Soviets dramatically decreased their sponsorship of crude,
anti-American disinformation, basically because the propagation of such themes
decreased receptiveness, on the part of world publics and elites, to the conciliatory
themes of "new political thinking," which, for the Soviets, were paramount to impress on
audiences worldwide. The Soviet decision to curtail crude, anti-American disinformation
was not entirely voluntary, however. The vigorous exposure of Soviet disinformation by
the U.S. government, which forded the Soviets to pay a steep price in terms of their
resulting tarnished image worldwide, in all probability played a decisive role in
convincing the Soviets to forego many of the benefits they derived from smearing their
"main opponent" with vicious lies.
Until mid-1987, by which time the conciliatory themes of "new political thinking" had
become ascendant in Soviet policy, Soviet disinformation under Gorbachev had
proceeded in its usual confrontational mode, seemingly guided more by the policy of
"uskorenie," or acceleration, than by that of glasnost. In fact, in late 1986 and early 1987,
as the Soviets were making "glasnost" and "perestroika" key principles of their policy at
home and abroad, they were simultaneously beginning or significantly accelerating a
number of crude, anti-American disinformation campaigns. These included false claims
that the United States had invented the AIDS virus in a military laboratory; that it had
killed the 918 people who died in the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978; and
that Americans were adopting Latin American children in order to butcher them and use
their body parts in organ transplants, the so-called "baby parts" story. (For a detailed
account of these campaigns, see the 1988 USIA report to Congress, Soviet Active
Measures in the Era of Glasnost.) As a measure of the times, such outrageous claims
were printed through mid-1987 in publications such as Moscow News, which was soon to
gain a deserved reputation as one of the flagships of glasnost.
The U.S. government had, of course, made its displeasure about these disinformation
charges made known to the Soviets both publicly and privately. In response, in August
1987, Soviet officials assured the U.S. government that Soviet media would stop
spreading the AIDS disinformation claim. Despite some exceptions, AIDS disinformation
charges diminished drastically not only in the Soviet press but also worldwide.
This marked the beginning of what was to become a prolonged, more-or-less steady
decline in crude, anti-American disinformation that lasted from August 1987 to
November 1990.
Numerous derogatory Soviet disinformation operations continued to occur, of course. For
example, in late July 1989, a forged letter purportedly sent in 1987 from South African
Foreign Minister Pik Botha to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker surfaced
in Namibia, several months before the elections to form a government in that country.
The sophistication of the forgery indicated Soviet involvement. An actual South African
Foreign Ministry letterhead and a sample of Mr. Botha's real signature were apparently
used to compose the forged letter, which appeared in photocopy form - all trademarks of
a KGB Service A operation. The theme of supposedly close U.S.-South African
cooperation was a standard Soviet theme at the time, and one that had appeared in past
forgeries of Soviet origin. Finally, according to Soviet defectors, the forged letter used
typical Soviet bureaucratic phraseology, and was written as if it had been composed in
Russian and then translated, somewhat clumsily and literally, into English.
A few days later, further developments strengthened the view that this was a well-
coordinated effort with Soviet involvement. Disinformation from Top Secret, a magazine
published in West Germany that serves as an outlet for Soviet and Cuban disinformation
aimed at Africa, also appeared in the Namibian press. Top Secret's editor, Michael
Opperskalski, was then in Namibia on a "fact-finding" mission for the International
Organization of Journalists, long identified as a Soviet-controlled international front.
But significantly, even though this disinformation operation was sophisticated and well
coordinated, Soviet news agencies did not replay the allegations, as they have typically
done in years past. This dramatically reduced the impact that the planted stories had
beyond their local environment.
Following the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, crude, anti-American
disinformation receded even further. Forgeries designed for media replay, in particular,
became much less frequent, as Soviet active measures practitioners were careful not to
take actions that would antagonize the United States. From late 1989 to late 1990, there
was still a regular flow of individual stories in the Soviet press and abroad that falsely
accused the United States of various misdeeds - assassinations, coups, and so on - but no
massive concerted campaigns. During this time, the Soviets engaged in anti-American
disinformation cautiously and half-heartedly. The flamboyant disinformation stories,
surrounding AIDS, "baby parts," Jonestown and similar themes, rarely appeared. The
next chapter's selected chronology of crude, defamatory Soviet disinformation from
January 1989 to August 1991 gives specific details on the appearance of such stories.
Then, in November 1990, as the hard-liners moved towards ascendancy in the USSR,
crude, defamatory Soviet disinformation began a comeback, but with a somewhat
different thrust and focus. This time, the main target was not the United States, but
democratic and nationalist groups within the USSR. On November 4, 1990, Sovetskaya
Rossiya, a favored outlet for disinformation placements-in the Soviet media, falsely
implied that members of the liberal Interregional Group in the Soviet parliament were
being supported by the CIA. The Sovetskaya Rossiya article was, for the most part, a
reprint of a lengthy article that had appeared on September 26, 1990 in the Guardian, a
small, radical left-wing newspaper in New York City. Sovetskaya Rossiya also printed an
extensive chart, however, which it claimed had been published "in the American press,"
without specifying in which publication. This chart made it appear, falsely, that the CIA
was controlling the activities of various nongovernmental organizations in the United
States, one of which had supplied $40,000 to the Interregional Group, in a perfectly
legitimate, public way, to purchase computers, printers, video equipment, and facsimile
machines. Thus, a vast CIA-controlled conspiracy was falsely lleged.
On November 17, 1990, one of the leaders of the hard-line Soyuz faction in the Congress
of People's Deputies, Col. Viktor Alksnis, falsely charged that the CIA was manipulating
both the Interregional Group and nationalist groups in the USSR, as part of a diabolical
scheme to dismember the Soviet Union. Alksnis strongly implied that he had received his
information from Soviet military intelligence. Speaking in the Supreme Soviet, he stated:
I, as a member of the military, have access to certain information - you know that the
army has its sources of information ... reports, ciphers, and other information which, at
times, are obtained at the risk of the lives of our people.
...At the end of August, in an Eastern European country, a secret meeting with the CIA
station chief took place at which plans for the dismemberment of the USSR took place.
Representatives from Rukh from Ukraine, the Byelorussian Popular Front, the Movement
"Sajudis," the National Front of Latvia, and the National Front of Estonia were at that
meeting. At the suggestion of the CIA, a plan for the creation of a Black Sea-Baltic
Confederation was put forward.
This idea about the creation of a Black Sea-Baltic Sea confederation resounded the day
before yesterday at a meeting of the Interregional Parliamentary Group, from the mouth
of one of our respected deputies. ...I want him to know whose idea he is broadcasting.
...When I see the secret plan of the Central Intelligence Agency for the destabilization of
the internal political situation in the country, I see that the plan that was worked out two
years ago is being completed ahead of schedule this means that it is not simply an
objective process it is controlled.
On December 11, 1990, "on the instructions of the USSR president," KGB Chairman
Vladimir Kryuchkov made a speech on Soviet television, in itself an unprecedented act
for a KGB chief. In his speech, Kryuchkov echoed the charges made by Alksnis and
Sovetskaya Rossiya, suggesting that "foreign special services" were seeking to
dismember the USSR. He stated:
The threat of the collapse of the Soviet Union has emerged. National chauvinism is being
whipped up. Mass disturbances and violence are being provoked.
...Forces operating employing far from democratic methods are rushing to seize power on
a wave of anti-communism. The Committee for State Security possesses information that,
in certain hot spots, lists of people are being compiled and, I quote, liable for
neutralization if the need arises.
The emergence of some extremely radical political tendencies is far from spontaneous,
but is single-minded and well thought through. Some of them are enjoying lavish moral
and material support from abroad.
...Officials of the state security bodies see their duty as preventing any interference in our
internal affairs by foreign special services and by those foreign organizations and groups
which, with their support, have conducted a secret war against the Soviet state for
decades and which are continuing to do so.
On December 22, 1990, Kryuchkov made another extremely hard-line speech, this time
to the Congress of People's Deputies. In it, he accused the West of shipping "impure, and
sometimes, infected grain, as well as products with an above-average level of
radioactivity or containing harmful chemical admixtures" to the USSR. He warned again
that "Western ... secret services and foreign anti-Soviet centers" were allegedly
continuing to try to subvert the USSR. He charged:
Facts are clear: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, for example, does not even consider
getting rid of radio "Liberty" and foreign anti-Soviet formations which are being financed
by it. By the way, within the structure of U.S. intelligence is a unit set up to collect
information about the movement of workers in the USSR and, hence, to influence it
single-mindedly.
Kryuchkov's "facts," in the case of Radio Liberty, were sadly out of date. It is true that the
CIA did covertly fund Radio Liberty during the 1950s and 1960s, but since the early
1970s Radio Liberty has been openly funded by the U.S. Congress through the
independent Board of International Broadcasting, as Kryuchkov surely knew.
A few days later, Soviet Defense Minister Yazov joined in the anti-U.S. and anti-
democratic chorus, accusing the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which aids
democratic groups worldwide, of trying to influence events in the USSR.
In early January 1991, the anti-democratic campaign reached a crescendo when a 40-
minute documentary film, "The Faces of Extremism," was broadcast on Soviet central
television. Shots of terrorism in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Spain were mixed with
film clips of U.S. military operations in Grenada, Panama, and Libya, followed by scenes
of a rally held by Rukh (the democratic party in Ukraine], riots in Central Asia, fighting
in Azerbaijan, and demonstrations in Lithuania. The narrator suggested that the U.S.
government would soon try to organize underground political movements in Central Asia
in order to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. He solemnly warned: "The country is
at a turning point. Time demands that we stop the extremist frenzy. Tomorrow could
already be too late."
Nine days later, Soviet troops stormed the Vilnius television tower in Lithuania, killing
14 unarmed people. Leningrad newscaster Alexander Nevzorov claimed three days later
that the deaths had occurred as a result of "traffic accidents" and "heart attacks." His
broadcast showed a man with crazed eyes drinking from a flaming bowl as Nevzorov
stated, "It seems the Lithuanians are prepared to drain the bitter cup of nationalism to its
dregs." Latvia's Radio Riga labeled the report "totally staged terrorist propaganda."
Similar absurd claims continued in the following months. In February 1991, Prime
Minister Pavlov, later a participant in the abortive August coup attempt, accused Western
banks of trying to sabotage the Soviet economy and overthrow the government.
During the coalition war against Iraq, anti-coalition disinformation stories frequently
appeared in Soviet media and in foreign media used for KGB placements, despite the
anti-Iraq stance adopted by Soviet diplomacy. Pravda repeated false Iraqi claims that
coalition forces were attacking Iraqi mosques, schools, and hospitals. The Indian
newspaper Patriot, which, according to defector testimony, had been set up with KGB
funds in order to spread Soviet propaganda and disinformation, falsely claimed that the
U.S. was encouraging Turkey to seize northern Iraq. In late February 1991, a forgery that
may have been of Soviet origin appeared in Stuttgart, Germany. Purporting to be printed
an the letterhead of the U.S. Information Service, it recounted decades of alleged U.S.
military slaughters of civilians in various countries in order to explain why "our armed
forces had to target a civilian air shelter in Baghdad." The forgery was referring to a
recent incident in which an Iraqi military command center, not a civilian air shelter, had
been bombed.
Then, at the beginning of March 1991, the international Soviet disinformation apparatus
suddenly began to churn out anti-American stories in a way it had not done for several
years. On February 28, an Indian Marxist newspaper repeated the false claim that the CIA
was trying to set up a "Black Sea-Baltic Sea" confederation in order to dismember the
USSR. On March 1, a four-part series of anti-CIA articles began to appear in the
Malaysian press, repeating old Soviet disinformation charges. On March 4, a newspaper
in Zimbabwe repeated many familiar AIDS disinformation claims and added a new one:
the false charge that the U.S. had spread AIDS to the USSR and the Third World by
exporting "AIDS-oiled condoms."
Then, just as suddenly as these defamatory disinformation stories had reappeared, they
stopped. This coincided with a move toward a more conciliatory Soviet policy toward the
West in April 1991.
Soon, however, crude disinformation began to reappear again. In June 1991, in a closed
speech to the Supreme Soviet that was soon leaked to the press, KGB chief Kryuchkov
falsely claimed that the CIA had riddled the USSR with a network of "agents of
influence" and was using them to undermine Soviet society. In late July, just weeks
before the attempted hard-line coup, the International Association of Democratic
Lawyers, long identified as a Soviet-controlled front group, circulated "baby parts"
disinformation charges in Geneva, the first apparent Soviet sponsorship of this story since
October 1988.
Following the failed coup attempt, this last resurgence of defamatory Soviet
disinformation faded away, as the "new thinkers" returned to power for a few brief
months before the USSR ceased to exist in December 1991.
 A Selected Chronology
Of Crude, Derogatory
Soviet Disinformation,
January 1989 To August 1991

The following chronology includes appearances of crude, derogatory disinformation in

the Soviet media, and appearances of such Soviet-fostered disinformation in the media of
other countries. It is only a sampling, not a comprehensive catalog.

DATE SOURCE NOTES / COMMENTS 17 Aug 91 Blitz Indian newspaper with "close ties to
Soviet intelligence" according to Soviet defector repeats disinformation that the CIA
assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. 08 Aug 91 Swedish
TV-2 News program features Jacob Segal, who repeats AIDS disinformation. Segal is the
former East German scientist whose false claims were the centerpiece of the Soviet AIDS
disinformation campaign. 31 July 91 EFE Spanish wire service reports surface
throughout Latin America and elsewhere, featuring "baby parts" disinformation claims by
Soviet-controlled front group International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).
Mexican and Portuguese wire services also cite IADL claims. 13 July 91 Blitz Replays
story of CIA involvement in Rajiv Gandhi assassination. 02 July 91 Patriot Indian daily
set up by KGB according to Soviet defector falsely alleges that U.S. Marines were
extensively surveying security areas of the India-Bangladesh border and sneaking into
India for espionage. 28 June 91 TASS Head of Lithuanian OMON (Special Purpose
Militia) claims that guns were discovered in its search of the Vilnius telephone exchange.
Charge is denied by Lithuanian Communications Minister, who says OMON planted the
weapons. 12 June 91 Pravda Replays disinformation that the CIA was behind the death of
Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, who died in a plane crash in 1981. 08 June 91 Tribune
Indian newspaper blames the CIA for the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi,
Zia Ul-Haq, Z.A. Bhutto, and a Bangladeshi cabinet minister, based primarily on 1988
Soviet book The CIA in Asia. 08 June 91 Patriot Falsely claims that the CIA was
involved in assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. 03 June 91 USSR
Prosecutor
General Report on killing of 13 unarmed demonstrators in Lithuania in January 1991
exonerates Soviet forces of responsibility for their deaths. 16 May 91 Izvestia USSR
Ministry of Defense document falsely claims that the U.S. National Security Council was
using revelations in the Soviet press about the 1983 shooting down of Korean Airliner
007 as part of a campaign against the Soviet Army. 08 May 91 Pravda Soviet newspaper
falsely suggests that "U.S. special services" assassinated former Nicaraguan Contra
leader Enrique Bermudez. 13 Apr 91 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Article falsely accuses the U.S. of developing biological weapons that use snake
venom. 09 Apr 91 Radio
Moscow Program falsely claims that Radio Liberty correspondents in the USSR gather
military intelligence for the U.S. government. 30 Mar 91 Rabochaya
Tribuna Deputy KGB chairman falsely charges the U.S. with training terrorists in
Lithuania. 04 Mar 91 Bulawayo
Chronicle Letter in Zimbabwean daily falsely charges that the U.S. invented the AIDS
virus and that the CIA exported "AIDS-oiled condoms" to other countries in 1986.
04 Mar 91 Pravda Repeats Iraqi disinformation claim that a biological weapons facility
bombed by coalition forces actually produced milk for children. 02 Mar 91 News
Today Indian daily that frequently carried Soviet disinformation repeats false charges that
the U.S. is plotting to dismember India. Mar 91 Harakah Four-part series in Malaysian
newspaper falsely accuses CIA of controlling Radio Liberty, trying to assassinate Charles
de Gaulle, etc. 28 Feb 91 Ganashakti Communist Party of India (Marxist) daily charges
that the CIA is orchestrating a "Black Sea-Baltic Confederation" among nationalities
seeking independence from the USSR. 27 Feb 91 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Falsely suggests that epidemics in Iraq may have been intentionally caused by
the U.S. 26 Feb 91 Rabochaya
Tribuna Falsely claims the U.S. was planning to seize the Gulf oil fields in order to
achieve geopolitical supremacy over Western Europe and Japan. 23 Feb 91 Radio
Baghdad Soviet Major General Viktor Filatov is reported to have said that "Patriot
missiles have not done anything and have actually caused the allies great damage."
12 Feb 91 Trud Soviet Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov falsely charges that unnamed
"Western forces" are conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government by sabotaging the
Soviet economy. Feb 91
(#2) Voyenno-
Istoricheskiy
Zhurnal Revives disinformation that Radio Liberty is run by the CIA. 07 Feb 91
Sovetskaya
Rossiya Falsely claims that the CIA is now permitted to engage in political assassinations.
06 Feb 91 Pravda Falsely charges that coalition forces made "frequent attacks on
hospitals, museums, schools, mosques, and refugees" in war against Iraq. 01 Feb 91
Komsomolskaya
Pravda Major-General Filatov, when asked whether Israel has an atomic bomb, states, "If
not, the Americans will give them one." 31 Jan 91
24 Jan 91 Patriot Repeats Iraqi disinformation that the Israeli air force was attacking
Iraq. 23 Jan 91 Patriot Alleges that Turkey was planning to seize northern Iraq, and was
being encouraged by the U.S. 22 Dec 90 Blitz Indian weekly with "close ties to Soviet
intelligence" according to defector falsely accuses the CIA of involvement in right-wing
terrorism in Latin America. 22 Dec 90 TASS KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov
accuses the U.S. of sending contaminated grain to the USSR. 21 Dec 90 Dainik
Jagran Indian newspaper revives long-standing Soviet disinformation claim that the CIA
is working to create an independent Assam. 20 Dec 90 Land
og
Folk Danish Communist daily repeats disinformation that U.S. was behind the
assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. 09 Dec 90 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Implies that the Interregional Group of deputies in the Soviet parliament is being
supported by the CIA. 05 Dec 90 Land
og
Folk Replays Palme disinformation. 20 Nov 90 Krasnaya
Zvezda Repeats "Black Sea-Baltic Confederation" disinformation. 19 Nov 90 Pravda
Claims that former Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos was assassinated by "Western
intelligence services." 17 Nov 90 Col. Nikolai
Petrushenko USSR Supreme Soviet deputy falsely implies that the Soviet parliament's
Interregional Group of deputies is supported by the CIA. 17 Nov 90 Col. Viktor
Alksnis USSR Supreme Soviet deputy falsely alleges that the CIA is to set up a "Black
Sea-Baltic Confederation" consisting of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Estonia, Lithuania, and
Latvia. 04 Nov 90 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Falsely implies that the Interregional Group is supported by CIA. Oct 90 Aaj
Kaal Indian newspaper features repetition by Communist Party of India (Marxist) official
of old Soviet disinformation that the U.S. is trying to dismember India in an alleged
"Operation Brahmaputra." 18 Oct 90 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Implies CIA involvement in assassination of Olof Palme and various acts of
terrorism in Belgium and Italy. 07 Oct 90 Sovetskaya
Belorossiya Repeats "baby parts" disinformation. 14 Sep 90 Amandla Belizean
newspaper repeats AIDS disinformation from April 1990 New African. 19 Aug 90
Izvestia Falsely claims that the U.S. was behind the ouster of Pakistani Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto. 17 Aug 90 Krasnaya
Zvezda Replays Iraqi disinformation that Israeli soldiers, disguised as Americans, are
serving among U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. 01 Aug 90 Dagens
Nyheter Swedish newspaper replays Palme disinformation, and accuses CIA of various
acts of terrorism. 25 Jul 90 TASS Soviet newswire falsely implies that unclassified,
government-funded research on AIDS at a U.S. university is part of a U.S. plot against
Africa. 19-25 Jul 90 Ny Dag Swedish weekly implies that AIDS may have been created
by U.S. May 90
(#9) Agitator
Uzbekistana Falsely charges that Voice of America and Radio Liberty broadcast
"according to CIA instructions." 15 Apr 90 Radio
Moscow Broadcast in Somali falsely claims that U.S. has signed agreement with
Somalian government to continue leasing Berbera military base. 15 Apr 90 City Press
South African newspaper for black readers reprints AIDS disinformation from April 1990
New African. Apr 90 L'Europeo Article in major Italian newsweekly repeats "baby parts"
charges, falsely claiming that there is a "flourishing market" for organ transplants in the
U.S. Author Gian Paolo Rossetti surfaced forgery of suspected Soviet origin in
LIEuropeo in 1988. Apr 90 New African Cover story in London-based magazine
distributed throughout Africa repeats AIDS disinformation claims of East German doctor
Jacob Segal, which had aired on British television in January. 30 Mar 90 Ghanaian
Times Article resurrects false Soviet claim that U.S. government killed the 918 people
who died in the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana. 09 Mar 90 Patriot Indian
newspaper set up by KGB makes false claim that U.S. engages in drug trafficking in
Afghanistan. Similar claim repeated in India's National Herald on March 14. 05 Mar 90
National
Herald Article by United Communist Party of India leader falsely accuses CIA of
destabilizing Punjab and Kashmir. 10 Feb 90 Blitz Falsely accuses U.S. of trying to
destabilize India in league with Pakistani intelligence service. 03 Feb 90 Blitz Falsely
suggests that U.S. embassy officials stole secret documents from Indian Defense
Ministry. 29 Jan 90 Radio
Moscow Falsely blames the spread of AIDS in the Philippines on the presence of U.S.
bases. 26 Jan 90 Nigerian
Tide Letter to editor repeats false Soviet claim that the CIA killed the 918 people who
died in the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana. 26 Jan 90 Radio
Moscow Implies that four American mercenaries were killed after hijacking an Iranian
plane. 22 Jan 90 Channel 4 British television broadcasts German film "AIDS: the African
Legend," which includes disinformation claims by Jacob Segal. 08 Jan 90 Pravda
Repeats false charge that U.S. killed Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos. Jan 90
Democratic
Journalist Magazine of the Soviet front group International Organization of Journalists
falsely implies CIA responsibility for the 1984 murder of Mexican journalist Manuel
Buendia. Jan 90 Novosti
Military
Bulletin Soviet publication that regularly carries disinformation claims that the U.S. will
produce "hormonal" weapons, a new type of mass destruction weapon, within 10 years.
Jan 90 Senegalese
press Several newspapers make false claim that U.S. is using a bacterial fungus,
coccidioidomycosis, as a genocidal weapon against Senegalese. Coccidioidomycosis was
commonly portrayed as an "ethnic weapon," which would have supposedly killed blacks
but not whites, in Soviet disinformation claims.
 A Selected Chronology
Of Crude, Derogatory
Soviet Disinformation,
January 1989 To August 1991
II

