PART 2:NEW LIES FOR OLD LIES:THE COMMUNIST STRATEGY OF DECEPTION & DISINFORMATION

NEW LIES FOR OLD 
The Communist Strategy of 
Deception and Disinformation 
by Anatoliy Golitsyn

5 

The New Policy and 

Disinformation Strategy 

KHRUSHCHEV'S VICTORY in the power struggle in June 1957 marked the beginning of the end of the crisis in world communism. It opened up a period of stability in which relations between the members of the communist bloc were to be reestablished on a new and sounder basis and in which a new long-range policy and new strategies for putting it into effect were to be worked out. 

Within days of his victory, Khrushchev renewed the effort to restore party as well as state relations with the Yugoslavs, a course on which he had embarked at the time of his visit to Tito in May 1955. 

Already, by June 1957, the Soviet and Chinese leaders had reached an agreed assessment of Stalin and his distortions of communist doctrine. The Chinese contribution to this assessment is to be found in two articles by Mao, which were published in the Soviet press in April and December 1956.1 At the Eighth Chinese Communist Party (C.P.C) Congress in September 1956, the Chinese leaders supported the condemnation of the cult of the individual by the Twentieth C.P.S.U Congress of February 1956.2 

By the end of 1957 reconciliation between the leaders of all the communist states had been achieved. At a conference in Moscow in November 1957, they all agreed that Stalin had been responsible for damaging distortions of communist theory and practice. In varying degrees they had all resented Stalin's interference in their internal affairs and the rigid conformity he had demanded of them. But all (including the Yugoslavs, whose presence at the conference was deliberately concealed) were prepared to cooperate on a Leninist basis in a partnership of equals. The Soviets, in effect, agreed to abandon their domination of the communist movement. They even offered to forego references to their leading role in the declaration issued after the conference was over. It was at Chinese insistence that such references were included. The conference took an unpublicized decision to formulate a new, Leninist program for world communism that was intended to imbue the movement with the sense of purpose and direction it so badly needed.3 

The next three years were a period of intense research and consultation between the communist parties inside and outside the bloc while the new policy and strategies were worked out.4 The process culminated in the Eighty-one-Party Congress held in Moscow in November 1960. The leaders of all eighty-one parties committed themselves to the program set out in the conference's statement, or— as it is sometimes described—Manifesto. From that day to this the main binding force in the communist movement, inside and outside the bloc, has not been the diktat of the Soviet Union, but loyalty to a common program to which the leaders of many communist parties had made their contribution. Despite subsequent appearances, an atmosphere of confidence was created between the party leaders in which Soviet coercion became superfluous but Soviet advice and help were willingly accepted. 

The New Policy 

In 1957, as in 1921, the communist strategists, in working out their new program, had to take into account the political, economic, and military weakness of the communist bloc and the unfavorable balance of power vis-a-vis the West. Fissiparous tendencies in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe threatened the cohesion of the bloc in 1957 as nationalist movements had threatened the unity of Soviet Russia in 1921. The communist world faced hostility from Western conservatives and socialists alike. Western propaganda was keeping the communist regimes under constant pressure. The West in general was reluctant to trade with the bloc. And the bloc faced one completely new factor—the possibility of nuclear confrontation. 

Against this background, how could the communist leaders make their system more acceptable to their peoples? How were they to achieve cohesion and cooperation between the members of the bloc? And how could they advance the communist cause outside the bloc without provoking a greater degree of unity in the non-communist world? It was clear that a reversion to the Stalinist policy of mass repression at home would fail and that traditional revolutionary tactics abroad would only intensify confrontation with the West at a time when the balance of power was unfavorable. The precedent of Lenin's N.E.P seemed to provide many of the answers, although, of course, the new policy would need to be far more complex and sophisticated. 

The need for a new policy was felt with special keenness by the Soviet leadership. The older members, like Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mikoyan, and Suslov, wanted to purge themselves of the taint of Stalinism and rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of history. The younger ones, like Shelepin, wanted the kudos due to innovators. All of them realized that only agreement on a long-range policy would preclude recurrent power struggles and give stability to the leadership. 

The Manifesto produced by the Eighty-one-Party Congress (November 1960) clearly betrays the influence of Lenin's ideas and practice, as does Khrushchev's follow-up speech of January 6, 1961.5 These two basic documents have continued to determine the course of communist policy to the present day. They explain in detail how the triumph of communism throughout the world is to be achieved through the consolidation of the economic, political, and military might of the communist world and the undermining of the unity and strength of the non-communist world. The use by communist parties of a variety of violent and nonviolent tactics is specifically authorized. Peaceful coexistence is explicitly defined as "an intense form of class struggle between socialism and capitalism." The exploitation by world communism of economic, political, racial, and historical antagonisms between non-communist countries is recommended. Support for "national liberation" movements throughout the Third World is reemphasized.

