Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is
political warfare conducted by the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
or
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
n government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as
espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tang ...
,
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
,
sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
, and
assassination
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
. The programs were based on foreign policy priorities of the Soviet Union.
[ ( Mitrokhin Archive)]
https://books.google.com/books?id=-fJXtQEACAAJ&dq=The%20Mitrokhin%20Archive --> google books
Active measures have continued in the post-Soviet era in Russia.
Description
Active measures were conducted by the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
and
Russian security services (
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
,
OGPU
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
,
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
,
KGB, and
FSB) to influence the course of world events, in addition to
collecting intelligence and producing revised assessments of it. Active measures range "from
media manipulation
Media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favors their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies, manipulation, outright deception (disinformation ...
s to ''special actions'' involving various degrees of violence". Beginning in the 1920s, they were used both abroad and domestically.
Active measures includes the establishment and support of international
front organizations
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy ...
(e.g., the
World Peace Council
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the self-described goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mas ...
); foreign
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
,
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
and
opposition
Opposition may refer to:
Arts and media
* ''Opposition'' (Altars EP), 2011 EP by Christian metalcore band Altars
* The Opposition (band), a London post-punk band
* '' The Opposition with Jordan Klepper'', a late-night television series on Com ...
parties;
wars of national liberation in the
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
. It also included supporting underground, revolutionary,
insurgency
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...
,
criminal
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...
, and
terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
groups. Further the programs
counterfeited official documents,
assassination
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
s, and
political repression
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby ...
, such as penetration into churches, and persecution of political dissidents. The intelligence agencies of
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
states also contributed to the program, providing operatives and intelligence for assassinations and other types of
covert operation
A covert operation is a military operation intended to conceal the identity of (or allow plausible deniability by) the party that instigated the operation. Covert operations should not be confused with clandestine operations, which are perform ...
s.
Retired KGB Major General
Oleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of the
Soviet intelligence":
Not intelligence collection, but subversion
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms ...
: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...
, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.
According to the
Mitrokhin Archives, active measures was taught in the
Andropov Institute of the
KGB situated at
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in
Yasenevo District of Moscow. The head of the "active measures department" was
Yuri Modin, former controller of the
Cambridge Five spy ring.
History
As early as 1923,
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
ordered the creation of a Special Disinformation Office. Defector
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa (; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Car ...
claimed that Stalin himself coined the term ''disinformation'' in 1923 by giving it a French sounding name in order to deceive other nations into believing it was a practice invented in France. The noun ''disinformation'' does not originate from Russia, it is a translation of the French word .
Implementation
Guerrillas
Promotion of guerrilla organizations worldwide
Soviet secret services have been described as "the primary instructors of guerrillas worldwide".
According to
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa (; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Car ...
, KGB General
Aleksandr Sakharovsky
Aleksandr Michael Sakharovsky (; 3 September 1909 – 12 November 1983) was a Soviet General who was head of the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the KGB from 1955 to 1971. Sakharovsky oversaw the KGB foreign intelligence divisio ...
once said: "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."
He also claimed that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention". In 1969 alone 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed
PLO.
Lt. General
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa (; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Car ...
claimed operation "SIG" ("
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
Governments") that was devised in 1972, to turn the whole Islamic world against
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
. KGB Chairman
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the ...
allegedly explained to Pacepa that
a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States
Installing and undermining governments
After World War II, Soviet security organizations played a key role in installing puppet communist governments in
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
, the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
,
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...
, and later
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
. Their strategy included mass
political repression
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby ...
s and establishment of subordinate secret services in all occupied countries.
Some of the active measures were undertaken by the Soviet secret services against their own governments or communist rulers. Russian historians
Anton Antonov-Ovseenko and
Edvard Radzinsky
Edvard Stanislavovich Radzinsky (russian: Э́двард Станисла́вович Радзи́нский) (born September 23, 1936) is a Russian playwright, television personality, screenwriter, and the author of more than forty popular histor ...
suggested that
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
was killed by associates of
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
chief
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
, based on the interviews of a former Stalin bodyguard and circumstantial evidence.
