Active measures were conducted by the Soviet and Russian security services and secret police organizations (Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, KGB, and FSB) to influence the course of world events, in addition to collecting intelligence and producing revised assessments of it. Active measures range "from media manipulations to special actions involving various degrees of violence". Beginning in the 1920s, they were used both abroad and domestically.[3]
Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence":[6]
Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, 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.[6]
Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed that Joseph Stalin 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 désinformation.[7][8]
Implementation
Guerrillas
Promotion of guerrilla and terrorist organizations worldwide
Soviet secret services have been described as "the primary instructors of guerrillas worldwide".[9][10][11] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."[12] He also claimed that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention". In 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[12]
Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa stated that operation "SIG" ("Zionist Governments"), devised in 1972, intended to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the United States. KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov 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[12]
Other widely publicized cases are murders of Russian communist Leon Trotsky and Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov by NKVD.
There were also allegations that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981. The Italian Mitrokhin Commission, headed by senator Paolo Guzzanti (Forza Italia), worked on the Mitrokhin Archives from 2003 to March 2006. The Mitrokhin Commission received criticism during and after its existence.[21] It was closed in March 2006 without any proof brought to its various controversial allegations, including the claim that Romano Prodi, former Prime Minister of Italy and former President of the European Commission, 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.[22]
The Islamic anti-Soviet Basmachi movement in Central Asia posed an early threat to the Bolshevik movement. The movement's roots lay in the anti-conscription violence of 1916 that erupted when the Russian Empire began to draft Muslims for army service in World War I.[24] In the months following the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in many parts of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil War began. Turkestani Muslim political movements attempted to form an autonomous government in the city of Kokand, in the Fergana Valley. The Bolsheviks launched an assault on Kokand in February 1918 and carried out a general massacre of up to 25,000 people.[citation needed] The massacre rallied support to the Basmachi who waged a guerrilla and conventional war that seized control of large parts of the Fergana Valley and much of Turkestan.[25][26] The group's notable leaders were Enver Pasha and, later, Ibrahim Bek. Soviet Russia responded by deploying special Soviet 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 the assassination of Pasha.[27][28]
Following World War II, various partisan organizations in the Baltic states, Poland and Western Ukraine fought for independence of their countries, which were under Soviet occupation, against Soviet forces. Many NKVD 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.[29]
Supporting political movements
According to Stanislav Lunev, GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements against the Vietnam War, which was a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".[9] Lunev claimed that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad".[9]
By the 1980s, the US intelligence community was skeptical of claims that attempted Soviet influence on the peace movement had a direct influence on the non-aligned part of the movement.[30] However, the KGB's 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 organization by the CIA.[30]
The World Peace Council was established on the orders of the Communist Party of the USSR in the late 1940s, and for over forty years carried out campaigns against western, mainly American, military action. Many organisations controlled or influenced by Communists affiliated themselves with it. According to Oleg Kalugin,
... the Soviet intelligence [was] really unparalleled. ... The [KGB] programs—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—[were] targeted at politicians, the academic community, at [the] public at large. ...[6]
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 in Western Europe as a counterweight to Soviet missiles in Eastern Europe,[31] and that they used the Soviet Peace Committee to organize and finance anti-American demonstrations in western Europe.[32][33][34] The Soviet Union first deployed the RSD-10 Pioneer (called SS-20 Saber in the West) in its European territories in March 1976, a mobile, concealable intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) containing three nuclear 150-kiloton warheads.[35] The SS-20's range of 4,700–5,000 kilometers (2,900–3,100 mi) was great enough to reach Western Europe from well within Soviet territory; the range was just below the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II) Treaty minimum range for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).5,500 km (3,400 mi).[36][37][38] Tretyakov made further stated that "[t]he KGB was responsible for creating the entire nuclear winter story to stop the Pershing II missiles,"[32] and that they fed misinformation to western peace groups and thereby influenced a key scientific paper on the topic by western scientists.[39]