The following chronology includes appearances of crude, derogatory disinformation in

the Soviet media, and appearances of such Soviet-fostered disinformation in the media of
other countries. It is only a sampling, not a comprehensive catalog.

DATE SOURCE NOTES / COMMENTS Dec 89 Top

Secret Magazine edited by West German with close ties to Soviet fronts, Cubans, and
Sandinistas repeats AIDS disinformation and other false claims. 13 Dec 89 Krasnaya
Zvezda Soviet newspaper falsely claims that rebellion in Philippines was "inspired by the
CIA." 09 Dec 89 Radio
Moscow Broadcast in Tagalog to Philippines falsely claims that U.S. "had a hand" in the
Philippine rebellion. 04 Dec 89 Ganashakti Newspaper of Communist Party of India
(Marxist) falsely claims that U.S. provides $50 million per year to more than 250 terrorist
groups. Dec 89 Novosti
Military
Bulletin Article falsely suggests that the United States used outlawed mycotoxin ("yellow
rain") biological weapons in Southeast Asia in the early 1980s. In fact, Soviet-supplied
mycotoxins were used by the Laotian and Vietnamese Communists. 19 Nov 89 Pravda
Havana-datelined article falsely claims that U.S. pilots took part in "massive
bombardments" of the capital of El Salvador during fighting launched by Marxist rebels.
Nov 89 U.S. Peace
Council U.S. affiliate of Soviet-front World Peace Council issues booklet reviving
disinformation that U.S. is producing a biological weapon that affects certain ethnic
groups, but not others. 26 Sep 89 El Diario
de Caracas Centrist Venezuelan daily repeats "baby parts" allegations, mentioning
European Parliament resolution introduced by French communist. 18 Aug 89 Pravda
Official Communist Party newspaper prints story falsely accusing U.S. of assassinating
former Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos. 31 Jul 89 Namibian Article "CIA in Namibia?"
falsely claims that U.S. is cooperating with South Africa to subvert elections in Namibia.
Claims based on West German magazine Top Secret, which frequently carries
disinformation. Article appeared just after Top Secret editor Michael Opperskalski had
left Namibia as member of "fact-finding" mission of Soviet front group International
organization of Journalists. 28 Jul 89 Namibian Article cites forged letter purportedly
from South African Foreign Minister R. F. "Pik" Botha to former U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State Chester Crocker, falsely claiming close U.S.-South African military and
economic cooperation in violation of U.S. policy and laws. Document is denounced as
phony by Mr. Crocker and State Department on July 28, and by Mr. Botha on July 31.
19 Jul 89 Namibian Article falsely claims that U.S. and South Africa are covertly
cooperating to subvert upcoming elections in Namibia. Based on set of allegations that
were circulated with forgery that surfaced on July 28. 06 Jul 89 The Observer Pakistani
newspaper repeats June 1990 Novosti charge that AIDS was caused by U.S. nuclear tests.
16 Jun 89 Indian
Press United News of India, Press Trust of India, Patriot, and other Indian newspapers
carry Novosti story falsely suggesting that U.S. nuclear tests in 1950s caused AIDS.
10 Jun 89 News of
Science and
Technology Novosti publication carries story claiming that November 1, 1952 U.S. H-
bomb test on Bikini atoll was "the original cause and issue of AIDS on our planet."
Jun 89 Novosti
Military
Bulletin Article falsely claims that U.S. used "agent black" mycotoxins in Vietnam war.
In fact, Soviets used outlawed mycotoxins ("yellow rain") in Afghanistan, and supplied
them to Vietnam and Laos for use in Southeast Asia. same issue falsely accuses U.S. of
conducting Nazi-style biological warfare experiments, using techniques of Dr. Mengele.
Jun 89 USA:
Economics,
Politics,
Ideology Article in journal of USSR's "USA Institute" repeats false charge that U.S.
government was responsible for killing of U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 1979.
28 May 89 Sunday
Times Zambian newspaper repeats AIDS disinformation allegations. 27 May 89 Trud
Soviet newspaper falsely claims Soviet writer Oleg Bitov was abducted by Western
intelligence services. 22 May 89 West German
television Hessischer Rundfunk and nationwide cable channel broadcast show "AIDS:
The African Legend," which features disinformation claims by East German doctor Jacob
Segal. 14 May 89 Rizospastis Moscow-line Greek newspaper repeats false charge from
April 14 Sovetskaya Rossiya that hearts are sold in U.S. for $100,000 to one million
dollars. 09 May 89 The Voice Article in weekly newsletter that describes itself as
"Britain's Best Black Newspaper" repeats Jacob Segal AIDS charges. 01 May 89 All
Africa
Press Service Repeats "ethnic weapon" allegations from April 25 issue of The Standard.
May 89 Straight
Left Unsigned, but extremely detailed article titled "Ethnic Weapons" appears in monthly
publication of pro-Soviet faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain. 30 Apr 89
Radio
Moscow Broadcast in Tagalog to Phillipines blames "ultra-rightists" for assassination of
U.S. Col. Rowe, despite fact that communist New People's Army admitted responsibility.
28 Apr 89 TASS Soviet government news agency falsely claims that U.S. is building new
facilities to develop and test biological weapons. 25 Apr 89 The Standard Kenyan daily
carries false claim that Kenyan fetuses are being used by U.S. to make a weapon that kills
only blacks. Kenyan Minister of Health immediately denies allegations. 20 Apr 89
Izvestia Article claims there is "much evidence" of CIA involvement in the 1978
Jonestown massacre in Guyana. 14 Apr 89 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Soviet daily that frequently carries disinformation falsely claims that human
hearts can be sold for $100,000 to one million dollars in U.S. 12 Apr 89 Sabah Turkish
paper repeats Jacob Segal AIDS charges. 22 Mar 89 Awake Magazine of the Watchtower
Bible Society repeats September 1988 European Parliament charges made by French
communist as if they were factual. Magazine printed in 11 million copies in 54
languages. 14 Mar 89 Hoy Peruvian daily repeats AIDS disinformation charge by Dr.
Segal. 03 Mar 89 Selskaya
Zhizn Article in Soviet paper falsely implies that U.S. is violating 1972 Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention, using "loopholes in this international legal document for
those possessed by the urge to commit mass murder." 02 Mar 89 Novosti Major General
Viktor Kutsenko of Soviet engineering forces, in interview in Polish paper Zolnierz
Wolnosci, falsely blames "Afghan rebels" for laying booby-trap mines, including "radio
receivers, flashlights, toys, and other articles stuffed with explosives." 19 Feb 89 Zarya
Vostoka Newspaper in Tbilisi, USSR repeats "ethnic weapon" disinformation. 13 Feb 89
Vjesnik Yugoslav daily prints Segal AIDS charges. 12 Feb 89 Sovetskaya
Rossiya Article in Soviet paper charges that AIDS was caused by nuclear testing.
03 Feb 89 Hoje Em Dia Brazilian newspaper repeats Segal AIDS charges. 02 Feb 89
TASS Official Soviet news agency raises possibility of "complicity" by "U.S. secret
services" in the plane crash that killed Pakistani president Zia and U.S. ambassador to
Pakistan. 01 Feb 89 La Republica Panamanian daily reprints AIDS disinformation
accusations. 30 Jan 89 Ultimas
Noticias Article from Cono Sur Press revives "baby parts" charges made by Soviet front
group International Association of Democratic Lawyers. 24 Jan 89 La Tribuna Honduran
daily cites 1998 European Parliament resolution on "baby parts" charges as if allegations
were true. 23 Jan 89 West German
television Hessischer Rundfunk broadcasts program "AIDS: The African Legend," in
which Dr. Segal makes disinformation charge. 21 Jan 89 Manchete Brazilian magazine
repeats AIDS allegations by East German doctor Jacob Segal. 16 Jan 89 Cambio 16
Leading Spanish weekly publishes Jacob Segal AIDS charges. 03 Jan 89 West German
television Westdeutscher Rundfunk broadcasts program "AIDS: The African Legend,"
featuring East German doctor Jacob Segal and his AIDS disinformation claims.
 A Sophisticated
Disinformation Operation

Examples of sophisticated disinformation are more difficult to identify because they are
more effectively disguised, but one publication seems worthy of attention in this regard.
Beginning in 1980, a group in France known as the Association pour le Droit a
l'Information began to issue a bimonthly publication called Bulletin d'Information sur les
Interventions Clandestines (BIIC). The publication's name was virtually identical to that
of a U.S. publication called Covert Action Information Bulletin, founded in 1978 by
Philip Agee and others.
Mr. Agee is a former CIA officer who has specialized in anti-CIA literature since 1975. In
1976, when Agee was expelled from Great Britain, the British government stated that he
had "maintained regular contacts harmful to the security of the United Kingdom with
foreign intelligence agents." The November 18, 1976 Washington Post article reporting
Agee's expulsion stated that British government sources had indicated that the "foreign
intelligence agents" referred to were Cubans. This is consistent with the fact that in his
1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Agee profusely thanks libraries in Havana
and "representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba," who, he said, "gave me important
encouragement at a time when I doubted that I would be able to find the additional
information I needed."
It has also been alleged that Agee has had dealings with Soviet as well as Cuban officials.
The Economist's "Foreign Report" stated in its April 27, 1985 issue:
Former CIA officials believe that Philip Agee ... established a significant contact with
Soviet intelligence back in October 1964, when he was still working for the CIA. It was
then that he first encountered Vassily Petrovich Semenov in Montevideo. Semenov was a
senior KGB officer....
Four years later, under Soviet economic pressure, the Cubans agreed to a joint
intelligence arrangement with the Russians, under which the Cuban DGI assumed
increased responsibility for handling radical dissidents in western countries. Semenov
reemerged as the chief KGB adviser to the DGI, with an office in Havana. He was based
in Cuba during the months that Agee spent there researching his book, "CIA Diary," after
leaving the CIA. Western analysts also claim that Semenov traveled to Moscow when
Agee went there two years ago - by his own account, to explore the prospects for a
Russian edition of his book.
Such a Soviet/Cuban division of labor would have made great sense in dealing with
radical leftists in Western countries, and is consistent with the display of pro-Cuban
emotion-shown by Top Secret in 1991.
While the exact nature of Agee's contacts with Cuban and Soviet officials remain
unknown, the track record of the publication he helped found, Covert Action Information
Bulletin, is well established. It has published anti-U.S. disinformation and propaganda in
tandem with the Soviet active measures apparatus from its founding in 1978 through late
1990, when it criticized alleged U.S. government destabilization of the Soviet Union and
supposed "meddling" by the National Endowment for Democracy in Lithuania and
elsewhere, at precisely the same time that disinformation centered around these themes
was being featured in Soviet publications.
Olivier Schmidt, the editor of Bulletin d'Information sur les Interventions Clandestines, is
a close associate of Agee's and of the group that produces Covert Action Information
Bulletin. Under the name Karl van Meter, he edited the book Dirty Work 2: The CIA in
Africa along with the editors of Covert Action Information Bulletin. In Agee's diary, On
the Run, he noted he usually stayed with van Meter when in France.
BIIC changed its name to Le Monde du Renseignement in 1983. it also published an
English edition, Intelligence/Parapolitics, whose name was changed to Intelligence
Newsletter in late 1988.
Prior to late 1988, much like Covert Action Information Bulletin, Intelligence/
Parapolitics frequently published crude Soviet disinformation stories. For example, it
consistently endorsed the false claim that Korean Air Lines flight 007 was on an
intelligence mission for the United States. It dismissed as "disinformation" claims that the
KGB may have had a part in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and implied
that the CIA may have been behind the attempt on the Pope's life. It also endorsed the
claim that the AIDS virus had been invented in a U.S. military laboratory. It did all this
while claiming to be a "non-allied center for information, documentation, and the study
of parapolitics, intelligence, and all intelligence services, no matter what their political or
ideological affiliation."
In October 1988, Intelligence/Parapolitics went through a remarkable transformation. It
went from being a monthly, typewritten collection of obscure, but publicly available
information selling for $25 per year to a slick, $400-per-year biweekly newsletter that
purported to provide "inside information" on what was occurring in intelligence services
worldwide. Olivier Schmidt remained its editor.
The information contained in Intelligence Newsletter was, on the whole, vastly improved
and those who are knowledgeable about the intelligence field found it impressive in many
ways. But Intelligence Newsletter still contained items of crude disinformation that surely
would be recognized as such by a publication of its expertise, if it were truly unbiased.
For example, in July 1990, Intelligence Newsletter reported that Julius Mader was about
to publish an update of his 1968 book Who's Who in the CIA, without mentioning that
since 1980 this book had been publicly identified as a disinformation operation conducted
by the Czechoslovak and East German secret services, in which half the names included
were not those of genuine CIA operatives.
Intelligence Newsletter also consistently treated publications containing crude
disinformation, such as the West German magazines Geheim and Top Secret as apparently
credible sources. The February 15, 1989 issue of Intelligence Newsletter also treated as
credible a book containing crude disinformation, CIA: Club der Moerder: Der U.S.
Geheimdienst in der Dritten Welt, by Top Secret editor Opperskalski and Kunhanandan
Nair, who, as noted above, was at the time the East German correspondent for Blitz, an
Indian newspaper famous for carrying Soviet disinformation and which was identified in
a 1962 book by Soviet defector Alexander Kaznacheev as having "close ties with Soviet
intelligence." Intelligence Newsletter's only caution about such egregious disinformation
was to describe the Nair/Opperskalski book as being written from a "critical leftist point
of view."
But even when it endorsed publications containing crude disinformation, Intelligence
Newsletter did so in a way that this would not have been obvious to someone who was
not a specialist in this area. This style was in sharp contrast to the shrill, obviously anti-
U.S., anti-Western disinformation that appeared in its predecessor publication
Intelligence/Parapolitics.
Intelligence Newsletter's "insider" mystique and upscale packaging made it an ideal
conduit for disinformation aimed at elite Western audiences. Unlike publications peddling
crude disinformation to audiences predisposed to think the worst of the United States, the
disinformation in Intelligence Newsletter achieved its credibility by speaking to the
sophisticated, "worldly-wise" cynical side of those who wished to possess supposedly
"inside information" known to only the very few. For example, in its August 29, 1990
issue, just after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Intelligence Newsletter falsely claimed that the
United States was to blame for the Iraqi invasion because the U.S. had allegedly connived
with Saudi Arabia to block concessions that Kuwait supposedly wished to make to Iraq,
in order to provoke an Iraqi invasion. This phony story was bolstered with dramatic
details that would have seemed available only to those "in the know."
In its June 20, 1990 issue, Intelligence Newsletter used this same basic approach to push
the disinformation claim that although "there seems to be no direct official CIA or Mafia
involvement in the Kennedy assassination ... a complex mixture of people associated with
both organizations took part." In its October 4, 1988 issue, Intelligence Newsletter ruled
out involvement by the Afghan intelligence service KHAD or the KGB in the
assassination of President Zia of Pakistan, instead concluding that Pakistan's Inter
Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was the most likely culprit. Intelligence Newsletter
also had good words for the KGB's anti-terrorism efforts and the cooperative Soviet
policy during the Gulf crisis, but would typically criticize and belittle the efforts of
Western intelligence services, including those in France, Britain, Germany, and other
NATO countries as well as the CIA.
Interestingly, the change from crude to sophisticated disinformation that occurred in 1988
in Olivier Schmidt's publication paralleled precisely the shift that occurred in Soviet
active measures practices at this time. Crude disinformation claims that would be eagerly
believed by anti-Western groups in the Third World or malcontents in the industrial
democracies began to be replaced in Soviet active measures operations by false
allegations and disingenuous themes more palatable to elite Western audiences. Some of
these sophisticated disinformation claims were anti-U.S. and anti-Western, like those in
Intelligence Newsletter; others were more conciliatory and pro-Soviet.
Just before the failed coup attempt in the USSR in August 1991, Intelligence Newsletter
was vigorously circulating anti-U.S. disinformation. For example, in its July 31, 1991
issue, it falsely charged that Paul Henze, an American expert on Ethiopia and the author
of a book on the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, had been responsible for
supporting the development of the Gray Wolves, the extreme-right terrorist organization
with which would-be papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca had been associated. This attempt
to smear Henze harked back to the earlier days of Intelligence/Parapolitics, when such
crude anti-American claims were made routinely. Interestingly, Intelligence Newsletter
misspelled Henze's name, referring to him as Paul "Hentze." This is how his name would
be spelled if it had been translated from English into Russian and then transliterated back
into English by someone who was unfamiliar with the actual spelling of Henze's name.
This identical misspelling of Henze's name had also previously appeared in some
English-language Soviet publications.
After the August coup, the tone of Intelligence Newsletter changed somewhat. It was no
longer as anti-American as it had been previously; it seemed less focused thematically,
and it emphasized economic and technical issues more heavily than it had previously. In
November 1991, it adopted a new format. It still continues to be published in 1992.
 Conciliatory Disinformation

