KGB Material Released By Cold War Project, Available Online 94
pha7boy writes "The Cold War International History Project just released the 'Vassiliev Notebooks.' The notebooks are an important new source of information on Soviet intelligence operations in the United States from 1930 to 1950. Though the KGB's archive remains closed, former KGB officer turned journalist Alexander Vassiliev was given the unique opportunity to spend two years poring over materials from the KGB archive taking detailed notes — including extended verbatim quotes — on some of the KGB's most sensitive files. Though Vassiliev's access was not unfettered, the 1,115 pages of densely handwritten notes that he was able to take shed new and important light on such critical individuals and topics as Alger Hiss, the Rosenberg case, and 'Enormous,' the massive Soviet effort to gather intelligence on the Anglo-American atomic bomb project. Alexander Vassiliev has donated his original copies of the handwritten notebooks to the Library of Congress with no restriction on access. They are available to researchers in the Manuscript Division."
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You don't honestly think that is a republican posting, do you?
Those kind of post are people just trying to make all conservatives look ignorant (yet not ignorant enough to post on slashdot anonymously.)
Do you think someone who is that stupid could even work a computer?
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Yes, [freerepublic.com]I [raptureready.com] do [conservapedia.com].
Freaking hilarious. While it's possible that original troll is just an imitation of stupidity as opposed to the real thing, your reasoning is tortured.
— not GP AC
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Well, I honestly think it's a Republican posting. Given the stupidity of the rhetoric we hear from Republican politicians and pundits, the Republicans don't need any help making themselves look bad. Hell, that AC post is downright sophisticated compared to some of what you hear from the likes of DeMint and Limbaugh.
Re:#2 - Poor KGB! (Score:4, Funny)
The world might be quite different if the KGB had realized how wasy it was to get the USA to elect a Communist, foreign-born, Muslim president.
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He did what for two years? (Score:1, Funny)
... two years poring over ...
Must have been quite the sweaty fellow. :)
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I hope you're joking, as that is the correct use of the verb "to pore":
pore
1. to read or study with steady attention or application: a scholar poring over a rare old manuscript.
2. to gaze earnestly or steadily: to pore over a painting.
3. to meditate or ponder intently (usually fol. by over, on, or upon): He pored over the strange events of the preceding evening.
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Pun
noun
1. the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.
2. the word or phrase used in this way.
verb (used without object)
3. to make puns.
Does that help?
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you wog-brained shitcock.
An interesting expletive, is it British or Australian English?
Re:He did what for two years? (Score:5, Funny)
you wog-brained shitcock.
An interesting expletive, is it British or Australian English?
The "shitcock" is a nesting bird primarily located in the northern hemisphere. It is closely related to the "fucktwit" in that both are members of Phasianidae family of birds. While not known for their intelligence, they are considerably smarter than the common wog of the order Galliformes.
Male shitcocks and fucktwits can be identified by a peculiar ability to act annoying and sometimes even hostile. Such behavior and a similar appearance often evokes comparisons to wogs despite their only distant relation. These activities are associated with mating patterns and are surprisingly affective at attracting the female members of the species.
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Not really, as incorrect usage is not the same as punning. Is English your first language?
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Now Moose and Squirrel know secret KGB plans (Score:1, Funny)
Boris! What shall we do!
Yes but... (Score:1)
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I shall now claim that everyone has colon cancer. I must now be right, just a little bit over-zealous.
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Interesting)
because it turns out that there were quite a number of spies in the U.S. government and other key institutions of American society.
True. But they were mostly useless. One of the more amusing Soviet documents to surface from that era was a grumbling memo from KGB Moscow Central. They were complaining that too many useless agents had been recruited in places like the State Department, and not enough in atomic and other defense programs.
Some well-known items:
For an good background on that era from the Soviet side, read Anatoly Dobrynin [wikipedia.org]'s memoirs. He was Soviet ambassador to the US from 1962 to 1986, and after the Cold War wound down, wrote it all up. Dobrynin became an ambassador due to a whim of Stalin's. One day, Stalin was frustrated with his diplomats, who were mostly old guys left over from the Revolution. He said something like "We need new Soviet men in this job, like young aircraft designers." The next day, Anatoly Dobrynin, young aircraft designer, was taken from his drawing board (literally) by KGB agents and shipped to Moscow, to attend the Higher Diplomatic Academy. And no, he wasn't told why at the time.
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Funny that they had the same esteem for the State Department that President Nixon would later have.
