The KGB Model of State Subversion

Someone tweeted this part of an interview with an ex-KGB agent, Yuri Bezmenov, from 1984. Bezmenov defected to Canada in 1970.

Back then the Soviet Union was committed to spreading the ideology of Marxism-Leninism throughout the world using these techniques called Ideological Subversion or Active Measures, Psychological Warfare has four stages. Espionage forms only a minor part of this process.
The goal is to "change the perception of reality to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions [in their own interests]".

This occurs in four stages.

1. Demoralization. 15-20 years. A propaganda and disinformation campaign aimed at students that contravenes the values of the country. The result is that "exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralised is unable to assess true information." Even if the demoralised person is presented with clear documentary evidence that their view is wrong, they will not refuse to believe. 
2. Destabilization. 2-5 years. The focus shifts from individuals to subverting state essentials: economy, foreign relations, defence. Politicians make extravagant promises.  
3. Crisis. 6 weeks. A violent change of structure. 
4. Normalization. Indefinite. The new "Big Brother" regime exerts itself, crushing the demoralised citizens. 

Note that Bezmenov says that the demoralisation phase of the KGB program in the USA is already complete. "Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to lack of moral standards."

Bezmenov suggests that aim of Soviet operations was to destabilise the free enterprise system. But we need to look at the history of the collapse of economic liberalism the first time around. Economic liberalism is inherently unstable because it creates a super-rich class who misuse the excessive wealth and power they have to subvert democracy. The Soviets cannot take responsibility for the 1929 stock market crash or the Great Depression.

Bezmenov implicates socially liberal educators. Educated people score higher on the openness trait of the Big Five psychometric test and all people who have high scores on this trait tend to be more socially liberal. Bezmenov also implicates civil rights defenders in destabilisation.

One needs to emphasise in response to Bezmenov that the Marxism-Leninism take over of the USA never happened. Indeed, by the time he was giving this interview, in 1984, the USA was moving decisively to the right economically and it continued to do so until Trump. Bezmenov is in fact quite off-beam in his assessment of US politics and social attitudes.

The methodology he describes however is interesting because what we see in 2019 is Americans refusing to believe authentic, documentary evidence of Trump's misuse of power and his subversion of the economy, foreign relations, and defence for his own ends - sometimes in ways that seem consistent with him furthering his own interests and sometimes seemingly at random (though in ways that play to his base).

Last week it emerged that the combined intelligence community is unanimous about the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. And that they have presented a classified briefing to the Senate, including authentic documentary evidence, that this was so and that the Ukraine meddling story was a Russian disinformation campaign being promoted by the Russia intelligence community.

Despite the unanimous voice of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence agencies, Republican senators, at the urging of Trump, launched an investigation into the subject of the Russian disinformation campaign. The President and key members of the Republican Party are dismissing the unified voice of the US intelligence community despite the evidence. They seem "unable to assess true information."

At the same time, despite clear and overwhelming evidence of Trump's repeated and ongoing misuse of power for personal gain, half of America and all of the Republican Party are denying that anything untoward happened. The testimony of career foreign service officials made no difference at all.

Although Bezmenov was clearly over-estimating the impact of Soviet Marxist-Leninist propaganda, we are in fact in just the same state of demoralisation as he describes, but with respect to President Trump's agenda and his support amongst the alt-right.

What happened in the USA was not what Bezmenov predicted. Rather it was a replay of the collapse of classical liberalism because of the chaos caused by the super-rich and their irresistible desire to manipulate things for their own ends. The 2019 version of economic liberalism sees billionaires battling it out for control of the government in the open, with the ability to outspend all their rivals combined. Bloomberg, a former Republican, entered the democratic primary by spending $30 million on advertising. The other candidates have raised considerably less than this in total, let alone for advertising.

It's also clear that Russia has also been at work in the UK, especially in the process of the UK leaving the EU (aka Brexit). They seem to have part funded the Leave campaign and to have facilitated a process of demoralisation including 20 years of fake news about the EU.

The Institute for Global Affairs, London School of Economics, released a report in 2017: Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It. An Analytic History, with Lessons for the Present. This provides more details as well as counter-measures that the US Govt developed to combat active measures. They point out that modern Russian propaganda is no longer ideological; it is distributed between state actors and various other interests and it is opportunistic. And there is no concerted effort to combat it.



The full, hour long interview is here.