LDS Freedom Forum

One of deceptions the West has fallen for is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, we no longer had to worry about communists. At the very least it should be recognized that China openly defines itself as communist, as does North Korea, and Russia has been making a lot of deals with China, and helping NK and other smaller communist countries or dictatorships. Russia ideologically, does not bend towards the side of freedom, but is more authoritarian, and has that communist past.

I thought I would start quoting New Lies for Old, which is a book written in 1984 by KGB defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, in the hopes of shedding some light as to how I've come to my world-view.

I'll start off with this:

"The general difficulties and obstacles in the way of Western studies
derive from the nature of communist regimes and are broadly
recognized in the West. Principal among these difficulties are:
• Special measures taken to prevent leakage of secret information relating
to problems of policy-making and its execution, such as the payment of a 15
percent salary supplement to KGB officers for maintaining secrecy.
• The existence of immensely powerful security service resources devoted
to protecting state secrets and suppressing true freedom of expression.
• The party and state monopoly over the publishing and communications
media and the dissemination of information for both internal and external
consumption.
• Effective control and observation of foreign embassies, journalists, and
visitors to communist countries and of their contacts in those countries.

...The special difficulties derive from the deliberate efforts of communist
governments to mislead and misdirect Western studies and assessments.
These deliberate efforts are known as disinformation (in Russian,
dezinformatsiya). The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia says that the word is taken
from two French roots, de(s), implying removal or elimination, and
information, meaning knowledge.2 The GSE defines disinformation as the
dissemination through press and radio of false data with the purpose of
misleading public opinion. It goes on to say that the capitalist press and radio
broadly use disinformation to deceive the people of the world and to portray
the new war that the Anglo-American imperialist bloc are preparing as
defensive and the peaceful policy of the Soviet Union and the people's
democracies as aggressive.
This would have been a broadly accurate definition of disinformation
if the alleged roles of the "imperialist" and Soviet blocs had been
reversed. In fact, disinformation has been used to a varying extent
throughout the history of the Soviet Union.
This book is primarily concerned with the communist use of
strategic disinformation. The term means a systematic effort to
disseminate false information and to distort or withhold information
so as to misrepresent the real situation in, and policies of, the
communist world and thereby to confuse, deceive, and influence the
noncommunist world, to jeopardize its policies, and to induce Western
adversaries to contribute unwittingly to the achievement of communist
objectives. Since 1958 a program of strategic political disinformation
operations has been brought into effect. Its purpose has been to create
favorable conditions for the implementation of long-range communist
bloc policy, to impede the adoption of effective countermeasures or
policies by the noncommunist world, and to secure strategic gains for
world communism. An understanding of the disinformation program
is crucial to a correct analysis of the situation in the communist world,
but its existence has been either ignored or discounted in the West. An
attempt will be made in this book to explain, on the basis of the
author's inside information and new methodology, the role of the
disinformation program and the techniques employed in it.

Before I post any more of the book - I went to Anatoliy Golitsyn Wiki page, and found these reactions to this book and his second book, "The Perestroika Deception." Thought they provided some more evidence right up front.

Reactions
In his book Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA (Knopf, 1994), Mark Riebling stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable'.[23]

According to Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats, Golitsyn's book New Lies for Old claimed that "as early as 1959, the KGB was working up a perestroika-type plot to manipulate foreign public opinion on a global scale. The plan was in a way inspired by the teachings of the 6th-century BC. Chinese theoretician and military commander Sun Tsu, who said, "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness." Albats argued that the KGB was the major beneficiary of political changes in Russia, and perhaps indeed directed Gorbachev. According to her, "one thing is certain: perestroika opened the way for the KGB to advance toward the very heart of power" in Russia.[24] It has been said that Mikhail Gorbachev justified his new policies as a necessary step to "hug Europe to death", and to "evict the United States from Europe".[25]

According to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, "In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Gorbachev in 1988–89 called our 'common European home'." (interview by The Brussels Journal, February 23, 2006).

On June 8, 1995, the British Conservative Member of Parliament Christopher Gill quoted The Perestroika Deception during a House of Commons debate, saying: "It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth"; and: "Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by the collective of the European Union, it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy."[26]

According to Daniel Pipes, Golitsyn's publications "had some impact on rightist thinking in the United States",[27] including political writer Jeffrey Nyquist[28] and Joel Skousen,[29] as well as the John Birch Society.[30]

Golitsyn's views are echoed by Czech dissident and politician Petr Cibulka, who has alleged that the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was staged by the communist StB secret police.

Disinformation in Communist Regimes
It is not only by communist governments that disinformation is
practiced. Nevertheless, disinformation plays a more significant role
in communist regimes than in any other type. Its role is determined by
the particular ways in which communist regimes respond to crises
within their systems, by the unlimited extent of communist external
objectives, and by the communist capacity for executing a worldwide,
long-term, offensive political strategy.
The role of disinformation in communist regimes can be clarified
by comparing communist and democratic systems in the manner
in which they respond to internal crises and in the nature of their
external policies.
In democratic societies internal crises are usually open and limited
in their extent. A democratic system allows for the absorption of the
forces of popular resentment through democratic elections, judicial
processes, and flexible responses in the form of negotiation and
mediation. For this reason political or social protest movements do not
normally lead to revolts of the entire population against the regime.
Crises usually result in some readjustments in the system and may seal
the fate of individual politicians, groups, or parties, but the basic
stability of the system remains unaffected. This kind of flexible,
democratic response could be seen in the United States during the
campaign against the Vietnam War and during the Watergate crisis
and in France after the events of May 1968.
In communist regimes crises are usually hidden from the outside
world; because of the absence of democratic processes and the
suppression of internal opposition, popular political, social, and economic
discontents accumulate and threaten to develop into serious
upheavals or revolts of the entire population against the system as a
whole. This happened in Hungary in 1956. The manner of solving
such a crisis in a communist system is normally arbitrary and
authoritarian.
As far as external policies are concerned, those of noncommunist
countries are normally dictated by national interest and have limited,
short-term objectives. Except in time of war, they are usually
defensive. Democratic governments deal directly with the governments
of other countries and are constrained in their dealings with the
opposition except in the event of civil war. Democratic governments
tend to be either disinclined or unprepared to take advantage of crises
in other countries that they may or may not regard as adversaries.
Communist external policy, on the other hand, is global, ideological,
and long-range, and has the final objective of world domination. It
is inherently inclined to take the initiative unless it is forced onto the
defensive by an extraordinary combination of circumstances.
Whatever the appearances, communist foreign policy also tends to
place considerable emphasis on its dealings with the extreme left-wing
opposition to the established government as well as on its dealings
with the government itself. Communism is always
inclined, and usually prepared, to take advantage of any crisis in a
noncommunist country; it is required to do so by its long-term,
unlimited objectives.
The differences between communist and noncommunist systems in
their reactions to internal crises and in their external policies
determine the different roles of disinformation in their respective
systems. Democratic systems, being more open and therefore inherently
more stable politically, do not need disinformation to hide the
internal crises that occur from time to time and the means by which
they are resolved. Crises become common knowledge and cannot be
concealed. The Watergate crisis is a case in point. The main condition
for the successful solution of such a crisis is that it should become
public knowledge; therefore, there is no place for disinformation.
Although democratic governments do manage news to some extent to
project a better image of their performance, the use of special,
clandestine methods for internal purposes is liable to be disclosed and
exploited by the opposition in the next election campaign. In external
policy democratic governments may practice disinformation on a
limited scale in pursuit of their limited, national, and normally
defensive objectives, but such disinformation tends to be on a modest
scale and restricted to the military and counterintelligence fields.
In communist regimes the role of disinformation is entirely different.
It is conditioned in part by the inherent instability of communist
systems. The political vulnerability of communist regimes, their
concern for stability, and their undemocratic methods of resolving
internal crises oblige them to use disinformation on a wide scale in
order to conceal and dispel the threats to their existence and to present
themselves in a favorable light as stable forms of society. The internal
role of disinformation is, on the one hand, to conceal the
undemocratic, antinational, unlawful, and even criminal methods of
resolving internal crises and, on the other, to minimize or neutralize
internal antiregime activities while at the same time preventing or
neutralizing any attempt from outside to foment and exploit those
activities.
The special role of disinformation is enhanced by the aggressive
and ambitious character of communist external policy. This aims at
promoting and establishing communist regimes in noncommunist
countries throughout the world by giving support to the extreme
left-wing opposition, by gaining temporary political allies, by exploiting
and deepening whatever internal crises may occur, and even by
creating artificial crises. In order to be successful, such a policy needs
a cloak or screen to mask or distort its specific objectives, tactics, and
maneuvers while at the same time it creates favorable conditions in
the countries concerned for the achievement of its goals.
Disinformation provides this cloak or screen and also a means of
exerting influence. It is the combination of aggressiveness with
disinformation that gives communist policy its conspiratorial character.
This combination is not a matter of speculation but an existing and
constant reality in communist activity that cannot be arbitrarily
ignored by Western governments and scholars without affecting the
accuracy and realism of their assessments of the communist world.
The scope and scale of disinformation activity by communist
regimes is virtually unlimited. There are no legal or political obstacles
to disinformation operations. A police state with its centralized
authority, its total control over resources, its untrammeled ability to
execute maneuvers and sudden shifts in policy, and its immunity from
the pressures of organized public opinion offers tremendous
advantages for disinformation operations as compared with a democratic
system.
Given total control over the communications media, communist
governments need have no fear of adverse publicity; they can say one
thing in public and do the opposite in private with complete impunity.
They can also use for disinformation purposes the facilities of their
intelligence and security services, which operate on a scale and with
an immunity unparalleled in the West.
Given these advantages, it is not surprising that communist regimes
should engage in disinformation at a state level as a significant part of
their activities; they have unlimited opportunities to practice total
disinformation, that is to say, to use all possible types of, and channels
for, disinformation.
Communist disinformation operations are controlled at the highest
level of government. They serve to support the interests of long-range
policy, and their forms, patterns, and objectives are therefore
determined by the nature of the policy in any given period.
In assessing the potentialities of communist strategic disinformation,
it should be remembered that during the Second World War the Western
allies showed themselves capable of devising ingenious
and effective military and strategic deception operations. The three
main conditions for the success of these operations were the existence
of clearly defined and agreed allied war aims, the wartime system of
press and radio censorship, and the insight the allies had gained into
German intelligence, particularly through their ability to decipher
German communications. In 1958-60 the communist regimes enjoyed
comparable conditions and advantages in relation to the West.

I have read a bit from Golitsyn before. Not sure what to make of him. It is partly true, but is it all true? Russians, including Putin himself, have a very convoluted and contradictory attitude towards their Soviet past.

The Russians have a contrarian streak in them. I believe it is this that allowed them to survive Communism. They worked around things and ignored many of the diktats because it would have been impossible to follow them all. When I look at the USSR, I see a number of people who were talented artists, musicians, film makers, writers etc and skilled scientists, but this happened in spite of the system in many ways. The genius behind the Soviet space programme, Sergei Korolev had his life shortened because Stalin had shoved him in a Gulag decades before... if he had lived longer, their space programme would have reached even greater heights. It was a self-defeating system in many ways.