According to
Yevgenia Albats' allegations,
Chief of the KGB Vladimir Semichastny was among the plotters against
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
in 1964.
KGB Chairman
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the ...
reportedly struggled for power with
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1 ...
.
The
Soviet coup attempt of 1991
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
against
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Com ...
was organized by KGB Chairman
Vladimir Kryuchkov
Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov (russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Крючко́в, link=no; 29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007) was a Soviet lawyer, diplomat, and head of the KGB, member of the Politburo of the ...
.
Gen. Viktor Barannikov, then the former State Security head, became one of the leaders of the uprising against
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
during the
Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
The current Russian
intelligence service, the
SVR, allegedly works to undermine governments of former Soviet
satellite states like
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, the
Baltic states
The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone ...
,
and
Georgia.
During the
2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy
6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number.
In mathematics
Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...
several Russian GRU case officers were accused by Georgian authorities of preparations to commit sabotage and terrorist acts.
Political assassinations
The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen.
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa (; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Car ...
claimed to have had a conversation with
Nicolae Ceaușescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu ( , ; – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and dictator. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He ...
, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill":
László Rajk and
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
from Hungary;
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu and
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (; 8 November 1901 – 19 March 1965) was a Romanian communist politician and electrician. He was the first Communist leader of Romania from 1947 to 1965, serving as first secretary of the Romanian Communist Part ...
from Romania;
Rudolf Slánský and
Jan Masaryk from
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
; the
Shah of Iran;
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, President of
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
;
Palmiro Togliatti from Italy;
John F. Kennedy; and
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...
. Pacepa provided some other claims, such as a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of
Lin Biao organized by the
KGB and alleged that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."
The second President of
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
,
Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin (Pashto/ prs, حفيظ الله امين; 1 August 192927 December 1979) was an Afghan communist revolutionary, politician and teacher. He organized the Saur Revolution of 1978 and co-founded the Democratic Republic of Afghan ...
, was killed by the KGB's
Alpha Group
Spetsgruppa "A", also known as Alpha Group (a popular English name), or Alfa, whose official name is Directorate "A" of the FSB Special Purpose Center (TsSN FSB) (Russian: Спецназ ФСБ "Альфа"), is an elite stand-alone sub-unit o ...
in
Operation Storm-333
Operation Storm-333 (russian: Шторм-333, ), also known as the Tajbeg Palace Assault, was executed by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan on 27 December 1979. It saw Spetsnaz storm the heavily fortified Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and subsequently as ...
. Presidents of the unrecognized
Chechen Republic of Ichkeria organized by Chechen separatists including
Dzhokhar Dudaev
Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev (, ; russian: Джохар Мусаевич Дудаев; ; 15 February 1944 – 21 April 1996) was a Soviet Air Force general and Chechen separatist leader who was the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichk ...
,
Zelimkhan Yandarbiev
Zelimkhan Abdulmuslimovich Yandarbiyev ( ce, Яндарбин Абдулмуслиман-кIант Зелимхан, romanized: ''Yandarbin Abdulmusliman-khant Zelimxan''; russian: link=no, Зелимхан Абдулмуслимович Я� ...
,
Aslan Maskhadov
Aslan (Khalid) Aliyevich Maskhadov (russian: Асла́н (Хали́д) Али́евич Масха́дов; ce, Масхадан Али-воӀ Аслан (Халид), Masxadan Ali-voj Aslan (Xalid); 21 September 1951 – 8 March 2005) was ...
, and
Abdul-Khalim Saidullaev
Abdul-Halim Abusalamovich Sadulayev ( ; Chechen: Сайд-Iелийн Абусаламин кІант Iабдул-Хьалим, ''Sadulin Abusalamin-Kant Abdulhalim''; Russian: Абдул-Халим Αбусаламович Сайдулае� ...
, were killed by the
FSB and affiliated forces.
Other widely publicized cases are murders of Russian communist
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
and Bulgarian writer
Georgi Markov.
