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My father was... He is on the left here... My father was officer of the general staff of the Soviet army.
He was inspector of land forces. Soviet troops stationed in countries like-
-Mongolia, Cuba, east-European countries.
This is the picture taken at the entrance of my institute of oriental languages,
it is a part of the Moscow state university. As every Soviet student I was "volunteering"-
-for harvesting grain in Kazakhstan. By the end of my training in school I was recruited by the KGB.
This picture was taken on that day and you can see how happy it feels to be recruited by the KGB.
Pay special attention to the numbers of bottles on the table.
One of my functions was to keep foreign guests permanently intoxicated from the moment they land at Moscow airport.
In 1967 the KGB attached me to this magazine, Look Magazine.
A group of twelve people arrived to USSR from the United States to cover the 50th anniversary-
-of the October Socialist Revolution in my country.
From the first page to the last page it was a package of lies.
Deception Was My Job Part 1 Life Under Soviet Collectivism
A conversation with Yuri Bezmenov, former propagandist for the KGB
Host G. Edward Griffin
Our conversation is with Mr Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov. Mr Bezmenov was born in 1939 in a suburb of Moscow.
He was the son of a high-ranking Soviet army officer.
He was educated in the elite schools inside the Soviet Union and became an expert in Indian culture and Indian languages.
He had an outstanding career with Novosti which was, and still is I should say,
the press agencies of the Soviet Union. And it turns out this is also a front for the KGB.
One of his interesting assignments was to brainwash foreign diplomats when they visited Moscow.
He will tell us a little bit about how they did this and how they planted information which eventually ended up in the press of the free world.
He escaped to the West in 1970 after becoming totally disgusted with the Soviet system-
-and he did this at great risk to his life. He certainly is one of the worlds outstanding experts on-
-the subject of Soviet propaganda and disinformation and active measures.
Mr Bezmenov I like to begin by having you tell us a little bit about some of your childhood memories.
The most vivid memory of my childhood was Second World War. Or to be more precise the end of Second World War.
When all of the sudden the United States from a friendly nation which helped us defeat Nazism-
-turned over night into a deadly enemy. And it was very shocking because all
newspapers was trying to present an image of belligerent, aggressive American imperialism.
Most of the things that we were taught was that the United States is a aggressive power which-
-is just about to invade our beautiful free socialist country. That American CIA is dropping Colorado beetles on-
-our beautiful potato fields to eliminate our crops. And each schoolboy had a picture of the-
-Colorado beetle on the back page on his notebook.
And we were instructed to go into collective fields to search for those little Colorado beetle bugs.
Of course we could not find any. Neither could we find many potatoes.
And that was explained by the encroachments of the decadent and imperialist power.
The anti-American paranoia, hysteria, in the Soviet propaganda was to such a high degree-
-that many less skeptical people, or less stubborn, would really believe that United States is just about-
-to invade our beautiful motherland. And some secretly hope that it will come true.
That is interesting. But getting back to the life inside the Soviet Union, or in communist countries in general.
In this country, at the university level primarily, we read and hear that the Soviet system is-
-different from ours but not that different. And that there is a convergence developing-
-between all of the systems in the world and that it really does not make a awful lot of difference what system-
-you live under because you have corruption and dishonesty and tyranny and all that sort of things.
From your personal experience what is the different between life under Communism and life in the United States?
Well life is obviously very different for the simple reason that the Soviet Union is state capitalist economically.
It is a state capitalism where an individual has absolutely no rights, no value. His life is nothing, just like an insect.
He is disposable. Where as in the United States even the worst criminal is treated as a human being.
He has a fair trial. Some of them capitalize on their crimes. They publish their memoirs while in prison-
-and get handsomely paid by your crazy publishers.
The differences of course in the daily life are very various depending on whom we are talking about.
In my own private life I never suffered from communism simply because I was brought up-
-in a family of a high-ranking military officer. Most of the doors were open for me.
Most of my expenses were paid by the government. I never had any trouble with the authorities or with the police.
So in other words I would say I enjoyed... Well I had good reasons to enjoy all the-
-advantages of the so-called "socialist system".
My main motivation to defect had nothing to do with affluence.
It was mainly moral indignation, a moral protest. Rebellion against the inhuman methods of the Soviet system.
Well, specifically what did you object to?
I objected first of all against to the oppression of my own dissidence and intellectuals.
That was the most disgusting thing that I witnessed as a young man, a young student-
-who was brought up in a very troublesome period in our history, from Stalin to Chrusjtjov-
-from total tyranny and oppression to some kind of liberalization.
Second, when I started working for the Soviet embassy in India I to my horror discovered that we are millions times more oppressive-
-than any colonial or imperialistic power in the history of mankind.
That my country brings to India, not freedom, progress and friendship between the nations-
-but racism, exploitation and slavery. And of course economical inefficiency to this country.
Since I fell in love with India I developed something which by KGB standards is a extremely dangerous thing.
It is called split loyalty when an agent likes the country of assignment more than his own country.
I literally fell in love with this beautiful country.
A country of great contrasts but also great humility, great tolerance and philosophical and intellectual freedoms.
My ancestors used to live in caves and eat raw meat when India was a highly civilized nation 6 000 years ago.
So obviously the choice was not to the advantage of my own nation.
I decided to defect and to entirely disassociate myself from the brutal regime.
Mr Bezmenov, we read a lot about the concentration camps and the slave labor camps under the Stalin regime.
Now the general impression in America is that those things are part of the past.
Are they still going on today or what is the status?
Yes. There is no qualitative change in the Soviet concentration camp system.
There are changes in numbers of prisoners, again this is unreliable Soviet statistics.
We do not know how many political prisoners that are in the Soviet concentration camps.
But we sure know from various sources that at each particular time there are close to 25 to 30 million of-
-Soviet citizens who are virtually kept as slaves in the forced labor camp system.
The size of the population of a country like Canada is serving terms as prisoners.
So I would say that those intellectuals who try to convince the American public that the
concentration camp system is a thing of the past are either conscientiously misleading-
-public opinion or they are not very intellectual people.
They are selectively blind. They lack intellectual honesty when they say that.
We have spoken about the intellectuals in this country and also the intellectuals in the Soviet Union.
What about down at the broad mass-level...