Personally my main concern in recent years has been China. I think China is far more dangerous than Russia, but gets a fraction of the bad press, because it is our slave labour camp and sweatshop.

What strikes me about modern Marxist infiltration of western culture is how different it is to the old Soviet model. There are some obvious similarities, but it has ditched many things, like the classical class struggle model, male dominated politburos and indeed practicalities. It is now a pseudo-intellectual beast spawned by rich people in exclusive universities, and bearing all the hallmarks of it. In a way, it is more akin to Trotskyism than Stalinism, and to Mao thought than post-Stalin USSR.

Speaking of China, I'll skip a little bit ahead. He talks about Lenin and Stalin, and then we get to this:

KHRUSHCHEV'S VICTORY in the power struggle in June 1957
marked the beginning of the end of the crisis in world communism.
It opened up a period of stability in which relations
between the members of the communist bloc were to be reestablished
on a new and sounder basis and in which a new long-range policy and
new strategies for putting it into effect were to be worked out.
Within days of his victory, Khrushchev renewed the effort to restore
party as well as state relations with the Yugoslavs, a course on which
he had embarked at the time of his visit to Tito in May 1955.
Already, by June 1957, the Soviet and Chinese leaders had reached
an agreed assessment of Stalin and his distortions of communist
doctrine. The Chinese contribution to this assessment is to be found in
two articles by Mao, which were published in the Soviet press in April
and December 1956.1 At the Eighth Chinese Communist Party (CPC)
Congress in September 1956, the Chinese leaders supported the
condemnation of the cult of the individual by the Twentieth CPSU
Congress of February 1956.2
By the end of 1957 reconciliation between the leaders of all the
communist states had been achieved. At a conference in Moscow in
November 1957, they all agreed that Stalin had been responsible for
damaging distortions of communist theory and practice. In varying
degrees they had all resented Stalin's interference in their internal
affairs and the rigid conformity he had demanded of them. But all
(including the Yugoslavs, whose presence at the
conference was deliberately concealed) were prepared to cooperate on
a Leninist basis in a partnership of equals. The Soviets, in effect,
agreed to abandon their domination of the communist movement.
They even offered to forego references to their leading role in the
declaration issued after the conference was over. It was at Chinese
insistence that such references were included. The conference took an
unpublicized decision to formulate a new, Leninist program for world
communism that was intended to imbue the movement with the sense
of purpose and direction it so badly needed.3
The next three years were a period of intense research and consultation
between the communist parties inside and outside the bloc while
the new policy and strategies were worked out.4 The process
culminated in the Eighty-one-Party Congress held in Moscow in
November 1960. The leaders of all eighty-one parties committed
themselves to the program set out in the conference's statement, or—
as it is sometimes described—Manifesto. From that day to this the
main binding force in the communist movement, inside and outside
the bloc, has not been the diktat of the Soviet Union, but loyalty to a
common program to which the leaders of many communist parties had
made their contribution. Despite subsequent appearances, an
atmosphere of confidence was created between the party leaders in
which Soviet coercion became superfluous but Soviet advice and help
were willingly accepted.
The New Policy
In 1957, as in 1921, the communist strategists, in working out their
new program, had to take into account the political, economic, and
military weakness of the communist bloc and the unfavorable balance
of power vis-a-vis the West. Fissiparous tendencies in Hungary and
elsewhere in Eastern Europe threatened the cohesion of the bloc in
1957 as nationalist movements had threatened the unity of Soviet
Russia in 1921. The communist world faced hostility from Western
conservatives and socialists alike. Western propaganda was keeping
the communist regimes under constant pressure. The West in general
was reluctant to trade with the bloc. And the bloc faced one completely
new factor—the possibility of nuclear confrontation.
Against this background, how could the communist leaders make
their system more acceptable to their peoples? How were they to
achieve cohesion and cooperation between the members of the bloc?
And how could they advance the communist cause outside the bloc
without provoking a greater degree of unity in the noncom-munist
world? It was clear that a reversion to the Stalinist policy of mass
repression at home would fail and that traditional revolutionary tactics
abroad would only intensify confrontation with the West at a time
when the balance of power was unfavorable. The precedent of Lenin's
NEP seemed to provide many of the answers, although, of course, the
new policy would need to be far more complex and sophisticated.
The need for a new policy was felt with special keenness by the
Soviet leadership. The older members, like Khrushchev, Brezhnev,
Mikoyan, and Suslov, wanted to purge themselves of the taint of
Stalinism and rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of history. The
younger ones, like Shelepin, wanted the kudos due to innovators. All
of them realized that only agreement on a long-range policy would
preclude recurrent power struggles and give stability to the leadership.
The Manifesto produced by the Eighty-one-Party Congress (November
1960) clearly betrays the influence of Lenin's ideas and
practice, as does Khrushchev's follow-up speech of January 6, 1961.5
These two basic documents have continued to determine the course of
communist policy to the present day. They explain in detail how the
triumph of communism throughout the world is to be achieved
through the consolidation of the economic, political, and military
might of the communist world and the undermining of the unity and
strength of the noncommunist world. The use by communist parties of
a variety of violent and nonviolent tactics is specifically authorized.
Peaceful coexistence is explicitly defined as "an intense form of class
struggle between socialism and capitalism." The exploitation by world
communism of economic, political, racial, and historical antagonisms
between noncommunist countries is recommended. Support for
"national liberation" movements throughout the Third World is
reemphasized.
All parties, inside and outside the bloc, including the Chinese,
signed the Manifesto—with the sole exception of Yugoslavia. For
tactical reasons, Yugoslavia was not present at the congress but, as
both Gromyko and Tito indicated publicly thereafter, Yugoslav and
Soviet foreign policy coincided on many issues.
Agreement between the communist leaders on a new Leninist
program for world revolution was only half the battle. A strategy was
needed for putting such a program into effect at a time when the
subject populations in the communist bloc were seriously alienated
from their communist regimes and when the militarily superior
Western powers were determined to resist the further spread of
communism.
Some aspects of the strategy, such as united fronts with socialists in
the advanced capitalist countries and support for national liberation
movements in the Third World, were openly proclaimed. But the
decision to use systematic, strategic disinformation as an essential
component of the strategy clearly had to be carefully concealed.
The Disadvantages of Apparent Unity
The communist strategists appreciated that the major disadvantage
of the pursuit by all the parties of the bloc of a uniform and openly
aggressive policy was that a combination of ideological zeal with
monolithic unity would alarm the noncommunist world and force it
into greater cohesion and possibly into a vigorous and coordinated
response to the communist threat. This would lead at best to a
continuation of the East-West status quo, and at worst to heavier
pressure on the communist world from a West equipped with a
superior nuclear arsenal.
A unified strategy would have been even more hampering to the
international communist movement. Experience had shown that the
activities of the Comintern were handicapped by its identification as
an instrument of Soviet policy. The same could be said of the
Cominform, its successor. Communist parties in the noncommunist
world had failed to gain influence or, in many cases, even legal
recognition because of their obvious subservience to Moscow. In
1958 more than forty parties were illegal.
From the historical experience of the Soviet Union and the bloc, the
communist strategists identified the factors that had favored united
Western action against communism. In the pre-NEP period, the West
had felt threatened by Soviet ideology and militancy. The result was
allied intervention on Russian territory. After the end of the Second
World War, the threat of monolithic, Stalinist communism drove the
West into military and political alliances, such as NATO, SEATO,
and the Bagdad pact, and into other forms of military, political,
economic, and security collaboration.
Similarly the communist strategists identified the factors that had
tended to undermine unity in the Western approach to the communist
world. These were moderation in official Soviet policy; emphasis on
the conflicting national interests of communist countries and parties at
the expense of their ideological solidarity; and the dissolution of the
Comintern in 1943, which caused many Western observers to believe
that worldwide communist subversion had been abandoned.

This intense official interest in Sun Tzu on the part of both the
Soviets and the Chinese at the very time when the new policy and
strategy were being formulated is a good indication that the Chinese
probably made a positive contribution to their formulation.
The strategy of strengthening the communist bloc while presenting
an appearance of communist disunity is neatly expressed in Sun Tzu's
aphorisms:
• All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign
incapacity; when active, inactivity.
• Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him.
• One who wishes to appear to be weak in order to make his enemy
arrogant must be extremely strong. Only then can he feign weakness.
To be credible and effective, a deception should accord as far as
possible with the hopes and expectations of those it is intended to
deceive. Since the communist strategists were aware, especially
through their knowledge of the Bilderberg papers,10 that the West half
expected and ardently desired the disintegration of the communist
bloc, they could anticipate that the projection to the outside world of a
fictitious disintegration of the bloc would be advantageous—provided
always that it was accompanied in parallel by an actual, but partially
concealed, implementation of the long-range policy of strengthening
the bloc and changing the world balance of power in its favor.

...A more remote, but equally instructive, precedent was provided by
Lenin's Far Eastern policy in the 1920s. Realizing that Soviet Russia
would be overstretched in defending all her frontiers simultaneously,
Lenin decided voluntarily to "sacrifice" a substantial area in the Far
East by setting up an independent "noncommunist" buffer state, the
Far Eastern Republic (DVR), in April 1920. It was independent and
noncommunist in form only, its policies being closely coordinated
from the outset with those of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, its
existence, together with promises of economic concessions that did
not materialize, relieved the pressure from Japanese and American
interests in the area while the Soviet army and Comintern reinforced
their capacity to deal with the threat from the White Russian emigre
movement in Mongolia led by Baron Ungern. By November 1922
Soviet influence in the area was strong enough for the "independent"
DVR to be openly incorporated into the Soviet Union as its Far
Eastern region (kray).
The combined lessons of the DVR and the Tito-Stalin split
suggested to the communist strategists of the 1950s that spurious
splits and independence in the communist world could be used to ease
Western pressure and to obtain increased Western economic and even
military aid for individual communist countries while the world
balance of power was being shifted inconspicuously in communist favor.

The error here is presuming that Communism is a unified force. It has always been the ideology of the split and the purge. Communists spend as much time fighting each other as they do their ideological enemies. I know people who've been involved in such parties and they are snake pits.

Marxism has been reinvented over the course of the 20th century, but other than the literal fighting, if you want to waste a day of your life, get a couple of Commies together from rival factions and they will argue til the cows come home. This isn't just some ruse to fool the enemy, it's a very real problem, and I've witnessed it first hand.

Niemand wrote: ↑March 2nd, 2022, 7:21 am The error here is presuming that Communism is a unified force. It has always been the ideology of the split and the purge. Communists spend as much time fighting each other as they do their ideological enemies. I know people who've been involved in such parties and they are snake pits.