All parties, inside and outside the bloc, including the Chinese, signed the Manifesto—with the sole exception of Yugoslavia. For tactical reasons, Yugoslavia was not present at the congress but, as both Gromyko and Tito indicated publicly thereafter, Yugoslav and Soviet foreign policy coincided on many issues. 

Agreement between the communist leaders on a new Leninist program for world revolution was only half the battle. A strategy was needed for putting such a program into effect at a time when the subject populations in the communist bloc were seriously alienated from their communist regimes and when the militarily superior Western powers were determined to resist the further spread of communism. 

Some aspects of the strategy, such as united fronts with socialists in the advanced capitalist countries and support for national liberation movements in the Third World, were openly proclaimed. But the decision to use systematic, strategic disinformation as an essential component of the strategy clearly had to be carefully concealed. 

The Disadvantages of Apparent Unity 

The communist strategists appreciated that the major disadvantage of the pursuit by all the parties of the bloc of a uniform and openly aggressive policy was that a combination of ideological zeal with monolithic unity would alarm the non-communist world and force it into greater cohesion and possibly into a vigorous and coordinated response to the communist threat. This would lead at best to a continuation of the East-West status quo, and at worst to heavier pressure on the communist world from a West equipped with a superior nuclear arsenal. 

A unified strategy would have been even more hampering to the international communist movement. Experience had shown that the activities of the Comintern were handicapped by its identification as an instrument of Soviet policy. The same could be said of the Cominform, its successor. Communist parties in the non-communist world had failed to gain influence or, in many cases, even legal recognition because of their obvious subservience to Moscow. In 1958 more than forty parties were illegal.

From the historical experience of the Soviet Union and the bloc, the communist strategists identified the factors that had favored united Western action against communism. In the pre-N.E.P period, the West had felt threatened by Soviet ideology and militancy. The result was allied intervention on Russian territory. After the end of the Second World War, the threat of monolithic, Stalinist communism drove the West into military and political alliances, such as NATO, SEATO, and the Baghdad pact, and into other forms of military, political, economic, and security collaboration. 

Similarly the communist strategists identified the factors that had tended to undermine unity in the Western approach to the communist world. These were moderation in official Soviet policy; emphasis on the conflicting national interests of communist countries and parties at the expense of their ideological solidarity; and the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, which caused many Western observers to believe that worldwide communist subversion had been abandoned. 

The Advantages of Apparent Disunity 

Communists regard unity between the Western powers as inherently unstable; it follows from the nature of the capitalist system that, in normal circumstances, divisive considerations of national interest outweigh tendencies toward solidarity and cohesion. The communist strategists therefore reasoned that, through projecting the right image of the bloc and the communist movement, they could help to dissolve the measure of Western unity that Stalinist policies had brought into being. Moreover, they decided not to await the appearance of natural contradictions and divisions in the West, but to take active political steps to create artificially conditions in which Western economic and political unity would tend to disintegrate and which would therefore prove favorable for the implementation of their long-range bloc policy. In their view, by consistent and coordinated efforts, the countries of the bloc would be able to influence the policies and attitudes of the governments and populations of the non-communist world in a direction favorable to themselves. They had before them the successful precedent of Soviet policy and intelligence operations during the period of the N.E.P. 

The naive illusions displayed in the past by the West in its attitudes and policies toward communism, the failure of the Western allies to develop a coordinated, long-range policy during their alliance with the Soviet Union in the Second World War, and the inclination of capitalist countries to pursue policies based on national interest were all taken into account in planning how to bring influence to bear on the West. 

The conclusion was reached that, if the factors that had previously served to forge a degree of Western cohesion—that is, communist ideological militancy and monolithic unity—were to be perceived by the West, respectively, as moderating and disintegrating and if, despite an increase in the bloc's actual strength, an image was to be successfully projected of a bloc weakened by economic, political, and ideological disarray, then the Western response to communist policy would be feebler and less coordinated; actual Western tendencies toward disintegration might be provoked and encouraged, thereby creating conditions for a change in the balance of power in favor of the communist bloc. 

In other words, common logic suggested that the bloc should proceed towards its aim of worldwide victory for communism by forging its own unity and coordinating its own policies as far as possible in secret while at the same time undermining the unity and resistance of the non-communist world by projecting a misleading image of its own evolution, disunity, and weakness. This was in fact the hidden essence of the long-range bloc policy adopted in 1958-60 and the basis of the various strategies developed from then onward in the execution of that policy. The Eighty-one-Party Congress in Moscow, in November 1960, could well have created a new, overt central coordinating body for the international communist movement as a successor to the Comintern and Cominform, but it did not do so. Instead, it ratified the use of varying tactics by individual communist parties within the framework of the long-range policy and, in place of a controlling center, called for the coordination and synchronization of policy and tactics between bloc and non-bloc parties. Thus, while coordination was in fact improved, the decision not to create a new, overt central body, the emphasis on "polycentrism," and the use of a variety of different tactics by communist parties were designed to create an effect analogous to that created by the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. 