Dissatisfied as the Soviets were with the number of assets inside the nuclear and defense programs, they had more than enough inside both the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos to steal the U.S. designs for nuclear weapons. Both of these projects were s
The 5th Column (Score:3, Informative)
> True. But they were mostly useless.
Depends on what your definition of useless is. Go read _Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies_ by M. Stanton Evans. The fifty year seal on the Senate records has expired and combined with many other sources, all well footnoted, that book makes several things clear.
1. McCarthy had no idea just how far the rabbit hole went. Which is why he lost. But what he did know was for the most part accurate.
2.
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But US is a democracy, right? Everyone has a right to keep their own political view, religion, and so on.
Then why communists were singled out and persecuted?
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No, they have actually formed our recent history. See this post below:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1234821&cid=27975543 [slashdot.org]
Their infiltration of our higher ed system and popular culture can be clearly seen today. It's eerie that if you watch Ronald Reagan's farewell address, you notice that at the end, it's the decline in the core of American sensibilities he is worried about, despite the increase in national pride under his administration.
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detai [millercenter.org]
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What about the communist plot to undermine our great American nation from within by planting their agents in our movie studios? Sad part? That is the extent of my knowledge about 'communist' activities. Mah school hadn't done gave me some book learnin's!
One has to be careful about using movies as propaganda tools. The Soviets used "The Grapes of Wrath" as propaganda to show how the poor were exploited in America. The audience on the other hand came away believing that every poor person in America owned an automobile.
And...? (Score:3, Insightful)
The executive summary please.
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Surely this should be:
In Soviet Russia, the KGB releases its cold war files to YOU!
Re:And...? (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer:
In post-Soviet Russia, KGB shows its papers to YOU!
It's sort of inspiring, actually.
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//The executive summary please.
In Soviet Russia, notes take you?
Call me paranoid (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the personal history of the powers that be [wikipedia.org] in Russia, I find hard to believe that this guy is given the "unique opportunity" to access or publish "some of the KGB's most sensitive files".
Get that Moose and Squirrel!!! (Score:2)
So, now we have access to the Boris and Natasha's nefarious plans of the past!
Where's the 'spyversusspy' tag when you need it!
Article about Vassiliev's credibility (Score:4, Informative)
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And we all know what a neutral, unbiased source The Nation is!
Re:Article about Vassiliev's credibility (Score:4, Informative)
I think the Nation article raises points that stand on their own merits:
Vassiliv sued John Lowenthal (and lost) for libel over Lowenthal's claim 'that Weinstein and Vassiliev "omit relevant facts" and "selectively replaced covernames with their own notion of the real names." 'that "he never met the name of Alger Hiss in the context of some cooperation with some special services of the Soviet Union."'
When Vassiliev was asked on the witness stand whether 'he'd ever seen a single document linking Alger Hiss with "Ales"--the code name of a Soviet agent in the 1940s who, Weinstein and Vassiliev insisted, had to be Hiss--he admitted he hadn't.'
Where's the skepticism? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:Where's the skepticism? (Score:4, Interesting)
These notes help corroborate other facts that have been revealed, such as the massive archive that Vasili Mitrokhin brought over with him at the end of the Cold War.
While they may not be 100% accurate, I'm expecting they'll likely be 90% or better. His previous writings have mostly dovetailed with the Mitrokhin Archive.
Yes, Vassiliev is prone to exaggeration and self-aggrandizement, (men of power frequently are) but these notes are not the only glimpse into the KGB's archives.
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Great work of fiction - sorry but I call bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
How redacted is it? (Score:1)
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Re:How redacted is it? (Score:5, Funny)
The Russian government serve considerably fewer "cease and desist" notices than the USA's.
I'm only counting written ones, of cour&
*^
##.;';''[p%$no carrier
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His handler in the KGB told him so...
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You must be joking or living behind a rock. Just google for the keywords journalists russia [google.com].
Journalists (or lawyers) critical of the regime, local administration or the oligarchs land up faster dead than reporters in Iraq. Most often, the police doesn't even bother to fake a investigation, despite the murder happening in public. Guess why they don't investigate, and why the murder happens in public.
Remember the 10 rules of intelligence & securi (Score:1)
#1
If it is really secret then don't write it down, forget it and never talk about it, not even your colleagues and heavens forbid your superiors.
#2
If it is really secret but also really important that it should be preserved and you are absolutely 'put your life on the line' sure about it then make sure you spread enough 'information'. Preferably related to it but meaning the opposite and meaning the same but unrelated to it, the quantity of misinformation counts the most.