Marxism has been reinvented over the course of the 20th century, but other than the literal fighting, if you want to waste a day of your life, get a couple of Commies together from rival factions and they will argue til the cows come home. This isn't just some ruse to fool the enemy, it's a very real problem, and I've witnessed it first hand.

I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with this.

The important thing to see though is that Russia and China have made many agreements, and have trained together multiple times militarily in that last little while. They are working together despite a few reports that they have some disagreements or problems with each other. Same thing goes for North Korea.

The "main enemies" of the Soviet Union were the United States, Britain,
France, West Germany, Japan, and all countries of NATO and other
Western-supported military alliances. (It was the first time that West
Germany, Japan, and the smaller countries had been so named in KGB
documents.)
The security and intelligence services of the whole bloc were to be
mobilized to influence international relations in directions required by the
new long-range policy and, in effect, to destabilize the "main enemies" and
weaken the alliances between them.

...After the conference, a number of organizational changes were made in
the KGB. The counterintelligence directorate was enlarged. Its three main
tasks were: to influence, pass disinformation to, and recruit as agents
members of the embassies of the capitalist and Third World countries in Moscow, as well as visiting journalists,
businessmen, scientists, and academics; to carry out prophylactic
political operations to neutralize and then use internal political
opposition, especially from nationalistic, intellectual, and religious
groups; and to carry out joint political operations with the security
services of the other communist countries.
Department D
When Shelepin created the new disinformation department, Department
D, in January 1959, he ensured that its work would be
coordinated with the other disinformation services of the party and
government machine: that is, the Central Committee, the Committee
of Information, the disinformation department in the Soviet Military
Intelligence Service, and the two new "activist methods" departments
in the KGB (one serving Shelepin himself and the other serving the
counterintelligence directorate).
From the beginning Department D was subordinate to the Central
Committee apparatus, which defined its requirements and objectives.
It differed from the other disinformation services in that it used its
own means and special channels available only to the KGB to
disseminate disinformation. These channels are: secret agents at home
and abroad; agents of influence abroad; penetrations of Western
embassies and governments; technical and other secret means of
provoking appropriate incidents or situations in support of policy—for
example, border incidents, protest demonstrations, and so forth.
Department D was given access to the executive branches of
government and to departments of the Central Committee to enable it
to prepare and carry out operations that required the approval or
support of the party leadership or the government machine.

...In the department were experts on NATO, the United States,
Germany, France, Japan, and other countries; on the US intelligence
services; on US, European, Asian, African, and Latin American labor;
and on rocketry, aviation, and other specialized subjects. There was a
specialist on Israel, Colonel Kelin, who as an officer in the security
service had worked for twenty years against the Jews in Moscow.
Colonel Sitnikov was the department's specialist on Germany, Austria,
and NATO. Colonel Kostenko (who in the 1960s appeared in England
under diplomatic cover) was its specialist on aviation. Indeed, the
composition of the department made it clear that it had both political
and military objectives.
A disinformation section of some twenty officers was also set up in
the KGB apparatus in East Germany under Litovkin, a specialist on
penetration of the West German intelligence service.

...the new tasks for the intelligence services of the bloc,
in addition to their traditional intelligence-gathering and security
functions, were, first, to help to create favorable conditions for the
implementation of the long-range policy by disseminating strategic
disinformation on disunity in the bloc and international communist
movement in accordance with the weakness and evolution pattern;
second, to contribute directly to the implementation of the policy and
its strategies through the use of communist bloc and Western agents of
influence; and third, to contribute to a shift in the military balance of
power in communist favor by helping to accelerate the bloc's military
and economic development through the collection of scientific and
technical intelligence from the West and through the undermining of
Western military programs.
To take the last of these tasks first, it was considered by Soviet
officials in 1959 that the communist bloc was lagging ten to fifteen
years behind the United States, for example, in the field of military
electronics. Through use of the bloc's intelligence potential, it was
hoped to close the gap within five years.1 Conversely, through the
disinformation potential of the bloc's security and intelligence services,
it was hoped, as Shelepin put it, to confuse and disorientate
Western military programs and divert them into useless, wasteful, and
extravagant fields of expenditure. With this end in view, Department
D, together with the Central Committee, took part in briefing Soviet
scientists for their assignments at various international conferences
where they have contacts with foreign scientists.
Some of the other operations of Department D were known
in outline to the author in their early stages.
There were plans for an operation to influence the French government
to leave NATO. Soviet experts were already convinced by 1959-
60 that "contradictions" between the United States and France could
be exploited to bring this about.
A long-term plan was in preparation to discredit anticommunist
American labor leaders and to influence them to change their attitude
toward contact with the communist trade unions.
There was also a plan called "Actions Against American Institutions,"
in particular the CIA and FBI, details of which are not known
to the author.
An operation, carried out soon after Department D was formed,
aimed to help isolate West Germany from NATO and the Western
community. Experts in Jewish affairs in Department D prepared
numerous letters for their agents to send to relatives in Israel and other
countries that were calculated to arouse hostility to West Germany
and to give a misleading impression of political developments in the
Soviet Union.
Of the greatest long-term significance was an order issued by
Shelepin to Agayants at the end of 1959 to collaborate with the
Central Committee's Department of Active Operations and with
Albanian and Yugoslav representatives on a disinformation operation
connected with the new long-range policy and relating to Soviet-
Yugoslav-Albanian relations.
A number of other reflections of the adoption of the new policy and
the revival of disinformation came to the author's attention in the
course of his work in Soviet intelligence.
Early in 1959 a secret party letter warned party members against
revealing state and party secrets.
Genuine, potential Western sources of information on the new
policy were suppressed. For example, the KGB arrested a valuable
American agent in the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Colonel Popov of the
GRU.
Other potential openings for the West to obtain information on the
policy were closed: for example, a special instruction was issued to
KGB staff to step up the recruitment, compromise, and discrediting of
Western scholars and experts on communist affairs visiting
communist countries.
An instruction was issued to KGB staff to give details to the
disinformation department of all their existing intelligence sources
and channels, so that, where appropriate, they could be used for
disinformation purposes.
New channels were planned and created for feeding disinformation
to the West. In this context, three items deserve mention. Department
D showed great interest in exploiting two special French sources
belonging to Soviet counterintelligence: they asked for the controlling
officer, Okulov, to be transferred to Department D. There is serious,
unresolved evidence that Colonel Penkovskiy was planted on Western
intelligence by the KGB. There has been publicity in the American
press suggesting that an important FBI source on Soviet affairs,
known as "Fedora," was under Soviet control while he was
collaborating with the FBI in the 1960s.
The section of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate, led by Colonel
Norman Borodin and responsible for the recruitment and handling of
agents among foreign correspondents in the Soviet Union, was
disbanded so as to avoid the creation of a central pool of agents all
taking a suspiciously similar line. The agents were handed over to the
appropriate geographical sections of the KGB to ensure that their
disinformation activity was closely related to the particular situation
in each country or area.
Two former residents of Hitler's security service, with their nets of
agents in the Ukraine, which were under KGB control, were prepared
for planting on the West German intelligence service.
In 1959 the head of Soviet counterintelligence, General Griba-nov,
issued an instruction to his staff to prepare operations to influence
Western ambassadors in Moscow, in accordance with the
requirements of the new policy. Western intelligence and security
services—in particular, that of the French—had occasion to investigate
Gribanov's activity against their ambassadors. Gribanov also
instructed members of his staff, posing as senior officials of various
Soviet government departments, to establish personal contact with,
and exercise political influence over, the ambassadors in Moscow of
all the developing countries.
In 1960 a secret directive was issued by the KGB in Moscow to the
intelligence service's representatives abroad and the security service at
home on the influencing of foreign visitors to the Soviet Union,
especially politicians and scholars; efforts were made to use, recruit,
and discredit anticommunist politicians, journalists, scholars, and analysts
of communist affairs during their visits to communist
countries. For instance, an attempt was made to discredit a prominent
American scholar, Professor Barghoorn, by harrassing him in Moscow
in 1963. Almost every Western security service has accumulated
evidence on this subject.
A special form of control over the Soviet press was established by
the apparatus of the Central Committee so that the press could be used
by the Central Committee and KGB for disinformation purposes. For
instance, the KGB supplied Adzhubey, the chief editor of Izvestiya,
with "controversial" material on internal conditions in the Soviet
Union.
The resources of the KGBs of the national republics were brought
into play; for example, in the year 1957-58 alone, the KGB of the
Ukraine put up for Moscow approval 180 operational proposals for
the recruitment of, or the planting of agents on, foreigners inside or
outside the Soviet Union.
Direct attempts were made to exert political influence abroad.
Instructions were issued to the KGB residents in Finland, Italy, and
France to step up and exploit their penetration of the leadership of
socialist and other political parties in order to bring about changes in
the leadership and policies of those parties in accordance with the
requirements of bloc policy.4
In Finland, in 1961, the KGB resident, Zhenikhov, was working on
a plan to remove from the political scene leading anticommunist
leaders of the Finnish social democratic party like Tanner and
Leskinen and to replace them with Soviet agents.5
A KGB agent was planted on the leadership of the Swedish social
democratic party.
Assassinations were not excluded in the case of anticommunists
who represented an obstacle to the successful implementation of bloc
policy. For example, in 1959 the KGB secretly assassinated the
Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in West Germany. This is
known thanks to the exposures of the former Soviet agent Stashinskiy,
who assassinated Bandera on Shelepin's orders.
The list could be expanded. But enough has been said to indicate
that the entire Soviet intelligence potential was used to carry out
operations in support of the first phase of the new long-range bloc
policy; the same can be said of the intelligence potential of the other
countries of the communist bloc.

Not directly related to this thread, but when my wife and I were first married, one of the accountants she worked for as a secretary gave her this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Mig-Pilot-Final- ... 0380538687

It blew us away, and people we've lent it to are also blown away. It makes you cry, even if you aren't the crying type. An elite test pilot and poster boy for the "New Communist Man" became disillusioned with Communism and decided to defect in a MiG-25. We were terrified of it at the time, because it had set altitude and speed records we couldn't come close to (we developed the F-series of fighters in response, but didn't know until his defection that the records had been set with stripped down versions whose engines were destroyed by the record flights). The moving and gripping part of his story is his long journey seeing the lies of Communism and learning intuitively that the lies about the West were lies. And then his experience in the U.S. (he was convinced at first that supermarkets were CIA "show stores," set up just for him). As he toured the country on his own to learn for himself without handlers and discover America on his own terms --- it's very moving and stirring.

I think it should be required reading. When I taught English, we read it after we had read and analyzed Animal Farm (with its historical allusions). The case he built in his head against Communism aligns closely with the specific points Orwell made about Leninist Communism, and it's a good backdrop to have students analyze evidence and compare/contrast.

Sarah wrote: ↑March 2nd, 2022, 10:38 am

Niemand wrote: ↑March 2nd, 2022, 7:21 am The error here is presuming that Communism is a unified force. It has always been the ideology of the split and the purge. Communists spend as much time fighting each other as they do their ideological enemies. I know people who've been involved in such parties and they are snake pits.