The Political Use of De-Stalinization 

The Soviet leaders recognized that mistakes had been made in the first phase of de-Stalinization. Too many rehabilitation's of Stalin's victims had been allowed too quickly; the party and the security service had been too passive in the face of the spontaneous reactions of intellectuals to the revelation of Stalin's crimes; above all, the Soviet leaders accepted that they should have consulted the parties of the other communist countries in advance. They realized that further uncontrolled measures of de-Stalinization could give rise to more revisionism and popular unrest. But they also realized that vigorous waving of the anti-Stalinist flag could help them undermine opposition at home and improve their image abroad; some of the damage done by Stalinism could be repaired. 

Controlled anti-Stalinism could be used to help stabilize the regime; through propaganda emphasis on the distinctions between the new policy and Stalin's policy, some internal and external opposition could be undermined. For example, former communist party members of all ranks who had suffered repression under Stalin, or their widows and families, could be brought into active collaboration with the regime in the implementation of a Leninist policy that ostensibly repudiated Stalinism. Controlled anti-Stalinism could create favorable conditions for political and diplomatic maneuvers against non-communist countries. It could be used to change attitudes toward communism and communist parties in the labor and social democratic movements. If the consequences of Stalinism, in the shape of personal dictatorship and the indiscriminate use of terror to suppress opposition inside and outside the party, had been fusion and alliances between the different types of opposition, it was arguable that emphasis on anti-Stalinism could lead to a weakening and disruption of such alliances. If Stalinism had led to cooperation between groups with different interests, between conservatives and social democrats in the creation of NATO, between Western capitalists and Yugoslav revisionist communists after 1948, between Russian emigres and Western governments, anti-Stalinism could be used to weaken these ties. If Stalinism had contributed to the decline in Soviet prestige, to diplomatic failures and a loss of allies, anti-Stalinism could be used to reverse the process, to recover old allies and gain new ones among Western intellectuals, liberals, social democrats, and nationalists. 

Between 1953 and 1956 genuine, improvised de-Stalinization was used to correct mistakes and improve the Soviet regime. In 1956 and 1957 notional de-Stalinization was exploited deceitfully by Khrushchev as a means of defeating his rivals while concealing the nature of his own methods. From 1958 onward calculated, deceitful use was made of notional de-Stalinization to help the new long-range policy achieve its domestic and external goals. 

By 1958 the real issues involved in Stalinism, anti-Stalinism, revisionism, and national communism having been resolved, they could be revived in artificial form as "issues" allegedly causing divisions between different leaders and different parties inside and outside the bloc. Individual communist leaders or groups of leaders (all of them committed Leninists) could be projected misleadingly and in contrast with one another as "Stalinist's," "neo-Stalinist's," "Maoists," "dogmatists," "hard-liners," "diehard's," "militants," or "conservatives" as opposed to "anti-Stalinist's," "pragmatists," "revisionists," and "national," "liberal," "progressive," or "moderate" communists. 

The objectives of disinformation on these "issues" can be summarized as follows: 

• By the revival of dead issues and the display of apparent differences of opinion over them, to present the communist countries as in a state of disarray in accordance with the weakness and evolution pattern of disinformation. 

• By projecting a false picture of nationalism and competing national interests in and between the communist regimes of the bloc, to conceal the actual unity of the bloc parties and governments in their pursuit of a common, ideological long-range policy. 

• To create favorable conditions for the implementation of that policy, internally and externally. 

• To provide a broad framework and convenient technique for specific disinformation operations on Soviet relations with Yugoslavia, Albania,China, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and certain West European communist parties. 

• To exploit these issues for disinformation about the alleged continuing power struggles and the unsolved succession problem, for shifts in communist domestic policy and in diplomatic tactics for implementing different phases of that policy. 

Sources of Inspiration 

The decision in principle to revert to the whole-scale use of strategic disinformation, taken in 1957, triggered off a spate of research into precedents and techniques. For example, the Central Committee called for secret publications on the subject held by the K.G.B and G.R.U, and in particular for a secret training manual for internal use only, written by a G.R.U officer, Popov, that described, in about eighty pages, the technique of disinformation, and for another manual written by Colonel Raina of the K.G.B entitled On the Use of Agents of Influence.6 

Popov's manual defined disinformation as a means of creating favorable conditions for gaining strategic advantages over the opponent. It specified that disinformation must function in accordance with the requirements of military strategy and diplomacy, and stipulated that in all circumstances it must be subordinate to policy. 

The book classified different types of disinformation as strategic, political, military, technical, economic, and diplomatic. It listed the channels through which disinformation can be disseminated as: 

• The declarations and speeches of leading statesmen and officials of the originating country. 

