Black is Beautiful: Introduction

The following is the text of Yuri Bezmenov's pamphlet, Black is Beautiful, Communism is Not. I have included scans of the pictures where or near to where they appear in the text. I have performed some minor grammatical edits to the text, most of which are demarcated with "[]" brackets. Some typos from the OCR may remain. Credit is due to T. from Germany for scanning the book.

The PDF is here.

Black is Beautiful is similar in many respects to Love Letter to America and Bezmenov's interview with G. Edward Griffin and lecture to a group in Los Angeles, both available on YouTube. This document is merely the transcript of a similar talk that Bezmenov gave to a CAUSA group in Atlanta. Presumably Bezmenov gave this talk many other places around the country.

The booklet contains many of the same anecdotes, and the pictures are mostly identical to the ones shown in the Griffin interview. Apparently Bezmenov used the same slide show wherever he went.

However, there are many new ideas in this booklet, and even for the old ones it is helpful to hear him expound on them in a different way. He also says a number of bizarre and controversial things beyond his main thesis. I am talking about passages such as:

Believe me please, there was no grass, no root, no revolution, and least of all Islam. There is no such thing as an Islamic revolution. Revolution has nothing to do with Islam. There is no such thing as Islamic terrorists.

Or:

The main objective of [the] KGB is to turn you from an open society, as I described in this diagram, to a closed one, which is carbon copy of the Soviet communist, or socialist, or fascist society. Why? Why would they bother? Very simple. To merge into one global system.

Or:

Your media lies to you. Why? Media is a part of the process of demoralization. They are monopolized today. They are controlled by the same group of people, unelected, super-rich and super-powerful people who trade with murders of my nation in the Kremlin.

(Emphasis mine.) These passages need to be taken within the larger context, but even then many of them are extraneous and misleading from Bezmenov's central point.

He doesn't mean that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist, but that it isn't naturally Islamic, and it didn't begin as an organic movement. He goes too far when he says that Muslims don't hate Christians and don't want to kill them, because some of them do. But his point, that terrorism is an invention of Soviet communism and not a natural development in the Muslim world, is correct. He neglects to mention that the Islamic world was incredibly susceptible to anti-American propaganda and already had the discipline and commitment necessary to commit violent, often suicidal acts of terrorism.

The second passage I have quoted could be construed by some conspiracy-theory-mongers to mean that the KGB is part of a "New World Order" conspiracy controlled by a higher group, perhaps "international bankers." This is nonsense; and in fact many of these theories have been formulated by disinformation wizards in the KGB specifically to discredit those who outline the actual activities of the Soviet junta.

The problem is that today these wacky theories are disconnected from their roots in actual Soviet propaganda, or more accurately, their overt diplomatic chatter. In the 70s and 80s the Soviets were talking about a lessening of Communist ideology, and talked up how similar they were to the West and the United States. They spoke about how eventually the two systems of capitalism and socialism would converge into a global system. This was music to the ears of Western liberals who believed that ideological opposition to socialism and communism were merely xenophobia and racism in disguise, and that, in the words of Jimmy Carter, we no longer needed "an inordinate fear of communism."

"Commies: they're just like us"-- that was the message. Even so-called dissidents like Andrei Sakharov peddled this message, for instance in his book Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.

This also catered to the wishes of the American right-wing or Republican leaders, who wanted to believe there was a strong democratic, intellectual movement for freedom in the Soviet Union, and that only by working together with the system could real change be achieved. Thus President Reagan softened to Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush spoke of a "new world order."

These events are completely taken out of their context by NWO people. So could this saying of Bezmenov's. But he is saying precisely the opposite of the Soviet propagandists; that is, that there is no possible merging of Soviet communism and Western capitalism. The world government would not be some secret intergovernmental body as the NWO people imagine, perhaps run by Zionist Illuminati bankers or some such nonsense, but merely the Soviet (and probably also the Chinese) Politburo.

Those who are innocent of this topic may take these as the same thing (wild conspiracy theory). They are not. One is completely divorced from reality and is based on flights of fancy, the other is (or was) the stated goal of international communism.

Finally, in the third passage I have brought to your attention, Bezmenov says that the "media" is "controlled" but a super-rich elite who are also responsible for fighting war in Vietnam while also subsidizing their real enemy in Vietnam, the Soviet Union. This also strikes me immediately as wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Later in that paragraph he remarks that those who "send billions of dollars of credit to the Soviet government" are same same people who "control your media."

What is he talking about? As best as I can surmise, he just means by "same group of people," the "establishment" mentality of the elite who occupy the positions of power in the media and the government, who suck up lies about the Soviet Union and think that by providing credit to communists (financial in the case of government, moral in the case of media), they can somehow defeat communism.