Marxism has been reinvented over the course of the 20th century, but other than the literal fighting, if you want to waste a day of your life, get a couple of Commies together from rival factions and they will argue til the cows come home. This isn't just some ruse to fool the enemy, it's a very real problem, and I've witnessed it first hand.

I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with this.

The important thing to see though is that Russia and China have made many agreements, and have trained together multiple times militarily in that last little while. They are working together despite a few reports that they have some disagreements or problems with each other. Same thing goes for North Korea.

I very rarely run into them now, but in my student days I would see a lot of these people and they would turn up on marches etc. They were a fractious bunch. Monty Python sent them up well in one of their films, always fighting one another. Big gossips, always looking for fault in each other and ideological deviation. Communists destroyed an organisation I was in. A lot of people left after the chairman became the leader of the Communist Party of Scotland, the secretary became his wife and the treasurer some other party member.

In the Spanish Civil War, Stalin seemed more intent on wiping out anarchists and rival socialists than fighting Franco etc. Orwell writes about it. Lenin, Stalin and Mao concentrated a lot of their fire on the left.

Russia and China have a complex relationship. China has long been angry that Russia has an east coast and wants a lot of its empty Siberian territory as Lebensraum. Jung Chang's biography of Mao is worth a read. Very chunky, but prerty sickening. I read it back in 2008... Mao and Stalin were always trying to get one over on each other, and when Stalin died, Mao was free although he kept demanding nuclear weapons tech.

North Korea has a funny relationship with China, but basically it is a buffer state, and would cease to exist if China stopped subsidising it, so there is only so much they can say against China.

"CHINA: A STRATEGIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES

Communist China is not a strategic partner but a concealed strategic enemy of the United States. China will join in the Soviet offensive to bring about 'restructuring' in the United States and worldwide.

Through penetration, Chinese Communist intelligence destroyed the ClA's sources in China during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and prevented the Agency developing reliable sources on the strategic intentions of the Chinese leaders. The National Security Agency cannot help because information on secret Sino-Soviet strategic coordination is not carried on accessible communications channels.

This situation leaves American policymakers poorly informed on the subject. American policymakers from the time of Nixon and Kissinger to the present day have become known for their excessive reliance on the verbal assurances of Mao, Chou En-Lai and Deng. Reliance on their word is no substitute for good intelligence.

Because of this intelligence gap, America's policymakers have not distinguished between China's tactics and her strategy. This failure is not new: it was evident as early as the Second World War when the Americans failed to realise that the Chinese Communists' cooperation with the Nationalists against the Japanese was a tactic adopted in order to achieve their strategic objective - their victory over the Nationalists. Some of the statements of the Chinese leaders to their own followers are unflattering about American policymakers and are, in fact, disturbing. In the late 1960s, Mao advised the Party not to take the Americans seriously in a strategic, but only in a tactical sense. Deng's well known statement about a cat catching a mouse, made when China was introducing capitalism and receiving American technology, can be interpreted as meaning that the Chinese Communist leader is the cat that caught the American mouse.

Because of their confusion, American policymakers believe that Communist China is an important strategic partner and a strategic rival and enemy of the Soviet Union. In this they are wrong. China is a tactical, not a strategic partner of the United States and a tactical, but not a strategic "enemy" of the Soviet Union.

The grounds for this conclusion are to be found by analysing the long-range Communist strategy which illuminates the strategic role of China.

Communist China was one of the principal architects of the Communists' long-range strategy. The Sino-Soviet 'split' was a common strategic disinformation operation to secure the successful preparation of their common strategy of 'restructuring'. The Soviet and Chinese leaders have continued their secret strategic coordination through a division of labour.

Gorbachev's 'perestroika' and Deng's 'Four Modernisations' (a Chinese euphemism for 'restructuring', or 'perestroika') are two similar elements in the final phase of the common strategy.

In the light of the new method of analysis, the purpose of Shevardnadze's hastily arranged trip to China on the eve of President Bush's visit was to give advice to Deng on his talks with the American President. Gorbachev and Deng will use their meeting to discuss coordination and new initiatives to be taken during the final phase of the strategy The new analysis sees the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as a tactical move en route to the principal strategic objective - 'restructuring' e.g., engaging the United States in support of 'perestroika'.

China's close relations with the United States and even Chinese helpfulness to the United States over the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation are tactics intended to secure China's primary strategic objective of becoming a modem superpower with the help of American technology.

According to this analysis, the Chinese leaders are using their own Party apparatus and security services to try to repeat Soviet successes in creating controlling political opposition and introducing its members to the United States in order to shape American policy in the interests of a common Communist strategy.

In fact the Chinese have been so impressed by Sakharov's success in gaining influence in the United States that they are developing their own Sakharovs - agents of influence among leading Chinese 'dissident' scientists. Thus it can be predicted that the Chinese will establish their own foothold of influence in the United States and will eventually join the Soviet offensive to procure American 'restructuring'.

For China is destined to become a primary Soviet partner in the future World Government towards which Moscow and Peking are jointly proceeding.

(Golitsyn, The Perestroika Deception, pages 35-36)
POSTED BY PERILOUS TIMES AT 7:29 AM 40 COMMENTS:
"
https://perestroika-deception.blogspot.com/
Golitsyn china soviet partner
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Golitsyn+chin ... =h_&ia=web

sushi_chef wrote: ↑March 2nd, 2022, 9:38 pm "CHINA: A STRATEGIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES

Communist China is not a strategic partner but a concealed strategic enemy of the United States. China will join in the Soviet offensive to bring about 'restructuring' in the United States and worldwide.

Through penetration, Chinese Communist intelligence destroyed the ClA's sources in China during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and prevented the Agency developing reliable sources on the strategic intentions of the Chinese leaders. The National Security Agency cannot help because information on secret Sino-Soviet strategic coordination is not carried on accessible communications channels.

This situation leaves American policymakers poorly informed on the subject. American policymakers from the time of Nixon and Kissinger to the present day have become known for their excessive reliance on the verbal assurances of Mao, Chou En-Lai and Deng. Reliance on their word is no substitute for good intelligence.

Because of this intelligence gap, America's policymakers have not distinguished between China's tactics and her strategy. This failure is not new: it was evident as early as the Second World War when the Americans failed to realise that the Chinese Communists' cooperation with the Nationalists against the Japanese was a tactic adopted in order to achieve their strategic objective - their victory over the Nationalists. Some of the statements of the Chinese leaders to their own followers are unflattering about American policymakers and are, in fact, disturbing. In the late 1960s, Mao advised the Party not to take the Americans seriously in a strategic, but only in a tactical sense. Deng's well known statement about a cat catching a mouse, made when China was introducing capitalism and receiving American technology, can be interpreted as meaning that the Chinese Communist leader is the cat that caught the American mouse.

Because of their confusion, American policymakers believe that Communist China is an important strategic partner and a strategic rival and enemy of the Soviet Union. In this they are wrong. China is a tactical, not a strategic partner of the United States and a tactical, but not a strategic "enemy" of the Soviet Union.

The grounds for this conclusion are to be found by analysing the long-range Communist strategy which illuminates the strategic role of China.

Communist China was one of the principal architects of the Communists' long-range strategy. The Sino-Soviet 'split' was a common strategic disinformation operation to secure the successful preparation of their common strategy of 'restructuring'. The Soviet and Chinese leaders have continued their secret strategic coordination through a division of labour.

Gorbachev's 'perestroika' and Deng's 'Four Modernisations' (a Chinese euphemism for 'restructuring', or 'perestroika') are two similar elements in the final phase of the common strategy.

In the light of the new method of analysis, the purpose of Shevardnadze's hastily arranged trip to China on the eve of President Bush's visit was to give advice to Deng on his talks with the American President. Gorbachev and Deng will use their meeting to discuss coordination and new initiatives to be taken during the final phase of the strategy The new analysis sees the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as a tactical move en route to the principal strategic objective - 'restructuring' e.g., engaging the United States in support of 'perestroika'.

China's close relations with the United States and even Chinese helpfulness to the United States over the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation are tactics intended to secure China's primary strategic objective of becoming a modem superpower with the help of American technology.

According to this analysis, the Chinese leaders are using their own Party apparatus and security services to try to repeat Soviet successes in creating controlling political opposition and introducing its members to the United States in order to shape American policy in the interests of a common Communist strategy.

In fact the Chinese have been so impressed by Sakharov's success in gaining influence in the United States that they are developing their own Sakharovs - agents of influence among leading Chinese 'dissident' scientists. Thus it can be predicted that the Chinese will establish their own foothold of influence in the United States and will eventually join the Soviet offensive to procure American 'restructuring'.

For China is destined to become a primary Soviet partner in the future World Government towards which Moscow and Peking are jointly proceeding.

(Golitsyn, The Perestroika Deception, pages 35-36)
POSTED BY PERILOUS TIMES AT 7:29 AM 40 COMMENTS:
"
https://perestroika-deception.blogspot.com/
Golitsyn china soviet partner
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Golitsyn+chin ... =h_&ia=web

Xi and Putin's bromance...

Sorry Being There, didn't see you already posted this video!

sushi_chef wrote: ↑March 2nd, 2022, 9:38 pm This failure is not new: it was evident as early as the Second World War when the Americans failed to realise that the Chinese Communists' cooperation with the Nationalists against the Japanese was a tactic adopted in order to achieve their strategic objective - their victory over the Nationalists.

It was also because the Nationalists were fighting themselves with local warlords squaring up against one another. Mao's forces were more effective and fanatical against the Japanese, although he too was not above purging a few people.

It was not a totally illogical strategy. As with the Soviets vs the National Socialists, many in the west hoped they would take each other out... or that the Japanese would kill off the Communists so the nationalists could step in. It turned out the other way round.

Similar issues in Yugoslavia. The Communist Tito had a much more effective fighting force than the Serbian royalists. Tito turned out to be much less bad than Mao when in power, but that is another story.