Although it is a counterintuitive concept, in the "post-Cold War" era, Soviet

disinformation was often conciliatory rather than derogatory. In this respect, it is
important to remember that the Soviets did not engage in disinformation for its own sake,
but for the purpose of achieving the goals of Soviet foreign policy. From 1988 through
late 1990, Soviet policy toward the-West was extremely conciliatory, and Soviet
disinformation followed suit.
In late 1988, when the head of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Kryuchkov,
became KGB chairman, the Soviets began to try to construct a new, benign image for the
KGB. Much of this image-building consisted of conciliatory disinformation.
For example, in 1989, the Soviets announced that the KGB's Fifth Directorate, which
combated "ideological subversion," had been abolished and that a new "Directorate to
Defend the Constitution" had been established, in what was portrayed as a sharp break
with the practices of the past. Although Soviet policies towards internal dissent did loosen
during this period, the alleged abolition of the Fifth Directorate and the establishment of
the "Directorate to Defend the Constitution" amounted to little more than a name change.
It continued its functions much as before.
In 1989, Kryuchkov authored a pamphlet entitled "The KGB Must Abide by the Interests
of the People." The pictures in the pamphlet revealed what the Soviets wanted the world
to believe about the "new KGB." They showed KGB officers and troops fighting
terrorism, guarding the USSR's borders, rescuing the crew of a sinking fishing boat,
capturing a mafia gangster, combating drug trafficking, and preparing for interviews on
television. It was also mentioned, almost in passing, that the KGB possessed an
intelligence and a counterintelligence service.
The impression the pamphlet attempted to impart was that the KGB was a professional,
modern security and intelligence agency much the same as any state would have. It
existed in order to protect its citizens, punish criminals, and maintain public order. The
seamy side of the KGB's activities, including its mammoth espionage, subversion, and
ideological surveillance operations were left unmentioned, denied, or glossed over.
Kryuchkov wrote in the 1989 pamphlet, ironically in retrospect, that "at the basis of all
our efforts we have placed two criteria - legality and truth." But, as his actions in August
1991 made clear, he did not want the KGB to surrender all its repressive functions.
In addition to conciliatory disinformation and the disingenuous argument that the KGB
was essentially an intelligence service "like every country had," the Soviets also used
some grand conciliatory gestures in their effort to improve the KGB's image. One was
their constant lobbying, in a very public way, for cooperation between the KGB and
Western intelligence services in the "common effort" against drug trafficking, crime, and
terrorism. These are all exceedingly worthy goals, but much Soviet effort in this area was
largely a propaganda campaign aimed at improving the KGB's image, as opposed to a
serious, businesslike effort to improve cooperation.
The Soviet effort to engage the West in joint anti-terrorism efforts began in earnest in
1987. An April 1, 1987 article in the New York Times, entitled "Soviet Proposes Antiterror
Effort to West," stated:
The Soviet Union has asked several Western governments to cooperate with it in fighting
international terrorism and has suggested that they negotiate extradition treaties providing
for the return of terrorist suspects, according to French and other diplomats.
Over the last few weeks, these sources say, the Soviet Union has made such proposals to
France, Britain, West Germany, and most other major Western countries. The United
States reportedly has not been approached directly but has been told about the Soviet
moves both by the Soviet authorities and by Western allies.
...The diplomats say this is the first time the Soviet Union has begun what appears to be a
diplomatic campaign to convince Western governments that it disapproves of terrorism
and is ready to cooperate with them in combating it.
...The Soviet campaign has not been confined to Western governments. At a private
meeting in Rome on March 11 and 12, Vladimir P. Suslov, head of the Second European
Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, told a group of former ministers of both
industrial and developing countries that the Soviet Union is firmly opposed to terrorism
and to those who support terrorism, according to participants.
Mr. Suslov spoke at a meeting of the policy board of the Inter-Action Council, a body of
retired senior officials led by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany.
Soviet authorities not only used their diplomats to push this idea, but also
nongovernmental groups and, perhaps, a highly dramatic media incident that Natalie
Grant, a student of Soviet disinformation since the 1920s, has suggested may have been
deliberately stage-managed by the Soviets.
This dramatic, eye-catching incident occurred in December 1988. In a incident that drew
worldwide media attention, Moscow reversed its long-standing policy of not giving in to
terrorist demands and allowed Soviet gunmen who had seized a bus with 30 children on
broad to depart the USSR for Israel, after giving them several million dollars in ransom.
once in Israel, the children were released, the hijackers were disarmed, arrested, and
returned to the USSR. Throughout the crisis, Moscow went out of its way to demonstrate
its willingness to cooperate with other countries in bringing the hijackers to justice.
Several days later, Vitaly Ponomarev, deputy head of the KGB, announced in a December
7 interview with Moscow's Radio Peace and Progress that the KGB would be willing to
cooperate with the CIA, British intelligence, or even Israel's Mossad intelligence service
in combating terrorism.
The very next month, in January 1989, unofficial meetings between Americans and
Soviets began on the issue of finding ways to combat terrorism. The American
nongovernmental organization that sponsored the meeting was called "Search for
Common Ground." Its executive director, John Marks, had authored or co-authored
several books highly critical of the CIA. The group he assembled also included a number
of respected counter-terrorism experts from outside the U.S. government, including
former senior CIA officials. In the August 1990 "acknowledgments" to a book on this
subject he co-edited with Soviet writer Igor Beliaev, entitled Common Ground on
Terrorism, Marks indicated that he had sought and received funds for such a project for
the past three years.
In the March 5, 1989 issue of the Washington Post, Marks and Brian Jenkins, a counter-
terrorism expert at the RAND corporation, wrote an article on "Talking Terrorism with
Moscow," which described their meeting with the Soviets two months earlier. In its
concluding paragraph, the article seemed to incorporate one of the main slogans of "new
thinking," when it spoke about moving away from the enemy image. Marks and Jenkins
wrote:
Neither nation is unilaterally letting down its guard toward the other, but the emphasis in
the relationship is shifting away from facing each other as the enemy and toward standing
together and facing the common danger.
In an interview in the February 11, 1989 issue of Izvestia, Marks stated that the Soviet
Peace Committee, the "public organization" that served as a cornerstone of the active
measures apparatus in the USSR, had been instrumental in originating the idea of
convening a meeting of U.S. and Soviet experts on terrorism. The interview, by Izvestia
correspondent M. Yusin, stated:
[Yusin] When did the idea for this meeting arise, and whose idea was it?
[Marks] A representative delegation of around 100 people from the Soviet Committee for
the Defense of Peace visited Washington a year ago. During this visit it was decided to
set up a Soviet-U.S. working group charged with preparing for the current meeting in
Moscow. Its organizers were "Search for Common Ground," Literaturnaya Gazeta, and
the Committee for the Defense of Peace.
[Yusin] What, in your view, has promoted the rapprochement of Soviet and U.S. positions
on the question of combating terrorism?
[Marks] Above all, the Soviet leadership's foreign policy course. General Secretary M.
Gorbachev, in an important speech, has called for terrorism to be rebuffed.
Marks and Beliaev elaborated on the origins of their group in the introduction to their
book Common Ground on Terrorism. They stated:
The U.S.-Soviet Task Force to Prevent Terrorism had its origins at a conference, the
"Citizen's Summit," sponsored in February 1988 by the Center for Soviet-American
Dialogue and the Soviet Peace Committee. That gathering brought together several
hundred Soviets and Americans for five days in order to generate a whole array of new
U.S.-Soviet projects. The "Summit" was in essence a giant brainstorming session - an
unparalleled opportunity for Soviets and Americans to try to be innovative together.
The two of us, Igor Beliaev and John Marks, were given perhaps the most difficult
assignment. We were named co-chairs of the committee whose job it was to find
solutions to regional conflict. ...We immediately decided that our best chance to make a
difference was to identify a single issue on which effective U.S.-Soviet collaboration
might be possible. ...After two days of deliberations with the fifteen or so Americans and
Soviets who made up our committee, we agreed that terrorism would be our issue.
Somewhat grandly, we named ourselves the soviet-American Task Force to Prevent
Terrorism, and participants signed an agreement to encourage U.S.-Soviet cooperation on
terrorism.
These actions illustrates how the Soviets used. nongovernmental groups, such as the
Soviet Peace Committee, and perhaps highly publicized media incidents such as their
handling of the December 1988 hijacking to strengthen their conciliatory image in the
West. As Natalie Grant wrote in Conservative Digest in 1990, these conciliatory active
measures were very useful in improving the Soviet image in the West, which had been
tarnished by reports of Soviet support for international terrorism, later revealed to have
been accurate by Russian authorities. Grant stated:
One must give the Soviets their due. No other country is capable as are the Soviets of
manipulating public opinion in the West. Only a year ago, Moscow was condemned for
supporting terrorism. It was said to be involved in a terrorist attack against the Pope.
Terrorists were statedly being trained under Soviet sponsorship. And, as if by magic, this
murky Soviet image has now undergone a complete change. The Soviets have now
become enemies of terror. With the help of some Americans who believe in this
extraordinary transformation, Moscow now holds conferences and participates in talks on
preventing terrorism.
As mentioned earlier, in a revealing footnote to this episode, on May 25, 1992, Sergei
Shakhrai, who had recently resigned as the senior legal adviser to Russian president Boris
Yeltsin, revealed that in 1975 the KGB had delivered arms and ammunition to a
Palestinian terrorist group, so that it could "carry out operations against American and
Israeli personnel in third countries." (The New York Times, May 26, 1992). On June 5,
1992, Russian Information Minister Mikhail Poltoranin stated that Soviet support for
terrorism had continued under Gorbachev, through 1991 - the same period in which the
Soviets were vigorously urging the United States and Western countries to join them in a
common effort to counter terrorism.
 Looking To The Future

An understanding of the types of active measures and disinformation operations pursued