• Official government documents. 

• Newspapers and other materials published in that country. 

• Foreign publications inspired by agents working among foreign journalists and other experts. 

• Special operations in support of disinformation. 

• Agents of influence and other agents in foreign countries. 

Studies of particular facets of the N.E.P were commissioned by the C.P.S.U's Central Committee from 1957 onward. As well as government departments, specialized institutes of the Academy of Sciences, such as the Institutes of Law and History, contributed. Two projects of special significance for the reintroduction of strategic disinformation were undertaken in the K.G.B. One was a study on the use of K.G.B agents of influence in the Soviet intelligentsia (meaning in this context scientists, academics, writers, musicians, artists, actors, stage and screen directors, and religious leaders); the other was on the disclosure of state secrets in the interests of policy. 

Popov's manual was in fact the only available modern text dealing with strategic disinformation. Lenin left behind him no specific treatise on the subject, although his writings contain scattered references to it; deception and duplicity were essential elements in his political technique. Significantly the Soviet authorities chose to publish for the first time, between 1960 and 1965 in the fifth edition of Lenin's works, some of his documents relating to the N.E.P period and the use of disinformation, in particular in his correspondence with his commissar for foreign affairs, Chicherin. 

In one of his letters Lenin, commenting on the draft of a statement to be made by the Soviet delegation to the Genoa conference, advised Chicherin to omit any mention of "the inevitable forced coup d'etat and bloody struggle" and also to omit the words "our historical concept includes the use of violent measures and the inevitability of new world wars." "These frightening words," he wrote, "should not be used because they would serve the interests of our adversaries."7 

Chicherin responded enthusiastically to Lenin's ideas on disinformation. He wrote to him on January 20, 1922: "In case the Americans would insist on representative institutions, don't you think that, for solid compensation, we can deceive them by making a small ideological concession which would not have any practical meaning? For example, we can allow the presence of three representatives of the non-working class in the body of 2,000 members. Such a step can be presented to the Americans as a representative institution."8 

Lenin and Chicherin were not the only sources of inspiration for the revival of strategic disinformation. The ancient Chinese treatise on strategy and deception, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, translated into Russian by N. I. Konrad in 1950 (shortly after the communist victory in China), was re-translated into German in 1957 by the Soviet specialist Y. I. Sidorenko, with a foreword by the Soviet military strategist and historian General Razin.9 It was published in East Germany by the East German Ministry of Defense and was prescribed for study in East German military academies. A new translation and other studies of Sun Tzu were published in Peking in 1957 and 1958 and in Shanghai in 1959. Mao is known to have been influenced by Sun Tzu in his conduct of the civil war. 

This intense official interest in Sun Tzu on the part of both the Soviets and the Chinese at the very time when the new policy and strategy were being formulated is a good indication that the Chinese probably made a positive contribution to their formulation. 

The strategy of strengthening the communist bloc while presenting an appearance of communist disunity is neatly expressed in Sun Tzu's aphorisms: 

• All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. 

• Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. 

• One who wishes to appear to be weak in order to make his enemy arrogant must be extremely strong. Only then can he feign weakness. 

To be credible and effective, a deception should accord as far as possible with the hopes and expectations of those it is intended to deceive. Since the communist strategists were aware, especially through their knowledge of the Bilderberg papers,10 that the West half expected and ardently desired the disintegration of the communist bloc, they could anticipate that the projection to the outside world of a fictitious disintegration of the bloc would be advantageous—provided always that it was accompanied in parallel by an actual, but partially concealed, implementation of the long-range policy of strengthening the bloc and changing the world balance of power in its favor. 

How, in practice, was this to be achieved? Study of the genuine Tito-Stalin split of 1948 showed that by no means all of its consequences had been adverse. Open defiance of Stalin had sent Tito's prestige soaring in his own country and throughout the world. Independence of the Soviet Union had enabled Yugoslavia to obtain substantial economic and military assistance from the West and to acquire the beginnings of political influence in the Third World and with West European socialist parties. Moreover, Tito had demonstrated in 1957-58 that, despite the Western support he had received, he remained a faithful Leninist willing to work wholeheartedly with the other leaders of the bloc.11 

A more remote, but equally instructive, precedent was provided by Lenin's Far Eastern policy in the 1920's. Realizing that Soviet Russia would be overstretched in defending all her frontiers simultaneously, Lenin decided voluntarily to "sacrifice" a substantial area in the Far East by setting up an independent "non-communist" buffer state, the Far Eastern Republic (D.V.R), in April 1920. It was independent and non-communist in form only, its policies being closely coordinated from the outset with those of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, its existence, together with promises of economic concessions that did not materialize, relieved the pressure from Japanese and American interests in the area while the Soviet army and Comintern reinforced their capacity to deal with the threat from the White Russian emigre movement in Mongolia led by Baron Ungern. By November 1922 Soviet influence in the area was strong enough for the "independent" DVR to be openly incorporated into the Soviet Union as its Far Eastern region (kray). 