The Second World War
Soviet expansionism was helped by disinformation during the
Second World War. Without in any way questioning the necessity of
the wartime antifascist alliance between the Soviet Union and the
Western allies, it is legitimate to point out that the alliance
was successfully exploited by the Soviet Union to further its own
political objectives. There is scope for a detailed historical study of the
methods and channels used by the Soviet regime to influence and
disinform the American and British governments before the Tehran
and Yalta conferences about the real nature of the Soviet regime and
its intentions. American and British archives should yield additional
information on the influence exerted by Soviet agents in the US State
Department and British Foreign Office, such as Donald Maclean and
Guy Burgess.1 Meanwhile, a few points may be made to illustrate the
use of the themes of the decline of ideology, the rise in nationalist
influence, and the disunity and lack of cooperation between
communist parties.
During the wartime alliance ideological criticism of the United
States and Great Britain virtually disappeared from the Soviet press.
Revolutionary ideology, though never wholly abandoned, was softpedalled.
Old Russian traditions were glorified; former czarist ranks
and decorations were restored in the Red Army. A new respect was
shown for religion; Stalin held a public audience for Russian church
leaders in 1943. The common dangers confronting the Soviet Union
and the West and their common interest in survival were emphasized,
and described as providing a basis for future cooperation. Western
statesmen and diplomats were told that a postwar liberalization of the
Soviet regime and its evolution into a national, Western type of
nation-state were inevitable; they were even flattered with the idea
that these changes would take place under Western influence. Soviet
acceptance of the Atlantic Charter in 1941 and signature of the United
Nations Pact on January 1, 1942, should be seen as part of the effort to
raise Western expectations of favorable developments in the Soviet
Union. But the most striking and significant deception designed to
mask continuing, active cooperation between communist parties and
convince the Western allies that revolutionary objectives had been
abandoned was the dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943, six
months before the Tehran conference. Allied with this deception were
the themes that the Soviet Union and the Red Army were fighting
only for the liberation of Eastern Europe from fascism and had no
thought of establishing communist regimes in that area.

During the
post-Stalin crisis, the communist intelligence and security services
were weak. More people were disposed to help the West; five officials
of Soviet intelligence defected in 1954. Although the West has never
fully uncovered the extent of communist intelligence penetration of its
governments and societies, Western intelligence did nevertheless have
some reliable sources with access to policy-making bodies in the
communist countries. But as the communist world recovered from its
crisis, so its intelligence and security services regained their strength
and effectiveness. The effort to penetrate Western governments in
general and Western intelligence and security services in particular,
which had been continuous from 1917 onward, was revitalized with
success. This is not the place for a detailed study of the problem;
nevertheless, some examples to illustrate the argument must be given.
From his service in the NATO section of the Information Department
of the KGB's First Chief Directorate in 1959-60, the author
knows that at that time the Soviet and bloc intelligence services
had agents in the foreign ministries of most NATO countries, not to
mention those of many of the non-NATO countries. This meant that
the Soviet leaders and their partners were nearly as well informed
about the foreign policies of Western governments as were those
governments themselves.
Symptomatic of the depth and scale of penetration were the cases of
the former British Admiralty official, Vassall; the former Swedish
military attache in the Soviet Union and later in the USA, Colonel
Wennerstrom; the former senior official in NATO headquarters in
Paris, Colonel Paques; and the forty concealed microphones belatedly
discovered in the American Embassy in Moscow in 1964.
There is also striking public evidence of communist penetration of
Western intelligence services. The British security and intelligence
services, the oldest and most experienced in the West, were gravely
damaged by Blunt, Philby, Blake, and others who worked for Soviet
intelligence inside them for many years before being discovered.
The exposure of the Felfe ring inside the German intelligence
service in 1961 showed that this service had been penetrated by the
Soviets since its rebirth in 1951.
The author's detailed information on extensive Soviet penetration of
French intelligence over a long period of time was passed to the
appropriate French authorities, who were able to neutralize the
penetration.
American intelligence suffered from Soviet penetration of allied
services with which it was collaborating. In 1957-58 American
intelligence lost an important secret agent in the Soviet Union,
Lieutenant Colonel Popov, as a result of KGB penetration.1
Particularly because the problem of disinformation has not been
understood, it is doubtful if adequate account has been taken of the
compromise of sources resulting from known instances of communist
penetration of Western intelligence.
Factors in Communist Intelligence Successes
Three main factors contribute to the successes of the communist
intelligence services against the West. In the first place, they operate
on a vastly greater scale. The intelligence potential of totalitarian
regimes is always greater than that of democracies because they rely
on secret police for their own internal stability. The determination of
communist regimes to promote their system in other countries entails
an expanded role for their intelligence services abroad. Accordingly,
communist regimes take intelligence and security work more seriously
and commit more human and financial resources to it than do
democracies. In the Soviet Union staff can be trained in these subjects
up to the equivalent of university degree level. They are encouraged to
enlarge their networks of informers on a massive scale both inside and
outside their own particular territories.
Second, communist leaders appreciate the importance of good
security work to their survival and the constructive contribution that
good intelligence can make to the success of their international
strategy. Communist intelligence and security services are therefore
free from the difficult if not impossible constraints imposed on the
activities of their counterparts in democratic countries. They have an
officially recognized and honored place in communist institutions.
They have no problems to contend with from the press or public
opinion in their own countries. They can afford to be more aggressive,
especially in the recruitment of new agents.
The third, and possibly the most important, factor is that from 1958-
60 onward the combined intelligence and security resources of the
whole communist bloc have been committed by the communist
governments to play an influential part in the implementation of the
new long-range bloc policy by assuming an activist political role,
which has entailed providing Western intelligence services with
carefully selected "secret" information from inside the communist
world.
It is an additional indication of the loss of effectiveness of Western
intelligence that this change in the role of the communist intelligence
services has virtually escaped attention in the West, just as did the
significance of the two conferences of leading KGB officials in the
Soviet Union in 1954 and 1959. There has been no sign, up to the
present, of any increased awareness of the new dimension of the
problem posed by the involvement of the communist intelligence
services in strategic disinformation. This seems to indicate that
whatever secret Western sources there may be have not reported on it.

"Before the new policy began to be formulated, and as one of the essential
preconditions for its formulation, a new relationship between the regimes of
the communist bloc was established in 1957. Soviet domination over the East
European satellites and Stalinist attempts to interfere in Chinese and
Yugoslav communist affairs were abandoned in favor of the Leninist
concepts of equality and proletarian internationalism. Domination gave way
to genuine partnership and mutual cooperation and coordination in pursuit of
the common long-range interests and objectives of the whole of the
communist bloc and movement; account was taken of the diversity of the
specific national conditions within which each communist regime and party
was operating.
Obsolete, conventional methodology failed to spot the significance of this
change; it continued to see the Soviet party as striving, often unsuccessfully
and in competition with the Chinese, to exert
its influence over the other communist parties so as to ensure their
conformity with the Soviet pattern. Once it is realized that, by mutual
agreement between the eighty-one parties that signed the Manifesto of
November 1960, diversity within the communist movement was
sanctioned, it is easy to see that arguments and disputes between
communists over the orthodoxy of different tactics are artificial,
contrived, and calculated to serve particular strategic or tactical ends.
The new methodology starts from the premise that the eighty-one
parties all committed themselves to the new long-range policy and
agreed to contribute toward its objectives according to the nature and
scale of their resources. Furthermore, since diversity was licensed,
there could be a division of labor between parties and any one of them
could be allotted a special strategic role in accordance with its national
specifics and Lenin's suggestion, in an earlier historical context, that
"we need a great orchestra; we have to work out from experience how
to allocate the parts, to give a sentimental violin to one, a terrible
double-bass to another, the conductor's baton to a third."1 The
decisions of 1957-60 gave the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslav,
Romanian, Czechoslovak, Vietnamese, and other parties their
different instruments and parts to play in a symphonic score. The old
methodology hears only the discordant sounds. The new methodology
strives to appreciate the symphony as a whole.
The new interpretation of the evidence available from official
communist sources leads to the identification of six interlocking
communist strategies and illustrates the different strategic roles
allotted to different communist parties within the overall design.
The congress of bloc communist parties in 1957 agreed on a
common, balanced assessment of Stalin's mistakes and crimes and on
the measures needed to correct them. The basis for differences
between communists on the question of Stalinism and de-Stalinization
was removed; the issues were settled...

From 1958 onward the concept of collective leadership widened
progressively to cover far more than agreement on policy between the
individual members of the Presidium or Politburo. It began to
embrace all those who were in a position to contribute toward the
formulation of the policy and the development and application of
ways and means of achieving its ends, including not only the leaders
of all the bloc and some of the more important nonbloc parties, but
also senior officials in the Central Committee apparatuses, the
diplomatic and intelligence services, and the academies of sciences.
The settlement of the issue of Stalinism, together with the establishment
of collective leadership in this sense and the downward
diffusion of power and influence that it entailed, effectively removed
the grounds for genuine factionalism, power struggles, and succession
problems in the leadership of the bloc communist parties.
Thenceforward these phenomena were available to be used as the
subjects of disinformation operations in support of long-range policy,
and it is in this light that the new methodology regards them.
Kremlinologists and China-watchers were caught out when they
continued to try to rationalize the ups and downs of Soviet and
Chinese leaders by using the outdated methodology, which took no
account of disinformation. According to the new methodology,
promotions and demotions, purges and rehabilitations, even deaths
and obituary notices of prominent communist figures—formerly
significant pointers for the Borkenau method of analysis—should be
examined for their relevance to communist attempts to misrepresent
shifts in policy as dictated by personal rather than strategic or tactical
considerations.
Conventional methodology tries to analyze developments in the
situation and policies of the communist world either in terms of shortterm
objectives or in terms of the rival, long-range great-power
national interests of the Soviet Union and China. It seldom appreciates
the marked influence, especially since 1958-60, of dialectical thinking
on communist policies, which frequently entail their own
opposites: communist detente diplomacy, for example, implying the
calculated raising of international tension over specific issues and its
subsequent relaxation when specific communist objectives have been
achieved; the disgrace of communist leaders, implying their later
rehabilitation; the harassment or forced exile of dissidents, implying
their eventual pardon or return to their homeland.

...The first phase is the
creation of favorable conditions for the implementation of the policy;
the second is the exploitation of Western misunderstanding of the
policy to gain specific advantages. These two phases, like the phases
of an alternating current electric supply, are continuous, overlapping
and interacting. The beginning of the third, and final, offensive phase
is marked by a major shift in communist tactics in preparation for a
comprehensive assault on the West in which the communist world,
taking advantage of the West's long-term strategic errors, moves
forward toward its ultimate objective of the global triumph of
international communism.
In the first phase of the NEP, economic reform was used both to
revive the economy and to foster the illusion that Soviet Russia had
lost its revolutionary impetus. Favorable conditions were thus created
for the second phase, that of stabilizing the regime and winning
diplomatic recognition and economic concessions from the Western
powers. The third phase began with the reversal of the economic
reforms in 1929 and the launching of ideological offensives internally
through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of
agriculture and externally through Comintern subversion. The success
of both internal and external offensives was prejudiced by the
distortions of the Stalinist regime. The corresponding first two phases
of the current long-range policy have already lasted over twenty years.
The final phase may be expected to begin in the early 1980s.
The intermediate objectives of the policy may be summarized as
follows:
• The political stabilization and strengthening of the individual communist
regimes as an essential precondition for the strengthening of the bloc as a whole.
• The correction of the economic deficiencies of the bloc through
international trade and the acquisition of credits and technology from the
industrially advanced noncommunist countries.
• The creation of the substructure for an eventual world federation of
communist states.
• The isolation of the United States from its allies and the promotion of
united action with socialists in Western Europe and Japan, with a view to
securing the dissolution of NATO and the United States-Japan security pact
and an alignment between the Soviet Union and a neutral, preferably
socialist, Western Europe and Japan against the United States2
• United action with nationalist leaders in Third World countries to
eliminate Western influence from those countries as a preliminary to their
absorption into the communist bloc.
• The procurement of a decisive shift in the balance of political and
military power in favor of the communist world.
• The ideological disarmament of the West in order to create favorable
conditions for the final offensive phase of the policy and the ultimate
convergence of East and West on communist terms.
The new methodology aims to see how developments in the communist
world may relate and contribute to the achievement of these objectives in
each phase of the policy. The decisions of November 1960 authorized the use
of all forms of tactics—right and left, legal and revolutionary, conventional
and ideological—in pursuit of communist aims. Conformity with the Soviet
pattern having ceased to be a criterion of orthodoxy, the most potent cause of
actual and potential splits in the communist world had vanished. The new
methodology therefore examines the so-called splits as a new form of tactic
and tries to see how they serve the aims of policy. Once it is realized that
licensed anti-Sovietism can in fact yield dividends for overall communist
strategy, it is easy to see that the anti-Sovietism of leading dissidents inside
the Soviet Union and Eurocommunists outside it, like the anti-Sovietism of
the Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslav, and Romanian leaders, is artificially contrived
to serve the ends of long-range policy.