by the Soviets during the "post-Cold War" era is essential to analyzing future political
influence operations. Any future such operations are likely to incorporate, in large part,
many of the manipulative techniques that the Soviets pioneered and employed heavily in
recent years.
A variety of state and non-state actors around the world continue to use sophisticated,
crude, conciliatory, confrontational, and alarmist disinformation and active measures
operations in their efforts to influence the perceptions and actions of foreign publics and
governments. Remaining communist countries such as Cuba and North Korea have their
own active measures and disinformation apparatuses. States or groups that have been
trained by the CPSU, such as Iraq and the Palestine Liberation Organization, use these
techniques in their foreign policy endeavors. Highly ideological, anti-Western regimes
such as Iran or Libya have elaborated their own front group structures and appear to have
few qualms about spreading anti-Western disinformation.
According to a report in the April 21, 1992 New York Times, Chinese authorities engage
in active measures aimed at the United States. A recent Chinese document excerpted in
the Times stated:
We want to ease tensions with the United States and break down the sentiment in
America for sanctions.... We should take prudent and active measures, and properly
report issues in Sino-American relations, so that bilateral relations develop in a way that
will help us. Propaganda news stories must be careful and tactical, paying attention to
results. As for American interference in our internal affairs, violations of our sovereignty,
and slanderous rumor-mongering, we can reveal this in ways that accord with the
circumstances and with our diplomatic aims.
In a May 19, 1992 letter to the editor of the New York Times, Robert Bernstein, chairman
of Human Rights Watch, stated his belief that the Chinese authorities may be involved in
spreading conciliatory disinformation. Bernstein said that two recently released
photographs of imprisoned Chinese pro-democracy activists, which showed them in
apparent good health, were "highly suspect," and he cast doubts on official Chinese
accounts of the condition of imprisoned dissident Wei Jingsheng, who was jailed in 1979
after advocating that democracy become China's "fifth modernization."
On other occasions, the Chinese press has carried anti-American disinformation. on
January 14, 1992, the Beijing newspaper Jiefangjun Bao, repeating charges that had
appeared in the November 24, 1991 issue of the People's Daily, reported the false "baby
parts" rumor. The article claimed:
Some surgeons in the United States were entrusted by rich people to find physically fit
children in Brazil. After paying a certain sum of money to their poor parents, these
surgeons were able to remove organs from the children through surgery.
Various communist parties around the world also continue to use disinformation and
active measures techniques. For example, a March 1992 article in the French magazine
Viva written by Maite Pinero, a correspondent for L'Humanite, the newspaper of the
Communist Party of France, repeated a litany of long refuted and discredited "baby parts"
allegations. Pinero's article was subsequently reported by Radio France International and
appeared in the press in the Malagasy Republic.
Pinero is a longtime participant in what was a combined Soviet/Cuban/French
Communist disinformation campaign on the so-called "baby parts" issue. Her initial
article, tendentiously and inaccurately titled "Selling the Hearts of Children," appeared in
the April 14, 1987 issue of L'Humanite, the same month in which the Soviet, Cuban, and
Sandinista media in Nicaragua began to spread disinformation on this issue. In May 1992,
Pinero was in Geneva, Switzerland, passing out material on the "baby parts" rumor to
journalists. The same month, Renee Bridel, an assistant representative of the
International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), for decades a Soviet-controlled
front group with consultative status at the United Nations, distributed disinformation on
the "baby parts" story to another journalist in Geneva, resulting in a story carried by
EFE, the Spanish news agency. IADL and Bridel have been very active in spreading the
"baby parts" story since 1988. It is unclear whether she and Pinero were acting on their
own in spreading this rumor in May 1992, or as part of a larger, coordinated operation.
Within the former USSR, many elements of the former active measures apparatus have
survived and continue to operate, maintaining informal links with embittered hard-line
remnants of the former CPSU apparatus, who yearn to again wield power in the future.
Also, important active measures entities such as the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service
(RFIS), the direct lineal descendant of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, and a variety of
"nongovernmental" front groups continue to operate - now under Russian rather than
Soviet sponsorship. In time, many of the independent states that made up the former
Soviet Union may also develop their own active measures apparatuses.
In what appeared to be a striking display of continuity across regimes, on April 4, 1992
the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies (USFS) voted to transform itself into the
Russian Association for International Cooperation, or RAMS in its Russian-language
acronym. On May 12, 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin supported this initiative,
proclaiming RAMS to be the legal successor to the USFS. Yeltsin decreed that all the
property of the USFS, including real estate both on Russian territory and abroad, would
be transferred to RAMS.
In a May 1992 announcement, RAMS stated:
The newly-established agency is an umbrella structure embracing over 100 cultural,
human rights, educational, scientific, ecological, medical, etc. organizations, collective
and associate members.
...RAMS maintains on a regular basis cooperation with similar structures in the former
USSR republics. CEOs [Chief executive officers] of these organizations make up a
coordinating committee which meets on a regular basis to work out common approach
[sic] toward financial contributions and joint use of property abroad.
...The budget is made up of membership dues, income-raising activities, and financial
support of the Government on ear-marked programs.
RAMS also announced that Valentina Tereshkova, the chairperson of the USFS, had been
elected chairperson of RAMS.
In this way, a key element of the Soviet active measures apparatus seems to have been
transferred largely intact to the Russian government, which is now funding it instead of
the CPSU. Much of the personnel remains the same. Thus, the Soviet friendship societies,
which served the interests of the CPSU in the "people-to-people" realm, have been
transformed into Russian friendship societies, which will now presumably serve Russian
government interests, at least on certain "ear-marked" programs. Much the same sort of
transformation process from Soviet to Russian institutions appears to be occurring
throughout what was formerly the Soviet active measures apparatus.
The Soviet friendship societies were used to funnel money to nongovernmental groups in
other countries that promoted friendship with the USSR. In May 1992, Alan Thompson,
the former executive secretary of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship
(NCASF), pleaded guilty to a charge of violating currency regulations in the United
States. It was revealed that Thompson had received $17,000 for NCASF operations in
Moscow from Sergei Zimenko, a Soviet official of the USSR Friendship Society.
The February 7, 1992 issue of Pravda revealed an example of continuing active measures
operations apparently undertaken by hard-liners in the former USSR. It reported that a
"Committee of Public Organizations to Promote a Near East Settlement" had recently
been formed under the chairmanship of V.M. Vinogradov. Vinogradov had served as a
KGB officer in Great Britain in 1961. He stated that, in addition to contributing to the
success of the Middle East peace talks, one of the main aims of his group was "to
strengthen friendly ties to all countries of the region." In this regard, he complained that
during the Moscow round of Middle East peace talks "disrespect was shown ... to Iran,
Libya, and Iraq, which were not invited to the conference," and suggested that they be
more fully included in the future.
Vinogradov criticized the Russian government's approach to the peace talks, which he
said he did not place sufficient pressure on Israel to withdraw from territories it occupied.
He concluded that "the Moscow round did not advance the cause of a settlement one
iota."
In short, the stance of the newly-formed "Committee of Public Organizations to Promote
a Near East Settlement" is anti-Yeltsin, anti-Israeli, pro-Iran, pro-Libya, and pro-Iraq,
positions identical to those embraced by ousted communist hard-liners.
Pravda reported that the initiative to form Vinogradov's organization was:
supported by the Russian Society for Friendship with Arab Countries, the Russian
Palestine Society, the International Association for the Cooperation of Lawyers, the
Academy of the Spiritual Heritage of the East, the Association of Diplomatic Officials,
the Committee for Friendship and Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the Russian
Lawyer's Association, and the Public Academy of Culture and General Values.
These organizations or their predecessors previously functioned as parts of the Soviet
active measures apparatus. It thus appears that, despite the demise of the CPSU, large
parts of its active measures machinery have survived and continue to operate, either on
behalf of the Russian government or for disaffected former communist hard-liners who
wish to undermine the Yeltsin government and forge closer ties to anti-Western regimes.
Vinogradov also stated that his committee had applied for the status of a
nongovernmental organization at the United Nations, which was one of the main avenues
through which Soviet front groups wielded their influence in the past.
On February 28, 1992, the former Soviet army newspaper Krasnava Zvezda reported on a
traditional Soviet-style active measures operation apparently undertaken by the Russian
government. The newspaper reported that "a meeting of the aktiv of the international
committee 'Peace to the oceans' and the Association of International Maritime Law" had
adopted an appeal calling on the Commonwealth states to:
preserve for a transitional period a unified security system, a unified military-strategic
area, and unified control of the CIS Armed Forces, and to declare a moratorium on the
division of the Navy for at least two or three years.
This operation had many of the classic characteristics of a Soviet-style active measures
operation, and, in fact, utilized one of the active measures organizations created during
the "post-Cold War" era. The "Peace to the Oceans" front group was formed in June
1990, when the Soviets were making a concerted effort, through diplomatic and active
measures channels, to pressure the West to accede to Soviet wishes to begin talks on
naval disarmament. On July 3, 1990, Radio Moscow reported on the thoroughly
stereotypical activities of this newly formed front group:
The inaugural conference of a new public organization has been held in Moscow. Around
200 representatives of the Soviet public - generals, admirals, lawyers, scientists, writers,
and journalists - who were invited to the conference gave their unanimous backing to the
idea of setting up a Soviet committee for peace, disarmament, and ecological security on
the seas and oceans - abbreviated to the Soviet Committee for Peace to the Oceans....
This Soviet-created front group is now apparently being used by the Russian government
for its purposes. Its appeal explicitly stated:
The "Peace to the Oceans" committee expresses support for the Russian Federation's
president's initiatives and proposals on reducing the CIS Strategic offensive Armed
Forces, including the Navy, on parity principles.
The article continued:
The lack of a unified CIS Navy, the appeal says, could lead to a possible naval arms race
and the emergence of confrontation at sea. Only on the basis of the CIS Joint Armed
Forces and a unified Navy is it possible to formulate a defensive doctrine that is
acceptable to the sovereign states and could reliably avert all threats from the seas and
oceans.
This heavy-handed attempt to label policies that active measures operations are meant to
support as "peaceful" ones, which "avert threats" and make possible a "defensive
doctrine," while alleging that contrary policies will lead to "confrontation," an "arms
race," and the possibility of war is a familiar Soviet-style active measures practice.
It is also interesting that the committee's appeal was issued in the name of its "aktiv." In
the Soviet system, a group's aktiv was the nucleus of its communist party organization.
Thus, although the Soviet active measures and disinformation colossus that sought for
decades to undermine the Free World with a variety of hostile and manipulative
campaigns has disintegrated, sizable fragments of the old system have survived and
continue to operate. Some are sponsored by the Russian government and others
apparently by disaffected communist hard-liners who wish to exert as much power as
they can.
The Russian government has little incentive to spread anti-American disinformation.
Instead, the logical targets for its derogatory disinformation are opponents of Russian
policies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), particularly Ukraine and
those opposed to a significant Russian role in the affairs of other Commonwealth
members. This might explain why, according to Moscow's Postfactum news service on
February 8, 1992, 68 members of the Kiev City Council had issued an appeal
complaining about "an unbridled anti-Ukrainian campaign the Russian mass media has
unleashed," including what they termed an "outright provocative torrent of
misinformation which is pouring muddy waters on the heads of sea-men serving in the
Black Sea fleet, and on the heads of all other Ukrainian citizens." On the same day, Kiev
radio reported that the mayor of Sevastopol had charged that programs broadcast by
Moscow television contained "political disinformation." Such motives would also explain
the stance of groups such as "Peace to the Oceans," which opposed Ukrainian policies on
dividing up the former Soviet armed forces.
On October 4, 1991, the newly appointed head of what was then the Soviet foreign
intelligence service and is now the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Yevgeni
Primakov, touched on some of these issues in a press conference. Primakov stated that the
newly independent states of the former USSR were potential targets for Moscow's
intelligence operations, which, of course, included active measures. According to the
newspaper Trud:
the head of Soviet foreign intelligence stated that its activities may be extended into the
former republics, which now have become independent states, if they represent a threat to
the security of our country.
When the USSR was dissolved and Russian president Boris Yeltsin took control of the
USSR's central institutions, including its foreign intelligence service, he kept Primakov as
its head. On April 6, 1992, ITAR-TASS reported that 8 of the 11 countries comprising the
CIS had recently signed an agreement on cooperation among themselves in which they
pledged not to conduct intelligence activities against each other. It remains to be seen
how this agreement will work in practice or whether Primakov's earlier warning will
remain relevant.
In his October 1991 press conference, Primakov also pledged that the then-Soviet foreign
intelligence service would "strive to provide objective information in order to avoid any
disinformation." on March 17, 1992, while recruiting for the RFIS at the prestigious
Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Primakov initially appeared to bolster
this reputation for truth-telling by admitting that the KGB had fabricated and planted
disinformation stories blaming the United States for the creation of the AIDS virus.
But there appeared to be a mischievous element in Primakov's admission of KGB
wrongdoing. According to the March 19, 1992 issue of Izvestia, he then claimed - falsely
- that the U.S. had retaliated for the USSR's AIDS disinformation campaign by spreading
rumors that the USSR had been involved in the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II.
The article stated:
The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service made a number of really sensational
announcements. He mentioned the well. known articles printed a few years ago in our
central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories.
According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing the U.S. scientists' "crafty" plot
against mankind were fabricated in KGB offices. In revenge for this, the U.S. special
services cooked up their own version of the attack on the Pope in the early 1980s,
accusing the Soviet Union of organizing this terrorist act.
Primakov's claim was clearly impossible because charges of Soviet involvement in the
attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II began to appear in 1981 and 1982, well
before the USSR's AIDS disinformation campaign began. (The original AIDS charge,
planted in the KGB-founded Indian newspaper Patriot in July 1983, went unnoticed by
the world until October 1985, when the Soviets began to replay it in a concerted media
campaign.) Even if the U.S. government had wished to respond to the AIDS
disinformation campaign in kind - which it did not - it could not have retaliated for
something that had not yet occurred. Furthermore, charges of Soviet involvement in the
attempted papal assassination were the result of investigations by independent journalists,
not the U.S. government, which never blamed the USSR for this event.
Other false charges have also appeared in the Russian press. On April 9, 1992, the
Russian news service ITAR-TASS carried an item containing falsehoods that, if believed,
would lend credence to fears that the breakup of the USSR may result in Soviet nuclear
materials and expertise being transferred to other countries. It reported:
An attempt to take 180 kilograms of "red mercury" - the strategic metal used in the
production of nuclear weapons - out of the country has been foiled by the efforts of the
Russian and Ukrainian militias.
Militia Colonel Vladimir Puchnin, chief of the internal affairs directorate of Tambov
Oblast today told a CRIME PRESS correspondent that workers at the Tambov plant
where "red mercury" is produced were among the plunderers. Fortunately, the cargo,
which was seized in Poltava, has been returned to the enterprise.
"Red mercury" is not "a strategic metal used in the production of nuclear weapons," as
purported in the article, but a hoax. According to the April 13, 1992 issue of the British
newspaper The Independent:
For the past two years, and particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, offers for
the sale of red mercury have been cropping up across Europe at prices up to $500,000 a
kilogram. The network stretches from the former Soviet Union to Italy, via the Bulgarian-
Romanian frontier, bonded warehouses in Switzerland, the Viennese underworld, (and]
agents in Denmark and Hungary ....
But what is red mercury and what is its function? The rumor in the black market is that it
is a vital component in the detonation process of certain types of Soviet nuclear warheads
and in the guidance systems of missiles. ... But independent experts say its alleged
properties are scientific gobbledygook and that it has about as much strategic worth as the
mercury in a household thermometer.
David Kay, the director of the Uranium Institute in London and the leader of the U.N.
team sent to inspect Iraq's nuclear facilities after the Gulf war, was quoted in the March
15, 1992 issue of the London Times as stating that the "red mercury" rumor began long
ago:
"A rumor started about 15 years ago that the Soviets had found a new reactor base (that
had] something to do with mercury," he said. "Nobody knew quite what it was but
everyone got very excited. We thought it could be an ingredient in a hydrogen bomb or
facilitate a pressurized water reactor. It became known as 'red mercury' purely because it
was Russian. People are now trying to sell off ordinary mercury tainted with coloring."
Kay, who led three IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration] inspection teams
in Iraq last year, said his hosts told him they had two filing cabinet drawers stuffed with
offers of red mercury.
A variety of scam artists have been involved in the "red mercury" hoax. According to the
April 13, 1992 issue of The Independent, individuals have been arrested "trying to peddle
trace quantities of plutonium and slightly enriched uranium, although neither in remotely
strategic quantities." One person simply placed mercury in a red-tinted vial. As CIA
Director Robert Gates told the U.S. Congress in testimony on January 15, 1992:
Because of the great demand for these materials, the difficulty in determining the
authenticity of nuclear materials, and the widespread availability of small quantities of
uranium and plutonium in research facilities, we can expect to see many scams and
hoaxes.
The April 13 issue of The Independent cited reports that "the Russian mafia are said to be
closely involved" in the red mercury scam. It also stated:
A further theory is that the Russians may have fostered the traffic in order to persuade the
West of the real threat of nuclear proliferation and thereby win funds and assistance to
combat it.
Thus, although the "red mercury" rumor appears to have started on its own, and a number
of confidence artists have apparently used it as a money-making scam, individuals or
intelligence organizations in the former Soviet Union may also have circulated the rumor
for their own purposes.
In other instances, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officials have made quite
simplistic disinformation claims. For example, in the May 4, 1992 issue of Izvestia, RFIS
spokesman Yuri Kobaladze claimed, falsely, that recent revelations in the press in United
States, France, and Belgium about extensive, ongoing economic espionage by the RFIS
were "forgeries" aimed at pressuring the RFIS to curtail its intelligence activities abroad.
The veracity of some conciliatory statements by Russian government leaders has also
been questioned by some observers. For example, the Russian government pledge that it
no longer intends to target U.S., European, Japanese, or Chinese targets with its nuclear
missiles has been questioned by President Kravchuk of Ukraine and by the captain of a
Typhoon nuclear submarine armed with 20 strategic ballistic missiles carrying 200
warheads. The submarine captain stated in an interview in the joint Russian-American
newspaper We in March 1992 that targeting instructions for his strategic missiles have not
changed:
"No one has changed my punched tapes yet," Yefimenko says. "I don't know where my
missiles are targeted. You should ask the General Staff people who program flight
patterns. But I can guess that the targets are military installations of one of the nations
currently sending us food aid," implying the United States.
An article in the May 8, 1992 Washington Times illustrated how conciliatory themes are
currently being used by Russian government authorities in efforts aimed at foreign media.
The article, entitled "Envoy proposes U.S. and Russia curb spy efforts," stated:
Russia's ambassador to the United States has challenged the Bush administration to
negotiate mutual reductions in intelligence activities.
The Russian government is willing to discuss the idea of reducing levels of its
intelligence cadres to a "zero level," Vladimir P. Lukin, the first Russian - not Soviet -
ambassador to the United States since the Bolshevik revolution, said in an interview
Wednesday.
...The former Soviet KGB was transformed into the Russian External Intelligence
Service ... this year, and its activities in the United States have diminished only slightly,
FBI and CIA officials say.
...The ambassador also said the U.S. government has not reciprocated for the former
KGB supplying diagrams showing electronic listening devices planted throughout the
new U.S. embassy in Moscow.
"So it is very questionable who has changed more since the Cold War," he said.
U.S. officials said privately the wiring diagrams were incomplete and did not reveal any
information about the bugging that was not known previously.
By making a highly public offer that it presumably had calculated in advance would be
rejected as unrealistic, the Russian government was thus able to appear to be taking the
high moral ground with regard to the issue of intelligence collection, without running any
real risks that it would have to curtail any of its intelligence gathering operations. This is
an illustration of how a post-totalitarian government can use a seemingly conciliatory
gesture to enhance its own image and to try to make a democratic government appear in a
bad light.
This offer was reminiscent of a similar suggestion made during the last days of the Soviet
regime. On Russian television on November 27, 1991, Soviet academician Georgi
Arbatov suggested that the CIA and the Soviet foreign intelligence services reach a
reciprocal agreement on their activities. Arbatov suggested that the intelligence services
of both countries abandon covert operations and stop recruiting citizens from each others'
countries as agents. Such utopian suggestions have no likelihood of being implemented,
but they do improve the image of the side making the noble-sounding suggestion and
make the other side appear, by contrast, to be somewhat unethical. This appears to be
their purpose.
While disinformation and active measures operations conducted by Russia would
logically be aimed at enhancing Russia's power by denigrating its opponents and
emphasizing conciliatory and alarmist themes with the West, disinformation and active
measures operations conducted by the former communist hard-liners would most likely
be anti-Yeltsin and anti-American. The chief opponent of former communists is the
democratic regime in Russia. Thus, the democratic elements within the Yeltsin
government and Yeltsin himself would logically be the main targets of their
disinformation and active measures campaigns. This group also remains hostile to the
West and the United States and thus would logically consider the West to also be their
target, although a secondary one at this time. The activities of the "Committee of Public
Organizations to Promote a Near East Settlement" typify the anti-Yeltsin, anti-Western
thrust embraced by these elements.
There are clear signs that former communist hard-liners are using their remaining power
and connections to form organizations opposed to the Yeltsin government. For example,
the former ideological chief of the hard-line Russian Communist Party, Gennadi
Zyuganov, now heads the coordinating council of an organization called The Movement
of Popular and Patriotic Forces, which acts as an umbrella group to "bring together
socialist-oriented parties" in Russia, according to an ITAR-TASS report of February 8,
1992. Zyuganov's group has organized anti-Yeltsin demonstrations and has suggested that
the Russian government "sit down at the negotiating table with representatives of parties
of socialist orientation rather than label them as 'red-brown.'"
On February 22, 1992, the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta published excerpts
from a report by the "Russian Federation-Politika" analytical center. It warned about the
dangers posed by the nomenklatura - CPSU-appointed officials, many of whom still
occupy powerful managerial positions in the government, industry, media, and other
societal structures of the former USSR. The report stated:
within Russia and around it a process of all-embracing, widespread, and very aggressive
nomenklatura revanche is in train which has as its goal the restoration and consolidation
of a nomenklatura-totalitarian regime not only in Russia but also in all the
Commonwealth republics.
...Legal, quasi-underground, and underground structures of the former Communist Party
nomenklatura are being developed everywhere.
...The work of the "Coordinating Council of the Popular-Patriotic Forces" - set up in
spring 1991 at the initiative of the Russian Communist Party Central Committee, I.
Polozkov, and G. Zyuganov, who heads it to this day - has been renewed.
...information is available on the operation of underground CPSU oblast committees that
in some regions maintain a direct, directive influence on the organs of power and a
powerful information and communications network linking the "center" with the regions
(in fact, according to some information an underground CPSU Central Committee has
been created).
...The apparatus of the so-called independent trade unions (what is meant here is the
Federation of Independent Trade Unions) has recently sharply increased its activity in
provoking strikes. In some regions there are cases of the trade unions coercing workers to
strike, including threatening to cut off supplies, bring production to a halt, and so forth.
...At the same time, specific activity is taking place in certain circles among the Armed
Forces and the KGB. There is talk in the military about the possibility and expediency of
a change of power because "the president is very ill."
...On 4 February at a closed "meeting on question of economic and national security"
certain regional leaders, about 500 directors of major enterprises in the military-industrial
complex, and military people formed a parallel government "commission" .... It can be
stated with a high degree of probability that this commission, with the "expert advice" of
0. Lobov and A. Volskiy of the "Russian union of industrialists and entrepreneurs" may
become a unique kind of "officers' assembly" for the nomenklatura economy, an
organizational base to insure coordinated measures of nomenklatura revanche in the
economy, sabotage, and a virtual rolling back of the economic reforms.
Cadre control by the military-industrial complex over the leadership in industry is
intensifying.
...Economic opposition to reform policy is intensifying, and is often expressed by
sabotaging decisions of the president and government passed on for "execution."
...Deliberate sabotage of land reform and the desperate struggle to preserve the kolkhoz
system continue unaltered.... The organs of power and management are refusing to issue
appropriate documents, under absurd pretexts ("there is no paper to print information
about the forms required").
...on this basis a system of "nomenklatura enclaves" inherited from Soviet times is being
formed and consolidated politically.
On March 4, 1992, the Moscow newspaper Rossivskaya Gazeta reported on a press
conference held by Vladimir Varon, chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet
Subcommittee on Political Reform, who was accompanied by experts from the "Russian
Federation-Politika" analytical center. Varon stated:
The official power not so much even the CPSU, but the party nomenklatura has
apparently left the arena. I stress: apparently. In actual fact it has moved into the
structures of state power in the so-called center and at the local level. In other words, we
are witnessing today the process of party-nomenklatura revenge in various forms -
primarily hidden forms. In other words, whereas the powers-that-be used to sit in their
well-known party offices and control all and sundry, and control it illegally, today they
are apparently almost always controlling things legally, but from different quarters. In
fact, it sometimes happens that they control things from the same offices.
...There are corresponding party nomenklatura positions in social organizations and in the
organs of state power. And when we analyze the data, we are forced to note with great
regret that in the majority of regions, and in the center as well, the party-state
nomenklatura constitutes up to 70-80 percent, and in some regions, even more.
...Unfortunately, we are forced to note that this tendency is also typical for Russia's top
structures.
An expert from the "Russian Federation-Politika" center, Dmitri Yuryev concluded, "The
nomenklatura era is probably over, but the nomenklatura system remains."
In addition to the continuing strength of party-appointed bureaucrats in the state structure
and social organizations, the "Russian Federation-Politika" experts claimed that, "there
are fake displays of 'mass support' by the population for the most odious nomenklatura
leaders; moreover, the population is frequently subjected to pure and simple food
blackmail."
The former communists and communist-appointed officials have joined with extreme
Russian nationalists to form what has been called a "red-brown" alliance opposed to the
Yeltsin government. On March 10, 1992, Sovetskaya Rossiya published a joint
declaration by these groups entitled "Justice, Nationality, Statehood, Patriotism." On
March 17, the efforts of the hard-liners to convene a extraordinary sixth Congress of
USSR People's Deputies as a vehicle for protesting the policies of the Yeltsin government
failed miserably, but these groups have considerable assets at their control and could pose
a serious threat to democratic development in the former Soviet Union for years to come.
The influence of the intelligence services is apparently relatively undiminished in some
formerly Soviet organizations that have extensive international operations. According to
TASS employee Alexander Zhebin, the influence of former KGB members remains
strong in that organization. writing in Moscow News' issue number 7 (Feb. 16-23) of
1992, Zhebin stated:
To this day, from one-third to half of all correspondents of the leading department of
TASS (the official Soviet news agency abroad) are on the payroll of special services.
...Even after the proclamation of TASS as an "independent" agency, the special services
and their representatives in this organization have continued to wield decisive influence
in the formation of the network of correspondents abroad. ... in whole divisions,
personnel selection remains the task of old, experienced hands.
The former Main Editorial Office of Foreign Information, now renamed International
Information Agency, has been headed by V. Chukseyev since the early 1980s. Now, as in
the past, he signs the documents which sanction the dispatch of dozens of sham
correspondents abroad, and presents them to the TASS Collegium for approval. ...
recently, having retained supervision over the foreign press, he received the post of
Deputy Director-General. He simultaneously heads the commission charged with
reorganizing the agency.
In the autumn of 1991, V. Talanov was once again appointed deputy - in charge of
personnel. In the early 1980s, as an official of the Department in Charge of Personnel
Working Abroad at the CPSU Central Committee, he "took care" of TASS. Through him,
an endless stream of special service officers was forwarded by a directive order to TASS.
...In TASS' history there were periods when the personnel service was headed by
journalists. But, for the past 20 years at least, the special services have not ceded to
anyone the post of deputy head of the personnel department - which selects all TASS
personnel to be sent abroad. The KGB may seem to no longer exist, but its staff member
still occupies this post.
...Meanwhile, the agency is being left by specialists. Never before in its history did TASS
see such an outflow of personnel as it did last year. Young and promising journalists and
eminent masters of the pen alike to whom TASS has owed its existence for years, have
been quitting. They are leaving in droves, with heads of editorial offices first to the doors.
After giving up 17 years of my life to TASS, I, too, am leaving.
In May 1991, the Soviet Peace Committee apparently set up a special fund to help ensure
the future functioning of the World Peace Council (WPC), which is headquartered in
Helsinki, Finland and for decades was the premier Soviet international front organization.
According to an article in the November 1, 1991 issue of the Finnish newspaper Kansan
Uutiset, the interest from this $2.2 million fund has provided $170,000 in interest income
donated to the WPC, accounting for more than 30 percent of its 1992 budget. For 1993,
the donation from the fund is expected to be about $225,000.
Funding endowments like this could supply the financial means for former Soviet front
groups to operate indefinitely. The Soviet Peace Committee has dissolved itself, but its
work is being carried on by the "International League for Peace and Reconciliation,"
which was formed in January 1992. The League first Vice-Chairman and de facto leader
Oleg Kharkhardin had formerly been a high-ranking Soviet representative to the WPC.
According to Kansan Uutiset:
At that time, he represented the Soviet Peace Committee, but the man's actions suggested
that he was really associated with the KGB. ...Kharkhardin himself steered the Council's
international money flows and disciplined the WPC office's secretaries coming from
socialist countries.
There have been numerous reports in the Soviet press about billions of rubles of CPSU
money that is missing and which may have been funneled abroad. During the decades in
which the CPSU and Soviet government funded extensive foreign operations, there was
ample opportunity for the Soviets to establish hard currency reserves in foreign countries,
the capital and earnings of which could be used to fund future active measures
operations, as is apparently being done for the World Peace Council. This is an additional
reason why active measures operations are unlikely to disappear.
In summary, both the hard-line former communist forces and the Russian government are
engaged in active measures and disinformation operations, in the quest to achieve their
political goals. Both groups should be expected to continue to pursue such operations
vigorously. There are many reasons for this. Those who have lived their entire lives in a
totalitarian system are well-schooled in such techniques and keenly aware of their
effectiveness; the totalitarian experience has bred widespread cynicism, the moral
atmosphere in which such operations flourish; front groups constructed for these
purposes already exist or can easily be created; and active measures and disinformation
techniques continue to be ill-understood and largely overlooked in societies that have not
experienced totalitarianism, making them an effective tool for influencing such
audiences. In short, active measures and disinformation are one of the few areas in which
those who have lived in a totalitarian regime have a competitive advantage over those
who have not. Until and unless a truly democratic regime that fully embraces Western
ideals of truth, honesty, openness, and mutual advantage emerges in Russia, those in
power or contending for power there will, most likely, find it to their advantage to
continue active measures and disinformation operations. In addition, other CIS countries,
for many of the same reasons listed above, are likely to develop active measures and
disinformation apparatuses of their own for use in their foreign relations.
The themes that will most likely be propagated in future dealings with the West by the
Russian government, hard-line communists and other sponsors of active measures in the
former USSR would logically be for the most part alarmist and conciliatory themes, as
was characteristic of Soviet active measures during the "post Cold-War" years of 1988 to
1991. These types of themes will be the most difficult for the West to discern because
they derive their credibility in Western eyes from the fact that they represent either what
the West wants most or fears most, but in either case, finds most plausible from its own
perspective. Some archetypal themes that might be aimed at the West in the future could
include: "We are embarking on reforms that will remake us in a Western image," or "If
you do not supply us with enormous amounts of aid with few restrictions, a dangerous,
chaotic situation will emerge." Such broad themes are inherently impossible to prove or
disprove and they may seem self-evident to many. The use of such themes could therefore
be very effective in influencing opinions.
Outside the Commonwealth of Independent States, state or non-state actors reared in a
communist tradition or one resembling it in spirit can be expected to continue to wage
active measures and disinformation campaigns as long as they exist. Last, but not least,
the legacy of the vigorous and spiteful anti-Western and, particularly, anti-American
campaigns the Soviet Union orchestrated for decades will be felt for many years to come
in the form of the lasting perceptions and attitudes that they shaped throughout the world.
 Conclusion