Do the people in general, the workers in general in the Soviet Union, do they support the system?
Do they tolerate it? What is their attitude?
Every Soviet citizen, if there is such an animal of course, does not like the system because it hurts, it kills.
He may not understand the reasons, he may not have enough information or educational background to understand.
But I doubt very much that there are many people who are conscientiously supporting the Soviet system.
There are no such people in the USSR. Even those who have all the reasons to enjoy-
-socialism, people like myself, who are members of the journalistic elite.
They also hate the system but for different reasons. Not because they lack material affluence but because-
-they are unfree to think, they are in constant fear, duplicity, split personality...
And this is a great tragedy for my nation.
What do you think are the chances of the people actually overcoming their system or replacing it?
There is a great possibility that the system will sooner or later be destroyed from within.
There is a self-destructive mechanism built-in into any socialist or communist or fascist system-
-because there is lack of feedback, because the system does not rely upon loyalty from the population.
But until the Soviet junta is no longer being supported by the Western so-called imperialists...
That is multinational companies, establishments, governments, and let us face it, intellectuals.
So-called academia in the United States is famous for supporting the Soviet system...
As long as the Soviet junta will keep on receiving credits, money, technology, grain deals and political recognition-
-from all these traitors of democracy or freedom, there is no hope, there is not much hope for changes in my country.
And the system will not collapse by itself simply because it is being nourished by so-called American imperialism.
This is the greatest paradox in the history of mankind when the capitalist world supports and actively nourishes its own destroyer.
I think you are trying to tell us something...
I am trying to tell you that it has to be stopped unless you want to end up in the Gulag system and enjoy all the-
-advantages of socialist equality, working for free, catching fleas on your body, sleeping on planks-
-of plywood in Alaska this time I guess. That is where Americans will belong unless they
will wake up and force their government to stop aiding Soviet fascism.
You told us a moment ago why you left the system.
I would like to hear the details about how you did it. It must have been a very dangerous thing.
It was not so dangerous, it was crazy. First of all because defecting in India is virtually impossible.
Thanks to very strong pressure from the Soviet government.
Excuse me, you were in India on an assignment at that time?
Yes I was working for the Soviet embassy in New Delhi as a press officer.
Defecting for a Soviet diplomat is next to impossible, it is suicide. Because "great friend" Indira Gandhi pushed a law-
-through parliament which says, and I quote: "No defectors from any country has the right
to political asylum in any embassy on the territory of the Indian Republic." Which is a master piece of hypocrisy.
No other defector but the Soviet one needs political asylum.
So knowing that perfectly well I planned the craziest possible way to defect.
I studied counterculture in India. There were thousands of young-
-American boys and girls with no shoes, long hair, smoking hash and marijuana.
Studying sometimes Indian philosophy. Sometimes simply pretending that they were studying.
And they greatly annoyed the Indian police and they-
-were made the laughing stock of Indians because obviously they were good-for-nothing students.
I studied carefully where they congregate, what routes they traveled, what language the speak, what do they smoke.
And one day I simply joined a group of hippies to avoid detection of Indian police.
I was dressed as a typical hippie with blue jeans, long kashmir shirts with all kind of nice decorations, long hair.
I bought a wig because for several weeks I had to turn myself from a conservative Soviet diplomat into a very progressive American hippie.
And that was the only way that I could avoid detection.
It was a very interesting experience but it was necessary because from my own knowledge as a member of the Soviet embassy staff,
I knew that there were many cases when Soviet defectors were betrayed by Indian police-
-and also some Western embassies played a very dirty role in betraying Soviet defectors.
According to our information there were some, I would not call them double agents but simply-
-unmoral people working for the United States embassy.
And confiding in people like this would be suicide. So I had to extremely careful, I could not trust anyone.
And that was the reason for such a crazy way to defect.
Well, had you been caught in the act of trying to get out, what would have happened to you?
Most likely I would end up in concentration camp.
Or depending on the situation, on the whim of some bureaucrat in the KGB, maybe even executed.
This is normal practice. Quietly of course, not publicly. But that would be the end of my defection of course.
When did you finally make it to the United States?
In 1970 after about six months of debriefing in Athens by the CIA, and I presume FBI too, they let me go first to Germany then to Canada.
That was my decision, I had to change my identity to protect my family and my friends in the USSR.
And also I was a little bit paranoid knowing that both Soviet KGB-
-and probably some double agents within the American system might be after me.
So I wanted to settle down as far away as possible. I requested the CIA to give me some kind of new identity-
-and just let me go on my own. And I settled in Canada. I was a student.
I had many professions from farmhand and laundry truck driver to language instructor and-
-broadcaster for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal.
Have you had any threats on your life or unpleasant experiences?
Yes, in about five years the KGB eventually discovered that I am working for Canadian Broadcasting...
I made a very big mistake. I started working for the overseas service of CBC, which is similar to Voice of America, in the Russia language.
And of course the monitoring service in USSR picked up every new voice.
Every new announcer they would try to discover who he is. And in five years, sure enough, slowly but surely they-
-discovered that I am not Tomas Schuman but that I am Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov and-
-that I am working for Canadian Broadcasting. And undermining the beautiful détente-
-between Canada and the USSR, the Soviet ambassador Alexander Yakovlev made it his personal effort to discredit me.
He complained to Pierre Trudeau, who is known to be a little bit soft on socialism, and the management for CBC behaved-
-in a very strange cowardly way unbecoming of representatives of an independent country like Canada.
They listened to every suggestion that the Soviet ambassadors gave-
-and they started a shameful investigation analyzing the content of my broadcasts to the USSR.
Sure enough the discovered that some of my statements probably would be offending to the Soviet politburo.
So I had to leave my job. And of course subtle intimidations, they would say things like;
"Please cross the street carefully because you know the traffic is very heavy in Quebec."
And fortunately I know about the psychology and the logic of activity of the KGB and I never allowed myself to be intimidated.
This is the worst thing. This is what they expect a person, a defector, to be intimidated.
Once they spot that you are scared, they keep on developing that line and then eventually-
-you either have to give up entirely and work for them, or they neutralize you.
They would definitely stop all kind of political activity, which they failed to do in my case-
-because I was stubbornly working for the Canadian Broadcasting.