Do so in at least in the main stream
The Sword and the Shield (Score:4, Interesting)
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So in lieu of mod points, anyone who enjoys the story will also enjoy Stephen Coonts' (of "Flight of the Intruder" fame) fictionalized version of the story in his novel Liars and Thieves [victoria.tc.ca].
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When I saw this post, I immediately thought of the The Sword and the Shield and the follow-up book, The World Was Going Our Way, which was about the KGB's Third World plans. But it turns out this was not from Vasili Mitrokhin. As an amateur historian, I look forward to exploring this stuff.
KGB Defector On Politcal Subversion (Score:5, Interesting)
Former KGB operative and defector Yuri Bezmenov said most KGB agents were not involved in "James Bond" type espionage over atmioc secrets etc. Ideological subversion was the primary focus:
On Demoralization & Destabilization
"YURI BEZMENOV: Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate and open. You can see it with your own eyes.... It has nothing to do with espionage.
I know that intelligence gathering looks more romantic.... That's probably why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond types of films. But in reality the main emphasis of the KGB is NOT in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.
It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first one being "demoralization". It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism....
The result? The result you can see ... the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can't get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior."
Excellent series of videos with Yuri on YouTube. These should be required viewing in schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHgYPDvQFU8&feature=related [youtube.com]
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:dW8vp_7B-00J:brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/videosyuri-bezmenov-on-soviet-subversion-of-the-free-world/+A+person+who+is+demoralized+bezmenov&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us [74.125.47.132]
Re:KGB Defector On Politcal Subversion (Score:4, Insightful)
This contradicts everything else that is known about KGB, however it is consistent with American propaganda that pretty much projected their own image on propaganda efforts of others -- real or imaginary.
Re:KGB Defector On Politcal Subversion (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice unsourced statement. You are conveniently attempting to ignore, much like the early leftist fans of Stalin, the reality of the situation. Our institutions of learning and higher learning *were* purposefully infiltrated by the Soviets in order to take us out from within. It's the same modus operandi that the Scientology folk have used on a larger scale, and like Scientology they also targeted Hollywood. Unfortunately for us, they were more successful.
Our popular culture is filled with people who are devoid of independent thought. Some, like Pete Seeger, eventually disowned Stalin, but many didn't, and a lot of damage was done. Seeger still sells the communist line, and look who he works with: School Children. Upstate New York's public radio is headed by a man who could sing you all the old "Labor songs" without reading them off a sheet.
You can show them revenue figures from the 1980's that showed tax revenue almost doubled, and they will still claim that the tax cuts caused the increase in the deficit, and that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The truth of course is that both groups got richer. If confronted with facts and figures, they will retreat into the rich got disproportionately richer than the poor, so it's "not fair". It's complete class warfare, and it's been pounded into them their whole lives.
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Our institutions of learning and higher learning *were* purposefully infiltrated by the Soviets in order to take us out from within. It's the same modus operandi that the Scientology folk have used on a larger scale, and like Scientology they also targeted Hollywood. Unfortunately for us, they were more successful.
Or maybe Communist ideas were popular among intellectuals to begin with, yet your politicians preferred to blame everything on "foreign spies". That is, before starting to promote blatant anti-intellectualism.
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Or maybe Communist ideas were popular among intellectuals to begin with, yet your politicians preferred to blame everything on "foreign spies". That is, before starting to promote blatant anti-intellectualism.
"Lenin's war on his intellectual foes, whom he had described in letters as 'lackeys of capital,' gained force on June 1, 1922, when he signed a new penal code into law. It effectively gave the government the right to kill anyone who threatened to destabilize the new power won by Soviet workers and peasants, i.e., the one-party state."
"The lists arrived in Lenin's hands by mid-August - he drew up the list of philosophers himself - and arrests began. An Aug. 31, 1922, article in the government newspaper Pravd
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You mean, they sent people who hated them them to promote Communist ideas abroad?
Or are you just googling for anything that is supposed to make Communists look bad, and pretending that it's a relevant argument?
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Welcome, Stalin Apologist...
After reading some more of your posts, I see that this is a hobby of yours.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1227031&cid=27945215 [slashdot.org]
And there's my source, where you decry American propaganda for creating "myths" about Stalin regarding his purges.
Let me guess, you think the Gulag Archipelago was American propaganda, too? And now you are here, sticking up for your fellow collaborators and trying to influence useful idiots. Nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHgYPDvQFU8&fe [youtube.com]
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Welcome, Stalin Apologist...