During the "post-Cold War" era, the Soviets used a wide variety of conciliatory,
derogatory, alarmist, and other active measures themes - whatever they believed would
work best in influencing their target audiences to take actions advantageous to the USSR.
Perhaps the most difficult task when analyzing active measures operations is to gauge
their effectiveness. Soviet active measures were such an integral part of that nation's
foreign policy operations and so broad in scope and intended effect, that it is impossible
to rigorously isolate their effects with any degree of precision. But broadly speaking, they
seem to have been effective in influencing foreign opinion. one recent article in Moscow
News (issue number 14, 1992) provides some anecdotal evidence of this. It was written
by Jim Doran, an American now living in Moscow. He stated:
Having lived in Moscow for just over one year now, I have had a unique opportunity to
compare what was being said in the West about the former USSR with the reality that I
have experienced on the streets each day. Unfortunately, there has often been a huge gap
between the two.
...our Western analysis of the former USSR was beset by three broad misconceptions. The
first, of course, was an immense overconcentration on the role of Gorbachev and a
concomitant overglorification of the man. Much of Western thinking was so centered on
Gorbachev that it failed to notice, as Hedrick Smith observes in The New Russians, that
by mid-1989, Gorbachev had been overtaken by events and had ceased to be the main
propellant for change in this society. It thus failed to appreciate the rise of Boris Yeltsin,
noting only his character faults and completely ignoring the fact that on all the bread and
butter issues, Yeltsin was clearly a more desirable leader than Gorbachev for both the
Russians and the West.
The second misconception was that the USSR was a real country; that its existence was
justified and that therefore its break-up was something to be avoided. The Soviet Union
has been with us so long that many of us forgot that it was nothing more than the last
European empire; an artificial, coerced entity, the majority of whose constituent parts
wanted out.
The third misconception ... was that the Soviet people could do no better than reform
communism. "They are just not ready for democracy" or "they should be satisfied with
Gorbachev," many of our observers seemed to be saying. I have always found such
thinking insulting and all the more so after having lived with the Russians.
It is perhaps more than coincidental that the beliefs in the West that Doran found to be the
most mistaken about the USSR coincide, in large part, with the most important Soviet
active measures campaigns of the "post-cold War" era, as described by former KGB
major Mikhail Butkov, who defected to the West in May 1991. The December 15, 1991
issue of the British newspaper The Independent described Butkov and the active
measures campaigns he helped run during 1989 to 1991:
After 10 years in the KGB, two of them on active service in a NATO capital, Major
Butkov had decided he could better serve his country by defecting. The "discrepancies,"
as he describes them, between the publicly-stated reformist policies of Mikhail
Gorbachev and the realities of an unreconstructed intelligence network bent on keeping
the Communist Party in power were what prompted his decision.
...He told his debriefers about the dirty tricks used by the KGB on behalf of the
Gorbachev regime as late as the spring of this year (1991) to try to undermine Boris
Yeltsin and other key opposition figures.
...Their main task from the late 1980s was to blacken the names of Mr. Gorbachev's
opponents and, through disinformation, to persuade the West to back him.
He spent ... three years at the KGB's Andropov Institute in Moscow. "These were the
times of perestroika. But nevertheless we were taught that we were the Party's political
warriors and should be proud of it."
...By the late 1980s some of the more extreme tactics of the old KGB were redundant.
Department 8 of the Directorate S - the special assassination unit - had been dormant for
more than a decade. The chief role of the KGB became and remained, even as late as this
year, to attack internal opponents of the Gorbachev regime.
On the political front, the KGB stations were under orders to destabilize the opposition.
Those around Mr. Yeltsin were to be quietly accused of taking money from the CIA,
while the Lithuanian president, Vytautas Landsbergis, was marked down for "active
measures" to portray him as a "member of the Mafia, a profiteer, an incompetent,
ambitious megalomaniac with dictatorial tendencies." "On the strength of such directives,
we would arrange meetings with sources and pass this information on," Mr. Butkov said.
Other active measures involved spreading the idea in the West that Gorbachev's
disappearance and the break-up of the Soviet Union would lead to the creation of a
number of aggressive republics with uncontrolled access to nuclear weapons. Mr. Butkov
observes: "In his appeals to the West, Gorbachev used all the arguments that we were
ordered to plant."
The era of Soviet active measures is gone forever, now relegated to history. But active
measures operations continue, on the part of other totalitarian regimes and groups,
extremist, anti-Western states, some Soviet successor regimes, and states in extremis.
The propensity of Soviet successor states to use the manipulative and deceptive
techniques of active measures will depend to a large degree on the extent to which they
act as what might be called "post-totalitarians," i.e., those whose ethics, habits, and
methods of operation have been shaped in a totalitarian tradition and who continue to
operate according to these rules of behavior. Hopefully, this will be a diminishing
phenomenon and those who consciously repudiate and reject totalitarian methods will
gain greater power and influence in the former USSR. The more influence that genuine
democrats have in a Soviet successor regime, the less likely it is that it will engage in
active measures.
Russia is a special case, because it has inherited the vast bulk of the assets of the Soviet
active measures apparatus, by virtue of its central position within the former USSR. This
alone will lead to the temptation to use these assets. But probably more important is the
extent to which the Russian government, at all levels, is governed by genuine democrats
or those who continue the totalitarian tradition in form, if not in its previous communist
content.
As in the past, active measures will focus on the tasks of primary importance to the states
that run them. For the USSR, this task was weakening the "main enemy," the United
States, and increasing support for Soviet policies in the international arena.
Russia and the other CIS states have much different priorities. Their main tasks are,
broadly speaking, to consolidate power at home, evolve advantageous relations with their
CIS neighbors, and to win as much economic aid and assistance as possible on the most
favorable terms. Active measures by CIS states are therefore most likely to be
concentrated on achieving these goals. Thus, just as the Russian Foreign Intelligence
Service now appears to be concentrating on economic and technological espionage,
Russian active measures operations aimed at the West and the world community would
likely focus heavily on improving Russian access to foreign funds and technology. But
Russian concerns are not merely economic. For example, according to an ITAR-TASS
report on May 8, 1992, then-acting Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev had told
Russian military leaders that one of his primary tasks was to coordinate efforts with
Russian military industry in developing advanced high accuracy weapons based on "new
principles." Both espionage and active measures operations would logically be designed
to help achieve this important Russian national goal.
Given the nature of the main tasks that the CIS states face in the immediate future -
survival, consolidation, and revival - there is little reason for the active measures of
Russia or other CIS states to be predominately anti-American in tone, as was the case
during the Cold War era. They are more likely to be conciliatory, alarmist, or simply
diversionary - whatever will work in order to achieve their economic, political, military,
and other goals.
As long as foreign governments and groups continue to use active measures and
disinformation campaigns to try to manipulate and deceive foreign governments and
publics, there will be a need on the part of the U.S. government to monitor and analyze
these activities, in order to try to separate fact from fiction, distinguish between genuine
and disingenuous proposals, and to expose and counter cynically launched campaigns
that are either openly anti-American or otherwise inimical to U.S. interests.
 Budgetary Implications

Given the scant resources that were allocated within USIA to the task of tracking,
analyzing, and countering Soviet active measures, the direct budgetary consequences of
the collapse of the Soviet active measures apparatus are minuscule. During the better part
of the past 10 years, the unit responsible for countering active measures and
disinformation within USIA's Policy Guidance office has consisted of two full-time
employees. Their efforts, of course, depended on extensive reporting from USIS (United
States Information Service) posts overseas, where information officers watch for anti-
American articles and items of misinformation and disinformation and report them to
USIA headquarters. The role of the policy guidance officers at USIA headquarters is to do
the background research necessary to respond to the allegations and to communicate this
information and guidance to the field.
Despite the small size of the "counter-disinformation" staff, their efforts and that of
USIA's leadership apparently played a major role in the Soviet decision to curtail sharply
crude, anti-American disinformation during the "post-Cold War" era. According to an
account in the September 19, 1991 issue of the Moscow newspaper Kuranty, protests by
former USIA Director Charles Wick in June 1987 to Valentin Falin, then the head of
Novosti Press Agency, led to the disbanding of a disinformation unit within Novosti. The
Kuranty article stated:
In 1987, the talk started circulating that the plague of the 20th century (AIDS] is not
God's punishment, but the result of professional negligence of American bacteriologists.
They - the tale went - ignorantly released the artificial virus developed by them from their
secret test tubes before its time. This was a very serious accusation, considering what
kind of paralyzing fear the mere word AIDS had been evoking. Once in a while
references were actually made to some sources of minor authority, including even some
European professor. For professionals, however, it was clear where the thing was coming
from. ...That is why there was no doubt in the United States as to who had discovered the
AIDS virus in American test tubes. The diagnosis was extremely quick. Soon afterwards
the head of the American information agency USIA lodged a personal protest to then
APN Chairman V. Falin. The addressee was selected extremely well. Shortly before the
sensational "discovery" [that the U.S. had allegedly created the AIDS virus], a special
group of staff, and not only staff, "undercover" APN employees was created by Falin's
personal order, under the direction of Colonel M., newly invited to join the agency.
It is said that Falin had met the disinformation professional while serving as an
ambassador to (then) West Germany. The acquaintance came in handy when Falin took
charge of the agency. However, after the Americans, incensed by such a brazen lie,
applied forceful pressure, the group was disbanded, and the colonel himself disappeared
somewhere.
Despite the collapse of the Soviet active measures apparatus, there are still numerous
anti-American articles in the media worldwide that require research and guidance from
Washington. For example, the so-called "baby parts" rumor, which the Soviet
disinformation apparatus embraced during 1987 and 1988, and again briefly in 1991,
continues to be rampant in the world press. The USIA officers responsible for countering
disinformation made a major contribution to U.S. public diplomacy during the coalition
war against Iraq, working very effectively to counter a number of virulent anti-American
disinformation campaigns spread by Iraq and its allies. Anti-American propaganda and
disinformation continues to be spread by Iraqi, Cuban, Iranian, Libyan, and other
governments and groups. As mentioned in the previous section, the active measures
activities of states of the former Soviet union need monitoring for their impact on U.S.
interests. The USIA officers responsible for countering active measures and
disinformation have turned their attention to deal with these issues on a flexible, as-
needed basis, and will continue to do so.
More broadly, the collapse of the Soviet active measures apparatus should bring a partial
respite for USIS posts around the world, who act as the front lines of defense in
responding to anti-American stories worldwide. Although the Soviet active measures
apparatus was not responsible for the broad and diffuse phenomenon of anti-
Americanism, it was the instrument that was most active in taking advantage of anti-
American sentiments in order to create problems for the U.S. government in its foreign
relations. With this deliberate source of trouble-making gone, the problems caused by it
have receded. But, in many countries, the relentless decades of Soviet-sponsored anti-
American propaganda and disinformation have shaped attitudes and caused or
exacerbated problems that will continue to exist for many years to come.
In short, there is no large budgetary "windfall" for USIA from the collapse of the Soviet
active measures apparatus. The small resources once devoted almost exclusively to this
task have been shifted to other similar tasks.
 Appendix:
Recent Revelations About
Soviet Active Measures

"Black" or Covert Active Measures

"Black" or covert active measures operations, coordinated by Service A of the KGB's
First Chief Directorate, included the use of agents of influence, forgeries, covert media
placements, and controlled media to influence foreign publics and governments. Some
interesting revelations about Soviet practices in this area have come to light.

