| Active measures | |
 | |
| Russian | активные мероприятия |
|---|---|
| Romanization | aktivnye meropriyatiya |
| IPA | [ɐkˈtʲivnɨjemʲɪrəprʲɪˈjætʲɪjə] |
Active measures (Russian:активные мероприятия,romanized: aktivnye meropriyatiya, designated "executive action" by the U.S. Government[1]) is a term used to describepolitical warfare conducted by theSoviet Union and theRussian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such asespionage,propaganda,sabotage andassassination, based on foreign policy objectives of the Soviet and Russian governments.[2][3][4] Active measures have continued to be used by the administration ofVladimir Putin.[5][6]
Active measures were conducted by theSoviet andRussian security services andsecret police organizations (Cheka,OGPU,NKVD,KGB, andFSB) to influence the course of world events, in addition tocollecting intelligence and producing revised assessments of it. Active measures range "frommedia manipulations tospecial actions involving various degrees of violence". Beginning in the 1920s, they were used both abroad and domestically.[4]
Active measures includes the establishment and support of internationalfront organizations (e.g., theWorld Peace Council); foreigncommunist,socialist andopposition parties;wars of national liberation in theThird World. It also included supporting underground, revolutionary,insurgency,criminal, andterrorist groups. The programs also focused oncounterfeiting official documents,assassinations, andpolitical repression, such as penetration into churches, and persecution of politicaldissidents. The intelligence agencies ofEastern Bloc states also contributed to the program, providing operatives and intelligence for assassinations and other types ofcovert operations.[4]
Retired KGB Major GeneralOleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of theSoviet intelligence":[7]
Not intelligence collection, butsubversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularlyNATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken theUnited States in the eyes of the people ofEurope,Asia,Africa,Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.[7]
According to theMitrokhin Archives, active measures was taught in theAndropov Institute of the KGB situated atForeign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters inYasenevo District of Moscow. The head of the "active measures department" wasYuri Modin, former controller of theCambridge Five spy ring.[4]
DefectorIon Mihai Pacepa claimed thatJoseph Stalin coined the termdisinformation in 1923 by giving it aFrench sounding name in order to deceive other nations into believing it was a practice invented inFrance. The noundisinformation does not originate from Russia, it is a translation of the French worddésinformation.[8][9]
Soviet secret services have been described as "the primary instructors of guerrillas worldwide".[10][11][12] 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."[13] He also claimed that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention". In 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financedPLO.[13]
Lt. GeneralIon Mihai Pacepa stated that operation "SIG" ("Zionist Governments"), devised in 1972, intended to turn the whole Islamic world againstIsrael and theUnited States. KGB ChairmanYuri Andropov allegedly explained to Pacepa that
a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill aNazi-style hatred for theJews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath againstIsrael and its main supporter, the United States[13]
After World War II, Soviet security organizations played a key role in installingpuppet communist governments inEastern Europe, thePeople's Republic of China,North Korea, and laterAfghanistan. Their strategy included masspolitical repressions and establishment of subordinate secret services in all occupied countries.[14][15]
Some of the active measures were undertaken by the Soviet secret services against their own governments or communist rulers. Russian historiansAnton Antonov-Ovseenko andEdvard Radzinsky suggested thatJoseph Stalin was killed by associates ofNKVD chiefLavrentiy Beria, based on the interviews of a former Stalin bodyguard and circumstantial evidence.[16] According toYevgenia Albats' allegations,Chief of the KGBVladimir Semichastny was among the plotters againstNikita Khrushchev in 1964, which led to the latter's downfall.[17]
KGB ChairmanYuri Andropov reportedly struggled for power withLeonid Brezhnev.[18] TheSoviet coup attempt of 1991 againstMikhail Gorbachev was organized by KGB ChairmanVladimir Kryuchkov and other hardliners.[17]Gen. Viktor Barannikov, then the former State Security head, became one of the leaders of the uprising againstBoris Yeltsin during theRussian constitutional crisis of 1993.[17]
The current Russianintelligence service, theSVR, allegedly works to undermine governments of former Sovietsatellite states likePoland, theBaltic states,[19] andGeorgia.[20] During the2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy, several Russian GRU case officers were accused by Georgian authorities of preparations to commit sabotage and terrorist acts.[citation needed]
The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen.Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed to have had a conversation withNicolae Ceaușescu, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill":László Rajk andImre Nagy from Hungary;Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu andGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej from Romania;Rudolf Slánský andJan Masaryk fromCzechoslovakia; theShah of Iran;Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, President ofPakistan;Palmiro Togliatti from Italy;John F. Kennedy; andMao Zedong. Pacepa also discussed a KGB plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help ofLin Biao organized by the Soviet intelligence agencies and alleged that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."[21]
The second President ofAfghanistan,Hafizullah Amin, was killed by the KGB'sAlpha Group inOperation Storm-333 before the full-scaleSoviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Presidents of the unrecognizedChechen Republic of Ichkeria organized by Chechen separatists, includingDzhokhar Dudaev,Zelimkhan Yandarbiev,Aslan Maskhadov, andAbdul-Khalim Saidullaev, were killed by theFSB and affiliated forces.
