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The Soviet Union and somecommunist states have sponsored internationalterrorism on numerous occasions, especially during theCold War.[1]NATO and the Italian, German and British governments saw violence in the form of "communist fighting organizations" as a serious threat.[2]
While he denounced the terrorism which was employed by theSocialist Revolutionaries,Vladimir Lenin advocated the use of state terrorism since the earliest days of his political activities. At the third congress of theRSDLP in 1905, while he was discussing therevolution in Russia, he argued that mass terror needed to be used in order to prevent anti-revolutionary mutinies.[3] Lenin had been influenced by the writings of radical revolutionarySergey Nechayev and hismanifesto which called for Jacobin style terror, saying that every communist revolutionary should read him.[4]Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder and first director of theCheka secret police is quoted as saying"We stand for organized terror – this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession?"[5]
According to Soviet defectorGrigori Besedovsky, theNKVD was directly coordinating a number of bombings inPoland as early as in the 1920s. The largest bombing, againstWarsaw Citadel on 13 October 1923, destroyed a large military ammunition storage facility, killing 28 and wounding 89 Polish soldiers. Another bombing on 23 May 1923 atWarsaw University killed a number of people, including professor Roman Orzęcki. Further bombings happened inCzęstochowa,Kraków andBiałystok.[6]
Soviet secret services have been described byGRUdefectorsViktor Suvorov andStanislav Lunev as "the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide."[7][8][9] The terrorism was seen by Soviet leadership as the only way to reduce the imbalance between USSR military and economical power against the Western world. According toIon Mihai Pacepa, KGB GeneralAleksandr Sakharovsky once said: "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."[10] He also claimed that "airplane hijacking is my own invention" and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financedPLO.[10]
After defeat of Soviet-supported Arab states in the1967 Six-Day war, Soviet Union started a widespread undercover campaign against Israel, involving propaganda as well as direct military support (funding, arms, training) to terrorist groups declaring Israel as their enemy. Additionally, the USSR took the decision to increase anti-Israeli sentiment by disseminatinganti-Zionist propaganda and even referencing previous anti-Semitic tropes from Western culture, such as the Jewish-Freemason conspiracy theories.[11] The overall goal of the campaign was to spread the idea that the state of Israel was an oppressive, imperialist state which was built on unjust terms, a feeling expressed in the Soviet-craftedUN General Assembly Resolution 3379. Meanwhile, the cause of the Palestinian people who had suffered mass displacement and deportation with the establishment of the state of Israel and the subsequent wars in the region was promoted and the USSR gave active support to certain Palestinian rebel groups whose primary method of struggle is characterised as terrorism, such as thePalestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The leader of the PLO,Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the RomanianSecuritate service and the SovietKGB in the beginning of the 1970s.[12] The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB.[13] However, the main KGB activities and arms shipments were channeled throughWadie Haddad of the DFLP organization, who usually stayed in a KGBdacha (BARVIKHA-1) during his visits to the Soviet Union. Led byCarlos the Jackal, a group of PFLP fighters accomplished a spectacular raid on theOrganization of Petroleum Exporting Countries office inVienna in 1975. Advance notice of this operation "was almost certainly" given to the KGB.[12] Faisal al-Shammeri credits Soviet special services with sponsoring international terrorist organizations that emerged in Libya in th 1970-'80s,Palestine Liberation Organization,Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as continuation of these policies after the fall of the USSR.[14]
TheRed Army Faction in Germany was supported by theStasi, East Germany's security service.[15][16] In 1978 part of the RAF group (Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Peter Boock, Rolf Wagner, Sieglinde Hoffmann) was hiding in aSłużba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) safe house in theMazury district in Poland, where they escaped through Yugoslavia. During the stay, they were training together with Arab operatives and also hiding from German police during an intensive search for the group's members in West Germany.[17]Carlos the Jackal and other prominent terrorists, such asAbu Nidal,Abu Daoud andAbu Abbas, enjoyed protection at SB safe houses in Poland, especially in the 1980s. Communist Poland was also used as a transit country for money and weapon transfers for these organisations.[18][19][20][21]
A number of notable operations have been conducted by the KGB to support international terrorists with weapons on the orders from theSoviet Communist Party, including:
Large-scale sabotage operations may have been prepared by theKGB andGRU in case of war against the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, as alleged by intelligence historianChristopher Andrew inMitrokhin Archive[24] and in books by formerGRU andSVR officersVictor Suvorov[9][25] andStanislav Lunev, and Kouzminov.[26] Among the planned operations were the following:
According to Lunev, a probable scenario in the event of war would be poisoning of thePotomac River withchemical orbiological weapons, "targeting the residents of Washington, D.C."[7] He also noted that it is "likely" thatGRU operatives have placed already "poison supplies near the tributaries to major US reservoirs."[33] This information was confirmed by Alexander Kouzminov, who was responsible for transporting dangerous pathogens from around the world for theSoviet program of biological weapons in the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. He described a variety ofbiological terrorist acts that would be carried out on the order of theRussian President in the event of hostilities, including poisoning public drinking-water supplies and food processing plants.[34] At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union "was the only country in the world that could start and win a globalbiological war, something we had already established that the West was not ready for", according to Kouzminov.
At its height, communism was the major threat to world peace, and by far the major source of international terrorism: that is, communist-inspired and/or communist-supported terrorism. Its hold on terrorist movements was not universal, however ...
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