The combined lessons of the DVR and the Tito-Stalin split suggested to the communist strategists of the 1950's that spurious splits and independence in the communist world could be used to ease Western pressure and to obtain increased Western economic and even military aid for individual communist countries while the world balance of power was being shifted inconspicuously in communist favor. 

By the end of 1957 the issues that had caused actual and potential splits in the communist world, principally Stalinist interference in the affairs of other communist states, had been finally and decisively resolved. Common agreement had been reached on the abandonment of Stalin's acknowledged distortions of Leninist doctrine. The Soviet Union abides by the terms of the agreement in practical ways, for example, by making a total declaration of its former intelligence agents in China and Eastern Europe. 

The reasons for genuine splits having been removed, the way was open for the creation of spurious splits in accordance with Dzerzhinskiy's principle of political prophylaxis; that is, the forestalling of undesirable developments (such as splits or the growth of opposition movements) by deliberately provoking and controlling such developments through the use of secret agents, and by guiding them in directions that are either harmless or positively useful to the regime. 

Khrushchev had demonstrated in 1957 how misrepresentation of the Stalinist issue could be used to his own advantage in the struggle for power. The artificial revival of the dead issues related to Stalinism was the obvious and logical means of displaying convincing but spurious differences between different communist leaders or parties.

6 

The Shelepin Report 

and Changes in Organization 

THE ADOPTION OF THE NEW BLOC POLICY and disinformation strategy entailed organizational changes in the Soviet Union and throughout the bloc. In the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, it was the Central Committee of the party that reorganized the intelligence and security services, the foreign ministry, and other sections of the party and government apparatus and the mass organizations so as to be able to implement the new policy. Several highly significant alterations were made to the Central Committee's own apparatus in and after 1958. A new Department of Foreign Policy was set up to supervise all government departments concerned with foreign affairs and to coordinate Soviet foreign policy with that of the other communist states. It was under Khrushchev's direct control. 

A new practice was adopted in relation to the appointment of ambassadors to other communist countries. Prominent party officials, normally members of the Central Committee, were chosen to ensure that there was proper coordination of policy between parties as well as governments. 

Another new department of the Central Committee, the Department of Active Operations, was introduced. Its function was to coordinate the bloc disinformation program and conduct special political and disinformation operations in support of policy. It began by holding secret briefings of senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Committee of Information, and the security and intelligence services. The news agency Novosti was set up to serve the interests of this new department.

An important change was the transfer to the Central Committee apparatus of the Committee of Information, which had hitherto been subordinated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of its new functions was to prepare long-range studies and analyses for the Central Committee. Another was to establish contacts with foreign statesmen and other leading figures, either in their home countries or during their visits to the Soviet Union, and use them to influence Western governments. Its head was Georgiy Zhukov, a former agent of the Soviet intelligence service, who had many contacts among Western politicians, journalists, and cultural figures. He was himself an able journalist. 

Perhaps the most significant changes of all were the appointments of Mironov and Shelepin. Mironov had been head of the Leningrad branch of the K.G.B. While in that post he had studied operation Trust, in which the Leningrad O.G.P.U had played an active part. He was a friend of Brezhnev and had easy access to him. Shelepin was a friend of Mironov. It was Mironov who first drew Shelepin's attention to the role of the O.G.P.U in the N.E.P period. 

In 1958 Mironov and Shelepin discussed with Khrushchev and Brezhnev the idea of transforming the K.G.B from the typical secret political police force that it was into a flexible, sophisticated political weapon capable of playing an effective role in support of policy, as the O.G.P.U had done during the N.E.P. 

They were rewarded for this suggestion with posts in the Central Committee apparatus. Shelepin was made head of the Department of Party Organs and, later, chairman of the K.G.B; Mironov was made head of the Administrative Organs Department. 

In the autumn of 1958 Mironov's and Shelepin's suggestion was discussed, in the context of the performance of the K.G.B and its head, General Serov, by the Presidium of the Central Committee. Serov had delivered a report to the Presidium on the work of the K.G.B at home and abroad, and it became the focus for sharp criticism. The leading critic was Shelepin. The K.G.B under Serov, he said, had become a very effective police organization that, with its widespread net of informers and agents throughout the country, had successfully detected and controlled opposition elements among the population as well as agents of Western intelligence services. It had failed, however, to influence the views of the population in favor of the regime or to prevent the growth of undesirable political trends either at home or among anticommunists abroad. He praised the recent successes of the K.G.B in penetrating the secrets of Western governments, but said that its role was too passive and limited in that it had done nothing to help the strategic, political, economic, and ideological struggle with the capitalist powers. 