And in response to their intimidations I said: "Look, this is a free country and I am as free as you are."
"I also can drive very fast and gun control is not yet established in Canada so I have a couple of good shotguns in my basement."
"Welcome to visit me someday with your Kalashnikovs and machine guns."
So obviously it did not work. Intimidation did not work.
So they tried a different approach, on the highest level, on the level of Canadian bureaucracy.
And on that level they were successful?
Yes on that level they were successful. On individual level they failed.
Mr Bezmenov has brought us a series of slides with him which he has taken from the Soviet Union-
-and I think this is a good time to take a look at the slides. The viewers will be able to see these slides as we talk about them.
Yes this is a collection of slides which are.... Some of them are snapshots from my family album.
Some of them are documents which I smuggled from the Soviet embassy.
And some are reproductions from local media. I usually show them to establish my credibility as a defector.
This is a picture of my native town Mytishchi about 20 miles north of Moscow.
Characteristically there is a statue of comrade Lenin in the central square.
This is myself at the age of seven. Again characteristically under a statue of comrade Stalin-
-extending his friendly hand to the peoples of the world.
At that age I was still a idealistically minded young communist and I still believed that sooner or later things will be better.
But I realized that the system stinks. That something is fishy, and that ideology is-
-fake and the propaganda about the advanced Soviet agriculture simply did not meet the criteria of reality.
They talked about the abundance of food, but there was none in the stores.
So it must be something wrong. My father was... He is on the left here.
My father was an officer of the general staff of the Soviet army.
He was inspector of land forces, Soviet troop stationed in countries like Mongolia, Cuba, east-European countries.
If he were alive today most likely he would be inspecting Soviet troops in Nicaragua, Angola and many other parts of the world.
Fortunately he died and he did not see the disgrace because deep inside he was a Russian patriot.
He did not like the idea of expanding Soviet military might, especially in the areas where we were not welcomed at all.
Unlike many other military officers he was reporting directly to the minister of defense, bypassing KGB and diplomatic service.
In other words he was a trusted military professional and my impression is that this type of people-
-is much less hawkish and adventuristic than the Party bureaucrats in Kremlin.
When American mass-media describes the Soviet military as a potential dangerous counterpart for the Pentagon-
-I simply laugh because I know better.
I know that the most dangerous part of the Soviet power structures are not military at all.
Most likely if they come to power in my country they will be more sensible negotiators-
-for nuclear disarmaments and withdrawal of the Soviet troops from many parts of the world.
But if someone from the Party structure or the KGB structure were to give the orders for a military intervention they would follow?
They had to obey because they are professional military.
You see the triangle of power and hate in the USSR is the Party at the top, the party elite, the oligarchy of the party,
then the military, and then the KGB at the bottom. They hate each other.
And the most hated corner of the triangle is the Communist Party bureaucrats.
They are the most adventuristic, senile megalomaniacs. They can start wars. I would not be suprised.
Not the military, they know what war is. At least my father did.
This is the picture taken at the entrance of the Institute of Oriental Languages.
It is a part of Moscow State University. I graduated in 1963 and I...
Excuse me, which one were you?
I am on the right, and on the left is my schoolmate Vadim Smirnoff who later-
-was a apparatchik in the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party.
What is an apparatchik?
It is a functionary, something like civil service in the British Empire.
Someone who is never fired from the service, he stays there internally.
He may not be promoted too high but he is a dependable bureaucrat who will stay forever.
I studied not only languages but also history, literature, even music.
On this picture I am trying to learn how to play a Indian musical instrument.
I even tried to look like an Indian when I was a second year student.
Not bad, really.
Yes, actually it was strongly encouraged by the instructors at my school because the-
-graduates of my school were later on deployed as diplomats, foreign journalists or spies.
As every Soviet student I was "volunteering" for harvesting grain in Kazakhstan.
This is the biggest agricultural blunder of the Soviet government. But I did not have much choice of course because-
-the Communist motto borrowed from the bible says those who do not work shall not eat.
And you can see me eating therefore I was working, and you can see how happy I was about it.
I went through a very extensive physical and military training. Including military games in the suburban areas of Moscow.
Here for example we are on tour in a Arkhangelsk area. By the end of my training in school I was recruited by the KGB.
This picture was taken on that day and again you can see how happy it feels to be recruited by the KGB.
Our conversation with Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, who was a defector from the Soviet Union-
-and a former propaganda agent for Novosti and the KGB will continue after this message.
Deception Was My Job Part 2 Propaganda and Mind Control
A conversation with Yuri Bezmenov, former propagandist for the KGB
Host G. Edward Griffin
As every student in the USSR I went through a very extensive physical and military training, and civil defense training too.
Unlike in United States were civil defense is virtually non-existent, zero.
In the USSR every student, whatever his major subject, has to go through a very extensive four year military and civil defense training.
You can see me here with a group of students during one of the war games near Moscow.
The main idea of course is to prepare a huge reserve army of the USSR.
Each student has to graduate as a Junior Lieutenant. In my case it was administrative and military intelligence service.
My first assignment was to India as a translator with the Soviet Economical Aid Group-
-building refinery complexes in Bihar state and Gujarat state.
At that time I was still naively, idealistically believing that what I was doing contributes-
-to the understanding and cooperation between the nations.
It took me quite a number of years to realize that what we were bringing to India was a new type of colonialism thousand-
-times more oppressive and exploitative than any colonialism or imperialism in the history of mankind.
But at that time I was still hoping that well, maybe it is not that bad, it could be worse and things may go for the better.
And I even tried to implement the beautiful Marxist motto: "Proletarians of all the countries unite!"
I tried to unite with a nice Indian girl, and actually I was fascinated by the Indian culture, by family life in this country.
But obviously the Communist Party had different plans for my genes, so I had to marry this beautiful Russian girl.
In the span of my career I married three times.
Most of these marriages were marriages of convenience on advice from the Department of Personnel.
This is normal practice in the USSR. When a Soviet citizen is assigned to a foreign job he has to be married.
Either to keep his family in the USSR as hostages or if it is a convenience marriage like mine so that the husband and wife-
-are virtually informers on each other to prevent defection or contamination of "decadent imperialist or capitalist ideas".
In my case I hated that girl so much that the moment I landed in Moscow we were divorced and I married later a second time.