There were also allegations that the KGB was behind the
assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981. The Italian
Mitrokhin Commission The Mitrokhin Commission was an Italian parliamentary commission set up in 2002 to investigate alleged KGB ties of some Italian politicians.
Set up by the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the '' Casa dell ...
, headed by senator
Paolo Guzzanti
Paolo Guzzanti (born 1 August 1940) is an Italian journalist and politician. He was previously a member of the Italian Socialist Party.
Biography
Born in Rome, he is the nephew of Elio Guzzanti and father to actors Corrado, Sabina and Caterin ...
(
Forza Italia
Forza ItaliaThe name is not usually translated into English: ''forza'' is the second-person singular imperative of ''forzare'', in this case translating to "to compel" or "to press", and so means something like "Forward, Italy", "Come on, Ital ...
), worked on the Mitrokhin Archives from 2003 to March 2006. The Mitrokhin Commission received criticism during and after its existence.
['']L'Unità
''l'Unità'' (, lit. 'the Unity') was an Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924. It was supportive of that party's successor parties, the Democratic Party of the Left, Democrats of th ...
'', 1 December 2006. It was closed in March 2006 without any proof brought to its various controversial allegations, including the claim that
Romano Prodi
Romano Antonio Prodi (; born 9 August 1939) is an Italian politician, economist, academic, senior civil servant, and business executive who served as the tenth president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. He served twice as Pr ...
, former Prime Minister of Italy and former
President of the European Commission
The president of the European Commission is the head of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). The President of the Commission leads a Cabinet of Commissioners, referred to as the College, collectively account ...
, was the "KGB's man in Europe." One of Guzzanti's informers,
Mario Scaramella, was arrested for defamation and arms trading at the end of 2006.
Puppet rebel forces
Operation Trust
In "
Operation Trust
Operation Trust (Russian: операция "Трест", tr. Operatsiya "Trest") was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU's predecessor Cheka, ran from ...
" (1921–1926), the
State Political Directorate (OGPU) set up a fake anti-
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
underground organization, "Monarchist Union of Central Russia". The main success of this operation was luring
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Russian: Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков; 31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary wing ...
and
Sidney Reilly into the Soviet Union, where they were arrested and executed.
Basmachi revolt
During the
Basmachi Revolt (started 1916) in
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...
, special military detachments masqueraded as
Basmachi forces and received support from British and Turkish intelligence services. The operations of these detachments facilitated the collapse of the Basmachi movement and led to the assassination of
Enver Pasha
İsmail Enver, better known as Enver Pasha ( ota, اسماعیل انور پاشا; tr, İsmail Enver Paşa; 22 November 1881 – 4 August 1922) was an Ottoman military officer, revolutionary, and convicted war criminal who formed one-third ...
.
Post World War II counter-insurgency operations
Following World War II, various partisan organizations in the Baltic states, Poland and Western Ukraine (including some previous collaborators of Germany) fought for independence of their countries against Soviet forces. Many
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
agents were sent to join and penetrate the independence movements. Puppet rebel forces were also created by the NKVD and permitted to attack local Soviet authorities to gain credibility and exfiltrate senior NKVD agents to the West.
Supporting political movements
According to
Stanislav Lunev
Stanislav Lunev (russian: Станислав Лунев; born 1946 in Leningrad) is a former Soviet military officer, the highest-ranking GRU officer to defect from Russia to the United States.
Biography
Stanislav Lunev was born in Leningrad, to ...
,
GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the
peace movements
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...
against the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
, which was a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".
Lunev claimed that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every
antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad".
By the 1980s, US intelligence community was skeptical of claims that attempted
Soviet influence on the peace movement had a direct influence on the non-aligned part of the movement.
However, KGB widespread attempts at influence in the United States, Switzerland, and Denmark targeting the peace movement were known, and the World Peace Council was categorized as a
communist front
A communist front is a political organization identified as a front organization under the effective control of a communist party, the Communist International or other communist organizations. They attracted politicized individuals who were not ...
organization by the CIA.
