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Soviet influence on the peace movement

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anarchangel (talk | contribs) at 13:15, 14 July 2009 (When all the uncited, PoV, but mostly just irrelevant details are stripped away...Obviously, a little background would be helpful to 1920, but is it worth it?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Allegations of funding for social activist groups by the former Soviet Union, and the steering of those groups' policy, are common, but evidence for this relies exclusively on individual testimony, and no solid proof of it exists.

Russian Revolution and the Polish-Soviet War

July 1920: "In Czechoslovakia, railway workers refused to let trains with military supplies go through to Poland. British dock workers sympathized with the Bolsheviks, so they threatened to strike if ordered to load ships for the Poles."[1]

Cold War

According to Russian GRU defector Stanislav Lunev, the Soviet Union spent more money on funding of U.S. anti-war movements during the Vietnam War than on funding and arming the VietCong forces.[2] Lunev said that GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements during the Vietnam War, which was a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".[2]

Oleg Kalugin is a former KGB general, convicted in absentia of spying for the West in Moscow in 2002. According to 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."[3]

Russian former intelligence officer and SVR defector Sergei Tretyakov claimed that the KGB "created the myth of nuclear winter"[4] Sergei, a former Colonel in the Russian KGB/SVR that defected to the United States in 2000, says during the 1970s the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying Pershing II cruise missiles in Western Europe. The plan, under KGB Director Yuri Andropov, aimed at fostering popular opposition to the deployment included a massive disinformation campaign requiring false scientific reports from the Soviet Academy of Sciences[4] The Soviet Peace Committee, a government organization, spearheaded the effort by funding and organizing demonstrations in Europe against the US bases.[4] The KGB propagandists then created two different scientific studies to be released from the Main Geophysical Observatory and the Institute of Terrestrial Physics but never submitted for peer review.[citation needed] The second study, using the findings from the first, concluded that temperatures across Europe would plunge after the use of nuclear weapons in Germany from dirt launched into the atmosphere blocking the sun's rays.[citation needed] The Soviet propaganda was then distributed to sources within environmental, peace, anti-nuclear, and disarmament groups including the publication Ambio.[4]

References

  1. ^ THE REBIRTH OF POLAND. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Retrieved 2 June 2006.
  2. ^ a b Stanislav Lunev. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-89526-390-4
  3. ^ An interview with retired KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, CNN
  4. ^ a b c d Pete Earley, "Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War", Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-399-15439-3, pages 169-177
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