'Service A' Organization

Information about the likely organization and operations of Service A has come from
revelations about Department X of the Stasi's Foreign Intelligence Collection Main
Administration, headed by Markus Wolf, which was patterned after Service A and which
worked closely with it. The operations of the Stasi active measures unit were described in
some detail by two of its former sector chiefs in the July 22, 1991 issue of the German
magazine Der Spiegel:
Wolf's department X headed by Colonel Rolf Wagenbreth, tried to systematically
destabilize the class enemy in the West and to provide incorrect information since 1966....
Within Department X, Bohnsack headed Section 7 (economy, trade) and Brehmer worked
in Section 5 (secret services). The two and another five dozen Stasi specialists were
trained to deceive mainly politicians and secret services in the Federal Republic of
Germany with all kinds of tricks and purposeful cheating.
With its dirty tricks, described as "active measures" in secret service jargon, Wolf's
favorite department pursued several goals:
• Exposure and defamation of other countries, governments, political groups, and
individual persons;
• Instigation of the population against state institutions as well as disturbing and
influencing the process of the formation of the political will in individual states;
• Disturbing the relations among noncommunist states, particularly between
countries of the so-called First and Third World;
• Making Western intelligence services feel insecure and discrediting them.
...Agents of the X department forged letters, information, and official West German
documents. They sent them across the border through secret paths, and then mailed them
to selected persons. Studies and books were compiled, and even jokes and rumors were
spread, because "occasionally a good joke has more impact than 10 editorials."
Stasi material was also handed over to curious politicians and journalists directly in the
German Democratic Republic. Thus, as "MfS officer Buchner," Brehmer provided
reporters of the Stern magazine several times with all kinds of information during their
visits. This has been confirmed by journalists affected.
Another way of directing Stasi documents to certain officials or offices took place via so-
called legal covers in the GDR whose MfS background was not revealed. These roofs
included the press office of the chairman of the Council of Ministers, the press section of
the Foreign Ministry, the GDR Journalists' Association, and various archives. There,
"unofficial agents" and "officers for special operations" provided services to Western
clients.
Thus, according to the Stasi and according to their own indications, Nazi hunters Beate
and Serge Klarsfeld collected "files from Potsdam (in East Germany] several times to
furnish evidence of the Nazi past of the former Chancellor Georg Kiesinger. Nazi
documents also incriminated the former president of the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution, Hubert Schruebbers.
Occasionally, cooperation between the East and West was even closer. Thus, according to
Bohnsack and Brehmer, the left-leaning papers Berliner Extradienst and Konkret
sometimes received both documents and money from the Stasi.
Konkret founder Klaus Rainer Roehl, who published the paper between 1955 and 1973,
has admitted that he naturally accepted "donations" from friendly comrades, "without
which it would not have been possible to finance the printing of the paper."

'Service A' Operations

In their 1991 book Instructions From the Centre, former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky
and British academic Christopher Andrew described active measures taken by the KGB
during 1982 to 1985, when Gordievsky was in London. These included economic active
measures, which attempted to manipulate prices in Western markets, as well as
disinformation and alarmist arguments spread on the issue of cruise missiles, a key
component of NATO rearmament. Gordievsky and Andrew stated:
In the course of these three years ... Gordievsky noted over forty subjects on which the
London Residency was asked to promote active measures. Some were long-term
operations such as that to discredit President Reagan. Other operations were short-term
and tactical; in November 1982, for example, the Residency was ordered to try to depress
western grain prices by spreading rumors, especially to the International Wheat Council,
that Soviet grain purchases were to be only 35 million tons instead of the anticipated 44
million tons.
Among the Residency's most important active measures campaigns was that to oppose
the deployment of Cruise Missiles. At the end of September 1982 the Centre sent a
telegram to London (noted but not copied by Gordievsky), listing four main active
measures 'theses':
 1. Cruise missiles were offensive, not defensive, weapons.
2. The Americans insisted on their deployment and refused serious negotiations
about them.
3. The Soviet Union would detect their dispersal from British bases during an East-
West crisis, interpret this as a signal of impending nuclear attack, and be likely to
respond with a nuclear strike of its own.
4. U.S. deployment of Cruise missiles in Britain thus risked involving Britain in a
nuclear war begun, against its wishes, by the United States.
The Residency was instructed to use these theses in meetings with all its contacts, both
'confidential' and otherwise. (p. 137)

Forgeries
In an interesting tidbit, Oleg Kalugin, a major general in the KGB until 1987, has
revealed that the famous British defector Kim Philby assisted in KGB forgery operations.
The March 12, 1992 issue of the British newspaper The Independent reported:
Philby's speciality, Mr. Kalugin said, was to insert a couple of sentences into genuine CIA
or Pentagon documents to make them seem enthusiastic about the Third World War, and
then to see that these gained the widest possible circulation in Europe.
In Oleg Gordievsky's book KGB: The Inside Story, he described a forgery planted by the
KGB in the United States in 1982:
In late October the Washington main residency implemented Operation Golf, designed to
plant fabricated material discrediting the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, on the unsuspecting American correspondent of the London New Statesman.
On November 5 the New Statesman duly carried an article entitled "A Girl's Best Friend,"
exploring "the often secret relationship" between Jeane Kirkpatrick and South Africa. The
article included a photograph of a forged letter to Ms. Kirkpatrick from a counselor at the
South African embassy conveying "best regards and gratitude" from the head of South
African military intelligence and allegedly enclosing a birthday present "as a token of
appreciation from my government." The use of the word "priviously" [sic] indicated that,
as sometimes happens with its forgeries, Service A had forgotten to check its English
spelling. (p. 587)
The person whom Gordievsky and his co-author Christopher Andrew described as the
"unsuspecting American correspondent of the London New Statesman" is Claudia Wright,
a journalist originally from Australia. Interestingly, during 1982, Ms. Wright also wrote
frequently for Ethnos, a popular tabloid newspaper launched in Greece in September
1981 and later revealed by Greek journalist Paul Anastasi to have been set up by KGB's
Service A as an outlet for Soviet propaganda and disinformation. An article on Ethnos in
the December 1985 issue of The Atlantic magazine, described some of the other
correspondents for the newspaper:
One of them, Carl Marzani, had served three years in an American jail for concealing,
while working for the U.S. State Department as an intelligence officer in the 1940s, the
fact that he had once been a member of the Communist Party. The paper's expert on
British affairs, Stanley Harrison, is a former editor of the British Communist Party's
official newspaper. Ethnos' Cyprus correspondent, Akis Fantis, is the son of the Cyprus
Communist Party's alternate secretary-general and an editor of the Party organ there.
Ms. Wright's articles appeared in later years in the Greek press in Ta Nea and Pontiki,
other far-left publications that have carried Soviet propaganda and disinformation. On
September 3, 1989, Ms. Wright wrote an article in the Dublin, Ireland Sunday Tribune
that repeated another standard Soviet disinformation theme, that "the Korean Airlines
jumbo jet, shot down by the Soviet Air Force six years ago today, was on a spy mission
for the U.S."

KGB Active Measures in India

The April 1992 issue of the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty printed excerpts from
a KGB document on funding of active measures operations in India, one of the areas in
which the KGB was most active, particularly in the active measures realm. The document
stated:
In accordance with a decision of the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR KGB allocates
funds annually for extension of financial aid to controlled organs of the press, public
organizations, and individual public figures of India, whose possibilities are utilized for
operations and influence in accordance with state interests of the Soviet Union. The
320,000 foreign currency rubles allocated for the indicated purpose in 1985 have been
spent. In order to support special operations and measures on consolidation of the results
of the official visit by Prime Minister R. Gandhi to the Soviet Union, the KGB requests
allocation of 320,000 foreign currency rubles for 1986. Drafts of the decree of the CPSU
Central Committee and the order to the USSR Council of Ministers are attached. Please
study.
[signed] V. Chebrikov, committee chairman
Argumenty i Fakty noted that, "in accordance with this letter funds were appropriated,"
according to a December 20, 1985 CPSU Central Committee decree and an order of the
USSR Council of Ministers on the same day.

