NEW LIES FOR OLD
The Communist Strategy of Deception and
Disinformation
ANATOLIY GOLITSYN
TO THE MEMORY OF
Anna Akhmatova
CONSCIENCE AND SOUL OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Contents
Editors's Foreword xiii
Author's Note xvii
PART ONE
The Two Methodologies
1 The Problems Facing Western Analysts 3
The General Difficulties 3 — The Special Difficulties: Disinformation
4 — Disinformation in Communist Regimes S
2 The Patterns of Disinformation:
"Weakness and Evolution" 10
The "Weakness and Evolution" Pattern 10 — The Precedent of the NEP
1 1— The Results of the NEP 16— The Lesson of the NEP
3 The Patterns of Disinformation:
"Facade and Strength" 18
Official Speeches and Party Documents 20 — Special Disinformation
Operations 2 1
4 The Patterns of Disinformation:
Transition 23
The Misrepresentation of De-Stalinization 24 — Anticommunism 25 —
Anti-Stalinism 26 — De-Stalinization in Practice 29 — Improvised De-
Stahnization from 1953 to 1956 29— Re-Stalinization 31
5 The New Policy and Disinformation Strategy 33
The New Policy 34 — The Disadvantages of Apparent Unity 36 — The
Advantages of Apparent Disunity 37 — The Political Use of De-
Stalinization 39 — Sources of Inspiration 41
6 The Shelepin Report and Changes in Organization 46
Department D. 50
viii CONTENTS
7 The New Role of Intelligence 52
8 Sources of Information 58
Western Sources 58 — Communist Sources 61 — The Analysis of Infor-
mation from Communist Sources 62
9 The Vulnerability of Western Assessments 65
The Consequences of Different Patterns of Disinformation 67 — The
Crisis in the Bloc, 1949-1956 68— The Second World War 68
10 Communist Intelligence Successes,
Western Failures, and the Crisis in
Western Studies 70
Factors in Communist Intelligence Successes 71 — Obsolete Western
Methods of Analyzing Communist Sources 73 — The Western Failure
to Detect Disinformation and Its Current Pattern 76
11 Western Errors 79
12 The New Methodology 85
Factors Underlying the New Methodology 86 — The New Methodology
and Western Sources 93 — The New Methodology and Communist
Sources 96 — Official Communist Sources 96 — Unofficial Communist
Sources 100 — "Secret" Communist Sources 101 — To Sum Up . . . 102
PART TWO The Disinformation Program and Its Impact on the West
13 The First Disinformation Operation:
The Soviet-Yugoslav "Dispute" of 1958-60 107
Yugoslavia's Final Reconciliation with the Bloc 107 — Open Evidence of
Yugoslav Participation in the Formulation of the Policy 1 10 — Further
Anomalies in the "Dispute" 1 14 — Objectives of the Soviet- Yugoslav
"Dispute" of 1955-60 118
14 The Second Disinformation Operation:
The "Evolution" of the Soviet Regime,
Part One: Major Changes in the USSR 120
Economic Changes 120 — Political Changes 124 ~ Changes in Dipio-
CONTENTS IX
macy 127 — The Influence of Ideology 131 — The Revival of De-Stalin-
ization 135 — The Position of Soviet Scientists and Other Intellectuals
139 — Objectives of Strategic Disinformation on Soviet "Evolution" and
"Moderation" 141
15 The Third Disinformation Operation:
The Soviet- Albanian "Dispute" and "Split" 143
The Overt Picture of Soviet-Albanian Relations 143 — Inside Informa-
tion and Its Interpretation 144 — Anomalies in the "Dispute" and "Spht"
147 — Comparison with the Tito-Stalin "Split" 149 — Conclusion 151 —
Objectives of the Disinformation Operation 152
16 The Fourth Disinformation Operation:
The Sino-Soviet "Split" 153
CPSU-CPC Collaboration, 1944-49, 153— Sino-Soviet Friction, 1950-
57, and Its Removal 156 — The Historical Evidence of Sino-Soviet
Differences 162 — The Form of Sino-Soviet Differences 163 — The
Content of Sino-Soviet Differences 168 — Ideological Differences
168 — Economic Differences 170 — Military Differences 172 — Differ-
ences in National Interest 175 — Differences in Political and Diplomatic
Strategy and Tactics 177 — Differences over Tactics for Non-bloc
Communist Parties 179 — The Technique of the "Spht" 179 — Strategic
Objectives of the "Split" 182
17 The Fifth Disinformation Operation:
Romanian "Independence" 183
Special Relations between the Romanians and Soviets 184 — The
"Evidence" of Soviet-Romanian Differences 186 — The Motives for the
Projection of Romanian "Independence" 191 — Objectives of the
Disinformation Operation 194
18 The Sixth Disinformation Operation:
The Alleged Recurrence of Power Struggles in the Soviet,
Chinese, and Other Parties 195
Succession in the Soviet Leadership: New Stabihzing Factors 196 —
The Failure of Lenin and Stalin to Solve the Succession Problem 197 —
Khrushchev's "Removal"an Agreed Transfer of the Leadership to
Brezhnev 200 — Objectives of Disinformation on Power Struggles 206
X CONTENTS
19 The Seventh Disinformation Operation: "Democratization" in
Czechoslovakia in 1968 208
The Western Interpretation 208 — Western Errors 209 — A Rein-
terpretation of Czechoslovak "Democratization" 210 — The Role of
Historians and Economists in "Democratization" 211 — The Roles of
Barak and Sik 212 — The Role of Writers in "Democratization" 214 —
The "Struggle" between the Novotny "Conservatives" and the Dubcek
"Progressives" 216 — Conclusions 220 — Communist Gains and Losses
from "Democratization" 221 — Possible Implications of "Democratization
"for the West 223 — Objectives of the "Quiet Revolution" 224
20 The Second Disinformation Operation: The
"Evolution" of the Soviet Regime.
Part Two: The "Dissident" Movement 227
Sakharov 231 — Objectives of Disinformation on "Dissidence" 241
21 The Eighth Disinformation Operation:
Continuing Eurocommunist Contacts with
the Soviets — The New Interpretation
of Eurocommunism 243
The Manifestations of Eurocommunism 244 — The French Party 245 —
The Italian Party 246— The Spanish Party 246— The British Party
247— Joint Statements 247— The Soviet Attitude 248— The Yugoslavs
and Romanians 249 — The New Analysis 240 — The Emergence of
Eurocommunism 250 — The Revival of Dead Issues 251 — Exploitation
of the "Independent" Image of Eurocommunist Parties 252 — The
Inconsistencies in Eurocommunism 253 — Continuing Eurocommunist
Contacts with the Soviets 255 — The New Interpretation of
Eurocommunism 257 — The Possible Adverse Effects on International
Communism 259 — Implications for Western Propaganda 261 —
Conclusion 261 — Objectives of Eurocommunism 262
22 The Role of Disinformation and
Intelligence Potential in the Realization of
the Communist Strategies 263
The Major Strategy 264 — The Disinformation and Strategic Role of
Yugoslavia 266 — Sino-Soviet Disinformation and the Cultural Rev-
olution: A New Interpretation 268 — Sino-Soviet Duality and Commu-
nist Strategy in the Third World 272 — Sino-Soviet Duality and Mili-
CONTENTS XI
tary Strategy 274 — Sino-Soviet Duality and the Revolutionary Move-
ment 279 — The Advantages of Sino-Soviet Duahty 281 — The Intelli-
gence Potential and Agents of Influence 282 — Strategic Exploitation of
KCB Agents among Prominent Soviet Intellectuals and Religious
Leaders 29 1
23 The Evidence of Overall Co-ordination
between the Communist Governments and Parties 295
Coordination within the Bloc 295 — Summit Meetings 296 — Coordi-
nation through Diplomatic Channels 299 — Bilateral Coordination
within the Bloc 301 — Coordination between Bloc and Non-bloc Parties
306 — Conclusions 307
24 The Impact of the Disinformation Program 309
The Shaping of Western Assessments of the Communist World 309 —
The Effect on Western Policy Formation 313 — The Practical Effects
on Western PoUcies 316 — Conclusion 317
PART THREE The Final Phase and the Western Counter- Strategy
25 The Final Phase 327
Western Interpretation of Events in Poland 328 — A New Analysis
328 — Developments in the 1970s 320 — Final Preparations for the
"Renewal" 330 — The Polish Communist Party within Solidarity 332 —
Motives for the Creation of Solidarity 332 — The Threat to the West
from the Polish "Renewal" 335 — Sino-Soviet Relations 343 — The
Third World 344 — Disarmament 345 — Convergence 345 — The
Worldwide Communist Federation 346 — Comments on the
Appointment of Andropov and on Other Developments Following the
Death of Brezhnev 347 — Sino-Soviet Developments 350 — The
Attempted Assassination of the Pope 351
26 Where Now? 355
Reassessment 357 — End to National Rivalries 360 — Ideological Soli-
darity 361 — Inward Heart- Searching 362 — Widening Defense Alli-
ances 362 — Reorientation of Intelligence Services 363 — Diplomatic
CONTENTS
Disengagement 363 — Denial of Trade and Technology 36
Isolating Communist Parties 364 — Addressing the Peoples of the
Communist Bloc 365— The Next Half Century 365
Glossary 367
Notes 371
Editors' Foreword
VERY RARELY disclosures of information from behind the Iron Curtain
throw new light on the roots of communist thought and action and
challenge accepted notions on the operation of the communist system.
We believe that this book does both these things. It is nothing if not
controversial. It rejects conventional views on subjects ranging from
Khrushchev's overthrow to Tito's revisionism, from Dubcek's
liberalism to Ceausescu's independence, and from the dissident
movement to the Sino-Soviet split. The author's analysis has many
obvious implications for Western policy. It will not be readily
accepted by those who have for long been committed to opposing
points of view. But we believe that the debates it is likely to provoke
will lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of the threat from
international communism and, perhaps, to a firmer determination to
resist it.
The author's services to the party and the KGB and the unusually
long periods he spent in study, mainly in the KGB but also with the
University of Marxism-Leninism and the Diplomatic School, make
the author uniquely well qualified as a citizen of the West to write
about the subjects covered in this book.
He was born near Poltava, in the Ukraine, in 1926. He was thus
brought up as a member of the postrevolutionary generation. From
1933 onward he lived in Moscow. He joined the communist youth
movement (Komsomol) at the age of fifteen while he was a cadet in
military school. He became a member of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1945 while studying at the artillery school
for officers at Odessa.
In the same year he entered military counterinteUigence. On
graduation from the Moscow school of military counterespionage in
1946, he joined the Soviet intelligence service. While working in its
headquarters he attended evening classes at the University of
Marxism-Leninism, from which he graduated in 1948. From
xiv EDITORS'FOREWORD
1948 to 1950 he studied in the counterintelligence faculty of the High
Intelligence School; also, between 1949 and 1952 he completed a
correspondence course with the High Diplomatic School.
In 1952 and early 1953 he was involved, with a friend, in drawing
up a proposal to the Central Committee on the reorganization of
Soviet intelligence. The proposal included suggestions on the
strengthening of counterintelligence, on the wider use of the satellite
intelligence services, and on the reintroduction of the "activist style"
into intelligence work. In connection with this proposal, he attended a
meeting of the Secretariat chaired by Stalin and a meeting of the
Presidium chaired by Malenkov and attended by Khrushchev,
Brezhnev, and Bulganin.
For three months in 1952-53 the author worked as a head of section
in the department of the Soviet intelligence service responsible for
counterespionage against the United States. In 1953 he was posted to
Vienna, where he served for two years under cover as a member of the
apparat of the Soviet High Commission. For the first year he worked
against Russian emigres, and for the second against British
intelligence. In 1954 he was elected to be a deputy secretary of the
party organization in the KGB residency in Vienna, numbering
seventy officers. On return to Moscow he attended the KGB Institute,
now the KGB Academy, as a full-time student for four years,
graduating from there with a law degree in 1959. As a student of the
institute and as a party member, he was well placed to follow the
power struggle in the Soviet leadership that was reflected in secret
party letters, briefings, and conferences.
From 1959 to 1960, at a time when a new long-range policy for the
bloc was being formulated and the KGB was being reorganized to
play its part in it, he served as a senior analyst in the NATO section of
the Information Department of the Soviet intelligence service. He was
then transferred to Finland, where, under cover as vice-consul in the
Soviet embassy in Helsinki, he worked on counterintelligence matters
until his break with the regime in December 1961.
By 1956 he was already beginning to be disillusioned with the
Soviet system. The Hungarian events of that year intensified his
disaffection. He concluded that the only practical way to fight the
regime was from abroad and that, armed with his inside knowledge of
the KGB, he would be able to do so effectively. Having reached
EDITORS FOREWORD XV
his decision, he began systematically to ehcit and commit to memory
information that he thought would be relevant and valuable to the
West. The adoption of the new, aggressive long-range communist
policy precipitated his decision to break with the regime. He felt that
the necessity of warning the West of the new dimensions of the threat
that it was facing justified him in abandoning his country and facing
the personal sacrifices involved. His break with the regime was a
deliberate and long-premeditated political act. Immediately on his
arrival in the United States, he sought to convey a warning to the
highest authorities in the U.S. government on the new political
dangers to the Western world stemming from the harnessing of all the
political resources of the communist bloc, including its inteUigence
and security services, to the new long-range policy.
From 1962 onward the author devoted a large proportion of his
time to the study of communist affairs as an outside observer reading
both the communist and Western press. He began work on this book.
While working on the book he continued to bring to the attention of
American and other Western authorities his views on the issues
considered in it, and in 1968 allowed American and British officials to
read the manuscript as it then stood. Although the manuscript has
since been enlarged to cover the events of the last decade and revised
as the underlying communist strategy became clearer to the author,
the substance of the argument has changed little since 1968. Owing to
the length of the manuscript, a substantial part of it has been held over
for publication at a later date.
With few exceptions, those Western officials who were aware of
the views expressed in the manuscript, especially on the Sino-Soviet
spht, rejected them. In fact, over the years it became increasingly
clear to the author that there was no reasonable hope of his analysis of
communist affairs being seriously considered in Western official
circles. At the same time, he became further convinced that events
continued to confirm the validity of his analysis, that the threat from
international communism was not properly understood, and that this
threat would shortly enter a new and more dangerous phase. The
author therefore decided to publish his work with the intention of
alerting a wider sector of world public opinion to the dangers as he
sees them, in the hope of stimulating a new
xvi EDiTORS'FOREWORD
approach to the study of communism and of provoking a more
coherent, determined, and effective response to it by those who
remain interested in the preservation of free societies in the noncom-
munist world.
In order to give effect to his decision to publish, the author asked
the four of us, all former U.S. or British government officials, for
editorial advice and help. Three of us have known the author and his
views for twelve years or more. We can testify to his Sisyphean
efforts to convince others of the validity of what he has to say. We
have the highest regard for his personal and professional integrity. The
value of his services to national security has been officially recognized
by more than one government in the West. Despite the rejection of his
views by many of our former colleagues, we continue to believe that
the contents of this book are of the greatest importance and relevance
to a proper understanding of contemporary events. We were,
therefore, more than willing to respond to the author's requests for
help in editing his manuscript for publication, and we commend the
book for the most serious study by all who are interested in relations
between the communist and noncommunist worlds.
The preparation of the manuscript has been undertaken by the
author with the help of each of us, acting in an individual and private
capacity.
The author is a citizen of the United States of America and an
Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
STEPHEN DE MOWBRAY
ARTHUR MARTIN
VASIA C. GMIRKIN
SCOTT MILER
Author's Note
THIS BOOK is the product of nearly twenty years of my life. It presents
my convictions that, throughout that period, the West has
misunderstood the nature of changes in the communist world and has
been misled and outmaneuvered by communist guile. My researches
have not only strengthened my belief, but have led me to a new
methodology by which to analyze communist actions. This
methodology takes into account the dialectical character of communist
strategic thinking. It is my hope that the methodology will come to be
used by students of communist affairs throughout the Western world.
I accept sole responsibility for the contents of the book. In writing it,
I have received no assistance of any kind from any government or
other organization. I submitted the text to the appropriate US
authorities, who raised no objection to its publication on grounds of
national security.
For the transHteration of Russian names I have used the system
adopted by US government agencies. The transHteration of Chinese
names follows the old system.
I wish to thank my friends, Stephen de Mowbray and Arthur
Martin, who did the lion's share of the editing and helped me
throughout with their editorial advice. I thank, too, Vasia C. Gmirkin
and Scott Miler for their contributions to editing and for their editorial
advice.
I am grateful to PC, PW, RH, PH, and AK for their dedication in
typing the manuscript, to the wives of my friends who suffered in
silence during its preparation, and especially to my wife, Svetlana, for
her encouragement and her forbearance.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to two of my American friends,
who will remain unnamed, for their help and their efforts in bringing
my manuscript to the attention of the publishers, Dodd, Mead &
Company. The publishers deserve my admiration for
xvii
xviii AUTHOR'S NOTE
their grasp of the significance of the manuscript and for having the
courage to publish such a controversial book. I am especially grateful
to Allen Klots, of Dodd, Mead & Company, who revealed a great
personal interest in the publication and also made the final editing of
the manuscript.
Finally, I thank the Soviet government and party for the excellent
educational facilities that made this book possible; and I thank
Russian history and literature for the inspiration they gave when
guiding me toward my decision of conscience to serve the people
rather than the party.
ANATOLIY GOLITSYN
Men will not receive the truth from their enemies and it is very seldom
offered to them by their friends; on this very account 1 have frankly
uttered it.
Alexis de Toqueville,
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
New lies for old.
Attributed to Anna Akhmatova
PART ONE
The Two Methodologies
The Problems Facing Western Analysts
THE NONCOMMUNIST WORLD devotes considerable effort to the
study of the communist world, and rightly so, since Western
policy toward the communist world is based on Western
assessments of the situation therein. Many institutions have sprung up
in the United States, Great Britain, France, and elsewhere to study
communist problems. Apart from traditional historical studies of
prerevolutionary Russia and China, new specialities have been
invented, such as "Sovietology" or the more limited "Kremlinol-ogy,"
which study the policy-making level in the Soviet Union. Analogous
specialities have been established in the fields of "China-watching"
and East European studies.
The results of Western studies are valid only if two sorts of
difficulty are successfully overcome: the general difficulties stemming
from the concern for secrecy displayed by communist regimes and the
special difficulties arising from their use of disinformation. The failure
of current Western studies is due in large part to the failure to
appreciate the second set of difficulties.
The General Difficulties
The general difficulties and obstacles in the way of Western studies
derive from the nature of communist regimes and are broadly
recognized in the West. Principal among these difficulties are:
4 NEW LIES FOR OLD
• Special measures taken to prevent leakage of secret information relating
to problems of policy-making and its execution, such as the payment of a 15
percent salary supplement to KGB officers for maintaining secrecy.
• The existence of immensely powerful security service resources devoted
to protecting state secrets and suppressing true freedom of expression.
• The party and state monopoly over the publishing and communications
media and the dissemination of information for both internal and external
consumption.
• Effective control and observation of foreign embassies, journalists, and
visitors to communist countries and of their contacts in those countries.
In principle, these measures are not new; they are the concomitants of all
totalitarian systems, which apply them with varying techniques and degrees
of efficiency.
Although these difficulties complicate the study in the West of communist
regimes and policies, they do not make it impossible. Western scholars have
accumulated experience in dealing with the difficulties. The eyewitness
accounts of many former inhabitants of the communist world now resident in
the West have proved extremely helpful to the serious study of communist
regimes and their problems in the past. If these general difficulties were the
only ones. Western assessments of the situation in the communist world
might be more or less accurate; however, there are other, special difficulties.
The Special Difficulties: Disinformation
The special difficulties derive from the deliberate efforts of communist
governments to mislead and misdirect Western studies and assessments.
These deliberate efforts are known as disinformation (in Russian,
dezinformatsiya). The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia says that the word is taken
from two French roots, de(s), implying removal or elimination, and
information, meaning knowledge." The GSE defines disinformation as the
dissemination through press and radio of false data with the purpose of
misleading public opinion. It goes on to say that the capitalist press and radio
broadly use disinformation to deceive the people of the world and to portray
PROBLEMS FACING WESTERN ANALYSTS 5
the new war that the Anglo-American imperialist bloc are preparing as
defensive and the peaceful poHcy of the Soviet Union and the people's
democracies as aggressive.
This would have been a broadly accurate definition of disinforma-
tion if the alleged roles of the "imperialist" and Soviet blocs had been
reversed. In fact, disinformation has been used to a varying extent
throughout the history of the Soviet Union.
This book is primarily concerned with the communist use of
strategic disinformation. The term means a systematic effort to
disseminate false information and to distort or withhold information
so as to misrepresent the real situation in, and policies of, the
communist world and thereby to confuse, deceive, and influence the
noncommunist world, to jeopardize its policies, and to induce Western
adversaries to contribute unwittingly to the achievement of communist
objectives. Since 1958 a program of strategic political disinformation
operations has been brought into effect. Its purpose has been to create
favorable conditions for the implementation of long-range communist
bloc policy, to impede the adoption of effective countermeasures or
policies by the noncommunist world, and to secure strategic gains for
world communism. An understanding of the disinformation program
is crucial to a correct analysis of the situation in the communist world,
but its existence has been either ignored or discounted in the West. An
attempt will be made in this book to explain, on the basis of the
author's inside information and new methodology, the role of the
disinformation program and the techniques employed in it.
Disinformation in Communist Regimes
It is not only by communist governments that disinformation is
practiced. Nevertheless, disinformation plays a more significant role
in communist regimes than in any other type. Its role is determined by
the particular ways in which communist regimes respond to crises
within their systems, by the unlimited extent of communist external
objectives, and by the communist capacity for executing a worldwide,
long-term, offensive political strategy.
The role of disinformation in communist regimes can be clarified
by comparing communist and democratic systems in the manner
b NEW LIES FOR OLD
in which they respond to internal crises and in the nature of their
external policies.
In democratic societies internal crises are usually open and limited
in their extent. A democratic system allows for the absorption of the
forces of popular resentment through democratic elections, judicial
processes, and flexible responses in the form of negotiation and
mediation. For this reason political or social protest movements do not
normally lead to revolts of the entire population against the regime.
Crises usually result in some readjustments in the system and may seal
the fate of individual politicians, groups, or parties, but the basic
stability of the system remains unaffected. This kind of flexible,
democratic response could be seen in the United States during the
campaign against the Vietnam War and during the Watergate crisis
and in France after the events of May 1968.
In communist regimes crises are usually hidden from the outside
world; because of the absence of democratic processes and the
suppression of internal opposition, popular political, social, and eco-
nomic discontents accumulate and threaten to develop into serious
upheavals or revolts of the entire population against the system as a
whole. This happened in Hungary in 1956. The manner of solving
such a crisis in a communist system is normally arbitrary and
authoritarian.
As far as external policies are concerned, those of noncommunist
countries are normally dictated by national interest and have limited,
short-term objectives. Except in time of war, they are usually
defensive. Democratic governments deal directly with the govern-
ments of other countries and are constrained in their dealings with the
opposition except in the event of civil war. Democratic governments
tend to be either disinclined or unprepared to take advantage of crises
in other countries that they may or may not regard as adversaries.
Communist external policy, on the other hand, is global, ideologi-
cal, and long-range, and has the final objective of world domination. It
is inherently inchned to take the initiative unless it is forced onto the
defensive by an extraordinary combination of circumstances.
Whatever the appearances, communist foreign policy also tends to
place considerable emphasis on its dealings with the extreme left-wing
opposition to the established government as well as on its dealings
with the government itself. Communism is always
PROBLEMS FACING WESTERN ANALYSTS 7
inclined, and usually prepared, to take advantage of any crisis in a
noncommunist country; it is required to do so by its long-term,
unlimited objectives.
The differences between communist and noncommunist systems in
their reactions to internal crises and in their external policies
determine the different roles of disinformation in their respective
systems. Democratic systems, being more open and therefore inher-
ently more stable politically, do not need disinformation to hide the
internal crises that occur from time to time and the means by which
they are resolved. Crises become common knowledge and cannot be
concealed. The Watergate crisis is a case in point. The main condition
for the successful solution of such a crisis is that it should become
public knowledge; therefore, there is no place for disinformation.
Although democratic governments do manage news to some extent to
project a better image of their performance, the use of special,
clandestine methods for internal purposes is liable to be disclosed and
exploited by the opposition in the next election campaign. In external
policy democratic governments may practice disinformation on a
limited scale in pursuit of their limited, national, and normally
defensive objectives, but such disinformation tends to be on a modest
scale and restricted to the military and counterintelligence fields.
In communist regimes the role of disinformation is entirely differ-
ent. It is conditioned in part by the inherent instability of communist
systems. The political vulnerability of communist regimes, their
concern for stabiHty, and their undemocratic methods of resolving
internal crises obhge them to use disinformation on a wide scale in
order to conceal and dispel the threats to their existence and to present
themselves in a favorable light as stable forms of society. The internal
role of disinformation is, on the one hand, to conceal the
undemocratic, antinational, unlawful, and even criminal methods of
resolving internal crises and, on the other, to minimize or neutralize
internal antiregime activities while at the same time preventing or
neutralizing any attempt from outside to foment and exploit those
activities.
The special role of disinformation is enhanced by the aggressive
and ambitious character of communist external policy. This aims at
promoting and establishing communist regimes in noncommunist
countries throughout the world by giving support to the extreme
8 NEW LIES FOR OLD
left-wing opposition, by gaining temporary political allies, by exploiting
and deepening whatever internal crises may occur, and even by
creating artificial crises. In order to be successful, such a policy needs
a cloak or screen to mask or distort its specific objectives, tactics, and
maneuvers while at the same time it creates favorable conditions in
the countries concerned for the achievement of its goals.
Disinformation provides this cloak or screen and also a means of
exerting influence. It is the combination of aggressiveness with
disinformation that gives communist policy its conspiratorial character.
This combination is not a matter of speculation but an existing and
constant reality in communist activity that cannot be arbitrarily
ignored by Western governments and scholars without affecting the
accuracy and realism of their assessments of the communist world.
The scope and scale of disinformation activity by communist
regimes is virtually unlimited. There are no legal or political obstacles
to disinformation operations. A police state with its centralized
authority, its total control over resources, its untrammeled ability to
execute maneuvers and sudden shifts in policy, and its immunity from
the pressures of organized public opinion offers tremendous
advantages for disinformation operations as compared with a demo-
cratic system.
Given total control over the communications media, communist
governments need have no fear of adverse publicity; they can say one
thing in public and do the opposite in private with complete impunity.
They can also use for disinformation purposes the facilities of their
intelligence and security services, which operate on a scale and with
an immunity unparalleled in the West.
Given these advantages, it is not surprising that communist regimes
should engage in disinformation at a state level as a significant part of
their activities; they have unlimited opportunities to practice total
disinformation, that is to say, to use all possible types of, and channels
for, disinformation.
Communist disinformation operations are controlled at the highest
level of government. They serve to support the interests of long-range
policy, and their forms, patterns, and objectives are therefore
determined by the nature of the policy in any given period.
In assessing the potentialities of communist strategic disinforma-
tion, it should be remembered that during the Second World War
PROBLEMS FACING WESTERN ANALYSTS 9
the Western allies showed themselves capable of devising ingenious
and effective military and strategic deception operations. The three
main conditions for the success of these operations were the existence
of clearly defined and agreed allied war aims, the wartime system of
press and radio censorship, and the insight the allies had gained into
German intelligence, particularly through their ability to decipher
German communications. In 1958-60 the communist regimes enjoyed
comparable conditions and advantages in relation to the West.
The Patterns of Disinformation:
"Weakness and Evolution"
THREE PATTERNS OF COMMUNIST STRATEGIC DISINFORMA-
TION may be distinguished: a pattern for a period in which a
specific, long-range policy is being pursued; a pattern for a
period of crisis in a communist regime or its policy; and a pattern for a
transitional period.
The "Weakness and Evolution" Pattern
The pattern of disinformation used during the implementation of a
long-range policy may be called the "weakness and evolution" pattern,
or the pattern of "calculated ideological moderation." Its aim is to
calm the fears of the adversaries of international communism by
understating real communist strength and to confound the policies of
those adversaries by masking the realities of communist policy.
When following this pattern, therefore, disinformation reflects real
or imaginary weaknesses, splits, and crises in the communist world
and projects an image of evolution away from an ideological toward a
conventional, national system. The intention is that the nations of the
noncommunist world, accepting the alleged disunity and evolution of
the communist world as genuine, will fail to respond effectively to
communist offensive strategy and, in their confusion, will be induced
to make practical miscalculations and mistakes in their dealings with
the communist world. The major role of disinformation in the
weakness and evolution pattern is to conceal
PATTERNS : WEAKNESS AND EVOLUTION 11
and misrepresent the real nature, objectives, tactics, and techniques of
communist pohcy.
In order to gain and exploit temporary, tactical political allies and
to avoid alarming them, efforts are made to conceal or understate the
actual strength and aggressiveness of communism. Factual
information favorable to communist regimes is withheld or down-
graded; unfavorable information is disclosed, leaked, or invented.
Given that communist, unlike democratic, governments are not
concerned about their electoral prospects, they can afford to reveal
true or false information unfavorable to themselves. During a period
of policy implementation, real and artificial weaknesses in the system
are emphasized; readjustments and solutions are presented as failures;
ideological differences between communist and noncommunist
systems are played down; calculated moderation in, and even some
departures from, communist dogma are permitted; common features
and common interests between communist and democratic systems
are overemphasized or exaggerated; long-range communist objectives
and coordinated action in pursuit of them are hidden. But the major
feature of this pattern is the projection of alleged splits and crises in
the communist world and the alleged evolution of communist states
into independent, conventional nation-states motivated like any others
primarily by national interests. The pattern determines the forms and
means. Special disinformation operations play the leading part;
propaganda is relegated to a supporting role.
The Precedent of the NEP
The weakness and evolution pattern was used successfully by Lenin
in the 1920s. In 1921 Soviet Russia faced imminent collapse. Industry
lay ruined by the war; agriculture was in crisis. The Russian people,
disillusioned by the rigid policy of "war communism," were on the
brink of revolt; the policy of terror was proving ineffective; there were
peasant uprisings in Siberia and along the Volga; nationalist
movements in the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Central Asia were
openly proclaiming separatism and posed a serious threat to national
unity; the sailors at the Kronstadt Naval Base revolted. Abroad, the
hopes of world revolution had faded after communist defeats in
Germany, Poland, and Hungary. The major European
12 NEW LIES FOR OLD
powers, although not united, were individually hostile to communism
and to the new Soviet state; a huge Russian emigre movement, spread
across Europe, was plotting the overthrow of the regime. Soviet
Russia was in complete political and economic isolation.
It was in this situation, facing a highly unfavorable balance of
power vis-a-vis the West, that Lenin conceived and launched a long-
range policy that, over the following eight years, was to show
spectacular success. It was given the deliberately misleading title of
the New Economic Policy, or NEP. In fact, it ranged far beyond the
economy, defining also the principal political and ideological
objectives and tactics for the regime internally and externally and the
strategy for the international communist movement. Within the terms
of the NEP, the Soviet leaders were to eliminate separatism by
creating a federation of national republics, the USSR. They were to
introduce national long-term economic planning. They were to plan
and build an electric power system to cover and bind together the
whole country. They were to start to change the world balance of
power in communist favor.
To the world at large, the NEP meant that foreign industrialists
were offered concessions in Soviet industry and invited to open
businesses in Soviet Russia; that Soviet industrial enterprises were to
be reorganized as trusts and operated on a profit basis; that smaller
enterprises and properties could be owned by cooperatives or private
individuals; that money was back in use and private trade permitted;
that restrictions on travel were relaxed; that emigres were encouraged
to return under amnesty, while some Soviet citizens were allowed to
emigrate; and that Soviet diplomacy was seeking peaceful coexistence
with the West.
The Soviet leaders saw it differently. They intended that the NEP
would not only bring about economic recovery, but would also serve
to prevent internal revolt, expand foreign trade, attract foreign capital
and expertise, gain diplomatic recognition from non-communist
countries, prevent major conflict with the Western powers, help to
exploit the contradictions in and between the capitalist countries,
neutralize the emigre movement, and help to promote world
revolution through the communist movement.
Lenin believed that this fundamentally aggressive and ideological
policy could prove effective if it was accompanied by the systematic
use of misrepresentation and deception, or, to use the current word,
PATTERNS: WEAKNESS AND EVOLUTION 13
disinformation. The cliaracteristics of this disinformation were an
apparent moderation in communist ideology, the avoidance of refer-
ences to violence in communist methods, the exaggeration of the
degree of the restoration of capitalism in Soviet Russia, the use of a
sober and businesslike style in diplomatic and commercial
negotiations with the West, and emphasis on disarmament and
peaceful coexistence. All of this was intended to induce the belief in
the outside world that the communist system was weak and losing its
revolutionary ardor. Left to itself, it would either disintegrate or come
to terms with the capitalist system.
The Soviet security service was reorganized, renamed the OGPU,
and given new political tasks. It was directed to mount disinformation
and political operations. False opposition movements were set up and
controlled secretly by the OGPU. They were designed to attract to
their ranks genuine opponents of the regime inside and outside the
country. These innocent persons could then be used by the regime in
various ways. They could act as channels for disinformation; they
could be blackmailed and recruited as agents; they could be arrested
and given public trials. A characteristic, but not unique, example of
this technique is provided by the so-called "Trust" operation.
In 1921, as the NEP was being launched, the OGPU created inside
S oviet Russi a a false anti -S o viet organi zation, the M onarchi st
Alliance of Central Russia. It had once been a genuine organization,
founded by Czarist generals in Moscow and Leningrad but liquidated
by the Soviet security service in 1919-20. Former members of this
organization, among them Czarist generals and members of the old
aristocracy who had come over to the Soviet side, nominally led the
movement. Their new loyalty to the Soviet regime was not in doubt,
for they had betrayed their former friends in the anticommunist
underground. They were the Czarist generals Brusilov and
Zaynchkovskiy; the Czarist military attache in Yugoslavia, General
Potapov; and the Czarist transport official Yakushev. The most active
agent in the Trust was a former intelligence officer of the General
Staff in Czarist Russia whose many names included Opperput.
Agents of the Trust traveled abroad and established confidential
contact with genuine anticommunist emigre leaders in order (osten-
sibly) to coordinate activity against the Soviet regime. Among the
14 NEW LIES FOR OLD
important emigres they met were Boris Savinkov and Generals
Wrangel and Kutepov.
These agents confided in their contacts that the anti-Soviet mon-
archist movement that they represented was now well established in
Soviet Russia, had penetrated into the higher levels of the army, the
security service, and even the government, and would in time take
power and restore the monarchy. They convinced the emigre leaders
that the regime had undergone a radical change. Communism had
completely failed; ideology was dead; the present leaders had nothing
in common with the fanatical revolutionaries of the past. They were
nationalists at heart, and their regime was evolving into a moderate,
national regime and might soon collapse. The NEP should be seen as
the first important concession on the road to restoring capitalism in
Russia. Soon political concessions would follow. Because of this, said
the Trust agents, any intervention or gesture of hostility from the
European powers or the emigre movements would be ill-advised, if
not tragic, since it would only unite the Russian people around their
government and so extend its survival. The European governments
and the emigre leaders should put a stop to anti-Soviet terrorist
activities and change their attitude from hostility toward the Soviet
regime to one of passive acceptance. They should grant diplomatic
recognition and increase trade. In this way they would have a better
opportunity to contribute to the evolutionary process. The emigre
leaders should return to Russia to make their contribution.
Naturally there were doubters among the emigres, but the prestige
of the leaders of the organization (particularly, of General Brusilov)
convinced the majority. They accepted at face value the Trust's
disinformation and passed it on to their influential friends in the
European intelligence services. By the time it had been circulated to
governments as "secret" intelligence it sounded most impressive, and
when as time went on the same story was confirmed by source after
source, it became "secret and reliable." The intelligence services of
Europe were committed and it was unthinkable that they could all be
wrong.
While the Trust was thriving the OGPU took control, wholly or
partially, of two other movements calculated to influence the political
climate in support of the NEP. They were the "Change of Signposts"
movement and the "Eurasian" movement. The first
PATTERNS: WEAKNESS AND EVOLUTION 15
was used by the Soviet security service to mislead emigres and
intellectuals in Europe into believing that the strength of communist
ideology was on the wane and that the Soviet regime was evolving
into a more moderate, national state. The movement published, with
unofficial government assistance, a weekly magazine in Prague and
Paris, The Change of Signposts, and in Berlin a paper. On the Eve. In
1922, at some risk, the Soviet government allowed two magazines to
be published in Leningrad and Moscow, New Russia and Russia.
They were intended to exert a similar influence on intellectuals inside
the country.
By 1926 all publications of the Change of Signposts movement had
been wound up, the movement disbanded, and some of its leaders in
the Soviet Union arrested. An official Soviet publication partially
confirms the exploitation of the movement and describes its end.
Shortly afterward, operation Trust was terminated with the arrest of
those opponents of the regime who had been unwise enough to reveal
themselves as such by associating with the Trust.
To impress the Soviet people, trials of members of the opposition —
some genuine, some false — were held throughout the country.
Abroad, various means were used to damage, disrupt, and discredit
both the emigre movements and the European intelligence services.
Agents of both — some genuine, some false — were publicly tried in
absentia; leaders of the emigre movements, European journalists,
businessmen, diplomats, and government officials were blackmailed,
on the basis of their involvement, into working for Soviet intelligence;
individual emigre leaders, including Boris Savinkov and General
Kutepov, and the Estonian ambassador in Moscow, Birk, were
kidnapped; compromised spies were exchanged or recovered; selected
persons and governments were held up to ridicule as 'Tools who had
been deluded by the clever OGPU provocation" or were pressured or
blackmailed by the threat of being discredited. For example, as late as
1944, during the Soviet occupation of Finland, Zhdanov threatened
Finnish President Mannerheim that if he did not comply with Soviet
demands, he would be put on public trial for his involvement in anti-
Soviet activities during operation Trust and thus be squeezed out of
politics.
The NEP was officially ended by Stalin in 1929 with what was
called "a socialist offensive on all fronts." The concessions to foreign
industrialists were canceled; private enterprise in the Soviet Union
16 NEW LIES FOR OLD
was prohibited; private property was confiscated; agriculture was
collectivized; repression of political opposition was intensified. The
NEP might never have been.
The Results of the NEP
Agriculture, industry, and trade all improved dramatically under the
NEP. Although the NEP failed to attract large credits from the West, it
brought technology and efficient new equipment. Thousands of
Western technicians helped to industrialize the Soviet Union, and
Western firms built essential factories there. It is fair to say that the
foundations of Soviet heavy and military industry were laid in the
1920s with American, British, Czechoslovak, and, after the Treaty of
Rapallo (1922), German help. Germany played an especially
significant role in the Soviet militarization. According to the secret
clauses of the treaty, Germans helped to build modern aviation and
tank factories in the USSR. Communists spoke cynically of foreign
concessionaires and businessmen as "assistants of socialism." Long-
range planning and industrialization were launched. De jure
recognition of the Soviet Union by the West helped the regime to
neutralize internal opposition and so to stabilize itself politically. The
remnants of other political parties (Socialist Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks, Zionists) were suppressed, Hquidated, or exiled. The
peasants were pacified. The independence of the churches was broken
and new, controlled "living churches" accepted the regime. The
nationalist and separatist movements in Georgia, the Ukraine,
Armenia, and the Asian republics were crushed and their nations fully
incorporated into the federal union. No new organized political
opposition to the regime emerged during the NEP. Regular purges of
communist party membership kept ideological purity intact; a
minority of members succumbed to the temptations of capitalism and
were expelled. The party and security service gained experience in
activist methods and in controlling contacts with the West. The
security service began to exercise effective control over Soviet
society.
The European bloc that it was anticipated would be formed against
the Soviet Union did not materialize. De jure recognition was granted
by all major countries except the USA. The Russian
PATTERNS: WEAKNESS AND EVOLUTION 17
emigre movement was successfully penetrated, discredited, and left to
disintegrate. The Treaty of Rapallo, signed with Germany in 1922 (the
crowning achievement of Lenin's activist diplomacy), raised Soviet
prestige, helped to increase Soviet military strength, precluded a
united anticommunist front in Europe, and weakened the Weimar
Republic.
Between 1921 and 1929 twelve new communist parties joined the
Comintern, bringing the total to forty-six. By the use of legal tactics,
communist parties increased their influence in trade unions and
parliaments. Though the bid to form a united front with the Socialist
Internationals failed, some socialist parties — the German, French,
Spanish, and Czechoslovak — split under the influence of the
communist approach; the left-wing groups joined communist parties
or formed new ones. Valuable experience was gained by the
Comintern in the simultaneous use of revolutionary as well as legal
tactics, in its readiness to switch from the one to the other, and in its
ability to coordinate with Soviet diplomacy. United front tactics were
successfully used by the communists in Nationalist China. Mongolia
became the first Soviet satellite.
The Lesson of the NEP
The disinformation of the NEP period had been successful. Seen
through Western eyes, the threat of communism under the NEP
seemed to have become diffused. Fear of Bolshevism waned. The
position of anticommunists was undermined. Expectations of rap-
prochement were aroused. The Western public, reluctant to make
sacrifices, urged their governments toward further accommodation
with the Soviet regime. In reality, of course, the challenge of com-
munism had been reinforced: Western expectations were later to be
rudely shattered. But the communist strategists had learned the lesson
that Western leaders could be deceived and induced to make mistakes
in their assessments of, and policy toward, the Soviet Union.
Disinformation had in fact created favorable conditions for the
success of Soviet internal policy, activist diplomacy, and Comintern
activity.
The Patterns of Disinformation:
"Facade and Strength"
IF A COMMUNIST REGIME IS IN A STATE OF CRISIS, if the regime is
weak, if its leadership is split or compromised, the logical pattern
for disinformation is to conceal the crisis and its dimensions, to
attract attention to other areas and problems, and to present the
situation both domestically and to the outside world in as favorable a
light as possible. This is the "facade and strength," or Potemkin
village, pattern of disinformation. It has been applied in all commu-
nist countries, including, for example, China and Romania as well as
the Soviet Union.
The general pattern of disinformation determines the forms it takes
and the techniques used. In the facade and strength pattern,
information damaging to the regime is suppressed and information
favorable to it is exaggerated. The real issues are reflected vaguely, if
at all, in the press. Statistics are withheld or inflated. Propaganda
plays a leading role to the extent that it becomes in itself the main
form of disinformation. Special deceptions are carried out to support
the credibility of the propaganda. The failures and weakness of the
regime are presented as its successes and strengths. Political and
ideological passivity and retreat are presented as political and
ideological victories. Concern about the future is presented as
confidence. The fears of the outside world at communist strength are
deliberately aroused and the communist threat is exaggerated out of
proportion to its actual potential in order to discourage external
intervention in communist affairs.
Massive use of disinformation in accordance with this pattern was
made during Stalin's purges and during the last years of his
18
PATTERNS: FACADE AND STRENGTH 19
life. For instance, during the mass repressions of the 1930s the regime
projected itself to the outside world, not without success, as a model
democratic system under a strong leader. The Red Army, whose
officer corps had been all but eliminated, was presented as the most
powerful army in the world. In the postwar period the decline in the
influence of communist ideology and the degree of popular discontent
in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites were hidden; the
significance of the opposition to Stalin from Zhdanov and his
Leningrad group in 1948 was successfully concealed; so were tensions
between the Soviets and Chinese and other communist countries. The
bloc was misrepresented as a monolith. The political, military, and
economic strength of the so-called monolith was grossly exaggerated
in communist propaganda, the main vehicle for disinformation.
To prevent the West from detecting the depth of the internal crisis
in the bloc that the propaganda was intended to conceal, contact
between the communist and noncommunist worlds was reduced to the
absolute minimum. Soviet and satellite citizens were prohibited from
foreign travel except as members of official delegations; delegates
were thoroughly checked before they left and kept under close watch
while abroad. The only visitors to the bloc from noncommunist
countries were communists or fellow travelers, and even they were
thoroughly screened before their visits were authorized. When they
arrived their itineraries were firmly supervised, with a large part of
their program being devoted to visiting collective farms and factories
that were organized as showplaces. Foreign diplomats and journalists
were subjected to rigid restrictions; their travel was limited to a
twenty-five-kilometer zone around the capital. Strict procedures for
official contacts between foreign diplomats and communist officials
were established; special decrees were enacted in 1946-47 defining the
responsibility of Soviet officials when handling state secrets. Western
contact with the man in the street hardly existed; and when it did, it
was controlled. By these measures the communist countries were
literally sealed off fi-om the rest of the world.
Communist newspapers were devoid of any genuine news. Their
articles were concerned only with the strength of the regime, the
achievements of the leaders, and the shortcomings of the noncom-
munist world. Only those skilled at analyzing propaganda and disin-
20 NEWLIESFOROLD
formation could sometimes read between the lines and deduce an inkling of
what was really going on.
Official Speeches and Party Documents
An example of the facade and strength pattern practiced at the time can be
found in the report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the Nineteenth
Party Congress in October 1952. It dealt with the political and economic
situation in the USSR and the communist bloc after the war. These are some
extracts:
The grain problem [in the Soviet Union] has been solved, solved definitely
and finally.
The achievements in all branches of the national economy have led to a
further improvement in the material and cultural standards of Soviet
society.
Undeviatingly implementing the national policy of Lenin and Stalin, our
Party strengthened the Soviet multi-national state, promoted friendship and
co-operation between the peoples of the Soviet Union, did everything to
support, ensure and encourage the efflorescence of the national cultures of
the peoples of our country, and waged an uncompromising struggle against
all and sundry nationalist elements. The Soviet political system, which has
gone through the severe test of war and has become for the whole world an
example and model of true equal rights and co-operation of nations, stands
witness to the great triumph of the ideas of Lenin and Stalin on the
nationality question.
The USSR's relations with these countries [the communist satellites] are an
example of entirely new relations among states, not met with before in
history. They are based on the principles of equal rights, economic co-
operation and respect for national independence. Faithful to its treaties of
mutual assistance, the USSR is rendering, and will continue to render,
assistance and support in the further consolidation and development of
these countries.
This report was a travesty of the real state of affairs. What it said was the
direct opposite of the truth. Those who composed
PATTERNS: FACADE AND STRENGTH 21
it, those who approved it, and those who spoke it knew full well that it
was totally false.
Special Disinformation Operations
A special Disinformation Service {Service 5) was created in 1947
as part of the Soviet intelligence service, known then as the Committee
of Information (KI). It was headed by Colonel Grauehr.^
Special disinformation operations by communist intelligence ser-
vices are never regarded as ends in themselves. They are intended to
serve the ends of policy, usually by creating and shaping the
conditions for its successful implementation. Since in the last years of
Stalin's life there was an acute crisis in Soviet affairs and a lack of any
coherent policy for resolving it, the special operations of Service 5
were limited in scope to unattributable propaganda operations
designed to conceal the crisis and to justify some of the more
outrageous and irrational instances of Stalin's behavior. One example
was the effort to plant the suspicion that Tito and other Yugoslav
leaders were long-term Western agents.
A further limiting factor on the scope of special disinformation
operations was the cult of personality, which pervaded Stalin's dicta-
torship and forbade frankness even when it was required to give
credibihty to a falsehood. Two examples illustrate this. A Soviet agent
was sent on a mission to the West. He was to pretend that he was a
defector seeking political asylum. The host country allowed him to
give a press conference, at which, not unnaturally, he criticized the
Soviet regime. When Stalin read the report of the press conference, he
asked who was the agent's controller, and then said: "Where did he
work before he went into intelligence?" "He was a collective farmer,"
answered the chief of the service. "Then," said Stalin, "send him back
to his kolkhoz if he cannot understand how damaging his agent's
statements are. They point to our political instability."
On another occasion the Polish security service created the fiction
that an underground organization in Poland, which had in fact been
liquidated, was still active. They wanted to use the notional
organization as a channel for political and military disinformation.
When Stalin was asked to authorize the passing of this disinforma-
22 NEW LIES FOR OLD
tion, he refused. "It gives the wrong impression of Poland's political
stability," he explained.
In 1951, when Soviet intelligence was transferred from the KI
(Committee of Information) to the MGB (Ministry of State Security),
Service 5 became a directorate in the new KI under the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, dealing only with diplomatic disinformation. During
the anti-Semitic campaign in 1951-53 Service 5 was as demoralized as
the rest of the intelligence service. In fact, its head, Grauehr, went
mad. He was succeeded by Ivan Ivanovich Tugarinov, who later
became head of the KI.
The Patterns of Disinformation:
Transition
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER BETWEEN STALIN'S SUCCESSORS lasted from
Stalin's death in 1953 to Khrushchev's final victory in June
1957. To an important extent, the struggle was not only between
rival personalities, but between rival policies. In the absence of a
settled and consistent policy, it is not surprising that there should have
been no centrahzed disinformation department in Soviet intelligence
during the period. Disinformation was practiced sporadically by heads
of departments acting on the instructions of the head of the service.
The aims of disinformation at this time were to conceal from the
West the dimensions of the internal crisis in the communist world, to
blur the differences in policy of the contenders for the succession, to
hide the savagery of the struggle, and to misrepresent the process of
de-Stalinization.
The successful concealment of internal crisis can be illustrated by
the handling of information on events in Georgia.
On March 5, 1956, the anniversary of Stalin's death, the first mass
disturbance happened in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Large crowds
of people, especially students, gathered spontaneously for an anti-
Soviet meeting in the main square. The speakers demanded the
abolition of one-party rule, dissolution of the security service,
freedom of speech, and the independence of Georgia from the Soviet
Union. The students appealed to the crowds to join the revolt, and
many Georgians responded to the appeal. On Khrushchev's order the
special troops were put on the streets, with orders to fire on the
crowds. Many were killed and wounded. Many stu-
23
24 NEWLIESFOROLD
dents were arrested. The national units of the Georgian and Armenian
troops in the local military district were disarmed and demobilized in
one night.
What happened in Georgia in the spring of 1956 can be Mkened to
"Bloody Sunday" (January 9, 1905), a day infamous in Russian
history when, on the orders of the Czar, a people's demonstration was
dispersed with bloodshed. In 1905 Bloody Sunday was headlined in
every newspaper in Russia, arousing mass indignation throughout the
country. In 1956 the event was ignored. Not a newspaper mentioned
it. It was as if it had never happened. It still remains a state secret that
Khrushchev and Serov, the Chairman of the KGB, rushed to Georgia
to direct the suppression of the disturbance.
Georgia was completely isolated from the rest of the country. The
area, which attracts holidaymakers from all over the Soviet Union to
its famous resorts, was deserted throughout the summer of 1956. Rigid
travel control was imposed. It was explained, semiofficially, that the
strong nationalist feelings of the Georgians had been upset by the
condemnation of Stalin.
News of the disturbance in Georgia did later filter through to the
West, but it was interpreted as a nationalist outburst of discontent with
the treatment of Stalin, not as a spontaneous demonstration against the
whole Soviet system.
The Misrepresentation of De-Stalinization
As for the struggle for power, the Central Committee, the KI under
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the KGB were all involved by
Khrushchev in a successful disinformation operation to misrepresent
the reasons for the removal of his rivals and the real character of his
own position and policy. Since this operation involved
misrepresentation of the issues involved in Stalinism and de-
Staiinization and provided part of the basic technique for the program
of strategic disinformation operations launched in 1959, it merits
detailed explanation.
To avoid misunderstanding, it is useful to begin by drawing a
distinction between anticommunism and anti-Stalinism and by de-
fining the extent to which de-Stalinization is a genuine process.
PATTERNS: TRANSITION 25
Anti CO mmuni sm
Anti communism is not specifically linked with hostility to any
individual communist leader. It means opposition to communist
principles and practice; it is critical of communism in the broadest
sense. It has existed in various forms inside and outside the Soviet
Union since before 1917. It developed in Lenin's time, flourished
under Stalin, and persisted, if less vigorously, under his successors.
Within it three trends can be distinguished: a conservative trend,
which is more or less rigid and consistent in its opposition; a liberal
trend, which from time to time favors a degree of accommodation
with communism; and a neutralist trend, particularly among non-
communist neighbors of the communist bloc who try to make practical
arrangements with communist regimes to secure their own survival.
Anticommunism in the intelligentsia may spring from the rejection
on intellectual grounds of the dogmatic pretensions of Marxism as a
philosophy. At all levels of society it is nurtured by the belief that
communism is an unnatural, intolerant, and inhuman system that
disregards the individual, maintains itself largely by force and terror,
and pursues an aggressive ideological policy aimed at eventual
domination of the world. In the past, communist theory and practice in
such matters as the seizure of power, the abuse and destruction of
democratic institutions, the suppression of personal liberty, and the
use of terror provoked a militant response from social democrats,
which led to a deepening gulf between socialist and communist parties
and a split in the international labor movement.
The strength of international anticommunism has waxed and
waned. The two high peaks were the Anglo-French effort to create a
European anti-Soviet coalition during the civil war in Russia from
1918 to 1921, and the creation of NATO after the Second World War.
Inside and outside the Soviet Union, anticommunism has expressed
itself in various forms from 1917 onward. Typical examples are found
in the civil war in Russia, 1918-21; the separatist movements in the
non-Russian republics; the revolts in the Caucasus and Central Asia in
the 1920s; the later underground resistance movements in the Ukraine
and Baltic republics; and in the activities
26 NEW LIES FOR OLD
of emigre organizations, political refugees, and those who broke with
the Western communist parties.
Opposition of this kind would have existed whether or not Stalin
had ever been in power, though it was strengthened and hardened by
his repressive influence. In fact, so personal and despotic was Stalin's
rule that, for a while, Stalinism became almost synonymous with
communism, and opposition to the one became confused with
opposition to the other, particularly since Stahn repressed both kinds
of opposition with equal ruthlessness and severity. In the 1930s he
crushed actual and imaginary opposition to himself by mass
repressions, even of party members. Some of the leaders of the Third
International, like Zinovyev, Bukharin, and Bela Kun, were shot.
Trotskiy, who along with social democratic leaders was regarded by
Stalin as being among the most dangerous enemies of the Soviet
Union, was assassinated in 1940 by secret agents acting on Stalin's
orders. Social democratic leaders in Eastern Europe after the Second
World War were physically eliminated.
Anti-Stalinism
AH anti communists are anti-Stalinists. But the important point to
note is that anti-Stalinism has traditionally been embraced by many
communists who have sought not to abolish the communist system,
but to strengthen and purify it by eliminating certain elements in
Stalin's policy and practice. Anti -Stalinism of this type is critical of
communism only in a narrow sense. It has existed in the communist
movement since 1922. After Stalin's death it became an element in
official party hfe and policy and gave rise to the genuine process of
de-Stalinization.
In many respects Stalin's policy followed classical Leninist doc-
trine: for example, in the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
communist party, industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture,
the elimination of the capitalist classes, the construction of
"socialism" in the Soviet Union, and in support for "socialist"
revolutions abroad. But there were also departures from Leninist
principles and practice in Stalin's establishment of his personal
dictatorship, in his ruthless physical elimination of opposition and
PATTERNS: TRANSITION 27
repression of loyal elements within the party, in the widening gulf he created
between the ruling class and the underprivileged workers and collective
farmers, and in the manipulation and discrediting of communist ideology.
Communist opposition to Stalin was expressed over the years:
• By Lenin, who in his testament criticized Stalin's rudeness and intoler-
ance and suggested that he should be removed from the post of general
secretary of the party.
• Publicly, in the 1920s and 1930s, by Trotskiy and his followers, who
distinguished between the Leninist and Stalinist elements in Stalin's policies.
• Publicly by Tito and the Yugoslav Communist party, during and after
the split with Stahn in 1948.
• Secretly by Zhdanov and his Leningrad group in 1948.
• Secretly by the Chinese Communist leaders from 1950 to 1953 and
openly in 1956.
• In deeds rather than words from 1953 to 1956, and openly from 1956
onward, by the leaders of the CPSU and other communist parties.
The criticisms of these individuals and groups varied in intensity and
outspokenness, but all of them remained communists in their different ways
and, in particular, they all retained their loyalty to Leninism. Theirs was a
true expression of de-Stalinization; that is to say, they believed in the
restoration of Leninist communism without Stalinist deviations.
The dangers of Stalinism to the communist movement were ignored or
overlooked in the 1930s and 1940s because of the threat of fascism and the
opportunities that it provided for the formation of popular fronts with
socialist parties in the 1930s and for the forging of the wartime alliance with
the Western powers. But by 1953-56, the damage Stalinism had done to the
communist cause was apparent. It could be seen in the following:
• The distortion, degradation, and discrediting of communist ideology. The image
of Marxism as a philosophy had been tarnished in the eyes of Western intellectuals.
• Deepening discontent in the Soviet Union and its satellites, leading
2S NEWLIESFOROLD
to explosive revolutionary situations in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.
• The decline of communist influence and the isolation of communist
parties and regimes.
• The revulsion against Stahnist communism of Western liberals who had
earlier been sympathetic.
• The increased influence and prestige of anticommunism.
• Strong opposition from various religious movements, including Ca-
tholicism and Islam.
• The formation of Western military alliances, such as NATO, SEATO,
and the Bagdad pact (later CENTO).
• Hostility from moderate, genuinely nonaligned national leaders of the
developing countries, such as Nehru.
• Cooperation between Western democratic governments and anticom-
munist emigre organizations.
• Collaboration between social democratic and conservative governments
and parties against the Soviet threat.
• Yugoslavia's break with the communist bloc and rapprochement with
the West in the period 1948-55.
• The serious tensions between the Soviet Union and Communist China,
which threatened to create a split between them in 1950-53.
• Zhdanov's opposition to Stalin.
• The major power struggle in the Soviet leadership that followed Stalin's
death.
In some areas Stalinism brought together the two kinds of opposition:
anticommunism and anti-Stalinism. In the case of Yugoslavia, which found
itself closer to the West than to the communist bloc after 1948, they almost
fused. In the present context, the most significant episode in the history of
unsuccessful opposition to Stalin during his lifetime was the attempt to form
a group around Zhdanov in 1948. Although it was a failure, it was known to
Stahn's immediate heirs in the Soviet leadership. It was part of their
accumulated store of knowledge of the various forms of opposition to
communism and Stalinism and an important argument in compelling them to
face the need to correct Stahnist distortions in the system if they were to
avoid disaster. De-Stalinization was the obvious course, and an account must
now be given of how it was put into effect after Stalin's death.
PATTERNS: TRANSITION 29
De-Stalinization in Practice
Three different phases of de-Stalinization can be distinguished:
first, an initial, unrehearsed, and ill-considered but genuine de-Stal-
inization, carried out from 1953 to 1956 by a confused, divided, and
competing leadership under pressure from the populace and in the
absence of any long-range policy for the bloc; second, a setback to de-
Stalinization in 1956-57, when Khrushchev was resorting to Stalinist
methods to suppress revolt in Hungary and opposition to himself in
order to secure his own personal preeminence; third, a cautious revival
from 1958 onward of some genuine elements of de-Stalinization (for
instance, the gradual release and rehabilitation of some of Stalin's
victims) coupled with a calculated political exploitation of the process
in which some of its elements were deliberately misrepresented.
Improvised De-Stalinization from 1953 to 1956
De-Stalinization began not, as is often assumed, with Khrushchev's
secret report to the Twentieth CPSU Congress in February 1956, but
immediately after Stalin's death in March 1953. Each one of the
pretenders to the succession, Beriya, Malenkov, Molotov, Bulganin,
and Khrushchev, was in his different way an anti-Stalinist. All of them
without exception knew of the crisis in the communist system and all
of them agreed on the urgent necessity of abandoning Stalinist
policies. On the other hand, there was disagreement on the nature and
extent of the changes needed. None of the pretenders was preeminent,
none of them had worked out the details of his own policies, and —
living as they had done under Stalin's shadow — no agreements on
policy had been worked out among them.
The different personalities and policies of the pretenders affected
the course of de-Stalinization. Beriya had in mind the deepest and
most heterodox forms of change, including the abolition of collective
farms. Malenkov, the most confident of the leaders in his own
position, went further than the others in open condemnation of secret
police methods and advocacy of concessions to popular demands. De-
Stalinization was initiated not by Khrushchev, but by Malenkov,
Beriya, and Molotov, who dominated the Presidium after Stalin's
death.
30 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Several steps were taken more or less immediately. The cases of
certain leading personalities who had been tried and imprisoned under
Stalin were reviewed. The Kremlin doctors were released. A ban on
mass arrests was issued. International tension was eased by the
settlement of the Korean War. Stalin's instruction of December 1952
on the reactivation of Soviet intelligence abroad was canceled, lest it
should compromise the impact of the new moderation in Soviet
foreign policy.
The first hint of the downgrading of Stalin's role and the admission
of his mistakes was given in July 1953 in a secret party letter to the
party membership informing them of Beriya's dismissal and the
reasons for it. It referred to Stalin not as an outstanding leader, but
simply as "Stalin, 1. V.," and bracketed his name with that of Beriya,
stating that Stalin's favoritism had prevented Beriya's exposure. It was
the first tacit admission to the party membership of the fallibility of
Stalin.
Later it became known in party circles that a discussion took place
in the Presidium on Malenkov's initiative in July 1953 after Beriya's
arrest. It was unanimously decided to make changes in Stalinist
practices in the party and administration, although without public
criticism of Stalin. In particular the Presidium recommended a
reexamination and reform of the practices of the security service with
the idea that, at a future date when the situation in the party and in the
country had settled down, a reasonable explanation should be found
for Stalin's deviations from communist principles, such as his
unjustified repressions of personnel, including party members. All
members of the Presidium, including Khrushchev, agreed that only
Stalin and Beriya should be criticized and that there should be no
admission of mistakes by other members of the Presidium.
Thus the secret report on Stalin's crimes, delivered by Khrushchev
in February 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress, which later found
its way to the West but which has never been published in the Soviet
Union, was in fact the consequence of a Presidium decision. The
report was prepared by Pospelov, the head of the Marx-Engels-Lenin-
Stalin Party Research Institute. The facts were taken from secret
security service archives, and many of the ideas from accounts of
Stalin's repression of the Leninist "Old Guard" found in the memoirs
of former communist leaders published in
PATTERNS: TRANSITION 31
the West in the 1930s, especially in those of Trotskiy. The draft of
Pospelov's report was discussed and approved by the Presidium on the
eve of the party congress.' While delivering the report, Khrushchev
added some personal touches of his own.
The most important point about the report was that it prevented de-
Stalinization from developing into an attack on communist principles
as a whole. The changes that Beriya and Malenkov had in mind in
their revisionist version of de-Stalinization might have altered the
regime in principle. Furthermore, given the depth of the crisis in the
communist world and the intensity of the struggle for power in the
Soviet leadership, if those changes had been pursued, they might have
developed a momentum of their own and brought about a radical
transformation of Soviet society regardless of the wishes of their
initiators and with incalculable consequences for the Soviet Union and
the rest of the communist and noncom-munist world. It was not
without reason that Beriya was shot for being an "agent of world
imperialism," and that Malenkov was dismissed as Prime Minister in
1955 for "departing from Lenin's and Stalin's theories." Their ideas
had indeed threatened the regime and could have led to a situation that
they would have been unable to control. By pinning the blame for all
past mistakes on the misdeeds — not the theories — of one single
individual, Stalin, the party leadership was able, while introducing
some tactical changes, to preserve the essence of the communist
regime.
Re-Stalinization
The exposure of Stalin's mistakes gave a substantial boost to
anticommunism in general and to anti -Stalinist feeling in both the bloc
and nonbloc communist parties. Revolts occurred in Georgia, Poland,
and Hungary. The crisis in many other communist parties deepened.
Khrushchev's response was to revert to Stalinist methods. The
security service was strengthened; armed force was used to crush
revolt in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Khrushchev's progress toward his own form of personal dictator-
ship alarmed his colleagues in the leadership. Molotov and Malenkov
emerged as the leaders of the opposition. At this time Molotov
32 NEW LIES FOR OLD
was forming his own attitude and policy on de-Sta!inization. He and
his supporters made it clear that they wanted to remove Khrushchev in
order to secure a continuation of the de-Stalinization process that
Khrushchev had arrested. As communists they wanted to stabilize the
system, and they viewed with dismay Khrushchev's establishment of
his own cult of personality. It threatened their own position. In their
view his resort to a policy of repression might lead to an even bigger
explosion than the Hungarian revolt, and it completely contradicted
the course adopted after Stalin's death. Khrushchev, in their eyes, was
a new StaHn who had to be removed.
The showdown came in June 1957. With the help of the army and
the security service, Khrushchev defeated the "antiparty group" by the
narrowest of margins. Had the opposition been successful, it would
once more have opened up the possibility of a genuine and
uncontrolled process of de-Stalinization and liberalization of the
regime. Public exposure of the Stalinist methods used by Khrushchev
to gain personal power, coupled with renewed denunciations of secret
police repression and a public trial of the KGB chairman, Serov,
would have led to popular demands for further changes. Being
divided, the opposition group, had it come to power, would have been
obliged to make concessions regardless of the wishes of the individual
members. An intensified power struggle would have ensued and a
new, agreed-upon, long-range policy could not have been adopted.
Khrushchev's defeat of the opposition in June 1957 left him in an
unchallengeable position, free to reconsider the situation in the Soviet
Union and the bloc without interference from inside the leadership.
His first move was to turn the tables on the antiparty group by falsely,
but successfully, pinning the Stalinist label on them. He managed to
take for himself the credit for the exposure of Stalin's crimes, to
conceal his own use of Stalinist methods in the pursuit of power, and
to distract attention from the nature of the opposition's charges against
him. Misrepresented as a victory over the forces of Stalinism, his
defeat of the opposition was made to look like a blessing for the
Soviet public and the world at large. Although there was some initial
scepticism at home, even in a few party organizations, both domestic
and international pressures on the government were eased.
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 com-
munism. 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. At the Eighth Chinese Communist Party (CPC)
Congress in September 1956, the Chinese leaders supported the
condemnation of the cult of the individual by the Twentieth CPSU
Congress of February 1956.''
By the end of 1957 reconcihation 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
33
34 NEWLIESFOROLD
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
unpubhcized 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.^
The next three years were a period of intense research and consul-
tation between the communist parties inside and outside the bloc while
the new policy and strategies were worked out.^ 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 sociahsts alike. Western propaganda was keeping
the communist regimes under constant pressure. The West in general
was reluctant to trade with the bloc. And
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 35
the bloc faced one completely new factor — the possibility of nuclear
confrontation.
Against this background, how could the communist leaders make
their system more acceptable to their peoples? How were they to
achieve cohesion and cooperation between the members of the bloc?
And how could they advance the communist cause outside the bloc
without provoking a greater degree of unity in the noncom-munist
world? It was clear that a reversion to the Stalinist policy of mass
repression at home would fail and that traditional revolutionary tactics
abroad would only intensify confrontation with the West at a time
when the balance of power was unfavorable. The precedent of Lenin's
NEP seemed to provide many of the answers, although, of course, the
new policy would need to be far more complex and sophisticated.
The need for a new policy was felt with special keenness by the
Soviet leadership. The older members, like Khrushchev, Brezhnev,
Mikoyan, and Suslov, wanted to purge themselves of the taint of
Stalinism and rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of history. The
younger ones, like Shelepin, wanted the kudos due to innovators. All
of them realized that only agreement on a long-range policy would
preclude recurrent power struggles and give stability to the leadership.
The Manifesto produced by the Eighty-one-Party Congress (No-
vember 1960) clearly betrays the influence of Lenin's ideas and
practice, as does Khrushchev's follow-up speech of January 6, 1961.^
These two basic documents have continued to determine the course of
communist policy to the present day. They explain in detail how the
triumph of communism throughout the world is to be achieved
through the consolidation of the economic, political, and military
might of the communist world and the undermining of the unity and
strength of the noncommunist world. The use by communist parties of
a variety of violent and nonviolent tactics is specifically authorized.
Peaceful coexistence is explicitly defined as "an intense form of class
struggle between sociaHsm and capitalism." The exploitation by world
communism of economic, political, racial, and historical antagonisms
between noncommunist countries is recommended. Support for
"national liberation" movements throughout the Third World is
reemphasized.
36 NEW LIES FOR OLD
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 pohcy coincided on many issues.
Agreement between the communist leaders on a new Leninist
program for world revolution was only half the battle. A strategy was
needed for putting such a program into effect at a time when the
subject populations in the communist bloc were seriously alienated
from their communist regimes and when the militarily superior
Western powers were determined to resist the further spread of
communism.
Some aspects of the strategy, such as united fronts with socialists in
the advanced capitalist countries and support for national liberation
movements in the Third World, were openly proclaimed. But the
decision to use systematic, strategic disinformation as an essential
component of the strategy clearly had to be carefully concealed.
The Disadvantages of Apparent Unity
The communist strategists appreciated that the major disadvantage
of the pursuit by all the parties of the bloc of a uniform and openly
aggressive policy was that a combination of ideological zeal with
monolithic unity would alarm the noncommunist world and force it
into greater cohesion and possibly into a vigorous and coordinated
response to the communist threat. This would lead at best to a
continuation of the East-West status quo, and at worst to heavier
pressure on the communist world from a West equipped with a
superior nuclear arsenal.
A unified strategy would have been even more hampering to the
international communist movement. Experience had shown that the
activities of the Comintern were handicapped by its identification as
an instrument of Soviet policy. The same could be said of the
Cominform, its successor. Communist parties in the noncommunist
world had failed to gain influence or, in many cases, even legal
recognition because of their obvious subservience to Moscow. In
1958 more than forty parties were illegal.
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 37
From the historical experience of the Soviet Union and the bloc, the
communist strategists identified the factors that had favored united
Western action against communism. In the pre-NEP period, the West
had felt threatened by Soviet ideology and militancy. The result was
allied intervention on Russian territory. After the end of the Second
Worid War, the threat of monolithic, Stalinist communism drove the
West into military and political alliances, such as NATO, SEATO,
and the Bagdad pact, and into other forms of military, political,
economic, and security collaboration.
Similarly the communist strategists identified the factors that had
tended to undermine unity in the Western approach to the communist
world. These were moderation in official Soviet policy; emphasis on
the conflicting national interests of communist countries and parties at
the expense of their ideological solidarity; and the dissolution of the
Comintern in 1943, which caused many Western observers to believe
that worldwide communist subversion had been abandoned.
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 noncommunist world in a
direction favorable to themselves. They had before them the
successful precedent of
38 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Soviet policy and intelligence operations during the period of the
NEP.
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 miHtancy 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 noncommunist 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 nonbloc 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
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 39
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 rehabilitations 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 noncommunist
countries. It could be used to change attitudes toward communism and
communist parties in the labor and social democratic movements. If
the consequences of StaHnism, 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
40 NEWLIESFOROLD
1948, between Russian emigres and Western governments, anti-Stalinism
could be used to weaken these ties. If Stalinism had contributed to the
dechne 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
"Stalinists," "neo-Stalinists," "Maoists," "dogmatists," "hard-liners,"
"diehards," "militants," or "conservatives" as opposed to "anti-Stalinists,"
"pragmatists," "revisionists," and "national," "hberal," "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,
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 41
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 pohcy.
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 KGB and GRU, and in
particular for a secret training manual for internal use only, written by a GRU
officer, Popov, that described, in about eighty pages, the technique of
disinformation, and for another manual written by Colonel Raina of the KGB
entitled On the Use of Agents of Influence.
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 jour-
nalists and other experts.
• Special operations in support of disinformation.
• Agents of influence and other agents in foreign countries.
Studies of particular facets of the NEP were commissioned by the CPSU's
Central Committee from 1957 onward. As well as government departments,
speciahzed institutes of the Academy of
42 NEWLIESFOROLD
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 KGB. One was a study on the
use of KGB agents of influence in the Soviet intelhgentsia (meaning
in this context scientists, academics, writers, musicians, artists,
actors, stage and screen directors, and rehgious 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 refer-
ences 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 NEP 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."
Chicherin responded enthusiastically to Lenin's ideas on disinfor-
mation. He wrote to him on January 20, 1922: "In case the Ameri-
cans 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."*
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 retranslated into German in
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 43
1957 by the Soviet specialist Y. 1. Sidorenko, with a foreword by the
Soviet military strategist and historian General Razin.^ 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,'" 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 spHt of 1948 showed that by no means all of its conse-
quences had been adverse. Open defiance of Stalin had sent Tito's
prestige soaring in his own country and throughout the world. Inde-
pendence of the Soviet Union had enabled Yugoslavia to obtain
44 NEW LIES FOR OLD
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 dem-
onstrated in 1957-58 that, despite the Western support he had
received, he remained a faithful Leninist willing to work wholeheart-
edly with the other leaders of the bloc.
A more remote, but equally instructive, precedent was provided by
Lenin's Far Eastern policy in the 1920s. Realizing that Soviet Russia
would be overstretched in defending all her frontiers simultaneously,
Lenin decided voluntarily to "sacrifice" a substantial area in the Far
East by setting up an independent "noncommunist" buffer state, the
Far Eastern Republic (DVR), in April 1920. It was independent and
noncommunist in form only, its policies being closely coordinated
from the outset with those of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, its
existence, together with promises of economic concessions that did
not materialize, relieved the pressure from Japanese and American
interests in the area while the Soviet army and Comintern reinforced
their capacity to deal with the threat from the White Russian emigre
movement in Mongolia led by Baron Ungern. By November 1922
Soviet influence in the area was strong enough for the "independent"
DVR to be openly incorporated into the Soviet Union as its Far
Eastern region (kray).
The combined lessons of the DVR and the Tito-Stalin split
suggested to the communist strategists of the 1950s that spurious
splits and independence in the communist world could be used to ease
Western pressure and to obtain increased Western economic and even
military aid for individual communist countries while the world
balance of power was being shifted inconspicuously in communist
favor.
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 abided 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
NEW POLICY AND STRATEGY 45
Dzerzhinskiy's principle of political prophylaxis; that is, the forestall-
ing 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.
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.
46
THE SHELEPIN REPORT AND CHANGES 47
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 journahst.
Perhaps the most significant changes of all were the appointments
of Mironov and Shelepin. Mironov had been head of the Leningrad
branch of the KGB. While in that post he had studied operation Trust,
in which the Leningrad OGPU 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 OGPU in the NEP period.
In 1958 Mironov and Shelepin discussed with Khrushchev and
Brezhnev the idea of transforming the KGB 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 OGPU had done during the NEP.
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 KGB; 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 KGB 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 KGB at home
and abroad, and it became the focus for sharp criticism. The leading
critic was Shelepin. The KGB 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
48 NEWLIESFOROLD
political trends either at home or among anti communists abroad. He
praised the recent successes of the KGB 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 OGPU, its predecessor under Lenin. The OGPU, 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 OGPU, 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 KGB
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
KGB agents among the Soviet intelligentsia.
The Presidium decided to examine the new role of the KGB 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 KGB, 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
OGPU's chairman in the 1920s.
Shelepin was appointed chairman of the KGB in December 1958.
In May 1959 a conference of senior KGB officers was held in
Moscow. It was attended by Kirichenko, representing the Presidium;
THE SHELEPIN REPORT AND CHANGES 49
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. 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 destabihze 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 enlai'ged. Its three main
tasks were: to influence, pass disinformation to, and recruit as agents
members of the embassies of the capitalist
50 NEW LIES FOR OLD
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, De-
partment 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 In-
THE SHELEPIN REPORT AND CHANGES 51
telligence 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 counterin-
telligence 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 1960s appeared in England
under diplomatic cover) was its specialist on aviation. Indeed, the
composition of the department made it clear that it had both political
and military objectives.
A disinformation section of some twenty officers was also set up in
the KGB apparatus in East Germany under Litovkin, a specialist on
penetration of the West German intelligence service.
7
The New Role of Intelligence
IN OUTLINE, the new tasks for the intelhgence 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 mihtary 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.' Conversely, through the
disinformation potential of the bloc's security and intelligence ser-
vices, 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
52
NEW ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 53
in outline to the author in their early stages.
There were plans for an operation to influence the French govern-
ment to leave NATO. Soviet experts were already convinced by 1959-
60 that "contradictions" between the United States and France could
be exploited to bring this about.^
A long-term plan was in preparation to discredit anticommunist
American labor leaders and to influence them to change their attitude
toward contact with the communist trade unions.
There was also a plan called "Actions Against American Institu-
tions," 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 inteUigence.
Early in 1959 a secret party letter warned party members against
revealing state and party secrets.
Genuine, potential Western sources of information on the new
policy were suppressed. For example, the KGB arrested a valuable
American agent in the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Colonel Popov of the
GRU.
Other potential openings for the West to obtain information on the
policy were closed: for example, a special instruction was issued to
KGB staff to step up the recruitment, compromise, and discrediting of
Western scholars and experts on communist affairs visiting
communist countries.
An instruction was issued to KGB staff to give details to the
54 NEW LIES FOR OLD
disinformation department of all their existing intelligence sources
and channels, so that, where appropriate, they could be used for
disinformation purposes.
New channels were planned and created for feeding disinformation
to the West. In this context, three items deserve mention. Department
D showed great interest in exploiting two special French sources
belonging to Soviet counterintelligence: they asked for the controlling
officer, Okulov, to be transferred to Department D. There is serious,
unresolved evidence that Colonel Penkovskiy was planted on Western
intelligence by the KGB. There has been publicity in the American
press suggesting that an important FBI source on Soviet affairs,
known as "Fedora," was under Soviet control while he was
collaborating with the FBI in the 1960s.
The section of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate, led by Colonel
Norman Borodin and responsible for the recruitment and handling of
agents among foreign correspondents in the Soviet Union, was
disbanded so as to avoid the creation of a central pool of agents all
taking a suspiciously similar line. The agents were handed over to the
appropriate geographical sections of the KGB to ensure that their
disinformation activity was closely related to the particular situation
in each country or area.
Two former residents of Hitler's security service, with their nets of
agents in the Ukraine, which were under KGB control, were prepared
for planting on the West German intelligence service.
In 1959 the head of Soviet counterintelligence. General Griba-nov,
issued an instruction to his staff to prepare operations to influence
Western ambassadors in Moscow, in accordance with the
requirements of the new policy. Western intelligence and security
services — in particular, that of the French — had occasion to investi-
gate 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,
NEW ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 55
and analysts of communist affairs during their visits to communist
countries. For instance, an attempt was made to discredit a prominent
American scholar, Professor Barghoorn, by harrassing him in Moscow
in 1963. Almost every Western security service has accumulated
evidence on this subject.
A special form of control over the Soviet press was established by
the apparatus of the Central Committee so that the press could be used
by the Central Committee and KGB for disinformation purposes. For
instance, the KGB supplied Adzhubey, the chief editor of Izvestiya,
with "controversial" material on internal conditions in the Soviet
Union.
The resources of the KGBs of the national republics were brought
into play; for example, in the year 1957-58 alone, the KGB of the
Ukraine put up for Moscow approval 180 operational proposals for
the recruitment of, or the planting of agents on, foreigners inside or
outside the Soviet Union.
Direct attempts were made to exert political influence abroad.
Instructions were issued to the KGB residents in Finland, Italy, and
France to step up and exploit their penetration of the leadership of
socialist and other political parties in order to bring about changes in
the leadership and policies of those parties in accordance with the
requirements of bloc policy."^
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.
A KGB agent was planted on the leadership of the Swedish social
democratic party.
Assassinations were not excluded in the case of anti communists
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.
56 NEW LIES FOR OLD
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 noncommunist 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 noncommunist
countries; or a specific problem, such as the defense program of a
noncommunist 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
NEW ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 57
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 noncommunist countries — all of them
reminiscent of the NEP period, were themselves means of
misrepresenting the bloc's intentions and influencing the noncom-
munist 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 Shele-pin's
report and the intensive preparation of a program of political
disinformation operations. The coincidence in timing helps to explain
the changes.
8
Sources of Information
PRECEDING CHAPTERS HAVE DESCRIBED IN DETAIL how the
program, strategy, organization, and operational philosophy at the
center of international communism developed in the period 1957 to
1960. How did it happen that the Western world almost entirely failed to
detect these changes and appreciate their significance? To discover the
answer, one must begin by examining the sources of information available to
Western analysts.
Western Sources
The main Western sources of information on communist countries are:
• The secret agents of Western intelligence services.
• The interception and decoding of communist communications.
• The monitoring of communist embassies and officials in noncommu-
nist countries.
• Photographic and other observations of industrial installations, missile
sites, troop movements, and so forth from Western aircraft and satellites
flying over communist territory..
• The monitoring of nuclear and rocket tests by technical devices.
• The personal observations of Western diplomats, journahsts, and visi-
tors in communist countries.
• Unofficial contacts in these countries of Western diplomats, journalists,
and other visitors.
58
SOURCES OF INFORMATION 59
• Scholars working on communist affairs.
• "Internal emigrants" or well-wishers in the communist states.
• Refugees from communist countries and parties and, in particular,
former officials and agents of their intelligence services.
These sources vary in their significance and reliability, in the
degree of access they provide, and in the manner in which they need
to be interpreted.
Because communist societies are closed societies and because their
governments' aims are aggressive, it is vital for the West to have
vigorous, healthy, and effective intelligence services capable of
obtaining reliable secret information of a strategic nature on the
internal affairs and external policies of the communist countries, on
their relations with one another, and on their relations with the
communist parties outside the bloc. The secret agents of Western
intelligence services are potentially the most valuable sources of all,
provided that they are operating in good faith and have access to
information at the policy-making level. The problem is that Western
intelligence services sometimes accept provocateurs as genuine
agents, and provocateurs are a favored channel for passing communist
disinformation.
The interception and decoding of communications can provide
valuable information, provided that the possibility of disinformation is
always kept in mind and properly assessed.
Likewise, the monitoring of communist embassies and officials can
be valuable, but it has to be remembered that the methods used by
Western counterintelligence and security services are well known and
in most cases are capable of being converted by the communist bloc
into channels for disinformation.
The technical monitoring of nuclear and rocket tests and the various
forms of aerial reconnaissance are valuable but cannot be regarded as
self-sufficient. Because of their limitations, the information they
provide always needs to be evaluated in conjunction with information
from other sources. All techniques have their individual limitations.
The general limitation which they all share is that, even if they
provide accurate information on what is present and what is
happening in a particular locality, they cannot answer questions on
why it is present or happening, who is responsible, and what their real
intentions are. For instance, from these sources
60 NEWLIESFOROLD
alone, one cannot say whether the existence of troop concentrations on
the Sino-Soviet border is evidence of genuine hostility between the
two countries or evidence of joint intention on the part of the Soviet
and Chinese leaders to give the impression, for strategic
disinformation purposes, that there is hostihty between them.
The personal observations of foreign diplomats, journalists, and
other visitors to communist countries are of limited value because of
the controls over their travels and their contacts. The value of
information from unofficial contacts should not be overestimated,
since the probability is that these contacts, however critical they may
be of the regime, are controlled by the security services. Given the
scale of operation of the communist security services, it is impossible
for a citizen of a communist country to remain for any length of time
in unauthorized contact with a foreigner. Investigative reporting of the
type so popular in the West is impossible in communist countries
without at least tacit cooperation from the security authorities.
