Black is Beautiful: Part Three

Continued from Part One and Part Two.

This is another type of KGB curiosity. I am on the left with the beautiful Walter Mondale smile. On the left [is] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famous Indian guru. Again, the legitimate question, why KGB socializes with the religious cults? Simple: we are not after Maharishi’s secrets. We are after [the] public opinion of [the] United States. If you remember the history of rock and roll music you know the name of The Beatles. They were trained in India in an ashram in transcendental meditation, and they landed in the United States and they poisoned millions of minds of your children with the strange blend of Oriental mysticism and revolutionary music. “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” My KGB supervisors were dying of curiosity: how could it possibly happen that four degenerate monkeys are so rich and famous in [the] United States?

This was the subject of our studies. You can see me infiltrating the ashram there. I am not implying that Maharishi is on a KGB payroll. I am illustrating to you people that the main objective of KGB activity is your minds.

These two gentlemen: the one on the right is now, by the way, in the United States. He is a Soviet official at the United Nations. On the left, a famous Indian communist. Both of them worked together with me in a secret department called Research and Counter-Propaganda. What we did was neither. We simply compiled information on each individual who is instrumental in shaping public opinion. Those who promote Soviet propaganda will be promoted by us to positions of power and influence by bribery, corruption and publicity. Those who resist Soviet propaganda will be listed by us for defamation, blackmail, or at the time of a people’s revolution, for this: execution.

This picture was taken in Cambodia, but the same execution happens everywhere the ‘people’s” government [is] established. In Nicaragua, in Zimbabwe, in Angola, in Ethiopia, in Bangladesh, in Afghanistan, in Cuba. Everywhere, but you have thick eyeglasses. You have bananas in your ears. Your liberals don’t explain to you what is happening. Maybe I will.

Maybe you will remember the name of a small South Vietnamese city by the name of Hue. It was occupied by North Vietnamese communists for about 10 days, but it was recaptured by the South Vietnamese and US military. They discovered to their horror that several thousand pro-American Vietnamese, your best friends, who talk too much against communism, were rounded up, taken out of the city limits, and executed this way. The CIA could not figure out how the communists could possibly round up that many people, several thousands of them. How did they know their identity, their political affiliations, and their addresses? I knew how.

Long before communists invaded that city, they had established a network of informers, Vietnamese citizens: barbers, taxi drivers, [and] teachers who acted under control [of] the Soviet Embassy in Hanoi, from the department which is called Research and Counter-Propaganda, for which I was in New Delhi doing exactly the same job. And it took me one year, because I am a thick-skulled Russian, to realize that what I was doing [was] compiling death lists for innocent people simply because they talk too much. Believe me: the same lists exist in United Stares. There may be some informers right here in this room, and you don’t need to be paranoid about this but you must KNOW about it. You have the right to know what the Soviet Embassy is doing in your country, and your media doesn’t explain it to you. The dimwits like Dr. Kissinger are appealing to you that quiet diplomacy is what you need. You don’t need any quiet diplomacy. You need LOUD diplomacy, loud and clear against what the Soviet Embassy is doing in United States.

I have no chance to explain it to Dr. Kissinger. Maybe you will have a chance. This is what we are doing. It took me one year to realize that what I was doing [might] bring irreparable damage to India. Naturally my decision was to run away and to scream at the top of my voice: “People, please wake up before this comes to your country.”

My attitude was different. I love India, I respected their culture. I meditated about marrying an Indian girl, which I could not. Naturally, my decision was obvious. Run away! It was a very painful decision.

First of all, because I have to leave behind this type of life. 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[ed]. 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.

This morning-- I have a tape if you want to listen. This morning people on the radio called me these names, dimwits living right here in Atlanta. A “fanatic and idiot” because I am trying to wake you up.

My decision was extremely painful because, as I say, you have to be absolutely crazy to leave behind a luxurious life to come to your side, trying to save you and get spit in my face. What do I get for the last 15 years? I was driving a taxi, I was a security guard, I was a farmhand, I was a translator, [and] I also worked for Canadian Broadcasting. For the last two years I was manager of an apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. Come and visit me. A building populated by [the] chronically unemployed and people who complain about American capitalism. They sit on welfare; they don’t want to pay rent. Even to collect rent would require a machine gun sometimes! Imagine, a Soviet diplomat, a son of high-ranking military officer in USSR, changing bulbs and flushing toilets in Los Angeles. I bet you would not like to take my place…

Another reason to think twice before defection: This secret document, which is called [a] recommendation letter… every Soviet agent assigned to a foreign country has to be co-sponsored by three long-standing members of the Communist Party. Their signatures are at the bottom.

If I defect, all three of them will be fired, imprisoned, or executed. Two of them are my friends. I don’t want to endanger their lives. Because I will feel guilty. Dr. Kissinger feels OK-- he has sentenced to death half of Asia. He is OK; he is nice, fat, talking about “important social-political structure confrontation.” He is smart! He feels OK-- he charged $15,000 for one lecture. Right? He sleeps well. He has good food. No problem.