Agents of Influence
One of the most effective, most difficult to detect, and least understood areas of Soviet
active measures is the use of agents of influence. Agents of influence are foreigners who
have been recruited by the KGB in order to be used to influence the opinions of foreign
publics and governments. Agents of influence are extremely useful because they are
perceived as loyal patriots of their respective countries who are simply expressing their
own personal opinions, not scripts written by the KGB and designed to dovetail with the
current actions and priorities of Soviet foreign policy apparatus. The covert influence
campaigns that they wage in public and private are not only the most difficult type of
active measures operation to identify, but also potentially the most potent if the agent of
influence is a senior government official or a respected public figure.
In the June 6, 1992 issue of Human Events, Herbert Romerstein reported that "a retired
high-ranking KGB officer with extensive knowledge about operations against the United
States" had identified U.S. journalist I.F. Stone as a longtime Soviet agent of influence.
Stone bitterly criticized the policies of the U.S. government for years in his influential
private newsletter and other writings. The article by Romerstein stated:
During my recent visit to Moscow, a retired high-ranking KGB officer with extensive
knowledge about operations against the United States identified the late American
journalist I.F. Stone as a paid KGB agent. My source, who insisted on remaining
anonymous, was commenting on a speech that former KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin made in
London March 11 [1992].
Kalugin had said, "We had an agent - a well-known American journalist - with a good
reputation, who severed his ties with us after 1956. 1 myself convinced him to resume
them. But in 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia ... he said he would never again
take any money from us." Kalugin declined to identity the American journalist. KGB
officers, even retired ones, don't like to identify their agents.
My KGB source in Moscow was much more frank. He said that Stone would not even
allow Kalugin to buy him lunch during their last meeting. He insisted he wanted nothing
from the Russians. However, according to the source, Stone had taken a considerable
amount of KGB money for more than two decades.
In the preface to his book Polemics and Prophecies, 1967 to 1970, Stone described
himself as a fiercely independent journalist whose views on the issue of communist
infiltration in the United States were so critical of U.S. government policies in the late
1940s and early 1950s that he stated, "There was nothing to the left of me but the Daily
Worker [the newspaper of the Communist Party of the U.S.A.]." Stone described himself
in the following terms in the preface to this book:
I am, I suppose, an anachronism. In an age of corporation men, I have been an
independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise, subject to neither mortgager nor
broker, factor nor patron. ...I have been a wholly independent newspaperman, standing
alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to no one but my good readers. I
am even one up on Benjamin Franklin - I have never accepted advertising.
My newspaper reached a relative handful, but the 5,000 readers with whom I started grew
to more than 70,000 in nineteen years. I was in the black every one of those years and
paid off the loans which helped me begin, without having to appeal to my readers or to
wealthy friends to keep going. I paid my bills promptly, like a solid bourgeois, though in
the eyes of many in the cold-war Washington where I operated I was regarded, I am sure,
as a dangerous and subversive fellow.
...I had become a radical in the twenties while in my teens, mostly through reading Jack
London, Herbert Spencer, Kropotkin and Marx. I became a member of the Socialist Party
and was elected to the New Jersey State Committee of the Socialist Party before I was old
enough to vote, ...but soon drifted away from left-wing politics because of the
sectarianism of the left. Moreover, I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with
independent journalism, and I wanted to be free to help the unjustly treated, to defend
everyone's civil liberty and to work for social reform without concern for leftist
infighting.
...From 1932 to 1939 1 was an editorial writer on the Philadelphia Record and the New
York Post, then strongly pro-New Deal papers. In 1940 I came to Washington as
Washington Editor of The Nation and have been here ever since, working as reporter and
columnist for PM, the New York Star, the New York Post (for a short interval) and the
New York Compass. When the Compass closed in November 1952 and no congenial job
seemed likely to open up, I decided to launch a four-page weekly newsletter of my own.
I succeeded because it was what might be called a piggy-back launching. I had available
the mailing lists of PM, the Star and the Compass and of people who had bought my
books. For a remarkably small investment, in two advance mailings, I was able to get
5,000 subscribers at $5 each. I was my own biggest investor, but several friends helped
me with loans and gifts. The existence of these highly selective mailing lists made it
possible to reach what would otherwise appear to be needles in a haystack scattered tiny
minority of liberals and radicals unafraid in McCarthy's heyday to support, and go on the
mailing lists of, a new radical publication from Washington.
...I had supported Henry Wallace in 1948. 1 had fought for the civil liberties of
Communists, and was for peace and coexistence with the Soviet Union. I had fought the
loyalty purge, the FBI, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and McCarran as
well as McCarthy. I had written the first magazine article against the Smith Act, when it
was first used against the Trotskyites in 1940. There was nothing to the left of me but the
Daily Worker.
...For me, being a newspaperman has always seemed a cross between Galahad and
William Randolph Hearst, a perpetual crusade. When the workers of Csespel and the
1956 Hungarian Revolution put a free press among their demands, I was thrilled. What
Jefferson symbolized for me was being rediscovered in a socialist society as a necessity
for good government.
I believe that no society is good and can be healthy without freedom for dissent and for
creative independence. I have found among the Soviets kindred spirits in this regard and I
watch their struggle for freedom against bureaucracy with deepest sympathy. I am sorry,
when discussing our free press with them, to admit that our press is often almost as
conformist as theirs. But I am happy that in my own small way I have been able to
demonstrate that independence is possible, that a wholly free radical journalist can
survive in our society. In the darkest days of McCarthy, when I often was made to feel a
pariah, I was heartened by the thought that I was preserving and carrying forward the best
in America's traditions, that in my humble way I stood in a line that reached back to
Jefferson. (pp. xi-xvii)
An Example of "Black" Active Measures:
Alleged Soviet Agents of Influence and
Covertly Sponsored Publications in Denmark
On January 2 and 5, 1992, The Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported some
fascinating revelations about alleged Soviet agents of influence in Denmark made by
high-ranking KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky. They provide important insights into how
Soviet agents of influence were handled and how the KGB used them to achieve its
purposes.
After growing disillusioned with the Soviet system, Gordievsky began working secretly
for British intelligence in 1974 while serving as a KGB officer in Copenhagen. He
continued to rise within the KGB until 1985, when he was slated to become rezident, or
chief of KGB operations in London. At this time, he came under suspicion and was
recalled to Moscow for interrogation. With the help of the British, he managed to elude
the KGB and escaped from the USSR to freedom. Gordievsky supervised KGB political
influence operations in Denmark during his tour of duty there from 1973 to 1978, and is
uniquely qualified to speak authoritatively about active measures operations in that
country.
Gordievsky identified two people who he said were particularly successful Soviet agents
of influence in Denmark. One was Jacob Holdt, the photographer and author of the
widely disseminated book American Pictures. The other was Jorgen Dragsdahl, then and
now the foreign affairs and defense specialist for the small but influential leftist,
intellectual Danish newspaper Information, and from 1980 to 1983 a member of the
Danish government's Security and Disarmament Policy Committee. Both men have
denied acting as agents of Moscow, although Holdt has admitted receiving money from
Soviet officials. Dragsdahl has claimed that the allegations in Ekstra Bladet are "untrue,
defamatory, and a threat to my employment and welfare," and is suing the newspaper.
Jacob Holdt's book American Pictures contains hundreds of photographs showing scenes
of extreme poverty in the United States, the vast majority involving blacks. It highlights
the themes of racism and extreme poverty to the exclusion of virtually everything else.
According to Ekstra Bladet, when American Pictures was first published in 1977, Jacob
Holdt had no connection with the KGB. But the KGB officers responsible for political
influence operations in Copenhagen saw the value of a book like American Pictures and
immediately targeted Holdt for recruitment. Gordievsky describes the process:
The KGB had a very great interest in Jacob Holdt because of American Pictures. It was
decided that we should seek to recruit him as an agent and that task was given to my
colleague Nikolai Petrovich Gribin.
In 1977, Gribin began to cultivate Jacob Holdt. He sought him out and invited him to
luncheons. He treated him like a great treasure and he was quickly able to recruit the
Dane. After a few months, Jacob Holdt began to take money from us. ...The KGB paid
him significant sums.
In 1977, the Soviets were on the defensive because of President Jimmy Carter's human
rights campaign. They regarded American Pictures as an effective tool in denigrating the
U.S. human rights record, and made plans to secretly boost its circulation. The January 2
Ekstra Bladet cited a top secret KGB workplan for active measures work in 1978, which
stated:
There will be great power put behind our active measures in the following areas:
...Emphasis on the human rights abuses of the United States. The publication of [Jacob
Holdt's] book in West Germany and Sweden, and help to assure its publication in Great
Britain and help with activities in relation to [Jacob Holdt's] picture exhibit. Study
possibilities to have the exhibit shown in other Western countries.
American Pictures became one of the most popular books about the United States in the
Danish secondary school system, spreading its extremely unfavorable portrayal of the
United States widely throughout Danish society.
Another top secret document sent from KGB headquarters to Copenhagen stated,
according to Ekstra Bladet, that the active measures campaign "which involved the
publication, distribution, and publicity for the book American Pictures earns special
recognition" and had been reported to the highest Soviet authorities, including the
Politburo. Gordievsky concluded by characterizing Jacob Holdt as a "first class agent of
influence," stating, "Jacob Holdt was a true and real agent. He fulfilled the criteria and we
paid him."
In his book Instructions from the Centre, Gordievsky explained the criteria the KGB used
for determining whether an individual was considered to be a fully recruited agent:
In order to qualify as a full KGB agent, the "subject of deep study" has to fulfill two main
conditions. First, he (or she) has to agree to secret, "conspiratorial" collaboration. Second,
he (or she) must be willing to accept instructions from the KGB. Targets who fail to meet
with either of these conditions are classed only as "confidential contacts;" their chances
of subsequent promotion to full agent status are slim. (p. 40)
Gordievsky said that Holdt fulfilled the criteria for being a Soviet agent.
Holdt has denied this. He admitted meeting with Gribin for years and stated that he once
took 10,000 kroner (more than $2,000) from him, but insisted, "I do not consider myself
their agent." Holdt, who raised money for poor African countries, explained the
relationship in these terms:
It is clear that the KGB had plans for me. I knew that. But I had my own plans. I had
something to do with the KGB but I also frequented prostitutes and murderers. I was
indifferent to where I got the money that was needed in Africa.
Ekstra Bladet commented:
We have talked with people who know Jacob Holdt and they all explain that he is an
idealistic man who has done important work for the oppressed. No one has anything bad
to say about him. He has shown the world how it should treat the weak. But those were
strange friends he had when he was entrapped by the KGB.
According to KGB documents cited by Ekstra Bladet, the KGB also wished to use Holdt
to recruit other agents. One KGB document stated, under the topic of "Principal goal for
agent infiltration in the work against the Main Enemy [the United States]:"
Intensify the study of [Jacob Holdt's] contacts. The idea is that we lead him to people
who have a potential interest in working against the Main Enemy and the idea is that we
should think, later on, of getting [Jacob Holdt] to recruit them under "false flag"
pretenses.
A "false flag" recruitment is one in which a person is convinced to work on behalf of, in
this case, Soviet intelligence, but given the false impression that he is working for another
government. In this way, individuals who would have been repulsed by the idea of
working for the Soviets could have been recruited to do anti-American work. The Soviets
envisaged such a recruiting role for Holdt.
Jorgen Dragsdahl is a much different person than Jacob Holdt. He has been a prominent
and, by all accounts, extremely well informed writer on foreign affairs and defense issues
for Information, a small circulation Danish newspaper that is influential in the Danish
foreign affairs and security community. In the January 5, 1992 issue of Ekstra Bladet,
Gordievsky described how he said the KGB had recruited Dragsdahl as an agent of
influence:
The whole thing began in the middle of the 1970s, when I was the second in command
for political espionage (Line PR) at the KGB station in Denmark. Dragsdahl had written
some quite pro-Soviet articles in Information and we decided to try to get to know him.
It was my colleague KGB officer Stanislav Chebotok who had the task of testing out
Dragsdahl and he quickly made contact with him. In fact, within a very short time, he
was very close friends with Dragsdahl. We began slowly to involve him.
When Stanislav Chebotok had gotten a good hold on Dragsdahl, he began to give him
ideas about what he should write in Information when he treated important political and
military issues. We gave him facts and arguments.
What happened is that more and more Dragsdahl began to use Chebotok's suggestions in
his writing. Everyday, Chebotok sat and read Information with a magnifying glass. We
could confirm that Dragsdahl, to a rising degree, reflected the KGB's thinking.
In 1977-1978, the last year that I was in Copenhagen, Dragsdahl was very active and the
rezident Mikhail Petrovich Lyubimov was so fascinated by him that he took him over
himself, that is to say, Lyubimov became his case officer.
Gordievsky considered Dragsdahl to be an unusually effective Soviet agent of influence.
He explained why:
Dragsdahl was gifted and wrote well. He had imagination and he knew a great deal about
military-strategic and political questions. But what made him such an unusual agent was
that he was so sophisticated. There are not many others that were.
The most important thing was that he presented the KGB's ideas to his readers in a very
artful fashion. His articles were not primitive propaganda drivel. They showed from far
and away that Dragsdahl was extremely well informed and he referred to points of view
from all sorts of places. In this way, it was impossible for readers to discover where he
obtained the things that the KGB put in his head.
Evening after evening Chebotok and Lyubimov sat and talked about what they should
feed him the next time, what ideas they should give him. The problem was precisely that
Dragsdahl did not swallow all the propaganda. He had his own viewpoints and sometimes
he rejected the KGB's ideas because he thought they were too primitive. He was very
creative himself.
It was precisely that that made him so useful and so loved. If Chebotok and Lyubimov
had given him 4 or 5 arguments for the next article on a particular subject, they were
surprised when they read it. Lyubimov would say, "It's extraordinary. We gave him only 4
or 5 ideas, but he's written 10 things which are as if they had come out of our mouths.
He's better at it than we ourselves are."
The fantastic thing about Dragsdahl was not just that the KGB could use him as a very
sophisticated channel to bring forward its views (anti-Americanism, anti-NATO politics,
etc.). In addition, he himself created such viewpoints and published them. Dragsdahl
worked together actively with the KGB to undermine Western viewpoints. It was very
goal-oriented disinformation.
I know these things for certain because I got all the reports about Dragsdahl from his case
officer.
People in Service A said that this was just what they needed and the First Chief
Directorate in Moscow expressed the same viewpoint. It was the most refined form of
Soviet propaganda: to allow a respected Western political commentator to serve it.
When Dragsdahl in the meantime wrote critically about the Soviet Union, it was also
water for the KGB's mill. It was this refinement that heightened his credibility.
According to Gordievsky, Dragsdahl wrote articles that contributed to the following KGB
active measures efforts:
1) the campaign against the neutron bomb.
2) the campaign against President Jimmy Carter's human rights policy.
3) the campaign against NATO's deployment of the Pershing II rocket and cruise missiles
in Europe
4) to try to give the West the impression that the Soviet threat was not so bad.
5) the disarmament negotiations.
These were the major Soviet active measures campaigns during the late 1970s and early
1980s.
Gordievsky also stated that Dragsdahl was paid large sums of money by the KGB when
he met with his case officer in Vienna and Budapest:
I don't know what he got, but I know that the sums that the KGB normally paid an agent
when one met with him in a third country capital. The typical payment was $15,000 to
$20,000 in cash.
The January 5 Ekstra Bladet article concluded with some, interesting observations on the
relationship between Jacob Holdt and Jorgen Dragsdahl:
In recent days, Jorgen Dragsdahl has written in Information understandingly and in a
friendly fashion about his old friend, the photographer Jacob Holdt, who has been
revealed in Ekstra Bladet as a KGB agent.
Jacob Holdt told Ekstra Bladet, "Dragsdahl was the man who made me famous. It was he
who promoted the book American Pictures and it was also he who thought up the title.
No one has done more for this project than Dragsdahl."
American Pictures was published by the publishing house associated with Information,
where Dragsdahl worked.
Interestingly, Dragsdahl was also a close student of the concept of "non-offensive
defense," an idea that originated in the West but which was adopted by Moscow for its
own purposes and became one of the main slogans of "new political thinking." The U.S.
magazine The Nation reported in its April 17, 1989 issue:
Ironically, Gorbachev appropriated the ideas of European and American researchers in
devising the sweeping proposal [on a "non-offensive" military doctrine] forwarded last
month in Vienna. Jorgen Dragsdahl, a defense writer and editor with the Copenhagen
daily Information, has traced this influence and attributes it to peace researchers such as
Anders Boserup in Denmark, Robert Neild in Britain, and Horst Afheldt in West
Germany. Through seminars and consultations with Soviet policy analysts, some of their
ideas gradually filtered into the Kremlin. A few diplomats, notably Lev Meldelevich,
former ambassador to Denmark, took a keen interest in the theories and channeled them
back to Moscow.
This raises the intriguing possibility that Dragsdahl may have been influential not just in
allegedly carrying out KGB instructions in Denmark, but may also have also played a
role in helping provide some of the raw material that Soviet ideologists used to devise
some of the core concepts of "new political thinking." As explained in the chapter on
"The Conciliatory Slogans of New Political Thinking," ideas such as "non-offensive
defense" were at the heart of Soviet active measures operations from 1988 to late 1990,
and again from the spring of 1991 to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991.
It is also interesting to note that Information was one of the few noncommunist
publications in the world to participate in one of the most objectionable Soviet
disinformation campaigns of the Gorbachev era, which falsely accused the U.S.
government of killing the 918 people who died in the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana
in 1978. The June 6-7, 1987 issue of Information included a book review of the Soviet
book Death of Jonestown - Crime of the CIA, which made these absurd claims. This
particularly crude and egregious Soviet disinformation campaign was almost universally
ignored in the noncommunist world. Information found it worthy of note, however.
"Gray" or Semi-covert Active Measures
Recent revelations in the Soviet press have shed light on the role the CPSU CC
International Department played in coordinating "gray" active measures operations,
which included the activities of Soviet-allied communist parties, Soviet-controlled
international front organizations, and Soviet nongovernmental organizations that played a
role in foreign affairs, particularly friendship societies, the foreign policy-related
institutes of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and the Soviet affiliates of the international
front groups.
On February 11, 1992 Izvestia reported some of the results of the Russian prosecutor's
investigation of the financial activity of the CPSU. It stated:
Since 1981, financial assistance was being provided to 98 parties and movements on all
continents: 23 of them in Europe, 31 in North and South America, 16 in Asia, 27 in
Africa, and to Australian communists. There were "favorites" among them. The number
one among the latter were French communists: $24 million during the past 10 years; next
came the communists in the United States - million; Finland - 16.6 million; Portugal - 9.5
million; Chile - $6 million; Lebanon - $5.2 million, and India - $5.1 million. Frequently,
in the same country several political organizations were on the CPSU's payroll at the
same time. For instance, in Chile the money was divided between the communist,
workers-peasant, socialist, and radical parties.
...In order to provide carefree existence for the "ideological fighters," a special
international fund was set up. Formally, it existed on contributions from East European
parties: the CPSU, Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Hungarian Socialist Workers Party,
and Bulgarian and Czechoslovak communists. However, the participation of our socialist
camp comrades was minimal; their joint efforts barely produced $2.5 million. The CPSU,
however, did things on a grand scale: its annual contribution to the collective Peggy bank
was between $15 million and $22 million a year.
...the leaders of the parties and movements especially favored by Old Square [the
headquarters of the CPSU CC] would send touching letters to the CPSU CC.... At times,
the arguments used were quite unexpected.
...General Secretary of the Communist Party of El Salvador: "Due to expansion of our
military forces, and increased procurement of uniforms, food, and medical supplies for
our partisan groups, our expenses have increased."
...South West African People's Organization [SWAPO] leaders in Namibia: "Our party
was only able to function in the last few years thanks to the CPSU's assistance."
Probably the most frank among these requests were those from the Israeli communists,
who simply wrote that they needed money because: "To pay our party functionaries a
salary of less than $3,000 a month is simply inhumane."
...This document (on CPSU funding of foreign parties], being of an especially delicate
nature, was considered in an unusual way - in the apparat jargon, it was "sent round:" it
was secretly brought to the office of each Politburo member where he, without anyone
else present, had to write his opinion: for or against. During the past 15 years, there had
been no dissent on this subject, however.
In further documentary evidence, on February 29, 1992, the Washington Post published a
picture of a receipt for two million dollars in CPSU funds, dated March 14, 1987, signed
by Gus Hall, head of the Communist Party of the United States.
The parties funded by the CPSU, as part of the its active measures apparatus, organized
demonstrations, held meetings, printed publications, engaged in subversive actions, and
otherwise engaged in political and military activities in their countries in an effort to help
achieve the goals of Soviet foreign policy.
During the late 1980s, Alexander Yakovlev was the CPSU CC Secretary in charge of
supervising International Department operations, including the funding of foreign
communist parties. On February 17, 1992, Izvestia reported Yakovlev's remarks on this
issue:
In 18 months, he said, Yakovlev managed to achieve a reduction in appropriations for
these fine purposes from about $25 million a year to approximately $12 million and, if he
had had his way, he would have stopped these illegal payments altogether. But he did not
manage to do that; he could not overcome the blank resistance from the well-tuned
system which had been functioning for decades.
Direct Soviet funding of foreign communist parties was only one way in which the CPSU
supported these parties. CPSU documents released on June 5, 1992 revealed that in 1969
the USSR sold 600,000 tons of oil at privileged rates to an Italian company for $4 billion,
some of which was later transferred to the Italian Communist Party. Thus, the CPSU had
many ways to financially support foreign communists or other allies.
On January 7, 1992 an article in Izvestia illuminated the role played by one Soviet
"nongovernmental" organization, the Soviet Committee for Solidarity with Asian and
African Countries, in active measures operations. This "public" organization acted as a
transmission belt for Soviet policies in the "people-to-people" realm. Izvestia wrote:
The Soviet Committee for Solidarity with Asian and African Countries (SCSAAC) held a
special place in the structure of the now defunct totalitarian system's foreign policy
service. The hackneyed, semi-literate title concealed a Central Committee-KGB subunit
which had links with dozens of countries in Africa and Asia. This was portrayed as the
Soviet public's contacts with the public in that part of the "Third World." But the label
concealed something quite different.
All the organizational work was conducted by an apparatus of specialist functionaries.
They were appointed by the CPSU Central Committee and strictly toed the party line. As
for foreign partners, ... they dealt with kindred organizations, parties, and governments
(often maintained by Soviet money) and all this was done exclusively for the purpose of
coordinating steps in the joint march toward the radiant future and developing the anti-
imperialist (for which read anti-U.S.) struggle.
The committee performed not only communications functions but also provided covert
financing from a special Central Committee fund and supplied weapons to various
detachments of the "national liberation movement."
...Its track record shows many years of support for the African National Congress, the
essentially tyrannical Mengistu regime in Ethiopia, and totalitarian dictatorships in Libya,