Western academics can be extremely valuable as analysts, provided
they are given accurate information. Their value as sources is not
always great, since their visits to communist countries do not
necessarily give them access to inside information, and they are as
prone as other visitors to be misled by deliberate communist
disinformation. Their visits can also be hazardous.
"Internal emigrants," or well-wishers, are those citizens of com-
munist countries who, for political or other reasons, approach foreign
diplomats or visitors or attempt to enter Western embassies with
offers of secret information. They can be valuable sources, but the
problem is that there are many obstacles in their way. For example,
the Soviet security service used to practice a provocation technique
through which any well-wisher who attempted to estabHsh contact by
telephone with the American or British embassies in Moscow would
be connected with specially trained officials of the security service.
These would pose as members of the American or British embassy
staffs and would arrange to meet the well-wisher outside the embassy,
with predictable consequences for the well-wisher concerned. Many
well-wishers attempted to contact Western embassies; few succeeded.
Even if they did, they were not always trusted by the embassies
because the Soviet security services deliberately discredited this type
of person by sending their
SOURCES OF INFORMATION 61
own provocateurs to embassies under the guise of well-wishers.
Past experience indicates that the most valuable information
has been provided by refugees and defectors from communist
countries and communist parties. The most informative have
been those who occupied leading positions, such as Trotskiy,
Uralov, and Kravchenko, or those who worked in organizations
where policy is implemented, such as the intelligence and
security services (Aga-bekov, Volkov, Deryabin, the Petrovs,
Rastvorov, Khokhlov, and Swiatlo), military intelligence
(Krivitskiy, Reiss, Guzenko, Akhme-dov), the diplomatic
service {Barmine, Kaznacheyev), or the armed forces (Tokayev).
Important information was revealed by Yugoslav leaders during
the Soviet-Yugoslav split from 1948 to 1956. Valuable
information was also provided by former leading communists or
communist agents, such as Souvarine, Jay Lovestone, Borkenau,
Chambers, and Bentley.
The value of the information from such sources depends, of
course, on the degree of their access to information, and on their
education, experience, honesty, degree of emotionalism, and the
completeness of their break with communism. Trotskiy's
exposures were of limited value because his break was not with
communism but with Stalin. The same could be said of the
Yugoslav leaders. Some refugee information is affected by
emotionalism. During the cold war period, some of the literature
on communism published in the West was distorted for
propaganda reasons and can be used only with caution.
Above all, the value of information from defectors and
refugees depends on their good faith, since it is common practice
for the communist security and intelligence services to send
provocateurs abroad under this guise to act as channels for
disinformation.
Communist Sources
The communist sources need to be treated as a separate
category. They may be divided into official, unofficial, and
"secret" communist sources. The official ones are:
• The published records of international conferences of communist
governments and communist parties inside and outside the bloc.
62 NEW LIES FOR OLD
• The public activities and decisions of the parties, governments, and
ministries of individual communist countries.
• The public activities and speeches of communist leaders and other
officials.
• The communist press: books, periodicals, and other publications.
• The official communist contacts of foreign diplomats, journalists, and
other visitors.
• The public activities and decisions of communist parties in noncom-
munist countries.
The unofficial communist sources are:
• Unofficial speeches and off-the-record comments by communist leaders
and officials.
• Unofficial contacts in communist countries of foreign diplomats, jour-
nalists, and other visitors.
• Wall posters in China and underground pubhcations in other communist
countries, such as samizdat in the Soviet Union.
• The books of communist scholars.
The "secret" communist sources are the occasional, often retrospective,
leakages or disclosures by the communist side, sometimes in documentary
form, of information that has earher been treated as secret. These often relate
to polemics between members of the communist bloc and may cover:
• Secret activities, discussions, and decisions of the leading bodies of the
bloc.
• Secret activities, discussions, and decisions of the parties, governments,
and ministries of individual communist countries.
• The secret activities and speeches of communist leaders and officials.
• Secret party and government documents, particularly party circulars to
rank-and-file members.
The Analysis of Information from Communist Sources
The possibilities of obtaining reliable information on the communist world
through communist sources should be neither ignored
SOURCES OF INFORMATION 63
nor overestimated. Obviously, not all the items that appear in the
communist press are false or distorted for propaganda or disinforma-
tion purposes. Though both are present to a significant degree, the
communist press also reflects, to a large extent accurately, the
complex life and activity of communist society. The party and the
population are kept informed through the press of major party and
government decisions and events; they are also mobilized and guided
through the press into carrying out those decisions.
For these reasons, study of the communist press is important for the
West. But the problem for Western analysts is to distinguish between
the factual information and the propaganda and disinformation to be
found in the press. Here certain Western tendencies tend to get in the
way: the tendency to regard certain communist problems as a
reflection of eternal, immutable world problems; a tendency to assume
that changes in communist society are spontaneous developments; and
a tendency to interpret developments in the communist world on the
basis of the experience, notions, and terminology of Western systems.
Undoubtedly there are eternal and universal elements at work in
communist politics (Stalin did have something in common with other
tyrants who were not communists). Some developments in the
communist world are spontaneous (the Hungarian revolt is a case in
point) and there are some similarities between the unfolding of events
in the communist and noncommunist worlds. It is more important to
point out that there is also a definite ideological, political, and
operational continuity in the communist movement and its regimes,
the specific elements of which should not be overlooked or ignored.
There is a more or less permanent set of factors that reflect the essence
of communism and make it different from any other social or political
system, and there are certain permanent problems with which
communists deal with varying degrees of failure and success. These
factors and problems are, for example, class ideology, nationalism,
intrabloc and interparty relations, internationalism, revisionism, power
struggles, succession in the leadership, purges, policy toward the
West, party tactics, the nature of crises and failures in the communist
world, and the solutions or readjustments that are applied to them. To
overlook what is specifically communist in the content and handling
of all these problems is to fall into error. For example, attempting to
explain the purges
64 NEW LIES FOR OLD
of the 1930s in terms of Stalin's psychological makeup would be
skating on the surface. No less erroneous would be the analysis in
Western terms of the nationalism that undoubtedly exists in the
communist world.
Even those Western experts who recognize the specific nature and
continuity of communist regimes and have overcome the three
tendencies mentioned above often display a fourth tendency, which is
to apply stereotypes derived from the Stalin period to subsequent
developments in the communist world, thereby failing to take into
account the possibility of readjustments in communist regimes and the
adoption of a more rational approach to the abiding problems
confronting them. Historically speaking, communist ideology and
practice have both shown themselves capable of flexibility and suc-
cessful adaptation to circumstances: Lenin's NEP is a good example.
Continuity and change are both present in the communist system; both
are reflected in the communist press.
Analysis of the communist press is therefore important to an
understanding of the communist world but only if it is done correctly.
A knowledge of communist history and an understanding of the
permanent factors and problems and the manner in which they have
been tackled in different historical periods is essential. So also — and
hitherto this has been almost entirely lacking in the West — is an
understanding of the role and pattern of communist disinformation in
a given period and the effect it has on the vahdity and reliability of
sources.
The Vulnerability of Western Assessments
GIVEN THAT COMMUNIST REGIMES PRACTICE DISINFORMA-
TION in time of peace on a scale unparalleled in the West, it is
essential to determine the pattern of disinformation that is being
followed if Western studies and assessments are to avoid serious error.
Once the pattern has been established, it provides criteria for
distinguishing reliable from unreliable sources and genuine
information from disinformation. Determining the pattern is difficult,
if not impossible, unless reliable inside information is available.
Here a distinction should be noted between the communist sources
and the Western sources. All the communist sources are permanently
available as natural channels for communist disinformation. Western
sources are in general less available as channels, but can become so to
a varying extent depending upon whether their existence is or is not
known to the communist side. With communist sources the problem is
to detect how they are being used for disinformation. With Western
sources the problem is twofold; to determine whether they have been
compromised to the communist side, and if so, whether they are being
used for disinformation purposes.
Since Western sources are in general less vulnerable than commu-
nist to exploitation for purposes of disinformation, they tend to be
regarded as more reliable than the communist sources, which are
completely open to exploitation. However, if Western sources are
compromised (and particularly if the West does not know, or does not
wish to acknowledge, that they have been compromised),
65
66 NEW LIES FOR OLD
they can become unreliable and even dangerous. Conversely, if the
pattern of disinformation is known and if an adequate method of
analysis is used, even communist sources can reveal reliable and
significant information.
The ideal situation for the West is when its intelligence services
have reliable sources of information at the policy-making level, when
adequate methods of analysis are applied by the West to communist
sources, and when the pattern of communist disinformation is known.
These three factors react on one another to their mutual advantage.
The inside sources provide information bearing on the adequacy of
Western analysis; they also help to determine the pattern of
disinformation and provide timely warning of any changes in it. The
pattern of disinformation, once established, and a proper analysis of
communist sources together lead to an accurate assessment of Western
secret sources and to the exposure of the tainted ones among them.
The trouble is, however, that the effectiveness of Western inteUi-
gence services cannot be taken for granted. Apart from the general
obstacles to the acquisition of reliable, high-level inside information
on the communist world, there are special risks of reliable sources
becoming compromised through their own mistakes or through
communist penetration of Western intelligence services. Some
Western sources — for example, listening devices — can be detected
and exploited by the communist side for disinformation purposes
without the Western services concerned being penetrated. But the
major factor that has damaged the effectiveness of Western services
has been penetration by their communist opponents; this has com-
promised Western sources and enabled the communist side to use
them as channels for disinformation.
If Western intelligence services lose their effectiveness and them-
selves become channels for communist disinformation, this in turn
damages Western analysis of communist sources and results in failure
to detect the pattern of communist disinformation and any changes
there may be in it. When all three factors — Western abihty to obtain
secret information. Western abihty to interpret communist sources,
and Western abihty to understand disinformation — are themselves
adversely affected by the consequences of penetration and
disinformation, then the whole process of Western assessment
VULNERABILITY OF WESTERN ASSESSMENTS 67
of communist affairs is vitiated, and the real problems and real
changes in the communist world cannot be distinguished from
fictitious and deceptive ones. Doubtful information from official,
unofficial, or "secret" communist sources confirms or is confirmed by
disinformation fed through compromised Western secret sources.
Information deliberately leaked by the communist side is accepted as
reliable by the West. Genuine information, fortuitously received by
the West, may be questioned or rejected. In this way the errors in
Western assessments become not only serious, but also irreversible
unless and until the pattern of disinformation is correctly established.
The critical condition of the assessment process in the West is the
more serious because it is unrecognized and undiagnosed. If Western
assessments of the communist world are wrong, then Western
miscalculations and mistakes in policy will follow. These
miscalculations and mistakes will be exploited by the communist side
to their own advantage. When this happens and the Western mistakes
are recognized by the public, the politicians, diplomats, and scholars
associated with those mistakes are discredited and a basis is laid for
the emergence of extremist bodies of opinion. The rise of
McCarthyism in the United States after the failure of American
postwar policy in Eastern Europe and China is an obvious example.
The Consequences of Different Patterns of Disinformation
The character of Western miscalculations depends to a large degree
on the pattern of communist disinformation. During a crisis in the
communist system when the facade and strength pattern of
disinformation is used, the West is confused about the real situation in
communist countries and fails to perceive the weakness of their
regimes. A convincing, but spurious, facade of monolithic unity is
built around the actual explosive realities of the communist world.
Spurious though it is, the facade is liable to be taken at its face value
by Western observers and even governments. Their overestimate of
the strength and cohesion of the apparent monolith inhibits them from
taking proper steps to exploit an actual crisis in the communist world.
68 NEWLIESFOROLD
The Crisis in the Bloc, 1949-56
Undoubtedly there was some realization in the West of the diffi-
culties in the communist world in the years immediately preceding
and following Stalin's death. But facade and strength disinformation
successfully concealed the existence of genuine Sino-Soviet differ-
ences between 1950 and 1953; it also veiled the acuteness of the
revolutionary situation in Eastern Europe. If the depth of the crisis
there had been more fully appreciated in the West, a more active and
helpful Western response to the events in Poland and Hungary might
have been forthcoming; part or all of Eastern Europe might have been
liberated altogether.
During the implementation of a long-range policy, a weakness and
evolution pattern of disinformation is used. Again, the West is
confused about the real strength of communist regimes and, this time,
about their policies as well. A convincing picture is built up of the
decline of ideology and the emergence of competing national entities
in the communist world. Although this image is false and is
dehberately projected by the communist regimes, it is liable to be
accepted at face value by the West as an accurate reflection of
spontaneously occurring political developments. On this basis the
West tends to underestimate the strength and cohesion of the
communist world and is encouraged to overlook the necessity for
proper defensive measures. Furthermore it can be misled into taking
offensive steps that unintentionally serve the ends of communist
policy and provide opportunities for future exploitation by the
communist side, to Western disadvantage.
Of the two patterns of disinformation, the second has potentially the
more serious consequences for the West in that, if appHed
successfully, it can adversely affect Western offensive and defensive
measures; the first inhibits Western offensive measures only and
serves to harden its defense.
The Second World War
Soviet expansionism was helped by disinformation during the
Second World War. Without in any way questioning the necessity of
the wartime antifascist alliance between the Soviet Union and the
Western allies, it is legitimate to point out that the alliance
VULNERABILITY OF WESTERN ASSESSMENTS 69
was successfully exploited by the Soviet Union to further its own
political objectives. There is scope for a detailed historical study of the
methods and channels used by the Soviet regime to influence and
disinform the American and British governments before the Tehran
and Yalta conferences about the real nature of the Soviet regime and
its intentions. American and British archives should yield additional
information on the influence exerted by Soviet agents in the US State
Department and British Foreign Office, such as Donald Maclean and
Guy Burgess.' Meanwhile, a few points may be made to illustrate the
use of the themes of the decline of ideology, the rise in nationalist
influence, and the disunity and lack of cooperation between
communist parties.
During the wartime alliance ideological criticism of the United
States and Great Britain virtually disappeared from the Soviet press.
Revolutionary ideology, though never wholly abandoned, was soft-
pedalled. Old Russian traditions were glorified; former czarist ranks
and decorations were restored in the Red Army. A new respect was
shown for religion; Stalin held a public audience for Russian church
leaders in 1943. The common dangers confronting the Soviet Union
and the West and their common interest in survival were emphasized,
and described as providing a basis for future cooperation. Western
statesmen and diplomats were told that a postwar liberalization of the
Soviet regime and its evolution into a national. Western type of
nation-state were inevitable; they were even flattered with the idea
that these changes would take place under Western influence. Soviet
acceptance of the Atlantic Charter in 1941 and signature of the United
Nations Pact on January 1, 1942, should be seen as part of the effort to
raise Western expectations of favorable developments in the Soviet
Union. But the most striking and significant deception designed to
mask continuing, active cooperation between communist parties and
convince the Western allies that revolutionary objectives had been
abandoned was the dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943, six
months before the Tehran conference. Allied with this deception were
the themes that the Soviet Union and the Red Army were fighting
only for the liberation of Eastern Europe from fascism and had no
thought of establishing communist regimes in that area.
10
Communist Intelligence Successes,
Western Failures, and the Crisis in
Western Studies
AT PRESENT, Western efforts to obtain secret political information
on the communist world, Western attempts to analyze
information from communist sources, and Western ability to
distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources — between genuine
information and disinformation — all appear to be suffering from at
least a temporary loss of effectiveness. This state of affairs is
symptomatic of the penetration of Western intelligence services by
their communist opponents.
Western intelligence has not always been unsuccessful. During the
post-Stalin crisis, the communist intelligence and security services
were weak. More people were disposed to help the West; five officials
of Soviet intelligence defected in 1954. Although the West has never
fully uncovered the extent of communist intelligence penetration of its
governments and societies, Western intelligence did nevertheless have
some reliable sources with access to poHcy-making bodies in the
communist countries. But as the communist world recovered from its
crisis, so its intelligence and security services regained their strength
and effectiveness. The effort to penetrate Western governments in
general and Western intelligence and security services in particular,
which had been continuous from 1917 onward, was revitalized with
success. This is not the place for a detailed study of the problem;
nevertheless, some examples to illustrate the argument must be given.
From his service in the NATO section of the Information Depart-
ment of the KGB's First Chief Directorate in 1959-60, the author
knows that at that time the Soviet and bloc intelligence services
70
COMMUNIST INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES 71
had agents in the foreign ministries of most NATO countries, not to
mention those of many of the non-NATO countries. This meant that
the Soviet leaders and their partners were nearly as well informed
about the foreign policies of Western governments as were those
governments themselves.
Symptomatic of the depth and scale of penetration were the cases of
the former British Admiralty official, Vassall; the former Swedish
military attache in the Soviet Union and later in the USA, Colonel
Wennerstrom; the former senior official in NATO headquarters in
Paris, Colonel Paques; and the forty concealed microphones belatedly
discovered in the American Embassy in Moscow in 1964.
There is also striking public evidence of communist penetration of
Western intelligence services. The British security and intelligence
services, the oldest and most experienced in the West, were gravely
damaged by Blunt, Philby, Blake, and others who worked for Soviet
intelligence inside them for many years before being discovered.
The exposure of the Felfe ring inside the German intelligence
service in 1961 showed that this service had been penetrated by the
Soviets since its rebirth in 1951.
The author's detailed information on extensive Soviet penetration of
French intelligence over a long period of time was passed to the
appropriate French authorities, who were able to neutralize the
penetration.
American intelligence suffered from Soviet penetration of allied
services with which it was collaborating. In 1957-58 American
intelligence lost an important secret agent in the Soviet Union,
Lieutenant Colonel Popov, as a result of KGB penetration.'
Particularly because the problem of disinformation has not been
understood, it is doubtful if adequate account has been taken of the
compromise of sources resulting from known instances of communist
penetration of Western intelligence.
Factors in Communist Intelligence Successes
Three main factors contribute to the successes of the communist
intelligence services against the West. In the first place, they operate
72 NEW LIES FOR OLD
on a vastly greater scale. The intelligence potential of totalitarian
regimes is always greater than that of democracies because they rely
on secret police for their own internal stability. The determination of
communist regimes to promote their system in other countries entails
an expanded role for their intelligence services abroad. Accordingly,
communist regimes take intelligence and security work more seriously
and commit more human and financial resources to it than do
democracies. In the Soviet Union staff can be trained in these subjects
up to the equivalent of university degree level. They are encouraged to
enlarge their networks of informers on a massive scale both inside and
outside their own particular territories.
Second, communist leaders appreciate the importance of good
security work to their survival and the constructive contribution that
good intelligence can make to the success of their international
strategy. Communist inteUigence and security services are therefore
free from the difficult if not impossible constraints imposed on the
activities of their counterparts in democratic countries. They have an
officially recognized and honored place in communist institutions.
They have no problems to contend with from the press or public
opinion in their own countries. They can afford to be more aggressive,
especially in the recruitment of new agents.
The third, and possibly the most important, factor is that from 1958-
60 onward the combined intelligence and security resources of the
whole communist bloc have been committed by the communist
governments to play an influential part in the implementation of the
new long-range bloc policy by assuming an activist pohtical role,
which has entailed providing Western intelligence services with
carefully selected "secret" information from inside the communist
world.
It is an additional indication of the loss of effectiveness of Western
intelligence that this change in the role of the communist intelligence
services has virtually escaped attention in the West, just as did the
significance of the two conferences of leading KGB officials in the
Soviet Union in 1954 and 1959. There has been no sign, up to the
present, of any increased awareness of the new dimension of the
problem posed by the involvement of the communist intelligence
services in strategic disinformation. This seems to indicate that
whatever secret Western sources there may be have not reported on it.
COMMUNIST INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES 73
Obsolete Western Methods of Analyzing Communist Sources
Up to now Western analysts have normally used the content method of
analysis of communist sources, principally the communist press and
periodicals. Since the rules were formulated by the former German
communist, Borkenau, it is often known as Borkenau's method. Without
questioning the intelligence or integrity of Western analysts, one must
question their continuing and almost exclusive reliance on his method after
the new long-range bloc policy and the systematic use of disinformation had
been adopted.
The basic rules of Borkenau's method can be summed up as follows:
• Avoid being taken in by the facade of communist propaganda and strip
away the empty verbiage of communist statements in order to determine the
real issues and real conflicts in communist societies.
• Interpret these issues and forecast possible developments in the com-
munist world before they become pubhc knowledge.
• Seek clues for the interpretation of developments in the communist
world in the national and local communist press in announcements of
appointments or dismissals of officials and in obituary notices.
• Make detailed comparisons of the speeches of leading communists in
the same country and in different countries in a search for significant
differences, especially in emphasis on and approach to doctrinal problems.
• Make similar detailed comparisons between communist newspapers,
other publications, and broadcasts in the same country and in different
countries, with the same purpose in mind.
• Interpret current developments in the light of knowledge of old party
controversies.
• Pay particular attention to struggles for personal power; trace the
background and careers of party bosses and study the grouping of their
followers.
This method was valid and effective for the period of Stalin's dictatorship
and for the power struggle that followed his death. The ehmination of the
Zhdanov group by Stalin in 1948-49, the existence of Sino-Soviet differences
in the Stalin period, and Khrushchev's "victory" over the majority of the
Presidium in June 1957 were all susceptible to more or less accurate
interpretation and
74 NEWLIESFOROLD
assessment by these means. Factionalism, policy disputes, political
maneuvers, and the struggle for power were all real problems at that
time, and the analysis of them on Borkenau's lines justified itself and
provided a key to the understanding of the realities of the communist
world and its poHcy.
During the initial post-Stalin period, from 1953 to 1957, the most
spontaneous and uncontrolled period in communist history, there were
some new developments. Genuine nationalism and revisionism took
on significant proportions. Different interest groups emerged (the
military, the party, and the technical administration), together with
groups of Stalinists and moderates, liberals, and conservatives. These
new factors were taken into account by Western analysts, who
modified their technique accordingly.
However, the spontaneous period ended with the reestablishment
of the authority of the communist parties in the bloc. Readjustments
in the communist world reversed the original significance and mean-
ing of the various factors studied by Western analysts. Since the latter
failed to apprehend these readjustments, their method of analysis of
communist sources was invalidated.
The adoption of the long-range policy firmly established the prin-
ciple of collective leadership, put an end to real power struggles,
provided a solution for the problem of succession in the leadership,
and established a new basis for relations between the different mem-
bers of the communist bloc. Whereas the methods of assessing
nationalism and revisionism were relevant to the crisis period of 1953
to 1956, in which there was a loss of Soviet control over the satellites
and spontaneous revolts occurred, notably in Poland and Hungary,
they ceased to be relevant once the leaders of the communist parties
and governments had been given tactical independence and all of
them, including the Yugoslavs, had committed themselves to the new
long-range bloc policy and international communist strategy. The
forces of nationalism and revisionism ceased to determine communist
policy anywhere; communist policy determined the use that could be
made of them. It was because this fundamental change was
successfully concealed from Western observers that subsequent
Western analysis of Soviet- Albanian, Soviet- Yugoslav, Soviet-
Romanian, Soviet-Czechoslovak, Soviet-Chinese, and Soviet-Polish
relations, based on the old, obsolete methodology, became
dangerously misleading.
COMMUNIST INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES 75
The reestablishment of the authority of the parties put an end to the
influence of the interest groups. This can be illustrated with the case
of the military group. Under Stalin the military were a potentially
important group because they were persecuted by him. They knew all
about Stalin's methods from personal experience. For that reason an
antiparty move by the military was always a possibility. During the
power struggle from 1953 to 1957, party control over the Soviet
military was weak, and the military played a significant role first in
unseating undesirable leaders like Beriya and later, through Zhukov,
in Khrushchev's "victory" over the opposition. After Zhukov's
removal the military came under sounder party control and were freed
from the threat of persecution. Similarly, party control over the
military in China was reaffirmed from 1958 onward. The military
cannot and do not make policy in either country. The "discovery" by
Western analysts of a military pressure group in the Soviet Union in
1960 and the emphasis on the role of the former Chinese minister of
defense, Lin Piao, were both mistaken. The military leaders, like the
so-called technocrats, are all party members under the control of the
party leadership. In their separate fields they are all active participants
in the implementation of the long-range policy.
Once collective leadership had been established in the Soviet Union
and reaffirmed in the Chinese party in 1959-60, factionalism lost its
meaning. There could no longer be actual groups of Stalinists, neo-
Stalinists, Khrushchevites, or Maoists, but such groups could be
invented if required by policy considerations. The personality factor in
the leadership of communist parties took on a new significance. A
leader's personal style and idiosyncracies no longer determined
communist policy; on the contrary, the long-range bloc policy began
to determine the actions of the leaders and to exploit their differences
in personality and style for its own purposes. Stalin used the cult of
personality to establish his own personal dictatorship; Mao used it, in
part, to conceal the reality of collective leadership. Since the adoption
of the common long-range policy also solved the problem of
succession, power struggles lost their former significance and became
part of the calculated and controlled display of difference and disunity
within the bloc. The existence of genuine groups of Stalinists and
liberals, hard-liners, and moderates in the Soviet Union is as illusory
as the existence of pro-Soviet and anti-
76 NEWLIESFOROLD
Soviet groups, or groups of conservatives and pragmatists in the
Chinese leadership. It is true that there have been representatives of
the older and younger generations in both leaderships, but attempts to
find differences in the ideology or policy of the different generations
cannot be substantiated by hard evidence. Both generations in both
parties were, and are, equally committed to the long-range pohcy of
1958-60.
When there was a real power struggle in the Soviet Union, it made
sense to scan the communist press for clues, hints, and significant
omissions, to read veiled criticism between the lines or to seek
divergences of emphasis on a given subject in different papers or by
different leaders in one party or in different parties. It made sense
particularly in the years before and after Stalin's death. After 1960,
however, continued analysis on these lines was not only useless but
positively dangerous, since the bloc's strategists knew all about the
Borkenau technique and its cliches and used their knowledge in
planning their strategic disinformation. They knew all the pointers on
which exponents of the Borkenau method had come to rely for their
insight into the workings of the communist system; they knew the
fascination exercised by actual and potential spHts in the communist
world; they knew when and how to drop hints in the media or in
private conversation suggesting apparent shifts in the balance between
apparent rival groups in the leadership; they knew where and how to
disclose the texts of secret speeches and discussions reflecting
apparent discord between parties; and, finally, they learned how to
conduct controlled public polemics between party leaders realistically
enough to convince the outside world of the reality of Soviet-AI banian
and Sino-Soviet hostility while at the same time preserving and
strengthening unity of action within the bloc in accordance with the
mutually agreed long-range policy and strategy.
The Western Failure to Detect Disinformation and Its Current Pattern
Conventional methodology tends to regard a secret source as
reliable if the information it provides is broadly compatible with other
information openly available; conversely, a source reporting
COMMUNIST INTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES 77
information that conflicts with the generally accepted view of the
situation in the communist world may be discounted or rejected. In the
absence of disinformation, this methodology would be valid. But the
Shelepin report of May 1959 marked the reintroduction of a
systematic program of disinformation. It is true that in the late 1960s
an increase in communist disinformation activity, mainly of a tactical
nature involving the fabrication and leakage by the communist side of
alleged Western documents, attracted Western attention and was
reported by the CIA to the Congress of the United States. But the fact
is that when Shelepin delivered his report to the KGB conference in
1959, the West apparently had no sources capable of reporting on it;
its contents and implications remained unknown to, and unexplored
by, any Western intelligence service until the author gave his account
of them. Bearing in mind the public references to the long-range
political role of the KGB at the Twenty-first CPSU Congress, the
good faith of any KGB source or defector who has described the KGB
conference of 1959 and Shelepin's report to it as routine is open to
serious doubt.
Not only did the West lack specific information on the Shelepin
report; communist use of disinformation in general has been consis-
tently underrated in the West, and the purpose of the weakness and
evolution pattern is virtually unknown.^ If the West had been aware of
the Shelepin report and had appreciated its implications, Western
methodology should, and probably would, have been turned upside
down; it would have been realized that a reliable source would give
information conflicting with the generally accepted picture. The
communist concept of total disinformation entails the use of all
available channels to convey disinformation; that is to say, all the
communist sources and all the Western sources except, obviously, any
that are unknown to the communist side and those that, for some
practical reason, are unsuitable. If the communist and Western sources
reflect the same image of the communist world, it is a good indication
that the Western as well as the communist sources are being used
successfully for disinformation purposes.
Against the background of the superior communist security and
intelligence effort and its known successes in penetrating Western
intelligence services, the odds are heavily against the survival of
rehable, uncompromised Western secret sources at the strategic
78 NEW LIES FOR OLD
political level in the communist world. If, despite the odds, such a
source were to have survived, it should have produced information at
variance with that from all other sources. At a time when the facade
and strength pattern of disinformation was in use, a reliable source at
the right level should have drawn attention to the existence of a
critical situation in the communist world that the communist side was
anxious to conceal. Conversely, after the weakness and evolution
pattern had been reintroduced in 1958-60, a reliable secret source
should have drawn attention, in contrast with other sources, to the
underlying strength and coordination of the communist world.
Because the West failed to find out about or understand communist
disinformation after 1958, it failed to change its methodology; because
it failed to change its methodology, it has continued to accept as
genuine information from all sources, both communist and Western,
reflecting disunity and disarray in the communist world. The fact that
all the sources. Western and communist alike, continue to tell much
the same story on this subject is a good indication that the
disinformation effort has been both comprehensive and effective. The
most dangerous consequence of Western failure to detect and
understand communist disinformation and its patterns is that, in the
absence of any correcting influence from rehable Western secret
sources, the version of events transmitted through communist sources
has increasingly come to be accepted as the truth. Conventional
Western views on the Sino-Soviet "split," the "independence" of
Romania and Yugoslavia, the "Prague spring," Eurocommunist
dissidence, and other subjects discussed in Part 2 were devised for the
West and communicated to it by the communist strategists.
11
Western Errors
THE FAILURE OF WESTERN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES to adapt their
methodology to take into account the changes in communist
pohcy and strategy in the period 1957-60 and the reintroduction
of disinformation on the weakness and evolution pattern meant that
those services lost their ability to produce or contribute to accurate
and balanced assessments of the situation in the communist world;
they unwittingly became vehicles for the further dissemination of
disinformation deliberately fed to them by their communist opposite
numbers. Since they failed to convey adequate warnings either about
the mobilization of the bloc's intelligence potential for political action
or about the techniques and patterns of disinformation, it is not
surprising that Western diplomats, academics, and journalists should
also have overlooked the calculated feeding of disinformation through
the communications media and should increasingly have accepted at
face value the "disclosures" made to them by communist leaders and
officials in unofficial, off-the-record conversations.
Acceptance of the new brand of disinformation from 1958 onward
was by no means total and immediate. Until 1961 at least, there were,
broadly speaking, two schools of thought among serious Western
students of communist affairs. There were those who, on the basis of
their long experience and acquaintanceship with communist duplicity
and deceit and their intuitive mistrust of evidence and "leakages"
emanating from communist sources, adopted a sceptical attitude
toward the early manifestations of divergences and splits in the
communist world and warned against the uncritical
79
80 NEWLIESFOROLD
acceptance of these manifestations at their face value. Scepticism
about the authenticity of Sino-Soviet differences was expressed in
different ways and on different grounds by, among others, W. A.
Douglas Jackson, J. Burnham, J. Lovestone, Natahe Grant, Suzanne
Labin, and Tibor Mende. For example, Jackson wrote: "In the latter
part of 1959 and throughout 1960, as a result of different views
expressed in statements issued in Peking and Moscow, the notion of a
possible falling out between the two powers [gained] considerable
momentum in some Western capitals. The desire to see a conflict
develop between the CPR and the USSR is a legitimate one, but it
may tend to blind the West to fundamental realities if undue weight is
given to seemingly apparent signs of rift, when in fact nothing of a
fundamental nature may exist."
James Burnham pointed out in the National Review that the Sino-
Soviet conflict seemed to be a subject of conversation much favored
by communist hosts for Western statesmen and journalists during their
visits to Moscow and Peking; he wondered whether statements about
the Sino-Soviet dispute were a "deliberate deception by the
communists or wishful thinking by non-communists, or a fusion of
both."-
Suzanne Labin repeated in her book the opinion of a refugee from
Communist China, Dr. Tang, according to whom Sino-Soviet
differences stemmed from a division of labor between the USSR and
China.'
Tibor Mende, who visited China at that time, warned against
exaggerating the importance of existing differences and observed that
"when China and the Soviet Union meet it is not merely to bargain,
but also to concert their actions."^
Natalie Grant, well-versed in the history of the Trust, went further,
suggesting that "a careful study of the material forming the alleged
grounds for concluding that there is a serious Sino-Soviet conflict
proves the absence of any objective foundation for such a belief ... all
statements regarding the existence of a serious disagreement between
Moscow and Peking on foreign policy, war, peace, revolution, or
attitude toward imperialism are an invention. All are the fruit of fertile
imagination and unbased speculation." She also said that much of the
"misinformation" on Sino-Soviet relations was communist-inspired
and "reminiscent of that almost forgotten era dominated by the
Institute of Pacific Relations."^
WESTERN ERRORS 81
The opposite school of thought apphed Borkenau's methods to the
new situation and devoted great attention to the study of what came to
be known as "symbolic," or "esoteric," evidence, which began to
appear in the communist press from 1958 onward, of divergences and
doctrinal disputes between different members of the communist bloc.^
The esoteric evidence of Sino-Soviet differences was supported by
various unofficial statements by Soviet and Chinese leaders, such as
Khrushchev's critical remarks about the Chinese communes to the late
Senator Hubert Humphrey on December 1, 1958, or Chou En-lai's
"frank admissions" to Edgar Snow in the autumn of 1960. Further
support came from off-the-record comments by communist officials in
Eastern Europe.
Throughout 1960 and much of 1961, opinions fluctuated between
the sceptics and the believers in the esoteric evidence. Then, at the
Twenty-second CPSU Congress held in October 1961, Khrushchev
dehvered a public attack on the Albanian Communist party leadership
and Chou En-lai, leader of the Chinese delegation, withdrew from the
congress. The Soviet-Al banian dialogue had ceased to be esoteric and
had become public. As the public polemics between the Soviet and the
Albanian and Chinese leaders developed, retrospective accounts
began to appear in the West of disputes that had allegedly occurred
behind closed doors at the congress of the Romanian Communist
party held in Bucharest in June 1960 and the congress of eighty-one
communist parties held in Moscow in November 1960. The most
notable of these disclosures were those made in Edward Crankshaw's
articles in the London Observer for February 12 and 19, 1961, and
May 6 and 20, 1962. They were followed by the publication of official
documents and statements in the press of the Italian, French, Belgian,
Polish, and Albanian Communist parties. This material confirmed and
added to the content of the Crankshaw articles.
By the end of 1962 the combination of esoteric evidence, public
polemics between communist leaders, and the largely retrospective
evidence of factionalism at international communist gatherings proved
irresistible; acceptance of the existence of genuine splits in the
communist world became almost universal The esoteric and the
unofficial evidence from communist sources had proved themselves
reliable and accurate. The continuing validity of the basic premises of
the old methodology had been reconfirmed and
82 NEW LIES FOR OLD
its practitioners vindicated. The ground was cut from under the
sceptics' feet. Some changed their minds. Those who retained their
doubts lacked soHd evidence with which to back them and had no
option but to keep silent. Study of the splits built up its own
momentum, creating on the way a variety of personal commitments to
and vested interests in the validity of an analysis that demonstrated
the accelerating disintegration of the communist monolith. New
students entering the field had no incentive and no basis for
challenging the accepted orthodoxy or for reexamining the basic
premises of the methodology or the validity of the evidence on which
they were founded.
The development of splits in the communist world appeals to
Western consciousness in many ways. It feeds the craving for sensa-
tionalism; it raises hopes of commercial profit; it stirs memories of
past heresies and splits in the communist movement; it shows that
factionalism is an element in communist as in Western politics; it
supports the comforting illusion that, left to itself, the communist
world will disintegrate and that the communist threat to the rest of the
world will vanish; and it confirms the opinions of those who, on
intellectual grounds, reject the pretensions of communist dogma to
provide a unique, universal, and infallible guide to the understanding
of history and the conduct of policy. Not surprisingly, therefore,
evidence in official communist sources that conflicts with the image
of disunity and disarray in the communist world and that points, or
can be interpreted as pointing, to continuing cooperation between the
Soviet Union, China, Romania, and Yugoslavia and continuing
coordination in the implementation of the long-range bloc policy has
been discounted or ignored. The focus of attention is almost
invariably on the evidence of discord. So exciting has this evidence
been and so lacking has been Western understanding of the motives
and techniques of communist disinformation that less and less
attention has been paid to the communist origin of the evidence.
Virtually all of it has in fact been provided to the West by communist
governments and parties through their press and intelligence services.
Failing to take this into account. Western observers have fallen deeper
and deeper into the trap that was set for them.
The present situation is reminiscent of the NEP period with one
important difference: In the 1920s Western mistakes related
WESTERNERRORS 83
only to Soviet Russia; now the mistakes relate to the whole commu-
nist world. Where the West should see unity and strategic coordina-
tion in the communist world, it sees only diversity and disintegration;
where it should see the revival of ideology, the stabilization of
communist regimes, and the reinforcement of party control, it sees the
death of ideology and evolution toward or convergence with the
democratic system; where it should see new communist maneuvers, it
sees moderation in communist policy. Communist willingness to sign
agreements with the West for tactical reasons on a deceptive basis is
misinterpreted as the reassertion of great-power national interests over
the pursuit of long-range ideological goals.
Two further tendencies have helped to compound the series of
Western errors: the tendency to apply cliches and stereotypes derived
from the study of conventional national regimes to the study of
communist countries, overlooking or underestimating the ideological
factor in their internal systems and their relations with one another;
and the tendency toward wishful thinking.
Both tendencies favor the uncritical acceptance by the West of what
communist sources, official and unofficial, say in particular about the
Sino-Soviet dispute. Much of the Western literature on the subject
lumps together historical evidence on rivalry between the two
countries when they were governed by czars and emperors with the
controversies between them in the 1920s through the 1960s — all this
in an effort to substantiate the authenticity of the current dispute
without any serious attempt to study the different factors in operation
in different periods. The focus of Western attention is always on the
split and not on the evidence from the same communist sources,
scanty though it is, of continuing Sino-Soviet collaboration. Western
analysts, inside and outside government, seem to be more concerned
with speculation on future relations between the communist and
noncommunist worlds than with critical examination of the evidence
on which their interpretation of events is based.
Nationalism was an important force in communist parties during
Stalin's last years and the crisis after his death. Various parties were
affected by it, particularly those in Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, and
Georgia. It is important to realize, however, that nationalist dissent in
the parties at that time was a reaction to Stalin's
84 NEWLIESFOROLD
departures from Leninist principles of internationalism. Once Stalin's
practices had been condemned and the necessary readjustments had
been made from 1956-57 onward in the conduct of communist affairs,
particularly with regard to relations between the CPSU and other
communist parties, the basis for nationalist dissent in those other
parties progressively disappeared. From then on, nationalist feehngs
in the respective populations were a factor that the communist regimes
could deal with by an agreed diversity of tactics and by the calculated
projection of a false image of the national independence of communist
parties. Whatever the appearances, since 1957-60 the regimes in
China, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Dubcek's Czechoslovakia have not
been motivated by different brands of national communism; their
actions have been consistently dictated by Leninist ideology and
tactics directed toward the pursuit of the long-range interests and
goals of the communist bloc as a whole, to which the national
interests of the peoples of the communist world are subordinated.
The fundamental Western error throughout has been to overlook the
adoption of the long-range bloc policy and the role and pattern of
communist disinformation. Either disinformation is not taken into
account at all or it is assumed that a facade and strength pattern is
being followed. In reality the weakness and evolution pattern has
applied since 1958-60. Disinformation on this pattern has laid the
basis for erroneous Western assessments of the communist world,
which in turn have engendered mistakes in Western responses and
policies. As a result the communist world has been allowed
systematically to implement its long-range policy over a period of
more than twenty years.
12
The New Methodology
THERE ARE TWO WAYS of analyzing and interpreting each of the
major developments since 1958 in world communism described
in Part 2. According to the conventional view, based on the old,
obsolete methodology, each of these developments is a manifestation
of the spontaneous growth of fissile tendencies in international
communism. The new methodology leads to the radically different
conclusion that each of them forms part of an interlocking series of
strategic disinformation operations designed to implement long-range
bloc policy and its strategies. The essence of the new methodology,
which distinguishes it from the old, is that it takes into account the
new policy and the role of disinformation.
Conventional methodology frequently attempts to analyze and
interpret events in the communist world in isolation and on a year-to-
year basis; communist initiatives are seen as spontaneously occurring
attempts to achieve short-term objectives. But because the years 1957-
60 saw a readjustment in intrabloc relations and the formulation and
adoption of a new long-range policy for the bloc as a whole, a proper
understanding of what occurred in those years provides the key to
understanding what has happened since. The first, and basic, principle
of the new methodology is that the starting point for the analysis of all
subsequent events should be the period 1957-60.
85
86 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Factors Underlying the New Methodology
From the account of those years already given, based largely on inside
information, eight new factors can be isolated. Only if all these factors and
the interaction between them are understood and taken into account together
can analysis of the developments of the past twenty years yield correct
results. These factors are:
• The readjustments in relations between members of the communist bloc,
including Yugoslavia, from 1957 onward and the adoption of a common
long-range policy.
• The settlement of the question of Stalinism.
• The establishment of collective leadership, the ending of power strug-
gles, and the solution of the succession problem.
• The phases and long-range objectives of the policy.
• The historical experience on which the policy was based.
• The preparations made to use the party apparatus, the mass organiza-
tions, and the diplomatic, intelligence, and security services of the whole bloc
for purposes of political influence and strategic disinformation.
• The adoption of a weakness and evolution pattern of disinformation.
• The new appreciation by communist strategists of the use that could be
made of polemics between different members of the communist bloc.
From these new factors new analytical principles can be derived. Each
factor will be considered in turn.
Before the new policy began to be formulated, and as one of the essential
preconditions for its formulation, a new relationship between the regimes of
the communist bloc was established in 1957. Soviet domination over the East
European satellites and Stalinist attempts to interfere in Chinese and
Yugoslav communist affairs were abandoned in favor of the Leninist
concepts of equality and proletarian intemationahsm. Domination gave way
to genuine partnership and mutual cooperation and coordination in pursuit of
the common long-range interests and objectives of the whole of the
communist bloc and movement; account was taken of the diversity of the
specific national conditions within which each communist regime and party
was operating.
Obsolete, conventional methodology failed to spot the significance of this
change; it continued to see the Soviet party as striving, often unsuccessfully
and in competition with the Chinese, to exert
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 87
its influence over the other communist parties so as to ensure their
conformity with the Soviet pattern. Once it is reaHzed that, by mutual
agreement between the eighty-one parties that signed the Manifesto of
November 1960, diversity within the communist movement was
sanctioned, it is easy to see that arguments and disputes between
communists over the orthodoxy of different tactics are artificial,
contrived, and calculated to serve particular strategic or tactical ends.
The new methodology starts from the premise that the eighty-one
parties all committed themselves to the new long-range pohcy and
agreed to contribute toward its objectives according to the nature and
scale of their resources. Furthermore, since diversity was licensed,
there could be a division of labor between parties and any one of them
could be allotted a special strategic role in accordance with its national
specifics and Lenin's suggestion, in an earlier historical context, that
"we need a great orchestra; we have to work out from experience how
to allocate the parts, to give a sentimental violin to one, a terrible
double-bass to another, the conductor's baton to a third."' The
decisions of 1957-60 gave the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslav,
Romanian, Czechoslovak, Vietnamese, and other parties their
different instruments and parts to play in a symphonic score. The old
methodology hears only the discordant sounds. The new methodology
strives to appreciate the symphony as a whole.
The new interpretation of the evidence available from official
communist sources leads to the identification of six interlocking
communist strategies and illustrates the different strategic roles
allotted to different communist parties within the overall design.
The congress of bloc communist parties in 1957 agreed on a
common, balanced assessment of Stalin's mistakes and crimes and on
the measures needed to correct them. The basis for differences
between communists on the question of Stalinism and de-Staliniza-
tion was removed; the issues were settled. The old methodology took
little or no account of this and continued to see them as matters in
contention between different Soviet leaders and between the Soviets
and the Chinese and Albanians. The new methodology sees Stalinism
from 1958 onward as a dead issue that was deliberately and artificially
revived and used for the projection of a false image of warring
factions among the leaders of the communist bloc. An understanding
of the constituent elements of de-Stalinization and
88 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the way they were exploited provides a key to the understanding of
communist tactics and technique in the rest of the program of related
disinformation operations dealing with, for example, the alleged
conflicts between Yugoslav and Soviet "revisionism" and Chinese and
Albanian "Stalinism," or the "independence" of Romania.
From 1958 onward the concept of collective leadership widened
progressively to cover far more than agreement on policy between the
individual members of the Presidium or Politburo. It began to
embrace all those who were in a position to contribute toward the
formulation of the policy and the development and application of
ways and means of achieving its ends, including not only the leaders
of all the bloc and some of the more important nonbloc parties, but
also senior officials in the Central Committee apparatuses, the
diplomatic and intelligence services, and the academies of sciences.
The settlement of the issue of Stalinism, together with the estab-
lishment of collective leadership in this sense and the downward
diffusion of power and influence that it entailed, effectively removed
the grounds for genuine factionalism, power struggles, and succession
problems in the leadership of the bloc communist parties.
Thenceforward these phenomena were available to be used as the
subjects of disinformation operations in support of long-range policy,
and it is in this light that the new methodology regards them.
Kremlinologists and China-watchers were caught out when they
continued to try to rationalize the ups and downs of Soviet and
Chinese leaders by using the outdated methodology, which took no
account of disinformation. According to the new methodology,
promotions and demotions, purges and rehabilitations, even deaths
and obituary notices of prominent communist figures — formerly
significant pointers for the Borkenau method of analysis — should be
examined for their relevance to communist attempts to misrepresent
shifts in policy as dictated by personal rather than strategic or tactical
considerations.
Conventional methodology tries to analyze developments in the
situation and policies of the communist world either in terms of short-
term objectives or in terms of the rival, long-range great-power
national interests of the Soviet Union and China. It seldom appreciates
the marked influence, especially since 1958-60, of dialectical thinking
on communist policies, which frequently entail their own
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 89
opposites: communist detente diplomacy, for example, implying the
calculated raising of international tension over specific issues and its
subsequent relaxation when specific communist objectives have been
achieved; the disgrace of communist leaders, implying their later
rehabilitation; the harassment or forced exile of dissidents, implying
their eventual pardon or return to their homeland.
The new methodology examines current developments in relation to
the objectives of the long-range policy. It sees that policy as having
three phases, like its predecessor, the NEP. The first phase is the
creation of favorable conditions for the implementation of the poHcy;
the second is the exploitation of Western misunderstanding of the
policy to gain specific advantages. These two phases, like the phases
of an alternating current electric supply, are continuous, overlapping
and interacting. The beginning of the third, and final, offensive phase
is marked by a major shift in communist tactics in preparation for a
comprehensive assault on the West in which the communist world,
taking advantage of the West's long-term strategic errors, moves
forward toward its ultimate objective of the global triumph of
international communism.
In the first phase of the NEP, economic reform was used both to
revive the economy and to foster the illusion that Soviet Russia had
lost its revolutionary impetus. Favorable conditions were thus created
for the second phase, that of stabilizing the regime and winning
diplomatic recognition and economic concessions from the Western
powers. The third phase began with the reversal of the economic
reforms in 1929 and the launching of ideological offensives internally
through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of
agriculture and externally through Comintern subversion. The success
of both internal and external offensives was prejudiced by the
distortions of the Stalinist regime. The corresponding first two phases
of the current long-range policy have already lasted over twenty years.
The final phase may be expected to begin in the early 1980s.
The intermediate objectives of the policy may be summarized as
follows:
• The political stabilization and strengthening of the individual communist
regimes as an essential precondition for the strengthening of the bloc as a whole.
• The correction of the economic deficiencies of the bloc through
NEW LIES FOR OLD
international trade and the acquisition of credits and technology from the
industrially advanced noncommunist countries.
• The creation of the substructure for an eventual world federation of
communist states.
• The isolation of the United States from its aUies and the promotion of
united action with socialists in Western Europe and Japan, with a view to
securing the dissolution of NATO and the United States-Japan security pact
and an alignment between the Soviet Union and a neutral, preferably
sociahst, Western Europe and Japan against the United States""
• United action with nationalist leaders in Third World countries to
ehminate Western influence from those countries as a preliminary to their
absorption into the communist bloc.
• The procurement of a decisive shift in the balance of political and
military power in favor of the communist world.
• The ideological disarmament of the West in order to create favorable
conditions for the final offensive phase of the pohcy and the ultimate
convergence of East and West on communist terms.
The new methodology aims to see how developments in the communist
world may relate and contribute to the achievement of these objectives in
each phase of the pohcy. The decisions of November 1960 authorized the use
of all forms of tactics — right and left, legal and revolutionary, conventional
and ideological — in pursuit of communist aims. Conformity with the Soviet
pattern having ceased to be a criterion of orthodoxy, the most potent cause of
actual and potential splits in the communist world had vanished. The new
methodology therefore examines the so-called splits as a new form of tactic
and tries to see how they serve the aims of policy. Once it is realized that
hcensed anti-Sovietism can in fact yield dividends for overall communist
strategy, it is easy to see that the anti-Sovietism of leading dissidents inside
the Soviet Union and Eurocommunists outside it, like the anti-Sovietism of
the Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslav, and Romanian leaders, is artificially con-
trived to serve the ends of long-range policy.
The old methodology takes httle or no account of the history of the NEP
and other periods in which disinformation was important. It cannot therefore
appreciate or illuminate the implementation of the long-range policy that was
based largely on a reexamination of that history. The new methodology
applies the lessons of
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 91
the NEP. The elements in it most relevant to the 1960s, and therefore most
useful to the new methodology for purposes of comparison, were:
• The stabilization of the Soviet regime by the creation of spurious,
controlled opposition movements and the effective use of those movements
to neutralize genuine internal and external opposition.
• The creation of favorable conditions for an activist Soviet foreign policy
aimed at securing diplomatic recognition by, and increased trade with, the
Western powers.
• The experience of the Treaty of Rapallo, of entering into a secret
political and military alliance with a capitalist state for acquiring military
technology.
• The successful projection of a false image of the Far Eastern Republic
(DVR) as an independent regime.
• Lenin's tactical advice to communist parties on overcoming their
isolation, establishing united fronts with socialists, and increasing their
influence in parliaments and trade unions.
The genuine Tito-Stalin split in 1948 provided the communist strategists
ten years later with a model on which to base their planning of spurious sphts
in the future. The history of Soviet-Yugoslav relations from 1948 to 1955
therefore provides the new methodology with a set of criteria for judging the
authenticity of subsequent splits.
The decision to use the intelligence potential of the bloc for strategic
disinformation purposes, embodied in the Shelepin report in 1959 and related
documents, destroys the notion, imphcit in much of conventional
methodology, that the communist intelligence services are engaged solely in
espionage and security work. The new methodology takes into account the
Shelepin report and the important role allocated to Soviet officials, trade
unionists, scientists, priests, academics, artists, and other intellectuals in the
implementation of policy through the exercise of political influence. The new
methodology tries to see how their activities and public statements may serve
the interests of policy.
To create favorable conditions for the implementation of that policy, the
bloc's strategists adopted the weakness and evolution pattern of
disinformation used successfully in the NEP period in
92 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the Soviet Union and extended since 1958-60 to cover the whole
communist bloc. The new methodology therefore dictates that all
information reaching the West on the communist world and the
international communist movement, including Eurocommunism,
should be assessed in relation to that pattern.
A significant contribution to the formulation of the long-range
policy and disinformation technique about splits was made by the
Yugoslav leader Edvard Kardelj, whose book Socialism and War was
published shortly before the Eighty-one-Party Congress in November
1960. In it Kardelj wrote that differences of opinion between
communists "are not only not harmful but are the law of progress."^
According to Kardelj the domestic and foreign policies of the Yugo-
slav communist party could not be independent of the interests of
socialism but could be independent of the "subjectively concocted
notions" of other parties, such as the CPC. One should not be content
with "interpreting this or that phenomenon in the course of
development by the simple repetition of stereotyped dogmatic
phrases."^ "When making an objective analysis, one should try to
separate what is subjective from what is objective, that is, not allow
slogans or political declarations to conceal insight into the real
substance of things."^ Tito made much the same Leninist point when
he said in 1958 that "internationalism is practice — not words and
propaganda."'
For obvious reasons Kardelj and Tito could not openly announce
that spurious polemics between communist parties were thencefor-
ward to be used as part of the technique of communist disinformation.
Nevertheless, the distinction clearly drawn between the subjective
nature of polemics and the objective nature of common interests and
socialist solidarity expressed in unity of actions provided a theoretical
basis on which the genuine polemics between Tito and Stalin could be
transmuted, when required by the interests of long-range policy, into
spurious polemics between communist leaders without endangering
the fundamental ideological and practical unity of the communist
world.
An up-to-date restatement of Kardelj 's point has been made by
Yuriy Krasin: "Complete unanimity can hardly be a precondition of
joint action. . . . What is needed is not static, monolithic unity, but a
dynamic system of views and positions marked by differences on
particular issues but developing on the basis of the fundamental
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 93
principles of Marxism-Leninism common to all."^
From such statements and their impHcations, five related principles
can be derived. The first is not to assume that where there are
polemics between communists there are necessarily divisions. The
second is to assess whether or not there are any solid and consistent
grounds for the existence of disputes. The third is to seek evidence of
unity of actions behind the disunity of words, to look for secretly
coordinated joint actions by apparent enemies or rivals. The fourth is
to seek correlations in timing between outbursts of polemics and
major communist initiatives or negotiations with Western powers
(SALT, for instance) or meetings with Western leaders. The fifth is to
assume that polemics form part of a disinformation operation and
examine them to see if, regarded in that light, they could contribute
toward the achievement of communist objectives. To take some
obvious examples, Khrushchev's charges of Chinese warmongering
and Chinese countercharges of Soviet revisionism and pacificism in
the 1960s should be examined to see if they helped to build up
Khrushchev's image in the West as a moderate with whom it was
possible to negotiate concrete deals. Yugoslavia's continued exclusion
from the communist bloc, despite Tito's secret participation in the
formulation and execution of the new long-range policy, should be
considered in relation to the buildup of Yugoslavia's credibility as a
leader of the nonaligned movement in the Third World. Soviet attacks
on conservative Western leaders in the last few years should be
viewed in conjunction with Chinese efforts to cultivate closer relations
with those same leaders. The escalation of Sino-Soviet hostilities in
1969-70 should be considered as intended to facilitate both the SALT
talks between the Soviet Union and the United States and Chinese
rapprochement with the advanced industrial nations. In short, the
study of polemics, if they are read as disinformation, may throw light
not on the existence of splits, but on the long-range policy and
strategic interests that apparent splits are intended to promote.
The New Methodology and Western Sources
The existence of a program of disinformation operations has
implications for every type of source of information on the commu-
94 NEWLIESFOROLD
nist world. Continued failure to take disinformation into account will
lead to the continuing proliferation of errors in Western assessments
of, and policy toward, the communist world. Given the communist
concept of total disinformation, any Western reassessment of the
situation, if it is to have meaning, should cover information from all
sources, open and secret, human and technical. The assumption that if
secret and open sources in general support one another, the reliability
of both is confirmed should be dropped; it should be realized that the
two streams of information, open and secret, may well have a
common point of origin in the Central Committees and disinformation
departments of the bloc parties and intelligence services. If
information from Western secret sources is in line with information
from open sources, including official communist sources, that alone
calls the reliability of the Western secret sources into question. Those
Western secret sources whose information since 1958-60 conforms
with the weakness and evolution pattern need particularly careful
scrutiny to see whether they have become known to the communist
side through compromise or other means.
If conformity with the normal pattern of information coming from
the communist world is an indication of the unreliability of sources,
the converse principle is that greater weight should be given to
evidence that conflicts with that pattern even if it comes only from a
single source. For example, the personal observations of a Western
visitor to a Chinese commune in 1961, who reported that commune
dwellers were no worse off in material terms than they were before
and that the Chinese people were inevitably becoming more closely
identified with the communist regime, should not have been
discounted on the grounds that the observations conflicted with the
generally accepted opinion of the time that the situation in the
communes was disastrous.^
Total disinformation, to be effective, necessitates the release by the
communist side of a volume of accurate information about itself,
including genuine secrets, in order to give credibility and weight to the
disinformation it is seeking to convey. In the Stalin period the release
of secret information by the communist side was impossible. With the
adoption of the long-range policy and disinformation program, the
position changed. The Leninist concept of primary and secondary
types of sacrifice was reintroduced. The primary communist secret is
the existence and nature of the
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 95
long-range bloc policy and strategy and the role of disinformation.
Military, scientific and technical, economic, and counterespionage
secrets are secondary; they form a reservoir from which information
may be drawn and given away for strategic purposes, particularly if
there is some reason to think that it may already have been
compromised by genuine leakages or technical means. For example,
the identities of secret agents who for one reason or another are
reaching the end of their usefulness to the communist side may be
given away through a source in whom the communist side is seeking
to establish Western confidence. The good faith of Western secret
sources or of defectors from the communist side is not therefore
automatically established by the fact that they produce quantities of
information on military, economic, scientific and technical, or
counterespionage subjects or that they give vent to spectacular
denunciations of communism. A more important criterion is what they
have to say on communist long-range policy and the use of
disinformation. The number of communist leaders, officials, and
intellectuals who have full knowledge of the scope and scale of the
disinformation program is very limited, but the number who
participate in one or other of its aspects is very large. Most secret
sources or defectors, if they have genuinely transferred their alle-
giance to the West, should have something of value to say on current
communist techniques in this field even if they themselves do not
realize the full significance of their own knowledge.
In evaluating scientific and technical information reaching the
West, due regard should be paid to the fact that Sheiepin, in his May
1959 report and articles for KGB staff in Chekist, called for the
preparation of disinformation operations designed to confuse and
disorientate Western scientific, technological, and military programs;
to bring about changes in Western priorities; and to involve the West
in costly, wasteful, and ineffective lines of research and development.
It is to be expected, therefore, that information available in the West
on Soviet space projects, weapons systems, military statistics, and
developments in science and technology will be found to contain an
element of disinformation.
Given that a program of total disinformation is in operation and
given that the communist side is well aware of Western interest in
intercepting its communications, evidence derived from communist
communications in plain language or weak codes and ciphers
96 NEW LIES FOR OLD
is particularly suspect; in fact, it should be treated in the same way as
evidence from official communist sources. According to the Western
press, some at least of the evidence on casualties in the Sino-
Vietnamese "war" in 1979 fell into this category.
The New Methodology and Communist Sources
All communist sources are permanently available for use as chan-
nels for disinformation; all must conform to the current pattern if the
credibility of the pattern is to be maintained. Nevertheless, it is
possible to distinguish between sources that are more or less Hkely to
be used for conveying disinformation to the West and those that are
more or less likely to contain revealing information on the
implementation of the long-range policy.
Official Communist Sources
Beginning with the official statements and decisions of interna-
tional communist gatherings, those in the period 1957 to 1960 are of
fundamental importance, not only because that was the period of the
formulation and adoption of the long-range policy, but also because of
the nature of the policy itself. An essential element in it was that its
existence and modus operandi should not be appreciated in the West.
It was to be expected, therefore, that once it had been adopted
subsequent official policy statements should have been less revealing
about long-range objectives and the methods of achieving them than
the fundamental documents of the period of policy formation. The
latter should be considered as including the documents of the congress
of bloc communist parties in 1957, the Twenty-first CPSU Congress
in January-February 1959, the congress of eighty-one communist
parties in November 1 960, and Khrushchev's strategic report of
January 6, 1961.
Basing themselves largely on retrospective evidence about dis-
agreements at the Eighty-one-Party Congress, most Western analysts
concluded that the decisions of that congress represented a
compromise between the positions of the various conflicting com-
munist parties that signed the congress Manifesto with varying
THENEWMETHODOLOGY 97
degrees of reluctance or commitment to abide by the congress's
decisions. The conclusion was incorrect. The congress lasted several
weeks. No doubt many different parties aired many different views, as
they had every right to do, according to Leninist principles of
democratic centralism, before the policy had been adopted. Once the
discussions had concluded and the policy had been ratified by the
majority decision, all parties which signed the Manifesto undertook a
serious commitment to work for the implementation of the policy.
Any party that had genuinely dissented from the congress's decisions
would not have signed the Manifesto and would have been ostracized
by the international communist movement. Any party wishing to
maintain its standing in the movement must be able to demonstrate
that it has made consistent efforts to put the decisions of the congress
into effect. If communist parties in general did not take the decisions
of the higher organs of authority seriously and strive consistently to
implement them, they would not be the disciplined and effective
bodies they are known to be. The element of political determinism
should not be overlooked, considering that it has been revealed daily
in the statements and actions of communist parties inside and outside
the bloc, in the proceedings of their national party congresses during
the past twenty years, and in their implementation of the policy and its
concomitant strategies.
In accepting the evidence that the Eighty-one-Party Congress
signified a watershed in the disunity of the communist world rather
than the opposite. Western analysts, unaware of the disinformation
program, made a fundamental error on which it was easy for the
communist strategists to build in the development of their major
strategies in Europe, the Third World, and the military and ideological
fields. Largely because of this error, later "evidence" in official
communist sources on communist disunity came to be almost auto-
matically accepted in the West at its face value.
Given that the disinformation program is directed primarily (though
not exclusively) at the noncommunist world, it is imperative to
distinguish those communist speeches, publications, and broadcasts
that are primarily intended for communist audiences from those that
are primarily intended for noncommunist audiences. Obviously the
second category is likely to contain more disinformation than the first.
It is not possible wholly to conceal the policy
98 NEWLIESFOROLD
and its implementation from those who are expected to carry it out.
For that reason the basic decisions of the period 1958 to 1960 were
published, as were the findings of the congress of communist parties in
1969, which reviewed progress in the first decade of the policy. To a
greater extent than elsewhere, progress in the coordination and
consolidation of the communist bloc, particularly through Comecon
and the Warsaw Pact organization, is recorded in the annual
supplements of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia which are available
only in Russian. Naturally, they do not disclose the nature of the
disinformation program. Nevertheless, items are occasionally included
that figure less prominently, if at all, in publications directed at the
West and that call into question the depth and authenticity of splits
and crises in the bloc.
In particular the Encyclopaedia reflects the continual exchange of
visits of communist leaders and delegations between communist
countries and parties that are supposed to be at odds with one another.
Sometimes these meetings are publicized elsewhere in the communist
press, accompanied by photographs of, for example, Brezhnev warmly
embracing Dubcek, Tito, or Ceausescu. Western commentators, in
their obsession with splits in the communist world, automatically
assume that such meetings are held in attempts, usually unsuccessful,
to resolve the differences between the parties and that the photographs
are intended to mask the hostility between the leaders. They forget
that in the years of the genuine Tito-Stalin spht it would have been
more than Tito's life was worth to have visited Moscow, and they
overlook the possibility that the meetings in the 1960s and 1970s have
been taking place in order to coordinate the display of bogus
differences intended to serve the interests of long-range policy.
The Western scholars who devoted so much attention to esoteric
evidence in the communist sources pointing to splits between the
Soviet Union and China and Albania seldom seemed to realize that
only a privileged few in the communist world, and mainly those
concerned with poHcy and the disinformation program, were in a
position to make detailed comparisons between the press of their own
party and the press of other parties. Even if foreign newspapers or
broadcasts were available, few Russians could read or understand
Chinese or Albanian and not many Albanians or Chinese could read or
understand Russian. Radio Moscow broad-
THENEWMETHODOLOGY 99
casts in Albanian in 1960-61 may not have been audible in Albania
unless retransmitted by an Albanian station. They were, however,
picked up by the BBC and other interested Western organizations and
circulated to Western analysts in Summaries of World Broadcasts and
similar publications. The communist intelligence services were well
aware of this, but few Western analysts spotted that some of the
polemics between communist leaders may only have reached a
Western audience.
In their preoccupation with finding and examining splits in the
communist world. Western analysts focused all their attention on the
passages in communist speeches and articles that betrayed differences
in approach between different parties or different leaders. Passages
dealing, for example, with communist unity and commitment to the
decisions of the Eighty-one-Party Congress were ignored or written
off as lip service to communist shibboleths. This is not necessarily the
way in which they were read and understood by members of the
communist parties concerned.
Because Western analysts have not been sufficiently on the lookout
for disinformation, they have paid inadequate attention to the origin
and authenticity of the texts of important communist statements and
speeches, particularly in cases where more than one text has been
available.
Even where disputes in the communist world are reflected in
official communist publications available to the West, the perception
of them by the party membership in the countries concerned is likely
to be very different from the perception of them in the West. By using
various devices such as those suggested above, the party leadership is
in a position to project simultaneously two different images of the
same "dispute." To the West, it may seem to be of profound
significance; in the East, it may well be a "little local difficulty"
whose consequences for the leaders of the parties concerned may be
wholly beneficial. To take a concrete example. As far as the author
was aware, no information or guidance was issued to CPSU members
on the Soviet- Albanian dispute before the Twenty-second CPSU
Congress in October 1961, when Khrushchev publicly attacked the
Albanian leaders. The only knowledge that the author had of anything
unusual in Soviet-AI banian relations up to that point was derived from
statements by two senior colleagues in the KGB in 1959 that a
disinformation operation on
100 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Soviet- Yugoslav and Soviet- Albanian relations had been planned
during 1958-59.
Unofficial Communist Sources
It is not uncommon for disclosures in the communist press about
dissension in the communist world to be backed up by off-the-record
remarks by communist leaders and officials to their Western
counterparts and friends. Bearing in mind that the KGB and the other
communist security services together can count the total numbers of
their informers as literally in the millions, it is a relatively simple
matter for them to control the few thousands of their citizens who are
in any regular form of official or semiofficial contact with foreigners.
Communist regimes are not tolerant of disclosures of information by
their servants to foreigners. As Khrushchev himself put it, in
repudiating the idea that he had spoken out of turn to the late Senator
Hubert Humphrey in 1958 on the subject of Chinese communes: "The
mere suggestion that I might have confidential contact with a man
who boasts of having spent twenty years fighting communism can
only give rise to laughter. Anyone who understands anything at all
about politics, to say nothing of Marxism-Leninism, will realise that a
confidential talk with Mr. Humphrey about the policies of communist
parties and relations with our best friends, the leaders of the
Communist Party of China, is inconceivable."'*' Yet many Western
observers and scholars claim to have benefitted from such disclosures.
In the preface to his book The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict,
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: "I am also grateful to several officials of
various communist states, for their willingness to discuss matters they
should not have discussed with me." No explanation is offered in the
book of the reasons why communist officials should have been willing
to speak frankly to a prominent anticommunist scholar and citizen of
the leading "imperialist" power, nor is any reference made in the book
to the possibilities of disinformation. But if the existence of a
disinformation program is taken into account, together with the
controls over the communist officials in contact with foreigners, the
explanation for these indiscretions is obvious. Almost all the Western
commentators on the "Prague spring" of
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 101
1968 and Eurocommunism in the 1970s have shown a similar ten-
dency to believe what they have been told by leading communist
participants in the events and debates concerned.
Against the background of the methods of provocation used during
the NEP period and the known facts of the intensified political use of
scientists, writers, and other intellectuals by the KGB from 1959
onward, the authenticity of the form of underground literature known
as samizdat, which made its appearance in the Soviet Union in the
1960s, must be regarded with scepticism. Its significance cannot be
fully assessed unless the extent of its circulation inside the Soviet
Union is known. There is no justification for assuming that because it
reaches a fairly wide audience abroad, it is also widely read at home.
It may be in fact that few in the Soviet Union see it other than those
authorized by the KGB to do so. In short, it should be regarded as
falling within the category of unofficial communist sources.
Similar considerations apply to the Chinese wall posters from
which the West derived much of its knowledge of the Cultural
Revolution, of power struggles in the Chinese leadership, and of the
Chinese attitude to the Soviet Union, especially in 1966-70. What can
be said with certainty is that wall posters would not have appeared at
all in this period unless the Chinese leadership had wished them to do
so and that the Chinese authorities were well aware of the attention
paid to them by noncommunist diplomats, journalists, and other
foreign representatives in China. This alone provides grounds for
reconsidering their contents against the current pattern of communist
disinformation. Their full significance cannot be judged without
knowing precisely by whom they were put up and what guidance was
given to party members about them through the normal channels of
party communication.
"Secret" Communist Sources
The remaining category of communist sources is the leakage or
disclosure, documentary or otherwise, of information on the
proceedings of secret party meetings and international conferences. A
conspicuous feature of the evidence on disagreements between parties
at the Romanian Communist party congress in June 1960
102 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and at the communist Eighty-one-Party Congress later in the same
year is that most of it was retrospective and much of it reached the
West with some delay. This is a significant factor, given the existence
of a disinformation program. It is a difficult matter to stage a whole
conference for disinformation purposes, but it is a simple operation to
fabricate or distort the record at leisure after the conference is over
and to choose appropriate channels to transmit it to the West.
To Sum Up . . .
The new methodology provides explanations for many contradic-
tions and anomalies in the communist world on which the old
methodology throws no light. It explains the confidence of the
communist world and the loyalty and dedication of the vast majority
of its officials. It explains the reasons for disclosures of information
by the communist world about itself and relates them to the require-
ments of long-range policy. It explains the seeming tolerance of a
totalitarian system toward dissension openly expressed by its citizens
in their contacts with foreigners. It provides criteria for assessing the
reliability of sources, for distinguishing genuine secret agents and
defectors from provocateurs, for distinguishing genuine information
from disinformation and propaganda. It provides pointers to the
identification of agents of influence in the West. It suggests that
disinformation, recognized as such, can provide clues to the intentions
of its authors. It offers guidance on the relative importance of the
official and unofficial communist sources. It diverts attention from
spectacular communist polemics between parties and focuses it
instead on the solid advances in the groundwork of communist
cooperation and coordination. It points the way to recovery from the
crisis in Western studies and assessments of communism. It could
help to revive the effectiveness of Western security and intelligence
services. It explains the communist victory in the Vietnam War
despite the Sino-Soviet split. Above all, it explains the willingness and
ability of the communist world, despite the appearance of disunity, to
seize the initiative and to develop and execute its strategies in relation
to the United States, the other advanced industrial countries, and the
Third World in the quest
THE NEW METHODOLOGY 103
for the complete and final victory of international communism. So far,
the new methodology is the methodology of a minority of one. Only
time will show whether it will survive; whether it will stimulate new
lines of research; whether it will replace the old, obsolete
methodology; and whether it will help the West to see in a new light
the real meaning and dimensions of the communist problem.
PART TWO
The Disinformation Program and
Its Impact on tiie West
13
The First Disinformation Operation: The
Soviet-Yugoslav "Dispute" of 1958-60
THE YEARS 1958 TO 1960 were marked by spectacular polemics
between the Soviet and Yugoslav leaders and their party presses,
with interjections from the Albanians and Chinese. Khrushchev
himself participated with vigor. In his speech to the Seventh Congress
of the Bulgarian Communist Party held in Sofia on June 3, 1958, he
called Yugoslav revisionism a class enemy in the pay of the
imperialists and a Trojan horse in the communist movement. "Some
theoreticians," he said, "exist only because of the alms they receive
from imperialist countries in the form of leftover goods. . . . The
revisionists are trying to bore at the revolutionary parties from within,
to undermine their unity and introduce disorder and confusion in
Marxist-Leninist ideology [shouts of They won't succeed']."'
The existence of a Soviet- Yugoslav dispute was, to all appearances,
confirmed by the boycott of the Seventh Congress of the Yugoslav
party by the communist parties of the bloc, by further Soviet criticism
of the Yugoslav party's program and foreign policy, and by the
exclusion of Yugoslavia from the Eighty-one-Party Congress in
November 1960, which condemned revisionism. However, the true
picture of Soviet- Yugoslav relations, revealed by inside information
supported by much open evidence, is very different.
Yugoslavia's Final Reconciliation with the Bloc
After Stalin's death the Soviet leaders made a major effort to
achieve a reconciliation with the Yugoslav leaders in order to win
107
108 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Yugoslavia back from the West and return her to the communist
camp. Official secret negotiations between Tito and Khrushchev in
1955 and 1956 led to a full reconciliation in state relations and a
partial reconciliation in party relations, but the process of
reconciliation was interrupted by the Polish and Hungarian uprisings
of 1956. The initial and generally sympathetic attitude of the Yugo-
slav leaders toward the Poles and Hungarians during these uprisings,
and Tito's attacks on such Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe as
Hoxha, contributed to the surge of nationalism and revisionism in the
bloc and to Hungary's short-lived break with the Soviets. The Soviets
recognized the dangers of Yugoslav revisionist influence in Eastern
Europe, and therefore resumed their general criticism of Yugoslavia
while continuing their efforts to split her away from the West.
Although the exchanges of criticism between the Soviets and
Yugoslavs intensified immediately after the Hungarian uprising, the
leaders on both sides were always careful to leave the door open for
subsequent meetings and discussions. After Khrushchev had defeated
the antiparty group at home in June 1957, he renewed his efforts to
return Yugoslavia to the bloc. This time he was successful. A complete
reconciliation between the Yugoslav leaders and the Soviet and other
bloc leaders was achieved. According to TASS, Kardelj and
Rankovic, while on holiday in the Crimea, visited Moscow for
"comradely" meetings with Khrushchev; the Albanian leader, Hoxha;
and the Bulgarian leader, Zhivkov, in July.
On August 1-2, 1957, Tito, Kardelj, and Rankovic met Khrushchev
and Mikoyan in Bucharest for a confidential conference on "socialist
solidarity." A statement issued after the conference affirmed their joint
determination to improve relations and cooperation on a basis of
equality. Moscow radio reported that agreement on "concrete forms of
cooperation" had been reached. The major implication of the Soviet-
Yugoslavian reconciliation was that the grounds for the continuation
of their old feud vanished.
It is clear from Yugoslavia's actions in the following months that
she had in fact realigned herself with the communist bloc, including
China. In September 1957 there were four strong indications of this; a
Yugoslav delegation led by Vukmanovic-Tempo was welcomed in
Peking; Yugoslavia blocked a United Nations resolution condemning
Soviet intervention in Hungary; Yugoslav
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 109
representatives attended a session of Comecon; and Tito, together with
Gomulka, pubHcly repudiated "national communism." Said Tito, "We
think it wrong to isolate ourselves from the great possibilities of
strengthening socialist forces throughout the world." In October the
Yugoslavs honored the commitment they had made to the Soviets in
1955-56 to recognize East Germany. In June 1958 Tito tacitly
assented to the execution of the former Hungarian premier, Imre
Nagy, whom the Yugoslavs had earlier betrayed to the Soviets.
The Yugoslavs secretly attended the first post-Stalin conference of
bloc communist parties in November 1957 and openly attended the
congress of sixty-four communist parties that followed it. Significantly
the Yugoslav delegation to both conferences included Kardelj, who
had been a Yugoslav representative to the Cominform; Ranko-vic,
who was responsible for the Yugoslav security service; and Vla-hovic,
who was responsible for relations with communist and socialist
parties. At the bloc conference Stalin's mistrust of other parties and his
interference in their affairs were condemned. New relations between
the leaders and parties of the bloc were established, based on Leninist
principles of equality and cooperation. Yugoslavia signed the Peace
Manifesto of the sixty-four communist parties, but not the declaration
of the bloc communist parties. The absence of Yugoslavia's signature
from the bloc declaration contributed to Western acceptance of the
subsequent Soviet-Yugoslav dispute as genuine. However, in his
lecture at the KGB Institute in December 1957, General Kurenkov
made it clear that the Yugoslavs fully agreed with the declaration but
had abstained from signing it because they had reached a secret
understanding with the Soviets that it would be tactically
advantageous for them not to sign.
Among the decisions of the conference to which the Yugoslavs
secretly gave their support was the decision to formulate a long-range
policy for the bloc. The agreement that the Yugoslavs should not sign
the declaration established the pattern of secrecy and deception
subsequently used to conceal Yugoslav collaboration in the
formulation and adoption of the long-range policy and paved the way
for Yugoslav participation in a joint disinformation effort in support
of that policy.
From conversations in 1959 with Colonel Grigorenko, the deputy
head of the KGB's disinformation department, the author
1 1 NEW LIES FOR OLD
learned that there were consultations and agreements between the
Soviets and Yugoslavs in late 1957 and early 1958 on political
cooperation between them within the framework of the long-range
policy. The agreements covered cooperation in three fields: in diplo-
macy, particularly with regard to Egypt and India, and Arab and Asian
countries generally; in dealings with Western socialists and trade
unionists; and in the field of disinformation.
According to Grigorenko, early in 1958 the Presidium of the
CPSU's Central Committee had given instructions to Pushkin, the
head of the party's newly created Department of Active Operations, to
prepare disinformation operations on Soviet-Yugoslav relations in
accordance with the requirements of bloc policy.'' This instruction
preceded the outbreak of the dispute in April 1958.
The dispute manifested itself mainly in the Soviet and Yugoslav
party presses. Since in both cases the party press was under the full
control of the party apparatus, such a dispute was easy to manufacture
and easy to control. Nevertheless, it was clear at an early stage that, in
order to capitalize on the operation and build for the future, new
assets, channels, and forms of action would have to be developed in
coordination with the KGB. This explains why, according to
Grigorenko, the Central Committee decided to use, from the end of
1959 onward, both the Department of Active Operations and the
KGB's disinformation department to widen the scope of this particular
operation. As a consequence of this decision, Shelepin issued
instructions that a special group should be formed in the KGB's
disinformation department under Grigorenko to work in cooperation
with the Department of Active Operations on the one hand and with
the Yugoslav and Albanian security services on the other.
Open Evidence of Yugoslav Participation in the
Formulation of the Policy
Evidence that Yugoslavia accepted the application of Lenin's
concepts and the lessons of the NEP period as the basis for the new
bloc policy is to be found in the speeches and writings of Tito and
Kardelj during the period of the formulation of the policy (from 1958
to 1960).
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 111
So much Western attention was focused on the polemics between
Tito and Khrushchev in mid-1958 that the crucial statements in Tito's
speeches, which are fundamental to an understanding of the actual
state of Soviet-Yugoslav relations, were overlooked. Tito frequently
referred to the relevance of the NEP. For example, in his speech at
Labin, Yugoslavia, on June 15, 1958, in reply to Khrushchev's
criticisms of Yugoslavia for accepting American aid, Tito said: "The
Americans began to furnish aid to us after 1949, {as they did to the
Soviet Union in 1921 and 1922) not that socialism might win in our
country . . . but because on the one hand, we were threatened with
famine and, on the other hand, Yugoslavia could thus more easily
fight off Stalin's pressures and preserve her independence. And if
perhaps some American circles cherished other hopes, this was not
our concern."''
Tito committed himself to a new and broader concept of socialist
internationalism that served to protect and support not just the Soviet
Union as in the past, but all the communist countries and parties and
socialist and other progressive movements.
On relations between the sociahst countries, Tito said that there
was a "new confidence and sincere exchange of opinions and experi-
ences on the basis of which broad cooperation is developing." Yugo-
slavia could play a more useful role outside the bloc than in it. As Tito
put it in his Labin speech: "Refusal to sign the Moscow Declaration
and to join the socialist camp does not mean that we are not for the
greatest co-operation with all socialist countries. It means, on the
contrary, that we are for such co-operation in all fields but that in the
present tense international situation we believe it is more useful to
follow a constructive peace policy, together with other peace-loving
countries which also do not belong to either bloc, than to join the bloc
and thus still more aggravate a world situation which is tense enough."
In other words, by remaining formally outside the bloc, Yugoslavia
could contribute more effectively to the furtherance of the objectives
of the common long-range Leninist policy.
Equally illuminating on the true nature of Yugoslavia's relationship
with the bloc policy is Edvard Kardelj's book Socialism and War,
published in Belgrade in 1960 shortly before the Eighty-one-Party
Congress. The book attracted the attention of Western analysts at the
time because of its polemics against China. In it Kardelj gives an able
exposition of the policy of "active coexistence,"
112 NEWLIES FOR OLD
a concept very close to Khrushchev's "peaceful coexistence,"
and takes the Chinese to task for their negative attitude toward this
concept and their opposition to the thesis (again propounded by
Khrushchev) that war is not inevitable despite the continuing exis-
tence of imperialism. The West focused on this aspect of Kardelj's
book and failed to understand the significance of his recommendation
that differences between communists should be analyzed in terms of
their substance, not in terms of the verbal polemics between them.
The West also failed to appreciate Kardelj's numerous references to
Lenin's doctrines, including clear, if not expHcit, references to Left-
Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, and to the experience
gained during Lenin's NEP in the use of concessions, diplomatic
agreements with adversaries, and various other tactics; in other words,
to the same historical sources that were used during 1958-60 in the
formulation of the new bloc policy and international communist
strategies.
The implications of the references to Lenin by the Yugoslav leaders
in defining their position cannot be ignored. They clearly establish
that Tito and Kardelj regarded a return to Leninism and the use of
activist diplomacy and tactics in conditions of "peaceful coexistence"
as the most effective way of undermining the nations of the West and
changing the world balance of power in favor of the communist
countries. Their statements are not only compatible with the long-
range policy; they are a clear expression of many of the most
important elements in it. They are important evidence that Yugoslav
policy and bloc policy as they developed between 1958 and 1960 were
identical and had a common source of inspiration in the historical
experience of Lenin and his NEP. They also suggest that the Yugoslav
leaders made significant contributions to the long-range policy and
communist strategy. The possibility should not be excluded that
communist strategists from other bloc countries contributed to
Kardelj's book. His and Tito's ideas were soHdly based on Leninist
ideological doctrine, not on the form of revisionism the Yugoslavs had
practiced during the Tito-Stalin split. Their concept of active
coexistence was but one of the variety of tactics, including
Khrushchev's variant of "peaceful coexistence" and Mao's tactic of
protracted revolutionary war, approved by the Eighty-one-Party
Congress of November 1960. The fact that Tito and Kardelj were
developing these ideas during 1958-60 in itself
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 113
exposes the unreality of their alleged dispute with the Soviets during
that same period; it confirms the validity of the inside information on
secret Soviet- Yugoslav cooperation.
The tactic of publishing Kardelj's book on the eve of the Eighty-
one-Party Congress, which approved the long-range bloc poHcy and
strategy for the communist movement, recalled Lenin's tactic of
publishing Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder on the eve
of the Soviet adoption of the NEP and just prior to the adoption of
new tactics by the Second Congress of the Comintern.
A vague admission of the Soviet-Yugoslav cooperation against
imperialism over questions on which their positions coincided was
made by Khrushchev in his report to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress
in January 1959.^ Although the official History of the CPSU,
published in Russian in 1959, criticized the Yugoslav leaders for their
refusal to attend the bloc conference in November 1957 and castigated
the Yugoslav party program of 1958 as revisionist,^ it also said that
normal relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia had been restored
on the CPSU's initiative and that the CPSU's policy of friendship and
mutual assistance had triumphed.'