By the end of my first assignment in India I was promoted to the position of Public Relation Officer.
You can see me here translating a speech by a Soviet boss...
And you are on the right? I am on the right here, yes.
The occasion was the commission of the refinery complex in Bihar, Barauni.
Back in Moscow I was immediately recruited by Novosti Press Agency which is a propaganda and ideological subversion front for the KGB.
75% of the members of the Novosti are commissioned officers of the KGB.
The other 25% are like myself co-opted agents who are assigned to specific operations.
In this particular case you can see me talking to students of Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow.
This is a huge school under the direct control of the KGB and the Central Committee where future leaders-
-of the so-called "National Liberation Movements" are being educated and selected carefully.
And some of them have absolutely... This for example is a group of students from Lumumba.
They do not look like students at all. They look more like military and that is exactly what they were.
They were dispatched back to their countries to be leaders of the so-called "National Liberation Movements", or to be-
-translated into normal human language: leaders of international terrorist groups.
Another area of activity when I was working for the Novosti was to accompany groups-
-of so-called "progressive intellectuals"; writers, journalists, publishers, teachers and professors of colleges.
You can see here in Kremlin, I am the second on the left, with a group of Pakistani and Indian intellectuals.
Most of them pretended that they do not understand that we are actually working on behalf of the Soviet government and the KGB.
They pretended that they are actually being guests, VIP intellectuals.
That they are treated according to their merits and their intellectual abilities.
For us they were just a bunch of political prostitutes to be taken advantage of for various propaganda operations.
Therefore you can see perfectly well the senior colleague of mine on the left does not really have that much respect on his face.
And myself with a very skeptical smile, a typical KGB sarcastic smile, anticipating another victim of ideological brainwashing.
This is how a typical conference in the Novosti headquarters in Moscow looks like.
Sitting in the middle is Boris Burkov, the then director of Novosti Press Agency, a high-ranking Party bureaucrat-
-in the Department of Propaganda. I am standing next to a famous Indian poet, Sumitranandan Pant.
He was famous because he was the author of a famous poem, entitled "Rhapsody to Lenin".
That is why he was invited to the USSR, and everything was paid for by the Soviet government.
Pay special attention to the number of bottles on the table.
This is one of the ways to kill the awareness or curiosity of foreign journalists.
One of my functions was to keep foreign guests permanently intoxicated.
The moment they landed at Moscow Airport I had to take them to the VIP lounge-
-and toast to friendship and understanding between the nations of the world.
A glass of ***, then a second glass of ***. And in no time my guests would be feeling very happy.
They would see everything in a kind of pink, nice color.
And that is the way I had to keep them permanently for the next fifteen or twenty days.
At a certain point in time, I had to withdraw alcohol from them so that some of them who are the most recruitable-
-would feel a little bit shaky, guilty, trying to remember what they were talking about last night...
That is the time to approach them with all kind of nonsense such as "Joint Communique" or a statement for Soviet propaganda.
That is the time they are the most flexible. And of course what they did not understand or realized-
-or pretended not to realize, that myself who was drinking together with them was not drinking at all.
I had ways to get rid of alcohol through various techniques including special pills which were given to me by colleagues.
But they were taking it seriously.
In other words, they would consume quite large volumes of alcohol and feel quite uneasy the next morning.
In 1967 the KGB attached me to this magazine, Look magazine.
A group of twelve people arrived in the USSR from the United States to cover the 50th Anniversary of-
-the October Socialist Revolution in my country.
From the first page to the last page it was a package of lies or propaganda clichés which-
-were presented to American readers as opinions and deductions of American journalists.
Nothing could be further from the truth. These were not opinions, they were not opinions at all.
They were the clichés which the Soviet propaganda wanted the American public to think that they think.
If that makes any sense at all...
It sure does because from the viewpoint of the Soviet propaganda, although there are some subtle criticism of the Soviet system,
the basic message is that Russia today is a nice, functioning, efficient system, supported by the majority of the population.
That is the biggest lie, and of course American intellectuals and journalists from Look magazine elaborated-
-on that untruth in various different ways. The intellectual lies that lie...
They found all kinds of justifications for telling lies to the American public. And this is...
Excuse me, it was partly your job to make sure they got these ideas and accepted them as their own ideas.
Right. Actually before they arrived to the USSR, and they paid an astronomical sum of money for that visit.
The Novosti Press Agency developed so-called "backgrounders".
20 - 25 pages of information and opinions which were presented to the journalists even before they bought their tickets to Moscow.
They had to analyze the situation and judging on their reaction to that backgrounder the local Novosti representative-
-or local Soviet diplomat in Washington D.C. would assess whether they be given a visa to the USSR or not.
They were selected ahead of time?
They were pre-selected very carefully, there is not much chance for honest journalists to arrive to the USSR and-
-to stay there for one year and to bring this package of lies back home.
This for example is a centerfold of the Look magazine. They presented this monument, erected by-
-the Communist Party in Stalingrad, as the symbol, the personification of Russian military might.
And they said in the article which is published on the side that the Soviets are very proud of the victory in the Second World War.
This is another big myth, a lie.
No sensible people would be proud to lose twenty million of their countrymen in a war-
-which was started by Hitler and comrade Stalin and paid by American multinationals.
Most of the Soviet citizens look at these types of monuments with disgust and sorrow-
-because every family lost a father, brother, sister or child in the Second World War.
Yet American journalists who were trying to appease, to please their hosts presented this picture on the centerfold-
-as the symbol and personification of Soviet national.... They call it Russian national spirit.
And it was the greatest misconception and a very tragic misunderstanding.
Of course Look magazine was not distributed in the USSR. The main audience was in the United States.
But I presume that many Americans, millions of Americans, who were reading Look magazine at that time had the-
-absolutely wrong idea about the sentiments of my nation, about what the Soviets are proud of and what they hate.
This is a group... You see the same lady with the sword in Stalingrad.
This is a group of journalists. I am in the center with the same devilish smile-
-and Mr. Philip Harrington is on the extreme left there with his camera.
This is the gentleman who was so daft or so uninterested in what I had to say to him.
This is the same picture, a blow-up of the same picture.
Many guests from various countries, in this particular case from Asia and Africa,
were taken by me as a Novosti Press Agency employee for a tour across Siberia for example.