Uganda, and Equatorial Guinea. ...The list could go on and on. ...the SCSAAC did not
once act in defense of violated civil rights and freedoms, flouted democracy, or
manifestations of totalitarianism. It had more important business - strengthening contacts
with its friends in the common cause.
Even during the years of perestroika the committee remained true to itself and continued
the line of its beloved Central Committee. ...And then, holding out until the very last
moment, the committee, instead of disbanding itself and disappearing ingloriously from
the public arena, performed an ungainly somersault and reappeared as ... the Russian
society for Solidarity and Cooperation with the Peoples of Asia and Africa.
It is legitimate to ask: Why is it necessary to legalize one of the most odious ideological
institutions of the old era? Is it really enough just to change the name and leave the
functionaries, convenient sinecure untouched?
The SCSAAC was one of the 10-15 major Soviet "public organizations" that worked to
achieve Soviet foreign policy goals in the "people-to-people" realm. Each of these Soviet
"nongovernmental" organizations also acted as the core member of a supposedly
independent but actually Soviet-controlled international front group that the Soviets had
set up as a disguised instrument through which they pursued their foreign policy aims. In
this way, the SCSAAC acted as a conduit for Soviet control in the Afro-Asian People's
Solidarity Organization, headquartered in Cairo, which had 91 affiliates in different
countries. The activities of this group and its affiliates were orchestrated by Moscow. The
Soviets controlled similar national and international groups organized around the areas of
women, youth, peace, scientists, lawyers, journalists, trade unions, students, teachers,
physicians, and religion. This system of Soviet-controlled and -influenced front groups
provided a powerful means for influencing attitudes and political systems worldwide
through "people-to-people" channels.
An examination of the archives of the International Department would shed light on how
it controlled, manipulated, and influenced hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations
worldwide. When the CPSU CC archives were opened to the public in March 1992,
however, access to ID archives less than 30 years old was banned under a newly devised
secrecy rule. The Russian leaders were apparently not ready to reveal the story of the
recent Soviet manipulation of foreign communist and leftist parties and control of a
panoply of international front groups. Many of these continue to operate in the
international arena.
"White" or Overt Active Measures
"White" active measures in the Soviet press were coordinated by the international
information subdepartment of the CPSU CC Ideology Department, prior to 1986 known
as the CPSU CC International Information Department (IID). The difference between the
IID and the International Department (ID) is that IID staffers would develop themes and
arguments for Soviet propaganda organs while ID staffers would work directly with
organizations that played a role in international affairs. In order to become a staff member
of the IID, fluency in a foreign language, significant work abroad (often for 5-10 years),
or at least 5 years experience in a central propaganda organ were the typical
requirements.
Despite its benign sounding cover name, the International Information Department was
known within the Central Committee for its close links with the KGB. For example, the
deputy head of the IID in the mid 1980s, Nikolai Chetverikov, assumed this position after
being expelled from France in April 1983 for espionage activities. Former Politburo
member and CPSU CC Secretary Alexander Yakovlev pointed out the special status of
the IID in Izvestia on February 17, 1992. He stated:
In general for a long time there was a provision banning the recruitment to work in the
Central Committee of people from the KGB. Only later, when the International
Information Department was formed, was this provision for some reason repealed for it.
One key component of the "white" active measures apparatus was the Novosti Press
Agency (APN). The activities of Novosti's department of political publications, which
specialized in active measures, were discussed in the Moscow newspaper Kuranty on
September 19, 1991. The article provides an inside look at how the 30-40 active measures
specialists working there on assignment from KGB's Service A devised arguments and
assembled information for covert media placements, which were then published in an
unattributed or falsely attributed fashion throughout the world and often subsequently
replayed in Soviet media:
The purposes of the part-time craftsmen, concentrated in the main editorial offices for
political publications and some other structures, was to conduct "black propaganda:" to
prepare articles, books, brochures, or simply argumentation in which, to the extent
possible, the "Soviet ears" would be invisible. ... it is not always convenient, for instance,
to defend the interests of Kremlin policy with the help of "opuses" by official authors.... It
is another matter if an independent newspaper or a magazine, published in faraway
foreign cities and towns, publishes an article written from an entirely neutral position,
using generalized facts found in Western publications, and on top of it is signed by a local
journalist or public figure.
...What is important is that these objectivist materials pushed the same ideas directed at
Western politicians and ordinary folks: to boycott the Soviet market means to prolong
unemployment; American grain sent to the starving people of Africa is poisoned by
pesticides; the Soviets really do not have a superiority in tanks and missiles, and so on.
The effect of the action depends, of course, not only on the quality and smartness of
arguments prepared in the Western style, but also on where the unrenowned opus is
published and under whose signature.
...the disinformation operation ... does not end with the publication of a skillfully planted
scholastic thesis. The highest aerobatics is to quote an already planted "duck" in - this
time - quite official propaganda: See, even the West European press is indignant over the
machinations of the wily Uncle Sam. So, it is a sacred task for us to stop these wily
efforts.
The Kuranty article also explains how the KGB disinformation specialists working at
Novosti were able to use their position to tap into the resources of the hundreds of world-
class scholars working at Soviet academic institutes, who supplied them with well
researched information and carefully crafted arguments that bolstered the active measures
themes decided upon by CPSU and KGB officials:
Disinformation requires daily laborious work. ...[And] to tell the truth, God deprived
many [KGB] officers ... of any talents. Except, of course, the predilection to report on
others. Which necessitates "borrowing" someone else's gray matter and commissioning
the needed articles and collections of theses to experts.
It is not advisable, however, to call, for instance, an ISKAN [USSR Academy of Sciences
Institute of the United States and Canada] researcher from such a [KGB] center, or invite
him for a meeting at a secret residence. It is quite another matter to call from a known
moonlighters' feeding bin, as the APN had been for decades, and ask him to write a five
or six-page article.
It is true that the topics sometimes shocked some "egghead Sovs." Some refused under
the pretext that the suggested interpretation of facts would not correspond to reality.
Naive people, they sincerely tried to educate their telephone interlocutors, who looked to
be complete ignoramuses in their eyes.
...Sometimes commissions fell through despite the fact that scientists, many of whom
were unique specialists, were coming under pressure locally by bosses who had received
a call from somewhere "at the top" or by the "undercover [KGB] officers" in their own
institute. ...But most of the time the specialists agreed to earn some extra milk for the kids
without questions: meet the deadline and provide the number of the savings bank account
to deposit the honorarium. It is not our business. If somebody orders material that the
Americans are just about to strike a deal with the Russians behind Western Europe's back,
it means that somebody needs it. ...Everybody has to make a living.
Thus, the totalitarian nature of the Soviet political system made it possible to construct an
elaborate system for influencing foreign public opinion and actions in a highly
sophisticated way. The resources at the disposal of the Soviet active measures apparatus
were immense, as were their means of spreading the various messages and themes that
they crafted, as the following example illustrates.
In March 1992, Father Gleb Yakunin, a former Soviet dissident who is now a member of
the Russian parliament and the vice-chairman of a committee that is investigating KGB
archives, visited the United States and distributed KGB and CPSU CC Propaganda
Department documents that illustrated how these officials worked together to orchestrate
the domestic and foreign media coverage of events in the USSR.
One document Yakunin distributed was signed by the Deputy Chief of the CPSU CC
Propaganda Department, P. Slezko, on April 21, 1986. It concerned media coverage of the
40th anniversary of the Lvov Church convocation, the vehicle which Stalin used in 1946
to dissolve the Uniate (Catholic) Church in the Ukraine, confiscating its property and
forcibly merging it into the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Central Committee document warned:
The Vatican and anti-Soviet Uniate-nationalist centers of the West are making an attempt
to resurrect Uniate religion in the Ukraine. ...[They] are disseminating slanderous
fabrications and insinuations about the lack of freedom of conscience in the USSR, the
persecution of believers, and calling them "to return to the fold of the Ukrainian Catholic
Church."
In light of these problems, the CPSU propagandists stated:
In order to counter the anti-Soviet actions of the Vatican and foreign Uniate-nationalist
centers, ... the following measures to widely mark the 40th anniversary of the Lvov
Church Convocation may be considered:
• to conduct ... celebrations ... of the 40th anniversary of the Lvov Church
Convocation with the invitation of Orthodox Church delegations from Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Romania, and also representatives of the World Council of
Churches; to invite Western journalists accredited in Moscow, and also media
representatives from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania for the celebration of
the jubilee; to satisfy the request of Austrian television about the creation of a
documentary film about the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Lvov
Church Convocation for showing through channels on West European television;
• to instruct TASS, APN, and USSR Gosteleradio (Soviet television and radio] to
enlighten foreign audiences about said jubilee;
• to instruct USSR Goskino (the State Committee on Films] to create, on orders of
the Moscow Patriarchate, a documentary about the celebration of the 40th
anniversary of the Lvov Convocation for showing abroad with the subsequent
preparation of films;
 • for the editors of Izvestia, New Times, the weekly Moscow News to prepare and
publish materials connected with the 40th anniversary of the Lvov Convocation
and its meaning.
A May 1986 KGB document distributed by Yakunin recorded their assessment of this
event:
A large group of agents of the organs of the KGB, including "Adamant," "Antonov,"
"Lukyanov," "Skala," and others, took part in organizing and conducting measures. The
celebration, in which about 300 guests and 10 representatives of foreign orthodox
churches took part, took place in a spirit receptive to us. Positive influence was rendered
on the foreigners, and interviews of a positive character were taken from several.
Materials about the celebration were broadcast abroad through the mass media for
counterpropaganda purposes.
In line with our orientation, the Lvov Oblast [region] KGB cut short attempts of foreign
journalist E. Zigli (Federal Republic of Germany) to collect tendentious information
about the situation of the church in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
In this way, the Central Committee Propaganda Department and the KGB worked
together to orchestrate the "news" in and about the USSR.
Manipulation of the Russian Orthodox Church
& the World Council of Churches:
How "Black," "Gray," and "White"
Active Measures Worked Together
One particularly cynical aspect of Soviet active measures operations was the way in
which the atheist Soviet authorities exploited the Russian Orthodox Church and other
official religious institutions in the USSR in order to bolster Soviet foreign policy by
appealing to religious sentiments in the noncommunist world. The Soviet government's
Council on Religious Affairs and the KGB were the instruments of Soviet control of these
religious groups.
CPSU active measures operations apparently took priority in the Church's activities over
more traditional church functions. For example, issue number 6 of Moscow News in 1992
reported that the foreign relations department of the Russian Orthodox Church employed
more than one hundred people, whereas the charities and educational departments were
staffed by only a dozen each. The article also referred to "well-substantiated allegations
that the present Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev [a prominent church leader] is a KGB agent
bearing the code name "Antonov."
Metropolitan Pitirim, head of the Church's publications department, was also identified as
a KGB agent by Vyacheslav Polosin, chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet's
Committee on Denominations and Freedom of Religion, in the January 21, 1992 issue of
the Russian newspaper Megapolis Ekspress.
Polosin also alleged that, in 1983, in part due to the efforts of a KGB network within the
World Council of Churches (WCC), Emilio Castro was elected as that organization's
General Secretary. A KGB document cited by Polosin described Castro as "a candidate
acceptable to us."
In 1987, the State Department's report on Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active
Measures and Propaganda, 1986-1987 made these comments about Soviet efforts to
influence the World Council of Churches through Russian Orthodox Church officials and
through the Christian Peace Conference, a Soviet-controlled international front
organization. It specifically mentioned that WCC General Secretary Castro's views had
been a factor in the WCC's "receptivity" to Soviet initiatives:
During the 1960s and 1970s, the WCC's focus shifted away from traditional ecumenical
dialogue toward policy stands on contemporary social and political issues, some of which
paralleled Soviet stands. Soviet church officials have been increasingly active in
encouraging WCC support for policy lines that the USSR also supports, and for using its
fora for presenting official Soviet views. In part, the WCC's receptivity is due to its
leadership. WCC General Secretary Emilio Castro is an advocate of liberation theology
who was exiled from Uruguay for his links to leftist organizations.
The WCC sometimes sponsors organizations or activities that have some form of
affiliation with Soviet front organizations. On occasion, the WCC works with the
Christian Peace Conference [CPC] or its affiliates to encourage foreign governments to
remove U.S. military bases.
The Christian Peace Conference works assiduously to influence WCC rhetoric and
actions. In preparation for the 1983 WCC General Assembly in Vancouver, Canada, a
conference of Christian women met in Kiev in April 1983. The women were instructed on
how to coordinate their activities in Vancouver with the CPC and the Russian Orthodox
Church delegation. The result was the defeat of a pending resolution demanding an
immediate Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Russian Orthodox and CPC
representatives argued successfully that if the General Assembly voted to condemn the
invasion, the East European women and Soviet clergy would not be permitted to attend
future WCC meetings. For similar reasons the WCC declined to take note of or act on
messages from persecuted East European Christians at the same gathering. (Democracies
Under Strain, Institute for the Public Interest, No. 3, June 1986).
WCC representatives have cooperated with the preeminent Soviet front, the World Peace
Council, in hosting a nongovernmental organization symposium on "World Peace and the
Liberation of South Africa and Namibia" at the WCC headquarters in Geneva, June
11-13, 1986.
WCC headquarter's support for radical leftist and/or violent movements in the Third
World has already caused considerable controversy with member churches, particularly
over the open funding of South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia
and the African National Congress. (p. 12)
The activities of the Russian Orthodox Church were supervised by department four
(specializing in ecclesiastical matters) of the KGB Fifth Directorate, which monitored
"ideological" issues. Father Gleb Yakunin is vice Chairman of a Russian parliamentary
commission that has investigated the activities of the KGB, and, as a clergyman, took a
special interest in documents relating to Church affairs. In the Russian newspaper
Argumenty i Fakty, issue number one in January 1992, Yakunin described verbatim
excerpts from KGB documents that described their efforts to influence the policies of the
World Council of Churches. They provide an insider's look at the decades-long Soviet
campaign to manipulate an important, prestigious, and influential world organization.
1967
At meetings of the Executive Committee and of the Central Committee of the World
Council of Churches in September in Crete, agents "Svyatoslav," "Voronov," "Antonov"
and others condemned the aggressive acts of the U.S.A. in Vietnam and of Israel in the
Middle East. The Russian Orthodox Church delegation voted against the resolutions on
Vietnam and the Middle East put forward by representatives of churches in the West, and
called for a debate on the situation of the blacks in the U.S.A.
August 1969
Our agents succeeded in promoting the agent "Kuznetsov" to a leading position in the
World Council of Churches.
In March 1992, Yakunin visited the United States and distributed other materials
describing the KGB's efforts to manipulate the World Council of Churches. The
following are verbatim excerpts from these KGB documents:
August 1969 line 204
Agents "Svyatoslav," "Adamant," "Altar," "Magister," "Roshchin," and "Zemnogorskiy"
went to England for participation in the work of the Central Committee of the World
Council of Churches. The agency [KGB] managed to thwart hostile activities, and agent
"Kuznetsov" managed to penetrate the WCC directorate.
February 1972 line 90
Agents "Svyatoslav" and "Mikhailov" went to New Zealand and Australia for sessions of
the Central Committee of the WCC.
July 1983 line 191
47 agents of the KGB organs among religious authorities, clergy, and technical personnel
from the USSR delegation were sent to Vancouver (Canada) for the 6th WCC General
Assembly.
July 1989 line 233
In accordance with a plan authorized by the leadership of the KGB of the USSR, agency-
operative and organizational measures were undertaken for ensuring state security in the
period of preparations for and conduct of measures during the meeting of the World
Council of Churches in Moscow, in which more than 500 foreign religious activists took
place. Eight declarations and 3 messages corresponding to the political line of the
socialist countries were adopted as a result of measures rendered by the executive
committee and central committee of the WCC.
The July 25-31, 1989 issue of the Soviet magazine New Times had mentioned the WCC
meeting in Moscow. It noted that "the bulk of technical arrangements ... has been placed
in the hands of Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Byelorussia [a different person than
Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Galicia] .... 11 Filaret of Minsk was chairman of the
Russian Orthodox Church's Department for Foreign Church Relations. He has also been
revealed as a prominent member of the KGB's network in the Russian Orthodox Church.
In Argumenty i Fakty issue number 8 of 1992 in February, A. Shushpanov, a former staff
member of the Foreign Church Relations Department who worked as a KGB agent, stated
that the Metropolitan was the only church member authorized to receive his reports:
The KGB required us to submit reports on when and where foreigners would drop in for
visits, whether to a store, the toilet, or whatever. A report was submitted in five copies,
one of which went to the desk of the Foreign Church Relations Department chairman
[Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Byelorussia]; the second copy went to the Council on
Religious Affairs [the governmental body that oversaw religious affairs], which was, in
essence, a branch of the KGB; and the remaining copies were transmitted directly to the
KGB.
The Metropolitan made some comments for the New Times article in which he revealed
his enthusiasm for some of the main slogans of "new political thinking:"
"The conference is going to become another evidence of the moral and intellectual
consolidation of the Christian world in the face of a wide range of threats to humanity -
from the threat of war to that of an ecological disaster. The World Council of Churches
has never kept away from politics, in some instances it even went ahead of the foreign
policy departments of various countries in carrying out certain peace initiatives," says
Metropolitan Filaret. (p. 45)
The Metropolitan also told New Times that he was planning to include a "special seminar
on perestroika in the Soviet Union" in the WCC's deliberations.
The Soviet active measures apparatus then used the proceedings of the WCC Moscow
conference as grist for media placements worldwide. For example, soon after the
meeting, an article in the August 19, 1989 issue of the Nigerian newspaper Daily Star
entitled "Perestroika Surveyed" mentioned the WCC conference and specifically its
session on perestroika:
The [Russian Orthodox] Church is taking up its role as a partner in the new dialogue
brought about by perestroika, according to Russian Orthodox Archbishop Kirill of
Smolensk.
A major reason it has been able to do so, Kirill told a forum on perestroika during the
meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches is "that many of our
theologians and church leaders have gone through the 'school of the WCC.'"
Kirill, a WCC Executive Committee member, ... said that for many years much of what
the WCC talked about "seemed strange, alien to our interests. Now, however, the agenda
of the WCC is also our agenda."
Another apparent Soviet media placement in the same issue of the Daily Star illustrated
how the Soviet active measures apparatus could use meetings such as the WCC
conference to propagate its themes without once mentioning Soviet involvement in the
conference or Soviet influence on it. The article, "Biotechnology Problems Probed,"
described how WCC Central Committee members had recently been treated to a special
"deliberative session," ostensibly designed to alert them to "emerging issues of
biotechnology," without mentioning that this complex issue was slanted in an anti-
Western direction, and included many themes favored by Soviet active measures
specialists. Thus, the session warned about allegedly dire new threats to the Third World
from volatile and dangerous biotechnology products that might be dumped there by
industrialized countries, as well as the supposed threat that industrial countries might
impoverish Third World economies by creating synthetic substitutes that would eliminate
the market for Third World agricultural commodities. The session went so far as to
resurrect the old Soviet disinformation campaign about an "ethnic weapon," which
supposedly would selectively target members of non-white races. No such weapon exists,
of course.
According to the article, one Sri Lankan delegate to the WCC meeting thanked the
session organizers for "shocking me out of my complacency."
The Daily Star article stated:
A description of recent developments in biology and genetics, interspersed with case
studies and scenarios of the impact that applications of these are having or might have on
people, offered members of the WCC Central Committee a broad and sobering
introduction to emerging issues of biotechnology in the first of four "deliberative plenary
sessions" at their meeting last month.
The deliberative session was thus meant to open up a major area of contemporary social
ethical, ecological and ideological concern and to elicit an initial round of reactions from
Central Committee members. One of those responding during the discussions, Annathale
-bayasekera [first litter of last name illegible] (Anglican, Sri Lanka), thanked the
presenters for "shocking me out of my complacency."
...citing a warning by distinguished scientists that a careless use of genetic engineering
"could lead to irreversible, devastating damage to the ecology," the presentation noted
that "the biotechnology industry is preparing to release scores of genetically engineered
viruses, bacteria, plant strains and 'transgenic animals' into the environment in the next
few years."
...Concern was expressed that without international laws regarding such release, Third
World countries will become the dumping place for these materials, just as they are often
the destination of toxic wastes whose disposal is illegal in the industrialized countries
where they are created.
"A new and frightening arms race" was how the presentation described the military
applications of genetic engineering. Not only does the application of recent discoveries
make possible the production of great quantities of biological warfare agent in a short
time, but it also permits the creation of horrifying new substances. Scientists have spoken
of the possibility of cloning 'selective toxins' that affect specific racial or ethnic groups
who are predisposed to certain diseases.
Apparently more benign uses of biotechnology - in producing high yields of agricultural
products like vanilla bean, palm oil or coconuts - may have serious economic
consequences for farmers in the Third World. According to the presentation, each of the
"many thousands of flavors, fragrances, dyes, nutrients and pharmaceuticals derived from
plants grown in the Third World ... is a potential target of biotechnology research and
production."
Replacing plant-derived products with laboratory developed substitutes could have a
devastating effect on the market for products now estimated to bring in as much as U.S.
$10,000 million a year.
Thus, the presence of KGB agents of influence and Soviet-controlled fronts such as the
Christian Peace Conference within the World Council of Churches made it possible to
arrange the presentation of "scientific" papers at WCC conferences that used
disinformation, distortions, and carefully constructed "concerns" to stimulate anti-
Western sentiments among Third World clerics. In the case above, this was done in the
name of a supposed outcry of conscience by unnamed "distinguished scientists" and
subsequently publicized in an unattributed fashion by the Soviet active measures
apparatus as if the article was simply reporting in a straightforward way the concerns of
the hierarchy of the World Council of Churches.
Thus, the "black" (KGB), "gray" (Christian Peace Conference), and "white" (Novosti
Press Agency) elements of the Soviet active measures apparatus worked together,
weaving a seamless web that first planted and then spread the messages of Soviet active
measures specialists, while obscuring their role in orchestrating this campaign from start
to finish. This type of scenario was repeated by Soviet active measures specialists
literally hundreds of times. The organizations varied tremendously, as did the themes,
which were chosen for their appeal to certain target audiences. But the purposes remained
the same: to stimulate anti-Western or pro-Soviet sentiments that would ultimately
rebound to Soviet advantage.