The reconciliation with Yugoslavia in 1957-58 went far beyond the
bounds envisaged by the Soviets in 1955-56. It covered the Yugoslav
leaders' relations not only with their Soviet opposite numbers, but also
with the Albanians, Bulgarians, Chinese, and all the other bloc
leaders. The Yugoslav leaders, in fact, voluntarily surrendered their
ideological and political independence to the bloc at the conference of
bloc parties in November 1957. This became possible for them
because the conference adopted a resolution, which Kardelj and
Rankovic no doubt helped to draft, permitting the bloc parties to
pursue their own national roads to socialism, provided that they
followed the basic principles of Marxist revolution and construction
of socialism.
Confirmation that all the bloc parties agreed that, for tactical
reasons, Yugoslavia should not sign the main declaration of the
conference is provided by the fact that, after the conference was over,
there was no condemnation of Yugoslavia's refusal to sign by the bloc
parties either individually or collectively. Indeed, since November
1957 the real state of relations among all the leaders of the bloc has
been excellent and there has been no basis for any serious disputes
between them.
114 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The true relationship between Yugoslavia and the rest of the bloc
during the period 1958-60 was revealed in November 1960 when the
Eighty-one-Party Congress (which continued to recognize Yugoslavia
as a socialist country) publicly approved, as its most fundamental and
crucial decision, a policy Manifesto that not only incorporated Tito's
concept of broad international solidarity, so heavily criticized by the
Soviets in 1958, but also Kardelj's recommendations on the revival of
Lenin's activist policies and tactics during a period of "peaceful
coexistence" and the use of the historical experience of the NEP to
facihtate the construction of socialism.
There was, of course, no public recognition of the Yugoslav contri-
bution and the authors of the Manifesto were not named. In fact the
congress officially announced that the Yugoslavs did not participate in
the proceedings. "Yugoslav revisionism" was condemned in general
terms in the Manifesto. Nevertheless, the evidence of secret
agreements entered into between Yugoslavia and the rest of the bloc
in November 1957, coupled with the arguments above, points to the
conclusion that Yugoslavia's apparent nonparticipation in the congress
in November 1960 was again no more than a tactical maneuver. The
likelihood is that Yugoslavia agreed secretly in advance to the draft
resolutions of the November I960 congress and that the bloc as a
whole agreed that its interests would best be served by Yugoslavia
continuing to appear to be an independent, nonbloc country.
Further Anomalies in the "Dispute"
Detailed examination of the Soviet criticisms of Yugoslavia and the
course of the 1958-60 dispute against the background of the genuine
Tito-Stalin split throws up a number of further points that either cast
additional doubt on the authenticity of the later dispute and confirm
that it was a disinformation operation or help to illustrate the
disinformation technique used in it and the purposes the operation was
intended to serve.
The dispute opened in the spring of 1958 with criticisms in the
Soviet press of the draft of the new Yugoslav party program, which
included a statement about Yugoslavia's road to socialism. In fact the
statement was fully in accord with the resolutions of
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 115
the November 1957 conference of bloc communist parties. Conse-
quently, Soviet criticism of it was not only strange, inconsistent, and
unjustified, but contrary to the endorsement specifically given by the
bloc parties of different national roads to socialism, provided that
certain basic principles, such as the leading role of the communist
party, were upheld. Later on, Khrushchev and Tito directly and
indirectly admitted that Soviet criticism of the Yugoslav program was
unfounded. In his report to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress in
January 1959, Khrushchev said: "Questions of the methods and
practice of socialist construction are the domestic affair of each
individual country. We have no controversy with the Yugoslav leaders
on the establishing of workers' councils or other matters of their
domestic affairs. When the Declaration of the Conference of the
representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties of the Socialist
Countries was being signed there were no arguments and no
controversies on such matters."^ Thus Khrushchev repudiated the
earlier Soviet criticisms of Yugoslavia's "road to socialism," but not
before the attention of Western analysts had been successfully
diverted by the polemics from what was really going on inside the
bloc at that time.
Soviet criticism of Yugoslavia for failing to support socialist soli-
darity was equally unfounded. Yugoslavia's recognition of East Ger-
many and expressions of solidarity with the East German Communist
party and its leader, Ulbricht, demonstrated that Yugoslavia honored
the promises of support that had been secretly given to the Soviets. It
is noteworthy that neither the Soviets nor the Yugoslavs revealed
during the 1958 polemics that they had reached this secret
understanding.
Officially, the Yugoslav party congress in April 1958 was boy-
cotted by the rest of the bloc. But the boycott was strangely incom-
plete because, although official party delegations from the bloc did
not attend, ambassadors from the bloc countries were present as
observers.
There is room for considerable doubt about the reality of the
economic pressure allegedly applied by the Soviets to the Yugoslavs
following the 1958 dispute. The Soviets did not cancel agreements or
sever economic relations, as they did when Stalin split with Tito.
Trade, technical cooperation, and cultural exchanges continued. The
Soviets did not cancel their 1956 credit commitments.
116 NEW LIES FOR OLD
deny them in principle, or arbitrarily delay the fulfillment dates.
Rather, they suggested that there should be discussions about delaying
the fulfillment dates from 1957-64 to 1962-69 and 1963-69. In
December 1958 negotiations on Soviet- Yugoslav trade began in
Moscow, and in April 1959 a cultural cooperation program was
signed in Belgrade. In January 1960 the Yugoslav leader Vukmano-
vic-Tempo met Khrushchev in Moscow. At the same time the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia signed a scientific cooperation protocol.
Criticism of Yugoslavia for lack of revolutionary ardor helped to
distract attention from the active support later given by Yugoslavia to
liberation movements, especially in Africa.
Criticism of Tito for accepting American aid preceded by only a
matter of months Soviet attempts to obtain for themselves a two-
billion-dollar credit from the United States for industrial mod-
ernization. Tito pointed out the inconsistency himself in April 1959,
referring to Mikoyan's visit to the United States in the previous
January.
Although Yugoslavia's position in the United Nations appeared to
vacillate between support for the United States and support for the
Soviet Union, on vital issues such as the German treaty (in February
1959), colonialism, disarmament, reorganization of the structure of
the UN, and the seating of communist China, Yugoslavia consistently
supported the Soviet position. There were therefore sound reasons for
Gromyko to say that the Soviets' relations with the Yugoslavs were
"good" and that, on major issues, their positions coincided.
Comparison of the dispute of 1958 with the split of 1948 shows
how superficial the later differences were. The 1958 dispute failed to
gather momentum. There were no clear breaches in political,
economic, or cultural relations. Yugoslavia was not isolated poHti-
cally by the bloc. Military action was not threatened against her nor
was an economic boycott imposed. There were no major changes in
diplomatic representation between Yugoslavia and the rest of the
bloc. Exchanges of delegations between them continued. Yugoslavia
asked to be admitted to the Comecon meeting in April 1959, but was
allegedly refused an invitation. Nevertheless, in the same month a
program of cultural cooperation between the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia was signed in Belgrade.
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 117
Since details of protocol have often been cited by Western analysts
in support of the existence of splits in the communist world, it is
worth mentioning that, despite the existence of an alleged dispute,
Khrushchev, while on his way to Albania, sent a greetings telegram to
Tito on May 26, 1959, which Tito acknowledged on the following
day.
The final inconsistency in the dispute was the manner of its ending.
For no apparent reason there was a sudden improvement in Soviet-
Yugoslav relations in 1960, accompanied by closer diplomatic
cooperation. An open reconciliation followed in 1961. The
controversial Yugoslav party program, which Khrushchev and the
Soviet press had criticized so vigorously in 1958 and 1959 and which
the Yugoslavs had so obstinately refused to modify, ceased to be an
obstacle to good relations in 1960 and 1961.
To sum up, open, official information from communist sources
confirms the validity of the inside information on secret Soviet-
Yugoslav agreements and leads to the conclusion that the Soviet-
Yugoslav dispute of 1958 — 60 was not a repetition of the genuine Tito-
Stalin split, but the calculated product of a joint Soviet- Yugoslav
disinformation operation in support of the long-range bloc policy to
the formulation of which both sides to the dispute had made their
contribution.
Once the Soviet- Yugoslav dispute of 1958-60 is seen to have been
artificial and once the polemics between the leaders are recognized as
having been no more than shadowboxing conducted by agreement
between them for the benefit of external observers, the explanation of
other aspects of the controversy becomes clear. For example, in
response to Chinese attacks on Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav press
criticized the Chinese communes; then, in December 1 95 8,
Khrushchev revealed to the late Senator Hubert Humphrey that there
were differences between the Soviets and Chinese on the subject of
the communes. The following month, in addressing the Twenty-first
CPSU Congress, Khrushchev repudiated his own remarks and accused
the "Yugoslav revisionists" of disseminating all sorts of inventions
about differences between the CPSU and the CPC. As he put it: "And
now the Yugoslav revisionists have taken this fabricator [Humphrey]
unto themselves as a witness." Anticipating to some extent the
argument of later chapters, this incident can be seen as a good
example of disinformation technique.
118 NEW LIES FOR OLD
First, Western interest was aroused in nonexistent Sino-Soviet dif-
ferences by a statement at the highest level. Then, Khrushchev's
repudiation of his own statements drew further attention to them and
suggested that they must indeed have represented a serious
indiscretion on his part, which he was at pains to cover up. Apart from
its significance in the Sino-Soviet context, the incident provided a
further artificial issue with which to fuel an agreed-upon, controlled
dispute between the Soviets and Yugoslavs; it was an instance not of
antagonism between them, but of cooperation in fulfillment of their
secret agreement to collaborate in the disinformation field.
Objectives of the Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute of 1958-60
The first objective of staging the dispute of 1958-60 was to conceal
the true degree of reconciliation between the leaders of Yugoslavia
and the other bloc countries. The reasons for concealment were
twofold; bearing in mind the anti-Soviet stance taken up by
Yugoslavia in the last five years of Stalin's Hfe and Yugoslav sympathy
with the Polish and Hungarian rebels in 1956, a sudden, open
reconcihation with Yugoslavia in 1958 could have had adverse
consequences elsewhere in the bloc, which it was particularly impor-
tant to avoid during the formulation of a new long-range policy.
Bearing in mind also the strength of nationalist feeling in the Yugo-
slav population and in the Yugoslav party itself, an open surrender by
the Yugoslav leaders to the bloc and to the requirements of its long-
range policy could have caused them severe problems with both their
followers and their opponents inside Yugoslavia.
The second major objective was to prepare the Yugoslav leaders for
a special strategic role by building up their image as independents. In
the advanced countries this was calculated to help the leaders to use
their relations with European socialist and trade union leaders to
promote the formation of united fronts between socialist and
communist parties and, in the longer term, to contribute toward the
dissolution of military pacts with the United States and toward the
neutralization of Western Europe and Japan. In the developing
countries it was calculated to gain acceptance for the Yugoslavs as
genuine neutralist leaders of the nonaligned move-
SOVIET-YUGOSLAV "DISPUTE," 1958-60 119
merit, which in the long run they would be able to influence and turn against
the West. Subsidiary objectives were:
• To pin the revisionist label firmly on the Yugoslav party and to identify
its policies and doctrines as one extreme of a variety of different brands of
communism.
• At a later stage, to project Khrushchev and the Soviet leaders as veering
toward Yugoslav revisionism and thereby to assist Soviet activist, detente
diplomacy in its dealings with the advanced countries.
• To gain experience, to provide support, and to create a favorable
atmosphere for the development of other disinformation operations, along
similar lines, on Soviet- Albanian and Sino-Soviet splits and, at a later stage,
on Romanian independence.
14
The Second Disinformation Operation:
The "Evolution" of the Soviet Regime,
Part One: The Major Changes in the USSR
CERTAIN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SOVIET UNION since 1958 have
been widely interpreted in the West as reflecting a moderation in
the rigors of communist ideology and a decline in its influence
over the practical handling of affairs of state. These apparent trends
are usually thought of as being associated with the growth of the
Soviet Union into a great power increasingly pursuing its national
interests along traditional lines and facing familiar internal political
problems, in particular the emergence of a dissident movement. While
it is true that changes have been made in various economic, political,
diplomatic, and ideological aspects of the regime, a distinction must
be made between the changes themselves and the manner in which
they have been presented if the nature and purpose of disinformation
about them is to be understood.
Economic Changes
From the late 1950s onward, changes in Soviet economic practice
included the improvement of material incentives to production in
industry and agriculture, the promotion of competition, and the
broadening of the private market in the cities. Sensational evidence
suggesting the revival of capitahsm appeared in the Soviet press in the
form of articles on the black market and on underground capitalists in
the Soviet Union. The confessions of a "former Soviet underground
millionaire" appeared in Izvestiya in 1959 or I960.
120
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 121
It is true that there is and, on a varying scale, always has been a
private market in the Soviet Union in which collectivized peasants and
some private individuals have sold the agricultural produce grown on
their lots. In the NEP period, when private ownership and private
enterprise were permitted, this private market reached its
postrevolutionary zenith. With the ending of the NEP and the
collectivization of agriculture, it shrank to insignificant proportions.
During and after the Second World War, it revived again for a short
period, only to be drastically curtailed in the last years of Stalin's rule.
Since his death, with the new emphasis on incentives and the abolition
of deliveries of goods to the State by farmers from their private lots,
the private market has once more grown in scale. It now exists in two
principal forms: the main market, in the cities where collective
farmers and some private individuals sell their agricultural produce;
and a small black market, especially in Moscow and Leningrad, in
which illegal transactions in currency and goods take place between
Soviet speculators and foreign diplomats and visitors.
The growth of the main market has been strictly limited because the
introduction of greater incentives for farmers and other workers was
not accompanied by the legalization of private enterprises; the
emphasis throughout has been on increasing production and efficiency
not in private enterprises, but in collective farms and state-owned
industries and trading enterprises. There can be no significant
widening of the private market in healthy competition with the state
sector unless private ownership and enterprise are reintroduced. The
Soviet government shows no sign of doing this; on the contrary, the
regime maintains its hostile attitude to private ownership and the
ultimate objective of party policy is still the total extinction of the
private sector.
As for the black market, it is, as foreign diplomats know, extremely
limited and illegal. What is less widely known is that it is secretly
controlled and actively exploited by the Anticontraband Department
of the KGB. Significantly this department was created in 1959 on the
lines of a similar department set up in the GPU during the NEP
period. Its function is to control the activities of domestic speculators
and foreign businessmen and to blackmail and recruit as agents
members of the diplomatic colony and other foreign visitors who
engage in illicit transactions. The head of this
122 NEW LIES FOR OLD
new department, Sergey Mikhaylovich Fedoseyev, was so successful
in recruiting foreigners, including Americans, that in 1961 he was
promoted to be Chief of the American Department, responsible for the
recruitment of officials of the US Embassy in Moscow.
Tendencies toward private enterprise have existed in the Soviet
Union since the revolution. Arrests of embezzlers and speculators who
have enriched themselves at state expense have not always been
reported. If in the period 1959-62 such arrests were given wide
publicity, this did not indicate, as some Western observers believed
and as the Soviet regime wished them to believe, that capitalism in the
Soviet Union was reviving; on the contrary, it indicated that the
regime was stepping up its traditional ideological policy of
eliminating the "remnants of capitalism" while at the same time
promoting the myth that capitalism was being restored.
Since the end of the 1950s a measure of industrial reorganization
has been in progress. Greater powers of initiative have been given to
local economic management without weakening central control. Local
councils of people's economy have been created. The authority of
economic officials has been enhanced.
In Western terminology, these officials are described as "techno-
crats," who are said to be increasingly taking over control. But what
Western observers largely ignore is that these so-called technocrats
are in reality party members who, having received industrial or other
specialized training, are applying the party line in their place of work.
Through them the party exercises a more efficient control over Soviet
industry, which, despite the appearance of recent changes, is now
more comprehensively planned and more effectively coordinated than
before.
From 1962 onward there was a protracted debate in the official
Soviet press on the introduction of the profit motive, on the concept of
a market -regulated economy, and on the creation of a trust system in
industry. The Soviet economist Professor Liberman played a
prominent role in the debate.' According to Liberman, factories
should be given no more than basic production plans, which should be
based mainly on commercial orders. Within the framework of the
basic plan, factories should be free to determine their own wages,
costs, and profits. A proportion of the profits should be paid into an
incentive fund, which would pay bonuses to managers and workers.
The introduction of state trusts that would function
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 123
on a profit basis was encouraged by the government. In fact some
trusts of this kind were created from 1962 onward; for example, small
shoe factories were combined experimentally into one complex in the
firm Progress in Lvov, and other trusts were set up in Gorkiy and
elsewhere.
The resemblance of these reforms to capitalism is only superficial.
Their effect has been to strengthen, not to weaken, party control over
industry. The fundamental differences between the Soviet and
capitalist systems in their basic objectives, their principles of owner-
ship and management, and the distribution of national income and
political power remain. The emphasis in the Soviet capital investment
program is still on heavy industry and especially on armaments,
including military satellites and nuclear missiles.
It should be noted that the economic reforms reflected to some
extent the experience of the NEP. Some of Liberman's ideas, as well
as the creation of trusts in industry, were directly modeled on the NEP
pattern, but in fact the changes of the 1960s were less far-reaching
than those of the 1920s. Private ownership of enterprises was not
reintroduced after 1960; agriculture remained collectivized. Such
reforms as were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s did not signal a
fundamental change in the regime; they were carefully calculated
steps taken by the regime within the framework of its long-range
policy. Their object was not to change the nature of the system, but to
stabilize it by making the economy more efficient and party control
more effective.
There are, in short, fewer objective grounds for concluding now
that the economic nature of the regime has been evolving since 1960
in the direction of capitalism than there were in the NEP period. In the
1960s and 1970s, however, the same technique has been used as in the
1920s to exaggerate and misrepresent the nature of such changes as
have occurred to suggest a weakening of ideological influence and a
tendency toward the restoration of capitalism.
The KGB has played an active part in this misrepresentation. For
example, the confessions of an underground millionaire were supplied
to Izvestiya by the KGB at the personal instigation of Shelepin. A
more widespread KGB technique has been used to influence directly
the opinions of visiting Western tourists, businessmen, scholars, and
correspondents. For instance. Western economists who visit the
Soviet Union naturally wish to meet their Soviet
124 NEWLIESFOROLD
colleagues. It is normal practice for the latter to clear such meetings in
advance with the party and the KGB. They are then briefed on the line
to be taken in "frank" discussions with their Western colleagues on the
faults in the Soviet system and the direction in which it is evolving.
Given that there has been no restoration of capitalism in the Soviet
Union, Chinese and Albanian charges to this effect in their polemics
with the Soviet leaders in the 1960s were unfounded and can therefore
be seen as part and parcel of an agreed bloc disinformation effort
carried out in accordance with the long-range policy decisions
reached, with Chinese and Albanian participation, in the period 1958-
60.
Political Changes
Western belief in a moderation in the Soviet attitude toward internal
and external political problems during the 1960s was based on various
changes introduced from 1958 onward. They can be briefly listed. A
new formula was evolved to replace the "dictatorship of the
proletariat," in official communist language. This was the concept of
the "state of the whole people."^ Certain legal changes were made.
Steps were taken ostensibly to reduce the role and influence of the
security service. The All Union Ministry of Internal Affairs was
abolished in 1959 — but only for a short time. The Chairman of the
KGB, the notorious police professional General Ivan Serov, was
dismissed on December 9, 1958; he was replaced two weeks later by
the former leader of the Soviet youth movement and alleged liberal
Shelepin. The use of terror was reduced. It was decreed that "socialist
legality" should be observed. The KGB was represented as a reformed
organization, hard on the enemies of the regime but "humanistic" in its
approach to the Soviet people, as was its forerunner in Dzerzhinskiy's
days. Khrushchev told editors of the West German social democratic
press that state security organizations were not really needed at all in
the Soviet Union; they could at most be used to deal with cases of
petty larceny.' Khrushchev and Shelepin repeatedly denied that there
were political prisoners in the Soviet Union. According to
Kommunist: "The state security organs are now laying more and more
emphasis on
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 125
preventive, educational work . . . they are expanding their prophy-
lactic work."^ This line was in sharp contrast with the earher emphasis
on repression in the work of the security services.
A more tolerant attitude was ostensibly adopted toward religion.
The Chairman of the Directorate for Affairs of the Orthodox Church, a
KGB official named G. Karpov, was replaced by Kuroye-dov, a former
secretary of a party provincial committee. More religious leaders were
allowed to travel abroad.
A more liberal attitude was adopted toward writers, scientists, and
other creative workers. There were occasional, apparently independent
and spontaneous, expressions of public opinion. Unofficial critical
comments about the regime were sometimes published. While
traditional socialist realism in art continued to receive official
encouragement, well-publicized exhibitions of abstract painters were
held in Moscow. They were roundly criticized by Khrushchev. As in
painting, so in literature; alongside traditional hard-line writing,
certain well-known Soviet poets and authors published controversial
material in the Soviet and foreign press. Some were harassed and
punished in consequence. A Yevtushenko poem including criticism of
Stalin was published in the Soviet Union. So was Solzhenitsyn's One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a description of life in a Soviet
prison by an author who had himself been a prisoner under Stalin.
Works by other former prisoners, such as Dyakov and Georgiy
Shelest, appeared in the early 1960s. More Soviet tourists traveled
abroad, including writers who made critical and controversial
comments about the regime. Some were allowed to leave the Soviet
Union permanently. Within the Soviet Union the well-known writer
Kochetov emerged as the leader of the "conservative" wing of the
writers' union, while the late poet Tvar-dovskiy, who sponsored
Solzhenitsyn's writings, led the "hberals." The liberals were joined by
the poets Yevtushenko and Voznesen-skiy, also by prominent
scientists and other dissidents.
With the help of these apparently more liberal official attitudes, the
image of the Soviet Union presented to the outside world was
changed; the political fundamentals of the regime were not. The "state
of the whole people" was still a dictatorship ruled exclusively, and
now more effectively, by the communist party through the party
apparatus and other organs, including the KGB. The KGB was still
one of the pillars of the strength and stability of
126 NEWLIESFOROLD
the regime. True anticommunist political opposition was suppressed
as before, but on a selective basis. The real nature of the Soviet
regime and the KGB and their intolerance of ideological opposition
were demonstrated in October 1959 by the assassination in West
Germany by the KGB of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan
Bandera. The regime was no less ruthless inside the Soviet Union
when dealing with nationalist or other opposition movements. Despite
Khrushchev's disclaimers, political prisoners still existed, though their
numbers were reduced. Political trials were normally still held in
secret.
The scale of repression cannot be judged by the show trials, which
were sometimes publicized, or by information that, following the
example of the 1920s, was sometimes leaked for political or tactical
considerations through samizdat and other sources. According to
Mironov, its former chairman, the KGB branch in Leningrad in 1958-
59 was still arresting 35 percent of the anti-Soviet elements it
detected; the other 65 percent were let off with prophylactic warnings.
Soviet intellectuals were still controlled officially through party
organizations in the various institutes, academies, and writers' and
other unions. Unofficially they were still controlled by the security
services through secret agents. There was no free, independent,
spontaneous expression of political views in the Soviet Union. Al-
though the use of terror was diminished in comparison with Stalin's
time, true reform went no further than in the thaw between 1953 and
1956.
The so-called political evolution of the regime can be understood in
the light of Shelepin's secret report as the implementation of the long-
range policy of stabilizing and strengthening the regime by adopting
the methods used with success in the 1920s. The policy entailed not
diminishing the power of the KGB, but giving it a wider, more active,
sophisticated, and influential political role in shaping and conditioning
the life of society. The statements by Khrushchev and others quoted
above on the reduction in the KGB's importance were untrue and are
in themselves evidence of the deliberate creation of a false image of
Soviet society. The KGB itself participated with the party and the
Soviet leadership in the creation of this false image. Prominent Soviet
legal experts, including several from the KGB Institute like Professor
of Law
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 127
Viktor Chikvadze, helped the Soviet leaders to formulate the new
concept of the "state of the whole people. " They also helped to prepare
the false statements quoted above on the restricted role of the KGB
and the nonexistence of political prisoners. When the puzzled staff
and students at the KGB Institute (including the author) pointed out
the inaccuracy of Khrushchev's remarks and asked for an explanation,
they were told that such statements were required for political and
tactical considerations. In fact, the statements were made in order to
mask the KGB's new role.
Further evidence of the role of the KGB in shaping the new, false
image of the regime, evidence that illustrates the linkage in technique
between the NEP period and the 1960s, can be found in the case of
Shul'gin.
Shul'gin was a former monarchist emigre leader who became a
victim of the OGPU's Trust and unwittingly was used by the OGPU to
influence Western views on Soviet evolution. In September 1925 he
was lured by the Trust into the Soviet Union, and under Trust auspices
visited Kiev, Moscow, and Leningrad, meeting the defense, foreign
affairs, and finance "ministers" of the Trust's "underground
organization." In 1927 he wrote a book about his visit to the Soviet
Union entitled Three Cities. After clearance with the Trust (in effect,
with the OGPU), the book was published outside the Soviet Union.
One of its main themes was that foreign intervention in Soviet affairs
was superfluous, since communism was a declining force.
After the Second World War Soviet security agents arrested
Shul'gin in Belgrade. He was imprisoned in the Soviet Union for his
involvement with the Trust in the 1920s. In 1960 he was released from
prison and was used by the KGB, this time wittingly, to publish a
brochure in which he stated some of the reasons for suggesting that
the Soviet regime was evolving toward a more tolerant and democratic
system.^
Changes in Diplomacy
From 1958 onward the Soviet leadership laid special emphasis on
peaceful coexistence, trade and economic relations with the West, and
a moderate and businesslike approach to negotiations
128 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and agreements. Soviet diplomacy entered an active phase; top-level
personal diplomacy became normal practice. Khrushchev and other
Soviet leaders visited the United States and France; Western leaders
were invited to the Soviet Union. Approaches were made to the
governments of advanced capitalist countries, including Great Britain,
the United States, West Germany, France, and Japan, for the purpose
of improving political, economic, and cultural relations with them.
The Soviets showed interest in summit conferences and international
meetings on disarmament and trade. On December 4, 1958, the
Soviets issued a declaration on the cessation of nuclear tests, preceded
and followed by other proposals on disarmament.^ The Soviets
expressed a desire to obtain capital equipment from the industrially
advanced noncommunist world on the basis of long-term credits.
Countries bordering on the Soviet Union received special attention.
In May 1962 Khrushchev suggested a world conference on trade.
These initiatives did not represent an evolution toward a less
ideological and more conventional national form of diplomacy on the
part of the Soviet government. They should be compared with Soviet
diplomacy under Lenin during the NEP; they were similar calculated
steps taken on the basis and within the framework of a long-range
ideological policy. Similar emphasis on peaceful coexistence and
businesslike relations with the capitalist world and a similar use of
high-level contacts with noncommunist governments can be seen in
Soviet diplomacy leading up to the Genoa conference of 1922. This
was a period in which Lenin himself advocated the use of moderate
language, avoiding in particular words suggesting that violence and
terror played any part in Soviet tactics.
The Soviet government's proposals to the UN General Assembly on
full and complete disarmament and the call for a world conference on
trade are even more strikingly similar to Soviet proposals in the 1920s.
The so-called moderate Soviet diplomacy of the 1960s was a
repetition of Lenin's activist foreign policy of gaining specific benefits
for the Soviet Union by exploiting the contradictions within and
between noncommunist countries.
If this historical basis for Soviet diplomacy in the 1960s is taken
into account together with Lenin's pamphlet. Left- Wing Communism,
An Infantile Disorder, it is easier to understand why the emphasis on
coexistence and businesslike cooperation between states
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 129
with different social systems in the 1960s was accompanied by an
intensification of the ideological struggle inside and outside the Soviet
Union. Khrushchev's calls for peaceful coexistence and disarmament
were combined with outspoken attacks on capitalism and predictions
of upheavals in the West, which were made during and after his visits
to the United States in 1959 and 1960.'" Even more important was the
intensification of support for revolutionary and national liberation
movements abroad, most conspicuously in Vietnam and Africa. The
year 1960 saw the foundation in the Soviet Union of a new university,
Lumumba University, intended for the training of revolutionary
leaders for the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America.
The resemblance between Soviet initiatives in the 1920s and those
in the late 1950s and early 1960s did not escape the notice of all
Western analysts. For example, David M. Abshire, in his contribution
to the book Detente, said that more striking than any adjustment
currently being made to meet changing conditions was the adjustment
oftheNEPinthe 1920s."
Similarly, Lazar Pistrak, in his book The Grand Tactician, observed
that Khrushchev had "resumed Lenin's methods of an active foreign
policy and the simultaneous spreading of world-revolutionary ideas by
means of unprecedented propaganda devices."'^
A third Western observer, G. A. von Stackelberg, pointed out the
inconsistency between peaceful coexistence and the foundation of a
university for training revolutionary leaders for the Third World. He
drew a direct comparison between Lumumba University and the
Communist University of the Toilers of the East, set up almost forty
years earlier under Lenin to train cadres for the Eastern Soviet
republics of Turkestan, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus. As he pointed
out, it could also be compared with the Sun Yat-sen University, which
trained cadres for the communist revolution in China.
Despite the talk of peaceful coexistence, Soviet policy provoked or
contributed to a series of crises in the decade following 1958,
including the Berlin crisis of November 1958, when Khrushchev
proposed to terminate the city's occupied status; the U-2 crisis in
1960, which Khrushchev used to wreck the summit conference; the
Soviet decision to resume nuclear testing in 1961; the Cuban crisis of
1962; and the Middle East crisis of 1967.
130 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Again the explanation is to be found in the experience of the NEP
and the Leninist view of foreign pohcy as a form of ideological
struggle in which both peaceful and nonpeaceful methods should be
used. Peaceful coexistence was defined under Khrushchev, as it was
under Lenin, as a form of class struggle between antagonistic social
systems based on the active exploitation of the contradictions within
and between noncommunist countries.
The revival of an active Leninist foreign policy was confirmed, for
example, in the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on July
18, 1963, in an article that stated: "The Leninist foreign policy carried
out by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government
is a high-principled, flexible, active poHcy always on the offensive. It
has fully justified itself and is bearing excellent fruit. . . Communists
do not keep it a secret that coexistence is necessary for world-wide
victory of Marxist-Leninist ideas, that there are deep-rooted
differences between the two world systems of socialism and
capitalism. To solve those differences, Marxists-Leninists hold, war is
not an obligatory means in economic, political and ideological
struggle."
Soviet foreign policy in the 1960s was not moderate; it was more
offensive than in the years preceding and following Stalin's death,
when the crisis of the regime forced it onto the defensive. The notion
that it was more moderate, more conventional, more nationalist, and
less ideological is the product of deliberate disinformation and the
systematic use of terms, such as peaceful coexistence, that are
themselves intentionally misleading.
The Soviet intelligence and security services played their part in
misrepresenting the nature of Soviet foreign policy, in particular by
projecting and underHning the common interests between communist
and noncommunist countries. The participation of prominent Soviet
agents of influence in the scientific field, like Academician
Topchiyev, and the role they played in Pugwash and other
conferences, recall the use of the Eurasian movement by Dzerzhin-
skiyinthe 1920s.
Chinese and Albanian accusations that the Soviet regime had
departed from Leninist principles of revolutionary policy contributed
to Western acceptance of the notion that this was so. Since, as this
analysis has shown, the charge was without foundation and since the
Chinese and Albanians were parties to the adoption of
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 131
the long-range policy, their accusations should be seen as another
element in a joint disinformation effort.
The Influence of Ideology
The changes in the economic, political, and diplomatic practice of
the Soviet government, which have been described above, contributed
to the belief in the West that the influence of ideology in the Soviet
system had declined. This was not so. On the contrary, the changes
and readjustments were calculated, controlled, and pragmatic. They
did not touch the economic and political fundamentals of the regime;
in fact, they contributed to the restoration and strengthening of
ideology, as compared with the Stalin period.
Similarly a not always consistently maintained moderation in the
Soviet press line on the West and continuing emphasis on common
interests between the communist and noncommunist worlds did not
indicate revisionism or an increase in Western or nationalist
influences in the Soviet Union, but rather a tactical shift within the
framework of the long-range policy.
It is true that the new, educated, postrevolutionary generation that
grew up in the Soviet Union (as in Eastern Europe) presented a
largely silent challenge to the basic principles of the communist
system and its ideology; there was strong latent anxiety and opposi-
tion, especially among intellectuals and young people, and a genuine,
deep-rooted sense of nationalism among the Russian and other
peoples of the Soviet Union hostile to the regime. The hostility of the
young was aggravated by the repression to which the older generation
had been subjected. This genuine opposition, and the decline in the
influence of ideology that reached its nadir in the immediate post-
Stalin years, presented the regime with a serious problem. It could
either revert to mass repression on Stalinist lines or adopt a new, more
flexible Leninist approach. Stalinist methods having clearly failed,
Leninist methods were the obvious choice.
The economic gap between the privileged "new class" and the
workers and collective farmers was narrowed, the use of terror and
repression was restricted, and more sophisticated methods were used
to counter religious, nationalist, and Western influences. A more
flexible, Leninist approach was adopted toward the "lost"
132 NEW LIES FOR OLD
younger generation. Using the techniques of the NEP period, the
regime managed to increase its prestige, reheve the internal crisis, and
neutrahze actual and latent internal opposition. The only real change
in the ideological substance of the regime was its increased
effectiveness.
Among other factors that contributed to Western belief in the
decline in the influence of ideology were, for example, the replace-
ment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" by the "state of the whole
people"; the alleged degeneration of Soviet leaders from genuine
revolutionaries into reformists and revisionists; the alleged growth of
special interest groups in Soviet society, and the emergence of some
kind of embourgeoise middle class; the revival of de-Stahnization; the
increased accessibility of Soviet scientists, writers, and other
intellectual and cultural figures; the larger numbers of Soviet Jews
allowed to emigrate; and Chinese and Albanian accusations of Soviet
revisionism.
According to the 1961 program of the CPSU, the "dictatorship of
the proletariat" (in other words, the dictatorship of the communist
party) had served its purpose. The "state of the whole people" was to
be maintained "until the complete victory of communism." Far from
indicating a weakening of ideological party control, this new formula
should be seen as part of the overall attempt to broaden the political
base of the party and enhance its influence by giving it a more
moderate and less exclusive image. The party retained its monopoly of
power, policy, and ideas. The gulf between the Soviet and
noncommunist social systems in fact widened even while the myth of
common interests between them was being propagated. Intolerance of
any genuine, uncontrolled political opposition in the Soviet Union was
and is as severe as ever. All actions inside and outside the country are
carried out with direct or indirect references to the abiding principles
of Leninism. Ideological and political considerations override national
and economic considerations as never before. Any expectation of a
genuine increase in revisionist, nationalistic, or Western influences on
the regime is unrealistic, especially given present Western attitudes
toward the system.
Even less well-founded is the notion that Soviet leaders and party
members are less ideologically motivated than before and have
abandoned revolution for reformism and revisionism. Although
MAJOR CHANGES E^ THE USSR 133
to some extent the adjustments after 1958 were introduced under
pressure from a discontented population, among whom the influences
of ideology had suffered a genuine decline, those adjustments were
also in line with the ideological long-range policy objectives to which
all the leaders were committed.
The up-and-coming younger generation of leaders like Shelepin,
Polyanskiy, and Andropov were not and are not revisionists or
"Young Turks," as some Western commentators dubbed them.
Shelepin's report and the KGB activity for which he and Andropov
have been responsible demonstrate that they are zealous revolution-
aries who are committed to an ideological, Leninist policy and are
qualified to take over the burden of power from the older generation
because of their commitment to that policy and because of their
achievements in implementing it. There are no liberals, moderates, or
conservatives in the Soviet leadership; there are only communists
whose actions are determined by the requirements of the long-range
policy. They may take on a public guise of liberals or Stalinists, but
only if required to do so by the Presidium of the party in the interests
of that policy.
Equally unfounded is the notion that the professional strata of the
Soviet Union are becoming less ideologically minded or more
independent of the party. The fact is that, normally, leading officials,
generals, scientists, and professional bureaucrats are party members
who know that their well-being depends on their standing with the
party and the government and that they would suffer if the regime
were to be weakened. In general they are less sceptical about
communist doctrine than they were in Stalin's years. Since arrests
among them are now unusual and take place only if they participate
actively in opposition to the regime, they are in fact more loyal than
before. They know that the authority of the party leadership is
unchallengeable. Since everything is under the control of the party,
there are no divisions between the party leadership and the
professionals. If the professionals play a more important role in the
implementation of policy, they do so under party control. It is
erroneous to suppose that the professionals in any field can be
independent politically, as they are in the West. They have significant
influence, but no independence. Unofficial evidence that military and
economic professionals or technocrats play an independent role in the
policy-making process can be discounted. If some
134 NEW LIES FOR OLD
professionals resign or express critical views in the Soviet press or in
contact with foreigners, it can be assumed that they are doing so on
the instructions of the party. The adjustments in economic poHcy were
not a response to pressure from economists, technocrats, or scientists,
as is sometimes supposed, but were planned and implemented on the
initiative and under the control of the party apparatus acting in
accordance with the requirements of its ideological long-range policy
based on NEP experience. The adjustments were not intended for the
enrichment of individuals or groups, but for the enrichment and
stabilization of the regime and the fulfillment of communist policy.
The technocrats and other professionals have not lost their ideological
zeal; they remain leading party officials who have simply received
new assignments from the party. If any of them depart noticeably
from communist norms of life or degenerate into middle-class
revisionists, they are removed from their positions and replaced. Their
ideological zeal is maintained through nonviolent purges, systematic
ideological education, and strict party control.
Soviet workers and collective farmers are not becoming middle-
class, as some observers Hke to think. The improvement in the lot of
rank-and-file workers is still modest. They have a long way to go yet
until they reach a decent standard of living. Furthermore, in Soviet
conditions the emergence of a middle class is impossible because the
party has different objectives and, when necessary, intensifies the
ideological struggle against middle-class philosophy and practice to
exclude such developments from Soviet society.
The major party and bloc documents of lasting significance, such as
the record of the CPSU's Twenty-first Party Congress, the Manifesto
of November 1960, Khrushchev's report of January 6, 1961, and the
1961 program of the CPSU, confirmed the fundamental principles of
the Soviet regime and its ideology, as well as the final ideological
objectives of the Soviet Union and the bloc. These documents directed
the communist movement to an intensification of the ideological
struggle against alien ideologies domestically and externally; they
called for more and better communist ideological education.
The evidence does not support the conclusion that, despite these
documents, the Soviet regime has been evolving into a less ideological
and more conventional national system. On the contrary, it
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 135
points to a deliberate decision by the regime to pursue its acknowl-
edged ideological goals the more effectively by distracting Western
attention from them. This it has sought to do by misrepresenting
tactical, pragmatic shifts in its practices as fundamental and sponta-
neous, thereby projecting a false image of a system evolving in a
direction opposite to its declared purposes. In planning and executing
this misrepresentation it has used the doctrine and historical
experience of Lenin's NEP.
The Revival of De-Stalinization
Perhaps the most important technique used to project a moderate
image of Soviet policy in the late 1950s and early 1960s was the
revival of de-Stalinization and the related issue of "revisionism." This
can be seen, for example, in the appointment of Pervukhin as Soviet
ambassador to East Germany in 1958; the replacement of Serov by
Shelepin as Chairman of the KGB; the renewed denunciation at the
Twenty-second CPSU Congress in October 1961 of the antiparty
group as Stalinists for their past role in the repressions; the revived
criticism of Stalin himself for these repressions, and the removal of
his body from the Lenin mausoleum; the special exploitation of the
Molotov affair; and the display of differences in attitudes toward
Stalin between the Soviet leaders on the one hand and the Albanians
and Chinese leaders on the other.
Pervukhin had been a member of the opposition to Khrushchev in
June 1957. He was therefore identifiable in the West, though wrongly,
as a hard-liner. He was appointed as ambassador to East Germany at a
time when the BerHn crisis of 1958 was being prepared by the bloc's
strategists. His appointment can be regarded as the first calculated
attempt to provide the West with a plausible explanation of an
international crisis being provoked by the influence of the hard-liners
within the Soviet system. In fact, the crisis was created within the
framework of long-range policy and the major spokesman on it was
none other than Khrushchev himself.
Serov's case was different in that he had long been a supporter of
Khrushchev, but, as has already been explained, his notorious past
involvement in repressions and his narrow-minded attitudes made him
unsuitable for a leading role in the implementation of
136 NEWLIESFOROLD
the new long-range policy. The background of Shelepin, a former
leader of Soviet youth, provided a useful contrast, which in turn
contributed to Khrushchev's and Shelepin's liberal images.
The renewed criticism at the Twenty-second Party Congress of the
antiparty group of Molotov, Malenkov, Buiganin, Voroshilov, and
others for their role in past repressions and of Pervukhin's "resistance
to the policy of reform" were perhaps the most striking and persuasive
instances of the calculated use of spurious de-Stalini-zation. The issues
involved had been settled with the ending of the power struggle and
the establishment of a homogeneous team of leaders committed to a
long-range policy. The display of "differences" between moderates
and Stalinists was linked with the decision of the Twenty-second
Party Congress on November 1, 1961, to remove Stalin's body from
the Lenin mausoleum and rebury it in the Kremlin wall. Another
staged display was the conspicuous refusal by KGB bodyguards, in
front of foreign diplomats and journalists, to allow Voroshilov to join
other Soviet leaders on top of the Lenin mausoleum for the official
parade in November 1961.
One purpose of these staged displays of de-Stalinization was to
create a favorable climate for the conversion of former internal
enemies of the regime into active allies in the promotion of its long-
range policy. Khrushchev in person had meetings with several
children of the rehabilitated officials. In the effort to involve all
sectors of Soviet society with the new policy, rehabilitation was
extended outside the political field. Khrushchev had a well-publicized
meeting with a thief who had been released from prison. The KGB
was given a special role in rehabihtating former prisoners and
returning them to the party ranks. The KGB helped such people to
obtain apartments and jobs through its contacts in factories and other
institutions. Those who were considered suitable were recruited by the
KGB for political assignments.
The explanation of the Molotov affair is more complicated and
deserves detailed examination. According to official and semiofficial
accounts, Molotov used his appointment as ambassador to Mongolia
to establish contact with the Chinese leaders. When the Soviet leaders
found out about this liaison, Molotov was recalled and appointed in
1960 to be the chief Soviet representative at the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) in Austria. According to Satyukov, the chief
editor of Pravda, and other communist leaders
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 137
including Kuusinen, on the eve of the Twenty-second Party Congress
in October 1961, Molotov circulated a letter to the members of the
Central Committee of the CPSU criticizing the draft of the new party
program as "revisionist, nonrevolutionary and pacifist.""' Molotov
allegedly knew that the Chinese leaders shared his views. Molotov
was recalled from Vienna to Moscow at the time of the Twenty-
second Congress, but he played no part in it. Shortly afterward he
returned to Vienna, where he was said to be under house arrest. A few
days later he was back in Moscow. On January 8, 1962, the Soviet
foreign ministry announced that he would be returning to Vienna.
Within days, this statement was withdrawn.
There are many curious anomalies in this story. Molotov was sent
to Mongolia by Khrushchev to isolate him and to lower his prestige in
the Soviet diplomatic service. He was kept under surveillance there by
informers controlled by General Dobrynin, chief adviser to the
Mongolian security service and former head of the KGB's surveillance
directorate. Continuing unauthorized contact between Molotov and
the Chinese would have been virtually impossible. If such contact had
taken place and had been reported, it is most unlikely that Molotov
would have been posted to the IAEA in Austria. Like Malenkov,
Bulganin, and others, he would have been sent off to retirement in a
small town in the Soviet Union. Moreover, misconduct of this kind on
Molotov's part would have been made known as before to party
members in a secret letter as further evidence of his antiparty
behavior. This did not happen. There was no reference to Molotov, in
the confidential party explanation of the decisions of the congress,
containing such criticisms. Furthermore, the criticisms attributed to
him look most unlikely. The draft program was based on the decisions
of the Eighty-one-Party Congress of November 1960, which ratified
the new, revolutionary bloc policy and strategy. For Molotov to have
criticized the program on the grounds alleged would have made him a
laughingstock within the communist movement.
Molotov did, however, criticize Khrushchev's policy on the eve of
the Twenty-first Party Congress two years earlier, in January 1959,
and this was stated in the confidential circular to party members in
Moscow on the decisions of that congress signed by Vladimir Ustinov,
who had become a Moscow party secretary. Molotov's
138 NEW LIES FOR OLD
criticisms were described as a mixture of dogmatism and quotations
from Lenin. This episode was not mentioned by Satyukov and in fact
has never been disclosed to the public by the Soviet leadership.
It is therefore reasonable to deduce that Molotov's actual criticisms
in 1959 were modified and only disclosed at a time suited to meeting
the needs of poHcy in 1961. It is also possible that use was made of
Molotov in this way with his knowledge and consent; as a party
member, he would have had no option but to agree.
The unusual publicity given to Molotov's movements between
Moscow and Vienna may well have been intended to attract Western
attention to the affair at a time of alleged Sino-Soviet differences. In
this connection it should be noted that Satyukov, supported by
Mikoyan and other speakers, accused Molotov of predicting political
conflicts with imperialism that would mean war. Mikoyan accused
Molotov of rejecting peaceful coexistence. Another party official said
that Molotov was opposed to high-level diplomatic contacts between
Soviet and Western leaders. Satyukov summed up with this emphatic
statement: "We say to Molotov — 'no!' The CPSU has done its best ...
to guarantee peace for the USSR ... on the basis of the Leninist policy
of peaceful co-existence." Clearly this exposure of Molotov's alleged
warmongering could have been intended to support the moderate
image of the Soviet leadership and the sincerity of their interest in
peaceful coexistence and detente, in contrast with the "warmongering"
of Molotov and the Chinese leadership.
Two further aspects of Satyukov's attack on Molotov should be
mentioned. He accused Molotov, first, of trying to assume the role of
an interpreter of Lenin, and second, of criticizing the new party
program as pacifist and insufficiently revolutionary. Both these
criticisms were to be used by the Soviets against the Chinese leaders, at
first without naming them, but later explicitly. It can therefore be
suggested that the Molotov affair was used to support the authenticity
of the alleged differences between the Soviets and Chinese on the
issue of peaceful coexistence.
The conspicuous revival of the de-Stalinization issue at the Twenty-
second Congress and Khrushchev's public attack on the Albanians
apparently angered the Chinese to such an extent that Chou En-lai, the
leader of the Chinese delegation, withdrew from
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 139
the congress. As has already been explained, the issues of revisionism
and Stalin's distortions of communism had already been settled
between the leaders of the communist bloc at the end of 1957.
Because they had been settled, there was no foundation for differ-
ences between communist parties on them. The conclusion may
therefore be drawn that the revival of the issues at the Twenty-second
Congress was artificial and that the differences between the Soviet
and the Albanian and Chinese parties on Soviet "revisionism" and
Chinese and Albanian "Stalinism" were calculated and agreed within
the terms and in the interests of the long-range policy.
It should be noted that one of the objects of the display of
differences was to add credibility to the notion of Soviet "moderation"
and to present Khrushchev as a revisionist. The conclusion that the
display was staged provides another argument for regarding the notion
of Soviet moderation as unfounded.
The Position of Soviet Scientists and Other Intellectuals
Extensive preparations were made by the Central Committee and
the KGB in 1958-60 to use scientists, writers, and other intellectuals
for political and disinformation purposes in accordance with the
requirements of the new long-range policy. '^ This new approach to
the intellectuals had its internal aspect; by seeking their collaboration
in some form of political activity, the regime sought to forestall
opposition from them. But it is with the external, strategic implica-
tions of the intellectuals' role in bringing influence to bear on Western
public opinion and governments that the present chapter is concerned.
Fadeyev's posthumous advice to the Central Committee to use
intellectuals for exerting influence, not for spying on one another, had
been well taken and was put into effect.
The use of scientists in particular as agents of influence and
channels for disinformation involved certain changes in their status.
The Central Committee apparatus and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
as well as the KGB, developed closer relations with them. Many of
them were given intelligence training individually and in schools. The
regime, instead of keeping them in isolation at home as before, began
to promote both their accessibility at home
140 NEWLIESFOROLD
and their travels abroad with a view to widening and exploiting their
contacts with Western scientists.
The complaints of Academicians Kapitsa and Sakharov and the
biologist Zhores Medvedev about the difficulties encountered by
Soviet scientists wishing to travel and meet their Western colleagues
were incomplete, and distract attention from the real grounds for
complaint by Western and Soviet scientists alike, which lie in the use
of these contacts by the Central Committee and the KGB for
collecting intelligence, conveying disinformation, and exercising
political influence.'^ In fact, the majority of Soviet scientists lend
themselves willingly to intelligence work against foreign scientists
because of the opportunities it gives them to increase their knowledge
and advance in their careers. Like Fadeyev, they find it in better taste
to spy on foreign associates than on their Soviet friends and
colleagues.
The use of Soviet scientists as agents of influence and channels for
disinformation entailed changes in Soviet practice over the disclosure
of secret information. Although the most significant areas, especially
the process of policymaking and the technique of its implementation,
remained as secret as ever, certain aspects of Soviet science and
society were opened up; the obsession with secrecy appeared less total
than in Stalin's days.
The greater accessibility of Soviet scientists made its own contri-
bution to the impression of evolution in the Soviet system. More
important, however, was the promotion through Soviet scientists of
the notion of common interests between the Soviet Union and the
West. The attendance of KGB agents, such as Academicians
Topchiyev, Artobolevskiy, and Khvostov, at international scientific
conferences and their role in promoting the idea of the Soviet Union's
common interest with the United States in avoiding nuclear conflict
deserve the closest scrutiny for the bearing they may have had on
American willingness to engage in strategic arms control and
disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union and the voluntary
decision by the United States in the early 1960s to surrender its
nuclear superiority in the naive belief that if the Americans reduced
the rate of development of their nuclear arsenal, the Soviets would do
the same.
As in the case of the scientists, the KGB's use of its expanded
assets among Soviet writers (especially among those with well-known
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE USSR 141
names) had its internal and external aspects. Shelepin's plans to introduce
false opposition on Dzerzhinskiy's lines found concrete expression in the
controlled debates between the "conservative" and "liberal" writers, in which
the main protagonists on both sides, Kochetov and Tvardovskiy, were
collaborating with the Central Committee and the KGB. This debate,
together with the general increase in East-West cultural contacts, made a
useful contribution to the myth of "evolution."
Objectives of Strategic Disinformation on Soviet "Evolution" and
"Moderation"
The main external objective of strategic disinformation in the early 1960s
on the "evolution" and "moderation" of the Soviet regime and its "common
interests" with the West was to create a suitable climate for activist, detente
diplomacy by the Soviet Union and other communist states and to condition
favorable, and erroneous. Western responses to communist initiatives. The
five specific aims of communist diplomacy were to:
• Undermine Western unity.
• Induce the advanced industrial nations to contribute to the growth of the
economic and mihtary potential of the bloc by agreeing to increase East-
West trade, grant long-term credits, and supply advanced technology.
• Distract Western attention from the growth in the military strength of
the bloc and the Soviet Union in particular.
• Engage the West, especially the United States, in arms control and
disarmament negotiations, with a view to swinging the mihtary balance of
power in favor of the communist bloc.
• Create favorable conditions for communist parties to form united fronts
with socialists and trade unionists in the advanced countries and with
nationalist movements in the developing countries.
At home the main objective of the adjustments to the regime and the
exaggeration of their significance through disinformation was to create
favorable conditions for the further construction of socialism and the
eventual transition to communism by neutralizing internal opposition and
securing a reduction in external pressure
142 NEW LIES FOR OLD
on the regime from the West.
Subsidiary objectives of the revival of de-Stalinization were to:
• Provide a foundation for open reconciliation and cooperation between
the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia without revealing the full extent of
Yugoslavia's membership in the bloc and commitment to its long-range
policy.
• Provide grounds for Soviet- Albanian and Sino-Soviet "differences" in
preparation for the pursuit of coordinated, dual foreign pohcies by the Soviet
Union and China.
• Support further disinformation operations concerning disunity and
disarray in the world communist movement ostensibly brought about by the
dechne in the influence of ideology and the resurgence of independent
nationalist tendencies in communist parties inside and outside the bloc.
15
The Third Disinformation Operation: The
Soviet-Albanian "Dispute" and "Split"
The Overt Picture of Soviet- Albanian Relations
Esoteric evidence indicated to Western observers of the communist
scene that disagreements between the Soviet and Chinese and
Albanian party leaders had developed by 1959 into a serious cleavage
on policy issues. In 1960 the dispute came out into the open; "The first
international communist confrontation where the Sino-Soviet dispute
and Albanian support for China publicly emerged was at the June 5-
9,1960, meeting in Peking of the General Council of the World
Federation of Trade Unions."
According to evidence published in the West some time after the
event, there were furious polemics, mainly between the Soviets on the
one side and the Chinese and Albanians on the other, at the closed
sessions of the Romanian party Congress in June 1960 and the Eighty-
one-Party Congress in Moscow in November 1960. The dispute
acquired the status of a split when Khrushchev denounced the
Albanian leaders publicly at the Twenty-second CPSU Congress in
October 1961 for their criticisms of the Soviet party program, for their
dogmatic Stalinism, and for their rejection of peaceful coexistence.
Chou En-lai, the leader of the Chinese delegation, withdrew from the
congress as an apparent gesture of support for the Albanian position.
Hoxha, while expressing through the Albanian party press his party's
continuing solidarity with the CPSU, responded to the Soviet attack
with bitter criticism of "Khrushchev and his group" for their public
attack on the Albanian party and for their revisionism. He said that
they had betrayed
143
144 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Leninism; that they were restoring capitahsm in the Soviet Union; that
they were conducting an opportunistic policy of concessions to, and
cooperation with, imperialism; and that they were conspiring with the
leading revisionist, Tito. A break in Soviet-Albanian diplomatic
relations followed in December 1961, and from 1962 onward Albania
refused to attend Warsaw Pact and Comecon meetings. Chinese
support for and alignment with the Albanian position against the
Soviets can be traced back at least to 1959 and possibly even earlier in
the esoteric evidence.
Inside Information and Its Interpretation
The author's information contradicts this generally accepted version
of the development of Soviet- Albanian relations between 1959 and
1962. Briefly, this information was to the effect that relations between
all the communist states, including Albania and China, had been
normalized by the end of 1957; that the Soviets had successfully
mediated in the secret reconciliation of the Yugoslav and Albanian
leaders in 1957-58; and that, from late 1959, the KGB's
disinformation department was actively collaborating with the Central
Committee's Department of Active Operations and with the Yugoslav
and Albanian security services in joint disinformation operations.
The effect of Shelepin's instructions was to make Albania a party to
a triangular disinformation operation with the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia, an ingenious method of turning to the advantage of the
bloc's long-range policy the earlier genuine disputes and difficulties in
relations between the three countries. The strategic considerations the
bloc leaders would have had in mind when planning this operation
would probably have been both internal and external.
Internally both the Yugoslav and Albanian regimes would have
faced major political problems if the radical step of immediately and
publicly normalizing their relations had been taken by those same
leaders under whom the hostilities between the parties had originated
and developed. In the case of Yugoslavia it was predictable that public
reconciliation would have carried with it a grave risk of factionalism
within the Yugoslav party because of the
SOVIET-ALBANIAN "SPLIT" 145
Strength of feeling against Albania that had built up in the Stalin
period. For the Albanian leaders the problems would have been even
more acute. They were the same leaders who had been responsible for
executing their own Albanian colleagues, including the former
minister Koci Xexe, for their pre- Yugoslav sympathies. Open
reconciliation with Yugoslavia might well have released pressure for
the posthumous rehabilitation of Xexe and his friends and for an
admission by the leadership that they had committed crimes against
loyal and innocent fellow-countrymen on Stalin's orders. In other
words, there might have been a popular and inner-party reaction in
Albania similar to that in Hungary which accompanied the
rehabilitation of the former minister, Laszlo Rajk, in 1956.
Furthermore, for strategic reasons, Yugoslavia's true role as an active
participant in the formulation and execution of long-range bloc policy
had to be kept a closely guarded secret known only to the inner circle
of Albanian party leaders. An open Yugoslav- Albanian reconciliation
could not have been fully explained to the Albanian rank and file and
might well have led to a revival of genuine revisionism in the party. A
disinformation operation to which both the Yugoslav and Albanian
leaders were parties offered substantial advantages by providing scope
for intimate secret collaboration between the party leaders in an
operation of importance to the whole bloc while at the same time
providing a means of delaying open acknowledgment of their secret
reconciliation to the party rank and file and to the populations at large.
In the Soviet Union Khrushchev had been enlightened enough to
see that the best way to solve the problem of genuine dissent from and
opposition to the regime among intellectuals and victims of Stalin's
persecution was to involve them actively in one or another aspect of
the new long-range policy. The same principle could be applied to
healing splits in the bloc and preventing their recurrence. For this
reason Yugoslavia was allowed to contribute significantly to the
formulation of the long-range policy and was given an important role
to play in its execution. The inclusion of the Albanian leaders was the
logical next step. They too could be actively involved in, and
committed to, the new policy. A disinformation operation embracing a
calculated, spurious dispute with the Soviet Union gave them the
opportunity to project themselves to their own people and to enhance
their own and their party's prestige as an indepen-
146 NEW LIES FOR OLD
dent national force robust enough to stand up to Khrushchev's
bullying interference in their affairs. In addition, they were given a
chance to play a strategic role in a disinformation operation to
misrepresent relations between members of the bloc, and especially
those between the Soviet Union and China, as degenerating into a
state of rivalry and hostility, the object of the misrepresentation being
to widen the openings for the bloc countries to develop their political
strategies vis-a-vis the noncommunist world.
Given Albania's past ahgnment with Stalin in the genuine Tito-
Stalin split and Western knowledge of that alignment, it would have
seemed logical and convincing to make Albania a "Stalinist" country
in partnership with the Chinese in a calculated and controlled dispute
with the Soviets. It also served as a useful preliminary move toward a
more open and official Soviet- Yugoslav alignment from 1961 onward,
in apparent opposition to the Sino- Albanian partnership. The
realignment of Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union after 1961 would be
less likely to prejudice her independent image and her political and
economic relationships with the advanced and developing countries if
the Soviets themselves were to be seen by those countries as
revisionists, in comparison with the militant Chinese dogmatists.
The fact that Albania was the smallest and most isolated of the
communist countries made her a particularly suitable choice to be the
first full member of the bloc to split away from the Soviet Union after
1958. The Soviet-Albanian "split" should in fact be regarded as a pilot
project for the much more significant Sino-Soviet split, which must
already have been in the preliminary stages of development. It gave
the bloc strategists an opportunity to test the validity of their
disinformation concepts and techniques and to examine the internal
and external consequences of a spurious minor split before
committing themselves finally to a spurious major split between the
Soviet Union and China. If the West were to see through the Soviet-
Albanian split, the minimum of political and strategic damage to the
bloc would have been done. If, on the other hand, the West were to be
successfully taken in by it, if there were no uncontrollable
repercussions of the split elsewhere in the bloc, if it proved possible to
arrange for the political and economic survival of the Albanian
regime, and if the West concluded from the Soviet- Albanian split that
the Eighty-one-Party
SOVIET-ALBANIAN SPLIT 147
Congress in November 1960 was indeed a watershed in the disinte-
gration of the communist monolith rather than the reverse, then there
would be every justification for moving ahead with the Sino-Soviet
split, to the credibility of which the Soviet- Albanian split would have
made its contribution. The Sino-Soviet split would help to build up the
moderate image of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the
1960s, to the advantage of their strategic political rapprochement with
the advanced and developing countries. The last, but not the least
significant, of the reasons for bringing the Soviet-Albanian dispute out
into the open as a split would have been to provide the West with
confirmation of the reliability of information on intrabloc relations
derived from esoteric evidence, from retrospective leakages, from
articles in the communist press, and from "secret" Western
intelligence sources.
Anomalies in the "Dispute" and "Split"
Detailed examination of the origins and development of the Soviet-
Albanian dispute and split, using the new methodology, brings to light
a number of additional points casting doubt on the authenticity of the
differences between them and confirming that the dispute was
manufactured in the interests of long-range policy.
According to the esoteric evidence, the Soviet-Albanian dispute
began in the very period during which the long-range policy was
being formulated. Hoxha himself, and other Albanian leaders, par-
ticipated in the process. In January -February 1959, Hoxha led the
Albanian delegation to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress, which
discussed the roughly simultaneous transition to communism in all the
countries of the bloc. This entailed an attempt to level up the
economics of the more backward communist countries, including
Albania, at the expense of the more advanced countries, including the
Soviet Union.
In May 1959 an official Chinese delegation, which included Chang
Wen-tien, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, formerly a Comintern
official and Chinese ambassador in Moscow, and Peng Te-huai, the
minister of defense, visited Tirana. Their visit coincided with the visit
of a Soviet delegation, headed by Khrushchev, that included Marshal
Malinovskiy, the Soviet minister of defense.
148 NEW LIES FOR OLD
It is generally supposed in the West either that meetings were held in
an unsuccessful attempt to iron out the differences between the three
countries, or that the opportunity was taken by Peng and Chang to
conspire with Khrushchev against Mao. The reception Hoxha gave the
delegations, the course of the negotiations, and the official
communique issued after the meeting provided clear evidence that
there were no differences between them and that their relations were
extremely close. Bearing in mind also that these high-level meetings
in Tirana took place at the same time as the joint Soviet- Yugoslav
disinformation operation was being launched, it is more likely that the
leaders discussed the development of the Albanian disinformation
operation than that they discussed differences between them for which
there were no solid grounds.
In the same month of May 1959, Comecon met in Tirana. The fact
that the Soviet delegation was headed by Kosygin, then chief of the
Soviet Planning Commission, indicates the importance of the session
and gives weight to the supposition that it dealt with long-range
economic planning. Despite the esoteric evidence of a Soviet-
Albanian dispute, the Albanians continued to participate in both
Comecon and Warsaw Pact organization meetings in 1960 and 1961
up to and including the plenary session of Comecon in Moscow in
September 1961, the month before Khrushchev's first public attack on
them.
Most significant of all, Hoxha was among the signatories of the
Manifesto of the Eighty-one-Party Congress in November 1960. In a
special resolution approving the participation of Albania in the
congress, the Albanian party stated that the CPSU was "the most
experienced and competent body of the international communist
movement," and added that "the hopes of the imperialists, headed by
the USA, to split the communist camp are doomed to failure." Hoxha's
official report to the Fourth Congress of the Albanian party, published
on February 14, 1961, attacked the US and NATO and was replete
with praise for the Soviet Union, China, and the decisions of the
Eighty-one-Party Congress; it acknowledged the "general
collaboration" between Albania and the Soviet Union.
The esoteric evidence of a Soviet- Albanian dispute between 1959
and 1961, relying mainly on a detailed comparison of the Soviet,
Albanian, and Chinese press during these years, was developed in the
West. From this comparison different approaches by the differ-
SOVIET-ALBANIAN "SPLIT" 149
ent parties to certain issues could indeed be deduced. At the same
time, it should be remembered that none but a privileged few in either
the Soviet Union or Albania were able to obtain and read the press of
the other country and make the sort of comparison which is the stock-
in-trade of Western analysts. Given the existence of a disinformation
program, the clear implication is that much of the esoteric evidence
was specifically directed at Western analysts and was not intended for
domestic consumption.
Nevertheless, Khrushchev's pubhc attack on the Albanians at the
Twenty-second CPSU Congress, in October 1961, seemed to most
observers to confirm that the esoteric evidence had all along reflected
a genuine dispute. It is interesting to note, however, that press
coverage of the exchanges between Khrushchev and Hoxha varied
widely in the bloc. The Soviet press did not name China or give any
indications of Chinese support for Albania. Some East European party
leaders openly critized Chinese support for Hoxha's position. The
Chinese press refrained from editorial comment on the Kremlin but
printed the Albanian attacks on Khrushchev. Press coverage of the
dispute was incomplete throughout the bloc; some documents and
speeches were not published, even by the Soviets or the Albanians.
In contrast, official information on Albanian attendance between
1958 and 1961 at Comecon and Warsaw Pact meetings, at the
Twenty-first CPSU Congress, and at the Eighty-one-Party Congress
was published at the time in the press of every communist country.
Commitments by communist parties to the decisions of multilateral
meetings are taken extremely seriously. The point applies as much to
the Albanian commitment to the Manifesto of the Eighty-one-Party
Congress as to any other. The day-to-day official evidence of
continuing Albanian cooperation with the rest of the bloc in the years
1958 to 1961 should be considered as reflecting far more accurately
the true state of affairs than the esoteric, unofficial, incomplete, and
retrospective evidence from communist sources pointing to a dispute.
Comparison with the Tito-Stalin "Split"
In the case of the genuine Tito-Stalin split in 1948 and the
continuing Soviet- Yugoslav differences in 1956 and early 1957, con-
150 NEW LIES FOR OLD
fidential briefings and guidance on the subject were given to CPSU
members. The author was a CPSU member in good standing until his
break with the Soviet regime in December 1961. He received no such
party briefing on the state of Soviet- Albanian relations.
Tito and other leading Yugoslavs could not and did not visit
Moscow during the Tito-Stalin split, but Hoxha and other Albanians
had no fears of visiting Moscow as late as November 1960. Even
Khrushchev's attack on Hoxha in October 1961, which might have
been expected to have the most serious consequences, did not prevent
an Albanian delegation from attending the Fifth World Congress of
the WFTU in Moscow in the following December, the month in
which Soviet- Albanian diplomatic relations were broken off.
In contrast with the Tito-Stalin split, there was no formal con-
demnation of Albania by any bloc or international communist meeting
or conference. There was no systematic, overall communist bloc
boycott of Albania, ideologically, politically, economically, or
diplomatically, despite attacks and critical comments by individual
parties or their leaders. These cannot be considered as binding on the
communist movement as a whole or as overriding in importance the
common obligations and commitments made at the international
communist conferences in 1957 and 1960.
Only the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Albania.
Even in this case the circumstances were peculiar, in that the note to
the Albanians was delivered by the Soviet deputy foreign minister,
Firyubin, a former ambassador to Yugoslavia who was responsible at
the time, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for relations with the
nonahgned countries, not with other communist countries in the bloc.
The use of Firyubin for this purpose suggested that the breach had
more to do with bloc strategic interests in the outside world than with
intrabloc relations. Although the other East European countries
withdrew their ambassadors, they did not break relations. Even
Yugoslavia retained a diplomatic mission in Tirana.
Although Albania ceased, by its own account, to attend Warsaw
Pact and Comecon meetings in 1962 and claimed to have terminated
its membership in both organizations, neither took formal action to
expel Albania, which therefore retains its de jure membership.
SOVIET-ALBANIAN "SPLIT" 151
The Soviet- Albanian Friendship Society survived the split. Its
board meeting in Moscow on January 9, 1981, celebrated the thirty-
fifth anniversary of the Albanian People's Republic.^
No economic pressure was brought to bear on Albania by the rest
of the bloc. Albanian trade representatives stayed on in Czecho-
slovakia, East Germany, and Hungary despite criticism of Albania by
the party leaders in those countries. In 1962 Poland, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany all signed trade agree-
ments with Albania. After the split, as before, 90 percent of Albania's
trade was with other communist countries. The main difference was
that China replaced the Soviet Union as Albania's principal supplier.
So smooth was the transition that it might well have been jointly
planned by the Soviets, Chinese, and Albanians in advance.
Conclusion
Western interest in splits in the communist world is understandable.
The potential benefits of genuine splits would be enormous.
Moreover, the esoteric evidence on which so much Western analysis
is based was genuinely valid so long as Stalin was alive. But the
failure to understand the changes that took place in the seven years
after his death, especially the reintroduction of strategic disin-
formation, has rendered the old methodology acutely vulnerable. So
intense is the interest in actual and potential splits that conflicting
evidence is undervalued or ignored. For example, few if any
commentators have remarked on the continuing high level of Alba-
nian trade with Eastern Europe, despite the fact that Eastern Europe
aligned itself with the Soviet Union against Albania and China. The
same bias is evident in the analysis of communist documents. The
passages containing mutual criticism are exhaustively discussed; those
expressing solidarity are ignored. But Hoxha was not just uttering
empty phrases when he reported to the Fourth Congress of his party in
February 1961 that 'Triendship with the Soviet Union has been, is, and
will always remain the cornerstone of the foreign policy of the new
Albania [stormy applause, ovations]. . . . This friendship is expressed
and tempered every day by the fraternal relations and general
collaboration between our two countries. . ."''
152 NEW LIES FOR OLD
If all the evidence given above is weighed objectively, it leads to the
inescapable conclusion that, in this instance, Hoxha was telling the truth and
that the Soviet-Albanian dispute and split were and are no more than the
products of bloc disinformation.
Objectives of the Disinformation Operation
The objectives of this disinformation were to:
• Avoid the adverse internal consequences of an open reconciliation
between the Albanian and Yugoslav leaders.
•-Enhance the prestige of the Albanian leaders and their parties in the eyes
of their own people as an independent, national force.
• Support the projection of Yugoslav revisionism as a Trojan horse within
the communist bloc.
• Suggest that, after 1961, Khrushchev himself was under revisionist
influence, and thus to build up his image as a moderate in contrast to the
militant Chinese and Albanian Stalinists.
• Confirm that efforts to unite the communist bloc and movement at the
Eighty-one-Party Congress in November 1960 had failed and that the bloc
and movement were disintegrating over the unresolved issues of Stalinism,
revisionism, national communism, and the pursuit of conflicting national
interests.
• Test reactions inside and outside the bloc to a minor split before the
further development of the nascent Sino-Soviet dispute.
16
The Fourth Disinformation Operation:
The Sino-Soviet "Split"
CPSU-CPC Collaboration, 1944-49
Historically relations between the Soviet and Chinese Communist
parties have been the subject of much confusion. To a significant
extent, this was due to a wide-ranging and successful wartime and
postwar disinformation effort designed to mislead the West on the
nature of Chinese Communism and to conceal the steady buildup of
Soviet diplomatic, intelligence, and military help to the CPC in the
final years of the civil war in China. The similarities between Soviet
and Chinese comments on the nature of Chinese Communism are
strongly suggestive of a coordinated disinformation operation.
Western journalists who visited Yenan during the war were told that
the Chinese Communists were not traditional communists, but
agrarian reformers who admired the West and had more in common
with Christian socialism than Soviet Communism.' Similar remarks
were made by Soviet leaders. For example, in June 1944 Stahn told
Averell Harriman, then US ambassador in Moscow, that the Chinese
Communists were not real, but "margarine" communists." In August
1944 Molotov, then Soviet foreign minister, told Patrick Hurley and
Donald Nelson, President Roosevelt's two personal representatives to
Chungking, that many of the so-called Chinese Communists were
simply desperately poor people who would forget this political
inclination when their economic condition improved.' In a
conversation with Harry Hopkins on May 26, 1945, Stalin made some
contemptuous remarks about Mao and discounted the CPC as a
serious factor in the situation;
153
154 NEW LIES FOR OLD
he said he thought the Chinese Communist leaders were less capable
than Chiang Kai-shek and would be unable to unite their country/ In
the course of negotiations with Wang Shih-chieh, the Chinese foreign
minister, in the summer of 1945, Stalin said that Chinese Communism
did not amount to much. Assurances that Chinese Communists were
not real communists were given by the Soviet leaders to Secretary of
State Byrnes at Potsdam in July 1945 and to a group of American
congressmen visiting Moscow in September 1945.^
Another indication of an agreed Sino-Soviet disinformation theme
was Mao's inaccurate statement, after the dissolution of the
Comintern, that China had received no assistance or advice from it
since its Seventh Congress in 1935.*
Stalin's apparent ignorance of the situation in China was of course
feigned. There was close collaboration throughout between the CPSU
and the CPC Soviet intelligence coverage of the Chinese Nationalist
government and its policies was at least as good as its coverage of
American and British policy.
While serving in the section of the Committee of Information that
was responsible for counterintelligence work in Soviet organizations
in China, Korea, and Mongolia, the author learned of a Soviet
decision, taken after secret negotiations with a high-level CPC dele-
gation to Moscow in the autumn of 1946, to step up Soviet military
aid to the CPC; the Soviet general staff, military intelligence, and the
Ministry of Transport were all instructed to give priority to the
Chinese Communist army. In addition to the Japanese arms captured
by the Soviets in Manchuria, large quantities of Soviet arms and
ammunition, including American weapons received by the Soviet
Union from the United States during the war, were secretly shipped
by train to China between 1946 and 1949. In a lecture to students of
the High Intelligence School in Balashikha in 1949, General
Roshchin, the head of Soviet intelligence and Soviet ambassador in
China, claimed that Soviet assistance had enabled the Chinese
Communist army to swing the military balance in its favor and to
launch its fmal and successful offensive against the Nationalist army
in 1947-48.
Further assistance was sent to China through Sinkiang. Soviet
control over Sinkiang had been lost in 1943 when the Governor,
Sheng Shih-tsai, a Soviet agent, broke with the Soviet Union. In
S I N O - S O V I E T '■ S P L I T " 155
order to restore the situation, a revolt in the Hi region of Sinkiang was
organized by Fitin from Moscow, Pitovranov from Kazakhstan,
Ogol'tsov and Byzov from Uzbekistan, and Langfang and Ivanov from
Outer Mongolia, all of them generals of the Soviet security and
intelligence service. The revolt was successful and an independent
East Turkestan Republic was proclaimed under the leadership of
Saifudin, a Soviet agent. Thereafter Sinkiang was used by the Soviets
as a supply route to the CPC until they had taken over complete
control of the province. The camel track to Ningsia from Outer
Mongolia was also used as a supply route.
A major Soviet intelligence effort went into obtaining military
information on the Kuomintang army for the benefit of the CPC and
into the subversion of the Nationalist administration and police. When
the Soviet embassy followed the Nationalist government to Canton, it
did so not, as is often supposed, to demonstrate Soviet allegiance to
the Treaty of Friendship with the Nationalist government, but,
according to Soviet intelligence telegrams between China and
Moscow, to facilitate contact with Soviet agents in the Nationalist
administration. It is worth noting that Soviet recognition of the new
Chinese Communist government and the establishment of diplomatic
relations with it were conducted through the head of Soviet
intelligence and consul-general in Peking, Colonel Tikhvinskiy.^ It was
the same Tikhvinskiy who, in answer to Nationalist charges that the
Soviets were helping the CPC, issued an official denial on behalf of
the Soviet government, carried in an Associated Press dispatch
datelined Peking, December 30, 1947, to the effect that "my
government recognizes only one government in China — the
Nationalist government — and is not supplying the communists with
anything. This is a 100 percent denial." The denial was, of course, 100
percent false. It was but one aspect of a major joint Sino-Soviet
intelligence and disinformation operation designed to help the CPC to
power while concealing from the West that Soviet aid was being
given. After his defeat Chiang Kai-shek frankly and correctly admitted
that the CPC "stole intelligence from our government and at the same
time closed all avenues of intelligence to the government. That was to
be expected. But they went one step further by furnishing the western
nations with false intelligence about the Chinese government in order
to create wrong impressions of our country."^ If the United States
administra-
156 NEW LIES FOR OLD
tion had not fallen victim to communist disinformation and had
realized at the time the scope and scale of Soviet aid to Chinese
Communism, more decisive American aid might have been given to
the Chinese Nationalists. Even if it had failed to save China from
communism, at least the reaction of American public opinion to the
failure of United States policy might have been more balanced than it
was in the McCarthy era.
Sino-Soviet Friction, 1950-57, and Its Removal
The changed character of Sino-Soviet relations after the CPC came
to power found expression in the thirty-year Treaty of Friendship
signed during Mao's state visit to Moscow in February 1950.^ Soviet
support for the "liberation" of Tibet and Taiwan was promised. Mao
was told by Stalin that all Soviet intelligence work in China had
ceased and that the names of former Soviet agents in China would be
disclosed to the Chinese intelligence service.
Despite the success of Mao's visit, there were still unsolved prob-
lems and maladjustments in relations between the two countries. It
would be quite wrong to regard China at that time as a Soviet satellite.
The extent of Soviet infiltration and control over the Chinese party
and government was small, compared with that over the East
European satellites; it was, broadly speaking, limited to Sinkiang and
Manchuria. Nevertheless, the relationship was not one of equals, and
at times the Soviets continued to interfere in Chinese internal affairs,
especially in Manchuria, the Liaotung peninsula, Sinkiang, and the
border areas. Many Soviet agents, especially in Sinkiang, were
disclosed to the CPC, among them Saifudin, who had been one of the
leaders of the Soviet-organized revolt, in East Turkestan in 1945. He
was a member of the first government of Communist China and
remained in power in Sinkiang for many years after the development
of the Sino-Soviet split.
Despite Stalin's assurances, some Soviet agents in China, such as
the long-standing Soviet agent in Shanghai, a Chinese citizen named
Kazakov, were not declared to the Chinese. Nor were the Soviets
entirely frank about properties they owned secretly in China in
connection with their intelligence operations; when the Chinese
caught the Soviets out, as they sometimes did, there was friction
S r N O - S O V r E T ■' S P L I T " 157
between them. Another source of tension in 1950 arose from deahngs
with Russian emigre groups in China. Either the Soviets highhandedly
carried out arrests using local Chinese security officials without
informing Peking, or the Chinese refused to carry out arrests
themselves on the scale demanded by the Soviets.
A serious disagreement arose when the Soviet advisers, concerned
over the unusual Nationahst background of Li K'u-nun, the head of
Chinese political intelligence, demanded his dismissal. The Chinese
flatly refused to comply.
Since there was no formal machinery in existence for dealing with
Sino-Soviet disagreements, they showed a tendency to fester.
The most serious disagreement of all arose over the Korean War, on
which Stalin embarked without having taken Mao fully into his
confidence. When the war started to go badly from the communist
point of view as a result of the unexpectedly prompt and effective UN
intervention, the Soviets suggested that the Chinese should send
troops to the aid of the North Koreans. Not surprisingly, the Chinese
at first refused. Only after severe Soviet pressure had been brought to
bear, culminating in a secret and personal letter from Stalin to Mao,
did the Chinese agree to send "volunteers" into Korea.
The uneasiness in Sino-Soviet relations, though carefully concealed
from the West, remained in being as long as Stalin was alive. As soon
as he was dead, the Soviets took steps to improve matters. Settlement
of the Korean War was a priority objective of Stalin's immediate
successors and was first discussed with Chou En-lai when he attended
Stalin's funeral. Another thorny problem, which was quickly solved,
centered on Kao Kang, the unofficial "Governor of Manchuria," with
whom the Soviets had maintained secret contact even during the
Korean War. After Beriya's arrest, the Chinese leadership was told in
confidence that Kao Kang had been one of Beriya's agents. In
February 1954 the Chinese government dismissed Kao Kang "for
separatist tendencies and plotting to establish an independent
Kingdom of Kao Kang in Manchuria." Kao Kang was imprisoned
without trial and hanged himself.
In October 1 954 Khrushchev and Bulganin visited China for
discussions that led to the voluntary surrender to China of all Soviet
extraterritorial rights. The age-old problems of Manchuria and Sin-
kiang having been solved, the Sino-Soviet boundaries were then
158 NEW LIES FOR OLD
finally settled. Soviet economic and military aid to China was stepped
up. On January 17, 1955, the Soviet government announced that it
would assist China in setting up nuclear research establishments. Later
the USSR undertook to construct a nuclear reactor in China that
would be operational by March 1958.
In the intelligence field the Soviets climbed down over Li K'u-nun.
Li retained his position, and the Soviet adviser who could not get on
with him was replaced. The earlier decision to disclose to the Chinese
all former Soviet agents in China was put fully into effect without
exceptions. Among the Soviet agents thus declared to the Chinese was
Soong Ch'ing-ling, the widow of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. This lady was
admitted to the CPC and made an honorary President of the Chinese
People's Republic shortly before her death in May 1981. She was
given an impressive state funeral attended by the CPC leadership.
Another declared agent was Kuo Mo-jo, the well-known poet and
scientist. President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an active
member of the World Peace Council. Probably few, if any, of the
names of Soviet agents came as a surprise to the Chinese leaders, but
the Soviets' evident frankness finally removed this potential source of
friction. Thereafter, at Chinese request, the Soviet intelligence service
sent to China a number of its leading experts on such subjects as
scientific intelligence, the penetration of Western embassies in
Moscow, the physical protection of nuclear and rocket installations,
the production of audio-surveillance equipment, and the conduct of
sabotage and assassination operations.
During the turbulent events in Eastern Europe in 1956, there were
signs of a divergence between Soviet and Chinese views on Stalin.
While the Chinese agreed that Stalin had made mistakes, particularly
on Yugoslavia, they seemed inclined to a more balanced view of his
place in history than that given in Khrushchev's report to the
Twentieth Party Congress. Toward the end of October 1956, a high-
level Chinese delegation paid a secret visit to Moscow, criticized the
Soviet leaders for their handling of satellite affairs in general, and
urged immediate Soviet military intervention in Hungary. One of the
consequences of the Chinese visit was a pubhc undertaking by the
Soviet government to review the status and functions of Soviet
advisers in all the countries of the bloc.
Mao and Teng Hsiao-p'ing led the Chinese delegation to the
SINO-S V IE T "SPLIT" 159
conference of bloc leaders in Moscow in November 1957. A joint
assessment of Stalin was unanimously agreed upon. Mao said that
Stalin's principal mistakes were his repression of party members and a
tendency towards "great-nation chauvinism." The latter had found
expression in Stalin's policy in Manchuria and in the behavior of some
of the Soviet advisers in China. The only criticism Mao had of the
Soviet decision in 1956 to admit Stalin's mistakes was that the Soviets
had failed to consult other communist parties properly in advance.
Khrushchev accepted the criticism as justified. The Soviet leaders
undertook not to repeat Stalin's mistakes; in particular, they agreed
that repressive measures would not be taken against former members
of the opposition. They were to be treated as Lenin would have treated
them. This explains why Malenkov, Molotov, and Bulganin were not
shot.
The status and functions of Soviet advisers, including intelligence
and security advisers, was settled to Chinese satisfaction. The advis-
ers' roles were limited to consultation and coordination. Interference
in the internal administrative affairs of the Chinese services was
excluded. The Soviets genuinely treated the Chinese services as
equals in status, if not in experience. The Soviets had at last dealt
frankly with them in declaring to them all their agents of Chinese
nationality. The question of Soviet bases in China for "illegal"
intelligence operations into noncommunist countries was solved. New
bases for "illegals," together with the necessary support facilities,
were provided to the Soviet intelligence services by the Chinese in
several of their ports, including Shanghai. There were other instances
of practical cooperation. At Chinese request the Soviets built a special
factory to manufacture highly sensitive eavesdropping devices. Soviet
advisers with experience of pohtical intelligence work against the
United States and Britain were provided. These included Colonel
Smirnov, a former Soviet intelligence resident in New York, and
Colonel Voronin, a former head of the British Department of Soviet
Counterintelligence. At the end of 1957 the Chinese asked for an
adviser on pohtical assassinations and sabotage. The Soviets
responded by sending their best man. General Vertiporokh, a former
head of their own assassinations and sabotage department and former
intelligence resident in Iran. Vertiporokh worked as a KGB adviser in
China until his death in January 1960.