We would show them a typical kindergarten, you see?
Nothing special by American standards, just nice children sitting and eating their breakfast or lunch.
What they could not understand or they pretended not to understand is that this is an exemplary kindergarten.
This is not the kindergarten for an average person or average family in the USSR.
And we maintain that illusion in their minds.
You can see me under the red spot in the needle there, with the same businesslike expression.
I am doing my job, that is what I am assigned to do and that is what I was paid to do.
But deep inside I still hoped that at least some of these useful idiots would-
-understand that what they are looking at has nothing to do with the level of affluence in my nation.
This is a better picture which reflects the true spirit of the Soviet childhood.
This picture was printed in a Canadian government publication by mistake.
In the middle you can see children playing on a small courtyard.
And the caption goes: "This is a typical kindergarten in Siberia".
What these idiots did not understand was that it is not a kindergarten at all.
It is a prison for children of political prisoners.
But there was not a single mention that what they were visiting actually was an area of concentration camps.
And it was the job of people like myself to help them not to notice that they are actually talking to prisoners.
Most of the children were dressed, especially on the occasion of the foreigners visit.
Of course there were no corpses on the ground. There were no machine gun guards.
Well, it looks not very pleasant as you see, it looks dull but obviously does not create an impression that this is actually a prison.
Well, did any of the journalists have the curiosity to ask about prisons and that kind of thing?
They were in Siberia, this is what you associate with it.
Yes, yes. Some of them asked questions and naturally we would give them...
For the stupid question we would give them a stupid answer. "No, there are no prisons in Siberia."
"No, most of the people who you see are free citizens of the USSR."
"They are very happy to be here and they are contributing to the glory of the socialist system."
Some of them pretended that they believed what I was telling them, and most of them... We may discuss it later.
What are the motivations of these people?
Why would they stubbornly bring lies to their own population through their own mass media?
I have various answers to this. There is not a single explanation.
It is a complex of explanations. It is fear. Pure biological fear.
They understand that they are on the territory of an enemy state, a police state, and just to save their rotten skins and their-
-miserable jobs, their affluence back home, they would prefer to tell a lie than to ask truthful questions and report truthful information.
Second, most of these schmucks were afraid to lose their jobs, because obviously if you tell the truth-
-about my country you will not last long as a correspondent of New York Times or Los Angeles Times.
They will fire you. "What kind of correspondent are you?"
"You obviously cannot find common language with Russians if they kick you out within 24 hours."
So just by trying to be conformist to their own editorial bosses, they tried not to offend the sentiments of-
-the Soviet administrators and people like myself.
Deep inside I hoped they would insult or offend my sentiment. Obviously they preferred not to.
Another reason... I refused to believe it but obviously there is another reason.
Obviously it is agreed, these people earn a lot of money. When they come back to the USA they claim-
-that they are experts on my country. They write books which sell a million copies.
Titles like: "Russians - The Truth about Russia" Most of it is a lie about Russia.
Yet they claim to be "Sovietologists". They play back the myth about my country, the propaganda clichés.
Yet they stubbornly resist the word of truth if a person like Solzhenitsyn is either defecting or kicked out of the USSR.
They try all their best to discredit him and to discourage him.
I do not have much chance to appear on a national network with the true story about my country.
But a useful idiot like Hedrick Smith or Robert Kaiser, they are big heroes.
They come back from the USSR and they say: "Oh we were talking to dissidents in Russia."
Big deal! Soviet dissidents are chasing American correspondents in the streets.
And they are cowardly escaping from these contacts.
For some strange reason, if you want to know more about Spain, you refer to Spanish writers.
If you want to learn more about the French, you read French writers.
Even about Antarctica I bet you would read penguins.
Only about the Soviet Union, for some strange reason, you read Hendricks and Schmendricks and all kinds of Kissingers.
Because they claim they know more about my country. They know nothing or next to nothing.
Or they pretend that they know more than they actually do.
I would say they are dishonest people who lack integrity and common sense and intellectual honesty.
They bring back all kinds of stories like that kindergarten in Siberia.
Omitting the most important fact that it is a prison for children of political prisoners.
Another great example of the monumental idiocy of American politicians...
Edward Kennedy was in Moscow and he thought that he was a popular, charismatic American politician,
who is easygoing, who can smile, dance at the wedding in the Russian Palace of Marriages.
What he did not understand, or maybe he pretended not to understand, was that actually he was being taken for a ride.
This is a staged wedding especially to impress foreign media or useful idiots like Edward Kennedy.
Most of the guests there, they had security clearance and they were instructed about what to say to foreigners.
This is exactly what I was doing. You can see me in the same damn Wedding Palace in Moscow,
where Edward Kennedy was dancing here. You see, smiling...
He thinks he is very smart. From the viewpoint of the Russian citizens who observed this idiocy,
he is a narrow minded, egocentric idiot, who tries to earn his own popularity through participation in propaganda farces like this.
Here you can see me. On the right, again a exemplary Soviet bride.
On the left, three journalists from various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Obviously they are enjoying the situation.
They will go back home and write their reports: "We were present at a regular Soviet wedding."
They were not present at a regular Soviet wedding. They were part of a farce, of a circus performance.
Another thing which I had to, sometimes risking my life to explain to foreigners...
Time magazine, for example, is very critical of the South African racist regime.
The whole article was dedicated to the shameful internal passport system where blacks are not being allowed to leave as whites are.
For some strange reason for the last fourteen years since my defection nobody wanted to pay attention to my passport.
This is my passport. It also shows my nationality and it has a police rubber stamp which is-
-called prapiska in the Russian language which assigns me to a certain area of residence.
I cannot leave that area, in the same way as this black man cannot leave his area in South Africa.
Yet we call the South African government a racist regime. Not a single Jane Schmonda or Fonda is brave enough,
courageous enough to come to the media and say: "Look, this is what happens in the USSR."
I sent a copy of my passport to many American liberals and civil rights defenders and all the other useful idiots.
They never bothered to answer me back. This shows what kind of integrity, what kind of honesty these people have.
They are a bunch of hypocrites because they do not want to recognize a good example of racism in my country.
This is the first stage of befriending a professor. You can see me on the left with the same James Bond smile.