The
World Peace Council
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the self-described goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mas ...
was established on the orders of the Communist Party of the USSR in the late 1940s and for over forty years carried out campaigns against western, mainly American, military action. Many organisations controlled or influenced by Communists affiliated themselves with it. According to
Oleg Kalugin,
... the Soviet intelligence asreally unparalleled. ... The GBprograms—which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS ... was invented by the CIA ... all sorts of forgeries and faked material— eretargeted at politicians, the academic community, at hepublic at large. ...
It has been widely claimed that the Soviet Union organised and financed western peace movements; for example, ex-KGB agent
Sergei Tretyakov claimed that in the early 1980s the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying nuclear missiles and that they used the
Soviet Peace Committee The Soviet Peace Committee (SPC, also known as Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace, SCDP, russian: Советский Комитет Защиты Мира) was a state-sponsored organization responsible for coordinating peace movements active ...
to organize and finance peace demonstrations in western Europe.
(Western intelligence agencies, however, have found minimal evidence of this.)
Tretyakov made a further uncorroborated claim that "
e KGB was responsible for creating the entire
nuclear winter
Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into t ...
story to stop the
Pershing II missiles,"
and that they fed misinformation to western peace groups and thereby influenced a key scientific paper on the topic by western scientists.
According to intelligence historian
Christopher Andrew, the KGB in Britain was unable to infiltrate major figures in the
CND, and the Soviets relied on influencing "less influential contacts" which were more receptive to the Moscow line. Andrew wrote that
MI5 "found no evidence that KGB funding to the British peace movement went beyond occasional payment of fares and expenses to individuals."
United States
Some of the active measures by the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...
against the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
were exposed in the
Mitrokhin Archive:
* Attempts to discredit the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
, using writer
Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (; January 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008)Will Weissert"Ex-CIA Agent Philip Agee Dead in Cuba" Associated Press (sfgate.com), January 9, 2008. was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer of t ...
(codenamed PONT), who exposed the identities of many CIA personnel. Mitrokhin alleges that Agee's bulletin ''
CovertAction'' received assistance from the Soviet KGB and Cuban
DGI.
* Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
, placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (
Operation PANDORA
Operation PANDORA (Russian: операция Пандора) is the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged active measure by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The intention was supposedly to start a r ...
).
* Planting claims that both
John F. Kennedy and
Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated by the CIA.
* In the Middle East in 1975, the KGB claimed to identify 45 statesmen from around the world who had been the victims of successful or unsuccessful CIA assassination attempts over the past decade.
* Make US military aid to the
El Salvador
El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south ...
government (increased more than fivefold by the Reagan administration between 1981 and 1984) so unpopular within the United States that public opinion would demand that it be halted. About 150 committees were created in the United States which spoke out against US interference in El Salvador, and contacts were made with US Senators.
* Starting rumors that fluoridated drinking water was in fact a plot by the US government to effect population control.
* Fabrication of the story that the
AIDS virus
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...
was
manufactured by US scientists at
Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick () is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, i ...
; the story was spread by Russian-born biologist
Jakob Segal
Jakob Segal (17 April 1911 – 30 September 1995) was a Russian-born German biology professor at Humboldt University of Berlin in the former East Germany. He was one of the advocates of the conspiracy theory that HIV was created by the United St ...
. In a secondary role to the KGB during the operation, former East German spymaster
Markus Wolf
Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa, was head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (, abbreviated MfS, common ...
admitted, during a visit to Italy in 1998, the role of the
HVA in spreading AIDS conspiracy theories.
In 1974, according to KGB statistics, over 250 active measures were targeted against the CIA alone, leading to denunciations of Agency abuses, both real and (more frequently) imaginary, in media, parliamentary debates, demonstrations and speeches by leading politicians around the world.
Blowback
Soviet intelligence, as part of active measures, frequently spread
disinformation
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...
to distort their adversaries' decision-making. However, sometimes this information filtered back through the KGB's own contacts, leading to distorted reports.