Regular personal consultation between the leaders of the Soviet
160 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and Chinese services was established. Shortly after taking over as
chairman of the KGB in December 1958, Shelepin paid a visit to
China, from which he returned much impressed with Chinese skill in
dealing with opposition to the regime from young people,
intellectuals, religious leaders, and national minorities, especially
during the elimination of the "thousand weeds" in the summer of
1956. Shelepin recommended that the KGB study and learn from
Chinese experience in these matters. General Sakharovskiy, the head
of Soviet intelligence, paid a visit to China at about the same time as
Shelepin. At the first conference of the heads of bloc security and
intelligence services in Moscow in mid-1959, the Chinese were
represented by the minister of public security, Lo Jui-tsin. The
conference decided to put security and intelligence liaison within the
bloc onto a multilateral footing, and established a joint security and
intelligence coordinating center for the purpose.
Early in 1960 General Pitovranov, one of the most experienced of
all KGB generals and a former deputy minister of state security, who
was known to and respected by the Chinese for his wartime work
against the Chinese Nationalists in Sinkiang, was appointed chief
KGB adviser to China.
In 1959-60 there was a regular exchange of secret political and
military intelligence between the Soviets and the Chinese. This
covered in particular Western views and predictions on Sino-Soviet
relations. The KGB passed on to the Chinese confidential and top
secret intelligence from its sources in NATO and Western Europe.
The Polish intelligence service obtained and passed on to the KGB a
set of papers recording the discussions at a meeting in 1958 or 1959 of
the Bilderberg group of distinguished Western statesmen and
commentators concerning the possibilities of a Sino-Soviet split, the
likely consequences of such a split for the communist bloc, and the
ways in which it might be exploited for the benefit of the West. These
were among the documents taken to China by General Sakharovskiy
in person. Among other documents sent to the Chinese by the KGB
were secret US State Department assessments of Sino-Soviet
differences over communes and the Chinese reaction to Khrushchev's
visit to the United States in 1959. A copy of a secret report dehvered
to NATO in 1959 by its former secretary-general, Spaak, on Sino-
Soviet differences and their implications for NATO was also given to
the Chinese by the KGB.
S I N O - S O V I E T " S P L I T " 161
It is of course a deliberately propagated myth that the Soviet and
Chinese leaders are ignorant of the situation in the outside world and
incapable of understanding it even if provided by their intelligence
services with texts of official Western documents. Intelligence
material is in fact carefully studied, absorbed, and used in the
planning of communist political strategy.
In addition to secret intelligence material, it is likely that the
communist strategists would have studied books like The Prospects
for Communist China, by Walt Rostow, which openly speculated as
early as 1954 on the possibilities of the Sino-Soviet alliance breaking
up.'"
It is therefore probably no coincidence that Mikoyan, in his speech
to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress in February 1959, said that
Western hopes and expectations of a split were doomed," a line
echoed in the basic communist documents of the period — the Eighty-
one-Party Manifesto of November I960'" and Khrushchev's strategic
report of January 6, 1961.'' The theme of unbreakable Sino-Soviet
friendship was also to be found in speeches and interviews by Chou
En-lai and the Chinese foreign minister, Chen Yi, ^ despite the
accumulating evidence of a dispute.
More than a year after the reported withdrawal of Soviet economic
and technical specialists from China, in July-August 1960, at least
some of the KGB advisers were still in place there. A former
colleague and friend of the author who had been sent to China to
advise on the physical protection of Chinese nuclear installations was
still in China in November 1961, the month after Khrushchev
denounced the Albanians at the Twenty-second CPSU Congress and
Chou En-lai walked out in apparent protest. By way of contrast, the
Soviet military, intelligence, and counterintelligence advisers were the
first to leave Yugoslavia when the genuine Tito-Stalin split occurred
in 1948. The intimacy of the intelligence and security connection
between the Soviets and Chinese up to the end of 1 96 1 was
incompatible with a serious deterioration in their overall relations
before that date.
The discrepancies between the evidence of a split and the open and
inside information on continuing good relations must be viewed
against the past history of intimate collaboration between the Soviet
and Chinese parties in disinformation operations in 1944-49, which
effectively concealed the extent of Soviet aid to the Chinese party
162 NEW LIES FOR OLD
in the final years of the civil war and successfully misrepresented
Chinese Communism as a relatively harmless agrarian reform move-
ment.
Against this background, the fact that Sino-Soviet relations in 1959-
61 closely followed the pattern of Soviet- Yugoslav and Soviet-
Albanian relations in the same period — a period in which the grounds
for tension and splits between the members of the bloc had been
removed and all members, including the Chinese, contributed to the
formulation of the new policy — suggests that the Sino-Soviet dispute
was, like the others, the product of bloc disinformation. The fact that
China continued to send observers to meetings of Comecon and the
Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact up to the end of
1961 supports this conclusion.
The Historical Evidence of Sino-Soviet Differences
Since the Sino-Soviet "split" became common knowledge, it has
become fashionable, with some encouragement from Soviet and
Chinese sources, to seek an explanation for it in traditional rivalries
and disputes between the two countries dating back as far as the
sixteenth century. It would be no more farfetched to try to explain the
deterioration in Franco- American relations in the 1960s by reference
to the French colonization of Louisiana. Given the nature of
communist ideology, the acquisition of power by communist parties,
whether in the Soviet Union, China, or elsewhere, entails in every
case a radical break with a country's political traditions.'^
It would be more relevant to seek the origin of the current split in
differences between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties since
1917. Such differences have undoubtedly existed. There were
differences between the Soviet and Chinese Communists on the
tactics to be used toward workers and peasants in the 1920s. Stalin
was opposed to Mao's leadership of the CPC in the period 1932-35;
but these were transient differences that did not prevent close
cooperation between the parties in the period 1935-49. The alleged
differences between them on united front tactics with the Kuomintang
and in their attitudes to the Chinese Nationalist government were false
differences deliberately projected by joint disinformation designed to
conceal Soviet support for the
S I N O - S O V r E T '■ S P L I T ■' 163
CPC, to contain the scale of American aid to the NationaHst govern-
ment, and to enable the Soviets and Chinese to subvert that govern-
ment the more effectively through the development of a duality in
their pohcies toward it. Soviet military support for the CPC may well
have tipped the balance in favor of the communist victory in China.
After the communist victory, differences and sources of friction once
more appeared between the Soviet and Chinese parties. The
insensitivity of Stalin's handling of Sino-Soviet and other intrabloc
relations, if it had remained uncorrected, might have led to a genuine
Sino-Soviet split analogous to the split with Tito. But in fact the
necessary corrective measures were taken in time. By the end of 1957
there were no outstanding differences left between the members of the
bloc. It is noteworthy that the Chinese, in justifying their attitude in
their polemics with the Soviet Union, did not base themselves on the
real difficulties they encountered with the Soviets in the period 1949-
53, but on alleged differences with Khrushchev after 1957 over issues
that had in fact been settled by that date. Khrushchev's contribution to
the elimination of past mistakes in Sino-Soviet relations was
recognized by Mao himself in 1957.'^
The Form of Sino-Soviet Differences
Roughly speaking, three periods can be distinguished in the devel-
opment of the split: the first from 1957 to mid-1963, the second from
1963 to 1969, and the third from 1969 onward. For most of the first
period official communist sources aimed gt communist audiences gave
no recognition to the existence of Sino-Soviet differences; on the
contrary, the record of Chinese participation in the world conferences
of communist parties held in Moscow in 1957 and 1960 and in the
Twenty-first CPSU Congress in February 1959, and also Chinese
attendance as observers at meetings of the Warsaw Pact and
Comecon, all indicated continuing and even increasingly close
collaboration at a high level between the Soviet and Chinese
governments and parties. The same conclusion could be drawn from
the exchange of delegations. In 1959 alone no less than 125
delegations visited China from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe;
over 100 Chinese delegations paid return visits.
164 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The evidence of disagreements was to be found in unofficial commu-
nist sources: different lines on various issues in the Soviet and Chi-
nese press, remarks by communist leaders to Western journalists and
statesmen, and retrospective accounts of polemics at closed meetings
of, for example, the Romanian party congress in June I960 and the
Eighty-one-Party Congress in November 1960. This unofficial
evidence, much of it retrospective, pointed to a deterioration in party
and diplomatic cooperation in 1959, to a termination of Soviet
military and nuclear collaboration in that year, and to the cessation of
Soviet economic aid to China in 1960.
From late 1961 onward indications of Sino-Soviet differences
began to appear in the official communist sources. There was sym-
bolic Chinese support for Stalin and the Albanian position when
Khrushchev denounced them both at the Twenty-second CPSU
Congress. Friction and competition between the Soviet and Chinese
delegations at the meetings of international front organizations be-
came conspicuous. The flow of information from official communist
sources on the subject of Sino-Soviet collaboration dwindled.
During the second period of the split, the existence of differences
was fully acknowledged. An ostensible attempt to settle them was
made when a high-level Chinese party delegation visited Moscow for
talks in July 1963. The talks apparently failed and public polemics
between the parties began. Hitherto secret party letters revealing
differences between the parties were disclosed in the Soviet and
Chinese press. Some Chinese diplomats were expelled from the Soviet
Union for distributing leaflets. China withdrew from the international
front organizations. Some communist parties in the noncommunist
world openly took up pro-Soviet or pro-Chinese positions; in some
cases pro-Chinese spHnter groups broke away from pro-Moscow
parties.
In the third period, beginning roughly in 1969, the apparent
deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations was expressed in actions as well
as words. Troop levels were built up on the Sino-Soviet frontier.
Border incidents took place between the two countries against a
background of mutual accusations of "hegemonism." China began
publicly and systematically to take up an opposite position to the
Soviet Union on NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the EEC, detente,
disarmament, European security, and many Third World issues,
including Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. After the communist
SINO-SOVIET "SPLIT" 165
victory in Vietnam, the Vietnamese aligned themselves more closely
with the Soviet Union. The Soviets and Chinese backed opposite sides
in the conflict between rival communist factions in Kampuchea. In
1979 the Chinese "punished" the Vietnamese with a brief invasion of
their territory. But, despite all the apparent violence of Chinese
hostility to the Soviet Union and her close Vietnamese ally, by 1980
the split had still not led to a breach in diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union, as did the Soviet-Albanian dispute in 1961 . Nor was the
Sino-Soviet treaty of friendship, mutual cooperation, and assistance
abrogated. Up to 1980 each side remained committed to support the
other in an emergency.
From this brief outline survey of the split, it will be seen that for
most of the first period there was a total conflict between the evidence
from unofficial communist sources and the evidence from official
communist sources supported by the author's inside information. In
the second period there was a closer coincidence in the evidence from
official and unofficial communist sources, although there was still a
conflict between the official sources in the first period and the
evidence of differences leaked retrospectively in the second period.
The new methodology, taking into account the launching of a
disinformation program in 1958-60 and the historical precedents on
which it was based, gives greater credence to the evidence from
official communist sources and calls into question the authenticity of
the secret party letters and polemics pubHshed in the second period of
the spht.
Several inconsistencies can be pointed out. First, the official evi-
dence of close Sino-Soviet relations was carried in the press of both
countries. The Manifesto of the Eighty-one-Party Congress, in
November 1960, specifically underlined that Western hopes of a split
in the bloc were doomed. By signing it the Chinese specifically
endorsed the tactic of peaceful coexistence as one of the options in a
common long-range policy. The Chinese president, Liu Shao-chi, who
led the Chinese delegation to the congress, subsequently toured the
Soviet Union in the company of the Soviet president, a curious thing
to do if there was a serious rift between them. Khrushchev's report of
January 6, 1961, widely distributed in the Soviet Union, emphasized
the closeness of Sino-Soviet relations.
Second, although the Soviet and Chinese press and radio must be
regarded as official communist sources, they should also be re-
166 NEW LIES FOR OLD
garded as subordinate to official sources, such as the Manifesto of the
Eighty-one-Party Congress, or the decisions and declarations of
Soviet and Chinese party congresses. These decisions and declarations
should not be regarded as being controverted by statements in the
press and radio of individual parties, especially in the light of all the
evidence of a decision in 1958-60 to support the new long-range
policy with a program of disinformation operations.
Third, neither the Russian nor the Chinese public was informed of
the existence of a dispute before the end of 1961, and even then, up to
mid-1963, only indirectly and by implication. Neither the Russian nor
the Chinese public is in a position to study the press of the other
country and to note the divergences between them on foreign policy or
doctrinal issues. It is doubtful whether the reduction in the coverage of
each other's affairs in their national presses, even if noticed, would
have been accorded much significance. Furthermore, as the author can
personally testify, the Soviet party was not briefed on the dispute up to
the end of 1961. In contrast, as already recorded above, confidential
guidance was given to the party from the beginning in the case of the
genuine Tito-Stalin split in 1948.
Fourth, although it would be impossible to assess how much of the
polemical material was made available and how widely it was
distributed within the Soviet Union and China, it can at least be said
that a proportion of the material available in and directed at the West
would not have reached the Russian or Chinese public. For example,
much of Novosti's material on Sino-Soviet relations was distributed in
English and in magazine supplements, which may or may not have
been distributed in the Soviet Union. According to the Soviet press,
the Chinese distributed polemical material to communists in the
Soviet Union in English, which would have been pointless if it was
really aimed at a Soviet, rather than a Western, audience.'^ This, along
with the esoteric evidence, supports the conclusion that the evidence
of the dispute was deliberately made available to the West either
directly to Western statesmen and commentators or indirectly in such
a manner that Western analysts would be likely to pick it up. The
question arises: Why would the Soviet and Chinese leaders
dehberately draw Western attention to the existence of a dispute that
they were at pains to conceal from their own parties and populations
unless by so doing
S I N O - S O V I E T " S P L I T '■ 167
they could serve their mutual interests in promoting their recently
agreed upon long-range policy for the bloc?
Fifth, the polemics between the Soviets and Chinese were not
continuous, but intermittent. They could well have been coordinated,
rather than spontaneous. In the Soviet press they began in July 1963,
continued until the beginning of October, and were then dropped until
April 1964. They were revived in that month with the publication of
material on the meeting of the CPSU Central Committee in February
1964, allegedly because the Chinese had continued to publish
polemical material despite appeals from Khrushchev and the Soviet
leadership to desist.'^
The new methodology further suggests that the Sino-Soviet hostil-
ities of the third period, however convincing they may appear, should
be reexamined to see whether they could have been staged, and if so,
with what strategic object. At this stage, four general points may be
made. First, frontier incidents in a remote corner of the world, like on
the Ussuri river, though spectacular and convincing evidence of
hostility, can very easily be staged — particularly if, as will be shown
later, means of coordinating action between the two "opponents" are
readily available. Second, the hostilities, like the verbal polemics,
have been intermittent as well as pointless. Third, despite all the
apparent violence of Chinese hostility to the Soviet Union and her
close Vietnamese ally, by 1980 the split had still not led to a breach in
diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, as did the Soviet-Albanian
dispute in 1961. Nor was the Sino-Soviet treaty of friendship, mutual
cooperation, and assistance abrogated. Up to 1980 each side remained
committed to support the other in an emergency. Fourth, the hostilities
can be correlated in timing with important communist initiatives or
with the opening of East- West negotiations — for example, SALT — or
with the visits of Western statesmen to the Soviet Union and China.
Like the verbal polemics, therefore, minor hostilities cannot be
accepted as evidence of a genuine dispute, and in the hght of the new
methodology should be examined for the possible relevance they may
have to communist political and strategic aims in furtherance of a
common long-range policy. In the same light must be seen the
adoption of opposing positions on international issues by the Soviet
Union and China. The question must be asked whether the ultimate
goal of a worldwide communist victory cannot be
168 NEWLIESFOROLD
achieved more expeditiously by the two leading communist powers
adopting dual foreign policies in apparent opposition to one another
than by pursuing a single policy in open solidarity.
The Content of Sino-Soviet Differences
Differences between the Soviets and Chinese have allegedly arisen
since 1958 in the ideological, economic, military, political, and
diplomatic fields. To many observers it appeared that the differences
stemmed from a clash of national interests between the two leading
communist powers. The various types of difference must be examined
in turn to see what substance, if any, there is to each of them.
Ideological Differences
Historically, as already noted, one of the first indications of the
Sino-Soviet dispute was an apparent difference over the subject of the
introduction of communes in China, which Khrushchev mentioned to
the late Senator Humphrey in December 1958. According to some
Western interpretations of communist theory, communes are the
highest form of organization of sociaHst agriculture, and their
introduction ought therefore to be preceded by industrialization and by
a lower form of socialist agricultural organization, such as collective
farming. The attempt to introduce communes in Soviet Russia in
1918-20 failed because the time was not yet ripe. By introducing
communes before collectivization, the Chinese, according to this line
of argument, were sinning against orthodoxy in two respects: They
were not abiding by communist theory, and they were implicitly
rejecting the Soviet model in their agricultural development. By so
doing, it was argued, they had incurred Soviet displeasure.
Furthermore, comparisons were drawn between the "leftist" policy of
the Chinese in setting up communes and the "rightist" policy of the
Soviets in permitting collective farms in 1958 to purchase state-owned
farm machinery.
This reasoning was outdated. The 1957 conference of bloc com-
munist parties reached agreements, endorsed by the Eighty-one-
sino-soviet" split" 169
Party Congress in November 1960, on the basic laws of communist
development, which legitimized the Chinese course of action. As far as
agriculture was concerned, the basic law was that it should be collective. The
exact type of organization, whether commune or collective farm, was not
specified; it was left to be determined by the specific national conditions in
each country. In China the specific national conditions and problems
confronting the CPC were how to break up the strong family ties in the vast
mass of the Chinese peasantry; how to overcome the lack of agricultural
machinery and to use mass manual labour to best advantage; and how to
appropriate the land, which belonged not (as in the Soviet Union) to the state,
but to the peasants. The commune provided the best solution to all three
problems. In addition the Chinese leaders would undoubtedly have taken into
consideration, in agreement with their Soviet colleagues, the high cost in
human and material terms of Stalin's method of collectivization, the obloquy
it had brought on his regime, and the impossibility of contemplating a
repetition of that experience with the even greater numbers of Chinese
peasants. The Chinese choice of communes was no more unorthodox than the
continued existence of private agriculture in Yugoslavia, Poland, and
Hungary, which was accepted by the bloc leaders as a temporary
phenomenon until the specific conditions in those countries could be
changed.
Scant Western attention was paid to the speech of the then Soviet
ambassador to China, Yudin, in which he told the Twenty-first CPSU
Congress in February 1959 that "the Chinese peasantry, in alliance with the
working class, is advancing confidently and resolutely toward socialism
under the leadership of the Communist party and has achieved enormous
successes. The Communist Party of China — a glorious detachment of the
international Communist movement — is wisely leading the Chinese people
along the path of socialism, despite tremendous difficulties and constant
threats and attempts at interference on the part of American imperiahsm."
Chinese allegations of a restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union were
unfounded. Economic reform in the Soviet Union was aimed at increasing
the efficiency of the economy and improving party control over it. The
impression of a return toward capitalism was deliberately fostered by
disinformation for tactical and strategic purposes. The Chinese would have
been aware of this. Similaiiy,
170 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" was dropped by the CPSU,
not as the result of any dilution of the party's monopoly of control, but
to widen the party's political base and to suggest an "evolution" of the
regime. The notion that the Soviet regime was less ideological than
the Chinese was unfounded. It is interesting to observe how the
Chinese, following the Soviet example, have themselves introduced
economic incentives and other elements of capitalism.
Economic Differences
The disparity in the levels of economic development between China
and the Soviet Union — or, in wider terms, between the Asiatic and
European communist zones — presented the communist strategists
with a dilemma. In 1960 the Chinese, saddled with a backward
industry, lack of capital, a population explosion, and a low level of
trade with the advanced noncommunist world, could hardly expect to
carry out ambitious industrialization and military programs without
help from the European zone; and help from the European zone could
only make a significant impact on the rate of Chinese industrial
development if the European zone severely curtailed its own
development programs and abandoned its aim of outstripping the level
of production in the United States.
The difference in economic levels between the Soviet Union and
China was a potential source of tension within the communist bloc,
but it is worth noting that the problem existed at the time of the
communist victory in China and did not lead to a Sino-Soviet split in
the decade thereafter.
As late as October 1958, the year in which the formulation of long-
range bloc policy got under way, a leading Soviet theoretician, T. A.
Stepanyan, took the view that the European socialist states, led by the
Soviet Union, and the Asiatic socialist states comprised "particular
economic zones" and that the former, being more advanced, would be
the first to "enter communism. "^*^ However, at the Twenty-first CPSU
Congress in January-February 1959, Khrushchev in a speech that must
be regarded as authoritative, overrode this view and announced that
all socialist countries would achieve communism "more or less
simultaneously on the basis of
S INO -S O V lET "SPLIT" 171
the planned and proportionate development" of the economy of the
bloc. A month later he went on to speak of the future economic
integration of a communist bloc without internal frontiers.^'
Khrushchev's points were underlined by Yudin, the Soviet ambassador
to China, who referred to the socialist camp as a "single economic
system" and said that the economic plans of the socialist countries
would be more and more coordinated and that "the more highly
developed countries will help the less developed countries in order to
march in a united front towards communism at an increasingly faster
pace."^" Khrushchev referred to the "unity of the socialist camp" as
one of the advantages enjoyed by the Soviet Union in its struggle to
overtake the United States in economic power. Chou En-lai, who led
the Chinese delegation to the congress, and Soviet Deputy Premier
Mikoyan both spoke of the unbreakable friendship between the Soviet
Union and China.
The period around the Twenty-first CPSU Congress was one in
which there was a shift of emphasis toward long-range economic
planning in Comecon. These discussions took place in the presence of
Chinese observers. It seems that, at the time, a decision was taken to
step up Soviet industrial aid to China. As a result of Khrushchev's
visit to Peking in August 1958, the Soviet Union agreed to build forty-
seven additional industrial projects in China. Chou En-lai's visit to
Moscow for the Twenty-first CPSU Congress resulted in another
Soviet agreement to build seventy-eight additional projects in China
between 1 959 and 1 967 at a total cost of $ 1 .25 billion.' ^
In July 1960 the picture of closer Sino-Soviet relations changed
abruptly. The conventional view is that the Soviet Union terminated
its economic aid to China, withdrew its technical and economic
advisers, and took steps to curtail Sino-Soviet trade drastically. Sup-
port for this view came from reports on the departure of Soviet
technicians from China (later confirmed in Sino-Soviet polemics in
1963-64), from the widely different treatment given the subject of
bloc assistance to China in the Soviet and Chinese press, and from
statistics on Sino-Soviet trade. There were also reports on the
economic damage done to China by the cessation of Soviet economic
aid, which came on top of the introduction of communes and the
failure of the Great Leap Forward. Letters from the communes to the
outside world and Chinese grain purchases in Australia
172 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and Canada underlined the point.
The alleged withdrawal of Soviet economic and technical special-
ists in July 1960 was not accompanied by, or even followed by — at
least up to the end of 1961 — a withdrawal of Soviet inteUigence and
security advisers.
On the evidence available, the most likely interpretation of what
occurred in mid-1960 is that a switch took place in Chinese thinking
on economic development in favor of self-reliance and concentration
on small-scale projects. As a consequence of the completion of some
projects and the cancellation of others, a proportion of the Soviet
technical experts was withdrawn from China in July 1960. If some
were replaced by Czechoslovaks and other East Europeans, this would
have been done to reinforce the impression of a split. Soviet and East
European aid continued to be given after 1960, but on a narrower
front and with a concentration on the scientific and technical fields. It
can further be surmised that these changes took place by agreement
between the Soviets and the Chinese and that the extent and the
consequences of the contraction in Soviet economic aid were
misrepresented by each side in accordance with their common
disinformation program. Apart from the wider strategic purpose of
supporting the authenticity of the split, the publicity on the withdrawal
of Soviet technicians could have been intended, in line with historical
precedent, to hide continuing Sino-Soviet collaboration in sensitive
key areas — in this case, the development of Chinese ballistic missiles
and nuclear weapons.
Military Differences
It is often thought that the real nub of the Sino-Soviet split was a
decision by the Soviets in 1959 to withhold assistance to China over
nuclear weapons. According to a secret Chinese party letter, which
was made public by the Chinese on August 15, 1963, the secret Sino-
Soviet agreement on the sharing of military nuclear secrets and the
provision to the Chinese of the necessary help in developing their own
nuclear potential, which was concluded on October 15, 1957, was
broken by the Soviets on June 20, 1959.
The letter is tantamount to an admission that collaboration in the
military nuclear field, up to June 1959, was close. It would
S I N O - S O V I E T " S P L I T ■' 173
have been unconvincing to deny it, given the earher pubhcity about
Sino-Soviet nuclear collaboration in general?^ But there are several
anomalies in the statement that this secret agreement was repudiated
by the Soviets in June 1959. The most important is that, in spite of the
alleged decision and the fury it is supposed to have generated in
China, the Chinese continued to be represented at meetings of the
Warsaw Pact in 1960. It is difficult to believe that a Soviet decision
with such profound implications would not have been reflected
immediately and across the board in the field of Sino-Soviet military
relations. In fact, not only did the Chinese continue to send observers
to Warsaw Pact meetings for more than a year afterward, but several
years of virtually open Sino-Soviet military collaboration followed
over the supply of military assistance to North Vietnam. The
references to Chinese military students returning from the Soviet
Union in 1964-65 indicate that at least some Soviet military training
continued to be given to the Chinese armed forces after the split had
developed.
It is also more than surprising that if, as alleged, there was an
abrupt cancellation of Soviet nuclear help to China, the Soviets should
have continued to provide, and the Chinese to accept, advice on the
physical protection of their nuclear installations. As already recorded,
a KGB officer known to the author was still in China in November
1961, having been sent there as one of a group of Soviet advisers on
nuclear security requested by the Chinese.
Sino-Soviet cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy
continued after June 1959. There are references in the Chinese press
to a prominent Chinese scientist, Professor Wang Kan-chang, serving
as vice-director of the Joint Nuclear Research Institute at Dubna, near
Moscow, in April I960."*
Many observers at the time believed that within the Chinese
military leadership there were differences on strategy, which were
associated with the Sino-Soviet split and which led to the dismissal of
the Chinese defense minister, Peng Te-huai, allegedly for conspiring
with the Soviet leaders against Mao. Part of this conspiracy
supposedly took place during the visit of Khrushchev and Peng to
Albania in May 1959, but this visit is far more easily explicable in
terms of preparation for the spurious Soviet-Al banian split and the
need to coordinate the replacement of Soviet by Chinese military,
political, and economic support for Albania. The suggestion
174 NEW LIES FOR OLD
that Peng and other Chinese leaders were disgraced for acting as
Soviet agents is inconsistent with the declaration by the Soviets to the
Chinese in 1954-55 of all their intelligence assets in China and with
the close Sino-Soviet intelligence relationship that persisted at least up
to the end of 1961. In any case, as Edgar Snow pointed out, Peng
neither led a conspiracy against Mao nor suffered arrest in 1959.^^ He
was still a member of the Chinese Politburo in 1962.
Interestingly enough, there does seem to have been a genuine
discussion, in China, between two schools of military thought between
1955 and 1958.'* Settlement of the argument occurred in the same
period in which many other problems were resolved in the Soviet
Union and the bloc, such as the elimination of the anti -Khrushchev
opposition in July 1957; the ousting of Marshal Zhukov in the
following October; and the first conference of bloc parties in
November, at which relations between them were normalized and the
decision was taken to formulate a new long-range policy for the bloc.
In his speech to the conference, Mao argued in favor of using the
whole potential of the bloc, especially its nuclear missile potential, to
swing the balance of power in favor of the communist world. By their
own account the Chinese agreement with the Soviets on collaboration
over nuclear arms dated from the end of 1957. It is tempting to
suggest, therefore, that in line with the basic technique of reviving
dead issues and using them for disinformation purposes the argument
in the Chinese armed forces was artificially revived, together with
allegations of a Khrushchev-Peng conspiracy, to support joint Sino-
Soviet -Alba-ni an disinformation on their mutual relations.
Furthermore, in view of his long services to Sino-Soviet strategy,
Peng would have been an obvious candidate to continue to serve in a
secret Sino-Soviet or bloc policy coordinating center. His "disgrace"
could have been designed to cover up a secret assignment of this kind.
In parallel with the alleged differences in the Chinese army, there
were allegedly differences in the Soviet army that led to, among other
changes, the dismissal of Marshal Sokolovskiy as chief of general
staff in April I960 and the dismissal in the same year of Marshal
Konev as commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. Sokolovskiy
was replaced by Zakharov and Konev by Grechko.
SINO-SOVIET "SPLIT" 175
If there had in fact been genuine differences in the Soviet general
staff, the author would have expected to pick up some reflection of
them from two former GRU officers, Bykov and Yermolayev, who
served with him in the NATO section of the KGB's Information
Department and kept in close touch with the general staff. If
Sokolovskiy was really in disgrace in 1960, it is curious that he was
chosen by the Soviet Ministry of Defense to edit a basic book on
Soviet military strategy two years later.
Differences in National Interest
Many factors have been cited as contributory causes of the split.
The list includes the racial and cultural differences between the
Russian and Chinese peoples; the Chinese population explosion; the
dechne in the influence of communist ideology; the reassertion of
purely national interests; and hegemonism, or the desire of the Soviet
and Chinese parties to dominate others.
No one could deny the existence of racial differences. The Chinese
in particular have used the racial issue for pohtical purposes. But
these differences did not prevent the closest possible alliance between
the Soviets and Chinese between 1957 and 1959, nor were they
responsible for the Sino-Soviet friction between 1949 and 1955. If
they are now thought to have been important in the causation of the
split, it is largely because of the evidence provided by the Soviets and
Chinese themselves in the course of their polemics in the mid-1960s.
For the same reason attempts were made to reinterpret Khrush-
chev's virgin lands campaign of 1954-56 as inspired by Soviet concern
over China's population explosion and designed to preempt any future
Chinese expansion into Siberia. As Professor W. A. Douglas Jackson
rightly pointed out, the motives for the campaign were domestic.
Cultural differences undeniably exist, but it is interesting that
cultural relations between China and the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe should have survived the Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese
Friendship Association still exists in the Soviet Union and the Sino-
Soviet Friendship Association still exists in China.'" Cultural visits
were exchanged at least until November 1966.
176 NEW LIES FOR OLD
National rivalry is seen by the West as the force behind the
apparent struggle between the Soviets and Chinese for influence in the
developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The
assertion of Chinese national interests is seen in Chinese claims on
Taiwanese, Indian, and Outer Mongolian territory and in demands for
revision of "unequal treaties," dating from the nineteenth century,
which awarded certain Chinese territories to Russia. Soviet national
self-assertiveness was seen in Soviet attempts to incite revolt in
Sinkiang and among tribal groups straddling the frontier with China
and in Soviet complaints about Chinese border violations, which,
according to Soviet official sources, amounted to five thousand in
1962 alone. The clash of Soviet and Chinese national interests was
seen in short-lived and sporadic outbreaks of border hostilities,
especially on the Ussuri River, which were intensified in 1969 — 70.
Border clashes were sometimes accompanied by Soviet and Chinese
student demonstrations outside each other's embassies and in
ostentatious walkouts by Soviet and Chinese representatives from
international gatherings.
The manner in which the traditional problems over Manchuria and
Sinkiang were solved after Stalin's death has been described, as has
the normalization of relations between the members of the bloc,
including the Soviet Union and China, in 1957. Khrushchev's
contribution to this achievement was recognized by Mao in 1957.^''
Against this background it would have made no sense for the Soviet
Union to meddle in Sinkiang. Chinese confidence that they would not
attempt to do so is demonstrated by the continuance in high office in
Sinkiang throughout the 1960s of a known former Soviet agent,
Saifudin. Far from trying to "liberate" areas of one another's territory,
the two powers cooperated in a war of national liberation in a third
country, Vietnam.
Before the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet split, the border area had
been converted, in Professor Jackson's words, from a zone of tension
into a zone of cooperation and stabilization.'^ The split was not
therefore the culmination of a continuing series of border problems;
the frontier incidents cannot be seen as a cause of the dispute. In this
connection attention should be drawn to articles on the border
problem published in 1964-65 by Academician Khvostov, whose
connection with the KGB was known to the author. Equally, anything
said or written on the subject by Tikhvinskiy,
SINO-S OV iET "SPLIT" 177
the former Soviet intelligence resident in Peking and Britain, should
be regarded as reflecting the communist disinformation Hne.
Western belief that nationalism is the driving force behind Soviet or
Chinese policy fails to take into account the nature of communist
theory and the distinction that must be made between the motives of a
communist regime and the sentiments of the people which it controls.
In communist theory nationahsm is a secondary problem. The
fundamental political force is the class struggle, which is international
in character. Once the "victory of the international working class" has
been achieved, national differences and national sentiment will
disappear. Meanwhile, the "class enemy" is not nationalism, but
capitalism and its adjunct, imperialism. It is in large part because of
communism's claims to an international, rather than a national, form
of loyalty that it has managed to retain its appeal and its hold over its
acolytes. The main point, however, is that the disinformation about the
Sino-Soviet spHt provides a new, more effective way for fighting
nationalism by investing the communist parties with a nationahst
image in the eyes of their people.
Differences in Political and Diplomatic Strategy and Tactics
Marked differences have existed since I960 in what the Soviets and
Chinese have said on subjects such as detente, peaceful coexistence,
and the inevitability of war. In the 1960s the Soviet press defended
peaceful coexistence, the Chinese press attacked it. Under the banner
of peaceful coexistence, the Soviet leaders established personal
contact with Western statesmen, sought an expansion of East-West
trade, and adopted a generally moderate and businesslike approach to
negotiations with the West. The Chinese denounced the Soviet
approach as a betrayal of Leninism and a capitulation to the forces of
imperialism and capitalism. Eschewing closer contacts with the West,
the Chinese advocated implacable, militant revolutionary policies
toward it. Khrushchev's visit to the United States in 1959, Soviet
detente with Western Europe, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of
1963 all came in for their share of Chinese communist abuse. The
Chinese and Soviets took diametrically op-
178 NEW LIES FOR OLD
posing lines on the Sino-Indian conflict in 1959, the Cuban crisis of
1962, and other matters. In relation to the developing world, the
Soviets emphasized the importance of diplomacy and economic aid;
the Chinese advocated wars of national liberation.
Was there any real substance to this war of words? The thesis that
war is not inevitable was formulated by Khrushchev at the Twentieth
CPSU Congress in February 1956. At the time the Chinese frequently
expressed their agreement with it.^^ It was only in I960 that divergent
views on the topic began to appear in the Soviet and Chinese press, to
be followed by open polemics, beginning in 1963. Broadly speaking,
the Soviets maintained that, although the causes of conflict between
the two different social systems had not disappeared, the strength of
the communist bloc was such that nuclear war, which would mean the
destruction of both sides, was no longer inevitable; communists
should seek the victory of their cause through peaceful coexistence
and peaceful competition. The Chinese argued that the communist aim
was world revolution. Communists should not fear world war because
it would mean the final victory of communism, even if at the sacrifice
of many million lives.
The unreality of the dispute is clear when the record of the two
sides is examined. The Soviets were far from moderate in their
approach to the Berlin problem from 1958 onward, in their disruption
of the summit conference in 1960, in their supply of weapons to
Indonesia and their resumption of nuclear testing in 1961, in their
provocation of the Cuban crisis in 1962, and in their Middle Eastern
policy in 1967. The Chinese were no more aggressive than this in
practice. They were not even consistent in their maintenance of an
aggressive posture, sometimes maintaining that they did not want
world war and would fight only if attacked." Indeed, without Soviet
backing the Chinese were in no position in the 1960s to wage an
aggressive war.
On the question of support for wars of national liberation in the
developing countries, which the Chinese accused the Soviets of
betraying, there was nothing to choose between the two sides in
practice. Khrushchev's verbal support for this form of war was given
practical expression in the foundation of Lumumba University and in
support for guerrilla movements in Vietnam, the Middle East, and
Africa.'^
There was, in fact, duality both in Soviet and Chinese policies
SINO-SOVIET "SPLIT" 179
and in the interaction between them. Both countries, in different areas
or at different times, used provocation and negotiation, aggressiveness
and moderation. In the 1960s Chinese militancy provided a helpful
backdrop to Soviet detente diplomacy; there was an apparent common
interest between the Soviets and the West in confronting the "Yellow
Peril" from the East. In the 1970s the roles were more or less reversed.
Soviet aggressiveness in Africa, her menacing stance in Europe, her
domestic neo-Stalinism, and her intervention in Afghanistan all helped
to create a favorable climate for the Chinese to extend their relations
with both advanced and developing countries as a potential ally
against Soviet expansionism.
Differences over Tactics for Nonbloc Communist Parties
Sino-Soviet differences spilled over into questions of the tactics of
the international communist movement. Despite the mutual
accusations of hegemonism and despite the alignment of extremist
communist groups with China and the more moderate communist
parties with the Soviet Union, rivalry between the Soviets and
Chinese was not carried as far as it might have been in practice. There
was no serious Chinese attempt to disrupt the international communist
movement. China withdrew from the international front organizations
in the 1960s, but did not set up rival organizations under Chinese
auspices.
The accusations of hegemonism were false. Neither the CPSU nor
the CPC seeks to impose its diktat on the communist movement.
Neither needs to do so. At the same time, the rejection of hegemonism
in principle is not incompatible with recognition of the undeniable fact
that the CPSU has the longest and widest experience in power of any
communist party and is the best placed to play a leading role. It was
the Chinese themselves who insisted on this point in 1957.
The Technique of the "Split"
It will be objected that, even if there is no substance to the
differences that are alleged to divide the Soviets from the Chinese, it
is inconceivable that they could have sustained a fictitious spHt
180 NEW LIES FOR OLD
for over twenty years without being found out and without doing
serious damage to their own cause. If the Soviet Union and China
were democracies, that would be a correct judgment; but in commu-
nist states, controls over the communications media, the discipline
imposed on party members, and the influence of the inteUigence and
security services are combined to provide unparalleled facilities for
practicing disinformation. It should not be forgotten that the closeness
of CPSU-CPC relations between 1935 and 1949 was successfully
concealed from the outside world. Communist victory in China was
achieved more swiftly through the duality of Soviet and CPC policies
toward the Nationalist government and the United States than it would
have been through an outward show of solidarity between them.
The technique of the Sino-Soviet split was not developed overnight.
Historical precedents drawn on in developing disinformation on false
splits and secret coordination, such as Lenin's Far Eastern Republic,
have already been cited in this and earlier chapters. The genuine Tito-
Stalin split was also obviously of prime importance, and it is
interesting to note how the published texts of the alleged secret party
letters between the Soviet and Chinese parties recall the genuine party
letters on the Tito-Stalin split and how the spurious allegations that
Peng and Lin Piao, both Chinese ministers of defense, were Soviet
agents echo the well-founded accusation that the Yugoslav chief of
staff in 1948 was working for the Soviet intelligence service.
There is also a certain parallel between the Mao-Khrushchev
polemics in the 1960s on the subject of peaceful coexistence and the
Lenin-Trotskiy argument over the issue of war and peace after the
revolution of 1917. This earlier controversy could well have been
used as a model for the later polemics.
The Eighty-one-Party Congress Manifesto of November 1960, to
which the CPC acknowledged its commitment, spoke of the need for
"unity of will and action" of all communist parties, not for unity of
words. ^'^ It also spoke of "solving cardinal problems of modern times
in a new way" (author's italics). What it meant by this in practice was
that centralized, Stalinist control over the movement having proved a
failure, the aim of a worldwide federation of communist states would
be pursued in the transitional stage by an agreed variety of different
strategies and tactics to be followed
S 1 N O - S O V I E T " S P L I T ■' 181
by different parties, some of which would appear to be at loggerheads
with one another. Traces of Chinese communist thinking about splits
can be found in the Chinese press. The analogy is drawn between
growth in nature, which is based on division and germination, and the
development and strengthening of the communist movement through
"favorable splits." The creation of two or more communist parties in
one country was advocated openly.'^^ One Chinese paper used the
formula: "Unity, then split; new unity on a new basis — such is the
dialectic of development of the communist movement." Problems of
Peace and Socialism referred disparagingly to Ai Sy-tsi, a Chinese
scholar well versed in dialectics, who developed the idea of the
contradiction between the left and right legs of a person, which are
mutually interdependent and move in turn when walking. All of this
suggests that the communist leaders had learned how to forge a new
form of unity among themselves through practical collaboration in the
exploitation of fictitious schismatic differences on ideology and
tactics.
It would be erroneous to attempt to separate the Sino-Soviet split
from the four disinformation operations already described and those
that will be described in succeeding chapters. The disinformation
program is an integrated whole. The Chinese have played an
important part in every operation. As Chapter 22 will argue, the Sino-
Soviet split is the underlying factor in all the different strategies
developed in support of long-range policy.
Mutual criticism between two parties should be seen as a new way
of supporting the credibility of the disinformation each is trying to
spread about itself. For example, Chinese criticism of Soviet and
Yugoslav revisionism, the decay of ideology, and the restoration of
capitalism in the Soviet Union helped to build up the illusion that
Khrushchev was truly moderate and that Tito was truly independent.
The Soviet and Chinese lines on different issues should be seen as the
left and right legs of a man, or better still, as the two blades of a pair
of scissors, each enhancing the other's capacity to cut.
The communist strategists proceeded cautiously and pragmatically
with the development of the Sino-Soviet split. The second period of
open polemics was not introduced until 1963, which gave time for
thorough study of the consequences of the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute of
1958-60, the Soviet- Albanian split, and the
182 NEW LIES FOR OLD
first period of the Sino-Soviet split. Even now, precedents exist for the
further extension of the Sino-Soviet spHt that have not yet been
exploited. The Soviet -Albanian split was carried to the point of a
breach in diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The Sino-
Vietnamese split was carried to the point of a major Chinese incursion
into Vietnamese territory in 1979. Either of these could presage
similar developments in Sino-Soviet relations.
Strategic Objectives of the "SpHt"
The strategic exploitation of the split will be described in Chapter
22. Its overall objective can be defined briefly as the exploitation of
the scissors strategy to hasten the achievement of long-range
communist goals. Duality in Sino-Soviet polemics is used to mask the
nature of the goals and the degree of coordination in the communist
effort to achieve them. The feigned disunity of the communist world
promotes real disunity in the noncommunist world. Each blade of the
communist pair of scissors makes the other more effective. The
militancy of one nation helps the activist detente diplomacy of the
other. Mutual charges of hegemonism help to create the right climate
for one or the other to negotiate agreements with the West. False
alignments, formed with third parties by each side against the other,
make it easier to achieve specific communist goals, such as the
acquisition of advanced technology or the negotiation of arms control
agreements or communist penetration of the Arab and African states.
In Western eyes the military, political, economic, and ideological
threat from world communism appears diminished. In consequence
Western determination to resist the advance of communism is
undermined. At a later stage the communist strategists are left with the
option of terminating the split and adopting the strategy of "one
clenched fist."
17
The Fifth Disinformation Operation:
Romanian "Independence"
BELIEF IN THE EXISTENCE OF SERIOUS DIFFERENCES between the
Soviet and Romanian leaders and, consequently, in the
independence of Romania is based on evidence that varies from
the sensational to the insignificant.
Allegedly the differences between the Soviet and Romanian parties
had their roots in wartime, or even prewar, history. The difficulties
were intensified in the period 1962-64, when Gheorghiu-Dej was still
alive and the leading figure in the Romanian communist party and
government. At that time the differences were more or less concealed
from view, but from 1964 onward they came out into the open and
became generally known to the West. Gheorghiu-Dej and Khrushchev
were believed to be at odds. There were stories that Khrushchev had
tried to unseat Gheorghiu-Dej and suggestions that Gheorghiu-Dej had
played some part in securing the removal of Khrushchev in 1964.
Their disagreements were said to have been based on differences of
view between the Soviets and Romanians on long-term economic
planning and the Soviet approach to Comecon. It was suggested that
Romania's insistence on proceeding with its own speedy
industrialization program had prevailed with difficulty over Soviet
opposition.
Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965. Nicolae Ceausescu, who had
for long been Gheorghiu-Dej 's right-hand man, took over as first
secretary of the party. Before this event, public but muted
manifestations of Soviet-Romanian differences and Romanian inde-
pendence were detected in the West. Examples were: Romania's
refusal, in contrast with other East European communist states,
183
184 NEW LIES EOR OLD
to align itself with the Soviet position in the Sino-Soviet conflict;
efforts by the Romanian leaders to play down the extent of Soviet
influence in their country by measures such as the removal of Russian
street names; publication by the Central Committee of the Romanian
Communist party in April 1964 of a statement on its independence;
Romanian efforts, apparently launched without the prior agreement of
the bloc, to increase trade ties with Western countries, particularly
France and the US, through the exchange of trade delegations; and, at
a later stage, Romanian diplomatic conduct in such matters as the
maintenance of diplomatic relations with Israel after 1967 and
Ceausescu's involvement in the arrangements for Sadat's visit to
Jerusalem in 1977, which contrasted with Soviet behavior and
indicated the independence of Romanian foreign pohcy from that of
the Soviet Union and the rest of the bloc. This impression of
independence was reinforced by occasional alleged refusals on the
part of the Romanians to cooperate with the Soviet Union and the bloc
in joint political, economic, or military projects within Comecon and
the Warsaw Pact; and the adoption of an independent position by the
Romanians on Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Critical examination of these manifestations of independence
against the background of the normalization of intrabloc relations in
1957 and the adoption of a long-range bloc policy and strategic
disinformation program in 1958-60 shows that, as with the splits
already examined, there is no substance in the alleged differences
between Romania and other communist countries. The differences can
be explained as the product of a bloc disinformation operation.
Special Relations between the Romanians and Soviets
As already argued, the normalization of intrabloc relations removed
the grounds for splits between the members of the bloc in general.
But, in the Romanian case, there were special reasons, according to
inside information available to the author, why a split was an
impossibility under Gheorghiu-Dej and why it is still an impossibility
under the present leader, Ceausescu.
Gheorghiu-Dej was an agent of Soviet intelligence. At the time of
the liberation of Romania from the fascists by Soviet troops,
ROMANIAN "INDEPENDENCE" 185
he was directed by the head of Soviet intelligence in Romania,
Colonel Fedichkin. The Romanian Communist party was then small in
relation to the social democratic party. Under Fedichkin's guidance,
Gheorghiu-Dej worked on the elimination of Romanian social
democratic leaders who were unreliable from a Soviet point of view
and who threatened to acquire influential positions in the new
Romanian government. The shedding of the blood of noncom-munist
Romanian politicians and the ousting of the Romanian king, actions
undertaken jointly by Gheorghiu-Dej and the Soviet government,
created unbreakable ties between them.
The head of Soviet intelligence in the late 1950s and 1960s,
General Sakharovskiy, was chief adviser to the Romanian security
service from 1949 to 1953. He was in official contact with Gheorghiu-
Dej. Through Gheorghiu-Dej and his staff, Sakharovskiy carried out
the Romanian purges of 1951 -52 and, in particular, the arrest of Anna
Pauker and other leading communists, who were accused of being
Yugoslav and Zionist agents. Relations between the Soviets and
Gheorghiu-Dej and other Romanian leaders were sealed with blood. If
there had been any really spontaneous or uncoordinated attempt by
Gheorghiu-Dej to break with the Soviet Union, the Soviet regime
would have had enough evidence, including personal correspondence,
to destroy him and his associates morally and politically both inside
and outside their country. This fact must be kept in mind when
assessing the genuineness of the later differences between the Soviets
and the Romanians.
If a Soviet-Romanian split was impossible under Gheorghiu-Dej,
there were even fewer grounds for expecting one under Ceausescu,
who had been his right-hand man and who replaced him after his
death in March 1965. As has already been explained, Stalinist
"colonial" practices toward Romania and other satellites had been
abandoned by the Soviet Union under Khrushchev in 1957. Soviet-
Romanian party relations were normalized on a Leninist basis of
equality. From 1958 to 1960 Romanian leaders played an active role
in consultations between the Soviet and other bloc leaders in the
Soviet Union, Romania, and elsewhere. Ceausescu, as one of the
secretaries of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist
party, took part in some of these consultations. He was a member of
the Romanian delegation to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress.
186 NEW LIES FOR OLD
There was also secret collaboration between the Romanian security
and intelligence services and the KGB under its chairman, Shelepin,
over the preparation of joint operations in support of the bloc's long-
range pohcy. The heads of the Romanian intelligence and security
services attended the bloc conference of intelligence and security
services in the Soviet Union in 1959. A new KGB chief adviser was
sent to Romania in 1960. He was Colonel Skomo-rokhin, a specialist
not on Romania, but on Western Europe and, in particular, France,
who was sent to assist the Romanian services in the implementation of
joint political operations.
Important evidence that Ceausescu continued to cooperate actively
with the Soviet leaders within the framework of the long-range bloc
policy is to be found in the Soviet press coverage of his official visit
to the Soviet Union in 1964, when he was already in the process of
taking over from Gheorghiu-Dej. This shows that during his four- or
five-day visit to the Soviet Union he was accompanied by Shelepin in
his capacity as a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Bearing in mind that it was Shelepin who, between 1958 and 1960,
launched the use of disinformation in support of the long-range policy
and from 1961 onward appears to have become the coordinator of its
use in bloc operations, it is reasonable to conclude that the opportunity
was taken to discuss with Ceausescu his role in sustaining the myth of
Soviet-Romanian differences.
The "Evidence" of Soviet-Romanian Differences
The so-called evidence of differences between the Romanian and
Soviet leaders in Comecon in 1962-63 cannot be taken seriously.
Romania's insistence on its own speedy industrialization fitted in with
the objectives of the long-range policy; hence there was no reason for
the Soviets to oppose it. Against Romania's alleged opposition to the
creation of the Executive Committee of Comecon and its long-range
planning concepts must be set the official evidence indicating that the
Romanian leadership under both Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu was
committed to long-term economic integration of the bloc under the
auspices of Comecon and its executive committee — on which, in fact,
Romania was represented.
ROMANIAN "INDEPENDENCE" 187
Official records of the period 1960 to 1964 reflect close relations
between the Soviet Union and Romania and an active exchange of
party and governmental delegations between them, suggestive of
coordination in the implementation of policy. The fact that the
evidence of Soviet-Romanian differences during this period was
based on esoteric and confidential sources and was in conflict with the
official record of Soviet -Romanian cooperation suggests that it was
the product of disinformation. The conflict between the official and
esoteric evidence became especially obvious in the 1970s, when
Romania, along with other members of the bloc, was involved in
concrete measures of economic integration.
Among the manifestations of Romania's neutrality in the Sino-
Soviet dispute were: the return of a Romanian ambassador to Albania
in 1963, which was out of step with the Soviet Union and other East
European communist states; the visit of the Romanian Prime Minister,
Ion Gheorghe Maurer, to Peking in the spring of 1964, a year after
open Soviet polemics against China had begun; and a statement by the
Romanian party leadership, described below, that was interpreted in
the West as a "declaration of Romanian independence."
Once it is realized that the Soviet-Albanian and Sino-Soviet splits
are joint disinformation operations prepared and launched in 1958 —
60 with the approval of all the leaders of the bloc, it is easy to see that
Romania's neutrality is a posture calculated to support the authenticity
of both splits, and that Romanian independence can be misrepresented
as one of their consequences.
Given that the West had accepted the authenticity of the Soviet-
Albanian split, the return to Albania of a Romanian ambassador
supported the myth of Romanian independence. It also had the
practical advantage of providing an additional East European channel
for bloc diplomatic consultation with Albania. The step may
reasonably be assumed to have received the bloc's blessing in ad-
vance. Maurer's visit to Peking can be interpreted as a visit to discuss
and coordinate this combination of disinformation operations with the
Chinese leaders, an interpretation supported by the fact that Maurer
went on from Peking to North Korea and then returned to Romania
via the Soviet Union, where he presumably also had discussions.
When Maurer returned from his tour, the Romanian Communist
188 NEW LIES FOR OLD
party's Central Committee held a week-long secret meeting, at the end of
which it issued a statement on the party's attitude to the situation in the world
communist movement. The statement was sixteen thousand words in length.
It was given wide publicity in Romania and was immediately translated into
Russian, Spanish, English, French, and German for distribution abroad. The
points in it that were singled out and interpreted in the West as expressions
of Romanian independence included the following:
• It is the sovereign right of each socialist state to work out, choose or
change the forms and methods of socialist construction.
• The planned management of the national economy is one of the . . .
inahenable attributes of the sovereignty of the socialist state.
• Communist countries should co-operate and help each other in eco-
nomic matters [only on the basis of| fully equal rights, observance of national
sovereignty and interests, mutual advantage and comradely assistance
[mainly] through bilateral and multilateral agreements.
• The idea of a single planning body for all Comecon countries has the
most serious economic and political implications.
• To hand over [the levers of management of economic and social life] to
the competence of some supra-state or extra-state bodies would be to turn
sovereignty into a concept without any real content.
• Romania favours the strengthening of co-operation with all "socialist"
countries and achieving an "international division of labour" provided that
this does not mean that the communist countries have to isolate themselves
from "the general framework of world economic relations"; it is natural for
communist states to "display initiative and to manifest themselves actively on
the international arena."
Remarks of this kind aroused lively Western interest, but it should be
pointed out that other parts of the statement were more significant. There
was, for example, a reaffirmation by the Romanian party leadership of their
commitment to the basic decisions and objectives formulated at the Eighty-
one-Party Congress in November 1960, such as the strengthening of
economic cooperation between the socialist states, the emphasis on peaceful
coexistence combined with support for national hberation movements, the
effort to attract new members into Comecon, and the quest for the final and
inevitable victory of communism throughout the world.
ROMANIAN "INDEPENDENCE" 189
Western commentators overlooked the fact that statements about
the maturity of the communist parties, their capacity to develop their
own domestic and foreign pohcies, and their eagerness to take their
own initiatives in the international arena were not in contradiction
with the decisions of the Eighty-one-Party Congress, which
specifically approved tactical flexibility in the pursuit of an activist
foreign policy. The Romanian statement in fact not only does not
conflict with the Eighty-one-Party Manifesto; it emphasizes the point
that communist parties, in developing their own policies, should do so
within the framework of the "socialist community."
The evidence used to support the notion of personal animosity
between Khrushchev and Gheorghiu-Dej is both flimsy and selective.
Gheorghiu-Dej's failure to attend the celebrations in Moscow in honor
of Khrushchev's seventieth birthday is given more weight by Western
commentators than the more significant fact that, on this same
occasion, Khrushchev was awarded Romania's highest decoration. It
can scarcely be argued, as Floyd attempts to do, that the level of
Soviet representation at the Romanians' twentieth anniversary
celebrations was downgraded if Mikoyan, at that time a member of the
Presidium of the Central Committee and President of the Soviet
Union, attended rather than Khrushchev, who was "not invited."^
Against the background of the bloc's disinformation program, it is
interesting to note that the "Romanians were at no pains to deny"
rumors that Khrushchev had tried to remove Gheorghiu-Dej from the
leadership of the Romanian party.
Against the same background, Gheorghiu-Dej's visit to Tito and his
well-advertised friendship with him in 1964 can be seen as a
dehberate attempt to build up the image of Gheorghiu-Dej's inde-
pendence in Western eyes by associating him with Tito.
The evidence of disagreements between the Soviets and Romania
under Ceausescu's leadership is equally unconvincing. Insofar as it
comes from the communist side in the form of official statements,
these can be easily tailor-made by the party apparatus and intelligence
services to suit the needs of the disinformation program.
Evidence of Romanian independence has been seen in the re-
placement in the 1960s of Russian street names by Romanian, and in
other attempts to play down the extent of Soviet influence in
Romania. But in the post- 1 957 atmosphere in the bloc, such
IQO NEW LIES FOR OLD
measures were not grounds for disagreement with the Soviets; they
would have met with the Soviets' full understanding and approval. The
tactless attempts by Stalin to impose a Soviet mold on all aspects of
life in the East European satellites had been rejected. Variety in the
national aspects of each country had been taken into account, and
communist parties had been given latitude by the Eighty-one-party
Manifesto to vary their tactics in accordance with the conditions
facing them. Romanian claims to be fighting Soviet interference in
their country were and are no more than a pretense adopted with
Soviet connivance, and are intended to invest the party and its leaders
with a nationalist and independent image in the eyes of the internal
and external public. Despite the development of an apparently
heterodox Romanian foreign policy, the internal regime remained as
rigidly orthodox and repressive as before.
That Romania increased its commercial, economic, and political
ties with the West in the 1960s and 1970s is beyond question. What is
questionable is whether it did so without the prior agreement of the
Soviet Union and other communist states. The Come-con conference
in June 1962 called for an expansion of bloc trade with the West. The
Romanians have done no more than give effect to this decision.
Moreover, by pretending to be acting independently and by exploiting
their so-called independence while in reality acting with the bloc's
connivance, they have contributed more to the achievement of the
bloc's objectives of increasing trade and securing long-term credits
and advanced technology from the West than they could have done by
acting as an orthodox member of the bloc. To take one specific
example, Romania's "independence" enabled her to import Rhodesian
chrome, whether on her own or the bloc's behalf, without the bloc
collectively incurring the political odium of so doing.
Romania's independent foreign policy should be regarded as a
device characteristic of Lenin's activist diplomacy as exhibited in his
use of the Far Eastern Republic. It offers various advantages for the
bloc in the diplomatic field. For example, a communist diplomatic
presence has been maintained in Israel since 1967 through the
Romanian Embassy in Tel Aviv, while the bloc as a whole has gained
favor with the Arab world through its severance of diplomatic links
with Israel. The close coordination between
ROMANIAN "INDEPENDENCE" 191
the diplomacy of Romania and the other members of the bloc has
gone largely unobserved.
The surest signs of disinformation in action are to be seen in the
contrast between the well-advertised, superficial Romanian dis-
agreements with Comecon and the binding effect of her continued
membership in the organization and her participation, for example, in
joint energy projects in Eastern Europe. Similarly, occasional well-
publicized Romanian refusals to participate in military exercises
should blind no one to the fact that Romania remains a member of the
Warsaw Pact. The Romanians' ostensible rejection of Soviet influence
must be seen alongside the continuing exchanges of friendly visits
between the Soviet and Romanian leaders and the award to Ceausescu
of an Order of Lenin in Moscow in January 1 978.
The Motives for the Projection of Romanian
"Independence"
It is not difficult to reconstruct the economic and political thinking
behind the decision to misrepresent Romania as an independent
member of the communist bloc, taken perhaps as early as 1958 — 60
when the long-range policy was being formulated. The long-range
policy called for industrialization and a gradual leveling up of the
economies of the entire communist bloc. The effort to swing the world
balance of power in communist favor entailed nuclear armaments
programs; massive conventional armed forces; a vast propaganda,
intelligence, and security bureaucracy; military and economic aid to
developing countries; and worldwide support for communist parties
and national liberation movements. At the same time living standards
in the communist world needed to be raised if further popular
explosions were to be avoided. The policy as a whole could be
sustained only with Western technical and economic help. That help
was unlikely to be given to an apparently aggressive, monolithic
communist bloc. Some inducement was needed to procure a change in
Western attitudes.
The strategic -political case for presenting the bloc as disunited has
already been argued. The addition of a further brand of communism,
distinguishable from the Soviet, Chinese, Albanian, and Yugoslav
varieties, would have recommended itself to the communist
1 92 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Strategists because it would help to authenticate the disagreements,
which had already begun to be displayed within the bloc, and would
give further encouragement to Western illusions that national senti-
ment and national interest were achieving dominance over ideology as
the driving force behind the communist world. These illusions would
raise Western hopes and expectations that, with cautious and selective
help and political encouragement, the fissures in the communist
monolith could be gradually enlarged until the monolith disintegrated
altogether.
Although a united Western world, improving the living standards of
its peoples without suppressing their political freedom, sets an
example for those living under communism, breeds discontent among
them, and causes them to exert pressure on their leaders, the
experience of the NEP had shown that the dangers to a communist
system from close Western ties could be contained; efficient secret
police control and ideological countermeasures were capable of
neutralizing the risks of political and ideological contamination of the
public from the presence of Western businessmen and experts in their
midst. Western expectations of expanding Western influence in
communist countries through economic links could once more be
disappointed if the necessary adjustments to the communist system
were to be properly calculated, controlled, and deceptively presented.
Visible evidence of foreign economic support for communist regimes,
far from stimulating internal opposition to them, has the opposite
effect. Genuine would-be opponents of the regime can anticipate little
support from Western powers committed to helping the established
system. Knowing this, the communist strategists would have
calculated that Western technical and economic help could safely be
used to support their long-range policy. In the long run, having
benefited from that help, they would hope to demonstrate to their own
subjects and to the world at large the superiority of the communist
system.
The Tito-Stalin split provided further precedents and lessons. Tito's
defiant rejection of Soviet interference sent his prestige soaring, both
at home and overseas, and won for his country generous Western
military and economic aid without obliging him to" abandon
fundamental communist principles. After Stalin's death it was a richer
and more stable Yugoslavia that was reconciled with the communist
bloc.
ROMANIAN "INDEPENDENCE" 193
Lenin's creation of an independent Far Eastern Republic, whose
policies were closely but secretly coordinated with those of Soviet
Russia, had demonstrated the advantages of using a diversity of forms
in the pursuit of "activist diplomacy." Lenin had also said that "what
we need is a great orchestra" with the different parties, like different
instruments, playing different roles. The Yugoslavs, with their
background of independence, were particularly suited for the role of
developing relations with European socialists and the nonaligned
developing countries. Their spurious dispute with the Soviets in 1958-
60 was intended to prepare them for that role. But there would also
have been arguments for using an existing member of the Warsaw
Pact and Comecon to play a similarly independent role.
Several factors probably influenced the choice of Romania for the
purpose. It may have been thought likely that Romania's longstanding
ties with France and hnguistic and cultural affinity with other Latin
countries would help to ensure a favorable European response to a
show of Romanian independence. The Latin background fitted
Romania to play a special role in relation to the influential European
communist parties in Italy, France, and Spain. But probably more
important was the fact that the Romanian regime, next to the Polish
and Hungarian, was the weakest and most despised by its subject
population. Given Tito's experience between 1948 and 1953, it was
reasonable to expect that a repeat display in public of differences with
the Soviet Union — even if, on this occasion, spurious ones — would
enhance the domestic and international prestige of the Romanian
Communist party and its leaders; they would be able to present
themselves not as Soviet puppets, but as bold, national leaders willing
to challenge the authority of the Soviet Union. But the weakness of
the regime and the contempt in which it was held internally meant that
the appearance of a split could not be carried very far. A relaxation of
internal control might have endangered the regime; hence the decision
to combine, however incongruously, an apparently heterodox and
independent foreign policy with a rigidly orthodox, oppressive,
Brezhnev-style domestic system.
Basing themselves on the Yugoslav example, the communist strat-
egists would have calculated correctly that Western commercial and
political interests would combine in pressing for more open-
194 NEWLIESFOROLD
handed trading policies toward Romania in the hope of weaning her further
away from the bloc. Since Romanian independence was a myth, such hopes
would prove illusory. Meanwhile, more liberal trading policies would
certainly be of benefit to Romania and probably to the bloc as well.
Objectives of the Disinformation Operation
This disinformation serves primarily the development of Romania's
special strategic role, especially in promoting, in association with Yugoslavia
and the Eurocommunist parties, the idea of the dissolution of military pacts
and the creation of a neutral socialist Europe. In summary form the objectives
of disinformation on Romanian independence may be defined as follows:
• To support other disinformation operations on the theme of the
disintegration of the bloc; to establish a new form of "independent commu-
nism" within the bloc.
• To raise the internal and international prestige of the Romanian party
and its leaders.
• To enable Romania to obtain more generous Western technical and
economic help.
• To allow her to take advantage on the bloc's behalf of diplomatic and
commercial openings that would be closed to more orthodox communist
states.
• To prepare her for a special strategic role.
• To build up Western confidence in her as a potential ally or confidant
within the communist world.
• To support, at a later stage, the independence of the Eurocommunist
parties.
• To prepare her, probably, for a shift to a more "liberal" domestic regime
in the final phase of long-range bloc policy.
18
The Sixth Disinformation Operation:
The Alleged Recurrence of Power Struggles
In the Soviet, Chinese, and Other Parties
THE WEST HAS BEEN SEEING EVIDENCE since the early 1960s of
recurrent power struggles in the leadership of the Soviet,
Chinese, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and other parties. In the
Soviet Union it has been seen in the alleged dismissal of Khrushchev
in October 1964 for his policy failures and "adventurism"; in the
alleged power struggle between the moderate and Stalinist factions
that followed his dismissal; in Brezhnev's switch to neo-Stalinist
practices since 1968 and in opposition to him from the liberals in the
Soviet leadership.
In China it has been seen in the alleged struggle for power between
the militant, radical, Stalinist, Maoist faction (Mao, Lin Piao, Chen
Po-ta) and the moderate, pragmatist faction (Chou En-lai, Teng Hsiao-
p'ing, Peng Te-huai, Peng Chen, Liu Shao-tsi, Lo Jui-tsin); in the
dismissal of Teng Hsiao-p'ing, Peng Te-huai, Liu Shaochi, Peng Chen,
and others; in the alleged cult of Mao; in unexplained phenomena in
China, such as the activity of the Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution; and in the reemergence of pragmatists, like Teng Hsiao-
ping, since Mao's death in 1976.
In Yugoslavia it has been seen in the alleged power struggle
between Tito and his deputy premier and minister of the interior,
Rankovic, which resulted in the ousting of Rankovic in 1966. In
Czechoslovakia it has been seen in the struggle between the conser-
vative Novotny faction and the liberal Dubcek faction, which resulted
in the victory of the liberals and the alleged dismissal of Novotny in
1968.
195
196 NEWLIESFOROLD
In order to demonstrate that this semblance of recurrent power
struggles is a misrepresentation of the facts directed principally at
Western observers and intended to serve communist strategic
purposes, the developments in these struggles in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere must be examined in the light of both official and inside
information about them.
Succession in the Soviet Leadership: New Stabilizing Factors
The problem of succession in the leadership of the Soviet Union
and other communist countries is of great importance, since on it
depends the solution of many other practical problems. The question
that has to be answered is whether or not a one-party, communist,
dictatorial system can settle the problem of succession without
recourse to a struggle for power, as has happened in the past. Another
related question is whether Khrushchev was forcibly removed in 1964
or whether, on the contrary, he succeeded in transferring his power
and solving the succession problem without a crisis.
Most noncommunist observers are inclined to regard communist
parties as incapable of finding a solution; they think that the recur-
rence of power struggles is inevitable. The most dramatic confirma-
tion of this view was the allegedly forcible removal of Khrushchev
from the Soviet leadership in 1964.'
The present study will attempt to distinguish between the facts
surrounding Khrushchev's departure from office, the deliberate mis-
representation of them by the Soviet strategists, and the unfortunately
erroneous interpretation of them by reputable Western scholars. In
order to make the distinctions clear and to explain how and why the
facts were misrepresented by the Soviet strategists and why reputable
Western scholars continue to accept uncritically information on the
continuing existence of power struggles, it is helpful to compare the
succession situations of 1924 and 1953 with the events of 1960-64,
using for the purpose official information as well as inside knowledge
and the new methodology.
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 197
The Failure of Lenin and Stalin to Solve the Succession Problem
There are similarities between the situations in 1924 and 1953.
Lenin's death in January 1924 left a political vacuum. There was
no single recognized successor with a ready-made team of
supporters: instead, there were several rival leaders, each with his
own claim on power. The situation in the country was still
critical. Lenin's adopted policy, the NEP, was still in force, but
many practical problems within that policy awaited their
solutions.
Stahn's death in March 1953 left an even greater political vac-
uum. The dictator left no designated heir, nor was there a single
recognized successor with a supporting team; as in 1924, there
were several leaders with rival claims on power. There was a
critical situation in the Soviet Union and in other communist
countries. No long-range policy had been adopted despite the
need for long-term solutions to the crisis in the bloc.
All these circumstances invited succession crises. Power
struggles were inevitable in both cases because of the rivalries
among the new groups of leaders. The membership of the new
generation in each case was fortuitous, unstable, and divided, its
individual members ambitious to play a leading role and at the
same time faced with the necessity of formulating a policy for the
party. The critical situation in the Soviet Union in 1924 and in the
bloc as a whole after 1953 demanded new solutions to burning
issues. The struggle for power became at the same time a struggle
for policy, which added to its bitterness. In each case the struggle
ended with the elimination from political hfe of all but one of the
contenders.
Lenin's death was not unexpected, in view of his long illness.
The struggle for power began while he was still alive. Stalin took
the opportunity to strengthen his position to some extent even
before Lenin's death. In 1924 there was still an atmosphere of
inner-party democracy. The party rank and file, as well as the
party and government apparatus, participated in the struggle and
exerted some influence over it, which explains why the struggle
after 1924 lasted longer than that after 1953.
Lenin revealed his concern about the succession in letters to
1 98 NEWLIESFOROLD
the party congress, written in December 1922 and January 1923, in
which he warned against the concentration of too much power in
Stalin's hands. He also warned against the possibility of a split in the
leadership and the need to prevent "conflicts between small Central
Committee groupings which would gravely affect the fate of the party
as a whole." He advocated a dispersal of his powers not to a few
leaders, but rather to an enlarged Central Committee with enhanced
authority, whose membership should be increased from twenty-seven
to as many as a hundred members.^
Of necessity, some dispersal of power did occur. Lenin's personal
rule was followed for a few years by an oligarchic rule. But there were
no constitutional means of deciding the succession and no provision
for popular participation in the process. The problem was one for the
leader of the party himself to solve; only the leader had the authority
to put his recommendations into effect. The difficulty was that,
although Lenin gave a theoretical solution to the succession problem,
he did not solve it in practice because of his illness. Moreover,
although he was worried about a split in the leadership after his death,
he himself invited a power struggle in his ambiguous testament, in
which he did not indicate who should be his successor. Had he not
been ill, he could have made his testament effective; in the event, it
was not fulfilled after his death.
Partly because Stalin needed time to take control over the govern-
ment apparatus, the struggle after Lenin's death lasted until the mid-
1930s, by which time all Stalin's rivals and real or possible opponents
and even some of his supporters had been eliminated physically. Not
infrequently, Stalin adopted the policies of his victims.
The emphasis on physical elimination was not irrational. Because
the whole party apparatus was involved in the struggle and because
some vestiges of inner-party democracy survived, he was obliged
when removing leaders to purge all of their supporters from the party
by mass repressions to forestall possible opposition from them. He
dispensed with collective leadership and established his own total,
personal dictatorship. This was a backward step, which weakened the
communist system and gave rise to the succession crisis and many
other problems. After the physical ehmination of his
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 199
rivals and the mass repressions of their followers, he could no longer
rely on his colleagues or the party, but only on the security bureau-
cracy. He ruled by watching potential rivals, dividing them, and
exploiting one against the other. By eliminating Zhdanov, the most
promising of his possible successors, he invited a crisis in the succes-
sion. Up to his last days he ignored the problem, and his negligence
left a vacuum after his sudden death that further contributed to the
intensity of the ensuing struggle.
Stalin's rigid personal dictatorship and his destruction of inner -party
democracy meant that the party membership was not involved in the
power struggle after his death; it took place only in the upper reaches
of the party and government hierarchy. In 1953 the bureaucracy
would have been prepared to serve any leader who was capable of
taking control over it; unable to appeal directly to the party or the
people, the bureaucrats had become nobodies in Stalin's final years.
For these reasons the struggle after his death was relatively short and
was not accompanied by mass repressions, except in the case of
Beriya's supporters.
There were similarities and differences between Stalin and
Khrushchev. Like Stalin, Khrushchev, after the removal of Malen-kov
in 1955, began as a communist dictator. He established his
preeminence in 1956-57, using nonconstitutional means and tactics,
and wielded his power, though not for long, in dictatorial fashion.
From 1956 to 1959 he replaced Stalin's cult of personality with one of
his own. The darker side of Khrushchev's career is still kept hidden
from the public by the Soviet leaders.
Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev did not physically eliminate his rivals,
apart from Beriya; since they had no followings, it was unnecessary.
Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev, though he remained supreme, managed to
establish collective leadership during his final years in power. But the
most important difference between him and Stalin was that he
succeeded in accomplishing the transfer of power to a successor he
had chosen. The view that he shared Stalin's disregard for the
succession problem is erroneous. Like Lenin, he was concerned about
it. Moreover, according to the present analysis, he found what Lenin
tried but failed to find — a practical solution to the problem. Probably
with the help of Mao's influence, he solved it on the lines of Lenin's
recommendations and by committing
200 NEW LIES FOR OLD
his followers to a long-range policy for the whole communist bloc,
and in so doing he established the model for the leaders of other
communist states to follow.
Khrushchev's "Removal" an Agreed Transfer of the Leadership
to Brezhnev
The view that Khrushchev was removed in a palace revolt is
probably mistaken; it is not supported by the available evidence. In
1964 the situation differed radically from that in 1924 or 1953.
After Khrushchev's departure from the leadership, there was no
political vacuum. The same united team of active Khrushchev sup-
porters carried on. The internal crisis of the regime and the problems
of intrabloc relations had been solved. The long-range policy for the
whole bloc had been adopted and was in operation. There were no
grounds for expecting political crisis or power struggle.
The tragic consequences of the two previous succession crises were
not lost on Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders. Lenin's death had
been followed by the liquidation of a generation of party leaders, by
mass repressions in the party, and by splits in the Communist
International and its affiliates. The struggle after Stalin's death had
delayed the formulation of a long-range policy and threatened the
continued existence of the communist bloc. It was vital that there
should be no further repetition of these disasters.
In 1964 favorable conditions existed for a calculated transfer of
power by Khrushchev to a leader or group of leaders of his choice
because of the existence of collective leadership, as practiced under
Khrushchev since 1959; the increased influence of the Central
Committee and party apparatus; the absence of opposition in the
leadership; the greater stability of the regime; improved relations with
the leaders of other communist countries; the establishment of
collective leadership in the Chinese party under Mao; and, above all,
the adoption of the long-range policy. Khrushchev had a personal
interest in the implementation of this policy through his successors
because it was adopted during his rule and with his active participa-
tion. His role in its initiation offered him promise of greater posthu-
mous respect and recognition than Stalin had been accorded, for all
the power and glory of his reign.
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 201
In his concern for long-range policy, Khrushchev would naturally
have considered the question of succession. He was in a perfect
position to arrange it, since he controlled the situation in the party and
the government and he had time in which to act. He had packed the
Presidium and the Central Committee with his men; he had his
nominees in the KGB and the army and at key points in the party and
government apparatus; he retained his own leading position in the
party secretariat, the Presidium, and the government. In the light of
his claims to be another Lenin, it seems likely that he gave serious
thought to the problem, as Lenin did in 1922-23. Following Lenin's
example, he probably made recommendations to the Central
Committee in the form of secret letters or speeches on the eve of the
Twenty-second Party Congress.
Such indications as there are support the conclusion that he was
thinking about and acting on the succession problem on the eve of his
"removal." Signs of this can be detected from the Twenty-second
Party Congress in October 1961 onward. Speaking about Lenin's
advice on the cult of personality, he called on the party to be worthy
pupils of Lenin in this matter. He confirmed Stalin's mistakes and
warned about the consequences of the cult of personality for leaders
who forget their duties to the party. ^ According to his definition, the
chief evil of the cult of personality lay in the leader's being outside the
control of the party.* He claimed that collective leadership had been
achieved and asked that his own personal role should not be
emphasized.'
The new party statutes adopted at the congress provide that, at
every regular election of the CPSU Central Committee and Presidium,
not less than one quarter of the members must be new; of the central
committees of the republic parties, not less than one third must be
new; and of committees of other party organizations, not less than one
half. The alleged purpose of these reforms was to foster "inner-party
democracy." The new regulations and other decisions of the congress,
which were complied with thereafter, were defined by Khrushchev as
guarantees against recurrence of the cult of personality.^ At the same
time the Soviet party press recalled a quotation from Lenin stating that
"the revolutionary movement cannot be stable without an organization
which maintains the succession of leaders."
Two other significant decisions of the Twenty-second Congress
202 NEW LIES FOR OLD
were obviously modeled on Lenin's recommendations, namely, the increase
in the membership of the Central Committee in comparison with the Twenty-
first Congress from 125 to 175 members and the transfer from the Presidium
of Ignatov, Furtseva, Mukhitdinov, Belyayev, and Aristov, and their
replacement by new party activists in accordance with the statutes.
In the author's view Khrushchev's was a short-term personal dictatorship
which was replaced, wisely and in time, by collective leadership in order to
avoid a succession crisis and a further struggle for power. Various new
circumstances contributed toward, and conditioned, the reorganization of the
system. They were:
• The condemnation of Stalin's cult of personahty and the practice of
physically eliminating rivals.
• The incompatibility between personal dictatorship and the active,
constructive, and harmonious collaboration of a bloc of communist countries
in pursuit of a common long-range policy.
• Mao's voluntary and exemplary decision in 1959 to give up all his
positions of power except the leadership of the party in order to concentrate
on problems of long-range policy and communist strategy.
• The concern of the bloc leaders as a whole to avoid a repetition of the
painful events after 1924 and 1953.
• The personal interest of Khrushchev and Mao in avoiding subsequent
condemnation of their activities resulting from a further power struggle, and
hence their wilhngness to yield power voluntarily to the party apparatus and
bureaucracy.
• The stabihzing effect of the long-range bloc policy.
Given past experience, given the establishment of collective leadership,
and given these new circumstances, the bloc's leaders had already begun by
1960 to make advance arrangements within their Central Committees to
ensure a smooth, timely, and peaceful transfer of power — as was the case, in
the author's view, with the succession to Khrushchev in 1964.
The Western version of Khrushchev's removal was based on inadequate
and unreliable evidence. The main items taken into account were that:
Khrushchev was given no recognition for his services; his portraits
disappeared in Moscow; his son-in-law and associate in pohcy, Adzhubey,
was dismissed {it became known
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 203
later that he had been demoted to a less important position in a Soviet
newspaper); references appeared in the Soviet press to the cult of
personality, which, though they did not directly mention Khrushchev's
name, were interpreted in the West as a campaign of "de-
Khrushchevization"; Khrushchev was allegedly living in humble
obscurity with a small retinue of servants; according to unconfirmed
reports, he was dismissed for nepotism at the end of an eight-hour
meeting of the Presidium on the strength of a report by Suslov; he was
responsible for numerous policy mistakes and failures, such as the
withdrawal from Cuba, the begging of wheat from the United States,
the quarrel with China, the ill-conceived decentralization of the Soviet
economy, his proposed visit to West Germany, and his unsuccessful
personal style of diplomacy with its mixture of insults to and cajolery
of the West.
This evidence is unconvincing and contradictory. The first argu-
ment against Khrushchev's having been forcibly removed is the fact
that it was his team that continued, without significant changes, to
dominate the Soviet leadership. Brezhnev, who replaced him as the
party leader, was his most trusted, obedient, and experienced assistant,
friend, and colleague. He owed his career to Khrushchev and was a
link between the Ukrainian and the Moscow party groups. Kirilenko
and the former President, Podgornyy, were almost as close to
Khrushchev as Brezhnev. Other faithful lieutenants and appointees of
Khrushchev, like Shelepin, Biryuzov, Malinovskiy, Semichastnyy,
and Patolichev, retained their key positions in the party and the
government.
Even more important, two of Khrushchev's relatives continued to
hold power in the leadership and government; one of them was even
promoted later on. The two were Polyanskiy, who stayed on as a
member of the Presidium and premier of the Russian Republic, and
Marshal Grechko, who remained as first assistant of the minister of
defense and chief of the Warsaw Pact forces; a few years later, he was
promoted to the major post of minister of defense.'** The fact that
Khrushchev's relatives retained their key positions after his departure
is inconsistent with Western belief in a palace revolution and
Khrushchev's abrupt dismissal; it supports the conclusion that it was a
smooth and agreed transfer of power. Furthermore, it disposes of the
story that Khrushchev was dismissed for nepotism, because his
relatives, apart from Adzhubey, were
204 NEW LIES FOR OLD
not affected by his loss of office. Here it is important to point out that
the relationship of Grechko and Polyanskiy to Khrushchev has never
been pubHciy revealed by Brezhnev or other party leaders. Such
information is normally kept secret and is known to very few within
the party.
If Khrushchev had in reality been dismissed for his cult of person-
ality or his policy mistakes, open criticism of him could have been
expected in the communist press. In fact there was very little, and
such as there was was oblique and indirect. There were no revelations
about his complicity in Stalin's crimes or about the ruthlessness of his
struggle for power in 1955-57. There was no criticism of his
"adventurist" foreign policy over the Berlin and Cuban crises or of his
exploitation of Soviet writers. There was some vague criticism in the
Soviet press about cult of personality and other rather minor aspects of
policy, which was interpreted by Western journalists as referring to
Khrushchev. Perhaps this interpretation was supported by revelations
of communist officials to their Western contacts, but communists do
not normally give Western diplomats or journalists the true facts of
the case. There was some speculative reporting about Khrushchev's
private life — his hunting, his apartments, and his villas — and there
was his sensational appearance before Western journalists. Such
manifestations should not be accepted at face value; they can be better
understood in the context of bloc disinformation operations. Naturally
there was no official recognition of Khrushchev's services to the
Soviet Union, because that would have upset bloc disinformation
about the recurrence of power struggles.
To sum up, there was no major convulsion before or after Khrush-
chev's retirement. With few exceptions there was continuity in the
leadership. Above all, there was continuity in the implementation of
the long-range policy that Khrushchev had initiated. The most likely
explanation, therefore, is that Khrushchev's removal was a staged
affair conducted with his full agreement. Furthermore, it was probably
staged with the foreknowledge and agreement of the communist
leaders of other countries. This would explain the well-publicized
visits of Western communist leaders to Moscow after the dismissal to
demand "explanations" for it and to express their high regard for
Khrushchev and his policies, thereby demon-
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 205
strating to the West their newly won independence of the Soviet
Union.
Over the radio, in their newspapers, and in official documents, the
Russian people were told that Khrushchev had resigned on grounds of
age and failing health. He was born in 1894. The official version
could well be near the truth. Lenin had set a precedent for retirement
on grounds of health. Khrushchev wanted to go down in history as
another Lenin. Like Lenin, he even went hunting in the neighborhood
of Moscow after his retirement. In spite of his Stalinist background,
he had made a significant contribution to the communist cause, but
this contribution could not be given immediate public recognition for
tactical considerations. In due course, probably after the conclusion of
the long-range policy, tribute will be paid to all the leaders who were
responsible for the policy, including Khrushchev, Mao, Novotny,
Ulbricht, Tito, Brezhnev, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and many others.
Khrushchev would not have been a true communist if he had not
agreed to such an arrangement, and no doubt he did so with his usual
mocking humor.
It is interesting that Neizvestnyy, the controversial sculptor whom
Khrushchev had himself criticized for abstractionism, was allowed by
Soviet officialdom to design the symbolic black and white monument
on Khrushchev's grave. Not many years after his death, Khrushchev's
name began to reappear in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia.