On the right is my KGB supervisor Comrade Leonid Mitrokhin.
And in the middle is a professor of political science in Delhi University.
The next stage would be to invite him to a gathering of the Indo-Soviet Friendship Society.
There he is sitting next to his wife before he is going to be sent to the USSR for a free trip.
Everything is paid for by the Soviet government. He was made to believe that he is invited to the USSR-
-because he is a talented, sober-thinking intellectual.
Absolutely false. He is invited because he is a useful idiot.
Because he will agree and subscribe to most of the Soviet propaganda clichés.
And when he comes back to his own country he is going for years and years to teach the beauties-
-of Soviet socialism to newer and newer generations of his students thus promoting the Soviet propaganda line.
The KGB was even curious about this gentleman, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a great spiritual leader.
Or maybe a great charlatan and crook depending on from which side you are looking at him.
The Beatles were trained at his ashram in Haridwar in India on how to meditate.
Mia Farrow and other useful idiots from Hollywood visited his school and they returned back-
-to the United States absolutely zonked out of their minds with marijuana, hashish and crazy ideas of meditation.
To meditate, in other words, to isolate oneself from the current social and political issues of your own country.
To get into your own bubble, to forget about the troubles of the world.
Obviously the KGB was very fascinated with such a beautiful school, such a brainwashing center for stupid Americans.
I was dispatched by the KGB to check what kind of VIP Americans that attend at this school.
That is you on the left there?
Yes I am on the left. I was trying to get enrolled in that school. Unfortunately Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked too much.
He wanted 500 American dollars for enrollment. But my function was not actually to get enrolled in this school.
My function was to discover what kind of people from the United States attend this school.
And we discovered that yes, there are some members of influential families and public opinion makers of-
-the United States who come back with the crazy stories about Indian philosophy.
Indians themselves look upon them as idiots, useful idiots, to say nothing-
-about the KGB who looked upon them as extremely naive and misguided people.
Obviously, a VIP, a wife of a congressman or a prominent Hollywood personality, after being trained in that school,
is much more instrumental in the hands of manipulators of public opinion and the KGB,
than a normal person who understands and looks through this type of fake religious training.
Why would they be more susceptible to manipulation?
I just mentioned it. Because you see, a person who is too much involved in introspective meditation...
If you carefully look at what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is-
-teaching to Americans, it is that most of the problems, most of the burning issues of today can be solved simply by meditating.
Do not rock the boat. Do not get involved. Just sit down, look at your navel and meditate.
And the things, due to some strange logic, due to cosmic vibration, will settle down by themselves.
This is exactly what the KGB and the Marxist-Leninist propaganda want from Americans.
To distract their opinion, attention and mental energy from the real issues of-
the United States into non-issues, into a non-world, non-existent harmony.
Obviously it is more beneficial for the Soviet aggressors to have a bunch of duped Americans-
-than Americans who are self-conscious, healthy, physically fit and alert to the reality.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi obviously is not on the payroll of the KGB.
But whether he knows it or not, he contributes greatly to the demoralization of American society, and he is not the only one.
There are hundreds of those gurus who come to your country to capitalize on the naiveté and stupidity of Americans.
It is a fashion. It is a fashion to meditate. It is a fashion not to be involved.
So obviously you can see that if the KGB were that curious, if they paid for my trip to Haridwar,
-if they assigned me to that strange job, obviously they were very much fascinated.
They were convinced that that type of brainwashing is very efficient and instrumental in the demoralization of the United States.
Our conversation with Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, who was a defector from the Soviet Union-
-and a former propaganda agent for Novosti and the KGB will continue after this message.
Deception Was My Job Part 3 Cultural Subversion and Escape
A conversation with Yuri Bezmenov, former propagandist for the KGB
Host G. Edward Griffin
This picture shows part of the building of the USSR embassy and my supervisors.
On the left is comrade Mehdi, an Indian communist, and on the right Comrade Mitrokhin,
-my supervisors in the secret Department of Research and Counter-Propaganda.
It has nothing to do with either research or counter-propaganda.
Most of the activity of the department was to compile a huge amount of information on-
-individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion.
Publishers, editors, journalists, actors, educationalists, professors of political science,
-members of parliament and representatives of business circles.
Most of these people were divided roughly into two groups.
Those whom would told the Soviet foreign policy,
-they would be promoted to the positions of power through media and public opinion manipulation.
Those who refused the Soviet influence in their own country would be character assassinated or executed physically.
Same way as in the small town of Huế in South Vietnam where several thousands of Vietnamese were-
-executed in one night when the city was captured by the Vietcong for only two days.
And the American CIA could never figure out how the communists could possibly know of-
-each individual, where he lives, where to get him.
They would be arrested in one night, basically in some four hours before dawn, put in a van, taken out of the city limits and shot.
The answer is very simple. Long before the communists occupied the-
-city there was an extensive network of informers, local Vietnamese citizens who knew absolutely-
-everything about people who were instrumental in public opinion, including barbers and taxi drivers.
Everyone who was sympathetic to the United States was executed.
The same thing was done under the guidance of the Soviet embassy in Hanoi, and same thing I was doing in New Delhi.
To my horror I discovered that in the files were people who were doomed to execution.
There were names of pro-Soviet journalists with whom I was personally friendly.
Pro-Soviet?
Yes, they were idealistically minded leftists who made several visits to the USSR.
And yet the KGB decided that counter revolution, or drastic changes in the political structure of India, they will have to go.
Why is that?
Because they know too much. Simply because the useful idiots,
the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or communist or whatever system...
When they get disillusioned they become the worst enemies. That is why my KGB instructors specifically-
-made the point, never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes.
Aim higher. This was my instruction. Try to get into large circulation, established conservative media.
Reach filthy rich movie makers, intellectuals, so-called "academic circles".
Cynical, egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie.
These are the most recruitable people. People who lack moral principles.
Who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance. They feel that they matter a lot.
These are the people who the KGB wanted very much to recruit.
But to eliminate the others, to execute the others, do not they serve some purpose? Would not they be the ones you rely on?
No, they serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation.
For example, your leftists in the United States... All these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders.
They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation.
When their job is completed they are not needed any more. They know too much.