Shelepin continued that the main reason for the unsatisfactory situation in the KGB was that it had departed from the traditions and style of the O.G.P.U, its predecessor under Lenin. The O.G.P.U, although inexperienced, had made a greater contribution to implementing policy than any of its successors. As examples of what he meant, he referred to the Eurasian and Change of Signposts movements and the Trust. Unlike the O.G.P.U, the KGB had degenerated into a passive, repressive organization. Its methods were self-defeating because they served only to harden opposition and damage the prestige of the regime. The KGB had failed to collaborate with the security services of the other bloc countries on political matters. 

Shelepin commended Mironov's ideas and said that the K.G.B should be concerned with positive, creative political activity under the direction of the party leadership. A new, more important role should be given to disinformation. The Soviet Union, in common with the other communist countries, had vital internal and external intelligence assets that had been lying dormant, especially in the persons of the K.G.B agents among the Soviet intelligentsia. 

The Presidium decided to examine the new role of the K.G.B at the Twenty-first-Party Congress, which was due to be held in January/February 1959. The Soviet press confirmed in general terms that this examination had taken place. 

Under Mironov the Administrative Organs Department became very important. Its function was to supervise and coordinate the work of departments concerned with internal order, like the K.G.B, the Ministry of the Interior, the prosecutor's office, the Ministry of Justice, and the law courts. Mironov was chosen in order that he should imbue these institutions with the style and methods of Dzerzhinskiy, the O.G.P.U's chairman in the 1920's. 

Shelepin was appointed chairman of the K.G.B in December 1958. In May 1959 a conference of senior K.G.B officers was held in Moscow. It was attended by Kirichenko, representing the Presidium; the ministers of internal affairs and defense; members of the Central Committee; and some two thousand KGB officers. 

Shelepin reported to the conference on the new political tasks of the KGB.1 Some of the more specific points in his report were as follows: 

The "main enemies" of the Soviet Union were the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and all countries of NATO and other Western-supported military alliances. (It was the first time that West Germany, Japan, and the smaller countries had been so named in KGB documents.) 

The security and intelligence services of the whole bloc were to be mobilized to influence international relations in directions required by the new long-range policy and, in effect, to destabilize the "main enemies" and weaken the alliances between them. 

The efforts of the KGB agents in the Soviet intelligentsia were to be redirected outward against foreigners with a view to enlisting their help in the achievement of policy objectives. 

The newly established disinformation department was to work closely with all other relevant departments in the party and government apparatus throughout the country. To this end, all ministries of the Soviet Union and all first secretaries of republican and provincial party organizations were to be acquainted with the new political tasks of the KGB to enable them to give support and help when needed. 

Joint political operations were to be undertaken with the security and intelligence services of all communist countries. 

The report ended with the assurance that the Presidium had approved the new tasks of the KGB, attached great importance to their fulfillment, and was confident that the KGB staff would do its best to put the directive into practice. 

After the conference, a number of organizational changes were made in the KGB. The counterintelligence directorate was enlarged. Its three main tasks were: to influence, pass disinformation to, and recruit as agents members of the embassies of the capitalist and Third World countries in Moscow, as well as visiting journalists, businessmen, scientists, and academics; to carry out prophylactic political operations to neutralize and then use internal political opposition, especially from nationalistic, intellectual, and religious groups; and to carry out joint political operations with the security services of the other communist countries. 

Department D 

When Shelepin created the new disinformation department, Department D, in January 1959, he ensured that its work would be coordinated with the other disinformation services of the party and government machine: that is, the Central Committee, the Committee of Information, the disinformation department in the Soviet Military Intelligence Service, and the two new "activist methods" departments in the KGB (one serving Shelepin himself and the other serving the counterintelligence directorate). 

From the beginning Department D was subordinate to the Central Committee apparatus, which defined its requirements and objectives. It differed from the other disinformation services in that it used its own means and special channels available only to the KGB to disseminate disinformation. These channels are: secret agents at home and abroad; agents of influence abroad; penetrations of Western embassies and governments; technical and other secret means of provoking appropriate incidents or situations in support of policy—for example, border incidents, protest demonstrations, and so forth. 

Department D was given access to the executive branches of government and to departments of the Central Committee to enable it to prepare and carry out operations that required the approval or support of the party leadership or the government machine. Its closest contacts with the Central Committee were Mironov's Administrative Organs Department, Ponomarev's International Department, the Department of Foreign Policy, and the Department of Active Operations; and with the Soviet government through the State Committee of Science and Technology and the planning organs. There was particularly close cooperation between the new department and the disinformation department of the Military Intelligence Service. 

There were two experienced candidates for the post of head of the new department: Colonel Fedoseyev, head of the foreign intelligence faculty of the KGB Institute, who was a specialist both on internal KGB operations and on the use of emigre channels to penetrate American intelligence; and Colonel Agayants, head of the political intelligence faculty in the High Intelligence School and a specialist on the Middle East (Iran in particular) and Western Europe (France in particular). Shelepin chose Agayants. 