According to the present, new interpretation, Khrushchev's retire-
ment, which incidentally enabled him to write his memoirs, was
intended to solve the problem of succession in the Soviet Union, to
rehearse the changing of the guard in accordance with his wishes, and
to forestall upheavals and difficulties for the party, for the regime, and
even for himself. A smooth, agreed-upon transfer of power was
rendered possible by, and in itself served to guarantee, the continuity
of long-range bloc policy and strategy. The new guard came from the
old team of leaders committed to the same policy. Since all the leaders
of the communist bloc were and are equally committed to it, none can
change it arbitrarily, whether in the Soviet Union, China, Romania, or
any other communist country, without facing serious opposition from
the party apparatus in his own and other communist parties. Since
Khrushchev's retire-
2o6 NEW LIES FOR OLD
ment was probably agreed with the leaders of the other parties, it can
also be suggested that his example was followed, with local
variations, in the transitions from Gheorghiu-Dej to Ceausescu in
Romania, from Novotny to Dubcek to Husak in Czechoslovakia, from
Gomulka to Gierek to Kania in Poland, and from Ulbricht to
Honecker in East Germany; and in the transitions in China and
Yugoslavia that followed Mao's and Tito's deaths.
According to this analysis Khrushchev's retirement was a successful
fulfillment of Leninist ideas on the transfer of power between leaders.
Since there is no solid foundation for the belief that Khrushchev was
removed by power struggle, the conclusion can be drawn that, for
strategic reasons, his retirement was deliberately misrepresented,
partly to the inhabitants of the communist countries but mainly to the
West, as part of a succession crisis analogous to those that followed
Lenin's and Stahn's deaths. Similar conclusions can be drawn from so-
called power struggles in the Yugoslav, Chinese, Czechoslavok, and
Polish parties; in fact, all of them should be regarded as operations
within the framework of the bloc disinformation program.
Objectives of Disinformation on Power Struggles
The disinformation effort to keep alive Western belief in the
existence and inevitabihty of recurrent power struggles in the leader-
ship of communist parties serves several purposes. There is an obvi-
ous close connection between power struggles and factionalism;
neither exists without the other. Disinformation on power struggles
therefore supports and complements disinformation operations based
on spurious factionalism, such as those on de-Stalinization, the
Soviet-Albanian and Sino-Soviet splits, and democratization in
Czechoslovakia in 1968. It further serves to obscure the unity,
coordination, and continuity within the bloc in pursuit of an agreed
long-range policy. By creating false associations in Western minds
between different communist leaders and different aspects or phases
of communist policy — Khrushchev with "revisionism," Mao with
"dogmatism," Teng Hsiao-p'ing with "pragmatism," Dubcek with
"democratization," and Brezhnev with "neo-Stalinism" — the West can
be induced to make false deductions about the mainsprings
ALLEGED POWER STRUGGLES 20J
of communist policy, inaccurate predictions about its future course,
and mistakes in its own responses. The West is more likely to make
concessions, for example, over SALT negotiations, or the supply of
high technology goods to the Soviet Union or China, if it believes that
by so doing it will strengthen the hand of a "liberal" or "pragmatic"
tendency or faction within the party leadership. Conversely, the West
can be persuaded to attribute aggressive aspects of communist policy
to the influence of hard-liners in the leadership. The disappearance
from the scene of leaders thus identified can be used to promote the
myth of liberalization, as was done in the case of Novotny in
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Part Three will argue that similar
developments may be expected in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in
Eastern Europe in the final phase of long-range policy and that the
succession to Brezhnev may well be exploited for the same purpose.
One further possible purpose of spurious power struggles may be
suggested, that the "purging" or "disgrace" of leading communists
such as Teng Hsiao-p'ing in China or Barak in Czechoslovakia, who
disappeared for varying periods of time allegedly as the victims of a
power struggle, may be intended to cover up their secondment to serve
during their disappearance in a secret policy coordinating center
somewhere in the bloc.
19
The Seventh Disinformation Operation:
"Democratization" in Czechoslovakia in 1968
The Western Interpretation
As reported in the communist and Western press, the leaders of the
communist party introduced certain economic and pohtical reforms in
Czechoslovakia during 1968. In the economy, greater independence
was given to factory managers; the profit motive and market-
orientated practices were partially reintroduced. Sensational
developments occurred in the political field. Communist sources
revealed that an intensive struggle was fought out in the party
leadership between the conservatives, or Stalinists, led by the general-
secretary, President Novotny, and the liberals, or progressives, led by
the secretary of the Slovak Communist party, Dub-cek. In January
1968 the liberals won and Dubcek replaced Novotny as the country's
leader.
The new regime disclosed certain crimes committed by the former
party leadership, denounced the cult of personality the former leaders
had practiced, allegedly reduced to some degree the role of the
security services, and broadened the political rights of the population.
Censorship was abolished, intellectuals were given greater freedom,
opportunities for foreign travel were improved, and even the
possibility of permitting the formation of noncommu-nist political
parties was discussed.
The Soviet Union, alarmed by these developments, denounced them
as counterrevolutionary. In August Warsaw Pact troops invaded
Czechoslovak territory without meeting resistance from the
Czechoslovak army. The political situation was reversed; Dubcek and
other liberals were replaced by Soviet puppets.
208
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 209
Western journalists, scholars, and officials, basing their interpreta-
tion largely on accounts of these events in communist sources,
accepted the Czechoslovak crisis as an attempt at a spontaneous,
peaceful democratic revolution. They accepted as genuine the power
struggle between progressives and conservatives. They accepted
Dubcek's reforms as a new brand of democratic "socialism with a
human face." Indignation at the occupation of Czechoslovakia by
forces of the Warsaw Pact evoked deep sympathy for Dubcek, his
regime, and his new brand of socialism.
Four additional factors contributed to Western acceptance of the
liberalization of the Czechoslovak regime at face value. First, the
liberalization took place in a country that had had strong democratic
traditions before the communist coup in February 1948, and the
liberalization seemed like a revival of those traditions. Second, the
Czechoslovak leaders seemed to have gone further than any other
communist leaders in their criticism of the Soviet Union, in their
preparedness to permit noncommunist parties, and in their
denunciations of the crimes of former Soviet and Czechoslovak
security officials against noncommunist statesmen, such as Jan Masa-
ryk, the former foreign minister. Third, extreme Soviet pressure was
exercised on the Dubcek regime through the Soviet press and through
conspicuous movements of Warsaw Pact forces on the Polish-
Czechoslovak border. Fourth, there was a close apparent parallel
between events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and those in Hungary in
1956.'
According to the Western interpretation of events, the overthrow of
the Novotny regime by the progressives was brought about through
the alliance of some liberal-minded economists and dissenting
intellectuals with a few progressive communist leaders, such as
Dubcek. Weak as it was, this alliance succeeded in carrying out a
democratic revolution against a totaHtarian regime enjoying the
support of the armed forces and security services without the firing of
a single shot.
Western Errors
A major error in most Western assessments of Czechoslovakia in
1968 was to consider the events of that year in isolation from the
recent past. Unfortunately, failing to appreciate the changes
210 NEW LIES FOR OLD
in relations within the bloc and the adoption of the long-range policy
between 1957 and 1960, they used outdated methodology in their
interpretation of events. Failing also to take into account the
systematic dissemination of disinformation through sources under
communist control, including the communist press and communist
officials and intellectuals, they placed excessive reliance on these
sources.
A Reinterpretation of Czechoslovak "Democratization"
The new methodology dictates a new and opposite interpretation of
Czechoslovak "democratization." It sees it not as a spontaneous
development, but as a planned, controlled maneuver and rehearsal for
a similar development, all to take place within the framework of the
long-range policy. The major argument in favor of this view is that
Czechoslovak "democratization" fitted into, and met the requirements
of, communist strategy for Western Europe. A second argument is
that, throughout the upheavals of 1968, Czechoslovakia remained an
active member of Comecon and the Warsaw Pact.
The Czechoslovak party leaders, their security and intelligence
services and the regime as a whole actively participated in the
formulation, adoption, and implementation of the long-range bloc
policy in the period 1958 to 1960. Novotny frequently consulted with
the Soviet leaders, especially Khrushchev, in this period, and Novotny
and his colleagues — notably Hendrych, the party official responsible
for ideology and work with intellectuals — played a key role in the
formulation of the policy in so far as it related to Czechoslovakia. A
Czechoslovak party delegation led by Novotny took part in the
Eighty-one-Party Congress, in Moscow in November 1960, which
adopted the long-range bloc policy and strategy for the international
communist movement.
There are indications that the special strategic role for Czechoslo-
vakia had been worked out, at least in outline, by 1960 and that
preparations for the maneuver began immediately thereafter. In May
1961 Dubcek visited the Soviet Union and was received by Suslov. In
June and July a delegation of Czechoslovak party workers led by
Lenart went to the Soviet Union to study the work of the
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 211
CPSU.^ In June 1962 Novotny led another party delegation to the
Soviet Union.
Coordination between the Czechoslovak, Soviet, and other bloc
intelligence and security services over their political role in the
implementation of the long-range bloc policy began in 1959. The
minister of the interior, Barak, and other members of his ministry
attended the conference of bloc security and inteUigence services in
Moscow in that year. Thereafter the Czechoslovak services became
members of the intelligence and security coordinating center for the
bloc.
From 1959 to 1968 Novotny and his minister of the interior (Barak
until 1961) were actively working on the dissolution of genuine
political opposition and the creation of false, controlled opposition in
Czechoslovakia, on the lines introduced and practiced in the Soviet
Union by Shelepin.
Dissolution of genuine opposition was tackled largely by rehabih-
tations and amnesties. The Novotny regime carried out amnesties in
1960, 1962, 1964, and 1965, the most extensive being the one in 1960
in which most of the "state criminals" were freed. The last amnesty, in
1968, was carried out under Dubcek, who was thus continuing a
policy already established by Novotny and Barak.
The Role of Historians and Economists in
"Democratization"
A close parallel developed in the period 1959 to 1968 between the
approach adopted by Khrushchev and Shelepin to the use of writers,
economists, historians, other intellectuals, and rehabilitated party
members in activist political work and the approach adopted by the
Czechoslovak leaders. The indications are that a false opposition was
created in Czechoslovakia and that the struggle between alleged
liberals and alleged conservatives was staged on the pattern
established in the Soviet Union by Khrushchev and Shelepin.
In 1963 the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist
party set up two commissions of experts. One was a commission of
thirty-six historians under Gustav Husak, then vice-president of the
council of ministers; the other was a group of economists under Ota
Sik, who later became a vice-premier in the Dubcek
212 NEW LIES FOR OLD
government. The Central Committee made the party's secret archives
and statistics available to the two commissions.
The date 1963 is significant in that it was three years after the
adoption of the long-range bloc policy and five years before the so-
called "democratization" took place. The commissions were es-
tablished in the Novotny period: Husak and Sik subsequently figured
prominently in the "democratization" and its reversal. Putting these
facts together, the conclusion may be drawn that the commissions
were established under Novotny's leadership within the framework of
the long-range policy to prepare the groundwork for the events of
1968. There is a strong pointer to Soviet-Czechoslovak coordination
in the matter in that the Economic Commission was established by
Novotny at Khrushchev's suggestion.^ Soviet historians were
mobilized in support of long-range policy in the Soviet Union during
the same period, though in a different manner. Academician Khvos-
tov played an important part in this activity.
The Roles of Barak and Sik
Barak's role, his dismissal in February 1962, and his rehabilitation
and reappearance in 1968 can be completely reinterpreted.
Barak was minister of the interior from 1953 to 1961 and a member
of the Presidium of the party from 1954 until February 1962. As
minister of the interior he played an important part in the formulation
of the long-range policy and was in close liaison with the chairman of
the KGB, Shelepin. The chief of the KGB Institute, General
Kurenkov, informed the staff and students of the KGB Institute in
Moscow in 1959-60, after the return of a KGB delegation to
Czechoslovakia of which he was a member, that the KGB had closer
relations with the Czechoslovak security service than with any other
service in the bloc.
Significantly the young technocrats and planners who became
members of the Economic Commission in 1963 and played key roles
in the introduction of economic reforms in 1968, including Ota Sik,
were close to Barak in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Given Barak's
connection at the time with the planning of the long-range policy and
the new role of the security and intelligence services in it, it is likely
that even then the young technocrats
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 213
were being prepared for their part in introducing controlled "democ-
ratization."
On February 9, 1962, it was announced in the Czechoslovak press
that Barak had been arrested and sentenced to fifteen years
imprisonment for embezzlement of public funds. He was released in
May 1968 with the explanation that the funds were not embezzled at
all but were intended for the Czechoslovak intelligence service. Barak
himself indicated that his removal was due to Novot-ny's fear of being
the victim of the young technocrats and economic planners by whom
he, Barak, liked to be surrounded.^
Given Barak's involvement in long-range policy formulation in
1959 to 1961, it is likely that his arrest in February 1962 was fictitious
and was used to mislead Western analysts about the true nature of his
relations with technocrats like Sik. It could also have been used to
fabricate for this leading secret pohceman a reputation as a liberal
reformer and a victim of Novotny, the better to explain his
reappearance under the new regime of 1968. There was a further
possible motive for the staging of Barak's arrest; in the course of
compiling their damage report on the author's defection in December
1961, the KGB would have discovered that the author was aware of
the close liaison between the leaders of the KGB and of the
Czechoslovak security service under Barak.
A likely speculation is that, instead of spending his time in jail from
1962 to 1968, Barak was sent secretly to Moscow to represent the
Czechoslovak government in the bloc's intelligence and security
coordinating center. His reappearance in Czechoslovakia in May 1968
would have been to act as a behind-the-scenes coordinator of the
developments of that year. As a key man at the planning stage of those
developments, he would have been needed on the spot during the
crucial period of their unfolding.
Given Sik's relations with Barak and his appointment as head of the
Economic Commission by the Central Committee of the party in 1963
under Novotny's leadership, his role in the introduction of economic
reforms, his support for Dubcek in 1968, and his participation in the
Dubcek government should be regarded not as a spontaneous personal
activity, but as the fulfilment of a party assignment within the
framework of the long-range policy. It was probably no coincidence
that his appointment in 1963 fell within the same period as the
emergence in the Soviet Union of
214 NEW LIES FOR OLD
a liberal economist. Professor Liberman. Sik, in fact, became known
as the "Czechoslovak Liberman."
The Role of Writers in "Democratization"
An understanding of Sik's party role in introducing economic
reforms in Czechoslovakia, together with an understanding of the
Soviet party's use of Tvardovskiy and Kochetov as the leaders of the
"liberal" and "conservative" factions among Soviet writers, helps
toward an understanding of the role of Czechoslovak writers in the
"democratization" of 1968. Since Khrushchev advised the
Czechoslovak party to set up an Economic Commission in 1963, it is
not unlikely that he or Shelepin advised the Czechoslovak party and
security service to use their writers in a controlled "liberalization" in
the same way as they themselves had used Tvardovskiy and
Kochetov.
Czechoslovak writers played an important part in the alleged
removal of Novotny and his replacement by Dubcek. For example, at
the Writers Congress in May-June 1967, the "liberal" Slovak writer
Ludvik Vaculik, a member of the Central Committee, a member of the
staff of Literarni Listy, and a confidant of Dubcek, delivered several
lectures advocating more creative freedom. In a plea for "democratic
socialism" he also called for an active struggle against "neo-
Stalinists." The Slovak writer Mnacko attacked Novotny. Anton
Liehm, one of the founders of Literarni Noviny, spoke against
censorship and police despotism. Another writer read out to the
congress Solzhenitsyn's "secret letter" against censorship.
The criticism of neo-Stalinism was convincing. But Vaculik, Klima,
and Liehm, who participated in this criticism and called for
democratization, were all members of the Central Committee of the
party at the time. This raises at least a possibility that they were
acting, like Tvardovskiy and Kochetov, on the instructions of the
party. It is interesting that, three months later (in September 1967),
these writers were expelled from the party "for spreading
anticommunist propaganda at the Writers Congress." Knowing the
methods of provocation used by communist security services, the
expulsions can be interpreted as deliberate steps to build up the image
of these writers as independent, spontaneous critics of the
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 215
regime and genuine exponents of democratic socialism. At the same time the
expulsions would have served to cover up their secret party assignments.
Some of the actions and speeches of the Czechoslovak writers — Vaculik's
speech, for instance — were reminiscent of the actions and speeches of
Hungarian writers in 1956. The question to be asked is whether the
Czechoslovak writers' actions and speeches were truly spontaneous or
whether they were deliberately modeled in advance on the Hungarian pattern
by the Central Committee and its Ideological Department in preparation for
the introduction of a program of controlled reform designed to stabilize the
Czechoslovak- regime and serve the purposes of bloc strategy in Europe.
It is interesting that in his speech Vaculik, after condemning "the first
Stalinist phase" of the Czechoslovak regime, referred to the "second phase"
in which democratic socialism would be realized. It is possible to detect in
this a hint of forward planning It could well be that these speeches were
prepared by the writers in conjunction with the Commission of Historians set
up in 1963 Vaculik himself revealed in March 1967 (two to three months
before the Writers' Congress) that he had been present at a meeting of the
Ideological Department of the Central Committee at which questions on
freedom for creative activities were discussed.
Vaculik and other writers published a manifesto titled "Two Thousand
Words" in the weekly Literarni Listy on June 27. 1968. This later became
the credo of the party "progressives" and was used by the Soviets and other
"orthodox" communists to denounce them as counterrevolutionaries. Some of
the statements in it reveal the kind of "democratization" the authors had in
mind. While identifying themselves with the party "progressives," they called
for support for the party functionaries and security organs and "respect for
Czechoslovakia's treaties of friendship with its allies" (i.e., the Soviet Union
and other countries of the Warsaw Pact). The following are a few quotations:
"In the first place, we will oppose the opinion, if it manifests itself, that a
democratic rebirth can come without the communists or even against
them; this would be not only unjust but unreasonable. . . . The communists
have well-established organisations; these organisations are necessary to sustain
the tendencies of progress. They have experi-
216 NEW LIES FOR OLD
enced functionaries and they also have in hand the controls of command.
They have prepared a programme of action which has been proposed to
the public. It is a programme aiming at reparation of the greatest injustices
and they are the only ones in possession of such a concrete programme. . .
. Let us bring the National Front back to life. . . . Let us give our support to
the security agencies when they pursue criminal and common law
delinquents. We have no intention of provoking anarchy or a general state
of insecurity. . . . And we give to our allies the assurance that we shall
respect our treaties of friendship, alliance and trade."
Seen against the background of party and security service interest in
introducing and controlling a process of "democratization," these expressions
of support for the party functionaries, security services, and the Warsaw Pact
are clear indications of party guidance to the writers.
The "Struggle" between the Novotny "Conservatives" and the Dubcek
"Progressives"
If the "liberal" economists and writers are considered the first two moving
forces behind the "democratization" of 1968, the third was the alleged
struggle in the party leadership between the "progressives" led by Dubcek
and the "conservatives" led by Novotny, which culminated eventually in the
victory of the "progressives."
Although Novotny was of the Stalinist generation and was brought up
against the background of Stahn's and Gottwald's leadership of the Soviet
and Czechoslovak Communist parties, he did not take over the leadership of
the Czechoslovak party until after Stalin's death. And it was under his
leadership, as under Khrushchev's in the Soviet Union, that an actual de-
Stalinization of the Czechoslovak party took place in the period 1956-60
during which many party political prisoners were rehabilitated. It is ques-
tionable therefore whether the charges of neo-Stalinism brought against
Novotny by the "progressives" were well-founded. The air of artificiality
about them supports the thesis that they were contrived, within the
framework of the long-range policy and disinfor-
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 217
mation program, in order to misrepresent as a spontaneous liberal upheaval
what was in fact an orderly, planned, and controlled succession to a new
generation of party leaders.
Similarly there are grounds for suggesting that Dubcek was chosen and
groomed for the role of Novotny's leading adversary in a calculated display
of internal party differences serving the same purpose. Like Novotny,
although junior to him in age and rank, Dubcek was a product of the Stalinist
party machine with a militant communist background. A Slovak by origin, he
had intimate connections with the Soviet Union, where he lived from 1922 to
1938. In 1939 he joined the Czechoslovak Communist party, in which he
rose steadily during the last fourteen years of Stalin's hfetime. In the year of
Stalin's death in 1953, Dubcek became party secretary of a town in Slovakia.
According to Salomon, Dubcek loved and respected the Soviet Union.
Between 1955 and 1958 he studied at the High Party School, attached to the
Central Committee of the CPSU, in Moscow. This school selects and trains
future leaders for the CPSU and other communist parties. Dubcek was still
there in 1958, the year in which the formulation of the long-range policy
began. It could well be that it was in part because of his Russian background
and training in this school that Dubcek was chosen and groomed by the
Central Committee as the leader of the "progressives."
Dubcek was made a secretary of the Slovak Communist party and a
member of the Presidium in 1963, the same year in which Sik was appointed
head of the Economic Commission and Husak head of the Commission of
Historians. It may therefore be surmised that Dubcek was chosen for his role
in 1963.
There are a number of anomalies in the story of the "quiet revolution" that
raise serious doubts about its spontaneous nature. Some of the unanswered
questions are as follows:
• Why did the "conservative" majority in the Presidium vote for Dubcek
and why did Novotny himself not object to Dubcek's candidacy?
• Why did the Central Committee and party machine controlled by
Novotny's "conservative" supporters not prevent the replacement of Novotny
by Dubcek?
• Why did neither tlie "conservative" military and security leaders, like tlie
minister of defense, Lomsky, and the head of military security.
218 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Mamula, nor the leaders of the shock troops and militia of Prague, which
organized the coup d'etat in 1948, act against Dubcek if there was a genuine
risk that he might turn into a Czechoslovak Imre Nagy and threaten the
foundations of their regime?
• Why did Hendrych, an "ultraconservative" Novotny supporter, a
frequent visitor to Moscow, the head of the party's ideological department,
the controller of the country's intellectuals since 1958 — in short, the
Czechoslovak equivalent of Il'ichev — side with Dubcek at the secret session
of the Central Committee in January 1968 that nominated Dubcek as general-
secretary?
• Why did all these "conservatives" accept Dubcek without resistance
when, if the revolution had been spontaneous, they would have stood to lose
their heads?
• Why did not Dubcek remove key officials like Lomsky or Mamula right
at the beginning in March 1968?
• Why did the press censors themselves support "democratization" and
vote against the censorship?
• Why was Novotny untouched after he had lost power, if he was such a
villain?
• Why did the foreign policy of Dubcek's regime follow the old, orthodox
conservative line: anti-NATO, anti-USA, and anti-Israel?
• Why did the "progressive" leaders welcome the bloc's occupation
troops?
Had the Dubcek regime been authentically democratic, it would have
removed the orthodox party and security officials who had been responsible
for past repression. In fact, only three hundred persons in the Ministry of the
Interior were allegedly discharged or demoted, mere drop in the bucket. By
and large the Old Guard went unscathed. "Conservative" and "orthodox"
officials and "new progressives," some of them former victims of "conserva-
tive" repression, served together in the new regime of "democratic
socialism."
In fact the major change was a return to the higher ranks of government of
certain rehabilitated party members, whose rehabilitation was exploited to
project a new image of the communist
regime. Among them were Husak, vice-premier (released in 1960);
Smrkovsky, president of the National Assembly (released in 1955); and
Pavel, minister of the interior (released in 1955). Their return
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 219
could well have been the realization of a calculated policy of rehabili-
tation carried out on Soviet lines. It should be remembered in this
context that both Gomulka and Kadar, who rose to be the party
leaders in Poland and Hungary respectively, were rehabihtated party
members.
A distinctive feature of rehabilitation in Czechoslovakia was that
former communist officials were fully rehabilitated; some of the
noncommunist political prisoners were not. The Rehabilitation Law
adopted in June 1968 approved the review of individual cases but did
not annul the courts' decisions, lest "justly sentenced, authentic
counterrevolutionary elements" should be set free.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of the essential continuity
between the old and new regimes is the fact that Gottwald, who was
responsible for the reign of terror from 1948 onwards — involving,
according to official statistics, the confinement of one hundred and
thirty thousand persons — was not denounced as a criminal by the new
regime. On the contrary, Dubcek decorated the widows and orphans
of martyred communist officials with the Order of Gottwald, under
whose leadership their husbands and fathers had been executed.
Strangely, the victims' relatives accepted these decorations. '°
The controlled nature of "democratization" in Czechoslovakia
shows up clearly when comparisons are made with Hungary in 1956.
The Hungarian revolution was a popular uprising; while it lasted, it
dismantled the system, the party machine, and the security services. It
replaced party leaders with nonparty leaders. Some party leaders, like
Imre Nagy, broke with the party and sided with the people. In
Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, "democratization" was carried out
by the party, hence the "quiet revolution." Basically, the party
machine, the army, and the security services were untouched. There
was continuity, not a fundamental break, with the previous regime.
Older communist leaders were replaced by younger communist
leaders, so that the party's monopoly of power and ideology was not
broken. The Hungarian revolution occurred during the crisis of the
communist bloc and was an expression of that crisis. The
Czechoslovak revolution occurred during the period of the bloc's
recovery from crisis and exemplified the bloc's long-range policy in
action.
Some aspects of the Soviet reaction to events were a little strange.
220 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Despite the exchange of criticism between the Soviet and Czecho-
slovak leaders, they continued to visit one another's countries. Pho-
tographs appeared of Dubcek and Brezhnev warmly embracing one
another. Nothing is known about the talks that actually took place
between them, other than a few hints inspired by the communist
regimes themselves. In the West this evidence of good relations
between the Soviet and Czechoslovak leaders was either ignored or
interpreted as a crude attempt to cover up the depth of the divisions
between them. The revised interpretation of the "quiet revolution,"
based on the new methodology, suggests that these meetings were
used for consultation and coordination of the further action to be taken
by each side.
The movements of the Warsaw Pact troops on the PoHsh-
Czechoslovak border, no doubt intended to recall events in Hungary
in 1956, were too conspicuous to be accepted at face value. Their
movement into Czechoslovakia was, on this analysis, an agreed
measure of assistance to the regime by the bloc, as indeed the
Czechoslovak party maintained at the time." It was also an opportu-
nity to season and rehearse troops from bloc countries in a "punitive"
intervention in another communist country to stabilize its regime.
Significantly, troops from those countries which had been most
rebellious in the past (Poland, Hungary, and East Germany) were used
in Czechoslovakia. But the primary purpose the intervention served
was to drive home the lesson throughout Eastern Europe and the
communist world that the United States and NATO were powerless to
intervene and that internal opposition in Czechoslovakia or any other
communist country would be crushed.
Conclusions
Given that the Czechoslovak leaders took part in the formulation of
the new, long-range bloc policy between 1958 and 1960; given that
their security and intelligence services were involved in the planning
and preparation of activist political disinformation operations in
support of this policy; given the indications that the economic reforms
of Sik and others were planned from 1963 onward under the Novotny
regime; given the indications that the Czechoslovak writers, in
demanding "democratization," were not acting
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 221
spontaneously, but in accordance with their party role under Hen-
drych's guidance; given the anomalies in the "democratization"
process and in the alleged struggle between "progressives" and "con-
servatives" led respectively by Dubcek and Novotny, the inescapable
conclusion is that the "quiet revolution" was a controlled operation
planned and conducted by the party apparatus itself with the benefit of
recent parallel Soviet experience in the preparation of a false
opposition movement. It cannot, of course, be denied that some
political and economic reforms were carried out in 1968, but it would
be erroneous to consider them either as spontaneous or as far-reaching
and democratic, as the communist leaders made them out to be. They
were calculated readjustments made on the initiative and under the
control of the party, which "had in hand the controls of command."
Goldstuecker, one of the leading figures in "democratization," put it
bluntly to Salomon: "We have tried to develop an effective control of
power from within our own system."''
The "quiet revolution" was an effective demonstration of the new,
creative leading role of the party working through its economists,
historians, writers, rehabilitated members, and alleged "progressives"
and using the techniques of political action and disinformation. It was
radically unlike the spontaneous Hungarian revolution. It represented
a further stage in the extension of controlled disinformation operations
throughout the bloc to serve the purposes of long-range policy and
strategy. It had some purely local, Czechoslovak elements. Among
these were, for example, the exposure of the Jan Masaryk affair {the
whole story of which has not yet been told), the acceptance of
noncommunist parties (controlled effectively by the regime), and the
alleged "removal" of Novotny (more likely a natural retirement, as in
Khrushchev's case, for reasons of age or health).
Communist Gains and Losses from "Democratization"
Undoubtedly the Soviet government and the bloc as a whole lost
prestige through their so-called intervention in Czechoslovakia. But
the immediate and future advantages in terms of long-range bloc
policy and strategy definitely outweighed the losses.
222 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Before 1968 there were acute problems in Czechoslovakia, which
demanded solutions. The communist party, the regime, and its
institutions were discredited and unpopular; there was a need for
change in the party leadership; there was internal and external
opposition to the regime; there was discontent among the intellectuals
and formerly imprisoned party members; there was Slovak resentment
at Czech domination; the unattractive stigma of the crushing of
democracy in February 1948 still attached to communists in Western
Europe and hampered their electoral collaboration with hberals and
socialists.
With the help and support of the leaders of the other bloc regimes,
the Czechoslovak leaders developed communist solutions to these
problems through calculated and controlled "democratization." They
succeeded in revitalizing the party, the regime, and its institutions and
in giving them a new, more democratic image. They solved the
succession problem without convulsions or a power struggle. They
committed the younger party leaders to the continuation of the long-
range policy and the strengthening of strategic coordination within the
Warsaw Pact.''^ In the "quiet revolution" they demonstrated their long-
range approach to the selection and training of future leaders and to
rotation of the candidates to create a reservoir of experience. They
developed their own Czechoslovak version of the disinformation on
de-Stalinization and power struggles used already by the Soviet,
Chinese, and Yugoslav parties. They succeeded in confusing and,
partially, in neutralizing internal and external opposition to the
regime.'^ They neutralized discontent among the intellectuals by
involving them as collaborators in their policy. They neutralized the
discontent of the imprisoned party members by rehabilitating them
and giving them leading roles. They neutralized Slovak discontent by
bringing forward Slovaks (Dubcek and Husak) as party leaders of
Czechoslovakia and by increasing investment in the Slovak economy.
In short, the Czechoslovak communist leaders succeeded in pre-
serving and in fact strengthening the power and effectiveness of the
regime while at the same time giving it a new image. Dubcek was
firmly identified at home and abroad with a new brand of "socialism
with a human face," acceptable to Western social democrats and
liberals.
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 223
Possible Implications of "Democratization" for the West
The Soviet, Czechoslovak, and bloc communist leaders and strate-
gists gained valuable experience and insight into Western reactions to
"democratization" in Czechoslovakia The Dubcek government,
communist though it was, rapidly acquired a radically new image in
the West. It was perceived not as an oppressive, totalitarian regime,
tainted by the stigma of February 1948 and deserving to be scorned
and shunned on that account, but as the harbinger of a new era of
"socialism with a human face," deserving to be encouraged and
supported by all currents of opinion. The Dubcek brand of
communism deprived both conservatives and the moderate left of the
argument that the acquisition of power by communist parties in
Western Europe or elsewhere would lead automatically to the
extinction of democracy as it did in Czechoslovakia in 1948. At the
same time it provided West European communist parties in particular
with a powerful new propaganda weapon and a new basis for
establishing united fronts with socialist parties in common opposition
to capitalism and conservativism. In this context it should be
remembered that the international organ of the communist parties. The
World Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, is based
on and is published in the Czechoslovak capital.
In the short term Dubcek's departure was a setback for West
European communist parties; under Husak, the pendulum appeared to
have swung back toward a more orthodox and traditional brand of
communism. Nevertheless, the Dubcek government aroused great
Western expectations of possible future political evolution in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union and the emergence of new brands of
communism. Indeed, it can be confidently expected that the
experiment will be repeated both in Czechoslovakia (with or without
Dubcek) and on a broader scale in the final stage of the bloc's long-
range policy. Future "Prague springs" could well bring electoral
victory for one or more West European communist parties. Provided
those parties conform to the Dubcek brand of communism, there is a
real danger that socialist, moderate, and conservative opinion, failing
to realize the true nature and strategic motives of Dubcek's
communism, will accept the situation with
224 NEW LIES FOR OLD
all its attendant dangers and potential consequences.
It would be worthwhile for the West to study the scenario and techniques
of the Czechoslovak experiment so as not to be taken in again as it was in
1968. The scenario could well be repeated, in essence, although with local
variations. Its main constituents are therefore recapitulated here:
• A revival of de-Stalinization, together with publication abroad of the
memoirs of former party and other political prisoners.
• Subsequent publication of these memoirs in the home country and of
new exposures and revelations about the old regime, especially through the
medium of "prison literature."
• Rehabilitation of former party leaders.
• Stories of a struggle for power behind the scenes in the party leadership,
and the emergence of "progressive" and "hberal" leaders.
• A writers' congress, with demands for greater freedom and the abolition
of censorship.
• Production of controversial television programs, films, and novels.
• Emphasis on "sociahst legality" and "socialist democracy"; emphasis on
federalism rather than on centralism (in relation to Slovakia).
• Expansion of commercial freedom and an increased role for economic
and workers' councils and trade unions.
• Suppression of censorship in the press, radio, and television, with
greater freedom for cultural and artistic activity.
• Formation of controlled noncommunist parties and political clubs and
organizations, such as Club 231.
• Reunions of political prisoners.
• Adoption of new laws on rehabilitation.
• Controlled student demonstrations. .
• Secret meetings of the Central Committee and the choice of new,
"progressive" leaders.
Objectives of the "Quiet Revolution"
The staging of the "quiet revolution" and its reversal served a wide variety
of strategic and tactical objectives. They can be summarized thus:
"DEMOCRATIZATION" IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 225
• To give a new, democratic image to the party, its institutions, and its
leaders, and to increase thereby their influence, prestige, and popular appeal.
• To revitalize the party, the regime, and institutions — such as the
National Front, the trade unions, press, and parliament — and to make them
effective organs of power and control in the political and economic hfe of the
country.
• To avoid a genuine crisis and popular revolt by provoking an artificial,
controlled crisis through coordinated action by the party, the security
services, the intellectuals, trade unions, and other mass organizations.
• To prevent the controlled crisis from becoming uncontrolled by the
introduction of bloc troops into Czechoslovakia in a move planned with and
agreed to in advance by the Czechoslovak leaders.
• To demonstrate the uselessness of opposition and the powerlessness of
NATO and the United States to intervene.
• To provoke genuine internal and external opposition into exposing
itself, and thereafter to neutrahze or hquidate such opposition (the regime
may well have found it convenient to get rid of a number of genuine
anticommunists by allowing freedom of travel for a while).
• To rehearse the use of Warsaw Pact troops in "stabilizing" a Warsaw
Pact country in case the need should arise to use them in another "indepen-
dent" communist state, such as Romania, Albania, or Yugoslavia.
• To secure a smooth succession from the older to the younger generation
of communist leaders.
• To ensure the unbreakable identification of the younger party leaders
with, and their total personal commitment to, the long-range bloc pohcy
initiated by the older generation.
• To provide the younger leaders with experience in handhng controlled
pohtical developments.
• To increase their prestige at home and abroad as independent, national
democratic leaders.
• To bridge the gap between the older and younger generations, and to
appeal to the national sentiments of the younger generation in particular.
• To support and amplify bloc strategic disinformation on political
evolution, the decay of ideology, the emergence of new brands of commu-
nism, and the disintegration of the bloc into independent, national regimes.
• To give the Romanian and Yugoslav regimes an opportunity to dem-
226 NEW LIES FOR OLD
onstrate their independence by criticizing the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
• To do the same for certain West European communist parties.
• To enable those parties to increase their electoral appeal by identifying
themselves with "socialism with a human face."
• To arouse sentiment against military pacts in Europe.
• To increase pressure in the West for the convening of a conference on
security in Europe, the communist interest in which is to promote the
dissolution of military pacts, the creation of a neutral, socialist Europe, and
the withdrawal of the American mihtary presence.
• To provide grounds for the future discrediting of Western statesmen
(especially conservatives) and of Western diplomatic and intelligence ser-
vices by misleading them over "democratization" and by falsifying their
assessments through the unexpected invasion of Czechoslovakia.
• To rehearse and gain experience for the repetition of "democratization"
in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, or elsewhere in Eastern Europe during
the final phase of the long-range policy of the bloc.
20
The Second Disinformation Operation:
The "Evolution" of the Soviet Regime,
Part Two: The "Dissident" Movement
Western hopes and expectations of liberalization in the Soviet
Union, aroused by the disinformation of the early 1960s, were largely
dashed by Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which
underlined the return to a form of neo-Stalinism in the Soviet Union
associated with the leadership of Brezhnev. But this new brand of
Stalinism seemed unable either to conceal or control the forces of
internal opposition. The West witnessed the emergence not just of
individual dissidents, but of an entire "dissident movement" with an
unofficial leader in the person of Academician Andrey Sakharov and
with a marked capacity to survive persecution by the regime and
maintain communication with the West. The phenomenon can be
understood only in the light of past history and the new methodology.
Genuine opposition to the communist system in the Soviet Union in
the period 1958-60, when the new long-range policy and the KGB's
new political role were being worked out, was deep-seated and
intense. Dissatisfaction was widespread among workers, collective
farmers, priests, and intellectuals. It was particularly strong among
Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Jewish nationalists. The
opposition rejected the Soviet regime in principle. Its members did not
believe in the possibility of "evolution"; they firmly believed that
freedom could come only through a new revolution, the overthrow of
the regime, and the dissolution of the communist party. They did not
call themselves dissidents nor were they described as such by the
regime. They were known in KGB and party documents as "enemies
of the people."
227
228 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The KGB was capable of preventing and neutralizing contacts
between the West and genuine opponents of the regime; pubhcation of
material regarded as inimical to Soviet interests was effectively
suppressed. Two examples, known to the author in 1961, illustrate the
point. In that year a prominent Soviet author and journaHst, V.
Grossman, wrote an anti-Soviet book and tried to have it published
abroad. The idea conveyed by the book was that the main fault in the
Soviet leadership was not the cult of Stalin, but the cult of Lenin and
his works. Grossman handed his manuscript to the former Swedish
ambassador and dean of the Moscow diplomatic corps, Sulman. The
KGB learned of this, and a special operational group was set up on
Shelepin's instructions to use any available means to recover the
manuscript. The Politburo was concerned at the effect it might have
on foreign communist parties if it was published abroad, especially at
a time when the new long-range policy had recently been adopted.
Within days the manuscript was delivered by Shelepin to the
Politburo. The West knew nothing of the affair at the time.
In the same year a prominent scientist named Zagormister, a former
Soviet deputy minister of geology who had access to important secret
information on the status of nuclear questions in the Soviet Union,
requested political asylum from the Israeli embassy in Helsinki while
on a visit to Finland. His request was refused, and he was referred to
the Finnish police. Through their secret sources in Finland, the KGB
residency in Helsinki received a report that a prominent Soviet official
had tried to defect to the West and had asked the Finnish authorities
for help. The KGB intervened. Zagormister was handed over to the
Soviet consul, Sergeyev, a KGB officer, who returned him to the
Soviet Union in an embassy car. Zagormister was interrogated by the
KGB in Moscow. He died of a heart attack when he was shown a copy
of his conversation with the Finnish police. Again, nothing was known
or published about this tragic incident in the Western press.
The serious challenge to the regime from the real opposition
required special measures. The preparations made by the Central
Committee and the KGB to deal with this and other problems have
been described. They were based on the techniques of political
provocation and prophylaxis used with success by Dzerzhinskiy in the
1920s.
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 229
Briefly, Dzerzhinskiy's GPU, faced with the problem of a strong internal
opposition supported and exploited by emigres and Western governments,
created a false opposition movement known as the Trust, which it used to
expose, confuse, and neutrahze genuine internal and external opposition. By
tricking the emigres and Western inteUigence services into supporting the
Trust, they effectively isolated the genuine internal opposition from the
outside world. Furthermore, the successful projection through the Trust of a
false image of the Soviet regime in evolution toward a more conventional
national European system helped the Soviet leaders to achieve their
diplomatic aims, such as recognition by and closer relations with the major
European powers and China, the acquisition of Western economic expertise,
and, through the Treaty of Rapallo, the supply of military aid by Germany.
Applying the new methodology to the emergence of the present dissident
movement means taking into account:
• All the evidence of a return to Dzerzhinskiy's techniques of political
provocation and disinformation, following the weakness and evolution
pattern and, in particular, the known advocacy of such methods by Miro-nov
and Shelepin.
• The specific instructions given by Mironov and Shelepin to the KGB in
1959 to use its expanded intelligence potential among scientists, writers, and
other intellectuals for political purposes and to prepare political operations
and experiments aimed at dissolving internal opposition in the Soviet Union.
• The strategic role played by KGB agents of influence among Soviet
scientists in the 1960s in promoting the idea of common interests between the
Soviet Union and the United States.
• The debate in the 1960s between "liberal" and "conservative" writers
inspired and controlled by the KGB through its agents Tvardovskiy and
Kochetov.
• The known assets of the KGB among scientists, writers, and other
intellectuals in 1960 and the likelihood of their further expansion since then.
• The prominence of scientists and writers in the dissident movement.
If all these factors are kept in mind, there can be no reasonable doubt that
the dissident movement as a whole is a KGB -controlled
230 NEW LIES FOR OLD
false opposition movement analogous to the Trust and that many of its
leading members are active and willing collaborators with the Central
Committee and the KGB. Only if this interpretation is accepted is it
possible to explain why a totalitarian, neo-Stalinist regime should
allow a degree of Western contact with, and freedom of movement to,
prominent "opposition" figures. It is, of course, more than likely that
some of the individual rank and file dissidents are honest people who
have become involved in the movement without realizing how they
will be exploited and eventually victimized. The movement would not
be fulfilling its internal function if it did not succeed in attracting
innocents.
The main apparent purpose of the movement is to strive for
democratization, human rights, and the fulfillment of the Helsinki
agreements. The overall impression created in the West is that of a
deep-rooted, spontaneous struggle between the regime's conservative
supporters and Hberal scientists, writers, and other intellectuals.
Intense Western indignation, sympathy, and support are naturally
aroused by news that "dissidents" like Sakharov are being harrassed,
arrested, and sentenced to imprisonment or exile without trial.
Emotions are further heightened by the deliberately engineered
connection between the problems of Soviet dissidents and those of
Soviet Jews. It is perhaps the emotionialism of the West's response
that clouds perception of the fact that much of Western knowledge of
the dissident movement is acquired by courtesy of the Soviet
authorities.
The growth of the dissident movement is often seen as one of the
fruits of East -West detente in the 1960s. Despite the present apparent
persecution of dissidents, long-term Western hopes and expectations
of a future liberalization of the Soviet regime have come to be pinned
on the eventual success of their "heroic struggle." In fact both the
dissident movement and the conspicuous harrass-ment of it by the
Soviet authorities are largely artificial, and both form part of the
dehberate stage-setting for the final phase of long-range bloc poHcy.
This may be expected to begin soon after Brezhnev's disappearance
from the political scene, and is likely to include a spurious
liberalization of the regime rendered plausible by the "rehabilitation"
of the present dissident leaders.
The parallel between the dissident movement and the Trust is not of
course exact. World conditions changed profoundly in the
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 231
fifty years between them. In the 1920s Lenin, Dzerzhinskiy, and the
GPU were fighting for the survival of communism in one country. In
the 1960s and 1970s dissidence of different kinds came to be
exploited throughout the communist bloc, conspicuously in
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Dissident movements are discernible else-
where in Eastern Europe and even in China.
The present chapter will be confined to an examination of the
unofficial dissident leader, Sakharov, now living in internal exile in
the city of Gor'kiy.
Sakharov
Sakharov is a scientist of distinction whose past services to the
Soviet regime in the development of nuclear weapons are officially
recognized. As one of the chief scientific advisers to the Soviet
government, he would have had access to the most sensitive nuclear
secrets and an insight into Soviet strategy and Soviet relations in the
nuclear field with other communist states, including China. It is
inconceivable that, if he were seriously at odds with the regime and
therefore a security risk, he would have been given the opportunities
he has had to maintain contact with Western friends and colleagues.
Even from his "exile" in Gor'kiy, he is able to convey his views to the
West through intermediaries and correspondence. The only conclusion
consistent with these facts is that Sakharov is still a loyal servant of
his regime, whose role is now that of a senior disinformation
spokesman for the Soviet strategists.
The theme of "common interests" between East and West, de-
veloped by Soviet agents of influence in the 1960s, was expanded
after 1968, most notably in Sakharov's writings, into the concept of
"convergence" between the communist and noncommunist systems.
Before examining Sakharov's statements, brief reference must be
made to the Change of Signposts movements described above. The
adherents of this movement asserted that the Soviet regime was
evolving from an ideological into a conventional, national, capitalistic
state. Therefore, they argued. White Russian emigres should not
struggle against the Soviet regime, but should cooperate with it in
order to encourage the development of these trends. The
232 NEW LIES FOR OLD
movement had a significant effect both on the emigres and on the
Western governments with which they were in touch, and it created
favorable conditions for the regime to win Western diplomatic
recognition and economic help. But the adherents of the Change of
Signposts movement were mistaken. Diplomatic recognition and
economic help did not result in the evolution of the Soviet Union into
a conventional, capitalistic, national state. On the contrary, the Soviet
regime emerged from the 1920s stronger, more aggressive, and more
ideological than before. The adherents of the Change of Signposts
movement were exposed as bankrupt prophets.
Western convergence theorists are unwittingly and naively ac-
cepting basically the same disinformation message as the former
adherents of the Change of Signposts movement, namely that the
influence of communist ideology is in decline, that communist re-
gimes are coming closer to the Western model, and that there are
serious possibilities of further changes in them that will prove
favorable to Western interests.
In the 1920s the message was conveyed by the regime through the
emigre movement: from 1958 onward, Soviet scientists were used. In
the 1920s the message emphasized the natural tendency of the Soviet
regime to move away from ideology toward a capitalist system. In the
1960s the arguments were rather different. Exponents of convergence
argued that, under the influence of the technological revolution, the
Soviet Union was developing structural similarities with the West;
these structural similarities provided a basis for asserting the existence
of common interests between the different systems. Further grounds
for asserting the existence of common interests stemmed from the
development of nuclear weapons and the necessity of avoiding East-
West nuclear conflict. Also, it was argued in the 1960s that the
existence of Sino-Soviet differences and Soviet moderation in
comparison with Chinese communist militancy created a common
interest between the Soviet Union and the West in resisting the
"Yellow Peril" from the East.
Since the notion of genuine evolution in the communist world is
unfounded, there are no grounds for asserting that it is converging
with the West. And since alleged Sino-Soviet differences are also the
product of joint Sino-Soviet disinformation, there is no basis for
asserting the existence of common interests between the West and
either the Soviet Union or China against the other. The notions
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 233
of convergence and common interests have both been shaped by
communist disinformation in the interests of long-range communist
policy. Western convergence theories are themselves built largely on
the acceptance at face value of communist disinformation.
Western desire for convergence between the communist and
noncommunist systems, is, by and large, sincere. There is genuine,
intense, and legitimate concern about the avoidance of an East- West
nuclear conflict. There is therefore a Western predisposition to accept
the authenticity of Sakharov's dissent as expressed, for example, in his
treatise, allegedly circulated privately in the Soviet Union and
published unofficially in the West under the title Progress,
Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, and in the later book Sakharov
Speaks. Acceptance of spurious notions of convergence has in fact
been widespread in the West. Acceptance of the authenticity of
fabricated Sino-Soviet disagreements has been almost universal. The
false notions inspired by these deceptions aroused expectations among
Western policymakers and the general public of a serious
improvement in relations between the Soviet Union and the West in
the 1960s and China and the West in the 1970s. Whether Western
exponents of convergence realized it or not — and most did not — their
attitudes were shaped by the bloc and its disinformation effort, whose
main objective was to create favorable conditions for the achievement
of the strategic objectives of the bloc's long-range policy.
The main lines of Sakharov's reasoning on convergence are set out
in Convergence of Communism and Capitalism — The Soviet View
and in Sakharov Speaks." In them Sakharov is concerned about the
annihilation of humanity, and therefore offers a "better alternative."
Then he divides present and future world developments into several
overlapping stages. In the first stage, "a growing ideological struggle
in the socialist countries between Stalinist and Maoist forces, on the
one hand, and the realistic forces of leftist Leninist Communist (and
leftist Westerners), on the other, will lead to a deep ideological split
on an international, national and intraparty scale." According to
Sakharov, "In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, this
process will lead first to a multiparty system (here and there) and to
acute ideological struggle and discussions, and then to the ideological
victory of the realists, affirming the policy of increasing peaceful co-
existence, strengthen-
234 NEW LIES FOR OLD
ing democracy, and expanding economic reforms (1960-1980)."^ The
dates "reflect the most optimistic unrolling of events."
Sakharov continues, "In the second stage, persistent demands for
social progress and peaceful co-existence in the United States and
other capitalist countries, and pressure exerted by the example of the
socialist countries and by internal progressive forces {the working
class and the intelligentsia), will lead to the victory of the leftist
reformist wing of the bourgeoisie, which will begin to implement a
programme of rapprochement (convergence) with socialism, i.e.,
social progress, peaceful co-existence, and collaboration with
socialism on a world scale and changes in the structure of ownership.
This phase includes an expanded role for the intelligentsia and an
attack on the forces of racism and militarism ( 1 972-85).
"In the third stage, the Soviet Union and the United States, having
overcome their alienation, solve the problem of saving the poorer half
of the world. ... At the same time disarmament will proceed (1972-90).
"In the fourth stage, the socialist convergence will reduce differ-
ences in social structure, promote intellectual freedom, science, and
economic progress, and lead to the creation of a world government
and the smoothing of national contradictions (1980-2000)."
There can be no criticism of Sakharov for his concern over the
possibility of nuclear conflict. What is disturbing is that his reasoning
on convergence goes further than the Western theories. He envisages
convergence on communist terms at the expense of the West. From his
reasoning it is obvious that he accepts the Sino-Soviet split as genuine
in itself and as a genuine catalyst for the realignment of world forces.
To understand the true meaning of Sakharov's statements, his role
must be examined in the light of Shelepin's report and the long-range
policy adopted in 1958-60, the period in which Sakharov began to
emerge as a public figure in the Soviet Union. As a leading
spokesman of the so-called-dissident movement, he has all the ap-
pearances of a political provocateur. If he were a genuine dissenter, he
would not have had the opportunities he has had to make contact with
Western friends and colleagues. Furthermore, as an academician
working in the nuclear field, he would have enjoyed access at the
policymaking level to debates on nuclear strategy at the
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 235
time when the new long-range pohcy and the use of disinformation
were being launched. He would have known the true state of Sino-
Soviet relations in the nuclear, as in other, fields. Given the all-
embracing character of the disinformation program, any pronounce-
ment by a Soviet scientist on strategic issues must be regarded as
having been made on the regime's instructions.
Moreover, Sakharov would have known that liberalization in the
Soviet Union would eventually come not in the way he suggests, as a
spontaneous development, but in accordance with a blueprint worked
out carefully in advance by the regime. If he had been a genuine
dissenter, he would have exposed the truth. That he has not done so
points to the conclusion that he is acting secretly as a spokesman for
the regime chosen for the task because of the natural strength of his
appeal to Western scientists and liberals.
Sakharov predicts changes in the Soviet Union and other socialist
countries. These changes will be revealed in the appearance of a
"multiparty system here and there" and in ideological discussions
between "Stalinists" and "realists," or "Leninists." In this struggle
Sakharov predicts victory for the reahsts (the Leninists) who, accord-
ing to him, will affirm the "policy of increasing peaceful coexistence,
strengthening democracy, and expanding economic reforms." These
future changes in the Soviet system are seen by Sakharov as a
continuation of present political developments and economic reforms.
Reading Sakharov's predictions as the product of Soviet disinfor-
mation, the conclusion can be drawn that some of his pronouncements
reflect the possible future course of communist actions and their
timing. Further political and economic reforms are therefore to be
expected in the bloc, and they will again be used for disinformation
purposes. These reforms will display an alleged "increase in
democracy" and other superficial resemblances to Western systems
and will be accompanied by further demonstrations of alleged Sino-
Soviet conflict. From 1980 onward an "expansion of democracy" and
the appearance of a so-called multiparty system can be expected in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere in the bloc. This would be the logical
continuation and culmination of the disinformation of the two
previous decades and would represent the implementation inside the
bloc of the final phase of the long-range policy. In this phase some of
the current "dissidents" and "liberals," Hke
236 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Sakharov himself in the Soviet Union and Dubcek in Czechoslova-
kia — leaders who are allegedly persecuted by their regimes — can be
expected to become the leaders of new "democratic parties" in their
countries. Naturally they will remain under the secret guidance and
control of their communist parties, and their emergence as the leaders
of new parties will be regarded in the West as sensational new
evidence of a true liberalization of communist regimes and as a new
basis for the practical realization of convergence between the two
systems, as predicted by Sakharov.
Reading Sakharov's writings as disinformation and decoding his
messages in that light, it can be predicted that the communist bloc will
go further in its exploitation of the fictitious Sino-Soviet split,
carrying it forward to a formal (but fictitious) break in diplomatic
relations and more impressive hostilities than have so far occurred on
the Sino-Soviet borders. This may well generate realignments of
international forces that will be detrimental to Western interests and
favorable to the long-range policy of the bloc.
Sakharov predicts changes in the West, particularly in the United
States, "under pressure of the sociahst states and the internal, pro-
gressive forces" in the US and other Western countries. "The leftist
reformist wing of the bourgeoisie" will win and will "begin to
implement a program of rapprochement (convergence)" with
sociahsm. Social progress and changes in the structure of ownership
will be introduced. A "leftist reformist" element will also start
collaboration with sociahsm on a world scale. Forced changes in the
political and military structure will occur. During the second phase
(1972-85), the role of the intelligentsia will be expanded and "an
attack on the forces of racism and militarism" will be made.
Again, reading Sakharov's predictions as disinformation, it can be
deduced that the bloc and its political and ideological allies plan
actions in the future to secure actual changes in the West of a kind that
Sakharov describes. The purpose of these actions will be to achieve
political systems in the West approaching closer to the communist
model. The changes planned for the communist system will be
deceptive and fictitious; those planned for the West will be real and
actual. That is the meaning of convergence in communist language.
It is noticeable and disturbing that Sakharov, a so-called dissident
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 237
Soviet intellectual, in his references to US "racism and militarism" not
only uses the normal language of communist propagandists in
referring to the present American system, but identifies himself with
the substance of long-range communist projections for the
exploitation of these issues and appears to be working for their
fulfillment.
The most striking point about Sakharov's reasoning is his choice of
dates, namely 1960-80, when he predicts the expansion of political
democracy and economic reform in the socialist countries; and 1972-
85, when he predicts forced changes in the US political and military
structure.^ That is to say, his dates roughly coincide with the dates of
the adoption of the new long-range bloc poHcy in 1958-60 and the
date for the inception of its final phase, roughly in 1980. This is no
fortuitous coincidence, since Sakharov, the secret spokesman of the
communist strategists and the secret advocate of their long-range
policy, is seeking to inspire and to promote trends in Western thinking
on convergence that will coincide with their designs. Read as
disinformation and decoded, his predictions of convergence are
predictions of the victory of the long-range policy of the bloc and the
surrender of the West with the minimum of resistance. That is the true
meaning of his "most optimistic unrolling of events."
In essence, Sakharov's concept of convergence predicts the very
outcome for the West about which the author of this book wishes to
convey a warning. Sakharov sees the outcome as "optimistic" and the
result of spontaneous developments like the Sino-Soviet split and
"political and economic reforms" in communist countries. He desires
this outcome. The purpose of this book is to explain its dangers for the
West because it would not be spontaneous; it would be the result of
the implementation of the 1958-60 bloc policy in which calculated use
is made of fictitious splits and fraudulent evolution and reform
promoted with the witting or unwitting help of Soviet scientists and
intellectuals like Sakharov and others.
The official communist attitude toward convergence theories is
described in Convergence of Communism and Capitalism — The
Soviet View. According to this book the Soviets attack convergence
theories as expressed both by Western experts and by Sakharov. The
Soviet leaders describe convergence as an "insidious form of Western
subversion" and as a "new 'positive' form of anti-communism."
238 NEW LIES EOR OLD
The Soviets say that the dissemination of ideas of convergence is
elevated by the Western countries "to the level of government policy."
In the Soviet view, convergence theories have two aims: One is to
"renovate" capitalism; the second is to portray "a softening or
weakening of communism." In other words, the Soviets see the first
aim as to defend capitalism and the second as an effort to subvert
communism. The Soviets single out for criticism theories of "bridge-
building" and theories of "industrial" and "post-industrial" society and
their proponents, Fourastie, Aron, Galbraith, Mar-cuse, Kahn,
Brzezinski, Leonhard, Bell, and others. Bell is singled out for his
theories on the similarities in the changes in the armed forces of
opposing systems under the influence of the scientific-technological
revolution. The Soviets show concern at the effects of convergence
theories on Soviet youth and scientists and other intellectuals.
Sakharov is given as an example of someone who has fallen under the
spell of Western convergence theories and has later "advanced his
own theories of rapprochement between the two systems." Another
physicist, Kapitsa, is mentioned as someone who "subscribed to a
number of the views voiced by Sakharov."^
There is a chapter in Convergence of Communism and Capital-
ism — The Soviet View with the intriguing title "Moscow's Use of
Convergence for Its Own Ends." The authors say that the Soviet
leaders find the concept of convergence useful as the point of depar-
ture "for the 'rejuvenation' of ideological education in the Soviet
Union." Party workers concerned with doctrine and ideology are
urged to refute "the new myths of imperialist propaganda" and to raise
"to higher levels understanding of the 'richness and eternal validity' of
Marxism-Leninism." The authors say that convergence theories
provide a "foil against which to stimulate and add . . . zest" to Soviet
ideological campaigns. More importantly, they provide "a cutting
edge" to Moscow's contention that "the USSR continues under siege
by an implacable and dangerous enemy despite the Soviet claims that
'capitalist encirclement' is a thing of the past and . . . that the balance
of world forces has irrevocably shifted in favor of the USSR."
American propaganda and intelligence agencies and the US em-
bassy in Moscow have all been attacked by the KGB in the Soviet
press for spreading ideas on convergence and for using tourism and
scientific and technological exchanges for the purpose of sub-
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 239
verting Soviet citizens, especially scientists and young people. This
"threat" to the security of the Soviet system has been exploited to
justify the intensification by the regime of its controls over Soviet
society. The Soviet attack on convergence has been linked with the
attacks on Ukrainian nationalists, Zionists, and religious groups in the
Soviet Union and abroad. According to the authors, Soviet analysts
distinguish, among the proponents of convergence theories, between
"enemies," who use the concept of convergence for subversive
purposes, and "idealists," who include prominent scientists, partisans
of peace, and "opponents of militarism." The "idealists," among whom
Professor Galbraith figures prominently, are seen by the Soviets as
"offering promising targets" for Soviet influence.
Since the authors of Convergence of Communism and Capitalism —
The Soviet View do not take into account either the use made of
disinformation in the past or the adoption of the new bloc policy in
1958-60 or the new political and disinformation role assigned to
Soviet scientists at that time, their explanation of the use of
convergence theories in current Soviet policy is incomplete. The real
meaning of attacks on convergence by the Soviet leaders can be
understood more fully in the light of the historical background, the
analysis of Sakharov's statements on convergence given above, and
the conclusion that he acts as a channel for Soviet disinformation and
influence.
From the mid-1960s onward the communist regimes stepped up the
ideological indoctrination of their own populations in preparation for
entry into the final phase of policy in about 1980. There was a
renewed campaign of ideological and militaristic indoctrination in the
Soviet Union in 1966 — 67 at the same time as, and similar in content
to, the Cultural Revolution in China and the attack on
"counterrevolution" in Czechoslovakia in 1968. While intensifying
their own program of indoctrination, the communist leaders sought to
protect their populations from the negative influence of Western ideas
and the spillover of their own disinformation. In helping to shape
Western convergence theories, they had cast a potential boomerang
against the West and took steps to prevent it rebounding on their own
people. At the same time, it offered them good opportunities "to
expose and attack the ideological subversion and tricks of Western
propaganda." There was nothing new in this technique. It was a
typical instance of political provoca-
240 NEW LIES FOR OLD
tion. At the same time as the ideas of the Change of Signposts
movement were shaped by Soviet disinformation in the 1920s, they
were attacked by Soviet propagandists as a Western ideological
subversion. The movement was actively exploited for the suppression
of internal opposition. The difference between then and now is in the
broader scope and greater sophistication of such provocations and the
fact that they are practiced by the whole communist bloc.
Soviet attacks on convergence, therefore, have, first, a defensive
and domestic purpose. Second, they serve the strategic objectives of
foreign policy. They help to build up belief in these theories in the
West as a sound and effective weapon for dealing with the communist
challenge. The communist strategists hope and expect that their
criticisms of convergence will be interpreted in the West as evidence
of their own concern at the efficacy and impact of such theories on
their own regimes and on their scientists in particular. They intend
that such criticisms should induce Western propagandists to continue
and intensify their efforts to advance convergence theories rather than
divert their efforts to less irrational and potentially more dangerous
themes.
Third, Soviet criticism of Sakharov and convergence may be seen
as a Soviet effort to build up the credibility in the West of Sakharov
and his like as genuine opponents and martyrs of the current Soviet
system who are expressing genuine dissent. By disguising convergence
as an "opposition" doctrine, the Soviets can gain greater strategic
impact in the West for their concept of convergence — that is to say, to
have convergence on their terms.
In the light of the 1958-60 bloc policy and the use of disinforma-
tion to support it, it can be seen that notions of common interest and
convergence have not developed spontaneously in the West, but are
the reflections and results of communist disinformation operations
whose influence has unwittingly been absorbed by Western exponents
of these ideas. Convergence theories are unrealistic because they lack
foundations. The impressions that the influence of ideology is
declining, that the Soviet Union is evolving from an ideological into a
conventional national state, that there is a struggle between the Soviet
Union and Communist China, and that the communist bloc is
disintegrating are all false. These impressions are the product of bloc
disinformation operations that have
THE "DISSIDENT" MOVEMENT 241
successfully hidden the true situation. Since 1958-60, communist
ideology in the communist countries has been revived, restored, and
intensified; the communist bureaucracy has been given a new,
constructive purpose; real and effective, but secret, coordination
between the communist countries, especially between the Soviet
Union and China, has been practiced on the basis of the long-range
policy. Whether intended to or not. Western convergence theories
effectively contribute to the successful fulfillment of this policy. They
promote detente, and thereby help the communist bloc to acquire
advanced technology from the West and to shift the balance of power
in communist favor. They provide an unsound basis for a rational
Western response to the increasing communist political and military
threat. They promote the political and ideological disarmament of the
West. They divert Western diplomatic effort from the reinforcement
of Western anticommunist alliances toward illusory and unreahstic
realignments with one or another communist state. They create
exaggerated expectations in the West about the possibilities of
accommodation with the communist world. They are laying a basis for
destroying Western morale and public confidence in those Western
statesmen, diplomats, and academics who have expounded theories
based on common interests and convergence and who will be exposed
as bankrupt prophets when the notion of convergence is exploded.
Such has been the success of the spurious notion of convergence in the
present phase of long-range policy that new Sakharovs and new
variations of convergence theory may confidently be expected to
appear in the third and final phase.
Objectives of Disinformation on "Dissidence"
The creation of a false, controlled opposition movement like the
dissident movement serves internal and external strategic purposes.
Internally it provides a vehicle for the eventual false liberalization of a
communist regime; it provokes some would-be opposition elements to
expose themselves to counteraction, and others are driven to
conformity or despair. Externally, "dissidents" can act as vehicles for
a variety of disinformation themes on the subject of the evolution of
the communist system. A well-advertised wave
242 NEW LIES FOR OLD
of persecution of dissidents, partly genuine and partly spurious,
generates Western sympathy for, and vulnerable alignments with,
those who are secret creatures of the regime. It sets the scene for an
eventual dramatic "liberalization" of the system by heightening the
contrast between neo-Stalinism and future "socialism with a human
face." It creates a cadre of figures who are well known in the West and
who can be used in the future as the leaders and supporters of a
"multiparty system" under communism. "Dissident" trade unions and
intellectuals can be used to promote solidarity with their Western
counterparts and engage them in joint campaigns for disarmament and
the reform of Western "military -industrial complexes." In the long run
the Western individuals and groups involved will face the choice of
admitting that their support for dissidents was mistaken or accepting
that communism has undergone a radical change, making
"convergence" an acceptable, and perhaps desirable, prospect.
21
The Eighth Disinformation Operation:
Continuing Eruocommunist
Contacts with the Soviets —
The New Interpretation of
Eurocommunism
IN THE mid-1970s a display of polemics between the CPSU on the
one hand and the French, Italian, Spanish, and to a lesser extent,
the British Communist parties on the other seemed to indicate the
emergence of a new brand of communism in Western Europe whose
salient characteristic was independence of the Soviet Union. The new
tendency came to be known as Eurocommunism.
The idea that Eurocommunism is a tactical and deceptive device
adopted by the major West European communist parties to improve
their electoral fortunes has already found expression in the West,
notably in the paper The Soviet Union and "Eurocommunism," by the
distinguished British scholar Professor Leonard Schapiro.' Schapiro's
paper also argues that, since Eurocommunism helps West European
communist parties electorally, it serves the long-term interests of the
Soviet Union. By drawing attention to this fact, the paper makes a
valuable contribution. Nevertheless, since it is based on the old
methodology, it accepts the differences between the CPSU and the
Eurocommunist parties as genuine and continues to see the CPSU as
striving vainly to reassert its hegemony over the European parties
concerned. Analysis of Eurocommunism in the light of the new
methodology strongly suggests that this is not so, that the
phenomenon represents a further extension of the strategic
disinformation program from bloc to nonbloc parties and follows a
pattern similar to earlier operations emphasising the national
independence of certain bloc parties. If so, several nonbloc communist
party leaders have been made full partners in a disinfor-
243
244 NEW LIES FOR OLD
mation operation in support of long-range communist policy and
international strategy. The new analysis of Eurocommunism, unlike the old.
illuminates the role that Eurocommunism may be expected to play in the
final phase of the policy in the 1980s when "democratization," on the pattern
of Czechoslovakia in 1968, is likely to be introduced on a broader scale in
Eastern Europe.
The Manifestations of Eurocommunism
The principal manifestations of Eurocommunism are set out in some detail
in Schapiro's paper. The characteristic tendencies exhibited by
Eurocommunist parties may be summarized as follows:
• A desire to demonstrate their emancipation from Soviet domination.
• A critical approach toward certain Soviet repressive policies, in partic-
ular violations of human rights and harassment of dissidents in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe.
• Rejection of the view that "proletarian internationalism" means that the
state interests of the Soviet Union have priority over the interests of the
international revolutionary communist movement.
• Assertion of the right of communist parties to follow their own revolu-
tionary policies even when they run counter to the Soviet Union's pursuit of
detente and economic links with the United States and Western Europe.
• Rejection of the view attributed to the CPSU that unity between
communists and socialists is only possible if socialists renounce their adher-
ence to "class collaboration": that is, for practical purposes, if they become
communists.
• Refusal to accede to alleged Soviet demands that they should denounce
the Chinese.
• Suggestions that an electoral victory by a communist party in Western
Europe would be contrary to Soviet interests.
• The abandonment of the quest for "dictatorship of the proletariat."
• The apparent evolution of Eurocommunist parties into responsible
national parties that, in contrast with the CPSU, accept existing parliamen-
tary institutions and embrace humanistic and democratic principles including
the preservation of "bourgeois freedoms" within a pluralist society.
• Condemnation of the use of terrorism by the radical left.
EUROCOMMUNISM 245
• Absence of the leaders of Eurocommunist parties from, or their non-
participation in, international gatherings organised by the CPSU.
• Restrictions on the participation of Soviet representatives at Eurocom-
munist gatherings.
• Rejection of existing military blocs and espousal of the concept of a
neutral, socialist Europe.
• The development of links with the Yugoslav and Romanian parties.
• The formation within some of the Eurocommunist parties of orthodox
splinter groups loyal to Moscow.
Since there has been some variation in the manner and extent to
which these general characteristics have been exhibited by the parties
concerned, some of the main points made by each of them
individually must be briefly mentioned.
The French Party
In May 1975 the party produced, in a "Declaration of Freedoms," a
disguised attack on Soviet restrictions on civil liberties. On September
4, 1975, L'Humanite insisted that the party was committed to
Western-style democracy. The following January the French
communist leader Marchais said that his party's divergences with the
CPSU over "socialist democracy" were so deep that he could not meet
Brezhnev; he did not attend the CPSU congress in the following
month, although his party was represented. Kirilenko, who attended
the French party congress shortly afterward representing the CPSU,
was denied the customary right to speak. In April
1976 the leading French communist Kanapa criticized the Soviet
Union for praising President Giscard's policy at a time when the
French party was fighting it. In May, when asked what he would do
about French nuclear missile submarines, Marchais refused to
comment. For the previous twenty-two years his party had continu-
ously condemned the concept of nuclear deterrence, in January
1977 the Soviet periodical Novoye Vremya launched an attack on
Jean Elleinstein, the deputy director of the party's research center.
Elleinstein, who had previously written an anti-Stalinist history of the
Soviet Union, published a new book, Le PC, in Paris
246 NEW LIES EOR OLD
in 1976 in which he said that there had been no Hberty in the Soviet
Union after 1922; he regretted that his own party had not followed the
Yugoslav example and had been slow in criticizing the lack of
freedom in the Soviet Union. Marchais did not attend the sixtieth
anniversary celebrations in Moscow in November 1977, but sent a
representative.
The Italian Party
In March 1975 Berlinguer criticized the pro-Moscow Portuguese
Communist party for its undemocratic Hne at the time of the abortive
right-wing countercoup in March 1975. In August, in reply to an
article by Konstantin Zarodov, the editor of the World Marxist
Review, implying criticism of the Italian party for seeking political
alliances rather than insurrection, L'Unita said that the modem Italian
situation called for an interweaving of democracy, socialism, and
liberty. In February 1976 Berlinguer said he wanted to see a socialist
society that guaranteed individual as well as collective rights. He also
said that his party was committed to Italy's existing "international
alliance." Four months later he said more specifically that Italy should
stay in the Atlantic Alliance, which guaranteed "socialism in liberty,
sociahsm of a pluralist sort."
The Spanish Party
In February 1976 the Spanish communist leader Carrillo absented
himself from the Twenty-fifth CPSU Congress. In the following
January the Spanish party weekly Mundo Obrero attacked East
European governments for their repression of "dissidents." In April
1977 Carrillo published a book, Eurocommunismo y Estado, in which
he maintained that, after sixty years of existence, the Soviet Union
was still not a "workers' democracy." He advocated a pluralist society
with "bourgeois freedoms" and a neutral, socialist Europe independent
of either of the two military blocs. He is also on record as saying that
United States bases would have to remain in Spain as long as Soviet
troops remained in Eastern Europe. The book was anathematized in
Novoye Vremya in June and July
EUROCOMMUNISM 247
1977. In response, Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria"), the veteran
Spanish communist who, together with seven other communist
leaders, had recently returned from many years of exile in the Soviet
Union, proposed a resolution rejecting Soviet criticisms of the party; it
was unanimously approved at an enlarged plenum of the party's
central committee. The resolution supported Eurocommunism as the
only way forward in the advanced countries. Carrillo attended the
sixtieth anniversary celebrations in Moscow in November 1977, but
was not invited to speak. He complained about this to Western
correspondents. In April 1978 the Spanish party dropped the term
"Leninist" from its title and incurred criticism in Pravda for so doing.
The British Party
In March 1976 the British communist leader McLennan told the
Twenty-fifth CPSU Congress that his party was working for a type of
socialism "which would guarantee personal freedom, plurality of
parties, independence of trade unions, religious freedom, freedom of
research [and of] cultural, artistic and scientific activities." In an
article in the Morning Star in the following July, McLennan aligned
himself with the Eurocommunist parties to the extent of denying that
there was any single leading communist party and stating that each
party should work out its own policy in its own country; no one else
could do this for them. In November the revised "British Road to
Socialism" was adopted as the party program; it advocated close
cooperation between the Communist and Labour parties. In 1976 a
group of hard-line opponents of Eurocommunism, under Sid French,
broke away from the party to form the "New Communist Party."
Joint Statements
To some extent Eurocommunist ideas were developed by the
Eurocommunist parties in open coordination with one another. For
example, in November 1975 the French and Italian parties issued a
joint statement after meetings in Rome supporting "hour-
248 NEW LIES FOR OLD
geois liberties, the plurality of political parties, the right to existence
and activity of opposition parties and alternation between the majority
and minority." Joint statements were made later by the Italian and
Spanish and by the Spanish and French parties that dropped the
commitment to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from their
programs. (The French party found it necessary to issue this statement
despite the fact that it had not used the term since 1966.) In March
1977 Marchais, Berlinguer, and Carrillo held a Eurocom-munist
summit in Madrid that endorsed Soviet foreign policy objectives but
pledged the participants domestically "to work within the framework
of political and social forces and to respect, guarantee and develop all
individual and collective freedoms."
The Soviet Attitude
Between 1974 and 1977 various articles by Ponomarev, head of the
International Department of the CPSU; Zagladin, his deputy; Zarodov,
the editor of the World Marxist Review; and others contained veiled
and open criticism of "modern compromisers" and "bourgeois
ideologists," meaning in fact Eurocommunists.
An article in the CPSU organ Partiynaya Zhizn' (no. 4, 1974),
described in Schapiro's paper as probably the first direct Soviet attack
on a West European communist party, criticized the leading Spanish
communist ideologist Azcarate for alleging that there was a
contradiction between the state interests of the socialist countries and
the interests of the revolutionary movement. He was further
denounced for alleging that peaceful coexistence helps to perpetuate
the status quo, for refusing to recognize that it serves better than cold
war to create favorable conditions for revolution, for criticizing the
Soviet Union, for opposing the projected international communist
conference on the grounds that it might lead to the setting up of a new
organizational center, and for stressing the independence of individual
communist parties rather than the overriding importance of
"proletarian internationalism."
On January 26, 1977, TASS dismissed Elleinstein's criticisms of
violations of human rights in the Soviet Union as anticommunist
propaganda. The Eurocommunist concept of a neutral, socialist
Europe was implicitly rejected in the Soviet journal Novoye Vremya;
the Soviets insisted in 1975 and 1976 that communist
EUROCOMMUNISM 249
parties should characterize NATO as aggressive and the Warsaw Pact as
defensive.
The Yugoslavs and Romanians
To some extent, the Yugoslavs and Romanians identified themselves with
the Eurocommunists. For example, it is alleged that in the course of
discussions in 1974 and 1975 on the convening of an international
communist conference the Yugoslavs, followed by a number of West
European communist parties, raised a number of questions about "proletarian
internationalism." In the same period Romania openly defended the right of
communist parties to independence. In 1975 both Yugoslavia and Romania
backed the concept of a neutral, socialist Europe, opposed military blocs in
general, and refused to characterize NATO as aggressive and the Warsaw
Pact as defensive. The Romanian and Spanish parties in particular enjoyed
close relations.
The New Analysis
There are various similarities between Eurocommunism and the
disinformation operations already described which support the conclusion
that it is a logical extension of the disinformation program intended to meet
the requirements of communist strategy for Europe. These similarities can be
seen:
• In the manner in which the alleged differences between the Soviet and
Eurocommunist parties became known to the West.
• In the fact that these differences are based on the artificial revival of
issues settled between the communist leaders in 1957-60 and are inconsistent
with the evidence of the adoption of a long-range communist policy and
strategy.
• In the exploitation of these issues to project a false image of the
evolution of the Eurocommunist parties into independent, national parties
with a view to promoting the success of their tactics, namely, forming united
fronts with sociahst and other parties.
• In the numerous inconsistencies in the arguments and polemics used
250 NEW LIES FOR OLD
by Eurocommunist leaders in different contexts; and in the contrasts be-
tween their words and their deeds, especially in their continuing contacts
with Soviet and other bloc leaders which are evidence not of disputes,
but of collaboration in a joint strategy.
The Emergence of Eurocommunism
The evolution of the Eurocommunist parties toward "independence"
followed the adoption of the long-range policy. The Euro-communist
parties were among the eighty-one parties that signed the Manifesto of
November 1960. When the Sino-Soviet split developed publicly in
1963, these parties, while avoiding condemnation of the Chinese,
aligned themselves informally with Moscow, thereby identifying
themselves with the moderate brand of Soviet communism rather than
the militant, doctrinaire Chinese brand. In so doing they boosted the
moderate image they needed to play their part in overall communist
strategy for Europe, which entailed the pursuit of united fronts with
socialist parties. In 1 965 and 1 967 the Eurocommunist parties
attended international communist conferences at Prague and Karlovy
Vary in Czechoslovakia. In 1968, in contrast with their supine
behavior over the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, they
pubhcly expressed their disapproval of the Warsaw Pact intervention
in Czechoslovakia, thereby demonstrating their independence of the
Soviet Union. In the light of their attendance at the Prague and
Karlovy Vary conferences, it is likely that the Eurocommunist parties'
alignment with the Dub-cek regime was planned and agreed to in
advance as part of communist strategy for Western Europe. Allegedly
the disagreements between the Soviet and Eurocommunist parties
were discussed at the world conference of communist parties in 1969.
It was at this conference that there was "the first clear indication that
the CPSU could no longer assert its traditional hegemony over the
world communist movement."^
As in the case of the alleged differences between communist parties
of the bloc, this "indication," and others which followed it up to 1973,
came from veiled or oblique mutual criticism in the party newspapers
or from retrospective revelations by communists about debates
between parties carried on behind closed doors.
EUROCOMMUNISM 251
Early in 1974 came the direct CPSU attack on Azcarate, followed by
open polemics in the press of the CPSU and the Eurocommunist
parties and retrospective evidence of disagreements at international
communist gatherings in Warsaw in 1974 and Budapest in 1975, and
to a lesser extent in Tihany (Hungary) in 1976. Finally, at the meeting
of European communist parties in East Berlin in June 1976, "the full
measure of the conflict between the CPSU and the 'Eurocommunist'
parties . . . was brought into the open."'* The validity of the earlier
evidence of disagreements was confirmed. As in the previous
disinformation operations, the original evidence and the confirmation
of disagreements came from communist sources.
The Revival of Dead Issues
Among the issues that allegedly divided the Eurocommunist parties
from the CPSU were the continued attempts by the Soviets to
dominate other communist parties, to insist that they should faithfully
copy the Soviet example, and to demand that, in the name of
international proletarian solidarity, priority should be given by all
communist parties to defending the interests of the Soviet Union.
These issues were in fact settled in 1957, largely on Soviet initiative.
Stalinist attempts to dominate other parties were rejected and
condemned. Relations between parties, inside and outside the bloc,
were reestablished on a Leninist basis of equahty, trust, cooperation,
and joint participation in the effort to achieve communist objectives.
The Eurocommunist parties attended the international meetings
between 1957 and 1960 at which these issues were thrashed out and
settled. All of them, by signing the Eighty-one-party Manifesto,
committed themselves to the long-range policy and strategy that had
been worked out with their active help.
Against this background it is easy to see that the revival by the
Eurocommunists in the 1970s of the dead issue of the Stalinist
concept of relations between communist parties was artificial, calcu-
lated, contrived, and agreed with the Soviets for the purposes of
strategic disinformation in the same way as other dead issues were
revived in other disinformation operations.
252 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Exploitation of the "Independent" Image of
Euro communist Parties
The revival of dead issues helped to promote the idea that the
Eurocommunist parties were independent of the CPSU. The same
purpose was served by suggesting that there were disagreements with
the Soviet Union over the pursuit of united front tactics, especially by
the Italian party, and that there was a conflict between the interests of
Soviet diplomacy in improving relations with European governments
and the interests of communist parties in acquiring power by legal
means. Both suggestions were false, but both helped to emphasize
Eurocommunist independence of the Soviet Union.
United front tactics were among the variety of tactics approved by
the Eighty-one-Party Congress of November 1960. In his report of
January 6, 1961, Khrushchev called on the communist parties to
"synchronize their watches." Three months later, Suslov, a major
communist strategist, led the Soviet delegation to the Sixth Italian
Party Congress. There he urged the adoption of a moderate policy to
achieve a broad, national democratic front. There was, of course,
nothing new or unorthodox about united front tactics. They were
specifically approved by the Comintern as long ago as 1935.
Equally there was and is no conflict between Soviet detente
diplomacy and communist party activity. Friendly relations between
the Soviet and Western governments favor the growth of Western
communist parties. Detente diplomacy and united front tactics are
complementary elements in a single communist strategy. Detente
creates favorable conditions for the formation of united fronts.
Ponomarev, head of the CPSU's International Department, made the
point clearly in 1974 when he wrote that detente had the effect of
neutralizing anticommunism within the social democratic parties, of
undermining the militaristic preparations of the imperialist powers,
and of strengthening the "realistically minded elements within the
bourgeois camp."
The harassment of dissidents in the Soviet Union and the denun-
ciations of it by Eurocommunists are both calculated tactics. The
conspicuous harassment of dissidents has its own strategic purpose,
discussed elsewhere. Criticism of it by the Eurocommunists helps
them to establish their credentials as genuine converts to democratic
principles.
EUROCOMMUNISM 253
The Inconsistencies in Eurocommunism
There are numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in the
statements and actions of "Eurocommunist" leaders. As observers
like Schapiro have pointed out, the alleged conversion of
Eurocom-munists to democratic principles is inconsistent with the
revolutionary programs they continue to advocate and the means
by which they seek to implement them. Schapiro's paper quotes
some telling statements by Eurocommunists on the use of force.
For example, the Spanish delegate at the Tihany conference in
May 1976, when asked whether the Spanish working class would
have to resort to revolutionary violence, said that "abolishing a
regime even by democratic means implies the use of force."
Carrillo wrote in his book: "The new ideas also mean that the
party is not an army, although it is able to become one if historical
conditions, the violence of the ruling classes, leave no
alternative." In addition he mentioned that party control over the
communications media is an essential requirement, which gives
some idea of the kind of democracy he had in mind. Schapiro's
paper also quotes a report in the London Daily Telegraph of
January 26, 1976, that Spanish communists had been trained in
the Soviet Union and were being trained in Romania in the
techniques of urban guerrilla warfare.
Even in Britain the party's aim of a "revolutionary transition to
Socialism" is to be achieved by a combination of a legislative
program with "mass extraparliamentary struggles" and the use of
force against anyone in the right wing who attempts a coup d'etat.