Lawrence Bittman also addressed Soviet intelligence blowback in ''
The KGB and Soviet Disinformation
''The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider's View'' is a 1983 non-fiction book by Lawrence Martin-Bittman (then known as Ladislav Bittman), a former intelligence officer specializing in disinformation for the Czech Intelligence Service and ...
'', stating that "There are, of course, instances in which the operator is partially or completely exposed and subjected to countermeasures taken by the government of the target country."
Russian Federation active measures, 1991 to present
Active measures have continued in the post-Soviet era in the
Russian Federation
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
and are in many ways based on Cold War schematics.
After the
annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation
In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War.
The events in Kyiv t ...
, Kremlin-controlled media spread disinformation about Ukraine's government. In July 2014,
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers. Kremlin-controlled media and online agents spread disinformation, claiming Ukraine had shot down the airplane.
Russia's alleged disinformation campaign, its involvement in
the UK's withdrawal from the EU,
interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, and its alleged support of far-right movements in the West, has been compared to the Soviet Union's active measures in that it aims to "disrupt and discredit Western democracies".
In testimony before the
United States Senate Intelligence Committee
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...
hearing on the US policy response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections,
Victoria Nuland, former US Ambassador to NATO, referred to herself as "a regular target of Russian active measures."
The introduction of the internet, specifically social media offered new opportunities for active measures. The Kremlin-affiliated
Internet Research Agency, also referred to as the Information Warfare Branch, was established in 2013. This agency is devoted to spreading disinformation through the internet, the most well known prominent operation being its part in the interference in the 2016 US presidential election. According to the
House Intelligence Committee
The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary commi ...
, by 2018, organic content created by the Russian IRA reached at least 126 million US Facebook users, while its politically divisive ads reached 11.4 million US Facebook users. Tweets by the IRA reached approximately 288 million American users. According to committee chair
Adam Schiff
Adam Bennett Schiff (born June 22, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who has served as a U.S. representative since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he has represented since 2013.
Schiff's district (numbered as the 2 ...
, "
he Russiansocial media campaign was designed to further a broader Kremlin objective: sowing discord in the U.S. by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues. The Russians did so by weaving together fake accounts, pages, and communities to push politicized content and videos, and to mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests."
See also
*
Active Measures Working Group
*
Agent of influence
An agent of influence is an agent of some stature who uses their position to influence public opinion or decision making to produce results beneficial to the country whose intelligence service operates the agent. Agents of influence are often the ...
*
Agents provocateurs
*
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
*
''Dezinformatsia'' (book)
*
First Chief Directorate of KGB of the USSR
*
Hybrid warfare—a military strategy which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare
* ''
The KGB and Soviet Disinformation
''The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider's View'' is a 1983 non-fiction book by Lawrence Martin-Bittman (then known as Ladislav Bittman), a former intelligence officer specializing in disinformation for the Czech Intelligence Service and ...
''—book
*
Kompromat
*
Operation Cedar (KGB)
Operation Cedar (Operation KEDR) was the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged covert program by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The program is mentioned in the Mitrokhin Archive which doesn't explai ...
*
Operation INFEKTION
*
Operation PANDORA
Operation PANDORA (Russian: операция Пандора) is the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged active measure by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The intention was supposedly to start a r ...
*
Operation Trust
Operation Trust (Russian: операция "Трест", tr. Operatsiya "Trest") was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU's predecessor Cheka, ran from ...
*
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
The poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, alternatively known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12, and Kamera (which means "The Cell" in Russian), was a covert research-and-development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies. Th ...
*
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. Ac ...
*
Russian military deception
*
Russian web brigades
*
Troll farm
*
Whataboutism
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accu ...
*
Yasenevo District—The Forest
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{Cold War
Cold War espionage
Communist theory
Communist propaganda
Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
KGB
Law enforcement in the Soviet Union
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Propaganda techniques
Psychological warfare techniques
Russian intelligence agencies
Soviet intelligence agencies
Soviet phraseology