Actually I hate Stalin and Stalinists -- at the extent that it's possible to hate dead people. However history is about studying facts of the past, not producing creative writing about it. Ex: 300 movie is not history.
Let me guess, you think the Gulag Archipelago was American propaganda, too?
No, it's a vaguely autobiographic work of fiction that only American propaganda worker would use as a source for anything but literary criticism.
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Actually I hate Stalin and Stalinists -- at the extent that it's possible to hate dead people. However history is about studying facts of the past, not producing creative writing about it. Ex: 300 movie is not history.
No, it's a vaguely autobiographic work of fiction that only American propaganda worker would use as a source for anything but literary criticism.
Right. And the source is so fictional that the KGB tortured people to get their hands on it. And that's also why it's corroborated by Soviet records...
From Wikipedia:
"The sheer volume of firsthand testimony and primary documentation that Solzhenitsyn managed to assemble in The Gulag Archipelago made all subsequent Soviet and KGB attempts to discredit the work useless. Much of the impact of the treatise stems from the closely detailed stories of interrogation routines, prison indignities and (especially in
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Right. And the source is so fictional that the KGB tortured people to get their hands on it.
Libel can get you pretty heavy penalties anywhere in the world.
And that's also why it's corroborated by Soviet records...
What? It never was.
"One of the noteworthy elements of Solzhenitsyn's analysis are the seemingly outlandish claims of Soviet brutality, which subsequently turned out to be true - or which in some cases turned out to be more outrageous than Solzhenitsyn had originally stated. For instance, Solzhenitsyn claimed that the Gulag system was so voracious that between 1930 and 1939, a quarter of the population of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was shipped to the Gulag. Post-Soviet scholarship has confirmed that the figure was even higher.[5] This one, seemingly unbelievable event, was reported by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, to skepticism in the West."
GULAG was a prison system, it was not made specifically for politically-related crimes, or had some outrageous mortality rate. It was harsh because it involved hard labor, however that was the extent of it for most of the prisoners (including Solzhenitsyn himself).
It seems to me the only reason you may hate Stalin is the negative publicity he gave the Soviet system.
I's not the only reason, however that's pretty much the only thing Americans know that is true about him.
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No, Russia was not concern
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Well this guy defected right? I imagine its better from his point of view to increase his apparent knowledge by feeding Authorities in the US exactly what they want to hear, and puff up his own importance. Its entirely possible he had little to trade when defecting, but since the Soviets were the great unknown its probably easy for him to bullshit his way into establishing a massive plan that only he knows the details on.
Intelligence is always a case of weighing the information from a source like this and c
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I get it. He's wrong because you *think* he is wrong. Never mind that you have no actual knowledge of events during that era, or that declassified materials on both sides have shown it to be true. Believing it would upset your liberal worldview, which tells us that the Soviets were only interested in espionage for the purposes of self-defense against the capitalist imperialist overlords.
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Fantastic. So I guess those people who became entrapped in cults weren't brainwashed either?
In any case, the things he is referring to can also be classified as indoctrination. But I am sure you will self-document that as "pretend" also. You set up so many straw man arguments you should be a wikipedia reference.
There is ample documentation of Soviet activity in a manner described by this man. Where is your documentation? Oh, wait, you are just another sympathizer who spent far too much time believing w
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Fantastic. So I guess those people who became entrapped in cults weren't brainwashed either?
So a few people have joined cults; therefore the whole United States was brainwashed by the KGB via university professors. Brilliant.
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You have still not refuted his statements with documented facts. Probably because you can't find a source, but it doesn't give you adequate standing to besmirch the man's character. You not liking what he said does not make it untrue.
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Brainwashing is indeed a fantasy. There hasn't been a single psychological experiment that supports the notion that large-scale brainwashing is feasible. Since cults contain a minuscule set of Americans, it is not possible to extrapolate from cults to American society.
Quite frankly, every time I hear someone talk about brainwashed Americans, it is in the context of others not hating enough the communists, socialists, fascists, islamo-fascists and other boogiemen du jour. These people cannot fathom how someo
And the winner is... (Score:1)
Whatever the KGB was doing in the US, the US was trying to do the same in the Soviet Union. Spy vs Spy. It is still going on today. The real point is what was the long term strategic impact of these efforts by both sides. Clearly very little of substance. The Soviet Union got atomic bomb a year or two earlier, but to think their physicists and engineers were incapable of designing and building one is sheer fantasy. The CIA did not hasten the fall of the Soviet Union: it did it all itself.
"So tell me, Mr Vassiliev, (Score:2)