The theme can perhaps be developed further in the case of Italy
with the suggestion that the denunciation by the Italian party of
the violence of the radical left is yet another deceptive tactic. In a
paper titled Terrorism: International Dimensions, by Paul Wil-
kinson, attention is drawn to the Soviet interest in direct or
indirect support of terrorist movements.^ There is a strong
possibility that terrorism in Italy is backed and supported by
international communism in parallel and in coordination with the
use of legal, electoral, and parliamentary tactics by the Italian
communist party. The object of violence is to create chaos and
anarchy, to impose additional strains on ruHng democratic parties,
to eliminate their ablest leaders, to force them to resort to
undemocratic measures, and to demonstrate to the public their
inability to maintain law and order, leaving the field open to the
legal communist party to present itself as
254 NEW LIES EOR OLD
the only effective alternative force.
Doctrinal justification for the use of terrorism is to be found in Left-
Wing Communism — An Infantile Disorder, in which Lenin wrote:
"All these fields of social life are . . . filled with inflammable material
and offer . . . many excuses for [starting] conflicts and crises, for
aggravating the class struggle. We do not and cannot know which
spark out of the mass of sparks which are presently being strewn in
every country under the influence of the worldwide economic and
political crisis will prove to be capable of setting the fire alight, in the
sense of . . . rousing the masses and we are obliged therefore with our
communist principles to set about 'working over' every possible, even
the oldest [and] apparently most hopeless field of action, since we
otherwise will not be equal to the task, will not be thorough, will not
possess every type of weapon.. . ." More specific was Shelepin's
instruction to the Soviet intelligence service in 1959 to the effect that
the service and its "illegals" should prepare and carry out operations
that would destabilize the main Western countries and create chaos,
which could be exploited by the local communist parties to their
advantage.
Schapiro's paper rightly concludes that no rupture between Moscow
and a Eurocommunist party has taken place and none is likely. Despite
the polemics, the Eurocommunist parties have continued by and large
to give their support to Soviet foreign policy objectives. In the same
way the Soviet Union and the communist bloc in general have
continued to support the international communist movement,
including the Eurocommunist parties, in innumerable practical ways.
As Schapiro points out, there is no substantial evidence that there has
been any disruption of the banking and commercial channels through
which the Eurocommunist parties have traditionally been financed
from Moscow. Since the mutual criticisms between the Soviet and
Eurocommunist parties are mutually agreed upon between the leaders,
there is no reason why the Soviets should wish to disrupt these
channels. Nor, since all the eighty-one parties that signed the
Manifesto of November 1960 are pursuing a common long-range
policy, is there any need for Moscow to seek to attach strings to
whatever financial or other aid it gives them.
The anomalies in the adoption of Eurocommunism by Spanish
communist leaders of the Stalinist generation, like Carrillo and
EUROCOMMUNISM 255
Ibarruri, are striking. At the enlarged Spanish party plenum in 1977
the resolution endorsing Eurocommunism was proposed by none other
than Ibarruri, who had spent much of her life in the Soviet Union, who
had lost a son at Stalingrad, who had been eulogized in Novoye
Vremya in May 1977, and who had earlier described Eurocommunism
as "nonsense." A few months after the plenum, she was back in
Moscow for the sixtieth anniversary celebrations. The anomaly can be
explained if it is remembered that she also was an active participant in
the formulation of the long-range policy in 1957-60.
The enthusiastic support given to Eurocommunism by the Roma-
nian party is not a little curious, given the espousal of "democratic
liberties" by the Eurocommunists and the repressive internal practices
of the Romanian regime. No less odd, in conventional terms, was the
apparently cordial meeting between Tito and Brezhnev on the eve of
the European communist conference in East Berlin in June 1976 and
the award of a Soviet decoration to Tito during a visit to Moscow in
the following year despite his support of Eurocommunism.^ The
anomalies disappear if Eurocommunism is seen as a further strategic
disinformation operation. Carrillo's declarations of independence of
the Soviet Union are then seen to be as spurious as the Romanians'
and modeled on them. Both the Romanian and Yugoslav leaders have
had an important role to play in supporting and coordinating the
Eurocommunist movement. If accurate, the report on Romanian
training of Spanish communists in urban guerrilla warfare is a further
illustration of Romania's role in a coordinated bloc effort to assist the
Eurocommunist parties.
Continuing Eurocommunist Contacts with the Soviets
The development of "differences" between the CPSU and the
Eurocommunist parties has not, except in a few well-publicized
instances, impeded the normal exchanges of visits between Soviet and
Eurocommunist party delegations. Berlinguer attended the Twenty-
fifth CPSU Congress in March 1976. He returned to Moscow for the
sixtieth anniversary celebrations in November 1977 and was received
in private audience by Brezhnev despite his com-
256 NEW LIES FOR OLD
mitment to pluralist democracy and the acceptance of continuing
Italian membership in NATO.
Although Carrillo absented himself from the Twenty-fifth CPSU
Congress, Ibarruri attended it. After the publication of Carrillo's book
in April 1977, a CPSU delegation, led by the editor of Pravda, visited
him, allegedly to work out some sort of truce. Carrillo was not afraid
to return to Moscow for the sixtieth anniversary celebrations in
November. The fact that he was present at the celebrations of the
party he was purporting to criticize carries far more weight than his
well-publicized complaints to Western journalists that he was not
allowed to speak. Ibarruri spent a vacation in the Soviet Union in
February 1979.
Marchais, the leader of the French party, stayed away from both the
Twenty-fifth CPSU Congress and the sixtieth anniversary celebrations
in November 1977, but on both occasions his party was represented,
and at the European communist conference in East Berlin in June
1976 Marchais was present in person. In the course of 1977 the
alliance between the French communist and socialist parties
foundered as a result of communist intransigence. On October 2,
Pravda published an article that was extravagant in its praise of
Marchais's policy. Thereafter Marchais increasingly withdrew from
the Eurocommunist camp to the extent of aligning the French party
with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan at the end of 1979.
The ease and impunity with which Marchais has been able to lead
the French party into and out of Eurocommunism is one of the more
startling incongruities pointing to the contrived nature of the
movement. Various explanations have been put forward: One is that
the CPSU opposed the French party's electoral alliance with the
socialists all along and that when Marchais, presumably acting
independently, saw fit to break off the alliance, the Soviets were ready
to welcome him back into the fold; other explanations suggest that
from late 1977 onward the Soviets belatedly used either financial or
blackmail pressure to bring Marchais back to heel. Both these
explanations are based on an outdated model of the relationship
between the leaders of the CPSU and other communist parties; both
imply the existence of centrifugal forces in the movement that
disappeared with the adoption of the common long-range policy in
1957-60. This provided a firm ideological foundation
EUROCOMMUNISM 257
for a disciplined, coordinated Leninist revolutionary movement ex-
perienced enough to be able to reap the strategic and tactical advan-
tages to be gained from a display of spurious differences. The new
methodology sees the termination of the alliance with the socialists in
France as a temporary measure decided on jointly between the Soviet
and French communist leaders in the interests of communist strategy
for Europe as a whole. The decision may well be related to the timing
of the beginning of the final phase of long-range policy, when all the
elements in communist strategy for Europe will be brought into play
together. The present interpretation perhaps provides an explanation
of the fact that, despite the breakup of the alliance, communist
ministers were included in the government formed after the elections
in 1981.
The New Interpretation of Eurocommunism
Since the adoption of the long-range policy in 1960, a series of
regional communist conferences can be traced that dealt with com-
munist strategy in Europe. Of particular importance were those in
Prague and Moscow in October 1965 and in Karlovy Vary in 1967,
the year before the Prague spring. The Eurocommunist parties were
represented at these conferences, which discussed the parties' appeal
to socialist, Catholic, and other Christian forces and the creation of a
Europe free of military blocs. In other words, the parties were
seeking to broaden the basis of their united front tactics, and at the
same time were echoing the call for a Europe free of military blocs
issued at the bloc summit conference in Bucharest the year before. The
carefully prepared "Prague spring" of the following year, the
deliberate association of the West European communist parties with it,
and their criticism of the Warsaw Pact intervention helped the
European parties to shed the stigma that was attached to them as a
result of the events in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and Hungary in 1956; it
gave a powerful boost to their pursuit of united front tactics.
What was new in this situation was not the use of united front
tactics (the 1965 Prague conference was held in celebration of the
thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of united front tactics by the
Comintern), but the coordinated support given to them
258 NEW LIES FOR OLD
by bloc strategic disinformation on Czechoslovak "democratization."
If the systematic disinformation about differences between the
leaders of different communist parties is stripped away, the pattern of
coordination between them in knitting together the various strands in
their common strategy for Europe becomes clear. A series of
preparatory conferences was held before the meeting of European
communist parties in East Berlin in June 1976. The series included a
preparatory session in Budapest in December 1974 and a conference at
Tihany in May 1976. Devlin noted that after the Budapest meeting "a
curtain of official secrecy descended over the proceedings."^ But a
detailed account of the Tihany meeting was eventually published four
months later in Problems of Peace and Socialism. The account
reflected very little discussion of "Euro-communist" issues. The
closing speech was delivered by Zarodov, who "argued at length the
strength which derives from unity and coordination of revolutionary
action — a view with which the overwhelming majority of the parties
represented agreed."'" The old methodology assumes {and has
assumed since 1960) that the differences between communist parties
are real and that the talk of coordination between them is so much
bluster intended to cover up the differences. The new methodology
argues that the differences are spurious and are designed to cover up
the coordination, which is real and which includes agreement to
"disagree" for tactical and strategic purposes.
As Tito and Kardelj put it, it is actions, not words, that count; or, as
Rumyantsev wrote in Problems of Peace and Socialism, statements
should be evaluated in terms of "class analysis."" The polemics
between the Soviet and Eurocommunist leaders should therefore be
read not as propaganda, but as disinformation intended to help the
achievement of strategic or tactical objectives. The point can be
illustrated by Berlinguer's statement on television, which was
broadcast five days before the elections in June 1976, that Italy should
stay in the Atlantic Alliance. The pattern shows up clearly in the
Spanish case also. The Eurocommunist summit meeting of French,
Italian, and Spanish leaders was held in Madrid in March 1977. One
month later the decision was taken to legahze the Spanish party, and in
the same month Carrillo published Eurocommunismo y Estado. Two
months later elections were held for the new Spanish
EUROCOMMUNISM 259
Chamber of Deputies. If the Spaniards went further in their "anti-
Sovietism" than the other Euro communist parties, this was because
they had been deeply compromised by their treatment of sociahsts,
anarchists, and others during the Spanish Civil War and needed
urgently to refurbish their image if they were to acquire legal status,
gain representation in parliament, and successfully pursue an alliance
with the socialists.
Confirmation of the tactical nature of protestations by Eurocom-
munists of their conversion to democracy is to be found in a speech
made in February 1976 by Dorofeyev, a leading Soviet expert on
Italian affairs. Dorofeyev justified the Italian party's advocacy of
certain specific freedoms on the grounds that it was intended solely as
a means of winning over the Italian petty bourgeoisie. He explained
that in reality the proletariat interpreted freedom quite differently from
its temporary allies, and that consequently there was no need to be
alarmed by changes of this kind in the programs of communist parties,
which maintained a consistently revolutionary position.'^
Lenin advised the use of moderate language to avoid frightening the
bourgeoisie. It was with such considerations in mind that Euro-
communist parties dropped the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and in
the case of the Spanish party, even the word "Leninist" from its title.
In dropping the "dictatorship of the proletariat," the Eurocommunist
parties were following the example of the CPSU, which did so in
1961, also to improve its image.
The Possible Adverse Effects on International Communism
Real disputes between the leaders of bloc and nonbloc parties
would have a damaging effect on the international communist move-
ment. Active collaboration between them in a disinformation opera-
tion based on false disputes serves to cement their working relation-
ships; they can but enjoy together their success in fooling outside
observers.
Given that dissident movements in the communist bloc are under
the control of the security services, neither the movements themselves
nor Eurocommunist support for them represent any threat to the
security of communist regimes. Potential adverse effects of
160 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Eurocommunist ideas on the membership of bloc parties that are not
privy to disinformation operations are no doubt neutralized by secret
party letters and briefings. As far as the East European general public
is concerned, it can be protected from contamination by a
combination of press censorship, intensified ideological work, and the
dismissal of allegations of violations of human rights as Western
bourgeois propaganda. In any case, given that the Euro-communist
dispute is a planned and controlled dispute, the appearance of adverse
effects on either side of the iron curtain can be swiftly countered by
damping down or dropping the dispute altogether.
Senior members of the Eurocommunist parties no doubt appreciate
the concrete tactical and strategic dividends to be derived from the
exchange of criticism with the Soviet Union and realize that no
sacrifice of communist principles is entailed. Nevertheless, the
formation of a few pro-Moscow splinter groups might be held to be
damaging to the Eurocommunist parties. Taking a long-term view,
this is not necessarily so and the arguments that follow apply equally
to the formation of pro-Chinese splinter groups as a result of the Sino-
Soviet split.
In some cases the formation of splinter groups may have been
controlled. For example, the expulsion from the Spanish party in 1970
of a group of Stalinists who later formed the Spanish Communist
Workers Party under Enrique Lister might have been part of the
forward planning for Eurocommunism. In other cases splinter groups
may have resulted from the spontaneous reaction of hardcore rank and
file elements who were not initiated into high-level communist
strategy. Such groups tend to contain the more militant strain of
revolutionary. Even if they are involved in more or less violent
disputes with one another or with the principal communist party, they
remain under the influence of one or another member of the
communist bloc, and not of any pro-Western or social democratic
party. They provide a reserve of organized militants whose hour may
come with a future shift in the communist line and the abandonment
of parliamentary united front tactics.
For Soviet leaders, untroubled as they are by electoral consider-
ations, the temporary loss to Soviet international prestige entailed by
Eurocommunist criticisms of their system is a small price to pay for
the actual and potential strategic and tactical gains stemming
EUROCOMMUNISM 261
from the improvement in the image and influence of the European
communist parties.
Implications for Western Propaganda
The identification of Eurocommunism as a disinformation operation
has obvious implications for Western policies and propaganda
concerned with communism. Ideas of exacerbating friction between
the leaders of the bloc and Eurocommunist parties are self-defeating
because there is no real friction. Western anticommunists who align
themselves with Eurocommunists in support of East European
"dissidents" are playing into their enemy's hands; they are falling for a
communist provocation. The vulnerability of these alignments will be
exposed when "liberalization" occurs in Eastern Europe in the final
phase of long-range policy. Meanwhile, they confer greater
respectability on Eurocommunists. Western anticommunist policies
and propaganda can only recover their effectiveness if they are based
on a correct understanding of the origins, nature, and objectives of the
long-range policy and strategy and the disinformation techniques used
in their implementation.
Conclusion
By 1969 the bloc strategists had had a decade of experience in
controlling and exploiting artificial disputes between the leaders of
certain of the bloc parties. They had also had the experience of a
controlled experiment in "democratization" in Czechoslovakia. They
had seen how the West had been taken in by each of their
disinformation operations in turn. They had seen how the image of
West European communist parties had been improved by their
association with the Dubcek brand of communism and by their
"independent" stand on Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia
in August 1968. Although the Dubcek experiment had been brought to
an end, there had been time for an assessment of its potential as a
means of influencing Western attitudes to communism. The effect had
been profound. It therefore made sense in the 1970s to explore the
potential of artificial disputes with Euro-
262 NEW LIES FOR OLD
pean communist parties to improve their future prospects. Such disputes, in
the form of Eurocommunism, could be fitted into the pattern of the other
disinformation operations. Eurocommunism could be supported by Romania
and Yugoslavia, the "independent" communist states, and attacked both by
the Soviets and Chinese. Mutual criticisms between the Soviets and
Eurocommunists would help to dispel fears of the introduction of a Soviet
system into Western Europe and confirm the sincerity of the
Eurocommunists conversion to democratic principles. Chinese accusations
that Eurocommunists were falling under social democratic influence could
further the illusion that this was so. With their credentials thus improved, the
Eurocommunist parties would stand to gain new allies among the working
classes, the social democrats, the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the
churches, and the armed forces and thus be able to play a more influential
role in overall communist strategy in Europe. Like Czechoslovak
democratization, Eurocommunism should be viewed as an experiment and
rehearsal for the final phase of policy. Its potential has not yet been fully
realized.
Objectives of Eurocommunism
The extension of already proven disinformation techniques into Western
Europe to suggest the evolution of the Eurocommunist parties into
liberalized, independent, responsible national parties was intended to:
• Conceal the coordination between the Eurocommunist parties and the
bloc in the pursuit of a common strategy for Europe.
• Suggest further disintegration in the international communist move-
ment, and therefore a diminution in its threat to the noncommunist world.
• Improve the capacity of the Eurocommunist parties to achieve influence
and power legally through united front tactics.
• Prepare the ground, in coordination with bloc policy in general, for an
eventual "liberalization" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and a major
drive to promote the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the
withdrawal of the American military presence from a neutral, socialist
Europe.
22
The Role of Disinformation and
Intelligence Potential in the Realization of
the Communist Strategies
THE DISINFORMATION PROGRAM has played a significant role in
the successful realization of the communist strategies. A study
of the available communist and Western evidence reveals the
existence of at least six interlocking strategies for the furtherance of
communism along the lines dictated by this long-range policy. The
first strategy relates to the activities of communist parties in the
advanced industrial countries. Its essence is the use of various tactics,
such as Eurocommunism, the deliberate display of an image of a
responsible, independent party to establish unity of action with social
democrats and Catholics in Europe and to create a neutral socialist
Europe tilted toward the communist side. The strategy envisages three
periods. In the first period the communists seek temporary allies
among the social democrats, the trade unionists, and the Catholics,
including the moderates and the conservatives who could be brought
into play against any alliance with the United States. In the second
period the conservatives are eliminated and the social democrats
become the principal allies in a neutral socialist Europe. In the final
period the communists take the necessary steps for the complete
takeover.
The second strategy deals with the communist effort to establish
unity of action with the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. Its essence is the use of various tactics, including the
support of the national liberation movements by the USSR and other
communist countries and capitalizing on the late Tito's influence in
the nonaligned movement, which has served to lessen Western
influence in these areas.
263
264 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The third strategy is concerned with the effort to reverse the
military balance of power, which in 1960 was tilted heavily in favor
of the West. The essence of this strategy is revealed by a number of
communist actions, including diplomatic negotiations, like SALT; a
Chinese effort to make a false military alliance with the United States;
efforts to increase Soviet military potential, involving the United
States in an unpopular war like that in Vietnam; antimilitary
campaigns in Western Europe; and terrorist acts against US military
officials.
The fourth strategy deals with the undermining of the ideological
resistance of the noncommunist world to the advance of communism.
Its essence is not in the use of propaganda and the preaching of
ideology, but by concrete actions and deeds, including calculated anti-
Sovietism.
Underlying all of these strategies is the fifth strategy, that of the
disinformation program. The most important element of this program
is the calculated Sino-Soviet split, which has enabled the two
communist powers to pursue successfully the scissors strategy, that is,
having complementary dual foreign policies, the close coordination of
which is concealed from the West and which has thus far escaped
detection by the West. It is this scissors strategy that has contributed
significantly to all the other strategies.
Although the communists have achieved unity of action with some
Arab and African states and have generated antimilitary campaigns in
Western Europe, they have failed to reach the majority of social
democrats, the free trade unions, and the Catholics there. They were
also unsuccessful in the United States largely because of the strong
anticommunist position of the American labor movement under the
late George Meany. The formation of united fronts in Latin America
as a whole has been inhibited by the strength of military influence in
the continent.
The Major Strategy
The sixth strategy, however, is the most significant. This strategy,
which has been in preparation by the bloc for the past twenty years,
deals with the solutions of the remaining problems with the unity of
action and has a crucial role in the final phase of the long-range
policy. This last strategy relates to the consistent effort
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 265
to bring about a political and economic consolidation of individual
communist regimes, the construction of so-called mature communist
societies, and the preparation of a semblance of democratization in order to
provide, in Togliatti's words, support for the communists outside the bloc in
realization of the major strategies. In essence this strategy involves the
interaction of the following factors:
1. The development of an effective political, economic, diplomatic, and
military substructure under which the communists can continue to coordinate
their policies and actions on a bilateral basis through a system of friendship
treaties. This substructure would not be affected by the formal dissolution of
the Warsaw Pact. A significant role in this coordination will rest with the
party apparatuses, especially with the departments responsible for relations
with the bloc countries.
2. The making of creative ideological readjustments and the revitaliza-tion
of the communist parties and the mass organizations, including the trade
unions and the youth and intellectual organizations. Further, the broadening
of the political base of the parties and the development of the mass
organizations into effective substructures of the parties. Such changes will
make possible the introduction of controlled pohtical opposition, which will
provide the basically totalitarian regimes with a convincing impression of a
fundamental change and a semblance of democracy. For example, within a
twenty-year period the communist parties of the USSR and China almost
doubled their memberships to seventeen million and thirty-six million
respectively. In China this was accomplished during and after the Cultural
Revolution. A major role in this revitalization was played by the ideological
commissions and the cultural departments of the parties.
3. The preparation of a false opposition, during the introduction of
controlled democratization in the communist regimes, for the purpose of
creating a favorable condition for unity of action with the social democrats,
the free trade unions, and with the Catholics against NATO and the US
military-industrial complex. This preparation was revealed by the
reorganization and reorientation of the KGB and the security services of the
bloc countries, as ordered by Shelepin. The rationale was to coordinate their
joint efforts and to introduce a false, controlled opposition along the lines of
the Soviet experience with the false anticommunist organization Trust during
the NEP under Lenin. Shelepin specifically ordered that agents of influence
be used among prominent writers, scientists, trade unionists, nationalists, and
rehgious leaders. He emphasized
266 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the need to use agents of influence among the heads of the various religions,
including the head of the Russian Orthodox church and the Moslem leaders
in Soviet Central Asia, for political objectives. A significant and active role
in such preparations is played by the administrative departments of the
communist parties, which supervise the activities of the security services.
4. The development of an effective strategic coordination between the
ministries of foreign affairs, ambassadors, communist parties, and mass
organizations of the communist countries within the bloc and also of the
communist parties outside the bloc. A significant role in such coordination
belongs to the party departments of international relations and to communist
diplomats. This explains why some communist ministers, such as those from
Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, were in the past the heads of such
departments. A significant role in such coordination, specifically for the
realization of the strategy in Western Europe, rests with the Soviet
Committee for European Security, headed by party official V. Shitikov. This
committee was created in June 1971 for better coordination between the
Soviet mass organizations in the struggle for the realization of a collective
European security. The development and realization of the strategy is
revealed by the numerous conferences of communist parties, especially in
Moscow and Prague in 1965, and the high-level meetings of communist
leaders with Brezhnev in the Crimea during the 1970s.
The study of available evidence leads to the conclusion that the
Czechoslovakian democratization in 1968 was a rehearsal of this strategy to
see how this scenario can work in practice and to test the Western reaction to
it.
The Disinformation and Strategic Role of Yugoslavia
The new methodology makes it possible to see how the so-called
independence of Yugoslavia has enabled her to play a leading part in
promoting the success of communist Third World strategy. Yugoslavia was
well qualified to bring her influence to bear in organizing the Third World,
reorientating it toward socialism, and forging it into a weapon for use against
the West. It was Tito who drew Khrushchev's attention to the political
potentialities of friendship
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 267
and cooperation with such leaders as Nasser, Nehru, and Sukarno. The
reconcihation between Yugoslavia and the other communist countries
and Yugoslavia's contribution and commitment to the long-range
pohcy of 1958-60 were successfully concealed by disinformation.
They have remained hidden for the past twenty years, despite the vast
amount of evidence that can be interpreted as indicating the
fulfillment by Yugoslavia of a strategic role in coordination with the
other members of the communist bloc — above all, with those in
Africa, Asia, and the United Nations.
Yugoslav influence inside and outside the nonaligned movement
was acceptable to the neutralist and nationalist Third World leaders
largely because they saw Yugoslavia, like themselves, as independent
and, unlike the great powers, disinterested in dominating and con-
trolling them. The Yugoslav brand of communism seemed more
flexible and adaptable than the Soviet or Chinese version. Moreover,
the penetration of Yugoslav ideas into the Third World was accom-
plished not through the traditional activities of a tightly knit com-
munist party, but through personal influence and such mass organi-
zations as the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia
and the Yugoslav trade unions.
On important issues, Tito's line was consistently anti-Western and
helpful to the fulfillment of long-range communist pohcy. He took up
an anti-American position in the Cuban crisis of 1962. He followed
the pro-Arab communist line in 1967 and broke off diplomatic
relations with Israel. He worked hard to persuade the nonaligned
nations to follow suit. In 1973 eighteen African states broke off
relations with Israel. Tito followed the communist line on the
recognition of East Germany and influenced many Arab and African
states in the same direction. He mobilized the non-aligned nations in
condemning American intervention in Vietnam. He criticized
American behavior over the civil war in Angola in 1975, and for a
while the Ford Administration reconsidered its attempts to improve
relations with Yugoslavia.
Tito was critical of Cuban actions in Africa and of Soviet interven-
tion in Afghanistan, but many of his criticisms were muted and none
led to any effective action. Tito and his Yugoslav colleagues can take
a major share of the credit for the swing in the United Nations'
balance, over the last twenty years, against the West and in favor of
the communist bloc. A further point, with important
268 NEWLIESFOROLD
implications for the fmal phase of long-range communist policy, is
that Tito succeeded in winning the support and solidarity of many
European and Japanese socialists for Third World national liberation
movements.
To sum up, Yugoslav actions from 1958 to 1980 were closely
coordinated with the Soviet Union and, latterly, with China. Through
the use of disinformation on Yugoslav independence, which was
accepted equally by the Third World and the West, Yugoslavia was
able to play a major strategic role on Leninist lines in promoting
united action with the Third World countries, in reorientating them
toward socialism, and in converting them into aUies of communism
against the West. Tito well deserved the Order of Lenin he was
awarded in 1979. He is dead, but his policies continue.
Because of Western failure to see through disinformation, includ-
ing the violent Chinese and Albanian attacks on Tito for acting as an
agent of United States imperialism in Africa, the United States and
her allies have continued to regard Yugoslavia as an asset for the
West and a moderating force in the newly independent countries; they
have continued to accord her favorable treatment. But Yugoslav
influence is dangerous. Already the groundwork has been laid for
coordinated action between the communist bloc, the Third World, and
many European and Japanese sociahsts. Without realizing the effect
on its own fate, much of the Third World is ready to act as the most
effective ally of the communist strategists in their offensive against
the advanced countries in the final phase of policy.
Sino-Soviet Disinformation and the Cultural Revolution: A New
Interpretation
Soviet denunciation of the Cultural Revolution as anti-Marxist and
antisocialist helped to conceal its true meaning as part of the process
of Chinese communist reconstruction. At the same time the Chinese
leaders were able to exploit their alleged differences with the Soviets
to rally the party and the masses behind them, during their most
vulnerable period, by hoisting the flag of Chinese nationalism. In this
they were repeating Stalin's exploitation of
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 269
"capitalist encirclement of the Soviet Union" in the 1920s and 1930s
to rally the Russian people to the Soviet regime. The difference in the
Chinese case was that, deliberately deceiving their own population
and the outside world, the Chinese included the Soviet Union among
the "imperialist powers" attempting to encircle China. In so doing,
they served their own interests in strengthening and stabilizing their
regimes; at the same time, they served the strategic interests of long-
range bloc policy.
Turmoil there undoubtedly was during the Cultural Revolution, but
in the light of the new methodology, the facts are capable of a new
interpretation. The Cultural Revolution was a part — and a very
significant part — of the wider process of the communist recon-
struction of Chinese society. It followed, as the next logical step, the
reconstruction of Chinese agriculture. The newly established material
basis of Chinese society required an appropriate Marxist political and
ideological superstructure. For this reason, Mao called it "the great
proletarian cultural revolution."
Apart from causing widespread economic dislocation, the creation
of communes and the switch in priority back from industry to
agriculture exposed the inadequacy of the structure and character of
the existing party and its mass organizations. These were based
mainly in the cities, whereas the real Chinese masses were in the
countryside — hence the drive to send intellectuals to the villages. The
ideological level of the party was too low and the tendency toward
rigid, bureaucratic inertia was unacceptable. The decision was
therefore taken to regroup the most highly indoctrinated and militant
elements of the old party and youth organization into an alternative
structure relying largely on the army and Ministry of Public Security
to provide the necessary element of control and to prevent the
situation from getting out of hand. The appearance of "political
departments," detachments of Red Guards, and "revolutionary
committees" was not spontaneous; it was instigated by the Central
Committee. Not until essential preparations had been made on this
basis for the introduction of an alternative power structure was the
Cultural Revolution launched. With an alternative power structure in
being, it was possible to abolish large parts of the existing party
organization below the Central Committee level while huge numbers
of party officials were being reindoctrinated. Meanwhile the
alternative organization, drawn largely from the
270 NEW LIES FOR OLD
younger generation, set about its task of increasing its ties with, and
influence over, the masses in order to fire them with revolutionary
ardor and commit them to the policies of communist reconstruction.
The Cultural Revolution was initiated by the plenum of the Central
Committee in August 1966 and was guided and directed by the
Central Committee throughout. That it was a revolution controlled
from above was shown by its temporary interruption for the spring
sowing season in 1967 and the simultaneous resumption of classes in
schools on the Central Committee's instructions. The revolution, being
ideological, was naturally directed by the Central Committee's
ideologists, led by Chen Po-ta and Mao himself. By April 1969
sufficient progress had been made for the Cultural Revolution proper
to be damped down by the Ninth Party Congress.
Although the turmoil died away, many of the processes begun
before and during the Cultural Revolution continued. If the essence of
the Cultural Revolution period from 1966 to 1969 was the creation of
new organs of power and the attack by the "leftists" on the "rightists,"
then the essence of the following three years was the reabsorption of
the older, reeducated party officials into the new organs of power and
the attack on leftists, initially begun with the support of the army,
which was then itself brought under firmer party control. The first
signs of detente with the West began to appear. In the next three years,
from 1973 to 1976, under the alleged guidance of the "Gang of Four,"
the process of reeducation continued. But now it was a more specific
process of ideological and political preparation of the reconstructed
party, government apparatus, and mass organizations for the new
situation entailed by a shift to activist, detente diplomacy. With the
death of Mao and the return of the "pragmatists" to power, full-scale,
activist detente diplomacy was launched on Soviet lines with the aim
of using economic, financial, and technological help from the
noncom-munist world to accelerate China's economic and military
development. China was ready to play her full part in long-range bloc
policy. She sought to ahgn herself especially with conservatives in the
advanced countries and Islamic regimes in the Third World, in order
the more effectively to carry out the Sino-Soviet scissors strategy.
As in other communist countries, the process of communist re-
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 271
construction in China has been accompanied by the introduction of
new, and the revival of old, techniques. In China's case the aims were
to revitalize the communist party, to broaden its political base, to
commit the younger generation to ideological objectives, to reeducate
the older generation of party members, to control and neutraHze
internal opposition, to revitalize the state apparatus and armed
services, and to prepare China as a whole for its part in the
implementation internally and externally of long-range bloc policy.
The techniques of pohtical activism, provocation, disinformation, and
political prophylaxis, which have been described in detail in the case
of the Soviet Union, have all been used effectively in China. The
alleged struggles for power in China between leftists and rightists,
dogmatists and pragmatists, are as unreal as the struggles between
Stalinists and anti-Stalinists in the Soviet Union.
Cooperation within the leadership to create the illusion of struggles
between themselves or between the party and the army helps to
forestall the threat of real struggles within the leadership or of
tendencies to "putschism" in the army. It gives the party ideologists
material to train party officials in fighting undesirable tendencies
while at the same time preparing them for radical shifts in policy. The
violence of the shifts in the Chinese line is a technique borrowed from
that used by Stalin at the end of the NEP period. Stalin's shifts from
left to right and back again were used to forge the party into a
hardened instrument obedient to his will. The difference lies in the
fact that Stalin used the technique to establish his personal
dictatorship and the factionalism was real; the Chinese leadership used
it to increase the effectiveness of the party as a whole and the
factionalism in the leadership was faked. The recent reassessment and
partial downgrading of Mao in China presents parallels with de-
Stalinization in the Soviet Union and is designed in part to forestall
the emergence in the future of any tendencies toward personal
dictatorship in the CPC.
The formation of the Red Guards recalls the use of Komsomol
activists in the Soviet Union during Stalin's collectivization of agri-
culture in the 1930s. The technique of using wall posters by the
regime seems to have been borrowed from their use by the genuine
opposition in 1956-57.
The Cultural Revolution and the whole process of Chinese com-
munist reconstruction have followed Lenin's precepts on overcom-
272 NEW LIES FOR OLD
ing "infantile disorder" and isolation of the party from the masses. The
reeducation of cadres and the restructuring of the party and its youth
and trade union organizations were necessary both to achieve these
aims and to prepare the Chinese system for activist detente with the
West as the long-range policy unfolded.
Despite the alleged destruction of the party in the Cultural Revo-
lution, in fact it strengthened itself. The Chinese trade union, youth,
and women's organizations have resumed their activities.
As a result of stabihzation and the reinforcement of the party and its
mass organizations, the Chinese, like other communist states after
1960, were enabled to introduce NEP-style measures, including some
of the appurtenances of democracy, such as wall posters; trials; the
release of market forces; and the relaxation of controls over religion,
intellectual life, working conditions in factories, and property
ownership. "Dissidents" began to appear, on the Soviet pattern.
Broader contacts were allowed with the West and more attention was
paid to trfc overseas Chinese, whose relatives in China are said to
number 12 million.
Sino-Soviet Duality and Communist Strategy in the Third World
Seen in the light of the new methodology, the Chinese effort in the
Third World is complementary to that of the other communist states
and an important element in communist strategy as a whole.
The character of the Chinese effort in the Third World from 1958
onward was dictated by China's historical background and current
capacities. China had been freed from colonial oppression by a
prolonged liberation struggle with Japan. The Chinese party had
learned how to exploit conditions of military conflict to deepen its
influence and win power. As a rule, Chinese and Soviet efforts can be
seen in terms not of rivalry, but of a coordinated division of labor that
has brought dividends for the common strategy.
Where a serious dispute exists between two Third World countries,
a pattern in Soviet and Chinese policies can be discerned in which the
Soviet Union and China take up opposite sides and adopt a clearcut
duality in their poHcies. The Soviet Union seeks
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 273
to build up its influence with one party to the dispute and China with
the other. The classic example of this pattern is to be seen in the case
of India and Pakistan.
The Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 was provoked by the Chinese. The
Soviets took a broadly anti-Chinese and pro-Indian line that gained
them goodwill in India. At the time of the outbreak of open Sino-
Soviet party polemics in 1963, an Indian army and air force mission
visited the Soviet Union. In the following year the Indian defense
minister went to Moscow to discuss Soviet-Indian military
cooperation. Further exchanges of military delegations took place in
1967 and 1968. In the mid-1960s regular consultations on problems of
mutual interest were instituted between the Soviet and Indian foreign
ministries.' The United States held India responsible for the Indo-
Pakistani conflict in 1971 and terminated military aid to India. The
Soviets called for a cessation of the conflict but nevertheless gave the
Indians moral support, for which Mrs. Gandhi expressed her gratitude.
A treaty of friendship was signed between the Soviet Union and India
in August 1971. An influx of Soviet visitors followed. In October
Firyubin went to India, interestingly enough in the same month as
Tito. He was followed in the next three months by the chief of Soviet
military aviation, Kutakhov, and the deputy foreign minister, V. V.
Kuznetsov. In December Mrs. Gandhi condemned American policy in
Vietnam." In 1973 an agreement was signed for cooperation between
Gosplan, the Soviet planning agency, and the Indian planning
commission.'
Largely because of skillful Soviet exploitation of the conflict be-
tween India and Pakistan, by the mid-1970s the trend toward closer
Soviet-Indian relations had become virtually irreversible. The Desai
government was unable to stem the tide. Relations were further
cemented by Brezhnev's visit and talks with Mrs. Gandhi in 1981.
While the Soviets were strengthening their hold in India, the
Chinese were doing the same in Pakistan, using the same techniques
of exchanges of visits and mihtary delegations, especially during the
years 1962-67. When the United States ceased military aid to Pakistan
in 1967, the Chinese stepped theirs up. In 1968 President Yahya Khan
and his foreign minister visited China. Further cooperation developed.
In 1970 Kuo Mo-jo visited Pakistan. Pakistan was sufficiently close to
China to be used as an intermediary in arranging the visit of Kissinger
to China in 1971. Bhutto was
274 NEW LIES FOR OLD
received by Mao in 1972 after the further conflict with India and the
formation of Bangladesh. The conflict resulted in Pakistan's departure
from the British Commonwealth and SEATO. Further high-level
exchanges of visits continued between Pakistan and China, regardless
of changes in the Pakistani government.
As in the case of Soviet influence in India, Chinese influence in
Pakistan is creating conditions for an alliance between them and for
an eventual communist takeover. A situation already exists that can be
further exploited by calculated and coordinated Soviet and Chinese
moves, for example, in connection with the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan.
The recent Chinese moderation is intended to help build up the new
image of respectability required by the Chinese for their detente
diplomacy vis-a-vis the advanced industrial, as well as Third World,
countries. It is also consistent with the emerging pattern of Sino-
Soviet duality; while the Soviet Union builds up united fronts with
nationalists against the United States, China seeks to ensnare the
United States and other conservative countries, including the Asian
and African states, in artificial, treacherous alliances with herself and
her associates, ostensibly against the Soviet Union. In this way China
seeks to enter her enemies' camp not merely unopposed, but
welcomed as an ally against Soviet expansionism and equipped with
Western arms.
In the present phase of policy, neither the Soviet Union nor China
puts local communist parties in general in the forefront as strategic
weapons. When the objective of isolating the United States from the
Third World has been achieved, local communist parties will come
into their own and accounts will be settled with nationalists who have
suppressed them in the past.
Sino-Soviet Duality and Military Strategy
The new methodology illuminates the contribution to the success of
communist strategies made by the division of labor between the
Soviets and Chinese and the coordinated duality of their policies.
In the early years of detente, paraphrasing Lenin's words, the
Chinese were given a "terrible double bass" to play in contrast with
the Soviets' "sentimental violin." While the Soviets were em-
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 275
phasising detente and peaceful coexistence and taking up high-level
contacts with American and European leaders, the Chinese advocated
militant and violent revolution. Marked divergences appeared in the
treatment in the Soviet and Chinese press of Khrushchev's visit to the
United States in 1959. In February 1960, three months before the
abortive summit meeting in Paris, the Chinese delegate at the Warsaw
Pact conference criticized the Soviets for their rapprochement with the
"imperialists," who had refused to make concessions on Berlin. On the
eve of Khrushchev's meeting with the French President in April 1960,
the Chinese press resumed its criticism of the Yugoslav "revisionists"
and published articles calling for a militant, revolutionary approach to
world problems while the Soviet press continued to emphasize
moderation and peaceful coexistence.
Further divergences appeared in Soviet and Chinese handling of the
Cuban and Sino-Indian crises in 1962, but perhaps the most striking
instance of duality in the early 1960s occurred during the Soviet-
American -British negotiations on the Atomic Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
The arrival in Moscow of the Anglo-American delegation that was to
conduct those negotiations was immediately preceded by the arrival of
a Chinese delegation that was to conduct party negotiations with the
CPSU. Soviet warmth toward the Western delegations contrasted
sharply with their coolness toward the Chinese. Progress on the test
ban talks was accompanied by the apparent failure of the Sino-Soviet
negotiations. The signature of the test ban treaty was followed by
interruption of the Sino-Soviet talks, attacks in the Chinese press on
Soviet policy in the test ban negotiations, and open polemics between
the Soviet and Chinese parties. A further eruption of Sino-Soviet
polemics occurred before the Soviet- American negotiations on a
nuclear nonprolifera-tion treaty in 1966-67.
Subsequent events have shown just how little foundation there was
for Chinese accusations that the Soviets had capitulated to Western
imperialism in the 1960s and had sacrificed "socialist solidarity" and
support for revolutionary struggle on the altar of peaceful
coexistence.'^ The effect of these Chinese accusations at the time was
to promote Western illusions about Soviet moderation, and thus to
create favorable conditions for the success of Soviet activist
diplomacy toward the United States and European NATO
276 NEW LIES FOR OLD
powers. In contrast with the implacable Chinese dogmatists, the
Soviets appeared cautious, reasonable, nonideological, pragmatic
communists with whom it was possible to negotiate a deal. Further-
more, they appeared sincere in their claim to have a common interest
with the West in restraining Chinese influence.
Sino-Soviet duality produced the effect on the West that the
communist strategists intended. It seems safe to say that it brought
them substantial dividends. For example, had it not been for General
de Gaulle's belief in the sincerity of Soviet interest in detente and his
confidence in the authenticity of the Sino-Soviet split, it is more than
doubtful that he would have gone as far as he did in his dealings with
the Soviet Union, his recognition of Communist China, and his
withdrawal of France from its military commitments to NATO.
From 1958 to 1969, despite all the sound and fury, China, by
comparison with the Soviet Union, was passive diplomatically in
relation to the Western powers. The contrast was only natural. The
Soviet Union was already a military superpower engaged in strategic
competition with the United States and NATO. The Soviets had a
solid background of experience in deahng with the Western powers
and a well-trained staff to carry out their policies. China was militarily
insignificant, unrecognized by the United States and many other
countries and short of trained and indoctrinated diplomatic staff. The
onset of the Cultural Revolution brought a further retreat into
diplomatic isolation.
In 1969 all this began to change. With the completion of the
Cultural Revolution, China reemerged onto the international scene.
Chinese activist detente diplomacy was launched. Trade, and espe-
cially the acquisition of advanced technology, bulked large among the
obvious Chinese motives. In January 1969 a special West German
ambassador, Egon Bahr, was invited to conduct trade negotiations in
Shanghai. Exchanges of visits between Chinese and Western
statesmen and military leaders became commonplace. A drive to
obtain diplomatic recognition soon brought results. By 1970 it had
been granted by fifty-five countries. On October 25, 1971, Communist
China was seated in the United Nations; by 1973, it had diplomatic
relations with ninety-one countries. In February 1972, after two
preparatory visits by Kissinger (carried out initially in great secrecy
and without consultation with the Japanese, the
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 277
most directly concerned of America's close allies), President Nixon
visited China. He was followed by the British foreign secretary,
Douglas-Home; by President Pompidou of France in 1973; and by the
West German chancellor, Schmidt, in 1975. The German and British
conservative opposition leaders, Strauss and Thatcher, visited in 1975
and 1977 respectively, and the British foreign secretary, Crosland, in
1976. In return Chinese ministerial visits were paid to the United
States and Europe, culminating in Teng Hsiao-ping's visit to the
United States and Japan and Chairman Hua's journey through Europe
in 1979. In the same year the U.S. President's national security
adviser, Brzezinski, visited China, followed in the aftermath of Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan by the defense secretary. Brown. The
exchanges of visits between China and the United States, Western
Europe, and Japan reflected not only the development of trade with,
and credits for, China, but also the transfer of Western technology for
China's industrial modernization and rearmament.
Three points about Chinese activist diplomacy deserve to be singled
out for special emphasis. First, it has been continuously and
consistently maintained throughout the 1970s despite the death of
Mao in 1976. Chairman Hua said as much himself, on December 25,
1976, when he undertook that China would carry out the directives
worked out by Chairman Mao.^ Second, a preeminent role has been
played by Teng Hsiao-p'ing, under Mao's guidance one of the
principal Chinese architects of the long-range policy of 1958-60.
Third, a noticeable feature of the Chinese choice of Western leaders
suitable for cultivation, more readily explained in terms of strategy
than ideological affinity, has been the proportion of conservatives
among them. Some of them — Strauss, Brzezinski, and Thatcher, for
example — were singled out as targets for personal attacks by the
Soviets, attacks that did nothing to harm their relations with the
Chinese.
At the same time as the Chinese were embarking on a policy of
detente, the Soviets were building on the successes of their activist
diplomacy in the earlier 1960s. Their efforts followed the three
principal directions described above: SALT talks with the United
States, CSCE in Europe, and closer bilateral relationships with certain
European powers. Also, at the same time, the West began to realize
that the Soviet Union had taken advantage of
278 NEW LIES FOR OLD
detente to build up its military strength.
Seen in the light of the new methodology, the stepping-up of Sino-
Soviet border hostilities in 1969 and 1970 was not fortuitous; neither
was the adoption by the Soviets and Chinese of diametrically opposite
positions on many other issues. Duality in Sino-Soviet policies served
to provide a favorable background for the launching and conduct of
both the SALT negotiations and Chinese activist detente diplomacy.
As far as CSCE was concerned, it was noticeable that the Chinese,
while condemning the Soviets for their part in organizing the Helsinki
conferences, nevertheless lent their support to the concept of a
Western Europe "independent of the two superpowers," in other
words, to the intermediate aim of overall communist strategy for
Europe.
As the 1970s wore on and as Soviet aggressiveness became more
apparent in Europe, Africa, and finally Afghanistan, China began to
look attractive as a potential ally for the West. The common interest
between the Soviet Union and the West in resisting Chinese militancy
in the 1960s had been superseded by a common interest between
China and the West in resisting Soviet expansionism in the 1970s.
West European and Japanese capitalists tumbled over one another to
build up China's economic and military potential, egged on by anti-
Soviet conservative Western politicians and experts on defense.
Alliance with China seemed to offer the best hope of redressing the
growing military imbalance between the Soviet Union and the West,
especially in Europe. The United States has been more and more
disposed to "play the China card." The relationship with Communist
China, initiated under Nixon and Kissinger and developed under
Carter and Brzezinski, was carried to the point of military cooperation,
under Reagan and Haig, with the intention of building up China as a
counterweight to the Soviet Union. Both in relation to the Soviets in
the 1960s and to the Chinese in the 1970s and 1980s, the West has
forgotten the error of the German General Staff in helping to rearm the
Soviet Union after the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922. The Sino-Soviet
scissors strategy has not been recognized for what it is.
In short, first the Soviet Union and then China carried out the
classical strategic precept of seeking to enter the enemy's camp
unopposed and, if possible, welcomed by him. As Sun Tzu said: "To
subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. "^
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 279
Fighting between communist states is generally regarded as con-
clusive evidence of a split between them. But it should be remem-
bered that the conflicts in the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Vietnamese border
areas have taken place in the presence of few, if any. Western
observers. Border incidents are easily staged and open radio commu-
nication about them can be used in support of their authenticity. Joint
exercises can be made to look very much like battles. Even if genuine
damage and casualties are caused, incidents are still open to more than
one interpretation. Apparent fighting between communist states can
contribute to such specific communist strategic objectives as
promoting agreements and false alignments between communist and
noncommunist states. For example, the Sino-Vietnamese "war" — and
fears that it might spread — intensified Western pressure on the United
States to conclude the SALT II agreement with the Soviet Union and
helped make China look attractive as a potential Western ally against
the Soviet Union.
Sino-Soviet Duality and the Revolutionary Movement
The Sino-Soviet split did not in general have the effect that might
have been expected of splitting the nonbloc communist parties down
the middle nor has it reduced their influence. Most of the West
European parties became more active and remained broadly in
alignment with the Soviets. Their association with Soviet
"moderation" helped their images and improved their chances of
success with united-front tactics. The Italian party was far more
influential in 1980 than it had been in 1960. In France the socialist-
communist alliance came closer to an electoral victory in 1974 than at
any moment since the Second World War. Insofar as pro-Chinese
splinter groups broke away from main-line communist parties, as in
Belgium, for example, it was in general advantageous to long-range
communist strategy. A calculated shedding of the most radical and
violent revolutionary elements helped the communist parties to
improve their images as respectable democratic parties and potential
allies of socialist. Christian, and other progressive groups.
The Japanese party tried to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet split
to broaden its political influence.
280 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Chinese militancy and Sino-Soviet duality opened up possibilities
of united action between pro-Chinese and other extreme-left factions,
especially Trotskyites. In June 1963, coinciding with the outbreak of
open polemics between the Soviet and Chinese parties, the Trotskyite
Fourth International, in a special resolution, approved "the historic
task of joining the Chinese and fighting for the creation of a united
front between the Fourth International and the Chinese comrades."
In 1967 the Fourth International declared itself in favor of accel-
erating the revolutionary armed struggle of the masses in the main
bases of capitalism. The majority supported Mao. A minority group,
critical of some of Mao's ideas, proposed a more flexible line in
fighting communist parties.
The Ninth Congress of the Fourth International was held at Rimini
in April 1969. It discussed tactics in Latin America. The European
section of the majority group held a conference in October 1969 and
decided to cease attempts to penetrate communist parties and to create
"independent revolutionary" parties. In the same month a congress of
the minority group in Vienna approved the actions of splinter groups
in the communist movement. At the same time it condemned refusal
by these splinter groups to cooperate with the Soviet Union in support
of the liberation struggle in Vietnam. Also in 1969, as the movement
for CSCE was gathering momentum, Trotskyite meetings in protest
against NATO were held in England, Denmark, Japan, and Australia.
The information publicly available is insufficient to allow judgment
on the degree to which the activities of extreme-left radical groups
have been successfully coordinated under Chinese or Soviet influence.
But the rivalry, and sometimes even violence, between these groups
and the main-line communist parties should not be allowed to obscure
the extent to which the activities of all of them have served the aims
of long-range communist strategy and might serve so even more in
critical situations in the future. Ponomarev, while describing some of
the elements of the New Left in 1971 as "adventurist," concluded that
"to neglect this segment of the mass movement would mean to
weaken the stress of the anti -imperialist struggle and hinder the
creation of a united front against monopolistic capitalism." Broadly
speaking, since the adoption of the long-range policy and the
development of Sino-Soviet duality,
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 281
both the moderate communist parties and the radical, revolutionary,
and terrorist groups have succeeded in gathering strength, often at the
expense of genuine left-wing and democratic socialist movements.
In the early 1960s the international front organizations provided a
convenient forum for the experimental airing of Sino-Soviet "dif-
ferences." The repudiation of radical Chinese positions by these
organizations helped make them less disreputable and, at the same
time, apparently confirmed the authenticity of the Sino-Soviet dispute.
When in the mid-1960s the Chinese finally withdrew from the front
organizations, they made no serious attempt to disrupt them or to form
rival counterparts of their own. The Chinese withdrawal seems to have
been entirely logical. In part, it may have been dictated by the Cultural
Revolution. It was no doubt also motivated by a desire neither to split
nor to demoralize the organizations as they geared themselves up for
their strategic role. It also left the Chinese free to pursue unorthodox
tactics, including friendly relationships with conservative
governments, without risk of compromising and confusing the faithful
in the front organizations' ranks.
The Advantages of Sino-Soviet Duality
To sum up, the coordinated duality of Soviet and Chinese policies
offers a number of advantages for communist strategy. It enables the
communist bloc to retain the initiative, to open up new possibilities
for maneuver, and to induce erroneous responses from its opponents.
Where there are conflicts in the outside world, it enables the two
communist partners, by taking opposite sides, to strengthen
communist influence simultaneously over both parties to the dispute.
It enables one partner to operate effectively in areas from which the
other is excluded or deliberately excludes itself for tactical reasons. It
facihtates a division of labor between the two partners and enables
one to take unorthodox or provocative action without compromising
the other. In the longer run, through enabling the Chinese to express
hostihty to the Soviet Union and emphasize their concern with
Chinese national interests, it may well help China to appeal more
effectively to the overseas Chinese. Finally,
282 NEW LIES FOR OLD
it offers possibilities of inducing conservatives in both advanced and
Third World countries to compromise themselves by entering in good
faith into treacherous alliances and alignments through which they can
be discredited in the final phase of policy. As a strategic weapon,
duality may prove itself to be more effective than either war or the
export of revolution.
The Intelligence Potential and Agents of Influence
The implementation of the disinformation program can be fully
understood only if one takes into account the use by the communists
of their intelligence potential, especially agents of influence both in
the West and in the communist bloc. Because precise information is
normally lacking, surveys of communist influence in particular
countries or areas seldom take into account the assets of the commu-
nist intelligence services. From his service in Finland at the time of
the launching of the long-range policy, the author knows that these
assets can prove to be a major factor in the internal political situation
of a noncommunist country; they can contribute effectively to the
furtherance of communist strategy.
In the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet government, acting largely
through the Soviet intelligence service, exercised great pressure on the
older anticommunist generation of Finnish social democratic leaders,
especially Tanner, a true sociahst and strong anticommunist who
stoutly resisted Soviet pressure.
According to Zhenikhov, the KGB resident in Helsinki in 1960,
Soviet intelligence, with the active help of Khrushchev and other
members of the Presidium, succeeded in the 1950s in recruiting a
prominent Finnish social democrat. His KGB cryptonym was
"Leader." Zhenikhov was one of the KGB officers who maintained
contact with him. At the KGB's suggestion, Leader argued in favor of
a change in the social democratic attitude toward cooperation with the
Soviet Union. Eventually, in 1959, he split away from the social
democratic party and formed his own party. The KGB provided him
with guidance on the political attitudes and policies of this party.
Other important recruitments were made in the social democratic
leadership, and the agents concerned were used in intrigues against
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 283
Tanner and Leskinen, but their identities are not known to the author.
There were also successful Soviet efforts to recruit Finnish trade
union leaders.
In a conversation with the author, which took place in 1960, on the
subject of removing anticommunists from the social democratic
leadership, Zhenikhov said that it might be necessary to eliminate
Leskinen physically by poisoning him. Zhenikhov said that he had an
agent in the leadership of the Finnish conservative party who was in
close touch with Leskinen and through whom the assassination could
be arranged.
Until the late 1950s Soviet intelligence made use of agents in the
Finnish Communist party, including Pessi and Herta Kuusinen, a
communist member of parliament. In the period 1957-60, when the
long-range policy was being formulated, the use by the KGB of agents
in local communist parties was abandoned. At the same time secret
cooperation between the leaders of the CPSU and local communist
parties was strengthened, the KGB acting under the guidance of the
Centra! Committee when necessary to facilitate this cooperation. In
the Finnish case, special groups were set up in the central committees
of the Soviet and Finnish parties to handle the practicalities of
coordination; the KGB resident in Helsinki acted as the link between
the two groups. When Khrushchev visited Finland, Herta Kuusinen
was invited by the KGB resident to the Soviet Embassy, where
Khrushchev discussed with her the political lines her parliamentary
statements should follow.
The KGB and its residents in Finland, Kotov and Zhenikhov,
played an important secret role through their agents in the election and
formation of a series of Finnish governments. The KGB secretly
coordinated the joint efforts of its agents and the Finnish Communist
party to muster support for those candidates who found favor with the
Soviet Union and to mount campaigns against those who did not.
Among the Soviet agents so used was the leader of the Swedish
People's party, who was handled by Zegal and Zhenikhov. The main
aim of these activities was to secure the election of a prominent
Finnish leader, a KGB agent of long standing, whose cryptonym was
"Timo."
Timo was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1948, at which time he
was a minister. The recruitment was achieved by a rank and file
intelligence officer, a Soviet Finn from Karelia, who was
284 NEW LIES FOR OLD
serving under cover as second secretary in the Soviet embassy in
Helsinki. This officer developed a close social relationship with Timo,
which involved drinking bouts and saunas. He succeeded in
persuading him that, in return for his collaboration with Soviet
intelligence, the Soviets would forget the repressive action he had
taken against communists in the past while serving as a high official
and would use all their influence to build him up into a major political
figure.
The KGB resident at the time, Mikhail Kotov, sent Time's recruiter
back to Karelia and took for himself the credit for this spectacular
success. From late in 1948 or early in 1949, Kotov in person
maintained contact with Timo. Soviet intelligence kept their side of
the bargain and threw all their weight behind his political career.
Eventually Timo achieved a high office and remained in it until
recently.
Soviet help for him took various forms, including diplomatic
support for his policies, indirect financial support for his electoral
campaigns, advice on the courses he should pursue, and help in
undermining rival candidates. In 1961 agent Leader, acting on KGB
instructions, declared himself as a candidate for a high office in order,
at a later stage, to transfer his supporters' votes to Timo.
Timo, for his part, acted as a classic Soviet agent of influence. He
promoted in his party those whom the Soviets wished to see promoted
and, when possible, discussed his political appointments and decisions
in advance with Soviet intelligence. For example, the Soviet
government was consulted through the KGB in advance about his visit
to the United States in 1961. He kept the KGB fully informed on his
discussions with other Scandinavian leaders. On KGB advice he
created his own secret intelligence service under Vilkuna, another
Soviet agent. Timo used the service to bolster his own power, and he
shared its product with the KGB, which received all reports from
Finnish ambassadors and military attaches abroad and secret
information from other departments of the Finnish government. Timo,
on KGB instructions, recommended the appointments of KGB agents
as ambassadors to Moscow and other important posts. In 1960 and
1961 Zhenikhov discussed with Timo the holding of the Eighth World
Festival of Youth in Finland in 1962. Timo promised to help arrange
this, despite fierce opposition from large sections of the Finnish
public.
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 285
Meetings between Zhenikhov and Timo took place at his brother's
farm or in the Soviet embassy. When official receptions were held at
the embassy, a special room was prepared in which private
conversations with Timo could take place. Soviet government leaders,
including Krushchev and Brezhnev, were fully aware of Timo's
relationship with the KGB, when conversations and negotiations with
Soviet leaders took place during his visits to Moscow, Kotov and
Zhenikhov would act as interpreters and advisers. Zhenikhov often
used to boast that he would get Timo secretly awarded the Order of
Lenm.
Friction between Zhenikhov and Zakharov, the ambassador to
Finland, over who should be responsible for maintaining and directing
relations with Timo generated so much heat that both were summoned
to appear before the Central Committee. The Central Committee's
eventual decision was that Zhenikhov should remain the principal
contact with Timo but that the ambassador should have the right to be
consulted and to be present at meetings at which certain political
matters were discussed. Zhenikhov and Zakharov were warned by the
Central Committee that if there were any further squabbles between
them, both would be recalled to Moscow.
In 1961 it was planned that Vladimirov should take over as KGB
resident horn Zhenikhov and should assume responsibility for
relations with Timo and for intelligence work in Finnish political
parties in general.
Kotov made a successful career in Soviet intelligence on the
strength of his service in Finland. From being a Scandinavian spe-
cialist, he rose to the higher echelons of the KGB. Not long after Timo
was appointed to a high office, Kotov was promoted to be a deputy
chief of Soviet intelligence with responsibility for Austria and West
Germany. In 1959 or 1960 he was summoned to a meeting of the
Presidium at which Khrushchev congratulated him on his success in
Finland and instructed him to apply his experience in Austria and
Germany with a view to influencing the leaders of those countries in
the direction of closer relations and eventual alliance with the Soviet
Union.
This illustration shows that the role of the KGB in what is now
known as Finlandization can be a significant one. For the present
purpose, it is more germane to see how, through agents of influence
286 NEW LIES FOR OLD
like Time, the Soviets have been able to promote the strategy for
Europe since 1958-60.
Herta Kuusinen played an important role in the Scandinavian
consultative body known as the Northern Council in promoting the
idea of a nuclear-free zone in Scandinavia. She was also active in the
1960s in the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF)
and became its chairman.
By June 1963 pro-Soviet influence in the social democratic party
had reached a level at which Tanner, true to his anticommunist
convictions, felt unable to accept the party chairmanship. According
to the press, his successors, Paasio and Koivisto, developed close
relations with both the Soviet government and party. In 1964 Simo-
nen took over the leadership of the Social Democratic Union of
Workers and Small Agrarians (SDS). In June there were negotiations
on a reconciliation of this splinter group with the main social
democratic party. In September Simonen led a delegation to the Soviet
Union that was received by Brezhnev and Andropov.
In 1967 Paasio, as chairman of the social democrats, and Simonen,
as chairman of the SDS, both supported Timo for a high office. Paasio
also came out against the US bombing of North Vietnam.
In 1968 Timo was reappointed to his high office. In May 1968 a
delegation led by Paasio visited the Soviet Union for party negotiations
with the CPSU and met Brezhnev, Suslov, and Ponomarev. The
delegation "highly esteemed the foreign policy carried out by the
CPSU."
Representatives of both the social democratic party and SDS
demanded the cessation of American bombing in Vietnam and agreed
on the convening of a European conference on security. In June 1968
a conference of delegates from fifteen countries took place in
Helsinki; it concerned the recognition of East Germany and the
implications this would have for European security. In the same
month Timo paid an unofficial visit to the Soviet Union. In October-
November 1968 Koivisto, who had taken over the post of Prime
Minister, paid a visit to Moscow. In connection with the possible
extension of NATO to cover "gray areas," Koivisto remarked in
November 1968 that Finland "had no enemies from whom to expect
an invasion." The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia recorded in 1969 that
the Finnish social democratic party fully cooperated on foreign policy
with the Soviet Union.'"
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 287
Perhaps Time's greatest single service to communist strategy will
turn out to be the help he gave in convening CSCE in Helsinki. In
1969 the Finnish government agreed to act as host. During 1970 a
Finnish ambassador was given a special assignment to visit the United
States and Europe. In November of that year the Finnish government
addressed a note to thirty-five countries proposing a preparatory
meeting on European security. In December the Soviet Union agreed
to the proposal. Similar agreement was expressed by all the East
European states including Yugoslavia but not Albania.
It is of particular interest that Timo visited the Soviet Union twice
in 1970. In between the two visits to the Soviet Union he visited the
United States and discussed European security and the Middle East
question. During his second visit to the Soviet Union he said that the
Soviet-Finnish Friendship Treaty of 1948 was of extreme significance
for Finland, and he agreed to help prolong it for a further twenty
years.
The strategic role of the communist intelligence potential in Finland
is known to the author in some detail up to the end of 1961 because he
worked there. He also knows in genera! terms that similar activities
were conducted in other European countries by KGB residents like
Krokhin and Rogov (whose real name is Tsimbal) in France;
Fedichkin, Orlov, and Gorshkov in Italy; and Korovin (an alias of
General Rodin) in Britain. In West Germany the KGB was
particularly active and successful in blackmailing and recruiting two
categories of politicians and officials: those who had bad records from
the Nazi period and those who were known, from KGB penetration of
other Western intelligence services, to be working as agents for one or
another of the Western powers. The exposure in April 1974 of
Gunther Guillaume as an East German agent, which led to Brandt's
resignation as Chancellor, showed how far communist intelligence
penetration had reached in West Germany. The author reported in
1962 that, in the previous September while serving in the KGB
residency in Helsinki, he had read a highly classified circular letter
from KGB headquarters to residencies abroad describing successful
recruitments of important new agents in recent years, which should be
emulated. One case, which was given as "an example of a well-
carried-out recruitment," illustrates the "false flag" recruitment
technique.
288 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The circular said that in one of its residencies the KGB had an
agent. He was a very dependable, active agent who had been working
for the KGB for many years and who had at one time been a minister
in his country. He still had entree into political circles in that country
and in particular was sufficiently close to the American and British
ambassadors for both of them to visit him at home. His KGB
controller asked him if he knew anyone who could be recruited in the
prime minister's office. The agent replied that he did have a friend
there, but that it would be difficult to approach him because he was a
man of pro-Western views. It was therefore decided that, since the
man knew that the agent was on friendly terms with the American and
British ambassadors, the agent would ask him, ostensibly on behalf of
one of them, for information on the prime minister's conversations.
The agent did so, and his friend agreed to supply information. In due
course he accepted money in return. The circular said that in this way
the residency had gained a new and valuable agent who began
systematically to give information on the Prime Minister and his
running of the country.
The normal practice in such a case would be for the KGB to take
over direct contact with an agent recruited under a false flag once he
had been "sucked in," but the circular did not say whether this had
been done in this case. As far as the author knows, the agent and his
friend have never been identified.
At the end of 1961 the KGB was planning yet more active use of
high-level agents of influence to manipulate world public opinion and
the policies of individual governments. The KGB residencies abroad
were instructed in 1961 to encourage its agents to attend the World
Disarmament Conference in Moscow in 1962. No doubt the same
instructions were repeated for other world peace congresses in the
1960s and 1970s.
For Western security services, preoccupied in the main with
conventional espionage, subversion, and law enforcement questions,
the high-level agent of influence presents new and complex problems.
Nevertheless, an understanding of communist strategy can help to
throw new light on the significance of contacts made by communist
embassies in the West and of visits by prominent Western citizens to
the communist bloc.
Undoubtedly the bloc countries applied their intelligence poten-
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 289
tial to the service of communist strategy in the Third World as
elsewhere. The author's information on the subject is fragmentary
because the development of this potential was still in the early stages
when he broke with the Soviet regime.
Some general indications of the way in which things were moving
were, for example, the creation of new African and Latin American
departments in the KGB; the instruction to Soviet counterintelligence
to establish direct personal contact with all Third World ambassadors
in Moscow; the more intensive use, on Shelepin's instructions, of
agents of influence for political purposes; and the use of
antiimperialist sentiment as the basis for recruiting agents. An
additional general point is that KGB deputy residents with specific
responsibility for Third World operations were appointed to important
KGB residencies in the advanced countries, such as in the Washington
and New York residencies.
A KGB training manual that the author read in the late 1950s
mentioned three specific cases, without giving full details. The first
related to the president of a developing country who was recruited on
a visit to the Soviet Union. Exceptionally, this recruitment was based
partly on an indirect form of blackmail. The president was a
homosexual. In approaching him the KGB claimed to have infor-
mation that a worldwide criminal organization had plans to blackmail
him. The KGB offered to help him to avoid the blackmail in return for
his cooperation against the imperialist powers. The president agreed to
the proposal. The second case related to an Indian ambassador in
Moscow, who performed important services for the KGB in exerting
influence over other ambassadors in Moscow. The third case
concerned an Indonesian ambassador in Moscow who was recruited.
The training manual described two different ways in which infor-
mation obtained from the penetration of Western intelligence services
could be exploited. One was the doubling of Western agents whom
the KGB had identified by penetration. The manual referred to a
minister or deputy minister of internal affairs of an African country
who was known from the penetration of British intelligence to be a
British agent and who was blackmailed and recruited by the KGB on
that basis. The alternative form of exploitation was to supply
information to Third World leaders with whom the Soviets had close
relations on the identities of Western agents in their
290 NEW LIES FOR OLD
countries. Information of this kind was given to Nasser in the late
1950s.
The author learned of two specific recruitments from a former
colleague, Sergey Antonov. In 1958 or 1959 Antonov, who was then
KGB deputy resident at the United Nations in New York, recruited an
important African personality. On the strength of this recruitment
Antonov was appointed head of the KGB's new African Department
in 1960. Vladimir Grusha, an official of the American Department,
recruited, in about 1957, a high-level Indonesian diplomat in the US.
For this reason Grusha, although a member of the American
Department, was posted as deputy resident in Indonesia in 1958 or
1959.
Viktor Zegal, an official of the KGB residency in Helsinki, told the
author that he had recruited a Brazilian diplomat in Finland in 1961.
The agent's cryptonym was "Pedro."
While the author was working in the NATO section of the
Information Department, the KGB obtained a memorandum written
for NATO by a prominent Western Arabist on the use of Arab
nationalism to divide the Arab world. The document was passed on to
the Soviet leadership.
In 1960 the KGB's decoding service broke the code used by the
Turkish ambassador in Moscow and systematically read the messages
passing between him and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The traffic
was known as "Turkish Notebook."
Mikhail Tkach was a former Soviet military intelligence officer
who spoke good Persian and English and had worked under cover as
consul-general in Iran, where he was known for his skill in recruiting
Iranian officials. In 1956 Tkach joined the KGB. In 1960, on
Shelepin's instructions, he was appointed head of the international
department of the Soviet trade union organization in order to re-
orientate it for political use, especially against the Third World.
Tkach told the author that all the officials of this department were
members of the KGB. This gives some indication of the importance
attached to the recruitment of foreign trade union officials, especially
those from the Third World.
That the security and intelligence potential of the Soviet national
republics was used in the interests of long-range policy is indicated by
the appointment in the 1970s of Aliyev as first secretary of the party's
Central Committee in Azerbaydzhan." He was once
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 291
head of the counter-inteUigence department of the KGB branch in
Azerbaydzhan, and after 1961 became chairman of the branch. His
promotion can be explained only by the success of the KGB branch
under his leadership in fulfilling party tasks. After he was made first
secretary he became active in the Third World; he has visited various
Arab and African countries.
There is evidence of advice and help being given by the Soviet
Union and other members of the communist bloc to friendly countries
and liberation movements on intelligence, security, and guerrilla
warfare. Recipients since 1960 have included Cuba, Ghana (up to
1966), and other African states.
Strategic Exploitation of KGB Agents among Prominent Soviet
Intellectuals and Religious Leaders
The KGB, and its departments that are responsible for work among
Soviet scientists and writers and foreign delegations and visitors to the
USSR, are involved in an active effort to influence prominent foreign
visitors along desirable foreign strategy lines. Especially exploited are
prominent personalities who are members of the Soviet Peace
Committee; the Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian
Countries; Soviet Friendship societies; the State Committee of
Science and Technology; the State Committee for Cultural Ties; and
the Institute of USA and Canadian Studies, led by G. Arbatov.
A special word heeds to be said on the exploitation of religion and
leading churchmen in the communist world for strategic political
purposes.
In November-December 1960 the Patriarch of All Russia, Alek-siy,
an old KGB agent, accompanied by Metropolitan Nikodim, head of
the Russian Orthodox Church's International Department, and
Professor Uspenskiy of the Leningrad Faculty of Theology and an
active member of the Soviet Peace Committee, toured the Middle East
in an aircraft provided by the Soviet government.'^ In the course of
the tour Patriarch Aleksiy and the Syrian patriarch issued an official
communique that stated: "Our standpoint of Christian love compels us
to condemn everything which incites hatred among peoples and
impels mankind toward a new world war and
292 NEW LIES FOR OLD
... to bless any attempts aimed at creating peace between peoples and
nations. . . . We resolutely condemn any manifestation of colonialism
as foreign to the spirit and the letter of the law of God."'''
The real identity of Metropolitan Nikodim is an interesting ques-
tion. According to official sources he was appointed head of the
International Department of the Russian Orthodox church in I960,
having served from 1957 to 1959 as a priest in the Russian Orthodox
church in Jerusalem. A colleague of the author's at the KGB Institute
named Lapshin was appointed, on graduation from the Institute, to the
religious section of the KGB's Emigre Department, where he was
working in I960. Lapshin told the author that the KGB had succeeded
in placing the deputy head of the Emigre Department who was
responsible for religious affairs, under cover as head of the
International Department of the Russian Orthodox church. The KGB
officer concerned, who used the name Viryukin in the KGB, had
served as a priest in Jerusalem in 1957-58. He had earlier made a
significant contribution to the KGB's penetration of the church and the
persecution of its priests. He had been transferred abroad to specialize
in other churches, using his KGB connections and facilities for
political purposes. Lapshin himself was being prepared to serve in the
United States under cover as the editor of a religious publication. His
mission was probably cancelled because the author's connection with
Lapshin would have been known to the KGB. Metropolitan Nikolay
Krutitskiy, whom Nikodim replaced as head of the International
Department, though a true priest, was an old KGB agent. His
replacement by Nikodim may well have been due to the fact that
Krutitskiy's association with the KGB was exposed by the former
Soviet intelligence officer Deryabin in 1957.
The Christian Peace Conference, composed of East European
church leaders, dates from the period of the formulation of the long-
range policy. It has played an active part in influencing Western
churches in the interests of that policy.
The Second All Christian Congress in Defense of Peace, held in
Prague in June-July 1964, attracted one thousand delegates, including
representatives of Buddhism and Islam as well as the Orthodox,
Cathohc, and the Anglican and other Protestant churches. The
introductory speech was made by Gromadka of
DISINFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE 293
Czechoslovakia, the president of the Christian Peace Conference.
Speakers from the Third World included one from Madagascar and
one from Uruguay. The congress appealed to all Christians for
disarmament, independence, and the eradication of hunger.
In November-December 1964 the Seventh General Conference of
the International Brotherhood of Buddhists, held in India, was
attended by Buddhists from the Soviet Union. Mongolian, as well as
Soviet, Buddhists went to a Buddhist conference in Ceylon in 1969. It
was decided to hold a forum of Asian Buddhists in June 1970 to
discuss the "struggle for peace" and support for North Vietnam.'"^ The
forum took place in Mongolia.'^ Two months later a Central Buddhist
Monastery and a Buddhist Institute were opened in Ulan Bator.
In March 1965 the First Conference of Muslims of Asia and Africa
was held in Bandoeng. Thirty-five countries were represented. The
Mufti of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Babakhanov, led the Soviet
delegation. The conference discussed the use of Mushm proselytizing
societies as weapons against imperialism. The need to harness Islam
to the service of the revolution has been openly discussed by
communist strategists. Based on Soviet experience in Central Asia,
the problem of achieving this is considered difficult but soluble.
The Christian Peace Conference held a seminar in Sofia in June
1976 to discuss the outcome of CSCE in Helsinki and its significance
for the Third World. The main reports were introduced by Professor
Bognar, the head of the Research Institute of World Economy of
Budapest University; by Dr. Kutsenkov, deputy director of the Institute
of International Labor Movements of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences; and by professors from India and Puerto Rico. The theme of
the seminar was that the Third World, which had been exploited by
imperialism in the past, should welcome the Helsinki conference and
recognize the need for cooperation in the European collective security
process. Dynamic steps should be taken to ensure military detente and
disarmament, which would allow Europe to contribute to the new
economic order. Helsinki had not destroyed the forces opposed to
detente or frustrated their anticommunist purposes. Further efforts
were necessary to prevent new forms of psychological warfare by the
"enemies of peace."
The seminar was followed by discussions in Moscow between
294 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Metropolitan Nikodim and delegations from Pax Christi and churches
in Italy, Holland, Belgium, and West Germany. The subject was "East
and West now and tomorrow from the Christian point of view." The
meeting welcomed the Helsinki agreements and underlined the
importance of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the
negotiations in Vienna for troop reductions in Central Europe. The
secretary of the International Department of the Russian church,
Buyevskiy, drew a distinction between communist and Western aid to
the Third World by maintaining that communist aid was given to
develop Third World economies toward independence. The Soviet
Professor Osipov said that East-West collaboration resulting from
Helsinki would allow the diversion of military budgets to the
development of the Third World. He drew attention to the importance
of the UN General Assembly's call in 1974 for a new economic order.
The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia recorded that by 1972 the World
Council of Churches had been converted from a "pro-Western" to a
"progressive" orientation in its policies on peace, disarmament, and
related matters. Assiduous advocacy by the Christian Peace
Conference and others of the view that Christianity and communism
were natural allies in support of the national liberation movement
induced the World Council of Churches to provide funds for African
guerrilla movements, including the Rhodesian Patriotic Front,
believed to be responsible for a massacre of British missionaries in
1978.
The Fifth General Conference of Buddhists for Peace was held in
Ulan Bator in July 1979. The Patriarch of All Russia, Pimen, sent a
message to his "dear, fellow friends of peace" wishing them success.
In the previous month he had received the Dalai Lama, who was in
Moscow on his way to Ulan Bator and no doubt shared with him his
experience of peace conferences. The Patriarch's message to the
conference was conveyed by Metropolitan Nikodim's successor.
Metropolitan Yuvenaliy, who had acted as chairman of an All-World
Conference held in Moscow in 1977, on "religious leaders for peace,
disarmament, and just relations between peoples." Yuvenaliy
advocated signature of the SALT II treaty and the opening of
negotiations on SALT HI, arguing that only detente could bring peace
to the whole world, including Asia.'^
23
The Evidence of Overall Coordination
Between the Communist Governments
and Parties
Coordination within the Bloc
The revival after 1958 of an overt central body analogous to the
Comintern or Cominform to coordinate the communist bloc and
movement would have been incompatible with the long-range policy
and strategy. There is, however, significant inside and open
information on the strengthening since 1959 of the coordinating
machinery of the bloc. The establishment in 1959 of a secret coordi-
nating center for the bloc's intelligence and security services has been
described already. In addition, as Khrushchev put it in October 1961,
it had become the "practice to hold periodic exchanges of views
among the heads of parties and governments on major economic and
political problems. The collective agencies of the socialist states — the
Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Council for Mutual Economic
Aid — have grown stronger."' The Political Consultative Committee of
the Warsaw Pact was activated at about this time. In 1969 a committee
of ministers of defense was added, and in 1976 a committee of foreign
ministers. In Comecon a Permanent Executive Committee was
established at the vice-premier level in 1963.
No less important than this supranational and governmental coor-
dinating machinery is the wide range of multilateral and bilateral
forms of contact at different levels between the leaders of the bloc and
nonbloc parties and their party apparatuses. A systematic reading of
official communist sources, especially the Great Soviet Ency-
clopaedia, shows the scope and scale of both governmental and
295
296 NEW LIES FOR OLD
party contacts. All of these provide opportunities for the communist
leaders and their experts in various fields to exchange information,
opinions, and accounts of their experiences in implementing the
policy and strategy and to discuss and decide on new initiatives and
tactics.
The possibility that, in addition to these acknowledged forms of
contact, there is a secret policy coordinating center for the bloc is
discussed below.
Before considering the main open forms of coordination, attention
should be drawn to a general point made in the Encyclopaedia
regarding various forms of contact. According to this source the
Twenty-second CPSU Congress in October 1961 determined the
"most appropriate forms of contact between parties in present
conditions."^ Chou En-lai was present at this congress. If his osten-
tatious walkout is discounted as part of a disinformation operation, the
implication is that the Chinese took part in determining what form
future contacts between parties should take. In the following year the
Encyclopaedia stated that "in modern conditions the cooperation of
communist parties finds expression in bilateral and multilateral
contacts ... in meetings between party leaders and in the participation of
communist party delegations in the work of party congresses." The
recognition by the Encyclopaedia of bilateral forms of contact as well
as attendance at congresses is significant in that it legitimizes the
continuation of bilateral contacts with the Chinese by the Soviets and
others after the Chinese withdrawal from multilateral bloc
organizations. Elsewhere, the Encyclopaedia emphasized the
importance of conferences for the "working out of agreements on joint
actions for the implementation of the general line of policy." Use of
the expression "general line of policy" is as near as the Encyclopaedia
gets to an admission of the existence of a common long-range policy.
Summit Meetings
In May 1958 the first of a series of summits of first secretaries of
the bloc parties and heads of the bloc governments devoted to the
economic integration of the European communist countries was held
in Moscow. The summits on the same subject in 1961,
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 297
1962, and 1963 were held under Comecon auspices.
The Moscow summit of August 1961, which dealt with the con-
clusion of the German treaty, was in the form of a meeting of the
Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact. It subsequently
became normal, but not invariable, practice to hold meetings of the
Political Consultative Committee at or near first secretary level. For
example, the Soviet delegation to the meeting of the committee in
January 1965 included Brezhnev, Kosygin, Gromyko, Malinovskiy,
and Andropov. It dealt with the subject of security in Europe and
discussed the convening of a European conference on security and a
world conference on disarmament.'' The meeting of July 1966, held in
Bucharest, was at summit level. It pursued the subject of security in
Europe and called for troop withdrawals and the dissolution of NATO
and the Warsaw Pact.' Subsequent meetings at summit level included
those held in Sofia (March 1968), which issued a declaration on
Vietnam; in the Soviet Union {August 1970); in Prague (January
1972); in Warsaw (April 1974); and in Moscow (November 1978).^
The 1970 summit in Moscow was attended by a particularly strong
Romanian delegation, including Ceausescu, Maurer, Niculescu-Mizil,
and Manescu. Those in Prague and Warsaw discussed European
problems. The Encyclopaedia noted that in 1970 the question of
raising the level of effectiveness of cooperation between communist
parties was central to the communist system. Their efforts in
economic policy, ideology, and the strengthening of defense were
closely coordinated.' Other summits were held independently of either
Comecon or Warsaw Pact organizations; for example, one was held in
Moscow in June 1967 and another in Budapest in the following
month. These two meetings discussed the Israeli-Arab war, expressed
solidarity with the Arab world, and demanded the withdrawal of
Israeli troops. As the Encyclopaedia puts it: "These meetings provided
an opportunity to work out a single position and joint political and
diplomatic actions." Two summits were held on international
ideological questions: one in Moscow (December 1973) and one in
Prague (March 1975). They discussed the direction that should be
taken by ideological cooperation "in conditions of deepening
detente." The political and military leaders of the Warsaw Pact
countries met in Warsaw in May 1980.
In addition to formal summit meetings, a series of informal sum-
298 NEW LIES FOR OLD
mer gatherings of communist leaders have been held in the Crimea.
References can be found to such meetings in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976,
1977, and 1978, and probably to one held in 1974. As the
Encyclopaedia for 1974 states: "The Crimean meetings have become a
tradition. The leaders keep each other informed and narrow down
their positions in the political, economic, and ideological fields."'^ In
1975 the Encyclopaedia said that the meetings had become the forum
at which the international situation is assessed, common tasks are
discussed, and the strategy of joint actions is developed. Thanks to the
Crimean meetings, the cooperation between communist countries has
become closer."'"
According to Pravda {March 20, 1981), it was noted at the Twenty-
sixth CPSU Congress that, during the past years, thirty-seven friendly
meetings at the summit level had taken place in the Crimea. The
future development of relations between the fraternal parties and
countries, key problems of world politics, and tasks for the future
were discussed at these meetings.
A second new type of high-level gathering made its appearance in
the 1970s. In September-October 1975, in January 1976. and in March
1977, there were conferences of the second secretaries of the central
committees held in Moscow, Warsaw, and Sofia respectively. Deputy
heads of government were included in the first of these conferences,
which dealt with economic cooperation." The second and third both
dealt with ideological questions in a period of detente. The Warsaw
meeting related to Europe in particular.'' Cuba, as well as Romania
and Czechoslovakia, was mentioned as being represented at the
Warsaw and Sofia meetings.
One meeting of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee
that does not appear to have been held at first or second secretary
level is nevertheless worthy of note. It took place in Bucharest, the
capital of supposedly independent Romania, in November 1976. Its
agenda covered the deepening political and military cooperation
between members of the Pact. In order to perfect the mechanism of
political cooperation within the framework of the Warsaw Pact, a
committee of ministers of foreign affairs, together with a combined
secretariat, was estabhshed as an organ of the Political Consultative
Committee.'
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 299
Coordination through Diplomatic Channels
With the adoption of the long-range policy, diplomatic represen-
tation within the bloc became a permanent form of political coordi-
nation among its members. This statement is supported by the fact that
an unusually large number of new ambassadors were appointed
between bloc countries in the period 1960-62. New Soviet
ambassadors were appointed in 1960 to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
Cuba, and Hungary; in 1961 to Mongolia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and
Albania; in 1962 to Cuba, Yugoslavia, and East Germany. The
Romanians, Hungarians, Mongolians, and Cubans appointed new
ambassadors to the Soviet Union in 1960; the Yugoslavs in 1961; the
Chinese in 1962, and the Czechoslovaks in 1963.