Some of them when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power,
obviously they get offended, they think that they will come to power.
That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.
But they may turn into the most bitter enemies of Marxist-Leninists when they come to power.
And that is what happened in Nicaragua. You remember most of these former Marxist-Leninists were-
-either put in prison, or one of them split and now he is working against Sandinistas.
It happened in Grenada when Maurice Bishop was, he was already a Marxist,
he was executed by a new Marxist, who was more Marxist than this Marxist.
The same happened in Afghanistan. First there was Taraki, he was killed by Amin,
and then Amin was killed by Babrak Karmal with the help of the KGB.
The same happened in Bangladesh when Mujibur Rahman, a very pro-Soviet leftist, was assassinated by-
-his own Marxist-Leninist military comrades. It is the same pattern everywhere.
The moment they serve their purpose, all these useful idiots, all the idealistically minded Marxists, will either be executed entirely or exiled.
Or put in prisons like in Cuba. Many former Marxists are in prison.
So most of the Indians who were cooperating with the Soviets,
especially with our Department of Information of the USSR embassy, were listed for execution.
And when I discovered that fact, of course I was sick. I was mentally and physically sick.
I thought that I was going to explode one day during the briefing of the Ambassador's office.
I would stand up and say something like; "We are basically a bunch of murderers."
That is what we are, it has nothing to do with "friendship and understanding between the nations" and blah-blah-blah.
We are murderers! We behave as a bunch of thugs in a country which is hospitable to us, a country with ancient traditions.
But I did not defect. I tried to get the message across,
but to my horror nobody wanted even to listen, and least of all to believe what I had to say.
And I tried all kinds of tricks. I would leak information through letters or-
-lost documents or something like that, and still I got no message.
The message was not published even in the conservative mass media of India.
The immediate impulse to defect was the Bangladesh crisis, which was described by American correspondents as-
-an "Islamic grassroot revolution", which is absolute baloney.
There was nothing to do with Islam and there was no grassroot revolution. Actually there are no grassroot revolutions, period.
Any revolution is a byproduct of a highly organized group of conscientious-
-and professional organizers and has nothing to do with grassroots.
In Bangladesh it had nothing to do with grassroots. Most of the Awami League party members,
Awami League means "Peoples Party", were trained in Moscow in the high party school.
Most of the Mukti Fauj leaders... Mukti Fauj in Bengali means "Peoples Army".
It is the same as SWAPO and all kinds of "liberation" armies all over the world, the same bunch of useful idiots.
They were trained at Lumumba University and various centers of the KGB in Simferopol and in Crimea and in Tashkent.
So when I saw that India, Indian territory, being used as a jumping board to destroy East Pakistan...
I saw myself thousands of so-called students traveling through India to East Pakistan through-
-the territory of India, and the Indian government pretended not to see what was going on.
They knew perfectly well, the Indian police knew it, the intelligence department of-
-the Indian government knew it, the KGB of course knew it, and the CIA knew it.
That was most infuriating because when I defected and I explained to the CIA debriefers that they should watch out,
because East Pakistan is going to erupt any moment, they said I was reading too many James Bond novels.
Anyway, so East Pakistan was doomed.
One of my colleagues in the Soviet consulate in Calcutta, when he was dead drunk he ventured into the basement to relieve himself,
and he found big boxes, which said "Printed Matter to Dhaka University"...
Dhaka is the capitol of East Pakistan. And since he was drunk and curious he opened-
-one of the boxes and he discovered not printed matter. He discovered Kalashnikov guns and ammunition in there.
It is a long story. When I saw the preparations for the invasion into East Pakistan, obviously I wanted to defect immediately.
The only thing was... I could not at that time make up my mind about when and where and how.
One of the reasons was that I was in love with India, I mentioned it before, I spoke the languages,
I socialized with people and I understood that I had to act fast unless I wanted this-
-beautiful country to be permanently and irreparably damaged by our presence.
One of the reasons not to defect was, as you can see, I was living in relative affluence.
Who the hell, in a normal state of mind, would defect, and do what?
To be abused by your media? To be called McCarthyist and fascist and paranoid?
Or to drive a taxi in New York City? What for? What the hell for should I defect?
To be abused by Americans, to be insulted in exchange for my effort to bring the truthful information about the impending danger of subversion?
As you can see I was living in quite the comfortable conditions, next to a swimming pool, where Indians were not allowed by the way.
I was a highly paid expert in propaganda. I had my family. I was respected by my nation.
My career was cloudless. The third reason, how to defect with the family?
To defect with a baby and a wife would be virtual suicide because according to the law,
that hypocritical law which I quoted before, the Indian police will have to hand me-
-over back to the KGB and that will be the end of my defection and probably my life.
Again, I cannot smuggle my wife because she was not quite sure what I was doing.
She was not that idealistically involved and she was definitely not in the total picture of what I was doing for the KGB.
She would be shocked if I, you know put her in my van and drove her to the American embassy or elsewhere.
That would be a great danger.
So again I had to defect in such a way that my defection would look like a simple disappearance.
And there were many cases like that when a Soviet agent simply disappeared...
Either killed in action, or thanks to their curiosity and their close contact with radicals-
-some of them were killed by the Marxists by the way.
It happened in many African countries when the Soviet KGB where killed by Africans themselves.
Not because they hated Marxist-Leninism but because they were simply a trigger-happy bunch of unruly characters.
If you give them machine guns they will shoot, and some of the Soviets obviously were not careful enough to protect themselves.
They got into embarrassing situations when they were shot in the crossfire between factions of so-called "liberation movements".
Anyway, so I decided as I said, to study the counter-culture. I decided that this probably would be the best way to disappear.
I socialized with characters like the one on the left. You see, he is a barefoot American hippy.
It took me quite a long time to study exactly what they were doing and how to mix with them. But eventually I did it.
Most of the Indian newspapers carried my picture and a promise of two thousand rupees for information about my whereabouts.
But they were looking for the wrong person because they obviously tried to stop a young Soviet diplomat-
-in white shirt and tie, and this is how I looked at the time of defection.
Nobody could possibly think that the Soviet diplomat would be as crazy as to join a bunch of hippies.
That is you?
Yes, travelling in India and smoke hash. So I made it literally, almost like a Hollywood-style detective story.