One more point: Some of Bezmenov's recommendations involve evangelical Christianity and for this reason can be distasteful. He advises us to listen to Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell. He apparently thinks that the theory of evolution is a demoralizing force: "Bring prayer back to school. No matter what prayer, as long as your children will remember that their grand-grand-grandparents were not monkeys." Perhaps the idea of evolution is demoralizing, but it doesn't mean it's not true. I myself would identify Bezmenov's indifference about Christian religion (he is apparently Orthodox, but goes to a Catholic church, and advises us to listen to evangelical preachers) as the result of demoralization; his own chart "The Subversion Process" lists the "methods" of "demoralization" for religion as "politicize, commercialize, entertainment." I would include Robertson et al. in that category.

As I have said before, Bezmenov is largely impressionistic and tends to exaggerate. For this reason what he says should be taken with a grain of salt. However, his main thesis, that the Soviet Union aims to demoralize Western society by destroying everything of cohesive value in it, and thus make it ready for conquering, is extremely important. Of course it needs to be combined with other more serious and academic accounts. But Bezmenov is more fun.

He is at his best in such passages as:

I was filthy rich by Soviet standards. Maybe not as filthy as your Jane Fonda, but definitely rich. My father was a big boss in the military; I was a frequent traveler. I could buy anything I want. Just one telephone call-- television sets, cars, booze, girls, you name it. Try to understand leaving all this behind to run to the United States to take the side of losers—-you! And what do I get for this? For the last 15 years I have been screaming, “Wake up people!” What do I get in return? More than 15 countries since my defection have been occupied by communists. And yet your media calls me paranoid, right-wing fanatic, ultra-conservative, McCarthyist, or whatever.

And:

I described it in this little booklet, which I peddle for $5; I know it’s highway robbery. Consider it support of a needy family—mine. I must compete with Jane Fonda. I describe the process in which I took part, the process of ideological subversion, which has nothing to do with espionage. It has something to do with your perception of reality. Why does the KGB want to mess up your minds? Very simple. Soviet international communists realize perfectly well they cannot defeat United States economically or militarily. They cannot force your government to do what they want it to do because your government is being changed every four years. You mess up Jimmy Carter; then along comes Ronald Reagan. It’s impossible. But it is possible to confuse the minds of millions of Americans so that YOU will force your government to do what the communists want you to do.

And:

And that’s where I come into conflict with your beautiful intellectuals. They say, “Mr. Schuman, you don’t know our Constitution, especially our Declaration of Independence . It says, ‘We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.’” See how ignorant I am? I don’t know your Constitution. Believe me, I know. I read it at the age of 15, and I was amazed how simple and how beautiful it is. It is the best constitution in the world. First of all, there is no period, there is a comma. Your liberals quote only one line: “We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.”

Well, read it yourself...

Go to Part One.

"If you think that I am crazy, please ask Mexicans."

Coming soon:



The following excerpts are from a talk on DISINFORMATION IN THE LIBERAL MEDIA, given March 26 [1985] at a CAUSA USA Regional Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The speaker, Mr. Tomas Schuman (Yuri Bezmenov), was formerly a correspondent for the Soviet Novosti Press Agency, specializing in producing disinformation for the foreign media. A defector, Mr. Schuman now works as a political analyst and public speaker on disinformation and other activities of the Soviet KGB.

Continue to the Introduction.

Preobrazhenskiy/Bukovsky Interview

Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB/FSB officer who now lives in the United States, recently interviewed the Soviet dissident and Russian opposition party leader Vladimir Bukovsky.

They discussed the KGB infiltration of the Russian Church, Putin's deception of world leaders including President Bush, and the manner in which President Obama is likely to be deceived. Here is an excerpt:

Preobrazhensky: Kremlin propaganda has openly called America the number one enemy. Many Russians are sure that America wants to destroy their country. Recently, the President of Ingushetia (the Russian Caucasus), an official person, has said so too. For Americans, it is hard to understand that Putin doesn’t need friendship with their country at all. He mostly needs the U.S. as a symbol of the exterior threat, which is so necessary for consolidating Russians in a time of crisis. Also, the ideas of American democracy penetrated into Russia in 1990s, so Putin has to cauterize them.

Bukovsky: The editors of the Western media tolerate the tone of their Moscow correspondents. The west has managed to justify even Putin’s severely anti-Western Munich speech by explaining it on the basis of some domestic factors. The Western leaders do not want to make Putin angry, naively believing that it will help them. While in fact that is just what Putin needs. Putin tells the West: “You are hostile!” and the West makes all possible concessions in order not to anger Putin again. Because Americans live in a society without conflicts, hostility causes stress, under which Americans have not been accustomed to live. But we Russians can tolerate it very well. Because we have been brought up in an atmosphere of police arbitrariness, of total boorishness. We all have stood in endless queues for many hours in order to buy something in the empty Soviet stores. Americans are much more vulnerable than Russians.