The status of Soviet ambassadors changed at the same time. There
are indications''' that Soviet ambassadors to other bloc countries were
made responsible for coordinating all aspects of long-range policy
within the countries of their accreditation. Soviet ambassadors are
carefully chosen so as to ensure that their background and experience
fit them for the specific tasks they will have to perform. Because of
their coordinating function, almost all Soviet ambassadors within the
bloc since 1960 have been members of the Central Committee of the
CPSU. In this context it is worth remembering Tito's complaint in
1948 that the Yugoslavs could not be expected to reveal secret party
information to Soviet representatives who did not have that status. It is
also interesting to note that no distinction seems to be made between
the status of Soviet ambassadors in "dissenting" bloc countries, such
as China and Romania, and "orthodox" countries, such as Hungary
and Bulgaria. For example, the Soviet ambassador to Romania from
1965 to 1971 was Basov, a Central Committee member. The Soviet
press indicated in July 1966 that he was a member of the Soviet
delegation to the Comecon meeting in Bucharest; the delegation
included Brezhnev and Kosygin.
Of special interest are the Soviet ambassadors to China. From 1959
to 1965 the post was held by Chervonenko. It is noteworthy that
Chervonenko, who was appointed in the period in which China was
actively participating in the formulation of the long-range policy,
should have been kept in Peking for the first five years of
300 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the Split. It is even more remarkable in the light of his background.
From 1951 onward he was a senior party theoretician and official in
the Ukraine; from 1956 to 1959, he was secretary of the central
committee of the Ukrainian party. As such, he was a close friend and
confidant of Khrushchev. He went to Peking and remained there as a
leading political and party figure, not as a career diplomat; his posting
indicated the close political and party relations between the Soviet
Union and China. His subsequent career is of equal interest. In 1965
he was transferred from Peking to Prague, where he remained until
1973, a period spanning both the preparation for and the aftermath of
the "Prague spring." In 1973 he moved to Paris, in time for the
development of Eurocommunism and other elements of the bloc's
strategy for Europe. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin.
In Peking he was succeeded by Lapin, who served there from 1965
to 1970. Lapin was elected a member of the Central Committee at the
Twenty-third CPSU Congress in 1966. As chief editor of broadcasts
from 1944 to 1953, he became an expert on the censorship and
manipulation of news. He went on to become minister of foreign
affairs for the Russian Republic from 1960 to 1962 and deputy to
Gromyko from 1962 to 1965.'^
Lapin's successor was Toistikov, a prominent party official. From
1952 onward he was active in party work in Leningrad and rose to be
first secretary of the Leningrad provincial committee, one of the most
important party posts in the Soviet Union, and one once held by
Zhdanov. Toistikov has been a member of the CPSU Central
Committee since 1961.
Shcherbakov, who took over from Toistikov in Peking in 1978,
worked in the Central Committee apparatus from 1949 to 1963 and
from 1974 to 1978. He has been a member of the Central Revision
Committee of the CPSU since 1966. He was minister at the Soviet
embassy in Peking in 1963-64, crucial years in the development of the
Sino-Soviet split. From 1964 to 1974 he was Soviet ambassador to
Vietnam.
The successive postings to China of these four very senior Soviet
party officials is incompatible with the deterioration in Sino-Soviet
party relations that is alleged to have taken place.
The continuity of Soviet and Chinese foreign policy is further
symbolized by the continuance in office as the ministers of foreign
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 301
affairs in their respective countries of Cromyko from 1957 to the
present day and of Chen Yi from 1958 to 1971.
Bilateral Coordination within the Bloc
Even if bilateral coordination is considered a less perfect form of
coordination within the communist world than multilateral, it is still
officially recognized. There is abundant, openly available evidence of
the continuity from 1958 to the present day of bilateral exchanges of
visits between party and government leaders of the Soviet Union and
other communist countries, including China, Romania,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Cuba, countries which, at one time
or another, have allegedly been estranged to some degree from the
Soviets.
For the duration of the genuine Tito-Stalin split, it would have been
more than Tito's life was worth for him to have attempted to visit the
Soviet Union; but since 1961, Tito, until his death, and other Yugoslav
leaders have been almost annual visitors. Khrushchev, Brezhnev,
Kosygin, and Gromyko in their turn have been to Yugoslavia. Tito
and his subordinates have traveled often to other communist countries,
including, from 1970 on, China. Tito's death did not destroy the
pattern; in April 1982 Gromyko visited Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav
defense minister visited Moscow despite alleged differences over
Afghanistan and Poland.
In the case of Romania, some of Ceausescu's many visits to the
Soviet Union have been well publicized. Western commentators,
under the influence of disinformation, have almost always assumed
that these visits were made in an attempt to resolve the differences
between the Soviet and Romanian leaders. But the evidence of
Romania's participation in Warsaw Pact, Comecon, Crimean, and
other multilateral and bilateral meetings within the bloc far outweighs
the occasional evidence of her nonparticipation and is inconsistent
with the existence of serious differences. It points to the conclusion
that, when Ceausescu met Brezhnev, it was not to be reprimanded by
him, but to work out in practical terms how the fiction of Romanian
independence could best be maintained and exploited in the interests
of long-range policy.
Similarly, the scale of the evidence of Czechoslovak contact with
302 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the Soviet Union, bilaterally and multilaterally, in summit, Warsaw Pact, and
Comecon meetings before, during, and after the events of 1968 supports the
conclusion that the Czechoslovak crisis was a planned and coordinated
operation. For example, in March 1968 Czechoslovak representatives
informed a summit meeting of several bloc countries in Dresden, called to
discuss political and economic unity through Comecon and bilateral contacts,
that the decisions of the January plenum were aimed at the "realization of the
line of the Thirteenth Party Congress" and that they were sure that the
leadership of the party would secure the further development of 'socialism.'
m17
Chinese party and government leaders played an important part in the
formulation of the long-range policy from 1958 to 1960. As observers they
attended Comecon meetings until late in 1961, and also attended the early
meetings of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact.' It
was at these meetings that the foundations of future coordination in the bloc
were laid. Even in 1961, continued Chinese participation in multilateral
gatherings of this kind was an anomaly. For them to have continued to attend
such gatherings would have put the Sino-Soviet disinformation operation at
serious risk. Less conspicuous bilateral Sino-Soviet contacts of one kind or
another have continued almost without interruption throughout the split.
They are capable of two interpretations. For example, conventional
methodology sees the meetings of the Sino-Soviet border commission as
vain, attempts to resolve frontier dispute. The new methodology sees them as
providing convenient cover for coordinating policy and planning, for staging
and exploiting spurious frontier incidents, and for other forms of Sino-Soviet
squabbhng. The same point apphes to the joint Sino-Soviet commission on
navigation. The exchanges of trade delegations could equally provide cover
for contacts of a political nature. Suggestive scraps of information can be
gleaned from the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia. For example:
• In April 1961 a Chinese trade delegation to Moscow was received by
Khrushchev.
• In 1962 Chinese party delegations attended party congresses in Eastern
Europe.
• In January 1963 a delegation from the Supreme Soviet, led by Andro-
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 303
pov, at that time the secretary of the central committee responsible for bloc
countries, visited China.
• From July 5 to July 20, 1963, there were meetings in Moscow between the
leading strategists of the CPSU and CPC. The Chinese delegation was led by
the general secretary, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and the CPSU delegation included
Suslov, V. Grishin, Andropov, Il'ichev, Ponomarev, Satyu-kov, and
Chervonenko. The Chinese delegation was received by the CPSU Central
Committee. The presence in Moscow of the Chinese delegation coincided
with the negotiation of the Test Ban Treaty. The meetings between the
delegations were interrupted, but there was an agreement that they should be
resumed later.
• In October 1964 there was a meeting of the Sino-Soviet railway
commission in Khabarovsk.
• In the same month Soviet, Romanian, Cuban, and other delegations
attended the celebrations of the Chinese revolution: the Soviet delegation was
led by V. Grishin, candidate member of the Presidium and chairman of the
Soviet trade union organization."'"'
• From November 5 to November 14, 1964, a party and government
delegation led by Chou En-lai was in the Soviet Union; it had meetings with
Brezhnev, Andropov, Kosygin, Podgornyy, Gromyko, and others and signed
an agreement." The reference to Gromyko's presence indicates that the
meeting dealt with the coordination of foreign policy.
• On February 5-6 and 10-11, 1965, a Soviet delegation led by Kosygin
stopped over in China on its way to and from Vietnam for negotiations with
Chinese leaders, including Mao""
• On January 7 and 13-14, 1966, Shelepin visited China on the way to and
from Vietnam. It may or may not he a coincidence that Brezhnev was in
Mongolia from January 1 1 to January 17."'
• In June 1966 Chou En-lai visited Albania and led a delegation to
Romania for talks with the Romanian leaders.
• From June 19 to August 8, 1969. the Sino-Soviet joint commission on
navigation in the Amur Basin held its fifteenth session and reached an
agreement. No dates were given for the first fourteen sessions.
• In September 1969 Romanian leaders visited Peking; on September 1 1,
Kosygin met Chou En-lai in Peking; on October 20, Sino-Soviet negotiations
took place in Peking on problems of mutual interest." The Soviet delegation
was led by the first deputy minister of foreign affairs, V. V. Kuznetsov."^
Kuznetsov remained in China until June 13, 1970."
• On August 15, 1970, the deputy minister for foreign affairs, Il'ichev,
304 NEW LIES FOR OLD
arrived in Peking as head of a Soviet government delegation for negotiations
with the Chinese.
• Between July and December 1970 sixteen Sino-Soviet negotiating
sessions were held on the settlement of border questions.
• In August and September 1970 negotiations on Sino-Soviet border trade
were held in Khabarovsk."
• On November 18, 1970, the new Soviet ambassador, Tolstikov, had a
meeting with Chou En-lai.
• In 1971 the negotiations on border questions continued; from June to
August a Chinese deputy minister was in the Soviet Union as head of a trade
delegation negotiating deliveries; a trade agreement was signed in Moscow.
• In 1972 the Sino-Soviet negotiations on border questions did not
advance "because of China's negative position"; in June a Soviet trade
delegation led by I. Grishin visited China.
• In 1973 negotiations on border questions continued at the deputy
minister of foreign affairs level.
• In February and March a session of the joint Sino-Soviet commission
was held."
• In 1974 the negotiations on border questions by the deputy ministers of
foreign affairs continued.
• In February 1974 direct flights from Moscow to China were started.
• In February-March 1974 a session of the joint Sino-Soviet commission
on navigation was held.
• On June 25, 1974, a Soviet delegation led by Deputy Minister Il'ichev
arrived in China for negotiations on border questions.""'
• On November 12, 1975, Deputy Minister Il'ichev arrived in Peking for
negotiations on border questions.
• In September 1976 the CPSU Central Committee sent its condolences
on Mao's death; Gromyko and Mazurov, both members of the Politburo,
called at the Chinese embassy.
• On November 29, 1976, Deputy Minister Il'ichev arrived in China;
negotiations on border questions continued in Peking until February \911^'
• From July to October, 1977, the joint Sino-Soviet mixed commission on
navigation resumed its sessions after a two-year interruption.
• On July 20-28, 1977, a Chinese government trade delegation, led by the
deputy minister of foreign trade, visited the Soviet Union and was received
by Patolichev.''
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 305
• In April 1978 Il'ichev arrived in Peking to resume negotiations. Tallcs
were held in Moscow from September 29 to November 30, 1979, between
Il'ichev and the Chinese deputy foreign minister, Wang You-ping. They were
to take up "broad questions of pohtical and economic relations," other than
border disputes. According to TASS, it was agreed that the talks should
continue in Peking. Gromyko met Wang in December.
• Early in 1981 China and the Soviet Union renewed an accord on
navigation rights in the Amur River; this was at the twenty-third session of a
series of negotiations begun in 1951.
• In March 1982 three Chinese experts visited Moscow to study Soviet
management techniques and were received by the deputy chairman of the
Soviet State Planning Committee.
This list of bilateral contacts is obviously incomplete. Even so, no
comparable list of bilateral Soviet- Yugoslav contacts could be drawn up for
the period of the genuine Tito-Stalin spht. For a substantial fraction of the
period covered, the Soviet Union was represented in China by a deputy
minister as well as by a leading party official in the post of ambassador.
Fragmentary as it is, the picture that emerges of Sino-Soviet bilateral contacts
is more consistent with coordination of policy and tactics than with abortive
attempts to settle disputes. Special attention should be drawn to the
prominence, in the talks with the Chinese, of two major Soviet strategists:
Kuznetsov, a leading speciahst in foreign pohcy; and Il'ichev, a specialist in
ideology as well as foreign affairs, including European security.'' Note also
the presence of Andropov, a speciahst on the bloc, later chairman of the
KGB, and now party leader. Tikhvinskiy, an expert on disinformation, has
figured in the Soviet delegations. On the Chinese side, prominent officials of
the Chinese Foreign Ministry also took part in these discussions, which
suggests that the subjects involved were wider than border problems.
The number of trade delegations sent by the Chinese to the Soviet Union
is also striking. It is noticeable that those in 1971, 1973, and 1977 arrived in
the Soviet Union in July or August, which is the time when the Crimean
summit conferences are held; the possibility of secret Chinese participation in
them should not be discounted.
A similar pattern of high-level bilateral contacts between the Soviets and
the Vietnamese and between the Chinese and the
306 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Vietnamese could also be documented.
Before leaving the subject of coordination within the bloc, brief
reference should be made to the close working relations between
speciahst departments of the central committees of the bloc parties.
Intensive contacts are also carried on between administrative, inter-
national, ideological, and other departments within the bloc, and
outside it in the case of those nonbloc parties large enough to have
similar departments of their own.
Coordination between Bloc and Nonbloc Parties
The arrangements for coordinating the bloc and nonbloc parties and
achieving what Khrushchev called the synchronization of their
activities and policies are so extensive that no more than an outline
can be given here.
Of fundamental importance are the international conferences of
bloc and nonbloc parties. The Sixty-four-party congress of November
1957 decided to work out a new long-range policy and strategy for the
bloc and for the international communist movement. The Eighty-one-
party congress of November 1960 formally adopted the new policy
and strategy. The Chinese, Albanian, Romanian, Czechoslovak,
French, Italian, and Spanish parties all took part in it. The next such
congress was held in Moscow in June 1969. Seventy-five parties
attended, nine from within the bloc and sixty-six from outside it. The
presence of five members of the Soviet Politburo shows the
importance attached to it by the CPSU. The congress reviewed the
preceding ten years and adopted a program of action for the future.
The French, Italian, and Spanish parties took part. The preparations
for the 1969 conference extended over more than four years.
In the same period other international conferences were devoted to
specific aspects of policy. For example, in October 1965 conferences
were held both in Moscow and in Czechoslovakia (Prague) to
celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Seventh Congress of the
Comintern, which adopted united front tactics. Representatives of
forty parties attended the Moscow meeting, which produced a report
on the historic significance of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern
for the modern communist movement. According to the Great Soviet
Encyclopaedia, "new strategic and tactical forms
EVIDENCE OF COORDINATION 307
and methods" for the communist movement were formulated. ^^ In
January 1970 a conference in Moscow of twenty-eight European
parties discussed European security. In September, in Budapest, forty-
five parties discussed common actions against imperialism.'' '
There have been systematic regional conferences of communist
parties in Western Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, Central
America, the Mediterranean, and in Arab and African countries. The
series in Europe included the Tihany and Berlin conferences in 1976,
in which the Eurocommunist parties were active. The list of
conferences could be prolonged indefinitely.
The congresses of the CPSU provide important opportunities for
consultation and coordination. The congresses of other bloc
communist parties attract fraternal delegations in substantial numbers.
It would be superfluous to enumerate them all; a few examples will
illustrate the point. The Twelfth Czechoslovak Congress, in 1962, was
attended by sixty-eight delegations, the Eighth Yugoslav Congress, in
1964, by thirty; the Romanian congress, in 1965, by fifty-seven.
Wherever conditions permit, the congresses of nonbloc communist
parties are attended by delegations from bloc parties. There are
innumerable official and unofficial contacts between communist
parties and national and international communist front organizations,
such as the World Federation of Trade Unions and the World Peace
Council.
Permanent linkage between the bloc and nonbloc parties exists
through the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee
under Ponomarev (this department has representatives stationed
abroad) and through the headquarters of the World Marxist Review in
Prague, where a number of representatives of bloc and nonbloc parties
work together as permanent members of the staff. The World Marxist
Review holds theoretical conferences on major policy issues.
Huge numbers of bilateral visits are paid to the Soviet Union and
other communist countries every year by the leaders and functionaries
of nonbloc communist parties traveling on party business.
Conclusions
Between 1958 and 1980 the scale of contact between communist
parties inside and outside the bloc is without parallel elsewhere
308 NEW LIES FOR OLD
in the world. The vast majority of communist gatherings take place
behind closed doors; no more is known about them than the leaders
wish to be known. Deprived of authentic news and hypnotized by
"revelations" about communist disunity derived from communist
sources. Western commentators have tended to underrate or ignore the
vast weight of the evidence of continuing systematic coordination of
the bloc from 1958 to the present day. The scale, the scope, and the
manner in which this coordination is conducted refute the notion that
international communism is a movement that has lost its momentum,
direction, and ideological sense of purpose through disunity.
Furthermore, the movement has not lost its controlled, organized, and
disciplined character. True, systematic dissent on the part of any one
communist country could only lead to its expulsion from the
communist bloc and its ostracism by all other communist countries, as
was the case with Yugoslavia in 1948. What has changed since 1957-
60 is not the nature of communism, but the appreciation by communist
leaders of the strategic and tactical advantages of spurious dissent
within the movement and the experience they have gained in
exploiting it strategically in the interests of long-range policy. The old
methodology resolves the contradiction between the evidence of
coordination and the evidence of disunity by ignoring much of the
evidence of coordination. The new methodology resolves it by
demonstrating the contrived and spurious nature of the disunity. The
scale of the acknowledged contact between the Soviets and the
Chinese, the Yugoslavs, the Romanians, and the Eurocommunists
betrays the nature of the "splits" and "differences" between them and
confirms that they are no more than manifestations of strategic
disinformation in action in support of long-range policy.
24
The Impact of the Disinformation Program
The Shaping of Western Assessments of the Communist World
The launching of a strategic disinformation program in 1958
invalidated the conventional methodology of Western students of
communist affairs. A carefully controlled flood of information was
released through the whole range of sources under communist control.
As in the NEP period in the 1920s, this flood of information confused
and distorted Western views on the situation in the communist world.
Western analysts, lacking the ability to acquire inside information on
communist strategic thinking, planning, and methods of operation,
gratefully accepted the new stream of information at face value.
Without their knowing it, their conventional methods of analysis were
invalidated and turned back on them by the communist strategists.
Because of the deliberate projection by these strategists of a false
image of the dissolution of communist unity, the noncommunist world
ignored or undervalued open and significant evidence pointing to bloc
cooperation from 1957 onward on a new footing of equality and
commitment to fundamental ideological principles and long-term
policy objectives. The new dispensation allows for variation in
domestic and international tactics and provides unlimited opportunities
for joint efforts between bloc countries to misrepresent the true state of
relations between them whenever this should be to their mutual
advantage. Unnoticed by the West, communist ideology was freed
from its Stalinist straitjacket and revived on Leninist lines. The change
was successfully misrepre-
309
310 NEW LIES FOR OLD
sented as the spontaneous replacement of ideology by nationalism as
the driving force behind the communist world.
Noncommunist studies came increasingly to be based on informa-
tion emanating from communist sources. While observers in the
noncommunist world sometimes showed some awareness that infor-
mation was reaching them through channels under communist control,
there was virtually no recognition of the fact that the information had
been specially prepared behind the Iron Curtain for their benefit. The
pohtical role of the intelligence services was ignored, and since the
evidence of planning and coordination in the activities of the bloc was
also overlooked, the growth of internal opposition movements and the
eruption of disputes between communist states and parties were
wrongly seen as spontaneous developments.
Up to 1960, and despite the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 and the Polish
and Hungarian uprisings of 1956, the noncommunist world was
willing to accept as fact the growth of a cohesive communist bloc and
international movement. Some Western analysts, like Professor
Possony, regarded the decisions of the Eighty-one-party congress in
November 1960 as indicating the adoption of a long-range policy. But
the acceptance at face value by Western statesmen, diplomats,
intelligence services, academics, journalists, and the general public of
the subsequent evidence of disputes and disunity in the communist
world precipitated a new attitude that would have been unthinkable
before and that caused the views of Possony and others to be regarded
as anachronistic if not antediluvian. The Eighty-one-party Manifesto
came to be regarded as a temporary, patched-up compromise between
the parties signifying their failure to adopt a common policy, and so
was brushed aside. The evidence of evolution and splits in the
communist world was so overwhelming in volume and so convincing
in character that none could continue to question its validity.
Acceptance in particular of the Sino-Soviet split as a reality became
the common basis for all noncommunist attempts to analyze present
and future policies and trends in the communist world. As a result
Western perception of offensive communist intentions was blunted
and the evidence of coordination in the execution of worldwide
communist strategies was discounted.
Because strategic disinformation was not recognized as such.
Western views on internal developments in the communist world
came increasingly to be shaped and determined by the communist
strategists in the interests of their own long-range policy. In the
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 311
Soviet Union the dropping of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and
the introduction of market-orientated enterprises and other measures
of economic reform seemed to presage a reversion toward capitalism.
The gradual rise in hving standards seemed to be taking the edge off
the Soviet appetite for revolutionary change, generating new pressures
on the regime to allow greater freedom and improve the supply of
consumer goods. Apparent differences in the Soviet leadership
between the liberal reformers and conservative ideologists on how to
grapple with these pressures and reconcile the need for progress with
lip service to ideology confirmed Western belief in the recurrence of
power struggles, mainly behind the scenes but sometimes in the open,
as in the case of Khrushchev's dismissal. When the liberals appeared
to have the upper hand, expectations were aroused of increasing
cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West. Moderation in
Soviet propaganda and expressions of interest in peaceful coexistence
and businesslike negotiations seemed genuine, especially when
compared with the implacable hostility of the Chinese. Occasional
aggressive Soviet actions were attributable to the survival within the
leadership of a group of die-hard Stalinists who had to be appeased
from time to time by the Hberal reformers. If the Stalinists were once
more to regain control, detente would be reversed and there might be a
Sino-Soviet reconciliation. The West therefore had an interest in
strengthening the hand of liberal reformers. Provided they survived,
there were prospects of an improvement in relations owing to the
existence of common interests between the Soviets and the West in
avoiding nuclear conflict and confronting Chinese militancy. In the
long run the technological revolution offered prospects of a gradual
narrowing of the gulf between the communist and non-communist
systems.
Such were the arguments of the 1960s. Despite the revival of neo-
Stalinism toward the end of the decade, the arguments survived and
gained weight until the later 1970s.
The apparent opening up of cracks between the communist states
was assessed as an encouraging development. The emergence of a
range of different brands of communism seemed to show how
ideology had lost its binding force. The rivalries between the com-
munist states appeared rooted in traditional national sentiment.
The impact of the Sino-Soviet dispute on Western thinking can be
illustrated by the change in attitude of Allen Dulles, the former
312 NEW LIES FOR OLD
director of the CIA, a man of unquestionable integrity and anticom-
munist conviction with access at the time to all available open and
secret information. In an address delivered on April 8, 1959, Mr.
Dulles said: "As long as the principles of international communism
motivate the regimes in Moscow and Peking, we must expect that
their single purpose will be the liquidation of our form of free society
and the emergence of a Sovietized, communized world order. They
change their techniques as circumstances dictate. They have never
given us the slightest reason to hope that they are abandoning their
overall objectives. We sometimes like to delude ourselves into
thinking that we are faced with another nationalistic power struggle of
which the world has seen so many. The fact is that the aims of the
Communist International with its headquarters in Moscow are not
nationalistic; their objectives are not limited. They firmly believe, and
eloquently preach, that communism is the system which will
eventually rule the world and each move they make is directed to this
end. Communism, like electricity, seeks to be an all pervasive and
revolutionary force."' Only three years later, speaking on the same
subject at the Convention of the American Bar Association, in August
1962 in San Francisco, Dulles, in referring to the unfolding Sino-
Soviet dispute, maintained that the communist system was showing
manifold vulnerabilities and weaknesses.^
Confirmation of this view was soon visible in the growing "inde-
pendence" of Romania. Following Tito's example, Ceausescu seemed
to be championing his people's cause against Soviet interference in
their country. He was therefore worthy of support in concrete terms.
Similar aspirations and tendencies toward independence from the
Soviet Union were thought to be at work elsewhere in Eastern Europe,
especially in Poland. But it was in Czechoslovakia that the newest and
most exciting brand of communism burst upon the market in the
"Prague spring" of 1968. This seemed more than just an assertion of
Czech and Slovak nationalism; it was a rethinking of some of the
basic concepts of the relations between the individual and the
communist state: It was "socialism with a human face," and it opened
up new possibilities of East-West cooperation. But because it
threatened the foundations of the communist system, it was crushed
by brutal Soviet military intervention.
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 313
Apparently shaken by rebellion outside their borders and the growth
of dissidence at home, the Soviet leaders under Brezhnev reverted to
repression on crude Stalinistic lines. It was therefore with reservations
that the West received communist proposals for a conference on
European security. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak experience had, it
seemed, demonstrated the existence of liberalizing tendencies in the
communist world, a point underlined by vocal Soviet "dissidents." It
was therefore worthwhile for the West to engage in discussions on
European security and human rights, even if only with an eye to the
future.
Tito and his Yugoslav regime were thought to be helpful in
promoting liberalizing tendencies in the bloc. Yugoslav influence in
the nonaligned movement was welcomed as an obstacle to the
extension in the developing countries of Soviet and Chinese power.
The tendency toward disintegration seemed to have spread from the
bloc to the international communist movement. The Sino-Soviet split
had triggered off a splintering process in many communist parties.
Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia had been repudiated by several
important parties, including the French and Italian, the two most
powerful in Europe. In the mid-1970s both parties had expressed their
independence of the Soviet Union and added their voices to the cry for
democracy, human rights, and a Europe free of military pacts. Even if
the Italian party came to power, it seemed that that might not be
incompatible with the survival of democracy or even with continuing
Italian adherence to the North Atlantic Treaty.
To sum up, the apparent loss of revolutionary ardor, the apparent
disunity in the bloc and movement, the apparent preoccupation of the
communist states with fratricidal struggles, and the advent of detente
all pointed to the same conclusion: The Cold War was over. The new
situation seemed to demand accommodation and a positive response
to communism rather than the old forms of resistance and
containment.
The Effect on Western Policy Formation
During the Cold War, when the threat of communism seemed
dangerously acute, traditional national differences between the
314 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Western powers were to some extent subordinated to the common
interest in self-defense. From 1945 to 1949 Western Europe was
recovering from the devastation of the war. American superiority was
unquestioned. Europe was dependent on the United States to restore
its economic life and protect it from Soviet attack. By the mid-1950s
the situation was already changing. Europe was on the road to
recovery and was beginning to see itself as a community of rapidly
advancing economic powers. Resentment of American influence was
growing. Especially in France, there was a demand for a more equal
partnership with the United States. In October 1958 General de Gaulle
addressed a memorandum to the American and British governments
asking in effect for the creation of a triumvirate of powers with
worldwide responsibilities. The memorandum reflected the changing
economic realities in Europe. Given a clearsighted and realistic
common assessment of the long-range communist problem, the
required adjustment of relationships within the Western alliance,
based on the principle of equal partnership, might have been achieved.
As it was, the alliance was allowed to drift. At the same time changes
began to appear in the communist world that, distorted and
exaggerated by communist disinformation, indicated a reduction in the
immediacy and intensity of the threat from communism. The
argument for sacrificing national interests for the sake of Western
unity in defense was weakened. If the communist monolith was
disintegrating into a set of rival national regimes, whose national
interests were increasingly overriding their supposedly common
ideology, the nations of the West could afford to revert to the pursuit
of their traditional national interests in their particular spheres of
influence. It was no longer necessary to strengthen Western unity
under American leadership. It was more important to examine
possible new alignments. The developing nations were no longer
frightened into joining Western-backed military alliances; they could
pursue their independence more effectively outside, or in active
opposition to, the alliances while seeking cooperation with the
communist countries.
If communist ideology was a dechning force, then Western ideo-
logical anticommunism of the Cold War variety was outdated; it
would serve only to blight the growth of nationalism in the communist
world and drive the increasingly "independent" communist regimes
back together. The new look in the communist world die-
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 315
tated a reexamination of traditionai Western concepts. The world
could no longer be simply divided into two antagonistic blocs divided
neatly along ideological lines. Given Soviet commitment to detente
and peaceful coexistence and given the existence of the Sino-Soviet
split, the concepts of East-West ideological competition and the global
containment of communism seemed obsolete; they could endanger
peace or provoke a Sino-Soviet reconciliation. Unity in Western
military, political, and economic policies toward the bloc had become
superfluous even before it had been achieved. The new situation
called for flexibility and freedom of initiative.
Different schools of thought developed on how best to take advan-
tage of the new situation in the communist world. If nascent differ-
ences between the communist states were to be encouraged, differ-
entiated approaches to them were needed. Bridge-building with those
East European states showing liberal or independent tendencies would
help to wean them away from the Soviet Union.
At the same time it seemed necessary to encourage closer Western
relations with the Soviet Union to stimulate the process of internal
evolution and to exploit her differences with China — in other words,
to "play the Soviet card." "History," it was said, "will not forgive us if
we miss that chance."
In the United States some argued that the emergence of the Soviet
Union and the United States as nuclear superpowers rendered the
Western alliance less important. A unilateral approach to the Soviet
Union was to be preferred as less complicated and less likely to
provoke Sino-Soviet reconcihation. A sympathetic understanding was
required of the position of liberal Soviet leaders. Their influence would
be strengthened if they could be helped to solve their agricultural
crises, industrial failures, technological backwardness, and shortages
of consumer goods. Better fed, better housed communists would be
more satisfied and less revolutionary.
The extent to which Khrushchev was accepted as a liberal in the
West was illuminated by the widespread Western fears of a reversion
to hard-line Soviet policies provoked by the news of his "dismissal" in
1964 and the relief that ensued when it became apparent that detente
and peaceful coexistence would continue.
Another school of thought in the United States contended that the
West should not seek actively to exploit the Sino-Soviet dispute for
fear of achieving the opposite effect to that intended; the two
316 NEW LIES FOR OLD
communist giants were best left to fight it out between themselves. A
passive policy on the Sino-Soviet split could nevertheless be ac-
companied by an active policy toward Eastern Europe. The continuing
independence of Yugoslavia had demonstrated the success of Western
policy toward her after 1948. An active trading policy in Eastern
Europe, apart from being profitable, offered hopes of prizing other
East European satellites away from the Soviet Union.
In France the Gaullist vision of a greater Europe stretching from
the Atlantic to the Urals became a topic for serious discussion.
Differences over policy toward China widened. The United States
clung to the view that no concessions should be made as long as the
regime pursued its radical militant line. Other countries, especially
France, argued that China was embittered by its diplomatic isolation.
Granted diplomatic recognition, a seat in the United Nations, and
more favorable openings for trading with the West, it would evolve,
like the Soviet Union, on more moderate lines.
In the 1970s the obvious Soviet military threat in Europe and open
Soviet aggressiveness in Africa and Afghanistan, in contrast with
China's new-found moderation, generated a new school of thought
advocating closer relations with China, or "playing the China card."
In oversimplified form these were some of the arguments and
considerations taken into account by the architects of Western policies
in the 1960s and 1970s. The major criticism of these policies is not that
they were influenced by cryptocommunists or fellow travelers, though
this factor should not be disregarded. The policies were, in the main,
honestly developed from certain basic premises, namely, that the
Soviet system was evolving, that the Sino-Soviet split was genuine,
and that the communist monolith was in the process of disintegration.
The policies were wrong because the premises were false: They were
the product of communist disinformation.
The Practical Effects on Western Policies
Apparent disunity in the East provoked real disunity in the West.
Antagonisms and disputes between the Western allies came out into
the open. For a while, they made headhne news. Soon they
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 317
were accepted as normal.
The trend toward the pursuit of national interest was most evident in
France. It entailed a sharp decline in cooperation with the United
States, the adoption of a new national defense policy, a withdrawal
from France's military commitments to NATO in 1966, concentration
on France's leading role in the Common Market, and the revival of
interest in her traditional allies in Eastern Europe: Russia, Poland, and
Romania. The deterioration in relations with some of the NATO allies
was sharp. Cries were heard of France for the French, Europe for the
Europeans, America for the Americans. Suspicions were fanned that
the defense of Europe was not a vital United States interest. American
reactions to the reassertion of French identity and interests were not
always tactful or farsighted. The United States refused to share its
nuclear technology with France. The Americans failed to consult the
French adequately over the Cuban crisis. France was not a party to the
test-ban treaty signed by the United States and Britain with the Soviet
Union in 1963. The French openly flouted American policy on the
recognition of communist China. As the American military
commitment in Vietnam built up, so did the intensity of West
European, especially Swedish, criticism of American policy there.
Franco-American hostility spilled over into Franco-British rela-
tions. Because of the "special relationship," Britain was cast in the role
of an American agent in Europe. Britain's application to join the
Common Market was vetoed by France. Britain focused on relations
with BETA and the Commonwealth and on cutting back her overseas
commitments.
These developments were accompanied by unjustified fears of a
revival of the German threat in Europe and by the questioning of the
wisdom of Franco-German rapprochement, which, though desirable in
the interests of Western European unity, was in itself no substitute for
it.
Elsewhere, quarrels multiplied. The Austrians and Italians quar-
reled over the Tirol; the French and the Canadians over Quebec;
Greece and Turkey over Cyprus; Britain and Iceland over fish;
Pakistan and India over Kashmir and other issues. Arab-Israeli hostility
reached new levels of intensity. These conflicts had their roots in
historical problems that had little or nothing to do with communism.
Nevertheless, the apparent weakening of the communist
318 NEW LIES FOR OLD
threat permitted a degree of indulgence in emotive nationalistic
disputes that might have been more muted in the face of a common
danger commonly perceived. In the atmosphere of detente NATO,
which had been created to contain the obvious postwar Soviet military
threat to Western Europe, lost momentum. Not only were there
political conflicts among its members, but the effort to establish
standardized arms and equipment languished. Joint NATO programs
were stillborn or halfhearted. In 1974 Greece followed France in
withdrawing from its military commitments. Tension with Turkey
gravely weakened NATO's southern flank.
In 1965 a Western observer who, like everyone, accepted the
authenticity of the Sino-Soviet split commented thus on NATO: "The
basic Soviet blackmail strategy in the past decade has been to splinter
NATO. This was the purpose behind the Berlin crisis. If the trends
within NATO are not reversed, this objective may be accomplished,
not by the more militant Soviet strategy, but by the temporary
reduction of Soviet militancy, encouraging disarray within the alliance.
How true it is that the use of force is often not the best strategy. The
Soviets may in retrospect count the Sino-Soviet split more than
compensated by a NATO split. As for the West, any breakup of
NATO into power clusters, or a Balkanization of West Europe, could
produce miscalculations or appeasement."^
The abandonment by the West of concerted policies toward the
communist world led to changes in Western diplomatic practice.
Personal contacts — including confidential talks — negotiations, and
understandings between leading communist and noncommunist
statesmen, even if initiated by the communist side, were welcomed in
the West. A unilateral approach to relations with communist countries
became the norm. General de Gaulle's visit to Moscow in 1966
revived talk of the Franco-Russian alliance of the 1890s and the
Franco-Soviet pact of the 1930s. The United States agreed to
conducting the SALT negotiations with the Soviet Union on a
bilateral basis. Regular bilateral political consultations between the
Soviets and the French and Italian governments became accepted
practice. In West Germany the argument for an opening to the East
gathered strength and found expression in Chancellor Brandt's Ost
politik in the early 1970s. The Western response to China's detente
diplomacy appeared not to be concerted. There
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 319
were conspicuous examples of failure to consult; for example, the
Japanese were not warned by the Americans of the Nixon-Kissinger
initiative in China in 1971; President Giscard d'Estaing gave his allies
little or no notice of his meeting with Brezhnev in Warsaw in May
1980.
The widening of the range of the contacts between communist
diplomats and politicians in the noncommunist world was as warmly
greeted as the widening of Western contacts with the communist
world.
With the advent of detente Western business interests pressed for
the expansion of trade with communist countries. Normally without
consultation or regard for any common Western policy or interest,
individual noncommunist countries took their own initiatives.
Justification, if needed, was to be found in the arguments that the
trade was profitable and beneficial to the economies of the
noncommunist world, and that it would promote good East-West
relations and stimulate pro-Western, liberal, nationalistic, and
separatist tendencies in the communist world, thereby contributing to
world stability and peace, and perhaps in the long run to the formation
of a world common market.
Many Western firms, attracted by apparently golden opportunities,
sent their representatives to explore the communist market. The
British, having the greatest experience in world trade, took the lead,
closely followed by the French, West Germans, Italians, and Japanese.
The Germans, in particular, extended long-term credits to Eastern
Europe, hoping, apart from making a profit, to promote independence
from the Soviet Union. The Europeans and the Japanese increased
their trade with China, hoping at the same time to take the edge off
Chinese militancy.
There was a general trend in the 1960s toward easing restrictions on
trade with communist countries. The policy of limiting East-West
trade, underlined in the Rome agreements of 1958-59, was abandoned
in favor of expansion; controls on strategic exports from the West
were relaxed, and major industrial plants of definite strategic
importance to the communist bloc were constructed on communist
territory by Western enterprises. Longer-term credits were provided.
Most favored nation status was granted to additional communist
countries, including Romania and, in 1980, China. The United States,
which had for long opposed the expansion of East-
320 NEWLIESFOROLD
West trade, began to change its ground. By 1977, as the President's
State of the Union Message for that year shows, the encouragement of
trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had become official
American policy. Scientific and technical cooperation flourished, and
the export of high-technology goods, including computers, was
permitted even by the United States. All these steps were taken by
Western nations acting individually, with little or no consideration of
the possible long-term consequences.
Particular favor was shown to the Yugoslavs on the grounds that,
having broken with the Soviet Union in 1948, they had established a
precedent for Eastern European independence.
Next in favor were the Romanians, for the very reason that they
appeared to have set off on the same independent course as
Yugoslavia. The Romanian minister of foreign trade was received in
France, West Germany, and the United States. Romania was given
most favored nation status. Credit was made available to Romania
more freely than to any communist country other than Yugoslavia and
Poland.
By the end of the 1970s the expansion of trade and credit had
allowed overall communist indebtedness to the Western world to rise
to a total of about $70 biUion. The growth of East- West trade had a
pronounced effect on the overall Western approach to the communist
world, since it built up powerful vested interests in the continuance of
detente despite the growth of communist military power and other
indications of aggressive communist intentions.
Detente and disinformation on communist "evolution" provided
grounds for socialist parties to view with greater favor the formation
of united fronts with communist parties. Apart from improving the
chances of socialists' gaining power, united fronts looked like a
promising device for influencing communist parties to move closer to
social democracy and further from the Soviet Union. Such ideas were
strong in the Italian, West German, French, and Finnish socialist
parties. In general, socialist parties looked less favorably on coalitions
or electoral alliances with center parties. The general leftward trend of
the 1960s had a polarizing effect. It widened the gulf between
conservative and progressive parties and between the reforming and
revolutionary wings of socialist parties. More often than not, the
moderate center suffered. The pragmatic relationship between
conservative American and socialist European ten-
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 321
dencies seemed to have outlived its usefulness.
Opposition to communism in principle became unfashionable. The
basic differences between democracy and communism were lost from
sight. It was considered more rewarding to seek out common interests
through increasing East- West scientific, cultural, and sporting
exchanges that, it was thought, would contribute to the liberalization
of communist regimes. In the 1960s anticommunist writers virtually
lost their admission tickets to the communications media; their
attitude was deemed inimical to detente.'^ European radio and
television organizations negotiated their own arrangements with their
official Soviet government counterparts. The need for anticommunist
broadcasts was called into question. The direct anticommunist content
was drastically reduced.' Attention was focused instead on the Sino-
Soviet split, other fissures in the bloc, and the growth of dissident
movements. Official and semiofficial funding of noncommunist
cultural and student organizations for the purpose of countering
communist fronts was largely discontinued.
Soviet expansionism in Africa and the intervention in Afghanistan at
the end of 1979 drew attention to underlying Soviet aggressiveness.
Some of the more naive Western illusions about detente were
shattered. At the same time Western reactions to the Soviet action
demonstrated the extent to which vested interests in detente had been
built up in the West, not least in West Germany and France. Despite
American opposition, the West Germans and French have shown
themselves determined to proceed with the construction of a gas
pipeline from the Soviet Union to Western Europe. It is doubtful if the
Afghan situation will alter long-term Western attitudes to detente any
more than did the Cuban crisis of 1962. It has not dissipated long-term
Western expectations, fostered by twenty years of communist
disinformation, that the decay of ideology and the growth of internal
opposition will lead eventually to the liberalization of the Soviet
regime.
Meanwhile, China's vigorously expressed hostility to the Soviet
Union offers apparent prospects of alliance with the West on the basis
of a common interest in containing Soviet expansionism. Because
there has been no understanding in the West either of disinformation
or of long-range communist policy and the scissors strategy, "playing
the China card" is now regarded as a serious strategic option for the
United States.
322 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Conclusion
Communist strategic disinformation has had a profound influence
on international relations. Western governments and their professional
advisers have remained oblivious of the problem. The fundamental
purpose of the disinformation program has been to create favorable
conditions for the fulfillment of long-range communist policy. The
communist strategists have achieved their purpose thus far by
misleading the West on developments in the communist world with
three main aims in view: to relieve Western pressure on the
communist regimes while they are "building socialism" and laying the
groundwork for an eventual worldwide federation of communist
states; to provoke the Western responses they desire to their activist
diplomacy and international communist strategy; and to prepare the
ground for a major shift in communist tactics in the final phase of
policy in the 1980s.
The success of the communist disinformation program has engen-
dered a state of crisis in Western assessments of communist affairs
and therefore a crisis in Western poHcy toward the communist world.
The meaning of developments in the communist bloc is
misunderstood and the intentions behind communist actions are
misinterpreted. Enemies are accepted and treated as though they were
allies of the West. The Soviet military threat is recognized, but the
strategic political threat is not comprehended and is therefore
underestimated. Communist political offensives, in the form of detente
diplomacy and disarmament negotiations, are seen as indications of
communist moderation. Communist strategy, instead of being
blocked, is unwittingly assisted by Western policies.
The first communist strategy of strengthening and stabilizing the
bloc pohtically and economically has been assisted by Western
economic aid and by the acceptance of detente and cooperation with
communist governments. By responding favorably to communist
initiatives on SALT and collective security in Europe, the West has
helped the communist strategists to prepare the ground for the
dissolution of NATO and the withdrawal of US troops from Europe.
By accepting Yugoslavia as independent, the West has given her the
opportunity to organize much of the Third World into a socialist-
orientated bloc with a procommunist, anti-Western bias. By accepting
Sino-Soviet rivalry as genuine and considering
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION PROGRAM 323
China as a possible ally against Soviet expansionism, the West is
creating opportunities for the construction of new alignments that will
rebound, in the long run, to its own detriment. By engaging in SALT
talks and agreements with inadequate awareness of communist long-
range policy and strategy and by providing advanced technology first
to the Soviet Union, then to China, the West has helped to shift the
balance of military power against itself. Failing to appreciate the
control over communist intellectual and religious figures and taking
detente at its face value, the West has been ready to accept the notion
of a long-term evolution of communism and its ultimate convergence
with the democratic system. The West has assisted communist
ideological strategy by its own unilateral ideological disarmament.
The spurious notion of a common interest between the United
States and the Soviet Union against China in the 1960s was deliber-
ately contrived and successfully exploited in the interests of commu-
nist strategy. The same can be said of the common interest between
Eastern and Western Europe in seeking collective security against
West German "revanchism" and American "interference"; or the
common interest between communist and developing countries in the
struggle against "imperialism"; or the common interest between
China, Japan, and the West in resisting Soviet expansionism. Even the
genuine common interest between the Soviet Union and the United
States in avoiding nuclear conflict has been successfully exploited to
swing the military balance in favor of the communist bloc.
The Western strategy of a mildly activist approach to Eastern
Europe, with emphasis on human rights, is doomed to failure because
it is based on misconceptions and will lead ultimately into a trap when
a further spurious liberalization takes place in Eastern Europe in the
final phase of long-range communist policy. Not the least disturbing
aspect of the present crisis in Western assessments and policy is that,
if it is recognized at all, its causes are misunderstood. As matters stand
the West is acutely vulnerable to the coming major shift in communist
tactics in the final phase of their policy.
PART THREE
The Final Phase and the
Western Counter-Strategy
25
The Final Phase
THE CONTENTION OF THIS BOOK has been that, during the past
two decades, the communist bloc has substantially achieved the
objectives of the first two phases of its long-range policy. The
individual communist regimes have been consolidated. The bloc
communist parties, with the help of the security services, have built up
their active forces within revitalized national and international front
organizations, especially those concerned with trade unions,
intellectuals, and young people. The importance of this drive is
demonstrated by the appointment of Shelepin as head of the Soviet
trade union organization from 1967 to 1975. The credibility abroad of
"dissidence" as a serious internal political factor in the communist
world has been established. A degree of accommodation with
organized religion has been achieved. A nexus of interparty
relationships, transcending the formal structure of Comecon and the
Warsaw Pact, has been built up.
In consequence, the communist strategists are now poised to enter
into the final, offensive phase of the long-range policy, entailing a
joint struggle for the complete triumph of communism. Given the
multiplicity of parties in power, the close links between them, and the
opportunities they have had to broaden their bases and build up
experienced cadres, the communist strategists are equipped, in
pursuing their policy, to engage in maneuvers and strategems beyond
the imagination of Marx or the practical reach of Lenin and
unthinkable to Stalin. Among such previously unthinkable strategems
are the introduction of false liberalization in Eastern Europe and,
probably, in the Soviet Union and the exhibition of spurious
327
328 NEW LIES FOR OLD
independence on the part of the regimes in Romania, Czechoslova-
kia, and Poland.
Western Misinterpretation of Events in Poland
Because the West has failed either to understand communist
strategy and disinformation or to appreciate the commitment to it of
the resources of the bloc security and intelligence services and their
high-level agents of political influence, the appearance of Solidarity in
Poland has been accepted as a spontaneous occurrence comparable
with the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and as portending the demise of
communism in Poland. The fact that the Italian, French, and Spanish
Communist parties all took up pro-Solidarity positions gives grounds
for suspecting the validity of this interpretation.
Western misreading of events led to predictions of Soviet inter-
vention in Poland in 1981, which turned out to be unjustified. It may
lead to more serious errors in the future.
A New Analysis
There are strong indications that the Polish version of "democra-
tization," based in part on the Czechoslovak model, was prepared and
controlled from the outset within the framework of bloc policy and
strategy. For twenty years the Polish Communist party had been
working on the construction of a "mature socialist society" in which
the party and its mass organizations would play a more active and
effective political role. In 1963 the party's ideological commission
was set up. In 1973 new means of coordinating the activities of youth
organizations were established. In 1976 a new law was adopted on the
leading role of the party in constructing communism and on the
party's interaction with the Peasant and Democratic parties. In the
same year all youth organizations, including those of the army, were
merged into one Union of Socialist Polish Youth.
Party membership increased from 1 million in 1960 to 3 million in
1980. In the same period Polish trade unions increased their
THE FINAL PHASE 329
membership from 5 to 13 million. The Union of Sociahst Pohsh
Youth had 2 million members in 1980. By the end of that year, 85
percent of the army's officer corps were party members. All Poles of
Jewish origin had been eliminated from the army.
Throughout the twenty-year period Polish leaders have been fully
involved in the coordinating mechanisms of the bloc, such as Corne-
con and the Warsaw Pact, as well as in bilateral meetings with other
communist parties. The Polish security service took part in the
conference in Moscow in 1959 of bloc security services at which their
new political role was discussed and means of coordination were
improved. Poland was among the countries visited by Mironov, the
originator of this new political role, when he was head of the CPSU's
Administrative Department.
Developments in the 1970s
Significantly two of the key figures in recent Polish events, the so-
called "renewal," took up important positions soon after the "Prague
spring" in 1968: Jaruzelski became Minister of Defense, and Kania
became head of the Polish communist party's Administrative
Department, with responsibility for the affairs of the Polish security
service. In 1971 Gierek took over from Gomulka and the future leader
of Solidarity, Walesa, began his political activity. Gierek and
members of other important departments, including Kama's
Administrative Department, consulted with their Soviet counterparts
in Moscow. In the same year the Polish and Czech leaders had several
meetings. In 1973 an agreement on ideological cooperation was
signed between the two parties. In 1977 a delegation led by Gierek
signed an agreement on the further strengthening of cooperation
between them. Gierek also took part in Crimean summit meetings in
the 1970s at which strategic questions were discussed.
In the course of the 1970s Kania was promoted to be Minister of
the Interior and a member of the Politburo with responsibility for
supervising the army and the security police. He also acted as the
government's principal link with the politically active Catholic church.
After the "renewal" had begun, Kania was further promoted to be
leader of the party. Two other security chiefs were also pro-
330 NEW LIES EOR OLD
moted, Moczar to membership in the Politburo and Kowalczyk to be
deputy premier. These promotions arc the clearest indication of the
involvement of Kania and the security services in the preparation of
the Polish "renewal."
Final Preparations for the "Renewal"
There was intensive consultation between Polish and Soviet leaders
and party officials in the two years preceding the "renewal." Among
the more significant items, apart from Comecon and Warsaw Pact
meetings, were the appointment of a new Soviet ambassador to
Poland in 1978 (Aristov, a senior party official from Leningrad); a
conference in Moscow of bloc officials (including Poles) on
organizational matters and mass organizations; Jaruzelski's visit to
Moscow in 1978; the meeting of Jaruzelski and the commander in
chief of the Warsaw Pact forces in 1979; two meetings in 1978 and
1979 between Soviet and Polish party officials responsible for strategy
and coordination of the communist movement, at which there were
discussions on international and ideological questions; visits to
Moscow by Cruchek, the chairman of the Polish trade union
organization, and by Shidlyak, head of the Polish-Soviet Friendship
Society, who discussed the strengthening of Soviet-Polish cooperation
with his Soviet counterpart, Shytikov. This last visit is particularly
interesting, since between February and August, 1980 — just before the
"renewal" — Shidlyak was head of the Polish trade unions.
In 1979 Gierek had two meetings with Brezhnev and separate
meetings with the Czechoslovak, East German, West German, and
French Communist party leaders. At the meeting with Brezhnev in the
Crimea in August 1979, the discussion focused on "favorable new
conditions for joint action in Europe." In February 1980 a Soviet
publication referred to the strengthening of fraternal relations between
the two countries resulting from agreements reached at their meetings.
A Polish party delegation attended a twenty-nine-party conference
in Hungary in December 1 979 that discussed relations between
communists and social democrats and perspectives for European
security. Suslov, the late leading Soviet ideologist and strategist.
THE FINAL PHASE 331
headed the Soviet delegation to the Polish party congress in February
1980. At the congress Gierek attacked NATO and the deployment of
nuclear missiles in Western Europe and offered to act as host to an
East-West disarmament conference in Warsaw. In May 1980
Brezhnev, Gromyko, and other senior Soviet officials attended a
conference of bloc leaders in Warsaw. In his introductory speech
Gierek said that the conference would open new prospects for peace
and security in Europe and the world. His speech was the only part of
the proceedings to be published.
There were frequent consultations between Polish party officials
responsible for the press, TV, and radio with their Soviet colleagues,
suggesting preparation of the Soviet and Polish media for a forth-
coming important event.
Brezhnev awarded honors to Gierek and Jaruzelski in 1978 and
Gierek honored Rusakov, head of the CPSU's department for bloc
affairs, in February 1980. The awards can be seen as recognition of
the contributions made to the preparation of the "renewal" by some of
its key figures. It may also be surmised that Gierek's departure from
the scene was envisaged at this stage. He doubtless had good reason
for saying, shortly after his dismissal, that "proper appraisal of the
Polish developments in the 1970s could only be made from a certain
distance in time."
All of the foregoing evidence points to the conclusion that a major
development in Poland, the "renewal," was planned thoroughly, and
well in advance, by the Polish Communist party in cooperation with
its communist allies and with a view to furthering the communist
strategy for Europe. The conclusion is further supported by the
evidence of the Polish Communist party's involvement in the
formation and functioning of Solidarity.
The Polish Communist Party within Solidarity
Kania himself revealed that there were 1 million communist party
members in Solidarity. Forty-two out of the 200 members of the
party's Central Committee in 1981 were Solidarity members. Bog-dan
Lis, Walesa's deputy, was a Central Committee member. Zofia Gryzb,
another Solidarity leader, was a member of the Politburo.
These leaders were not expelled from the party for their member-
332 NEW LIES FOR OLD
ship in Solidarity. On the contrary, Solidarity recognized the leading
role of the party and the party recognized SoHdarity's existence. Kania
and Moczar even made statements in favor of it. Solidarity enjoyed
access to the state-controlled media. Obstacles were not placed in the
way of Walesa's extensive foreign travels; indeed, the Polish
ambassador to Japan, who defected after the introduction of martial
law, assisted in arranging Walesa's contacts with Japanese trade
unions.
Stripping away the disinformation as before, it becomes clear that
the changes in the leadership of the Polish party from Gierek to Kania
to Jaruzelski were not the outcome of power struggles between
factions in the leadership, but reflections of different stages in the
"renewal" process, in the planning of which all of the leaders were
equally involved.
The visits of Kania and other Pohsh leaders to Moscow and the
visits of Suslov and Gromyko to Poland in April and July 1981 were
part of the process of high-level coordination and readjustment of an
agreed-upon strategic plan, not evidence of Soviet coercion being
exercised over the Polish leaders.
Soviet military and naval maneuvers in the vicinity while the
"renewal" was being introduced would have been planned and agreed
in advance with the Polish and East German governments as a
warning to the Polish and East German peoples that genuine
anticommunist feeling would not be allowed to get out of hand.
Motives for the Creation of Solidarity
As with the "Prague spring" of 1968, the motives for the Polish
"renewal" were a combination of the internal and external. Internally
it was designed to broaden the political base of the communist party
in the trade unions and to convert the narrow, elitist dictatorship of
the party into a Leninist dictatorship of the whole working class that
would revitalize the Polish political and economic system. The
"renewal" followed the lines of Lenin's speech to the Comintern
congress in July 1921. "Our only strategy at present," said Lenin, "is
to become stronger and therefore wiser, more reasonable, more
opportunistic. The more opportunistic, the sooner will you assemble
again the masses around you. When we have won over
THE FINAL PHASE 333
the masses by our reasonable approach, we shall then apply offensive
tactics in the strictest sense of the word."
Polish trade unions before the "renewal" were suffering from the
stigma of party control. To have attempted to apply Leninist principles
by creating a new trade union organization through governmental
action would have failed to remove that stigma. The new organization
had to appear to have been set up from below. Its independence had to
be established by carefully calculated and controlled confrontation
with the government. The origin of the Solidarity movement in a
shipyard bearing Lenin's name, the singing of the "Internationale," the
use of the old slogan "Workers of the world, unite" by Solidarity
members, and the constant presence of Lenin's portrait are all
consistent with concealed party guidance of the organization. Without
that guidance and help, the discipline of Solidarity and its record of
successful negotiation with the Polish government would have been
impossible. The party's concealed influence in the Pohsh Catholic
church ensured that the church would act as a force for moderation
and compromise between Solidarity and the government.
Externally the strategic objectives behind the creation of Solidarity
resemble those behind the "Prague spring." In brief, they were to
deceive Western governments, politicians, and public opinion
generally as to the real nature of contemporary communism in Poland
in accordance with the weakness and evolution pattern of
disinformation. More specifically, the intention was to use Solidarity
to promote united action with free trade unions, social democrats.
Catholics, and other religious groups to further the aims of communist
strategy in the advanced countries, and to a lesser extent in the Third
World. The name Solidarity is itself symbolic of this intention, which
was made plain by Walesa's state-sponsored visits to trade unions in
France, Italy, and Japan and to the Holy See.
Solidarity's effort to strengthen its international ties was part of a
wider effort by the international communist movement to press
forward with its strategy. In February 1981 Brezhnev spoke about the
new, favorable conditions for unity of action in the world trade union
movement. The communist World Federation of Trade Unions and
regional European, Latin American, and Arab trade union bodies
stepped up their campaigns against monopolies and in favor of
disarmament. Meetings in Moscow in October 1980
334 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and Berlin in March 1981 discussed working class solidarity and new
forms of cooperation with trade unions of differing political
orientation. A Soviet trade union delegation visited Italy for talks with
three major Italian trade union federations. The influence of Solidarity
was felt throughout the labor movement, even in the United States,
where the left showed interest in Solidarity's experience. The
communist intention was, and will remain, to exploit this influence for
strategic ends.
The creation of Solidarity and the initial period of its activity as a
trade union may be regarded as the experimental first phase of the
Polish "renewal." The appointment of Jaruzelski, the imposition of
martial law, and the suspension of Solidarity represent the second
phase, intended to bring the movement under firm control and to
provide a period of political consolidation. In the third phase it may be
expected that a coalition government will be formed, comprising
representatives of the communist party, of a revived Solidarity
movement, and of the church. A few so-called liberals might also be
included.
A new-style government of this sort in Eastern Europe would be
well equipped to promote communist strategy by campaigning for
disarmament, for nuclear-free zones in Europe, perhaps for a revival
of the Rapacki Plan, for the simultaneous dissolution of NATO and
the Warsaw Pact, and ultimately for the establishment of a neutral,
socialist Europe. The revival of other elements of communist strategy
for Europe — Eurocommunism and CSCE negotiations, for example —
would be timed to coincide with the emergence of such a government.
Intensified solidarity campaigns between East and West European
trade unions and peace movements could be expected; preparations
are, in fact, already in train. In October 1980 a new all-European
structure for youth organizations was set up at a conference of five
hundred national youth organizations held in Budapest. A meeting of
the World Parliament was held in Sofia in September 1980 in which
leading communist authorities on united action took part. The Soviet
and East European Committee for European Security was reactivated.
A meeting of parliamentarians from communist states was held in
Moscow in March 1981, at which Shytikov was much in evidence.
There are increasing signs of preparation for a communist initia-
THE FINAL PHASE 335
tive on Germany, the key to progress toward a neutral, socialist
Europe. Among these were the meeting between Brezhnev and the
East German leader, Honecker, in the Crimea in 1980 at which a
European conference on disarmament was discussed. Similar dis-
cussions took place between the Soviet and West German peace
committees in February 1980. A specialist on Germany, Czyrek, was
appointed Polish foreign minister. Another specialist on Germany,
Kvitsinskiy, was chosen late in 1981 to be chief negotiator for the
Geneva nuclear arms reduction talks. Winkelman, former head of the
International Department of the East German Communist party, was
appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union in March 1981. Falin, a
senior CPSU official and former ambassador to West Germany, was
appointed deputy head of the USSR-West Germany Society, and
Zamyatin, a CPSU Central Committee official, was appointed head of
the section of Soviet parliamentarians in contact with West Germany.
A revived Solidarity movement could be expected to extend its
influence in Latin America, drawing together social democrats.
Catholics, and progressives against military dictatorships. Here again
there are signs of preparation. There was a meeting of Soviet and
Latin American trade union leaders in Moscow in April 1981, and
there were other, WFTU-sponsored, preparatory meetings for a World
Congress of Trade Unions of Different Orientation in Cuba.
The Threat to the West from the Polish "Renewal"
A coalition government in Poland would in fact be totalitarianism
under a new, deceptive, and more dangerous guise. Accepted as the
spontaneous emergence of a new form of multiparty, semidem-
mocratic regime, it would serve to undermine resistance to commu-
nism inside and outside the communist bloc. The need for massive
defense expenditure would increasingly be questioned in the West.
New possibihties would arise for splitting Western Europe away from
the United States, of neutralizing Germany, and destroying NATO.
With North American influence in Latin America also undermined,
the stage would be set for achieving actual revolutionary changes in
the Western world through spurious changes in the communist system.
336 NEW LIES FOR OLD
If in a reasonable time "liberalization" can be successfully achieved
in Poland and elsewhere, it will serve to revitalize the communist
regimes concerned. The activities of the false opposition will further
confuse and undermine the genuine opposition in the communist
world. Externally, the role of dissidents will be to persuade the West
that the "liberalization" is spontaneous and not controlled.
"Liberalization" will create conditions for establishing solidarity
between trade unions and intellectuals in the communist and
noncommunist worlds. In time such alliances will generate new forms
of pressure against Western "militarism," "racism," and "military-
industrial complexes" and in favor of disarmament and the kind of
structural changes in the West predicted in Sakharov's writings.
If "liberalization" is successful and accepted by the West as
genuine, it may well be followed by the apparent withdrawal of one or
more communist countries from the Warsaw Pact to serve as the
model of a "neutral" socialist state for the whole of Europe to follow.
Some "dissidents" are already speaking in these terms.
Yugoslavia may be expected to play a conspicuous role in the new
scenario. A display of Sino-Soviet rivalry for influence in Europe may
be expected on the lines of the "struggle for hegemony" already being
witnessed in South-East Asia. Its purpose would be to assist in the
creation of new, false alignments between communist and
noncommunist powers, and to break up the existing NATO structure
and replace it with a system of European collective security entailing
the ultimate withdrawal of the American military presence from
Western Europe and the growth of communist influence there.
It is through flexible maneuvers such as these that the ruling
communist parties, in contrast with the damaging rigidities of their
performances during the Stalinist period, will provide the international
communist movement with the kind of strategic backing Togliatti had
in mind.
The recent travels of Chairman Hua to Yugoslavia and Romania
and the closer ties between the French and Italian Communist parties
and the Chinese are portents of things to come. In fact, using the new
methodology, more and more signs can be detected that the onset of
the final phase of communist long-range policy is imminent. The
"arrest" and "exile" of Sakharov, the occupation of Afghanistan,
developments in Poland, and the Iraqi attack on
THE FINAL PHASE 337
Iran in the autumn of 1980 are among the pointers.
The last two are of special strategic importance. The developments in
Poland look like a major move toward the final phase of communist strategy
for Europe. The Iraqi attack on Iran looks like a concerted effort by radical
Arab states, each of which is in a united front relationship with the Soviet
Union against "imperialism," to use dual tactics (hostihties by Iraq, assistance
by Syria and Libya) with the single overall objective of bringing Iran into an
anti-Western alliance with them. The object of the alliance would be to gain
control over a strategically vital area of the Middle East. Its success could but
serve the strategic interests of the communist bloc. Despite Saddam Hussein's
alleged purges of communists in Iraq and the moderation in his attitude
toward the United States, he is continuing to receive arms supphes from
communist sources, as are his Iranian opponents.
Certainly, the next five years will be a period of intensive struggle. It will
be marked by a major coordinated communist offensive intended to exploit
the success of the strategic disinformation program over the past twenty years
and to take advantage of the crisis and mistakes it has engendered in Western
policies toward the communist bloc. The overall aim will be to bring about a
major and irreversible shift in the balance of world power in favor of the bloc
as a prehminary to the final ideological objective of establishing a worldwide
federation of communist states.
There are a number of strategic options at the disposal of the communist
strategists that can be used in various combinations to achieve their ultimate
objectives. It would be impossible to list them all but five likely
interconnected options are as follows:
• A closer alignment of an independent socialist Europe with the Soviet
bloc and a parallel alignment of the United States with China. Japan,
depending on whether it remains conservative or moves toward sociahsm,
might join either combination.
• A joint drive by the Soviet bloc and a socialist Europe to seek allies in
the Third World against the United States and China.
• In the military field, an intensive effort to achieve US nuclear disarma-
ment.
• In the ideological and politicai field, East-West convergence on communist
terms.
• The creation of a world federation of communist states.
338 NEW LIES FOR OLD
In each of these the scissors strategy will play its part; probably, as
the final stroke, the scissors blades will close. The element of apparent
duality in Soviet and Chinese policies will disappear. The hitherto
concealed coordination between them will become visible and
predominant. The Soviets and the Chinese will be officially
reconciled. Thus the scissors strategy will develop logically into the
"strategy of one clenched fist" to provide the foundation and driving
force of a world communist federation.
The suggested European option would be promoted by a revival of
controlled "democratization" on the Czechoslovak pattern in Eastern
Europe, including probably Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
The intensification of hard-line policies and methods in the Soviet
Union, exemplified by Sakharov's arrest and the occupation of
Afghanistan, presages a switch to "democratization" following,
perhaps, Brezhnev's departure from the political scene. [The
following observations were made prior to Brezhnev's death. They are
followed by comments on developments subsequent to that
event, beginning on page 347. Ed .] Brezhnev's successor may
well appear to be a kind of Soviet Dubcek. The succession will be
important only in a presentational sense. The reality of collective
leadership and the leaders' common commitment to the long-range
policy will continue unaffected. Conceivably an announcement will
be made to the effect that the economic and political foundations of
communism in the Soviet Union have been laid and that democ-
ratization is therefore possible. This would provide the framework for
the introduction of a new set of "reforms."
The Brezhnev regime and its neo-Stalinistic actions against "dissi-
dents" and in Afghanistan would be condemned as Novotny's regime
was condemned in 1968. In the economic field reforms might be
expected to bring Soviet practice more into line with Yugoslav, or
even, seemingly, with Western socialist models. Some economic
ministries might be dissolved; control would be more decentralized;
individual self-managing firms might be created from existing plants
and factories; material incentives would be increased; the independent
role of technocrats, workers' councils, and trade unions would be
enhanced; the party's control over the economy would be apparently
diminished. Such reforms would be based on Soviet experience in the
1920s and 1960s, as well as on Yugoslav experience. The party would
be less conspicuous, but would continue to control
THE FINAL PHASE 339
the economy from behind the scenes as before. The picture being
dehberately painted now of stagnation and deficiencies in the Soviet
economy should be seen as part of the preparation for deceptive
innovations; it is intended to give the innovations greater impact on
the West when they are introduced.
Political "hberahzation" and "democratization" would follow the
general lines of the Czechoslovak rehearsal in 1968. This rehearsal
might well have been the kind of political experiment Mironov had in
mind as early as 1960. The "liberahzation" would be spectacular and
impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction
in the communist party's role; its monopoly would be apparently
curtailed. An ostensible separation of powers between the legislative,
the executive, and the judiciary might be introduced. The Supreme
Soviet would be given greater apparent power and the president and
deputies greater apparent independence. The posts of president of the
Soviet Union and first secretary of the party might well be separated.
The KGB would be "reformed." Dissidents at home would be
amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to return, and some
would take up positions of leadership in government. Sakharov might
be included in some capacity in the government or allowed to teach
abroad. The creative arts and cultural and scientific organizations,
such as the writers' unions and Academy of Sciences, would become
apparently more independent, as would the trade unions. Political
clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the communist party.
Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political
parties. Censorship would be relaxed; controversial books, plays,
films, and art would be published, performed, and exhibited. Many
prominent Soviet performing artists now abroad would return to the
Soviet Union and resume their professional careers. Constitutional
amendments would be adopted to guarantee fulfillment of the
provisions of the Helsinki agreements and a semblance of compliance
would be maintained. There would be greater freedom for Soviet
citizens to travel. Western and United Nations observers would be
invited to the Soviet Union to witness the reforms in action.
But, as in the Czechoslovak case, the "liberalization" would be
calculated and deceptive in that it would be introduced from above. It
would be carried out by the party through its cells and individual
members in government, the Supreme Soviet, the courts, and the
340 NEW LIES FOR OLD
electoral machinery and by the KGB through its agents among the
intellectuals and scientists. It would be the culmination of Shele-pin's
plans. It would contribute to the stabilization of the regime at home
and to the achievement of its goals abroad.
The arrest of Sakharov in January 1980 raises the question of why
the KGB, which was so successful in the past in protecting state
secrets and suppressing opposition while concealing the misde-
meanors of the regime, is so ineffective now. Why in particular did it
allow Western access to Sakharov and why were his arrest and
internal exile so gratuitously publicized? The most likely answer is
that his arrest and the harassment of other dissidents is intended to
make a future amnesty more credible and convincing. In that case the
dissident movement is now being prepared for the most important
aspect of its strategic role, which will be to persuade the West of the
authenticity of Soviet "liberalization" when it comes. Further high-
level defectors, or "official emigres," may well make their appearance
in the West before the switch in policy occurs.
The prediction on Soviet compliance with the Helsinki agreements
is based on the fact that it was the Warsaw Pact countries and the
Soviet agent Timo who initiated and pressed for the CSCE process.
Since the Soviets signed the CSCE agreements, they may be expected
at some stage, at least, to go through the motions of complying with
them. Their present ostentatious noncompliance, noted at the follow-
up conferences in Belgrade and Madrid, is intended to heighten the
effect of their switch to apparent compliance in the final phase of
policy.
"Liberalization" in Eastern Europe would probably involve the
return to power in Czechoslovakia of Dubcek and his associates. If it
should be extended to East Germany, demolition of the Berlin Wall
might even be contemplated.
Western acceptance of the new "liberalization" as genuine would
create favorable conditions for the fulfillment of communist strategy
for the United States, Western Europe, and even, perhaps, Japan. The
"Prague spring" was accepted by the West, and not only by the left, as
the spontaneous and genuine evolution of a communist regime into a
form of democratic, humanistic socialism despite the fact that
basically the regime, the structure of the party, and its objectives
remained the same. Its impact has already been de-
THE FINAL PHASE 341
scribed. A broader-scale "liberalization" in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere would have an even more profound effect. Eurocommun-
ism could be revived. The pressure for united fronts between com-
munist and socialist parties and trade unions at national and interna-
tional level would be intensified. This time, the socialists might finally
fall into the trap. United front governments under strong communist
influence might well come to power in France, Italy, and possibly
other countries. Elsewhere the fortunes and influence of communist
parties would be much revived. The bulk of Europe might well turn to
left-wing socialism, leaving only a few pockets of conservative
resistance.
Pressure could well grow for a solution of the German problem in
which some form of confederation between East and West Germany
would be combined with neutralization of the whole and a treaty of
friendship with the Soviet Union. France and Italy, under united front
governments, would throw in their lot with Germany and the Soviet
Union. Britain would be confronted with a choice between a neutral
Europe and the United States.
NATO could hardly survive this process. The Czechsolovaks, in
contrast with their performance in 1968, might well take the initiative,
along with the Romanians and Yugoslavs, in proposing (in the CSCE
context) the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in return for the
dissolution of NATO. The disappearance of the Warsaw Pact would
have little effect on the coordination of the communist bloc, but the
dissolution of NATO could well mean the departure of American
forces from the European continent and a closer European alignment
with a "liberalized" Soviet bloc. Perhaps in the longer run, a similar
process might affect the relationship between the United States and
Japan leading to abrogation of the security pact between them.
The EEC on present lines, even if enlarged, would not be a barrier
to the neutralization of Europe and the withdrawal of American
troops. It might even accelerate the process. The acceptance of the
EEC by Eurocommunist parties in the 1970s, following a period of
opposition in the 1960s, suggests that this view is shared by the
communist strategists. The efforts by the Yugoslavs and Romanians to
create stronger links with the EEC should be seen not as inimical to
Soviet interests, but as the first steps in laying the foundation for a
merger between the EEC and Comecon.
342 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The European Parliament might become an all-European socialist
parliament with representation from the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe. "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals" would turn out to be a
neutral, socialist Europe.
The United States, betrayed by her former European aUies, would
tend to withdraw into fortress America or, with the few remaining
conservative countries, including perhaps Japan, would seek an alli-
ance with China as the only counterweight to Soviet power. The
greater the fear of a Soviet-socialist European coalition, the stronger
the argument for "playing the China card" — on the false assumption
that China is a true enemy of the Soviet Union.
"Liberalization" in Eastern Europe on the scale suggested could
have a social and political impact on the United States itself, espe-
cially if it coincided with a severe economic depression. The commu-
nist strategists are on the lookout for such an opportunity. Soviet and
other communist economists keep a careful watch on the American
economic situation. Since the adoption of the long-range policy, an
Institute of World Economy and International Relations, originally
under Arzumanyan and now under Inozemtsev, has been analyzing
and forecasting for the Central Committee the performance of the
noncommunist, and especially the American, economic system.
Inozemtsev is a frequent visitor to the United States and was a
member of a Soviet delegation received by the U.S. Congress in
January 1978. The communist bloc will not repeat its error in failing
to exploit a slump as it did in 1929-32. At that time the Soviet Union
was weak politically and economically; next time the situation would
be different. Politically the bloc would be better poised to exploit
economic depression as proof of the failure of the capitalist system.
Information from communist sources that the bloc is short of oil
and grain should be treated with particular reserve, since it could well
be intended to conceal preparation for the final phase of the poHcy and
to induce the West to underestimate the potency of the bloc's
economic weapons. The bloc would certainly have an interest in
secretly building up reserves of oil and grain that could be used for
political purposes in a time of crisis to support newly established
procommunist governments in Europe or elsewhere. It is worth noting
that the scale of Soviet oil exports to India is already producing
political dividends for the Soviet Union.
THE FINAL PHASE
343
Sino-Soviet Relations
"Liberalization" in the Soviet Union could well be
accompanied by a deepening of the Sino-Soviet split. This might
include a rupture in trade and diplomatic relations, an increase in
spectacular frontier incidents, and perhaps deeper incursions into
one another's territory on the lines of the Chinese "invasion" of
Vietnam in 1979 — an invasion that could well have been intended
as a rehearsal for a future Sino-Soviet operation.
A deepening of the split would sharpen the scissors strategy. It
would encourage an even closer alignment with China of the
United States and any other surviving conservative nations
against a Soviet-sociaHst European coalition. Military
cooperation would be included in this alignment and China might
go so far as to offer bases in return for help in building up her
military potential. In this connection, the agreements on bases
between the United States and Somalia and Egypt may be a
portent.
A breach in diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and
China might complicate but would not interrupt the process of
policy coordination between them. They have now had twenty
years in which to build up experience and mutual confidence in
handling a bogus split. The existing Sino-Soviet bilateral links —
political, diplomatic, and economic — could have been used for
the purpose of coordinating Sino-Soviet disinformation activity
connected with the split. Interruption of those channels might be a
handicap, but there has been time in which to prepare alternative
solutions to the problem of coordination. The breach in Soviet-
Albanian diplomatic relations in 1960 was not followed by a
breach in relations between Albania and all the other East
European communist states. Following this precedent, Romania
and Yugoslavia at least might be expected to maintain their
representation in Peking if the Soviets were to withdraw or be
"thrown out." To some extent, Sino-Soviet coordination could be
carried on through Romanian and Yugoslav intermediaries.
Another possibility is that direct, secret communications links
exist between the Soviet Union and China that are not accessible
to the West. In addition there is the possible existence of a secret
bloc headquarters staffed by senior representatives of the major
communist states, to which allusion has been made above.
344 NEW LIES FOR OLD
The Third World
An alignment of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with a
socialist Western Europe would exert a powerful influence over Third
World socialist parties and trade unions. Some of the remaining
conservative Third World countries would be strongly drawn toward a
socialist orientation. Resistance to communism from the Socialist
International would be replaced by a combined communist-socialist
drive for Third World influence, backed by economic aid. It would
have far-reaching consequences, especially if US aid should be
curtailed in response to a severe depression. Soviet oil and grain could
be used to good effect.
In his article on Nicaragua, Arismendi, the leading Latin American
communist strategist, envisaged international solidarity between
socialists and communists in support of the "national liberation"
struggle in Latin America." Cuba, which might follow the Soviet
example of "liberalization" (the 1980 Cuban emigration might be part
of the preparation for such a move) would play an active part in the
liberation struggle. Those leaders of the nonaligned movement who
had close relations with communist countries would try to involve the
rest of the nonaligned movement in concerted actions with
communists and social democrats to promote the joint aims of
procuring the disarmament of the United States and the reduction of
its role as a world power; of isolating Israel, South Africa, and Chile;
and of helping liberation movements in Latin America, Southern
Africa, and the Middle East, especially the PLO.' A variety of
forums — the UN, the OAU, and the Brandt commission on the North-
South problem — would be used for exerting political and economic
pressure, including, if possible, the denial of oil.
In apparent competition with the Soviet Union, China would step
up its Third World activity. The United States could be tempted to
encourage the growth in influence of China and her associates, such as
Egypt, Somalia, and the Sudan, as a barrier to Soviet expansion.
American support for China would greatly improve her openings for
maneuver and for making false alliances with Thailand and Islamic
countries, such as Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other
conservative Arab states. It would also open doors for Chinese
penetration of Latin America.
THE FINAL PHASE 345
The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was used by the Chinese to
improve their position in Pakistan. Following this pattern, more Soviet
and Chinese interference could be expected in the affairs of neighbor
states. Sino-Soviet "rivalry" did not impede the communist victory in
Vietnam; it would not impede their Third World penetration. If the
Third World were to be divided into pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese
camps, it would be at the expense of the interests of the United States
and any other surviving conservative Western nations. The final
outcome of support for Chinese influence in the Third World would
be the emergence of additional regimes there that would be hostile to
the West.
Disarmament
A Soviet-socialist European coalition, acting in concert with the
nonaligned movement in the United Nations, would create favorable
conditions for communist strategy on disarmament. The American
military -industrial complex would come under heavy fire. "Lib-
eralization" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would provide
additional stimulus to disarmament. A massive U.S. defense budget
might be found no longer justified. The argument for accommodation
would be strengthened. Even China might throw in its weight in favor
of a Soviet-socialist line on arms control and disarmament.
Convergence
After successful use of the scissors strategy in the early stages of
the final phase of policy to assist communist strategy in Europe and
the Third World and over disarmament, a Sino-Soviet reconciliation
could be expected. It is contemplated and implied by the long-range
policy and by strategic disinformation on the split.
The communist bloc, with its recent accretions in Africa and South-
East Asia, is already strong. European-backed Soviet influence and
American-backed Chinese influence could lead to new Third World
acquisitions at an accelerating pace. Before long, the communist
strategists might be persuaded that the balance had swung irreversibly
in their favor. In that event they might well decide
346 NEW LIES FOR OLD
on a Sino-Soviet "reconciliation." The scissors strategy would give
way to the strategy of "one clenched fist." At that point the shift in the
political and military balance would be plain for all to see.
Convergence would not be between two equal parties, but would be
on terms dictated by the communist bloc. The argument for
accommodation with the overwhelming strength of communism
would be virtually unanswerable. Pressures would build up for
changes in the American political and economic system on the lines
indicated in Sakharov's treatise. Traditional conservatives would be
isolated and driven toward extremism. They might become the victims
of a new McCarthyism of the left. The Soviet dissidents who are now
extolled as heroes of the resistance to Soviet communism would play
an active part in arguing for convergence. Their present supporters
would be confronted with a choice of forsaking their idols or
acknowledging the legitimacy of the new Soviet regime.
The Worldwide Communist Federation
Integration of the communist bloc would follow the lines envisaged
by Lenin when the Third Communist International was founded. That
is to say, the Soviet Union and China would not absorb one another or
other communist states. All the countries of the European and Asiatic
communist zones, together with new communist states in Europe and
the Third World, would join a supranational economic and political
communist federation. Soviet-Albanian, Soviet -Yugoslav, and Soviet-
Romanian disputes and differences would be resolved in the wake, or
possibly in advance of, Sino-Soviet reconciliation. The political,
economic, military, diplomatic, and ideological cooperation between
all the communist states, at present partially concealed, would become
clearly visible. There might even be pubHc acknowledgment that the
splits and disputes were long-term disinformation operations that had
successfully deceived the "imperialist" powers. The effect on Western
morale can be imagined.
In the new worldwide communist federation the present different
brands of communism would disappear, to be replaced by a uniform,
rigorous brand of Leninism. The process would be painful. Conces-
THE FINALPHASE 347
sions made in the name of economic and political reform would be
withdrawn. Religious and intellectual dissent would be suppressed.
Nationalism and all other forms of genuine opposition would be
crushed. Those who had taken advantage of detente to establish
friendly Western contacts would be rebuked or persecuted like those
Soviet officers who worked with the allies during the Second World
War. In new communist states — for example, in France, Italy, and the
Third World — the "alienated classes" would be reeducated. Show
trials of "imperialist agents" would be staged. Action would be taken
against nationalist and social democratic leaders, party activists,
former civil servants, officers, and priests. The last vestiges of private
enterprise and ownership would be obliterated. Nationalization of
industry, finance, and agriculture would be completed. In fact, all the
totalitarian features familiar from the early stages of the Soviet
revolution and the postwar Stalinist years in Eastern Europe might be
expected to reappear, especially in those countries newly won for
communism. Unchallenged and unchallengeable, a true communist
monolith would dominate the world.
Comments on the Appointment of Andropov and on Other
Developments Following the Death of Brezhnev.
These predictions and analyses were made during Brezhnev's tenure
in office in anticipation of his departure. Brezhnev's succession and
other developments confirm, in essence, the validity of the author's
views. For example, the expeditiousness of the appointment of
Andropov as Brezhnev's successor confirmed one of the main theses
of this book; namely, that the succession problem in the Soviet
leadership has been resolved. The practical consideration of the long-
term strategies has become the major stabilizing factor in this solution.
The promotion of the former KGB chief, who was responsible for the
preparation of the false liberalization strategy in the USSR, indicates
that this factor was decisive in his selection and further points to the
imminent advent of such "liberalization" in the near future.
The rise of Andropov fits into a familiar pattern whereby the former
security chief becomes the party leader in order to secure
348 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the important shift in the reahzation of the strategy. Kadar, who
introduced the so-called "liberalization" in Hungary; Hua Kuo-feng,
under whom China shifted to "capitalist pragmatism"; and Kania, who
initiated the Polish "renewal" and recognized Solidarity — all had been
former security chiefs. This pattern reflects the crucial role of the
security services in the "liberalization" of communist regimes. The
appointment of Andropov also implies that Shelepin would have been
the successor of Brezhnev, because of his initiation of preparation for
the "liberalization" in the USSR, except for the compromise by
Stashinskiy, who exposed Shelepin's role in the assassination of the
emigre leader Bandera, and further, because of the exposure, by this
author, of Shelepin's role in the strategic reorientation of the KGB.
Another important factor in the selection of Andropov was his
leadership role in the preparation for the Czechoslovakian "liberali-
zation" in 1967-68 and the "liberalization" in Hungary, which took
place when he was the head of the Central Committee's department
responsible for relations with communist countries until mid- 1967.
Therefore, the timing of the release of the SoHdarity leader and the
news of the appointment of Andropov confirm another point in the
book: that the "liberalization" will not be limited to the USSR, but will
be expanded to Eastern Europe and particularly to Poland. The
experiment with "renewal" in Poland will be repeated again. This
time, however, it will be with full strategic initiatives and implications
against Western Europe and NATO. The appointment of Andropov,
the release of the Solidarity leader, and the invitation to the Pope to
visit Poland in June 1983, made by the Polish Government, all
indicate that the communist strategists probably are planning the
reemergence of Solidarity and the creation of a quasi-social
democratic government in Poland (a coalition of the communist party,
the trade unions, and the churches) and political and economic
reforms in the USSR for 1984 and afterward.
The coming offensive of the communist strategists will pursue the
following objectives:
• The establishment of a model government for Western Europe, which will facilitate
the inclusion of the so-called Eurocommunist parties into government coalitions with
socialists and the trade unions.
THE FINAL PHASE 349
• The dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pacts, the neutrahzation of
Western Europe, and the Finlandization of Western Europe in general,
through the advocacy of European collective security.