The new department consisted at the outset of fifty to sixty experienced intelligence and counterintelligence officers. Under Colonel Agayants was Colonel Grigorenko, a specialist in counterintelligence work at home and emigration operations abroad. He had been adviser to the Hungarian security service from 1953 to 1955, and then had worked in the counterintelligence directorate in headquarters as head of the department responsible for the surveillance of immigrants and repatriates. The department was abolished when Grigorenko moved to Department D. 

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

A disinformation section of some twenty officers was also set up in the KGB apparatus in East Germany under Litovkin, a specialist on penetration of the West German intelligence service.

7 

The New Role of Intelligence 

IN OUTLINE, the new tasks for the intelligence services of the bloc, in addition to their traditional intelligence-gathering and security functions, were, first, to help to create favorable conditions for the implementation of the long-range policy by disseminating strategic disinformation on disunity in the bloc and international communist movement in accordance with the weakness and evolution pattern; second, to contribute directly to the implementation of the policy and its strategies through the use of communist bloc and Western agents of influence; and third, to contribute to a shift in the military balance of power in communist favor by helping to accelerate the bloc's military and economic development through the collection of scientific and technical intelligence from the West and through the undermining of Western military programs. 

To take the last of these tasks first, it was considered by Soviet officials in 1959 that the communist bloc was lagging ten to fifteen years behind the United States, for example, in the field of military electronics. Through use of the bloc's intelligence potential, it was hoped to close the gap within five years.1 Conversely, through the disinformation potential of the bloc's security and intelligence services, it was hoped, as Shelepin put it, to confuse and disorientate Western military programs and divert them into useless, wasteful, and extravagant fields of expenditure. With this end in view, Department D, together with the Central Committee, took part in briefing Soviet scientists for their assignments at various international conferences where they have contacts with foreign scientists. 

Some of the other operations of Department D were known in outline to the author in their early stages. There were plans for an operation to influence the French government to leave NATO. Soviet experts were already convinced by 1959-60 that "contradictions" between the United States and France could be exploited to bring this about.2 

A long-term plan was in preparation to discredit anticommunist American labor leaders and to influence them to change their attitude toward contact with the communist trade unions. 

There was also a plan called "Actions Against American Institutions," in particular the CIA and FBI, details of which are not known to the author. 

An operation, carried out soon after Department D was formed, aimed to help isolate West Germany from NATO and the Western community. Experts in Jewish affairs in Department D prepared numerous letters for their agents to send to relatives in Israel and other countries that were calculated to arouse hostility to West Germany and to give a misleading impression of political developments in the Soviet Union. 

Of the greatest long-term significance was an order issued by Shelepin to Agayants at the end of 1959 to collaborate with the Central Committee's Department of Active Operations and with Albanian and Yugoslav representatives on a disinformation operation connected with the new long-range policy and relating to Soviet-Yugoslav-Albanian relations. 

A number of other reflections of the adoption of the new policy and the revival of disinformation came to the author's attention in the course of his work in Soviet intelligence. 

Early in 1959 a secret party letter warned party members against revealing state and party secrets. 

Genuine, potential Western sources of information on the new policy were suppressed. For example, the KGB arrested a valuable American agent in the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Colonel Popov of the G.R.U. 

Other potential openings for the West to obtain information on the policy were closed: for example, a special instruction was issued to KGB staff to step up the recruitment, compromise, and discrediting of Western scholars and experts on communist affairs visiting communist countries. 

An instruction was issued to KGB staff to give details to the disinformation department of all their existing intelligence sources and channels, so that, where appropriate, they could be used for disinformation purposes. 

New channels were planned and created for feeding disinformation to the West. In this context, three items deserve mention. Department D showed great interest in exploiting two special French sources belonging to Soviet counterintelligence: they asked for the controlling officer, Okulov, to be transferred to Department D. There is serious, unresolved evidence that Colonel Penkovskiy was planted on Western intelligence by the KGB. There has been publicity in the American press suggesting that an important FBI source on Soviet affairs, known as "Fedora," was under Soviet control while he was collaborating with the FBI in the 1960's.3 

The section of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate, led by Colonel Norman Borodin and responsible for the recruitment and handling of agents among foreign correspondents in the Soviet Union, was disbanded so as to avoid the creation of a central pool of agents all taking a suspiciously similar line. The agents were handed over to the appropriate geographical sections of the KGB to ensure that their disinformation activity was closely related to the particular situation in each country or area. 

Two former residents of Hitler's security service, with their nets of agents in the Ukraine, which were under KGB control, were prepared for planting on the West German intelligence service. 