Preobrazhensky: And that is why Obama wants to improve relations with Russia.

Bukovsky: “Improving relations” is a senseless phrase. The West was also improving relations with the Soviet Union in the period of détente, but it resulted in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Preobrazhensky: But the new American President wants to seriously understand what is separating us.

Coincidentally, I have just read books by both Preobrazhenskiy and Bukovsky and will review them here shortly.

The interview is on FrontPage Magazine.

Editor's Note

I will no longer be using Useless Dissident to comment on current news stories or recent articles. I will now use this space only to review the books I have been reading on the subjects of intelligence, Russian history, Communism, and espionage. Upcoming reviews:

Abel, by Louise Bernikow
To Build a Castle, by Vladimir Bukovsky
New Lies for Old, by Anatoly Golitsyn
Spy Wars, by Pete Bagley
Deception, by Edward Jay Epstein
On the Wrong Side, by Stanislav Levchenko
KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse, by Konstantin Preobrazhensky

History Lesson

From Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa:

The Cold War and the Iraq War are far from being identical. But they are similar. In both wars our enemies were armed with Kalashnikovs and Katyusha rockets. And in both wars our enemies were indoctrinated by Moscow to hate Americans. In 1972, Yury Andropov, the first KGB chairman to be enthroned in the Kremlin, tasked the Soviet bloc intelligence community to transform Palestinian anti-Semitism into an armed anti-American doctrine throughout the whole Islamic world. A billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than a million could,” he told me. Our task was to portray the U.S. as a Zionist country dedicated to converting the Islamic world into a Jewish colony. The KGB chairman explained that Islamic cultures would be uniquely receptive to our goals. They had a taste for nationalism, jingoism and victimology. Their oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against “Zionist America” would flow naturally from their religious fervor.

Sounds familiar?

We do not have an instrument to measure the results of intelligence influence operations. But over the course of thirty-some years the Soviet bloc community spread millions of Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a tsarist Russian forgery that had become the basis for much of Hitler’s anti-Semitic philosophy) in the Islamic world. It also sent thousands of influence agents to the same area, tasked to portray the U.S. as a country intent on subjugating the world to Jewish interests. It is safe to presume that this combined effort must have played a role in generating the hatred for America that is now screamed forth across the Islamic world.

[...]

The general perception is that Germany was the cradle of contemporary anti-Semitism. But before we had the word Holocaust we had the Russian word pogrom, meaning massacre. An official Russian dictionary of 1939 defines pogrom as the government-organized mass slaughter of some element of the population as a group, such as the Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia. Russia’s first major pogrom against the Jews took place on April 15, 1881, in the Ukrainian town of Yelisavetgrad.

Totalitarianism always requires a tangible enemy.

The Protocols was compiled by the tsarist political police, the Okhrana, to compromise Russia’s Jewish minister of finance, Sergey Witte, who wanted to modernize the country. The author of the Protocols was an Okhrana disinformation expert, Petr Ivanovich Rachovsky, who was assigned to France at that time and had been inspired by the enormous wave of anti-Semitism aroused by the Dreyfus controversy. Rachovsky lifted most of his text from an obscure, 1864 French satire called Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), written by Maurice Joly and accusing Emperor Napoleon III of plotting to seize all the powers in French society. Rachovsky had essentially done nothing more than substitute the words the world for France and the Jews for Napoleon III.

To disguise its hand, the Okhrana claimed the Protocols to be the minutes of the first Zionist Congress (held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897), at which the Jews had allegedly plotted to take over the world.

The Protocols are one of the most resilient pieces of disinformation in history. In 1921, the Times of London published a devastating exposure of the forgery by printing extracts from the Protocols side-by-side with the passages from the Joly book that had been plagiarized. That did not stop the Protocols from becoming the basis for much of Hitler’s anti-Semitic philosophy as expressed in Mein Kampf, written in 1923. In fact, Nazi Germany later translated the Protocols into many languages and flooded the world with them to support its allegation that there was a Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination, and to demonstrate that the persecution of Jews was a necessary self-defense for Germany.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Protocols began infecting Russia itself. The state-controlled Orthodox Church, alleging Jewish plans to overthrow Christianity in Russia, started printing the Protocols and selling them to the population. In October 1998 Albert Makashov, a retired Soviet general and member of the Duma, called for the “extermination of all Jews in Russia,” after insinuating that they were being paid by American Zionism. On November 4, 1998, the Duma officially endorsed Makashov’s statement by voting (121-107) to defeat a parliamentary motion censuring his hate-filled statement. On August 3, 2001, a letter from ninety-eight U.S. Senators expressing concern about the rise of anti-Semitism in the Russian Federation was sent to President Putin.

Footnotes excised. For more, read the original at FrontPage Magazine.