• The provision of a broader basis and impetus for expansion of the
antimilitary movement by a more active involvement of Catholics and other
believers in the West, thereby forcing the United States into a
disadvantageous disarmament.
• Influencing the 1984 United States presidential election in favor of
candidates who are more hkely to deal with the leaders of the "liberalized"
regimes in the USSR and East Europe and are more inclined to sacrifice the
US military posture.
The dialectic of this offensive consists of a calculated shift from the old,
discredited Soviet practice to a new, "liberalized" model, with a social
democratic facade, to realize the communist planners' strategy for
establishing a United Europe. At the beginning they introduced a variation of
the 1968 Czechoslovakian "democratization." At a later phase they will shift
to a variation of the Czechoslovakian takeover of 1 948.
Developments have accurately confirmed the prediction that the
communist strategists would undertake the political initiative on
disarmament, particularly against West Germany. The trip of Gro-myko to
Bonn, the invitation of social democratic opposition leaders to Moscow, and
the statements of Andropov on missile concessions (made to influence the
West German elections) are all clear indications of such a political initiative.
As expected, the communist initiative revealed that its main target was the
socialist parties. It also showed that there are elements in their leadership who
are vulnerable to such an initiative, especially those in the West German
social democratic party who have anti-NATO and anti-US views, or who like
Brandt and Sweden's social democrat Palme are ready to embrace Rapacki's
idea of a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe. The initiative increased also
the pressure on the US for concessions to the USSR. In the opinion of the
author, however, the communist initiative has not yet reached its peak. How
will the Western German social democrats respond when the communist
regimes begin their "liberalization" by making concessions on human rights,
such as easing emigration, granting amnesty for the dissidents, or removing
the Berlin wall? One can expect that Soviet agents of influence
350 NEW LIES FOR OLD
in Western Europe, drawing on these developments, will become
active. It is more than likely that these cosmetic steps will be taken as
genuine by the West and will trigger a reunification and neutralization
of West Germany and further the collapse of NATO. The pressure on
the United States for concessions on disarmament and accommodation
with the Soviets will increase. During this period there might be an
extensive display of the fictional struggle for power in the Soviet
leadership. One cannot exclude that at the next party congress or
earlier, Andropov will be replaced by a younger leader with a more
liberal image who will continue the so-called "liberalization" more
intensively.
Sino-Soviet Developments
It is also necessary to comment on developments in Sino-Soviet
relations and their actions. The sending by China of a high level
delegation to the funeral of President Brezhnev, headed by Foreign
Minister Huang Hua; the conduct of talks between Huang Hua and
Gromyko; and the unusual statement made by Huang Hua
characterizing Brezhnev as "an outstanding statesman of the Soviet
Union" — all have some significance. Especially significant and con-
tradictory was a reference to the "loss of Brezhnev, a great statesman."
This characterization ignores the fact that the worst hostilities with
China — if one accepts the conventional point of view — took place
under Brezhnev. Such a favorable assessment of Brezhnev seems
accurate and sound, however, if one accepts Sino-Soviet hostilities as
strategic disinformation. According to the analysis developed in this
book, these developments add to and strengthen the validity of the
author's argument that the Sino-Soviet split was a disinformation mask
over their secret coordination for the realization of their common
strategies. Because of the secret strategic Sino-Soviet cooperation, still
according to this analysis, the primary objective for the Soviet move
into Afghanistan, aside from achieving its Sovietization, was not to
encircle China, but to force the United States and Pakistan into a close
political and military cooperation with China. It is not inconceivable
that the Soviets will make concessions on Afghanistan in order to gain
new strategic advantages.
Andropov's proposals about improving relations with China are
THE FINAL PHASE 351
not aimed at undermining China's relations with the United States, but
at stimulating a revival of an American interest in closer relations with
China, which are presently perceived as weakened after the departure
of such strong proponents of United States-Chinese military
cooperation as Brzezinski and others. Its main purpose is to facilitate
the acquisition by China of American weaponry and military
technology. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan also may be
designed to create more favorable conditions for China's penetration
into Moslem countries, capitalizing on China's success with Pakistan.
The recent trip of China's premier to Africa, which included visits to
Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, confirms another point in the book
about the existing division of labor between the Soviet Union and
China. It seems that the influencing of Moslem countries has been left
to China by the Soviet strategists. As for China's role in the realization
of communist strategy in Europe, the Sino-Soviet rivalry might be
exploited by China's intervening in European politics under the pretext
of resisting "Soviet hegemony." In this case, the Chinese strategists
might try to gain a Rapallo type of arrangement with some
conservative governments of Western Europe.
The Attempted Assassination of the Pope
It is also necessary to comment on the attempt to assassinate the
Pope. The author is not naive about the attitude, involvement, and
practice of poHtical terrorism by the KGB. Earlier in the book he
expressed the view that the Soviet and other communist services were
behind the political terrorism of the Red Brigade in Italy and terrorism
in Western Germany. The question here, however, is not whether the
Soviets control the Bulgarian services as they control other communist
services, or whether the Soviets and Bulgarians are involved in
terrorism in Western Europe, but whether the KGB and the Bulgarian
services are involved in this particular attempted assassination. In
order to make an assessment of the assassination attempt against the
Pope, it is not enough to refer to Soviet control of the Bulgarian
service. One must first examine the Soviet rationale for political
assassinations, and then address the basic question: whether the Soviet
strategists have a political
352 NEW LIES FOR OLD
interest and a rea! need to get involved in such an affair. The author does not
share the view that the KGB and the Bulgarian service are involved in the
assassination attempt against the Pope perpetrated by Agca, a Turkish
gunman. This conclusion is based on the following reasons:
1. This assassination attempt does not fit into the rationale of assassina-
tions as practiced by the KGB. According to the author's understanding, the
Soviet government and the KGB would resort to a political assassination of a
Western leader only under the following conditions:
A. If a Western leader, who is a recruited Soviet agent, is threatened
in office by a pohtical rival. This is based on a statement made by
Zhenikhov, a former KGB resident in Finland. He stated that if
his agent, holding a high office, was threatened by an anticommunist
social democrat during the elections, the latter would be poisoned
by a trusted KGB agent.
B. If a Western leader became a serious obstacle to communist
strategy and to the strategic disinformation program, he would be
quietly poisoned at a summit meeting during negotiations or while
visiting a communist country, since detente provides such opportuni
ties in abundance. The practical lesson here is that a Western leader
who is involved in furthering an effective counterstrategy against
the communists should not visit communist countries or take part
in any summit meetings with their leaders. The technique for a
poisoning was described in a statement made by a KGB general,
Zheleznyakov, at an operational briefing devoted to an assassination
proposal against Tito in 1953 in Moscow. Zheleznyakov stated that
the major requirement for success is mere physical contact with
the target, as the Soviet service has technical means (special poisons)
to inflict mortal diseases without leaving traces of the poison, so
that death will be attributed to natural causes.
C. If the assassination of a leader provides the opportunity for a
controlled Soviet agent to take over the position. According to Levi-
nov, a KGB adviser in Czechoslovakia, this rationale was used by
both the Soviet and the Czech services in the assassination of Presi
dent Benes, thus vacating a place for a communist leader, Gottwald.
D. If a communist leader decided to eliminate his communist rival.
It is a well-known fact that, based on this rationale, Stalin got rid
of many of his rivals, including Trotskiy in Mexico. According to
THE FINAL PHASE 353
the author, this rationale is not used any longer because of the cessation
of the struggle for power in the Soviet party leadership.
2. In view of the arguments and reasoning made about Polish develop-
ments in this book, particularly those concerning Solidarity as a product of
"mature sociahsm," it is clear that there is no motive for such an assassiantion
(of the Pope) by the KGB and their communist partners.
3. The author regards as erroneous the perception that the KGB is a
primitive and inefficient service that would resort to the use of the Bulgarian
service to recruit a killer for hire, especially one who was guilty of murdering
a progressive editor in Turkey, and who had earlier escaped from prison and
had somehow made a strange visit to Bulgaria. According to the author's
understanding, the KGB is always apprehensive about using escapees,
suspecting the possibility of their being police provocateurs. The KGB would
not consider such a candidate, unknown to them and over whom they had no
control, for an operation of such importance and sensitivity.
4. If the Soviet strategists had reason for such assassinations, they would
not attempt to act through the Bulgarian service. More likely, the KGB would
undertake such a mission through their trusted illegals or through
opportunities available to the Polish service. It is well known that the Pope
maintains a vast staff of secretaries and kitchen help, almost all consisting of
Polish nationals. He further receives visitors from Poland. The Polish
security service, through its antireligious department, would study the
relatives of people on the Pope's staff and would use them as hostages in the
preparation of such an operation. It would be a quiet, secret operation.
5. The author is also of the opinion that the Italian services, which are
seriously weakened by recent scandals and investigations, are too inexpe-
rienced to assess the strategic complexity and implications of such an
operation. This affair can be assessed and understood only in terms of
communist strategies (communist liberalization and Western disarmament
and its implications for the West).
6. The author is more inclined to agree with the views of the Israeli and
West German services, as expressed in a December 17, 1982, New York
Times article written by Henry Kamm, in which he states that implicating the
KGB in the assassination affair is outright disinformation. The author,
however, does not agree with the article as to the purpose of such
disinformation. In his opinion, the purpose was not to undermine or discredit
Andropov, but to confuse the strategic implications.
354 NEW LIES FOR OLD
7. There is also a serious contradiction in the actions of the Pohsh
and Soviet governments regarding this affair. If the Soviet government
perceives the Pope as an anticommunist involved in subversive activities
against Poland and other communist countries, as imphed in a TASS
statement, it is incongruous that the Polish government would invite
the Pope to visit Poland in June of 1983, since all such matters are
coordinated with the Soviets.
Another relevant comment probably should be added here. In view
of the ardent public statements of some Italian socialist ministers
regarding their acceptance of the communist involvement in this
affair, such a position strengthens their vulnerability to an erroneous
response to future Polish developments. Despite their genuine
anticommunism, they would be pressured to accept the Polish
"liberalization" as spontaneous.
26
Where Now?
THIS BOOK HAS TRIED to give an objective assessment of the
current long-range communist policy and the threat it poses for
the West. The assessment has been based partly on secret
information available only to an insider; partly on an intimate under-
standing of how the communist strategist thinks and acts; partly on
knowledge of political readjustments, the use of strategic disinfor-
mation, and the extent of KGB penetration of, and influence on.
Western governments; and partly on research and analysis, using the
new methodology, of open records of Soviet and communist
developments over the past twenty years. It leaves no doubt in the
author's mind that the threat is more serious, its scope wider, and its
culmination more imminent, than scholars and politicians in the West
have led him to beheve.
This is not because they have consciously played down the threat. It
is due to a genuine and, to some extent, excusable lack of under-
standing. They accept at face value what the communists choose for
them to see and hear. They accept the existence of communist tactical
disinformation in the form of covert political actions and forgeries of
Western government documents, but fail to appreciate the problem of
strategic disinformation in the shape of communist forgeries of
differences, splits, and independence in the communist bloc. Tactical
forms of disinformation are intended to divert attention from the onset
of the communist offensive in the final phase of policy. Strategic
disinformation is a root cause of the current crisis in Western foreign
policies. Even those who recognize the dangers of disinformation
cannot conceive that it can be practiced
355
356 NEW LIES FOR OLD
on SO grand a scale and with a subtlety so disarming. They forget — or
perhaps have never fully reahzed — that their predecessors were
similarly deluded in the 1920s, and they fail to take into account that
communist penetration of Western governments and intelligence
services provides an accurate early warning and monitoring service of
Western reactions to disinformation.
It is not easy, living in a democracy, to accept that total, obsessive
commitment to world revolution could survive through sixty years
and then be rekindled with fresh zeal. The West, basing itself on its
own experiences, expects splits and cracks to appear in the communist
bloc. Any hint of differences between communist states or parties is
avidly seized on, while evidence of cooperation is ignored or
misinterpreted. Diplomatic overtures, based on what the West sees as
common interests, are hastily pursued; detente and disarmament are
discussed in all seriousness.
The West recognizes the communist military threat but misinter-
prets the political threat. With the best of intentions, United States
policy has labored hard to bring about a liberalization in the USSR
and Eastern Europe with its human rights policy and encouragement
for the internal dissident movement; but it has failed to realize that the
dissident movement has been shaped and controlled by the party
apparatus and the KGB, and that a sham "liberalization" may well be
the next major step in the disinformation program.
Pursuit of a realistic foreign policy by the United States has been
made even more difficult by the demoralization of their intelligence
and counterintelligence services that followed the Watergate
exposures and the overblown campaign to restrict the functions of the
CIA and FBI. The CIA's capacity for political action was curtailed and
two thousand experienced officers were retired. Particular damage
was done to US counterintelligence, whose task it should be to
analyze communist policy and tactics, forecast communist intentions,
and so help to protect the nation and its intelligence services from
communist penetration, subversion, agents of influence, and
disinformation.
What, at the eleventh hour, can now be done? With all due
diffidence the author feels that his book would not be complete until
he has sketched in the direction in which he feels the West should
now move. For the sake of brevity the difficulties of accom-
WHERE NOW? 357
plishment are brushed aside. The aims are stated baldly and uncom-
promisingly.
Although time is fast running out, the balance of forces between
East and West has not yet tilted irrevocably. It is still possible for the
West to recover the initiative and to frustrate the communist strategy
to isolate Western Europe, Japan, and the Third World from the
United States, but it is a difficult road to travel. The initial lead must
be positive, and it must come from the United States.
Reassessment
The logical consequence of the argument of this book, and of the
new methodology which it introduces, is that a group of ac-
knowledged American experts should reexamine and reevaluate
communist policy, tactics, and strategy of the past twenty years. They
should be drawn from the intelligence, counterintelligence, military,
and diplomatic services and from the academic world. They should
have the support of their heads of services or institutions in providing
research facilities and should have access to all information and
records relating to communist state and party affairs since the 1950s.
Their report should define the communist long-range strategy, predict
its course of action, estimate its time scale, assess the political strength
of the communist bloc and the subversive potential of the communist
movement, expose communist disinformation, and estimate the extent
and impact of communist penetration of, and agents of influence
within, the United States and other governments.
Having set in train its own fact-finding and mind-clearing exercise,
the United States should then seek to inspire a revival of allied unity
on a new basis. Since the provocation of division and friction between
member nations of the Western alliance is one of the prime objectives
of communist long-range strategy, it is essential that all Western
governments and their peoples should have a clear understanding of
that strategy, and of the disinformation which supports it, before any
other remedial measures can become effective. That is why
reassessment of the threat comes first. Ideally
358 NEW LIES FOR OLD
each major Western country should, Hke the United States, set up its
own commission of enquiry into communist policy, tactics, and
strategy as reflected in its own intelligence, counterintelligence,
military inteUigence, and diplomatic records of the past twenty years.
To counter communist strategy and regain the initiative for the
West, a new Western strategy is needed, based on a true under-
standing of the situation, policy, and strategic disinformation of the
communist bloc. Without a clear appreciation of the deceptive nature
of Sino-Soviet rivalry and of "liberalization" and splits in the
communist world, Western governments, whatever their political
complexion, cannot recover from the crisis in their foreign policy and
are at risk of sliding into false alliances with one communist state
against another. If possible, a moratorium should be imposed on any
form of rapprochement with any member of the communist bloc while
the reevaluation takes place. The publication could then follow of an
allied defense document setting out calmly and clearly the agreed
overall Western assessment of current communist bloc policy and the
means being used to implement it. Public discussion of the findings
would be encouraged by conferences of the Western governments, of
political groupings such as the Socialist International, and of the
leaders of the moderate, pro- Western Third World nations; parallel
professional exchanges would take place between the Western
intelligence and counterinteUigence services.
The effect that an expose on this scale would have should not be
underestimated. The communist bloc leaders and strategists would
find, if the Western assessment were correct, that their next strategic
offensives and moves in the deception plan had been preempted. The
initiative would have been snatched from them. Their complicated
political, diplomatic, and disinformation operations still in the pipeline
would, if pursued, confirm the correctness of the Western assessment.
The peoples of the communist bloc, the majority learning for the first
time of the deceit on which their country's policy had been based,
would — whatever their feelings about its morahty — realize that it
would not work in the future and that their leaders had failed. While a
communist regime remains successful, the people can be coerced into
going along with it. It is when failure — or, at least, lack of new
successes — sets in that, as was shown in Hungary and Poland in
1956, real and radical
WHERE NOW? 359
changes may happen. Exposure of a bankrupt policy would unleash
powerful political pressures on communist leaders and on their re-
gimes, parties, and governments, perhaps forcing them to change their
conduct in international relations.
It will be argued by faint hearts in the West that to proclaim
publicly that the full significance of the communist threat is now
recognized and that a realistic response is on its way is only to drive
the communist leaders to an openly hard-line attitude and even to war.
But does this argument stand up? If the threat has been correctly
evaluated and properly explained, it will be clear to public opinion
that, although disinformation may have concealed the intentions of
communist policy, its line could scarcely have been harder. Indeed, if
the Western expose were to result in the reemergence of the
communist monolith — China and the USSR "reconciled," Romania
and Yugoslavia openly back in the fold — that would be no cause for
alarm. For the West it would be the most advantageous of all possible
outcomes, for it would mean that the communist bloc had had to
retreat; and that the Western miscalculations, which the bloc had
striven so long and hard to create, would be left unexploited while the
innate strength of the West was still intact. It would, moreover, have a
salutary effect on the peoples of the Western nations. A full-strength
communist bloc, all illusions of splits and rifts removed, would inspire
them to close ranks and face up to reality. It would demonstrate that
their governments had made the right assessment. It would give
breathing space during which past mistakes could be corrected. It
would give solidarity to the alhance and heart to the whole
noncommunist world to be able to say to the communist leaders: "We
have seen through your disinformation and pretences; we can interpret
your double-talk; we now call halt."
The cynics in the West will argue that it is an illusion to imagine
that, at this late hour, the communist threat can be averted by
exhortations to close ranks and unite. The peoples of the West detest
uniformity; the nations of the West will never give up their traditions
of independence. A common cause may bring them together, but no
cause has ever held them together for long. But as Professor Goodman
points out in his book The Soviet Design for a World State (p. 487):
"The communists have acted cautiously when confronted by strong
external power and aggressively when
360 NEW LIES FOR OLD
they have been tempted by weakness. ... If one of the principal
sources of weakness of the contemporary non-communist world is its
disunity, then the surest way to precipitate war is to provide
seemingly easy targets of Soviet conquest through dissension or
neglect on the part of the non-Soviet world to formulate unmistakably
affirmative policies. ..."
For one who, like the author, was brought up in the communist
world, who in his early years worked for the communist cause only to
reject its code of ethics in maturity, it is difficult to believe that, faced
with imminent subjection to the communist way of life, the Western
nations would be unable to find lasting ideological and political
solidarity. Solidarity does not mean conformity. The spiritual strength
of the West hes in its freedom and diversity, but freedom and
diversity should not be cultivated to the point where they become an
obstacle to survival.
To achieve the lasting solidarity that can withstand the communist
challenge, the West should make a number of fundamental changes of
attitude, direction, and counterstrategy. These changes emerge
logically from an understanding of the long-range communist policy;
they seek to frustrate what the communist strategists aim to
accomplish. Above all, the Western alliance should refresh its sense of
common purpose, common interest, and common responsibility. The
main causes of internal dissension should be removed or mollified.
They are: national rivalries, originating deep in history; the distrust
that American conservatism and European democratic socialism hold
for each other; the growing hostility between conservatives and
sociahsts inside Western Europe.
End to National Rivalries
The deep-seated national rivalries and suspicions between the
nations of Western Europe, between Western Europe and America,
and between America and Japan must somehow be controlled. Despite
the tragic conflicts of the past, despite the present mutual distrust, the
advanced nations of the noncommunist world now all share a
democratic process of government, freedom of opposition and dissent,
and an economic system that relics, at least in part, on free market
competition. If the peoples of these nations would
WHERE NOW? 361
realize that the communist threat to their way of life, far from receding
as they had thought, is now at their heels; if they would see that unless
they present a cohesive force in the face of the communist challenge,
they will be picked off one by one; surely then they would insist that
their governments sink their differences. National interests can no
longer be protected by purely national efforts. The communist threat is
now so formidable that for any nation, be it France or even the United
States, to stand half-aloof from the alliance is irrational and potentially
suicidal. The aUies themselves should establish, and then submit to,
some form of supranational authority for policy coordination. Perhaps
the most effective initial step would be for the United States to offer to
sacrifice a measure of her own sovereignty in favor of such a body if
the Western European nations would do Hkewise.
Ideological Solidarity
Differences between American conservatives and European social
democrats in their attitudes toward capitalism should not be allowed
to weaken the Atlantic alliance. Democratic socialism is now firmly
entrenched in Western Europe. Its economic ideals show some
common features with the communist system and differ markedly
from American economic ideals. But, like Americans, European social
democrats regard democratic freedoms as sacrosanct; when faced by
communists, the two are natural alhes. They joined together when
faced by Stalin's "police socialism"; now they must join forces again
to face the more insidious deception of "communism with a human
face." Their common interest is overwhelming, for both Europe and
America are targets of a political offensive that seeks to embrace them
now only to strangle them later.
Within Europe itself, conservatives and social democrats must draw
closer together, for both need to protect themselves against the
growing radicalism of the far left of European socialism, which, if it is
not halted soon, will inevitably lead to a united front with the
communists. Both conservatives and social democrats must un-
derstand and, together, combat the communist long-term strategy; the
survival of both depends on it.
362 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Inward Heart-Searching
The West should devote the effort that it now expends on detente,
SALT, and European collective security (communist-style) to
concentrating on its own affairs. The advanced countries are afflicted
by a malaise that stems from disillusionment. Criticism of traditional
values and national institutions is rife. Military forces and the
military-industrial machine are held in low esteem; intelligence and
security services have been savaged; private enterprise, as represented
by the multinational concerns, is dubbed as greedy and power -hungry;
in the United States even the presidency is belittled. Each individual
nation must find its own way to recover self-respect before the
Western alliance can regain the initiative. A start might be made if
thinking and concerned men and women — from the political parties,
the labor movement, the universities, the media — would form cross-
party political alliances in defense of democratic institutions.
Widening Defense Alliances
As a major strategic goal the West should seek to widen its
defensive organization by inviting other threatened countries to share
the security and the responsibilities of NATO membership. Japan,
Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, and Israel are examples, taken at random, of countries with an
incentive to join the noncommunist defense alliance; by doing so, they
would lift Western defense planning from regional to global
dimensions. The benefits would be mutual, guaranteeing oil supplies
for the West, extending beyond strict defense considerations. The case
for unity of the noncommunist nations was made by H. C. Allen in his
book The Anglo-American Predicament. It is still valid today.
Complementary to the expansion of formal alliances, closer rela-
tions should be forged with the developing nations. Public exposure of
the long-term communist bloc policy toward them, and of the Trojan
horse role of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Cuba, should by itself alert
the leaders of these nations to the danger. But the Western objective
should be not merely to frustrate communist intentions, but to
strengthen the political and economic basis for their
WHERE NOW? 363
independent development. National rivalries, spheres of influence,
and patronage would be replaced by joint efforts to give aid, trade,
and credit to enterprising young nations not only for future commer-
cial gain, but to mould their national traditions along democratic lines
and against communist subversion.
The Western military alliance should maintain superiority in
nuclear weapons — not mere parity.
Reorientation of Intelligence Services
The intelligence, counterintelligence, and security services of the
Western nations should be strengthened and reorientated to match the
changed direction of the communist threat. Overriding priority should
no longer be given to countering traditional KGB espionage and
information gathering; the main task now should be to neutralize the
political damage caused by communist agents of influence and their
disinformation. Appreciation of the problem of disinformation should
be raised from the tactical to the strategic level.
To interpret communist actions and detect communist agents of
influence, the Western services should use the new methodology. A
central coordinating staff, working on behalf of the security and
diplomatic services of the whole Western alliance, should be set up to
exchange experience, coordinate operations, and provide research on
patterns of disinformation.
Security screening should be resumed for all important recent
emigres, including "dissidents." Their background and activities
should be reviewed in the light of communist long-range policy and
disinformation.
Diplomatic Disengagement
To protect themselves from communist strategic disinformation and
activist diplomacy, the Western powers should probe every political
action for its true motive. Detente discussions, SALT negotiations,
and communist proposals for European collective security should be
broken off or declined. There should be no independent consultations
between communist leaders and member nations of
364 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the alliance.
The number of Western missions on communist territory should be
reduced to the minimum — preferably no more than two or three — and
strict reciprocity should be maintained when allowing communist
missions and delegations into the West.
Denial of Trade and Technology
The communist bloc is still striving to level up economic and
industrial strength among its more backward members — China among
them — and to increase still further its military strength. Denial of
trade, credit facilities, and technological know-how delays completion
of these programs; strains the economies of the more advanced
members, such as the USSR and Czechoslovakia; and, in the long run,
breeds pubHc discontent. The denial of credit facilities has a further
advantage in that it limits communist opportunity to damage Western
economies. Economic action by the West hits the communist bloc
where it is most vulnerable, and should be relentlessly pursued against
every bloc country, including Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland. A
central coordinating and planning staff should be set up to conduct the
economic offensive.
Isolating Communist Parties
The long-range strategy of the communist movement is to broaden
its political base in noncommunist countries by forming a united front
with socialist and nationalist parties; when a parliamentary majority
has been won, the communists will seek, through the development of
extra-parliamentary mass action, to bring about fundamental changes
in the democratic system. The stratagem will only succeed if the
democratic parties being wooed are either ignorant of communist
intentions or imagine that they can control the outcome. Exposure of
the communist long-range policy, strategy, and tactics and the coming
sham liberalization in Eastern Europe, with its implications for the
West — in particular, for countries with Eurocommunist parties —
should warn the unwary and detach the deceived.
WHERE NOW? 365
Addressing the Peoples of the Communist Bloc
It is not the communist leaders or the dissidents (brain children of
the KGB) on whom the West should pin its hopes for genuine changes
in the communist empire. It is the people — Russians, Chinese, and the
Eastern European nationals — who, despite Western errors and
miscalculations, are still potential allies. It is to the peoples of the
communist bloc that Western foreign policy should be addressing
itself.
They should be distinguished from their rulers and from the false
opposition their rulers have invented. They expect to be addressed as
equals and allies. They want to be told the truth in plain, unvarnished
terms about both communist and Western policies, successes, and
failures. They will respect a true picture, blemishes included, of the
guiding moral, political, and economic principles of the West. They
will listen to exposes of their own country's policies and malpractices,
provided they are factual and dispassionate, but they will expect to be
told, equally plainly, the implications of what the West is doing to
combat them. If over a period of years the peoples of the communist
bloc could be kept informed, objectively and scrupulously fairly, of
what is taking place in the world around them, one day they might
find ways to turn their thoughts into actions.
The Next Half Century
Suppose all that has been suggested here were to happen. Suppose
the Western alliance did publicly proclaim its realization that it had
been deceived by communist disinformation, that its policies of
detente and arms hmitation had been misguided, that the alliance was
now united in its determination to face the challenge. What then? It is
obvious that there can be no quick solution to an ideological struggle
that has continued unabated since 1917. Perhaps there never can be a
solution. Perhaps the two camps, each representing a way of life
abhorrent to the other, must for all foreseeable time oppose each other.
But is this so bad a thing? Is it unthinkable that ideological and
political competition should become permanent? Might not open
competition between two fundamentally opposed systems be the best
way to sort things out? Might not
366 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the two systems, in vying with one another, improve each other?
There seem to be three possible scenarios around which the history
of the next half century will be written:
In the first, communism, meeting neither ideological nor political
resistance from the West, continues along its present course to
disarmament, then to convergence with the West on its own terms,
and so to world domination.
In the second, the West realizes in time the nature of the communist
threat, solves its own national problems, unites the noncom-munist
world, and adopts a policy of open competition between the two
systems; as a result, the peoples of the communist bloc repudiate their
leaders and the communist empire disintegrates.
The third scenario resembles the second except that both systems
remain intact and competition continues for a very long time.
And who shall say that unrelenting competition between two
opposing systems of government, each secured by the nuclear deter-
rent, would not prove fruitful? But where are the statesmen who will
recognize this path to possible safety and guide their peoples along it?
Glossary
AAPSO
CHEKA
Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization.
The Soviet security service in the early post-
revolutionary days under Dzerzhinskiy. See
also VCHEKA.
Chekist
Comecon
Member of VCHEKA staff. Also a secret
KGB magazine.
Council of Mutual Economic Assistance of
Communist States.
Cominform
(Informatsionnoye Byuro Kommunistiches-
kikh Partly). Information Bureau of the Com-
munist Parties from 1947 to 1956.
Comintern
(Kommunisticheskiy Internatsional). Commu-
nist International, also known as the Third
Communist International. Abolished in 1943.
CPSU
CSCE
DVR FCD
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe.
(Dal'ne-Vostoch'naya Respublika). Far East-
ern Republic, established in 1920. Incorpo-
rated into the Soviet Union in 1922.
First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Soviet
intelligence service.
367
GPU
368
See OGPU.
NEW LIES FOR OLD
GRU
GSE
(Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye). Chief
Intelligence Administration, the Soviet mihtary
intelhgence service.
(Bol'shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya). The Great
Soviet Encyclopaedia.
Illegal resident Intelligence representative operating abroad under
nonofficial cover.
Izvestiya Daily newspaper, organ of the Supreme Soviet.
KGB
KI
(Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti). Committee
of State Security, the Soviet foreign intelligence and
internal security service, created in 1954.
(Komitet Informatsii). Committee of Information, the
political and military intelligence service from 1947 to
1949 under the Council of Ministers. From 1949 to
1 95 1 , the political intelligence service under the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1951 to 1957, the
research and disinformation service under the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. From 1958 to the present, the
research, disinformation, and special operational
political service under the Central Committee of the
CPSU, probably under cover of the State Committee
for Cultural Ties.
Komsomol
(Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodezhi).
Communist Youth Organisation.
(Ministerstvo Gosuparstvennoy Bezopastnosti).
Ministry of State Security, including.
MGB
GLOSSARY 369
from October 1946 to March 1953, the Soviet
intelligence and security service.
MID
MVD
(Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del). Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
(Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del). Ministry of
Internal Affairs, responsible for general inter-
nal security. For one year, from March 1953 to
March 1954, it was also responsible for
foreign intelligence and state security.
NEP
(Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika). The
New Economic Policy, initiated by Lenin in
1921 and continued until 1929.
Novosti
Novyy Mir
Soviet press agency, abbreviated as APN.
Literary and political monthly publication in
Moscow.
NTS
(Natsional'nyy Trudovoy Soyuz). National
Labor Union, an emigre political anticom-
munist organization in the West.
OGPU
(Ob'yedenennoye Gosudarstvennoye Politi-
cheskoye Upravleniye). Federal State Political
Administration, the Soviet intelligence and se-
curity service from February 1922 to July
1934.
Oktyabr'
Literary and political monthly publication in
Moscow.
Politburo
(Politicheskoye Byuro). Political Bureau. The
leading organ of the Central Committee of the
CPSU. Renamed the Presidium before Stalin's
death; reverted to Politburo under Brezhnev.
370 NEW LIES FOR OLD
Pravda Daily newspaper, organ of the CPSU.
Residency KGB secret intelligence apparatus in a non-communist
country. The KGB itself uses the term Rezidentura.
Chief of the KGB intelligence apparatus in a
Resident noncommunist country. The KGB term is Rezident.
Russian Federation, or Russian Republic.
RSFSR Second Chief Directorate of the KGB, Soviet security and
counterintelligence service.
SCD
(Telegrafnoye Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza). Telegraph
Agency of the Soviet Union, a Soviet news agency.
TASS
(Vsesoyuznaya Chrezvychaynaya Kommissiya po Bor'be s
Kontrrevolyutsyyey, Spekulyatsi-yey i Sabotazhem). All-
Union Extraordinary Commission for Combatting
Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage, the Soviet
security service from December 1917 to February 1922.
Women's International Democratic Federation
Yugoslav League of Communists, Yugoslav Communist
party. Also referred to as YCL and CPY.
WIDF
YLC
Notes
Chapter 1: The Problem Facing Western Analysts
1. Recognition of this may be found in, for example, The Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (Random House, New York, 1960), by Leonard Schapiro, p. 542: "The
secrecy with which the USSR has been able to surround itself had broken down,
largely as the result of the testimony which thousands of Soviet citizens who had been
displaced during the war, and who did not return, were able to provide. For the first
time, serious academic study of Soviet histor}', politics and economics was providing
the non-communist countries with a basis for countering Soviet propaganda claims
about itself."
2. Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (1952), p. 566 (hereafter cited as GSE).
Publishers — "The State Scientific Agency," "Great Soviet Encyclopaedia" in Mos-
cow. This is the second edition published at the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s.
Since 1957 it has published annual supplemental volumes. The volumes will be cited
hereafter as GSE with an indication of the year of the supplement. (Supplements are
not numbered but go by the year.)
Chapter 3: The Patterns of Disinformation: "Weakness and Evolution"
1. In the eighteenth century Count Poiemkin organized a river journey for his
sovereign, Catherine ii, and the ambassadors to her court. Anxious to display the high
living standards enjoyed by the local peasantry under her rule, he had artificial mobile
villages constructed on the banks of the river. Once the royal barge had passed the
villages, they were hastily dismantled and reassembled for display again farther along
on the barge's course.
2. Former head of Soviet intelligence in Sweden and other countries.
Chapter 4: The Patterns of Disinformation: Transition
1. These statements are supported by the official records of the speeches made by
various members of the Presidium at the Twentieth Party Congress, including those of
Khrushchev, Molotov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, and Kaganovich.
Chapter 5: The New Policy and Disinformation Strategy
1. See Mao's articles "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat" and "More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of
371
372 NEW LIES FOR OLD
the Proletariat," published in Pravda on April 5 and December 29, 1956, respectively.
Mao wrote: "in struggles inside as well as outside the party, on certain occasions and
on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in
nature — contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among
the people — and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the
work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-
revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there
were innocent people who were wrongly convicted, and in 1937 and 1938 there
occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-
revolutionaries. In the matter of party and government organization, he did not fully
apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling
relations with fraternal parties and countries he made some mistakes. He also gave
some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused
some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement."
2. See, for instance, the 1956 speeches of Mao, Liu Shaochi, and Teng Hsiao-
ping.
3. In December 1957 party members in the KGB Institute, including the author,
were given a secret briefing on the November conference of bloc countries by
General Kurenkov, the head of the institute, who had been a guest at conference
meetings and who had himself been briefed by General Serov. This and other hitherto
unpublished information about the conference is taken from that briefing.
4. During these years the author was serving in the KGB Institute and KGB
headquarters.
5. World Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, (December 1960)
and (January 1961).
6. The author's account of disinformation is based on Shelepin's articles in the
secret KGB magazine Chekist; on Popov's manual; and on the author's conversations
with Grigorenko, Sitnikov, Kelin, Kostenko, and Smirnov of the Disinformation
Department. The author borrowed Popov's book from the library on the grounds that
his work on document assessment in the KGB's Information Department required
that he should be able to distinguish authentic information from disinformation. The
librarian called him twice daily to ask when he would return the book.
7. Lenin's Works, 5th ed., vol. 45, (The State Publishing Agency for Political
Literature, Moscow), p. 63. The fifth edition was prepared by the Institute of
Marxism-Leninism and published by the Central Committee of the CPSU during the
late 1950s and the early 1960s.
8. Questionsof History of the CPSU, no. 4, (1962), p. 152.
9. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford University Press,
London, Oxford, and New York 1963), pp. 45-56, 66, 93, 183, 190, 191.
10. See page 160.
11. The issues were dead as between party leaders. Nationalism was still very
much alive in the Yugoslav Communist party. Tito admitted this in his conversations
with the Soviet leaders in 1955 and promised to deal with it. He explained, however,
that it would take time to neutralize and eradicate it.
NOTES 373
Chapter 6: The Shelepin Report and Changes in Organization
1. The author read and studied the Shelepin report in the KGB Institute while a
student there.
Chapter 7: The New Role of Intelligence
1. Material based on a secret lecture given KGB staff by the Soviet Deputy
Minister of Defense responsible for scientific and technical research and develop-
ment.
2. Information made available to the French authorities in 1962-63.
3. See Henry Hurt's article in the October 1981 issue of Reader's Digest, supported
independently by George Lardner, Jr., in his article in the Washington Post of
September 3, 1981. According to Hurt, the FBI reexamined the Fedora case, which
concerned a KGB official whom the FBI regarded as its reliable agent from 1962
onward and some of whose information was passed on to the White House. The FBI
concluded that Fedora had been under Moscow's control during the years of his
association with the FBI.
If this is correct, it confirms that the Soviets were actively creating new channels
for disinformation in the early 1960s and the US government owes it to the public to
produce an official white paper on the activities of this Soviet plant and the
disinformation he provided. Such a publication would be a revolutionary contribution
to the enlightenment of Western scholars and journalists on communist affairs, and to
the general public, on the little-known subject of communist strategic disinformation.
It should throw light on concrete Soviet disinformation themes, particularly on
intrabloc relations, and would illustrate how such disinformation shaped or influenced
US attitudes and decisions during the period.
4. Material based on secret instructions, given between 1959 and 1961, from the
head of Soviet intelligence to the intelligence residents in those countries.
5. Told to the author by Zenikhov himself.
Chapter9: The Vulnerability of Western Assessments
1. Some details on the subject are available in "Interlocking Subversion in
Government Departments," the Report of the Subcommittee to Investigate the
Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws to the
Committee on the Judiciary of the US Senate, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., July 30, 1953.
Chapter 10: Communist Intelligence Successes, Western Failures, and the Crisis in
Western Studies
1. A special secret review of Popov's case (known as "Operation Boomerang") was
circulated to KGB staff after his arrest. It stated that Popov was uncovered as a result
of reports from agents abroad (not named) and from surveillance over Popov and his
case officer. Popov could not be arrested earlier because a GRU
374 NEW LIES FOR OLD
colonel was "in American hands." Popov's use in an operational "game" against the
Americans was excluded because he was known to be very anti-Soviet and would
therefore be likely to disclose the game to the Americans.
2. See B. Nikolayevskiy's article on the Nineteenth CPSU Congress, The New
Leader, October 6, 1952. See also Franz Borkenau, Sino-Soviet Relations, Depart-
ment of State ERS paper, series 3, no. 86, February I, 1952; and "Mao Tse-tung," The
Twentieth Century, August 1952.
3. Use of the facade and strength pattern has sometimes been recognized. See, for
example. Walker's China under Communism, (Richard Lewis Walker; George Allen
and Urwin, Ltd., London, 1956) pp. 240-45.
Chapter 1 1 : Western Errors
1. W. A. Douglas Jackson, The Russo-Chinese Borderlands, (D. Van Nostrand,
Princeton, New Jersey, 1962) p. 95.
2. "Bear and Dragon: What Is the Relation between Moscow and Peking?",
supplement to the National Review, November 5, 1 960.
3. Suzanne Labin, The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China
(Stevens and Sons Ltd., London I960), pp. 419-20, in which the author quotes Dr.
Tang: "The fact that in all questions basic to their survival both regimes always agree
helps us to understand that their disagreements on tactical questions simply stem from
a division of labour by which Russia and China take turns in throwing the ball. For
example, where the one makes an aggressive move, the other comes forward to play
the role of mediator, and so calm the free world's fears. It is, I think, what is called in
American slang 'working both sides of the street.' Please remember, Madame, that
until comparatively recently the Soviet Union alone staged the international moves on
behalf of the whole Communist world, and thus the Soviet Union itself had to
alternate the tough and the soft lines according to the reactions of the West. But in
recent years Communist China has come on to the international scene as a partner,
and the two of them working together can now follow these disparate policies
simultaneously — the one from Moscow, the other from Peking. This gives the
Communist powers great advantage and increases the disarray of the West."
4. Tibor Mende, China and Her Shadow, (Thames and Hudson, London 1 960), pp.
162, 180-81: "There are indeed few imaginable developments in the world today
which could more completely alter the existing balance of forces than the eventual
drifting apart of the two major Communist powers. For the same reason, there are few
subjects on which, based on so little concrete evidence, so much speculation has been
built. If, at the beginning, fascination with the immense impact of the Sino-Soviet
collaboration tended to discount signs of disagreements now the danger is rather that,
under the influence of political mystery literature, the importance of existing
differences may be vastly exaggerated. . .
"The outside world's understandable interest in the detection of the symptoms of
discord inevitably leads to a distorted picture in which dissension is magnified at the
expense of the much more important field where there is coincidence of interests. To
mistake the occasional creakings of the Moscow-Peking axis for symp-
NOTES 375
toms of deep-seated conflict is, and is likely to remain for many years to come, a
dangerous miscalculation. The image of a Russia frightened by a reckless China is a
poor substitute for a coherent Western policy in Asia. The illusion that the West can
thrust a wedge between the two allies is likely to remain fashionable for some time
even though its victims continue to do their utmost to weld the two countries even
closer together.
"When China and the Soviet Union meet it is not merely to bargain but also to
concert their action."
5. Supplement to the National Review, November 5, 1960.
6. According to Diversity in International Communism, ed. Alexander Dallin
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1963; p. xxxviii, note 4), the term "esoteric
communications" came into use through Myron Rush's Rise of Khrushchev
(Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958), which made extensive use of this
technique of analysis. In his note on methodology in The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-
1961, Donald S. Zagoria wrote: "Since the time five or ten years ago when systematic
analysis of Communist communications was dismissed as "Kremlinoi-ogy," Western
students have developed a considerable amount of sophistication in using these
sources. Although this approach is still regarded in some circles as a black art, there
can be no reasonable doubt that a rich body of work has grown up which provides
important insights into various aspects of Communist politics. . . . [Because]
factionalism and open airing of differences have been proscribed. Communists are
forced to differ with one another through the employment of . . . "esoteric
communication" or Aesopian language. As often as not, differences over policy or
strategy alternatives are heavily veiled in doctrinal exegesis. Yet behind the
seemingly arid doctrinal polemics lie real and serious political problems."
7. Edgar Snow, The Other Side of the River: Red China Today (New York:
Random House, 1961), pp. 97-100,431.
8. See, for example, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc Unity and Conflict,
rev. ed. (New York: Erederick A. Praeger, 1961), pp. xx, xxii, 424-25, and footnote
43, p. 514.
9. See also William E. Griffith, "The November 1960 Moscow Meeting: A
Preliminary Reconstruction," China Quarterly, no. 1 1 (July-September 1962).
Chapter 12: The New Methodology
1. See Lenin's Works, vol. 8, p. 96.
Z An alternative possibility would be a deceptive Chinese alignment with a
conservative Japan and the United States.
3. Edvard Kardelj, Socialism and War: A Survey of the Chinese Criticism of the
Policy of Coexistence (Methuen, 1961), p. 11.
4. Ibid., p. 238.
5. Ibid., p. 229.
6. Ibid., p. 9.
7 Quoted from Yugoslav Eacts and Views (New York: Yugoslav Information
Center), no. 50 (May 5, 1958).
376 NEW LIES FOR OLD
8. Yuriy Krasin, "The International and the National in the Revolutionary
Process," Novoye Vremya, no. 7, February 13, 1981.
9. Denis Warner, Hurricane from China (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 123.
10. Documentary record of the Extraordinary Twenty-first CPSU Congress,
Current Soviet PoJicies, vol. 3, Leo Gruliow, editor, Praeger (January 1959), p.
206 (hereafter cited as CSP).
Chapter 13: The First Disinformation Operation: The Soviet-Yugoslav "Dispute" of
1958-60
1. Pravda, June4, 1958.
2. The author was a subordinate of Grigorenko in the Counterintelligence
Department in 1951. On one occasion in December 1959 Grigorenko visited the
Information Department, where the author was then working, seeking staff with
expertise on Yugoslavia and Albania for service in his department. The nature of this
quest obliged Grigorenko to give information on the kind of work for which the
officers were required. The information on Pushkin's involvement in this operation
was confirmed to the author independently by another KGB officer, Kurenyshev.
3. Georgiy Maksimovich Pushkin, Soviet diplomat since 1 937, ambassador in East
Germany until the beginning of 1958, with previous experience in Hungary, Sinkiang,
and Middle East affairs. Listed officially as Deputy Minister of foreign affairs from
1959.
4. Yugoslav Facts and Views, no. 56, 1958.
5. CSP, Leo Gruliow ed., (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959), vol. 3, p. 62.
Khrushchev stated: "On many questions of foreign policy we speak a common
language."
6. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, English ed. (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, I960), pp. 701-2.
7. Ibid., p. 641: "Subsequently, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on its
own initiative, took steps to restore norma] relations between the USSR and
Yugoslavia.
"The policy of friendship and mutual assistance, pursued by the CPSU, triumphed.
The mistakes made occasionally in the relations with fraternal countries were of a
secondary, accidental character. The essence of these relations was genuinely
Socialist, and accorded fully with the principles of proletarian internationalism. The
CPSU directed all its efforts to strengthening friendship with People's China and the
other People's Democracies, and this policy was entirely successful. The joint
activities of the CPSU and the other Communist Parties standing at the helm of their
respective States, resulted in the establishment of a fraternal community of Socialist
countries, and no amount of intrigue on the part of their enemies could, or can, shake
their solidarity and unity. This unity is a source of the strength of the Socialist camp. .
. The problem of relations between the Socialist countries was, for all its complexity
and novelty, successfully solved in the interests of each country and of the entire
Socialist camp."
8. CSP, vo!.3, pp. 68-6
9. GSE(196I), p. 374.
NOTES 377
Chapter 14: The Second Disinformation, Operation: The "Evolution" of the Soviet
Regime (Part One: The Major Changes in the USSR)
1. For an example, see Pravda, September 9, 1962.
2. Officially introduced in 1961.
3. Izvestiya, May 19, 1959.
4. Izvestiya, January 28, 1959, p. 9: "There is not now condemnation by the courts
in the Soviet Union for political crimes. It is a big achievement which speaks for the
exceptional unity of the political views of the people with the Central Committee of
the Party."
5. Kommunist, no. 1 1 (1960), p. 44.
6. The author learned this from Grigorenko, whose department helped Shul'gin to
write and publish the brochure.
7. See, for example, the letter from Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko to the United
Nations, September 20, 1958, about a 10-15 percent reduction in the military budgets
of the major powers. (Pravda, September 1958)
8. On June 6, 1958, Pravda published Khrushchev's letter of June 2 to President
Eisenhower in which he forwarded to the American government the Soviet govern-
ment's proposal for "joint measures for an increase in trade." The letter stated that the
Soviet Union and the US, as the two most economically powerful states, could "carry
on trade with one another on a wide scale."
9. See Khrushchev's report to the Twenty-second CPSU Congress in October 1961
(CSP, vol. 4, p. 69): "the Soviet Union is giving particular attention to the
development of ties with its neighbours. The differences between our social and
political systems have not been preventing the development of friendly, mutually
beneficial relations between the USSR and such countries as Afghanistan and Finland.
Our relations with Austria and Sweden are coming along quite well. We have been
making efforts to improve our relations with Norway and Denmark and shall continue
doing so. Relations with neighbouring Turkey have been improving of late. We want
these relations to develop still further."
10. See, for example, Khrushchev's report to the Twenty-second CPSU Congress
(CSP, vol. 4, p. 46): "To-day, the USA, which has become the centre of world
reaction, takes the role of the chief aggressive nucleus. The US imperialists are acting
in alliance with the West German militarists and revanchists and threatening the peace
and security of peoples. . . ." Ibid., p. 45: "Comrades, the 20th party congress,
analysing the situation in the countries of capitalism, came to the conclusion that they
were moving steadily toward new economic and social upheavals. Has this conclusion
been borne out? Yes, it has. In the years that have elapsed there has occurred a further
sharpening of contradictions, both within the capitalist countries and among them;
colonial empires have collapsed and the struggle of the working class and the peoples'
national liberation movement have assumed tremendous proportions."
11. Detente; Cold War Strategies in Transition, ed. Eleanor Lansing Dulles
378 NEW LIES FOR OLD
and Roberl Dickson Crane (Published for the Center for Strategic Studies, George-
town University, by Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1965), p. 268.
12. Lazar Pistrak, The Grand Tactician (New York, Praeger 1961), p. 269.
13. G. A. von Stackelberg, Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of the USSR, vol.
7, no. 4 (April I960), pp. 16-20.
14. A penetrating explanation of Soviet provocation of the Berlin Crisis as being
based, in large part, on Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder was
given by Nikolay Galay, "Berlin and Soviet Foreign Policy," Bulletin of the Institute
fortheStudy oftheUSSR, vol. 6, no. 6 (June 1959).
15. See CSP, vol. 4, p. 23: "Having brought about the complete and final victory
of socialism, the first phase of communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat has
fulfilled its historical mission and has ceased to be essential in the USSR from the
point of view of internal development. The state which arose as a state of the
dictatorship of the proletariat has turned into a state of the entire people, which
expresses the interests and will of the people as a whole."
16. Satyukov said [CSP, vol. 4, p. 176): "The delegates to the 22nd congress
should know that in October of this year, just before the congress opened, Molotov
sent a letter to the Central Committee. Without having a word to say about his
subversive, factionalist work against the Leninist party and against the decisions of its
20th congress, he tries afresh in this letter to pose as interpreter of Leninism and again
attacked the Central Committee and the draft of the CPSU programme. Molotov
declares in his letter that the draft programme fails to co-ordinate communist
construction in the USSR with the prospects for the revolutionary struggle of the
working class in capitalist countries, with the prospects for socialist revolution on an
international scale. And this at a time when the draft programme has been
unanimously approved not only by our party and the Soviet people but by the
international communist movement. . . . His contentions lead to the conclusion that it
is impossible to continue the advance to communism without the most serious
political conflicts with the imperialist countries, and hence without war. We say to
Molotov: no, the CPSU has been and is doing everything possible to ensure peace for
the Soviet people, the people who are building communism. The Leninist principle of
peaceful co-existence has been and remains our general line in foreign policy. This is
plainly stated in the new programme and the party will pursue this line consistently."
17. The Soviet Academy of Sciences includes historians, lawyers, and economists
as well as scientists in the conventional sense. The expression "Soviet Scientists"
should be interpreted as including these additional categories.
18. Mose L. Harvey, Leon Goure, and Vladimir Prokofieff, Science and Technol-
ogy as an Instrument of Soviet Policy (Center for Advanced International Studies,
University of Miami, 1972), pp. 93-94.
Chapter 15: The Third Disinformation Operation: The Soviet-Albanian
"Dispute" and "Split"
1. See Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift by William E. Griffith (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1963), p. 37.
NOTES 379
2. Izvestiya, January 10, 1981.
3. In one article (June 1962) David Floyd in the London Daily Telegraph noted
that "it was through Durres and . . . Vlora . . . that the Albanians received last year the
grain shipments which enabled them to resist the Russian economic blockade. It was
the Chinese who brought the wheat from Canada, paid for it in clearing rubles, and
shipped it to Albania in West German ships."
4. Zeri-I-Poppulit, February 14, 1961; reprinted as Document 6 in Albania and the
Sino-Soviet Rift, p. 207.
Chapter 16: The Fourth Disinformation Operation: The Sino-Soviet "Split"
1. Joy Homer Dawn Watch in China, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941), pp.
194-95: "from the day that I set foot in Yenan, I noticed a lukewarm attitude towards
Russia on the part of students and young officials. Far more popular than Russia were
America and Great Britain. At least once a day I was told very earnestly something
like this: 'You must not confuse our communism with the communism of Russia.
Today we do our own thinking. In your country, you would probably call us
socialists. We believe in sacrifice for each other, and in hard work and love for all
men. Almost it is like your Christianity."
2. An account of Harriman's interview is in The China Tangle by Herbert Feis
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 140.
3. Charles B. McLane, Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists 1931-1946
(Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, Copyright 1958 by Columbia
University Press, 1972), pp. 1-2.
4. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York:
Harper & Bros., 1948), p. 902-3: "[Stalin made the] categorical statement that he
would do everything he could to promote unification of China under the leadership of
Chiang Kai-Shek. . . . He specifically stated that no Communist leader was strong
enough to unify China."
5. McLane, op. cit.
6. Robert Payne, Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-Tiing (London and New
York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961), footnote, p. 175.
7. See the official announcement in Pravda, October 23, 1949. Tikhvinskiy was
named as an intelligence officer by the former Soviet intelligence officer Rastvorov in
his article in Life, December 6, 1 954.
8. See Chiang Kai-Shek, Soviet Russia in China (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Cudahy, 1957), p. 369.
9. This treaty remained in force throughout the Vietnam War. On its expiry in
April 1980, it was not renewed; by then, there was no discernible threat to China from
any Western nation.
10. Walt Whitmaa Rostow in The Prospects for Communist China (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1954),
pp. 216-220, notes "under what circumstances, if any, is a break up of the alliance to
be foreseen? In a technical sense the evidence of an alliance lies in the relative
weakness of China vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. This means that
380 NEW LIES FOR OLD
three conditions are probably required to effect a Chinese withdrawal from the Sino-
Soviet alliance:
"1. Acute dissatisfaction among an effective group of Chinese leaders with the
workings of the Soviet alliance, and probably with the consequences of
applying Soviet technique to the problem of China's economic growth.
"2. Assurance that withdrawal would be met by more favourable terms of
association with the West.
"3. The neutralization of potential Soviet strength vis-a-vis China either by
severe internal Soviet difficulties or by some third power.
"In the light of this basic situation there are several conditions, now beyond the
horizon of immediate possibility. . . . The Sino-Soviet tie might be definitively altered
if the uneasy process of adjustment ... in the Soviet Union created by Stalin's death
should break into open conflict, resulting in either a drastic weakening of Moscow's
power on the world scene or a drastic shift in its internal and external political
orientation, even the present Chinese communist rulers might be prepared to rethink
their relationship to Moscow and move towards a greater degree of independence
from the Soviet Union or association with the non-communist world. Their precise
course of action would depend on many factors, notably the character and probable
duration of changes in the Soviet Union and the terras the Free World might offer for
a change in [Chinese] orientation."
11. See CSP, vol. 3, p. 129: "in the U. S., I was asked many questions about the
relations between the Soviet Union and China. I must assume that these questions
derived from the revisionist anti-Chinese propaganda in the Yugoslav press which
recently . . . published insinuations about incipient disagreements, if you please,
between the Soviet Union and China. ... 1 replied that the gentlemen questioners were
evidently dreaming sweet dreams in which, lo and behold, magic could cause
disagreements to appear in the socialist camp between the Soviet Union and China.
But I said that . . . the dream was unrealisable. Soviet-Chinese friendship rests on the
unshakable foundation of Marxist-Leninist ideology, on the common goals of
communism, on the fraternal mutual support of the peoples of our countries, on joint
struggles against imperialism and for peace and socialism. [Applause.] The greetings
of the CPC Central Committee to our congress, signed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung . . .
are a reaffirmation of the eternal, indissoluble friendship between our parties and
between our countries. [Applause] We shall cherish this friendship as the apple of our
eye. Our friendship is a sacred thing, and let not those who would seek to defile it
reach out with unclean hands for this purpose. [Applause.]"
12. "Imperialist, renegade and revisionist hopes of a split within the socialist camp
are built on sand and doomed to failure. All the socialist countries cherish the unity of
the socialist camp like the apple of their eye." (Manifesto)
13. "I want to emphasize our constant effort to strengthen the bonds of fraternal
friendship with the CPC, with the great Chinese people. ... the friendship of our two
great peoples, the unity of our two parties ... are of exceptional importance in the
struggle for the triumph of our common cause. . . . The CPSU
NOTES 381
and the Soviet people will do their utmost to further increase the unity of our parties
and our peoples, so as not only to disappoint our enemies but to jolt them even more
strongly with our unity, to attain the realisation of our great goal, the triumph of
communism." (Khrushshev's speech, January 6, 1961)
14. In his speech to the Twenty-first CPSU Congress (CSP, vol. 3, pp. 77-78),
Chou En-lai said: "The Soviet Union and China are fraternal socialist countries . . .
the close friendship of the peoples of our two countries is eternal and indestructible."
In an interview published in Peking Review on November 8, 1960, he said, "The
solidarity between the two great countries, China and the Soviet Union, is the bulwark
of the defence of world peace. What the imperialists and all reactionaries fear the
most is the solidarity of the socialist countries. They seek by every means to sow
discord and break up this unity."
15. The Sino-Soviet Dispute, an article by Geoffrey Francis Hudson, Richard
Lowenthal, and Roderick MacFarquhar which was published by the China Quarterly,
1961, p. 35.
16. A timely warning against false historical analogies was given by former
leading American communist Jay Lovestone in testimony before the Internal Security
Committee of the U. S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary on January 26 and
February 2, 1961: "We must guard against the temptation to resort to historical
analogies. Since Communist Russia and Communist China are bound together by this
overriding common objective [communist conquest and transformation of the world],
it would be dangerously false to equate their differences or jealousies with the hostility
and clash of interests between Czarist Russia and pre-World War I China."
17. Kommunist, no. 5 (1964), p. 21.
18. PartyLife, no. 10(1964), p. 65.
19. Ibid., no. 7(1964), p. 9.
20. Problems of Philosophy (October 1958).
21. See his speech at Leipzig on March 7, 1959, reprinted in World without Arms,
World without Wars (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960), vol. 1,
p. 198: "Broad co-operation is developing between the sovereign countries of the
socialist camp in every sphere of economic, public, political and cultural life.
Speaking of the future, I believe that the socialist countries' further development will
in all likelihood follow the line of consolidating the single world socialist economic
system. The economic barriers that divided our countries under capitalism will be
removed one after another, and the common economic basis of world socialism will
be steadily strengthened, eventually making the question of boundaries pointless."
22. CSP, vol. 3, p. 188: "The thesis in Comrade N. S. Krushchev's report that
"from the theoretical standpoint it would be more correct to assume that by
successfully employing the potentialities inherent in socialism, the countries of
socialism will enter the higher phase of communist society more or less simulta-
neously" will be of tremendous interest not only to Communists of the Soviet Union
but also to Communists of all the socialist countries as well as Communists of the
entire world. This is the first formulation of the new thesis that the law of planned and
proportional development applies not only to individual socialist
382 NEW LIES FOR OLD
countries but also to the economy of the socialist camp as a whole. This is a new
pronouncement in the theory of scientific communism. It expresses the profound truth
of Leninism that the world socialist camp constitutes a single economic system. As
time goes on, the economic plans of these countries will be more and more co-
ordinated and the more highly developed countries will help the less developed
countries in order to march in a united front toward communism at an increasingly
faster pace."
23. Mende, China and Her Shadow, pp. 175-76, 338-39.
24. The following is an extract from this letter: "It is not only at present that the
Soviet leaders have begun to collude with US imperialism and attempt to menace
China. As far back as 20th June 1959, when there was not yet the slightest sign of a
treaty on stopping nuclear tests, the Soviet government unilaterally tore up the
agreement on new technology for national defence concluded between China and the
Soviet Union on 15 October 1957, and refused to provide China with a sample of an
atomic bomb and technical data concerning its manufacture. This was done as a
presentation gift at the time the Soviet leader went to the US for talks with
Eisenhower in September."
25. For an example, see Trud, August 31, 1963: "The 10 MW pilot nuclear power
plant and the 24 million electron volt cyclotron commissioned in 1958 were another
aspect of Soviet aid to China which was too many-sided to be mentioned in all the
details."
26. See Peking Review, April 26, 1960: "A new nuclear particle — anti sigma
minus hyperon — has been discovered by scientists of the socialist countries working
together at the Joint Nuclear Research Institute in Dubna, outside Moscow (estab-
lished in 1956 by representatives of 12 governments of the socialist states). In
addition to the Soviet physicists who led in obtaining this remarkable result. Professor
Wang Kan-chang, prominent Chinese scientist who is the vice-director of the Joint
Institute played a big part. He has long been a figure of world reknown in the field of
physics. Speaking of the new success. Professor Wang described it as the first
discovery of a charged anti-hyperon ever made, marking another step forward in
man's knowledge of the basic particles of the micro-world. Professor Wang attributed
this triumph first of all to leadership and support by the Soviet director of the Institute
and to close co-operation in work by scientists of other socialist countries, it is truly,
he said, a fresh testimony to the superiority of the socialist system."
27. Snow, Other Side of the River, p. 642.
28. See Mende, China and Her Shadow, pp. 182-93.
29. Military Strategy: Soviet Doctrine and Concepts, ed. Marshal V. D. Soko-
lovskiy (Moscow, 1962).
30. For an instance, see Pravda, August 27, 1963, on the alleged Chinese objection
to the admission of the Soviet delegation to the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in
1963 in Moshi on the grounds that the Soviet delegates were neither black nor yellow.
31. See Douglas Jackson, Russo-Chinese Borderlands, p. 91: "Salisbury also
attributes the Khrushchev virgin and idle lands programme which in 1954-56 resulted
in the ploughing of millions of acres of unused land in Western Siberia
NOTES 383
and Northern Kazakhstan and the setthng of several hundred thousand Russians and
Ukrainians there, as proof of Soviet concern for its vast empty Siberian spaces. The
Khrushchev programme unquestionably has political overtones, but more compelling
reasons for its implementation may be found in domestic conditions in the Soviet
Union than in the Chinese population problem."
32. In Moscow on September 2, 1980, the Chinese Friendship Association
celebrated the anniversary of the Japanese defeat in Manchuria. A report was
delivered by the association's deputy chairman, Tikhvinskiy.
33. New York Times, November 22, 1966.
34. Kommunist, no. 5 (1 964), p. 21 .
35. See Douglas Jackson, Russo-Chinese Borderlands, p. tlO: "As events have
unfolded their role has changed with circumstances. From zones of tension between
Imperial Russia, Imperial China, Soviet Russia and Nationalist China, the borderlands
have become, since the Communist revolution in China, zones of co-operation and
stabilisation. Their further economic development will undoubtedly strengthen the
hold that the Communists have over them — and in turn, they will contribute much to
the overall Communist strength. Indeed, the role of the borderlands in future Sino-
Soviet relations may in some ways be as dramatic as that played in preceding
centuries of Russo-Chinese competition and distrust. Whatever the future may bring,
the lands of Asia, where Russia and China meet, will continue to fascinate us, and
what is more, demand our awareness and understanding."
36. For examples, see the speeches of Mao, Liu Shaochi, Peng Te-huai, and Teng
Hsiao-p'ing at the Eighth CPC Congress in September 1956. (Jen min-Jih-Pao,
September 1956)
37. See Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Three Continents
(London: Collins, 1962), p. 40: "Chou emphasized again and again that China must
have peace, although she will always fight to resist aggression against her own
territory. . . . Marshal Chen Yi, the foreign minister, had given me exactly the same
views during my talks with him." See also Chou En-lai's emphasis on China's
recognition of the policy of peaceful co-existence in the article in Peking Review,
Novembers, 1961.
38. See Khrushchev's speech of January 6, 1961: (the war in Algeria) is a
liberation war, a war of independence waged by the people. It is a sacred war. We
recognize such wars; we have helped and shall continue to help peoples fighting for
their freedom. ... is there a likelihood of such wars recurring? Yes, there is. Are
uprisings of this kind likely to recur? Yes, they are. But wars of this kind are popular
uprisings. Is there the likelihood of conditions in other countries reaching the point
where the cup of the popular patience overflows and they take to arms? Yes, there is
such a likelihood. What is the attitude of the Marxists to such uprisings? A most
favourable attitude. These uprisings cannot be identified with wars between countries,
with local wars, because the insurgent people are fighting for the right to self-
determination, for their social and independent national development; these uprisings
are directed against the corrupt reactionary regimes, against the colonialists. The
Communists support just wars of this kind wholeheartedly and without reservations."
384 NEW LIES FOR OLD
39. "The interests of the struggle for the working-class cause demand of each
communist party and of the great army of communists of all countries ever closer
unity of will and action." (Manifesto)
40. Kommunist, no. 13 (1964), p. 21; and Jen-min Jih Pao and Iluntzi, February 4,
1964.
41. World Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, no. 6 (1964), p.
33.
Chapter 17: The Fifth Disinformation Operation: Romanian
"Independence"
I. See, for examples, David Floyd, Rumania: Russia's Dissident Ally (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1965).
2 Ibid
3. Ibid, pp. 119-20.
4. Ibid., p. 108.
Chapter 18: The Sixth Disinformation Operation: The Alleged Recurrence of Power
Struggles in the Soviet, Chinese, and Other Parties
I. In the author's opinion, Robert Conquest and Myron Rush both misinterpreted
the change of leadership from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in their books, respectively,
Russia after Khrushchev (New York. Frederick A. Praeger, 1965) and Political
Succession in the USSR (New York Research Institute on Communist Affairs,
Columbia University Press, 1965).
According to Conquest's interpretation, Khrushchev was removed as the result of a
sudden secret coup in accordance with Kremlin traditions for his mistakes in domestic
and foreign policy, the "conservatives" uniting with "modernizing moderates" and
"defectors from Khrushchev's own faction" (Brezhnev) to oust him. The reasons were
objections to his ill-prepared schemes. It is very notable that by far the most
powerfully urged cpmplaints were the fact that he acted without consulting them, that
he turned Central Committee meetings into crowd scenes to carry his proposals by
acclaim, that he used his son-in-law, Alexey Adzhu-bey, as a personal agent in foreign
affairs without informing the Presidium, and so on. But the crucial point was reached
when Khrushchev openly proposed to them the installation of Adzhubey in the
machinery of power. Here was a threat to old Khrushchevites and non-
Khrushchevites alike. The former must have remembered how Stalin, too, had
replaced his old followers with men of his personal entourage."
Conquest bases his interpretation on the parallel with the struggle for power after
Stalin's death. "The present situation differs in many important respects from that
which followed Stalin's death in March 1953. However, the events of that time are the
only parallel we have and some further examination of them must certainly prove
fruitful. For the more the structure of power depends on one man, the more it is likely
to be shaken when that one man is removed. On Khrushchev's departure, as after
Stalin's, a power vacuum came into being. . . . There were then a number of figures of
the second rank with long experience
NOTES 385
at the top and high prestige in the apparat ready to move."
According to Rush's interpretation, struggles for power in the Soviet Union
continue as after Lenin's and Stalin's deaths, since the problem of the political
succession has not been solved. Rush's interpretation also accepts Khrushchev's
dismissal as the result of a conspiracy. "Khrushchev's surrender of the posts that made
him the effective ruler of the Soviet Union, announced on October 15, 1964, came as
a surprise to the West and to Khrushchev as well. The coup d'etat prevented him from
attending a celebration for Soviet space-men he had just announced over radio and
television. Khrushchev's overthrow was the result of a conspiracy, not the culmination
of a series of moves aimed at reducing his power." Rush sees Khrushchev as a dictator.
"A conspiracy was necessary to remove Khrushchev because sovereignty resided in no
collective but in Khrushchev's person."
According to Rush's view, an arranged political succession in the Soviet Union is
impossible and the ruler's demise or removal begins the succession crisis. "In the
USSR the ruler evidently cannot inherit authority but must win it, and it is difficult to
see how such vast powers can be seized against the certain opposition of rivals
without producing a political crisis. Its depth and effects, however, are variable,
according to the scope and intensity of the struggle and the manner of its resolution.
Succession is initiated by the political or physical demise of the ruler. The
circumstances in which this event occurs may significantly affect the course of
succession, yet even the ruler who attempts to arrange his succession cannot know
with confidence what these circumstances will be. The ruler's demise may be a
political rather than a physical event as when he is removed in a palace revolt, as
Khrushchev was in fact, in which case his person and politics immediately become a
central issue in the succession. . . . However it begins, the succession crisis is at the
outset largely colored by the personal rivalry of the most ambitious of the former
ruler's heirs. In their efforts to inherit his power, they are compelled to manoeuvre and
compromise, forming factions in the top leadership according to the shifting
calculation of personal interest and political principle."
Rush recognizes Khrushchev's concern over the succession problem: "if, as we
shall argue, Khrushchev tried to deal with the problem of succession, his dispositions
did not lose significance because he was ousted before he could achieve his purpose.
On the contrary, his succession arrangements shaped the situation that resulted from
his fall, and even helped to bring it about. Khrushchev was deeply aware of the Soviet
succession problem, although Marxism contributed little to that awareness.
Preoccupied with the problem of the transfer of power from one class to another, it
has relatively little to say about the transfer of power between rulers. Khrushchev
learned of the succession problem through experience — not theory. He was already in
his thirties during Lenin's succession and he in some measure relived that experience
in his campaign against Stalin's memory."
2. See Lenin's letter of 1923, published in Kommunist, no. 9 (1956), pp. 11-17:
"Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous
power in his hands and I am not at all certain that he is capable of always utilising this
power with sufficient caution."
386 NEW LIES FOR OLD
3. Rush's analysis of the succession problems after Lenin's and Stalin's deaths,
given in Political Succession in the USSR, is in general accurate. See pp. 39-43:
"Lenin's effort to influence the succession with respect to personalities, policy, and
organization met complete defeat. His advice, offered after serious deliberation and
with due gravity, was disregarded even while he lived by men who professed to serve
him. They not only failed to act on Lenin's recommendations; they also failed to learn
from the arguments by which he justified them. Stalin, however, may be an exception
to this; Lenin's testament may have taught him caution and dissimulation even beyond
what was natural to him. Lenin's last writings had not exhausted their historical
significance in 1930. A third of a century later, they were finally handed over to the
Party's Congress by a new pretender to Lenin's mantle, who had learned that his
ambitions could be advanced by attacking Stalin. Khrushchev's use of Lenin's
testament in 1956 serves as a reminder that it remained an important part of the Soviet
political scene even after the XIII Congress decided to suppress it. . . . [Stalin's] chief
preoccupation was assuredly the continued exercise of his own authority rather than
arranging its transfer to his heirs, so that the need to preserve his own vast power
intact narrowly limited his succession arrangements."
4. See his concluding remarks to the Twenty-second CPSU Congress (CSP, vol.
4, p. 200): "It is wrong, comrades, it is simply impossible to permit the inception and
development of instances when the merited prestige of an individual may assume
forms in which he fancies that everything is permissible to him and that he no longer
has need of the collective. In such a case this individual may stop listening to the
voices of other comrades who have been advanced to leadership, just as he was, and
may begin suppressing them. Our great teacher V. I. Lenin resolutely fought against
this, and the Party paid too dear a price for not heeding his wise counsel in good time.
So let us be worthy disciples of Lenin in this important matter."
5. Ibid.: "But each leader must also understand the other side of the matter —
never to plume himself on his position, to remember that in holding this or that post
he is merely fulfilling the will of the Party and the will of the people, who may have
invested the greatest power in him but never lose control over him. The leader who
forgets this pays heavily for his mistake. I would add that he will pay while he is
alive, or even after his death the people will not forgive him, as has happened with the
condemnation of the cult of Stalin. A person who forgets that he is obliged to fulfill
the will of the Party and of the people cannot, properly speaking, be called a true
leader; there must be no such 'leaders' either in the Party or in the state apparatus."
6. Ibid., p. 198: "In the conditions of the cult of the individual, the Party was
deprived of normal life. People who usurp power cease being accountable to the
Party, they escape from under its control. Herein is the greatest danger of the cult of
the individual. The situation in the Party must always be such that every leader is
accountable to the Party and its agencies, and the Party can replace any leader when it
considers this necessary."
7. Ibid., p. 200: "I would like to say a few words about the following question. In
many speeches at the Congress, and not infrequently in our press as well.
NOTES 387
when mention is made of the activity of our party's Central Committee, a certain
special emphasis is placed on me personally and my role in carrying out major Party
and Government measures is underlined. I understand the kind feelings guiding these
comrades. Allow me however to emphasise emphatically that everything that is said
about me should be said about the Central Committee of our Leninist Party, and about
the Presidium of the Central Committee. Not one major measure, not one responsible
pronouncement has been carried out upon anyone's personal directive; they have all
been the result of collective deliberation and collective decision. And this concluding
speech, too, has been considered and approved by the executive collective. Our great
strength. Comrades, lies in collective leadership, in collegial decisions on all
questions of principle."
8. Ibid., pp. 199-200: "The 22nd Congress is confirming this beneficial course.
The Party Programme and Statutes and the resolutions of the congress set forth new
guarantees against relapses into the cult of the individual. The role of the Party as the
great inspiring and organising force in the building of communism is rising higher
still."
9. Stenographic records of the Twenty-second Congress (Moscow, 1962), vol. 3,
pp. 356-60.
10. The information about the relationship of these leaders to Khrushchev
was obtained from KGB officials in the Ukraine and Moscow (Kolesnikov and
Kochurov) and was partially confirmed in Zhukov's attack on Khrushchev at the
meeting of the Politburo in the fall of 1957.
Chapter 19: The Seventh Disinformation Operation: "Democratization" in
Czechoslovakia in 1968
1. The Soviet leaders contributed to the promotion of this analogy. For instance,
while visiting Sweden in the summer of 1968, Kosygin three times made a slip of the
tongue confusing Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
2. CSE(1962), p. 458.
3. CSE(1962), p. 16.
4. GSE(I963), p. 18.
5. See Prague Notebook: The Strangled Revolution (Boston. Little, Brown & Co.,
1971), p. 30. M. Salomon, however, misinterpreted this evidence attributing
Khrushchev's proposal not to long-range bloc policy, but to the example of President
Kennedy's "brain trust."
6. Ibid., p. 30, note I. Salomon overlooked the significance of the close relations
between Barak and Sik.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., pp. 101-10.
9. Ibid., p. 69.
10. Ibid., p. 229.
11. See the following extract from the Czechoslovak communist party letter to the
five Warsaw Pact powers, dated July 20, 1968, quoted in [Salomon], Prague
Notebook, p. 121. "The manoeuvres of the armed forces of the Warsaw Treaty on
Czechoslovakian territory constitute a concrete proof of our faithful
388 NEW LIES FOR OLD
fulfilment of commitments of alliance. In order to assure the success of these
manoeuvres, we have, on our side, taken all necessary steps. Our people as well as the
members of our army have welcomed the Soviet army and the allied armies to our
territory in a friendly way. The supreme leaders of the party and the government, by
their presence, have testified to the importance we attach to these manoeuvres and the
interest we take in them. The confusion and certain doubts expressed in our public
opinion appeared only after the reiterated changes in the date of departure of the
allied armies from Czechoslovakia at the end of the manoeuvres."
12. See the Czechoslovak party's letter of July 20, 1968, quoted [Salomon], in
Prague Notebook, pp. 120-21: "We will never accept that the historic achievements of
socialism and the security of the nations of our country should be threatened or that
imperialism, in a peaceful manner or by violence, should shatter the socialist system
and modify the balance of power in Europe in its favour. The principal content of our
evolution after January is just this tendency to increase the internal strength and the
stability of the socialist regime and thus that of our relationships of alliance."
13. Prague Notebook, Michel Salomon, p. 243.
14. See the Czechoslovak party letter dated July 20, 1968, quoted in Prague
Notebook, pp. 1 18-19: "Our alliance and our friendship with the USSR and the other
socialist countries are deeply rooted in the social regime, in the traditions and the
historical experiences of our nations, in their interests, their sentiments and their
thoughts. . . . We behave in such a way that friendly relationships with our allies, the
countries of the world's socialist community, will deepen on a basis of mutual respect,
sovereignty and equality of rights, and international solidarity. In this sense, we
contribute more actively to the common activity of [Comecon] and the Warsaw
treaty."
15. Here, while maintaining that "democratization" was on the whole controlled,
one can allow for the existence of genuine antiregime individuals either inside or
outside the country, who, without realizing what was really going on, acted
completely independently during the last months of the crisis, thereby revealing
themselves to the regime as counterrevolutionary elements. No doubt they were
registered as such.
Chapter 20: The Second Disinformation Operation: The "Evolution" of the Soviet
Regime (Part Two: The "Dissident")
1. Andrey D. Sakharov, Sakharov Speaks, ed. Harrison E. Salisbury (London:
Collins & Harvill Press, 1974).
2. Leon Goure, Foy D. Kohler, Richard Soil, and Annette Stiefbold, Convergence
of Communism and Capitalism — The Soviet View (Miami, Florida Centre for
Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1973), pp. 44-46; Sakharov
Speaks, pp. 107 et seq.
3. Sakharov Speaks, p. 108, gives these dates as 1968-80.
4. Sakharov Speaks, pp. 107 et seq.
5. See note 3. Ibid.
NOTES 389
6. It is not clear why Sakharov and Kapitsa, who are both so outspoken, have not
been expelled from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, although Sakharov, at least, was
allegedly stripped of his state honors and awards. For some unexplained reason, this
did not occur until January 1980.
Chapter 21 : The Eighth Disinformation Operation: Eurocommunism
1. Leonard Schapiro, The Soviet Union and "Eurocommunism, " Conflict Study
no. 99 (London: The Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1978). Some Spanish
socialists also seem to regard Eurocommunism as a deceptive device.
2. See, for examples. World Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism,
no. 6 (1974); Pravda, August 6, 1975; and Novoye Vremya, no. 9 (1976).
3. Schapiro, Soviet Union and "Eurocommunism," p. 2.
4. Ibid., p. 5.
5. B. N. Ponomarev, "The World Situation and the Revolutionary Process," World
Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, no. 6, (1974): "Detente
strengthens the realistically minded elements within the bourgeois camp and helps to
isolate the more reactionary, imperialist forces, the 'war parties' and the military-
industrial complexes."
6. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism: International Dimensions, Conflict Study no. I 13
(London: The Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1979).
7. See Kevin Devlin, "The Challenge of 'Eurocommunism,' " Problems of Com-
munism (Washington, D. C), January-February 1977.
8. GSE(I968), pp. 480-481.
9. Devlin, "The Challenge of 'Eurocommunism,' " p. 3.
10. Schapiro, Soviet Union and "Eurocommunism," p. 8
11. World Marxist Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, no. 7 (1964), pp. I-
2.
12. Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir, 1976, no. 4, as quoted in Schapiro, Soviet
Union and "Eurocommunism. "
Chapter 22: The Role of Disinformation and Intelligence Potential in the Realization
of the Communist Strategies
L GSE(I969), p. 52.
2 GSE(I972), p. 269.
3. GSE(I974), p. 278.
4. See, for example, the Chinese People's Daily, September 6, 1963: "The
leadership of the CPSU has become increasingly anxious to strike political bargains
with U.S. imperialism and has been bent on forming a reactionary alliance with
Kennedy even at the expense of the interests of the socialist camp and the interna-
tional communist movement."
5. GSE(1977), p. 294.
6. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 77.
7. Boris Ponomarev, "Topical Problems in the Theory of the World Revolutionary
Process," Kommunist, no. 15 (October 1971).
390 NEW LIES FOR OLD
8. The award of an Order of Lenin to Timo followed the award earlier of an Order
of Friendship.
9. GSE(1965), p. 374.
10. GSE(1969), pp. 388-S9.
11. Aliyev became the Soviet Premier under Andropov.
12. Information from Kirilin, deputy head of the KGB religious department, and
Lapshin, officer of the religious section of the KGB emigre department. See Izvestiya,
November 26, 1960.
13. Izvestiya, December 16, 1960.
14. CSE(1970), p. 318.
15. GSE(1971), p. 323.
16. See "Political Shifts in the Middle East: Roots, Facts, Trends," World Marxist
Review — Problems of Peace and Socialism, no. 2 (1980). The article is a summary of
a discussion on events in Iran and Afghanistan; participants included a Soviet Afghan
scholar. It notes: "Albeit difficult, it is fully realistic (and the experience of Soviet
Central Asia is highly instructive in this sense) in some way to enlist Islam into
serving the revolution and the building of a new life."
17. Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, no. 9 (1976).
18. Yu venal iy was replaced, allegedly for reasons of health, in April 1981.
Chapter 23: The Evidence of Overall Coordination Between the Communist
Governments and Parties
1. See CSP vol. 4, p. 44.
2. GSE(1962), p. 460.
3. GSE(1963), p. 451.
4. GSE(1966), p. 52.
5. GSE(1967), pp. 447, 472-73.
6. For Prague, GSE ( 1 973), p. 49 1 , for Warsaw, GSE ( 1 975), pp. 502-503.
7. GSE(1971), p. 55.
8. GSE(1976), p. 487.
9. GSE(1974), p. 6.
10. GSE(1975), p. 502.
11. GSE(1976), p. 42.
12. GSE (1977), pp. 18,44.
13. GSE(1977), p. 454.
14. See, for example, GSE (1967), p. 35.
15. GSE(1966), p. 598.
16. See the section on the development of communist contacts in GSE each year
from 1958 onward.
17. GSE(1969), p. 468.
18. GSE(1962), p. 283.
19. GSE (1964), p. 15.
20. GSE(1965), p. 285.
21. GSE (1965), pp. 47, 69, 75, 459; also GSE (1970), p. 63.
22. GSE (1966), pp. 26, 51.
23. GSE (1967), pp. 473, 475.
NOTES 391
24. GSE(1970), pp. 53,62.
25. GSE(1970), p. 53.
26. GSE(1971), p. 80.
27. Ibid.
28. GSE(1971), p. 66.
29. GSE(1974), p. 310.
30. GSE(1975), p. 64.
31. GSE(1976), p. 59.
32. GSE(1977), pp. 65, 295.
33. GSE(1978), p. 56.
34. GSE(1980), p. 64.
35. New York Times, March 25, 1982.
36. In 1980-8 1 he led the Soviet delegation to the CSCE conference in Madrid.
37. GSE(1970), pp. 9-22.
38. GSE(1966), pp. 466-67.
39. GSE(I971), p. 34.
Chapter 24: The Impact of the Disinformation Program
1. Quoted in Alvin Z. Rubinstein The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union (New
York: Random House, 1960), p. 405.
2. New York Times, August 10, 1962.
3. David M. Abshire, 'Grand Strategy Reconstructed: an American View,' in
Detente: Cold War Strategies in Transition, ed. Eleanor Lansing Dulles and Robert
Dickson Crane (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 269.
4. "The New Drive Against the Anti-Communist Program," hearing before the
Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the internal Security Act and
Other Internal Security Laws of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Washington,
D.C, July 11, 1961, p. 10.
5. R. Strausz-Hupe, W. R. Kintner, J. E. Dougherty, and A. J. Cotrell, Protracted
Conflict, (New York: Harper Brothers, 1959) pp. 1 15-16: "It is no exaggeration to say
that in recent years the Western governments have shown neither enthusiasm for, nor
skill in, the conduct of their official "information programs" which are a poor
substitute for ideological-political warfare. Western peoples, in general, are hardly
exercised about the future of the free way of life. So defensive has the Western
mentality become that many intellectuals devote most of their time to apologizing for
the institutions and the processes of liberal society. Paradoxically, even those
intellectuals who are most dedicated to the cause of individual freedom within their
own nations do not manifest as profound a concern over the threat which communist
expansion poses to human freedom."
Chapter 25: The Final Phase
1. New York Times, December 1, 1981.
2. Questions of History, no. 2 (1980).
3. The involvement of socialists with "national liberation" movements can already
be seen, for example, in relation to El Salvador and the meeting in 1979 between the
Austrian socialist leader Kreisky and Arafat of the PLO.