...The elements in it most relevant to the 1960s, and therefore most
useful to the new methodology for purposes of comparison, were:
• The stabilization of the Soviet regime by the creation of spurious,
controlled opposition movements and the effective use of those movements
to neutralize genuine internal and external opposition.
• The creation of favorable conditions for an activist Soviet foreign policy
aimed at securing diplomatic recognition by, and increased trade with, the
Western powers.
• The experience of the Treaty of Rapallo, of entering into a secret
political and military alliance with a capitalist state for acquiring military
technology.
• The successful projection of a false image of the Far Eastern Republic
(DVR) as an independent regime.
• Lenin's tactical advice to communist parties on overcoming their
isolation, establishing united fronts with socialists, and increasing their
influence in parliaments and trade unions.
The genuine Tito-Stalin split in 1948 provided the communist strategists
ten years later with a model on which to base their planning of spurious splits
in the future. The history of Soviet-Yugoslav relations from 1948 to 1955
therefore provides the new methodology with a set of criteria for judging the
authenticity of subsequent splits.
The decision to use the intelligence potential of the bloc for strategic
disinformation purposes, embodied in the Shelepin report in 1959 and related
documents, destroys the notion, implicit in much of conventional
methodology, that the communist intelligence services are engaged solely in
espionage and security work. The new methodology takes into account the
Shelepin report and the important role allocated to Soviet officials, trade
unionists, scientists, priests, academics, artists, and other intellectuals in the
implementation of policy through the exercise of political influence. The new
methodology tries to see how their activities and public statements may serve
the interests of policy.

...To take some
obvious examples, Khrushchev's charges of Chinese warmongering
and Chinese countercharges of Soviet revisionism and pacificism in
the 1960s should be examined to see if they helped to build up
Khrushchev's image in the West as a moderate with whom it was
possible to negotiate concrete deals. Yugoslavia's continued exclusion
from the communist bloc, despite Tito's secret participation in the
formulation and execution of the new long-range policy, should be
considered in relation to the buildup of Yugoslavia's credibility as a
leader of the nonaligned movement in the Third World. Soviet attacks
on conservative Western leaders in the last few years should be
viewed in conjunction with Chinese efforts to cultivate closer relations
with those same leaders. The escalation of Sino-Soviet hostilities in
1969-70 should be considered as intended to facilitate both the SALT
talks between the Soviet Union and the United States and Chinese
rapprochement with the advanced industrial nations. In short, the
study of polemics, if they are read as disinformation, may throw light
not on the existence of splits, but on the long-range policy and
strategic interests that apparent splits are intended to promote.

...Total disinformation, to be effective, necessitates the release by the
communist side of a volume of accurate information about itself,
including genuine secrets, in order to give credibility and weight to the
disinformation it is seeking to convey. In the Stalin period the release
of secret information by the communist side was impossible. With the
adoption of the long-range policy and disinformation program, the
position changed. The Leninist concept of primary and secondary
types of sacrifice was reintroduced. The primary communist secret is
the existence and nature of the
long-range bloc policy and strategy and the role of disinformation.
Military, scientific and technical, economic, and counterespionage
secrets are secondary; they form a reservoir from which information
may be drawn and given away for strategic purposes, particularly if
there is some reason to think that it may already have been
compromised by genuine leakages or technical means. For example,
the identities of secret agents who for one reason or another are
reaching the end of their usefulness to the communist side may be
given away through a source in whom the communist side is seeking
to establish Western confidence. The good faith of Western secret
sources or of defectors from the communist side is not therefore
automatically established by the fact that they produce quantities of
information on military, economic, scientific and technical, or
counterespionage subjects or that they give vent to spectacular
denunciations of communism. A more important criterion is what they
have to say on communist long-range policy and the use of
disinformation. The number of communist leaders, officials, and
intellectuals who have full knowledge of the scope and scale of the
disinformation program is very limited, but the number who
participate in one or other of its aspects is very large. Most secret
sources or defectors, if they have genuinely transferred their allegiance
to the West, should have something of value to say on current
communist techniques in this field even if they themselves do not
realize the full significance of their own knowledge.
In evaluating scientific and technical information reaching the
West, due regard should be paid to the fact that Shelepin, in his May
1959 report and articles for KGB staff in Chekist, called for the
preparation of disinformation operations designed to confuse and
disorientate Western scientific, technological, and military programs;
to bring about changes in Western priorities; and to involve the West
in costly, wasteful, and ineffective lines of research and development.
It is to be expected, therefore, that information available in the West
on Soviet space projects, weapons systems, military statistics, and
developments in science and technology will be found to contain an
element of disinformation.
Given that a program of total disinformation is in operation and
given that the communist side is well aware of Western interest in
intercepting its communications, evidence derived from communist
communications in plain language or weak codes and ciphers
is particularly suspect; in fact, it should be treated in the same way as
evidence from official communist sources. According to the Western
press, some at least of the evidence on casualties in the Sino-
Vietnamese "war" in 1979 fell into this category.

...The Soviet government's proposals to the UN General Assembly on
full and complete disarmament and the call for a world conference on
trade are even more strikingly similar to Soviet proposals in the 1920s.
The so-called moderate Soviet diplomacy of the 1960s was a
repetition of Lenin's activist foreign policy of gaining specific benefits
for the Soviet Union by exploiting the contradictions within and
between noncommunist countries.
If this historical basis for Soviet diplomacy in the 1960s is taken
into account together with Lenin's pamphlet, Left-Wing Communism,
An Infantile Disorder, it is easier to understand why the emphasis on
coexistence and businesslike cooperation between states
with different social systems in the 1960s was accompanied by an
intensification of the ideological struggle inside and outside the Soviet
Union. Khrushchev's calls for peaceful coexistence and disarmament
were combined with outspoken attacks on capitalism and predictions
of upheavals in the West, which were made during and after his visits
to the United States in 1959 and 1960.10 Even more important was the
intensification of support for revolutionary and national liberation
movements abroad, most conspicuously in Vietnam and Africa. The
year 1960 saw the foundation in the Soviet Union of a new university,
Lumumba University, intended for the training of revolutionary
leaders for the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America.
The resemblance between Soviet initiatives in the 1920s and those
in the late 1950s and early 1960s did not escape the notice of all
Western analysts. For example, David M. Abshire, in his contribution
to the book Detente, said that more striking than any adjustment
currently being made to meet changing conditions was the adjustment
of the NEP in the 1920s.11
Similarly, Lazar Pistrak, in his book The Grand Tactician, observed
that Khrushchev had "resumed Lenin's methods of an active foreign
policy and the simultaneous spreading of world-revolutionary ideas by
means of unprecedented propaganda devices."12
A third Western observer, G. A. von Stackelberg, pointed out the
inconsistency between peaceful coexistence and the foundation of a
university for training revolutionary leaders for the Third World. He
drew a direct comparison between Lumumba University and the
Communist University of the Toilers of the East, set up almost forty
years earlier under Lenin to train cadres for the Eastern Soviet
republics of Turkestan, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus. As he pointed
out, it could also be compared with the Sun Yat-sen University, which
trained cadres for the communist revolution in China.13
Despite the talk of peaceful coexistence, Soviet policy provoked or
contributed to a series of crises in the decade following 1958,
including the Berlin crisis of November 1958, when Khrushchev
proposed to terminate the city's occupied status; the U-2 crisis in
1960, which Khrushchev used to wreck the summit conference; the
Soviet decision to resume nuclear testing in 1961; the Cuban crisis of
1962; and the Middle East crisis of 1967.
Again the explanation is to be found in the experience of the NEP
and the Leninist view of foreign policy as a form of ideological
struggle in which both peaceful and nonpeaceful methods should be
used. Peaceful coexistence was defined under Khrushchev, as it was
under Lenin, as a form of class struggle between antagonistic social
systems based on the active exploitation of the contradictions within
and between noncommunist countries.14
The revival of an active Leninist foreign policy was confirmed, for
example, in the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on July
18, 1963, in an article that stated: "The Leninist foreign policy carried
out by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government
is a high-principled, flexible, active policy always on the offensive. It
has fully justified itself and is bearing excellent fruit. . . Communists
do not keep it a secret that coexistence is necessary for world-wide
victory of Marxist-Leninist ideas, that there are deep-rooted
differences between the two world systems of socialism and
capitalism. To solve those differences, Marxists-Leninists hold, war is
not an obligatory means in economic, political and ideological
struggle."
Soviet foreign policy in the 1960s was not moderate; it was more
offensive than in the years preceding and following Stalin's death,
when the crisis of the regime forced it onto the defensive. The notion
that it was more moderate, more conventional, more nationalist, and
less ideological is the product of deliberate disinformation and the
systematic use of terms, such as peaceful coexistence, that are
themselves intentionally misleading.
The Soviet intelligence and security services played their part in
misrepresenting the nature of Soviet foreign policy, in particular by
projecting and underlining the common interests between communist
and noncommunist countries. The participation of prominent Soviet
agents of influence in the scientific field, like Academician
Topchiyev, and the role they played in Pugwash and other
conferences, recall the use of the Eurasian movement by Dzerzhinskiy
in the 1920s.
Chinese and Albanian accusations that the Soviet regime had
departed from Leninist principles of revolutionary policy contributed
to Western acceptance of the notion that this was so. Since, as this
analysis has shown, the charge was without foundation and since the
Chinese and Albanians were parties to the adoption of
the long-range policy, their accusations should be seen as another
element in a joint disinformation effort.