In 1959 the head of Soviet counterintelligence, General Gribanov, issued an instruction to his staff to prepare operations to influence Western ambassadors in Moscow, in accordance with the requirements of the new policy. Western intelligence and security services—in particular, that of the French—had occasion to investigate Gribanov's activity against their ambassadors. Gribanov also instructed members of his staff, posing as senior officials of various Soviet government departments, to establish personal contact with, and exercise political influence over, the ambassadors in Moscow of all the developing countries. 

In 1960 a secret directive was issued by the KGB in Moscow to the intelligence service's representatives abroad and the security service at home on the influencing of foreign visitors to the Soviet Union, especially politicians and scholars; efforts were made to use, recruit, and discredit anticommunist politicians, journalists, scholars,and analysts of communist affairs during their visits to communist countries. For instance, an attempt was made to discredit a prominent American scholar, Professor Barghoorn, by harassing him in Moscow in 1963. Almost every Western security service has accumulated evidence on this subject. 

A special form of control over the Soviet press was established by the apparatus of the Central Committee so that the press could be used by the Central Committee and KGB for disinformation purposes. For instance, the KGB supplied Adzhubey, the chief editor of Izvestiya, with "controversial" material on internal conditions in the Soviet Union. 

The resources of the KGB's of the national republics were brought into play; for example, in the year 1957-58 alone, the KGB of the Ukraine put up for Moscow approval 180 operational proposals for the recruitment of, or the planting of agents on, foreigners inside or outside the Soviet Union. 

Direct attempts were made to exert political influence abroad. Instructions were issued to the KGB residents in Finland, Italy, and France to step up and exploit their penetration of the leadership of socialist and other political parties in order to bring about changes in the leadership and policies of those parties in accordance with the requirements of bloc policy.4 

In Finland, in 1961, the KGB resident, Zhenikhov, was working on a plan to remove from the political scene leading anticommunist leaders of the Finnish social democratic party like Tanner and Leskinen and to replace them with Soviet agents.5 

A KGB agent was planted on the leadership of the Swedish social democratic party. 

Assassinations were not excluded in the case of anticommunists who represented an obstacle to the successful implementation of bloc policy. For example, in 1959 the KGB secretly assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in West Germany. This is known thanks to the exposures of the former Soviet agent Stashinskiy, who assassinated Bandera on Shelepin's orders. 

The list could be expanded. But enough has been said to indicate that the entire Soviet intelligence potential was used to carry out operations in support of the first phase of the new long-range bloc policy; the same can be said of the intelligence potential of the other countries of the communist bloc.

Since even professional analysts in the West do not always realize clearly what the intelligence potential of the communist bloc in action may amount to in terms of exercising influence favorable to the bloc, it is desirable at this point to give at least some theoretical examples. 

Suppose, for instance, that a particular non-communist country becomes the target of the bloc's intelligence potential. This would imply that all the intelligence and counterintelligence staff of all the communist countries would review all their intelligence assets and make suggestions about what could be done to bring political influence to bear on the government of the country and on its policy and diplomacy, political parties, individual leaders, press, and so forth. It would imply that all the intelligence staff of the bloc countries under diplomatic or other official cover in the country concerned, which could amount to several hundred highly trained professionals plus several hundred secret agents among the country's nationals, would all be directed to work in different ways toward one objective according to one plan. The agents would be guided not only to obtain information, but also to take certain actions or to exercise influence wherever and whenever the plan required. Their combined capacity to affect governmental, press, and public opinion could well be considerable. 

The same would apply if the target was a group of non-communist countries; or a specific problem, such as the defense program of a non-communist country; or a particular Western attitude to the communist bloc or one of its members; or world public opinion on a particular policy; or issues such as the Vietnam War, alleged West German revanchisme, or the Middle East situation. 

In his speech on January 6, 1961, Khrushchev, after alluding to the fact that "the dictatorship of the working class has emerged beyond the confines of one country and become an international force," said that "in the conditions of today, socialism is in a position to determine, in growing measure, the character, methods and trends of international relations." It was the reorientation of the Central Committee apparatus, the mass organizations, and the diplomatic, intelligence, and security services of the bloc that provided Khrushchev and his allies with the means to change the character and methods of international relations. 

Some elements of the new bloc policy—like the introduction of economic reforms in the industry and agriculture of the Soviet Union and other communist states or the emphasis on peaceful coexistence, disarmament, and the improvement of diplomatic, trade, and other relations with non-communist countries—all of them reminiscent of the NEP period, were themselves means of misrepresenting the bloc's intentions and influencing the non-communist world in the first phase of the policy. Even more significant, and again reminiscent of the NEP period, were the striking changes in the style, quantity, and quality of information revealed by the communist world about itself. These changes were reflected in the wider access permitted to foreign visitors to the Soviet Union and most East European countries. They coincided in time with Shelepin's report and the intensive preparation of a program of political disinformation operations. The coincidence in timing helps to explain the changes.