Other widely publicized cases are murders of Russian communistLeon Trotsky and Bulgarian writerGeorgi Markov byNKVD.
There were also allegations that the KGB was behind theassassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981. The ItalianMitrokhin Commission, headed by senatorPaolo Guzzanti (Forza Italia), worked on the Mitrokhin Archives from 2003 to March 2006. The Mitrokhin Commission received criticism during and after its existence.[22] It was closed in March 2006 without any proof brought to its various controversial allegations, including the claim thatRomano Prodi, former Prime Minister of Italy and formerPresident of the European Commission, was the "KGB's man in Europe." One of Guzzanti's informers,Mario Scaramella, was arrested for defamation and arms trading at the end of 2006.[23]
In "Operation Trust" (1921–1926), theState Political Directorate (OGPU) set up a fake anti-Bolshevik underground organization, "Monarchist Union of Central Russia".[24] The main success of this operation was luringBoris Savinkov andSidney Reilly into the Soviet Union, where they were arrested and executed.
TheIslamic anti-SovietBasmachi movement inCentral Asia posed an early threat to the Bolshevik movement. The movement's roots lay in theanti-conscription violence of 1916 that erupted when the Russian Empire began to draft Muslims for army service inWorld War I.[25] In the months following theOctober Revolution of 1917, theBolsheviks seized power in many parts of the Russian Empire and theRussian Civil War began.Turkestani Muslim political movements attempted to form an autonomous government in the city ofKokand, in theFergana Valley. The Bolsheviks launched an assault on Kokand in February 1918 and carried out a general massacre of up to 25,000 people.[citation needed] The massacre rallied support to the Basmachi who waged aguerrilla and conventional war that seized control of large parts of the Fergana Valley and much ofTurkestan.[26][27] The group's notable leaders wereEnver Pasha and, later,Ibrahim Bek. Soviet Russia responded by deploying special Soviet military detachments masqueraded asBasmachi forces and received support from British and Turkish intelligence services. The operations of these detachments facilitated the collapse of the Basmachi movement and the assassination of Pasha.[28][29]
Following World War II, various partisan organizations in the Baltic states, Poland and Western Ukraine fought for independence of their countries, which were underSoviet occupation, against Soviet forces. ManyNKVD agents were sent to join and penetrate the independence movements. Puppet rebel forces were also created by the NKVD and permitted to attack local Soviet authorities to gain credibility and exfiltrate senior NKVD agents to the West.[30]
According toStanislav Lunev,GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for thepeace movements against theVietnam War, which was a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".[10] Lunev claimed that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about everyantiwar movement and organization in America and abroad".[10]
By the 1980s, the US intelligence community was skeptical of claims that attemptedSoviet influence on the peace movement had a direct influence on the non-aligned part of the movement.[31] However, the KGB's widespread attempts at influence in the United States,Switzerland, andDenmark targeting the peace movement were known, and the World Peace Council was categorized as acommunist front organization by the CIA.[31]
TheWorld Peace Council was established on the orders of the Communist Party of the USSR in the late 1940s, and for over forty years carried out campaigns against western, mainly American, military action. Many organisations controlled or influenced by Communists affiliated themselves with it. According toOleg Kalugin,
... the Soviet intelligence [was] really unparalleled. ... The [KGB] programs—which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS ... was invented by the CIA ... all sorts of forgeries and faked material—[were] targeted at politicians, the academic community, at [the] public at large. ...[7]