...Strategic Objectives of the "Split"
The strategic exploitation of the split will be described in Chapter
22. Its overall objective can be defined briefly as the exploitation of
the scissors strategy to hasten the achievement of long-range
communist goals. Duality in Sino-Soviet polemics is used to mask the
nature of the goals and the degree of coordination in the communist
effort to achieve them. The feigned disunity of the communist world
promotes real disunity in the noncommunist world. Each blade of the
communist pair of scissors makes the other more effective. The
militancy of one nation helps the activist detente diplomacy of the
other. Mutual charges of hegemonism help to create the right climate
for one or the other to negotiate agreements with the West. False
alignments, formed with third parties by each side against the other,
make it easier to achieve specific communist goals, such as the
acquisition of advanced technology or the negotiation of arms control
agreements or communist penetration of the Arab and African states.
In Western eyes the military, political, economic, and ideological
threat from world communism appears diminished. In consequence
Western determination to resist the advance of communism is
undermined. At a later stage the communist strategists are left with the
option of terminating the split and adopting the strategy of "one
clenched fist."


...Objectives of Disinformation on Power Struggles
The disinformation effort to keep alive Western belief in the
existence and inevitability of recurrent power struggles in the leadership
of communist parties serves several purposes. There is an obvious
close connection between power struggles and factionalism;
neither exists without the other. Disinformation on power struggles
therefore supports and complements disinformation operations based
on spurious factionalism, such as those on de-Stalinization, the
Soviet-Albanian and Sino-Soviet splits, and democratization in
Czechoslovakia in 1968. It further serves to obscure the unity,
coordination, and continuity within the bloc in pursuit of an agreed
long-range policy. By creating false associations in Western minds
between different communist leaders and different aspects or phases
of communist policy—Khrushchev with "revisionism," Mao with
"dogmatism," Teng Hsiao-p'ing with "pragmatism," Dubcek with
"democratization," and Brezhnev with "neo-Stalinism"—the West can
be induced to make false deductions about the mainsprings
of communist policy, inaccurate predictions about its future course,
and mistakes in its own responses. The West is more likely to make
concessions, for example, over SALT negotiations, or the supply of
high technology goods to the Soviet Union or China, if it believes that
by so doing it will strengthen the hand of a "liberal" or "pragmatic"
tendency or faction within the party leadership. Conversely, the West
can be persuaded to attribute aggressive aspects of communist policy
to the influence of hard-liners in the leadership. The disappearance
from the scene of leaders thus identified can be used to promote the
myth of liberalization, as was done in the case of Novotny in
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Part Three will argue that similar
developments may be expected in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in
Eastern Europe in the final phase of long-range policy and that the
succession to Brezhnev may well be exploited for the same purpose.
One further possible purpose of spurious power struggles may be
suggested, that the "purging" or "disgrace" of leading communists
such as Teng Hsiao-p'ing in China or Barak in Czechoslovakia, who
disappeared for varying periods of time allegedly as the victims of a
power struggle, may be intended to cover up their secondment to serve
during their disappearance in a secret policy coordinating center
somewhere in the bloc.

...Objectives of Disinformation on "Dissidence"
The creation of a false, controlled opposition movement like the
dissident movement serves internal and external strategic purposes.
Internally it provides a vehicle for the eventual false liberalization of a
communist regime; it provokes some would-be opposition elements to
expose themselves to counteraction, and others are driven to
conformity or despair. Externally, "dissidents" can act as vehicles for
a variety of disinformation themes on the subject of the evolution of
the communist system. A well-advertised wave
of persecution of dissidents, partly genuine and partly spurious,
generates Western sympathy for, and vulnerable alignments with,
those who are secret creatures of the regime. It sets the scene for an
eventual dramatic "liberalization" of the system by heightening the
contrast between neo-Stalinism and future "socialism with a human
face." It creates a cadre of figures who are well known in the West and
who can be used in the future as the leaders and supporters of a
"multiparty system" under communism. "Dissident" trade unions and
intellectuals can be used to promote solidarity with their Western
counterparts and engage them in joint campaigns for disarmament and
the reform of Western "military-industrial complexes." In the long run
the Western individuals and groups involved will face the choice of
admitting that their support for dissidents was mistaken or accepting
that communism has undergone a radical change, making
"convergence" an acceptable, and perhaps desirable, prospect.

...Objectives of Eurocommunism
The extension of already proven disinformation techniques into Western
Europe to suggest the evolution of the Eurocommunist parties into
liberalized, independent, responsible national parties was intended to:
• Conceal the coordination between the Eurocommunist parties and the
bloc in the pursuit of a common strategy for Europe.
• Suggest further disintegration in the international communist movement,
and therefore a diminution in its threat to the noncommunist world.
• Improve the capacity of the Eurocommunist parties to achieve influence
and power legally through united front tactics.
• Prepare the ground, in coordination with bloc policy in general, for an
eventual "liberalization" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and a major
drive to promote the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the
withdrawal of the American military presence from a neutral, socialist
Europe.

As you read this next section, take note that Kissinger has been described as a political "realist."

The main lines of Sakharov's reasoning on convergence are set out
in Convergence of Communism and Capitalism—The Soviet View
and in Sakharov Speaks.2 In them Sakharov is concerned about the
annihilation of humanity, and therefore offers a "better alternative."
Then he divides present and future world developments into several
overlapping stages. In the first stage, "a growing ideological struggle
in the socialist countries between Stalinist and Maoist forces, on the
one hand, and the realistic forces of leftist Leninist Communist (and
leftist Westerners), on the other, will lead to a deep ideological split
on an international, national and intraparty scale." According to
Sakharov, "In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, this
process will lead first to a multiparty system (here and there) and to
acute ideological struggle and discussions, and then to the ideological
victory of the realists, affirming the policy of increasing peaceful coexistence,
strengthening democracy, and expanding economic reforms (1960-1980)."3 The
dates "reflect the most optimistic unrolling of events."
Sakharov continues, "In the second stage, persistent demands for
social progress and peaceful co-existence in the United States and
other capitalist countries, and pressure exerted by the example of the
socialist countries and by internal progressive forces (the working
class and the intelligentsia), will lead to the victory of the leftist
reformist wing of the bourgeoisie, which will begin to implement a
programme of rapprochement (convergence) with socialism, i.e.,
social progress, peaceful co-existence, and collaboration with
socialism on a world scale and changes in the structure of ownership.
This phase includes an expanded role for the intelligentsia and an
attack on the forces of racism and militarism (1972-85).
"In the third stage, the Soviet Union and the United States, having
overcome their alienation, solve the problem of saving the poorer half
of the world. ... At the same time disarmament will proceed (1972-90).
"In the fourth stage, the socialist convergence will reduce differences
in social structure, promote intellectual freedom, science, and
economic progress, and lead to the creation of a world government
and the smoothing of national contradictions (1980-2000)."4
There can be no criticism of Sakharov for his concern over the
possibility of nuclear conflict. What is disturbing is that his reasoning
on convergence goes further than the Western theories. He envisages
convergence on communist terms at the expense of the West. From his
reasoning it is obvious that he accepts the Sino-Soviet split as genuine
in itself and as a genuine catalyst for the realignment of world forces.
To understand the true meaning of Sakharov's statements, his role
must be examined in the light of Shelepin's report and the long-range
policy adopted in 1958-60, the period in which Sakharov began to
emerge as a public figure in the Soviet Union. As a leading
spokesman of the so-called-dissident movement, he has all the appearances
of a political provocateur. If he were a genuine dissenter, he
would not have had the opportunities he has had to make contact with
Western friends and colleagues. Furthermore, as an academician
working in the nuclear field, he would have enjoyed access at the
policy making level to debates on nuclear strategy at the
time when the new long-range policy and the use of disinformation
were being launched. He would have known the true state of Sino-
Soviet relations in the nuclear, as in other, fields. Given the all embracing
character of the disinformation program, any pronouncement
by a Soviet scientist on strategic issues must be regarded as
having been made on the regime's instructions.
Moreover, Sakharov would have known that liberalization in the
Soviet Union would eventually come not in the way he suggests, as a
spontaneous development, but in accordance with a blueprint worked
out carefully in advance by the regime. If he had been a genuine
dissenter, he would have exposed the truth. That he has not done so
points to the conclusion that he is acting secretly as a spokesman for
the regime chosen for the task because of the natural strength of his
appeal to Western scientists and liberals.
Sakharov predicts changes in the Soviet Union and other socialist
countries. These changes will be revealed in the appearance of a
"multiparty system here and there" and in ideological discussions
between "Stalinists" and "realists," or "Leninists." In this struggle
Sakharov predicts victory for the realists (the Leninists) who, according
to him, will affirm the "policy of increasing peaceful coexistence,
strengthening democracy, and expanding economic reforms." These
future changes in the Soviet system are seen by Sakharov as a
continuation of present political developments and economic reforms.
Reading Sakharov's predictions as the product of Soviet disinformation,
the conclusion can be drawn that some of his pronouncements
reflect the possible future course of communist actions and their
timing. Further political and economic reforms are therefore to be
expected in the bloc, and they will again be used for disinformation
purposes. These reforms will display an alleged "increase in
democracy" and other superficial resemblances to Western systems
and will be accompanied by further demonstrations of alleged Sino-
Soviet conflict. From 1980 onward an "expansion of democracy" and
the appearance of a so-called multiparty system can be expected in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere in the bloc. This would be the logical
continuation and culmination of the disinformation of the two
previous decades and would represent the implementation inside the
bloc of the final phase of the long-range policy. In this phase some of
the current "dissidents" and "liberals," like
Sakharov himself in the Soviet Union and Dubcek in Czechoslovakia—
leaders who are allegedly persecuted by their regimes—can be
expected to become the leaders of new "democratic parties" in their
countries. Naturally they will remain under the secret guidance and
control of their communist parties, and their emergence as the leaders
of new parties will be regarded in the West as sensational new
evidence of a true liberalization of communist regimes and as a new
basis for the practical realization of convergence between the two
systems, as predicted by Sakharov.
Reading Sakharov's writings as disinformation and decoding his
messages in that light, it can be predicted that the communist bloc will
go further in its exploitation of the fictitious Sino-Soviet split,
carrying it forward to a formal (but fictitious) break in diplomatic
relations and more impressive hostilities than have so far occurred on
the Sino-Soviet borders. This may well generate realignments of
international forces that will be detrimental to Western interests and
favorable to the long-range policy of the bloc.
Sakharov predicts changes in the West, particularly in the United
States, "under pressure of the socialist states and the internal, progressive
forces" in the US and other Western countries. "The leftist
reformist wing of the bourgeoisie" will win and will "begin to
implement a program of rapprochement (convergence)" with
socialism. Social progress and changes in the structure of ownership
will be introduced. A "leftist reformist" element will also start
collaboration with socialism on a world scale. Forced changes in the
political and military structure will occur. During the second phase
(1972-85), the role of the intelligentsia will be expanded and "an
attack on the forces of racism and militarism" will be made.
Again, reading Sakharov's predictions as disinformation, it can be
deduced that the bloc and its political and ideological allies plan
actions in the future to secure actual changes in the West of a kind that
Sakharov describes. The purpose of these actions will be to achieve
political systems in the West approaching closer to the communist
model. The changes planned for the communist system will be
deceptive and fictitious; those planned for the West will be real and
actual. That is the meaning of convergence in communist language.
It is noticeable and disturbing that Sakharov, a so-called dissident
Soviet intellectual, in his references to US "racism and militarism" not
only uses the normal language of communist propagandists in
referring to the present American system, but identifies himself with
the substance of long-range communist projections for the
exploitation of these issues and appears to be working for their
fulfillment.