According to intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, the KGB in Britain was unable to infiltrate major figures in the CND, and the Soviets relied on influencing "less influential contacts" which were more receptive to the Moscow line. Andrew wrote that MI5 "found no evidence that KGB funding to the British peace movement went beyond occasional payment of fares and expenses to individuals."[40]
Attempts to discredit the Central Intelligence Agency, using writer Philip Agee (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[41]
Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the Ku Klux Klan, placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (Operation PANDORA)[42]
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[45]
Make US military aid to the El Salvador 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[45]
Starting rumors that fluoridated drinking water was in fact a plot by the US government to maintain population control[43]
Fabrication of the story that the AIDS virus was manufactured by US scientists at Fort Detrick; the story was spread by Russian-born biologist Jakob Segal.[47] In a secondary role to the KGB during the operation, former East German spymaster Markus Wolf admitted, during a visit to Italy in 1998, the role of the HVA in spreading AIDS conspiracy theories[48]
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,[49] in media, parliamentary debates, demonstrations and speeches by leading politicians around the world.[45]
Soviet intelligence, as part of active measures, frequently spread disinformation to distort their adversaries' decision-making. However, sometimes this information filtered back through the KGB's own contacts, leading to distorted reports.[50]Lawrence Bittman also addressed Soviet intelligence blowback in The KGB and Soviet Disinformation, 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."[51]
Russian Federation active measures, 1991 to present
Active measures have continued in the post-Soviet Russian Federation and are in many ways based on Cold War schematics.[1] After the annexation of Crimea, 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.[52]
The introduction of the Internet, specifically social media offered new opportunities for active measures. The Kremlin-affiliated Internet Research Agency, also referred to as the Information Warfare Branch, was established in 2013.[57] This agency is devoted to spreading disinformation through the Internet, the most well-known and prominent operation being its part in the interference in the 2016 US presidential election.[58] According to the House Intelligence Committee, 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, "[The Russian] 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."[59]
^Pacepa, Ion Mihai & Rychlak, Ronald J. (25 June 2013). Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism. Washington, D.C.: WND Books. pp. 4–6, 34–39, & 75. ISBN978-1-93648-860-5.
^Manning, Martin J. & Romerstein, Herbert (30 November 2004). Historical Dictionary of American Propaganda. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. pp. 82–83. ISBN978-0-31329-605-5.
^ abcLunev, Stanislav (1998). Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc. ISBN0-89526-390-4.
^Radzinsky, Edvard (1997). Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives. New York City: Doubleday. ISBN0-385-47954-9.
^Solovyov, Vladimir & Klepikova, Elena (1984). Yuri Andropov: A Secret Passage into the Kremlin. Translated by Daniels, Guy. London, UK: R. Hale. ISBN0-7090-1630-1.
^Victor Spolnikov, "Impact of Afghanistan's War on the Former Soviet Republics of Central Asia", in Hafeez Malik, ed, Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 101.
^Uzbekistan, By Thomas R McCray, Charles F Gritzner, pg. 30, 2004, ISBN1438105517.
^Martha B. Olcott, The Basmachi or Freemen's Revolt in Turkestan, 1918-24, 355.
^ abEarley, Pete (2007). Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War. New York City: Berkley Books. pp. 167–177. ISBN978-0-399-15439-3.
^Cant, James (May 1998). "The development of the SS-20"(PDF). Glasgow Thesis Service. Archived(PDF) from the original on 13 February 2022. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
^Andrew, Christopher & Mitrokhin, Vasili (2001). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. pp. 237–239. ISBN0-465-00312-5.
^Andrew, Christopher & Mitrokhin, Vasili (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. London, UK: Allen Lane. Ch. 14. ISBN0-14-028487-7.
^ abcdAndrew, Christopher & Mitrokhin, Vasili (2005). The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB in the World. London, UK: Allen Lane. ISBN978-0-71399-359-2.
^Selvage, Douglas (1 October 2019). "Operation "Denver": The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB's AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985–1986 (Part 1)". Journal of Cold War Studies. 21 (4): 71–123. doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00907. ISSN1520-3972.
^Bittman, Ladislav (1985). The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider's View. Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey's. pp. 49–52. ISBN978-0-08-031572-0.
Bittman, Lawrence (February 2000). "Disinforming the Public". Perspective. X (3). Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy. Archived from the original on 10 June 2008.