It has been widely claimed that the Soviet Union organised and financed western peace movements; for example, ex-KGB agentSergei Tretyakov claimed that in the early 1980s the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying nuclear missiles inWestern Europe as a counterweight to Soviet missiles inEastern Europe,[32] and that they used theSoviet Peace Committee to organize and finance anti-American demonstrations in western Europe.[33][34][35] The Soviet Union first deployed theRSD-10 Pioneer (calledSS-20 Saber in the West) in its European territories in March 1976, a mobile, concealableintermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with amultiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) containing three nuclear 150-kilotonwarheads.[36] The SS-20's range of 4,700–5,000 kilometers (2,900–3,100 mi) was great enough to reach Western Europe from well within Soviet territory; the range was just below theStrategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II) Treaty minimum range for anintercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM):5,500 km (3,400 mi).[37][38][39] Tretyakov further stated that "[t]he KGB was responsible for creating the entirenuclear winter story to stop thePershing II missiles,"[33] and that they fed misinformation to western peace groups and thereby influenced a key scientific paper on the topic by western scientists.[40]
According to intelligence historianChristopher Andrew, the KGB in Britain was unable to infiltrate major figures in theCND, and the Soviets relied on influencing "less influential contacts" which were more receptive to the Moscow line. Andrew wrote thatMI5 "found no evidence that KGB funding to the British peace movement went beyond occasional payment of fares and expenses to individuals."[41]
Some of the active measures by the USSR against theUnited States were exposed in theMitrokhin Archive:[4]
In 1974, according to KGB statistics, over 250 active measures were targeted against the CIA alone, leading to denunciations of Agency abuses, both real and (more frequently) imaginary,[50] in media, parliamentary debates, demonstrations and speeches by leading politicians around the world.[46]
Soviet intelligence, as part of active measures, frequently spreaddisinformation to distort their adversaries' decision-making. However, sometimes this information filtered back through the KGB's own contacts, leading to distorted reports.[51]Lawrence Bittman also addressed Soviet intelligence blowback inThe KGB and Soviet Disinformation, stating that "There are, of course, instances in which the operator is partially or completely exposed and subjected to countermeasures taken by the government of the target country."[52]
Active measures have continued in the post-SovietRussian Federation and are in many ways based on Cold War schematics.[2] After theannexation of Crimea, Kremlin-controlled media spread disinformation about Ukraine's government. In July 2014,Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers. Kremlin-controlled media and online agents spread disinformation, claiming Ukraine had shot down the airplane.[53]
Russia's alleged disinformation campaign, its involvement inthe UK's withdrawal from the EU,interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, and its alleged support of far-left and documented support of far-right movements in the West, has been compared to the Soviet Union's active measures in that it aims to "disrupt and discredit Western democracies".[54][55]
In testimony before theUnited States Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the US policy response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections,Victoria Nuland, former US Ambassador toNATO, referred to herself as "a regular target of Russian active measures."[56][57]
The introduction of the Internet, specifically social media offered new opportunities for active measures. The Kremlin-affiliatedInternet Research Agency, also referred to as the Information Warfare Branch, was established in 2013.[58] This agency is devoted to spreading disinformation through the Internet, the most well-known and prominent operation being its part in the interference in the 2016 US presidential election.[59] According to theHouse Intelligence Committee, by 2018, organic content created by the Russian IRA reached at least 126 million US Facebook users, while its politically divisive ads reached 11.4 million US Facebook users. Tweets by the IRA reached approximately 288 million American users. According to committee chairAdam Schiff, "[The Russian] social media campaign was designed to further a broader Kremlin objective: sowing discord in the U.S. by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues. The Russians did so by weaving together fake accounts, pages, and communities to push politicized content and videos, and to mobilize real Americans to signonline petitions and join rallies and protests."[60]