THE DISINFORMATION PROGRAM has played a significant role in
the successful realization of the communist strategies. A study
of the available communist and Western evidence reveals the
existence of at least six interlocking strategies for the furtherance of
communism along the lines dictated by this long-range policy. The
first strategy relates to the activities of communist parties in the
advanced industrial countries. Its essence is the use of various tactics,
such as Eurocommunism, the deliberate display of an image of a
responsible, independent party to establish unity of action with social
democrats and Catholics in Europe and to create a neutral socialist
Europe tilted toward the communist side. The strategy envisages three
periods. In the first period the communists seek temporary allies
among the social democrats, the trade unionists, and the Catholics,
including the moderates and the conservatives who could be brought
into play against any alliance with the United States. In the second
period the conservatives are eliminated and the social democrats
become the principal allies in a neutral socialist Europe. In the final
period the communists take the necessary steps for the complete
takeover.
The second strategy deals with the communist effort to establish
unity of action with the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. Its essence is the use of various tactics, including the
support of the national liberation movements by the USSR and other
communist countries and capitalizing on the late Tito's influence in
the nonaligned movement, which has served to lessen Western
influence in these areas.
The third strategy is concerned with the effort to reverse the
military balance of power, which in 1960 was tilted heavily in favor
of the West. The essence of this strategy is revealed by a number of
communist actions, including diplomatic negotiations, like SALT; a
Chinese effort to make a false military alliance with the United States;
efforts to increase Soviet military potential, involving the United
States in an unpopular war like that in Vietnam; antimilitary
campaigns in Western Europe; and terrorist acts against US military
officials.
The fourth strategy deals with the undermining of the ideological
resistance of the noncommunist world to the advance of communism.
Its essence is not in the use of propaganda and the preaching of
ideology, but by concrete actions and deeds, including calculated anti-
Sovietism.
Underlying all of these strategies is the fifth strategy, that of the
disinformation program. The most important element of this program
is the calculated Sino-Soviet split, which has enabled the two
communist powers to pursue successfully the scissors strategy, that is,
having complementary dual foreign policies, the close coordination of
which is concealed from the West and which has thus far escaped
detection by the West. It is this scissors strategy that has contributed
significantly to all the other strategies.
Although the communists have achieved unity of action with some
Arab and African states and have generated antimilitary campaigns in
Western Europe, they have failed to reach the majority of social
democrats, the free trade unions, and the Catholics there. They were
also unsuccessful in the United States largely because of the strong
anticommunist position of the American labor movement under the
late George Meany. The formation of united fronts in Latin America
as a whole has been inhibited by the strength of military influence in
the continent.
The Major Strategy
The sixth strategy, however, is the most significant. This strategy,
which has been in preparation by the bloc for the past twenty years,
deals with the solutions of the remaining problems with the unity of
action and has a crucial role in the final phase of the long-range
policy. This last strategy relates to the consistent effort
to bring about a political and economic consolidation of individual
communist regimes, the construction of so-called mature communist
societies, and the preparation of a semblance of democratization in order to
provide, in Togliatti's words, support for the communists outside the bloc in
realization of the major strategies. In essence this strategy involves the
interaction of the following factors:
1. The development of an effective political, economic, diplomatic, and
military substructure under which the communists can continue to coordinate
their policies and actions on a bilateral basis through a system of friendship
treaties. This substructure would not be affected by the formal dissolution of
the Warsaw Pact. A significant role in this coordination will rest with the
party apparatuses, especially with the departments responsible for relations
with the bloc countries.
2. The making of creative ideological readjustments and the revitaliza-tion
of the communist parties and the mass organizations, including the trade
unions and the youth and intellectual organizations. Further, the broadening
of the political base of the parties and the development of the mass
organizations into effective substructures of the parties. Such changes will
make possible the introduction of controlled political opposition, which will
provide the basically totalitarian regimes with a convincing impression of a
fundamental change and a semblance of democracy. For example, within a
twenty-year period the communist parties of the USSR and China almost
doubled their memberships to seventeen million and thirty-six million
respectively. In China this was accomplished during and after the Cultural
Revolution. A major role in this revitalization was played by the ideological
commissions and the cultural departments of the parties.
3. The preparation of a false opposition, during the introduction of
controlled democratization in the communist regimes, for the purpose of
creating a favorable condition for unity of action with the social democrats,
the free trade unions, and with the Catholics against NATO and the US
military-industrial complex. This preparation was revealed by the
reorganization and reorientation of the KGB and the security services of the
bloc countries, as ordered by Shelepin. The rationale was to coordinate their
joint efforts and to introduce a false, controlled opposition along the lines of
the Soviet experience with the false anticommunist organization Trust during
the NEP under Lenin. Shelepin specifically ordered that agents of influence
be used among prominent writers, scientists, trade unionists, nationalists, and
religious leaders. He emphasized
the need to use agents of influence among the heads of the various religions,
including the head of the Russian Orthodox church and the Moslem leaders
in Soviet Central Asia, for political objectives. A significant and active role
in such preparations is played by the administrative departments of the
communist parties, which supervise the activities of the security services.
4. The development of an effective strategic coordination between the
ministries of foreign affairs, ambassadors, communist parties, and mass
organizations of the communist countries within the bloc and also of the
communist parties outside the bloc. A significant role in such coordination
belongs to the party departments of international relations and to communist
diplomats. This explains why some communist ministers, such as those from
Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, were in the past the heads of such
departments. A significant role in such coordination, specifically for the
realization of the strategy in Western Europe, rests with the Soviet
Committee for European Security, headed by party official V. Shitikov. This
committee was created in June 1971 for better coordination between the
Soviet mass organizations in the struggle for the realization of a collective
European security. The development and realization of the strategy is
revealed by the numerous conferences of communist parties, especially in
Moscow and Prague in 1965, and the high-level meetings of communist
leaders with Brezhnev in the Crimea during the 1970s.
The study of available evidence leads to the conclusion that the
Czechoslovakian democratization in 1968 was a rehearsal of this strategy to
see how this scenario can work in practice and to test the Western reaction to
it.

The Shaping of Western Assessments of the Communist World
The launching of a strategic disinformation program in 1958
invalidated the conventional methodology of Western students of
communist affairs. A carefully controlled flood of information was
released through the whole range of sources under communist control.
As in the NEP period in the 1920s, this flood of information confused
and distorted Western views on the situation in the communist world.
Western analysts, lacking the ability to acquire inside information on
communist strategic thinking, planning, and methods of operation,
gratefully accepted the new stream of information at face value.
Without their knowing it, their conventional methods of analysis were
invalidated and turned back on them by the communist strategists.
Because of the deliberate projection by these strategists of a false
image of the dissolution of communist unity, the noncommunist world
ignored or undervalued open and significant evidence pointing to bloc
cooperation from 1957 onward on a new footing of equality and
commitment to fundamental ideological principles and long-term
policy objectives. The new dispensation allows for variation in
domestic and international tactics and provides unlimited opportunities
for joint efforts between bloc countries to misrepresent the true state of
relations between them whenever this should be to their mutual
advantage. Unnoticed by the West, communist ideology was freed
from its Stalinist straitjacket and revived on Leninist lines. The change
was successfully misrepresented as the spontaneous replacement of ideology by nationalism as
the driving force behind the communist world.
Noncommunist studies came increasingly to be based on information
emanating from communist sources. While observers in the
noncommunist world sometimes showed some awareness that information
was reaching them through channels under communist control,
there was virtually no recognition of the fact that the information had
been specially prepared behind the Iron Curtain for their benefit. The
political role of the intelligence services was ignored, and since the
evidence of planning and coordination in the activities of the bloc was
also overlooked, the growth of internal opposition movements and the
eruption of disputes between communist states and parties were
wrongly seen as spontaneous developments.
Up to 1960, and despite the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 and the Polish
and Hungarian uprisings of 1956, the noncommunist world was
willing to accept as fact the growth of a cohesive communist bloc and
international movement. Some Western analysts, like Professor
Possony, regarded the decisions of the Eighty-one-party congress in
November 1960 as indicating the adoption of a long-range policy. But
the acceptance at face value by Western statesmen, diplomats,
intelligence services, academics, journalists, and the general public of
the subsequent evidence of disputes and disunity in the communist
world precipitated a new attitude that would have been unthinkable
before and that caused the views of Possony and others to be regarded
as anachronistic if not antediluvian. The Eighty-one-party Manifesto
came to be regarded as a temporary, patched-up compromise between
the parties signifying their failure to adopt a common policy, and so
was brushed aside. The evidence of evolution and splits in the
communist world was so overwhelming in volume and so convincing
in character that none could continue to question its validity.
Acceptance in particular of the Sino-Soviet split as a reality became
the common basis for all noncommunist attempts to analyze present
and future policies and trends in the communist world. As a result
Western perception of offensive communist intentions was blunted
and the evidence of coordination in the execution of worldwide
communist strategies was discounted.
Because strategic disinformation was not recognized as such,
Western views on internal developments in the communist world
came increasingly to be shaped and determined by the communist
strategists in the interests of their own long-range policy. In the
Soviet Union the dropping of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and
the introduction of market-orientated enterprises and other measures
of economic reform seemed to presage a reversion toward capitalism.
The gradual rise in living standards seemed to be taking the edge off
the Soviet appetite for revolutionary change, generating new pressures
on the regime to allow greater freedom and improve the supply of
consumer goods. Apparent differences in the Soviet leadership
between the liberal reformers and conservative ideologists on how to
grapple with these pressures and reconcile the need for progress with
lip service to ideology confirmed Western belief in the recurrence of
power struggles, mainly behind the scenes but sometimes in the open,
as in the case of Khrushchev's dismissal. When the liberals appeared
to have the upper hand, expectations were aroused of increasing
cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West. Moderation in
Soviet propaganda and expressions of interest in peaceful coexistence
and businesslike negotiations seemed genuine, especially when
compared with the implacable hostility of the Chinese. Occasional
aggressive Soviet actions were attributable to the survival within the
leadership of a group of die-hard Stalinists who had to be appeased
from time to time by the liberal reformers. If the Stalinists were once
more to regain control, detente would be reversed and there might be a
Sino-Soviet reconciliation. The West therefore had an interest in
strengthening the hand of liberal reformers. Provided they survived,
there were prospects of an improvement in relations owing to the
existence of common interests between the Soviets and the West in
avoiding nuclear conflict and confronting Chinese militancy. In the
long run the technological revolution offered prospects of a gradual
narrowing of the gulf between the communist and non-communist
systems.