Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is

political warfare Political warfare is the use of political means to compel an opponent to do one's will, based on hostile intent. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience, including another state's govern ...

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, ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

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 tangibl ...

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 The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Direc ...

)
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

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 The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

, 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 gro ...

(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 mass ...

); 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, a s ...

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 e ...

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 Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) to establish separa ...

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 irregu ...

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 Can ...

, 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

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

ed official documents,

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, thereb ...

, 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 performe ...

s. Retired KGB Major General

Oleg Kalugin Oleg Danilovich Kalugin (russian: Олег Данилович Калугин; born 6 September 1934) is a former KGB general (stripped of his rank and awards by a Russian Court decision in 2002). He was during a time, head of KGB political ope ...

, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of the

Soviet intelligence This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...

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. Sub ...
: 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 No ...
, 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 The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Di ...

, active measures was taught in the Andropov Institute of the

situated at Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in

Yasenevo District Yasenevo District (russian: райо́н Я́сенево) is an administrative district (raion) of South-Western Administrative Okrug, and one of the 125 raions of Moscow, Russia. The area of the district is . Population: 172,300 (2017 est.). Ge ...

of Moscow. The head of the "active measures department" was

Yuri Modin Yuri Ivanovich Modin (8 November 1922 in Suzdal – 2007 in Moscow) was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1948 to 1951, during which Donald Duart Maclean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951, Modin arran ...

, former controller of the

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for ...

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 political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

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 Carter' ...

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

, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky 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

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 primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. 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 po ...

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 Europe, 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 Russ ...

, 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 most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

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 Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

, 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 bordere ...

. Their strategy included mass

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 Anton Vladimirovich Antonov-Ovseenko (russian: Анто́н Влади́мирович Анто́нов-Овсе́енко; 23 February 1920, Moscow, RSFSR – 9 July 2013, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian historian and writer. (Antonov-Ovseyen ...

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 history ...

suggested that

was killed by associates of

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 Yevgenia Markovna Albats (russian: Евге́ния Ма́рковна Альба́ц, born 5 September 1958Chief of the KGB

Vladimir Semichastny Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny (russian: Влади́мир Ефи́мович Семича́стный, January 15, 1924 – January 12, 2001) was a Soviet politician, who served as Chairman of the KGB from November 1961 to May 1967. A pro ...

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

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 Union, Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gener ...

. The Soviet coup attempt of 1991 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 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

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 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, also known as the 1993 October Coup, Black October, the Shooting of the White House or Ukaz 1400, was a political stand-off and a constitutional crisis between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and ...

. The current Russian

intelligence service An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informatio ...

, the SVR, allegedly works to undermine governments of former Soviet

satellite state A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent in the world, but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting ...

s 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 populous ...

, 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 Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. 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.

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 was ...

, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill":

László Rajk László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizi ...

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 Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu (; November 4, 1900 – April 17, 1954) was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania (PCR), also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he ...

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 Party ...

from Romania;

Rudolf Slánský Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a leading Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechosl ...

and

Jan Masaryk Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14 September 1886 – 10 March 1948) was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbul ...

from

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

; the

Shah of Iran This is a list of monarchs of Persia (or monarchs of the Iranic peoples, in present-day Iran), which are known by the royal title Shah or Shahanshah. This list starts from the establishment of the Medes around 671 BCE until the deposition of th ...

;

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in ...

, 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 Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (; 26 March 1893 – 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death. He was nicknamed ("The Best") by his supporters. In 1930 he became a citizen of ...

from Italy;

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

; and

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also 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 founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

. Pacepa provided some other claims, such as a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of

Lin Biao ) , serviceyears = 1925–1971 , branch = People's Liberation Army , rank = Marshal of the People's Republic of China Lieutenant general of the National Revolutionary Army, Republic of China , commands ...

organized by the

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

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 Afghanist ...

, 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 ...

Operation Storm-333 Operation Storm-333 (russian: Шторм-333, ), also known as the Tajbeg Palace Assault, was executed by the Soviet Union in Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan on 27 December 1979. It saw Spetsnaz storm the heavily fortified Tajbeg ...

. Presidents of the unrecognized

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (; ce, Нохчийн Республик Ичкери, Nóxçiyn Respublik Içkeri; russian: Чеченская Республика Ичкерия; abbreviated as "ChRI" or "CRI") was a ''de facto'' state that ...

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, 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 Georgi Ivanov Markov ( bg, Георги Иванов Марков ; 1 March 1929 – 11 September 1978) was a Bulgarian dissident writer. He originally worked as a novelist, screenwriter and playwright in his native country, the People's Repub ...

. 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 Caterina. ...

(

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 the ...

'', 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 Prim ...

, 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 fro ...

" (1921–1926), the

State Political Directorate The State Political Directorate (also translated as the State Political Administration) (GPU) was the intelligence service and secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from February 6, 1922, to December 29, 1922, ...

(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 win ...

and

Sidney Reilly Sidney George Reilly (; – 5 November 1925)—known as "Ace of Spies"—was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the pre ...

into the Soviet Union, where they were arrested and executed.

Basmachi revolt

During the

Basmachi Revolt The Basmachi movement (russian: Басмачество, ''Basmachestvo'', derived from Uzbek: "Basmachi" meaning "bandits") was an uprising against Russian Imperial and Soviet rule by the Muslim peoples of Central Asia. The movement's roots l ...

(started 1916) in

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, 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 t ...

, 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

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,

GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...

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 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 pea ...

and organization in America and abroad". By the 1980s, US intelligence community was skeptical of claims that attempted

Soviet influence on the peace movement During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that ...

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 pa ...

organization by the CIA. The

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

... 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 th ...

story to stop the

Pershing II The Pershing II Weapon System was a solid-fueled two-stage medium-range ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the Pershing 1a Field Artillery Missile System as the United States Army's primary nuclear-capable thea ...

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 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucle ...

, and the Soviets relied on influencing "less influential contacts" which were more receptive to the Moscow line. Andrew wrote that

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

"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 nationa ...

against the

were exposed in the

: * 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 ...

, placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" ( Operation PANDORA). * Planting claims that both

and

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

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 b ...

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 immu ...

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, commonl ...

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 L ...

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 List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

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 th ...

, 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 Victoria Jane Nuland (born July 1, 1961) is an American diplomat currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland, a former member of the foreign service, served as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eura ...

, 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 The Internet Research Agency (IRA; russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, translit=Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy), also known as ''Glavset'' (russian: link=no, Главсеть) and known in Russian Internet sla ...

, 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 committ ...

, 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 Russian He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

social 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."

References

External links

* * * * * * * * * * * * {{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

Description

History

Implementation

Guerrillas

Promotion of guerrilla organizations worldwide

Installing and undermining governments

Political assassinations

Puppet rebel forces

Operation Trust

Basmachi revolt

Post World War II counter-insurgency operations

Supporting political movements

United States

Blowback

Russian Federation active measures, 1991 to present

See also

References

Further reading

External links