From under the nose of the KGB in Bombay Airport, I boarded a plane and I flew to Greece where I was debriefed by the CIA.
That is basically most... That is all for my slides.
Okay, we can turn off the projector... That is very interesting.
You spoke several times before about ideological subversion, that is a phrase that I am afraid some Americans do not fully understand.
When the Soviets use the phrase "ideological subversion", what do they mean by it?
Ideological subversion is the process, which is legitimate, overt and open... You can see it with your own eyes.
All you have to do, all American mass media has to do, is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it.
There is no mystery. It has nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence gathering looks more romantic.
It sells more deodorants through the advertising probably.
That is why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond-type of thrillers.
But in reality the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all.
According to my opinion and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber,
only about 15% of time, money and manpower are spent on espionage as such.
The other 85% is a slow process which we call either "ideological subversion" or "active measures" in the language of the KGB.
Or "psychological warfare". What it basically means is-
-to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that, despite of the abundance of information, no one is able-
-to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.
It is a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages.
The first one is Demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation.
Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years-
-which is required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy.
In other words Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students,
without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism.
The result? The result you can see.
Most of the people who graduated in the sixties, drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying-
-the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media and the educational system.
You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them.
They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern.
You cannot change their minds, even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black,
you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
In other words these people... The process of demoralization is complete and irreversible.
For the society to get rid of these people you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of-
-patriotically minded and common sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society.
And yet these people who have been programmed and as you say are in place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept...
These are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?
Most of them yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in the future what the-
-beautiful society of "equality" and "social justice" means in practice, obviously they will revolt.
They will be very unhappy, frustrated people, and the Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people.
Obviously they will join the leagues of dissidents.
Unlike in the present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America.
Here you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy-rich like Jane Fonda for being dissident, for criticizing your Pentagon.
In the future these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches.
Nobody is going to pay them anything for their beautiful, noble ideas about equality.
This they do not understand and it will be the greatest shock for them of course.
The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already.
For the last 25 years... Actually it is over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously-
-not even comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success.
Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to a lack of moral standards.
As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore.
A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tells him nothing.
Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures...
Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him the concentration camps,
he will refuse to believe it, until he receives a kick in his bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls, then he will understand.
But not before that. That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.
So basically America is stuck with demoralization and unless...
Even if you start right here and now. You start educating a new generation of Americans...
It will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism.
The next stage is Destabilization. This time the subverter does not care about your ideas-
-and the patterns of your consumption. Whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby does not matter anymore.
This time it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation...
What matters are essentials like economy, foreign relations and defense systems.
You can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and the-
-economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic.
I could never believe it fourteen years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the process would have gone that fast.
The next stage is Crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring-
-a country to the verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now.
And after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure and economy, you have the so-called period of Normalization.
It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda.
When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, comrade Brezhnev said:
"Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized."
This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all these schmucks to bring the country to crisis,
to promise people all kinds of goodies and the paradise on earth, to destabilize your economy,
to eliminate the principle of free market competition and to put a Big Brother government in Washington D.C. with-
-benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale who will promise lots of things, never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not.
He will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins.
He will create false illusions that the situation is under control.
The situation is not under control. The situation is disgustingly out of control.
Most of the American politicians, media and educational system trains another generation-
-of people who think they are living at the peacetime. False.
The United States is in a state of war. Undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system.
And the initiator of this war is not comrade Andropov of course. It is the system.
However ridiculous it may sound, it is the world communist system or the world communist conspiracy.
Whether I scare some people or not, I do not give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you.
But you do not have to be paranoid about it. What actually happens now is that unlike me,
you have literally several years to live on unless the United States wakes up.
The time bomb is ticking. With every second the disaster is coming closer and closer.
Unlike myself you will have nowhere to defect to. Unless you want to live in Antarctica with the penguins.
This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.
Okay so what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?
The immediate thing that comes to my mind is that there must be a very strong-
-national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one.
Number two, to explain to them the real danger of socialist, communist, whatever welfare state, Big Brother government.
If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States.
You may kiss good bye to your freedom, including freedoms for homosexuals, for prison inmates.
All this freedom will vanish, evaporate in five seconds, including your precious lives. The second thing...
At the moment at least part of the United States population is convinced that the danger is real.
They have to force their government and I am not talking about sending letters, signing petitions and all this beautiful, noble activity.
I am talking about forcing the United States government to stop aiding Communism.
Because there is no other problem more burning and urgent than to stop the Soviet military-industrial complex-
-from destroying whatever is left of the free world.
And it is very easy to do... No credits, no technology, no money,
no political or diplomatic recognition and of course no such idiocy as grain deals to the USSR.
The Soviet people, 270 million of Soviets, will be eternally thankful to you if you stop-
-aiding the bunch of murderers who sit now in Kremlin and whom President Reagan respectfully calls "government".
They do not govern anything, least of all such a complexity as the Soviet economy.
So basically two very simple... Maybe too simplistic answers or solutions but nevertheless they are the only solutions.
Educate yourself and understand what is going on around you. You are not living at the time of peace.
You are in a state of war and you have precious little time to save yourself.
You do not have much time, especially if we are talking about the young generation.
There is not much time left for convulsions and *** to the beautiful disco music. Very soon it will go just overnight.
If we are talking about capitalists or wealthy businessmen, I think they are selling the rope from which they will hang very soon.
If they do not stop... If they cannot curb their unsettled desire for profit and if they keep on trading with-
-the monster of the Soviet communism, they are going to hang very soon.
They will pray to be killed, but unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska probably, to manage the industry of slaves.
It is simplistic. I know it sounds unpleasant. I know Americans do not like to listen to things which are unpleasant,
but I have defected not to tell you the stories about such idiocy as microfilm, James Bond-type espionage.
This is garbage. You do not need any espionage anymore.
I have come to talk about survival. It is a question of the survival of this system.
You may ask me what is in it for me. Survival obviously. Because unlike...
As I said, I am now in your boat. If we sink, we will sink together.
There is no other place on this planet to defect to.
A conversation with Yuri Bezmenov, former propagandist for the KGB
Camera Crew: Dusty Ebsen Lee Grover Rick Simonton
Post Production at ALL WEST VIDEO
An American Media Production