Then there is another reason: my family. Even though it was a marriage of convenience, by mistake we made a baby already. It’s a shame to leave a baby and a wife. Even in the United States where husbands leave their wives without any political reason, it’s a shame. I was feeling reluctant to defect, and I could not take my wife and my child with me. Why? Very simple. Because the Indian government, which is described in your media as a “non-aligned democratic government,” betrays defectors to the Soviet KGB. Especially after this lady defected in India-- she is Stalin’s daughter-- she defected in 1967, but she is back in Russia, by the way. The Soviet Embassy was so mad at Indira Gandhi that we forced her to adopt a law which says that “no defector from any country has a right of political asylum in any embassy on the territory of India.” Which, as you may understand, is the highest degree of hypocrisy because only Soviet defectors need political asylum.

Imagine yourself, an American citizen, in India and you want to defect to the USSR. What kind of asylum do you need? Political? No, Psychiatric! In my case, my defection would end predictably if I walked into United States Embassy. I would be taken back to the warm embrace of the KGB, and yet I had to run away.

How? This is how. I noticed there are many American hippies [with] no shoes, long hair, smoking hashish, [and] gravely annoying Indian police. And I realized that with my pale European face I would stand out in the crowd of Asians; they will catch me in two minutes. But if I dress as a hippy, and I join a bunch of hippies from the United States, a crazy Russian in a crowd of crazy Americans, [I will be] very difficult to identify. This is exactly what I did. I mixed with them.

All papers carried my picture, and [a] promise of 2,000 rupees for information leading to me arrest, as if I was a criminal or a murderer. An insult to me. And other insult was 2,000 rupees. I was sure I was worth more than that. And yet they could not find me because they were looking for this gentleman:

…and at the time of defection I looked like this:

No sensible detective would even imagine that the normal Russian diplomat would look like a total idiot and walk away from the Soviet Embassy. This is what saved my life and another thing was the American CIA which smuggled me out from Bombay airport, first to Greece. They debriefed me for six months. They gave me the name Tomas Schuman to protect my family [and] friends and keep me away from mischief for five years. I worked in Canada; I was employed by Canadian Broadcasting for six years. I was fired from there for my anti-communist jokes because I was stupid. I thought to be an anti-communist was OK in Canada. No? I was wrong. Under Pierre Trudeau it was a crime to be an anticommunist and be employed by Canadian government.

Continued in Part Four.

Black is Beautiful: Part Two

Continued from Part One.

This is another type of activity. You can see me second on the left with my KGB supervisor, with a group of intellectuals, “progressive writers, journalists, freedom fighters, and civil rights movement leaders, visiting the Kremlin in this picture, seemingly for one purpose only: to denounce American racism and imperialism and to glorify Soviet imperialism and racism. And of course they are being paid for this; don’t worry. Secretly people like [me] call them “useful idiots.” This is a gathering of such idiots in the headquarters of Novosti Press Agency. I am standing next to one of them: an Indian poet who wrote a poem entitled “Springtime Blossom for Mankind, Comrade Lenin.” You can imagine how much money we paid to him.

Pay attention to the number of bottles on the table. This, my dear friends, is hard booze. Part of my job was to keep foreigners permanently on a certain level of intoxication, not too drunk, not too sober. Why? Simple. So that everything looks nice to them in Russia. The moment that they walk out of the airplane in Moscow, we take them to the VIP lounge and we toast with champagne to friendship, understanding, detente, brotherhood, Andropov-style. And if they refuse to drink, we tell them, “It’s unethical. You may offend [the] feelings of our people, because it’s a tradition in our country to get drunk for friendship.” And the poor idiots start boozing for three, four, five, ten days continuously. And then next morning we stop. And if any of you who ever tried this trip, to drink for five days and then stop, you know what will happen next morning? You will be sick with a hangover, even sicker. You will feel guilty sometimes, trying to recollect: “What were we talking about yesterday? With whom did you spend the night?”

In the United States, this decadent capitalist country, it’s not a big problem. You go across the street; you buy a 6-pack of cold beer and refresh your memory. In my country, I control these idiots. I take them to the hotel and there is not a drop of alcohol miles around. And they are dying for a drink. This is the time, when their mentality is the most ‘flexible.’ If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor. Alcohol does it, drugs do it. This is the time when we get them involved in propaganda operations--not espionage, no: propaganda, blackmail.

Your beautiful politicians, journalists, can do any idiocy such as citing Helsinki agreements, SALT accords, [and] preferential trade agreements with the Soviet bandits in the Kremlin. They can make a speech in the Kremlin denouncing America and glorifying the USSR. They can sing a song like Pete Seeger did, or Paul Robeson did, in the Kremlin. Anything we want, to our advantage, and to the disadvantage of your nation. And when they come back to America, your media describes this type of people as “soberly thinking politicians.”

This is one sober-thinking politician, Edward Kennedy, dancing with a Russian bride in a wedding palace. We don’t have church weddings because churches are being destroyed by the communist party. So we have official weddings, and Edward Kennedy is attending one of them. What he believes is that (and Time magazine describes [this] misunderstanding too) he is finding common language with the Russians. No, he is not. He thinks he is a beautiful, charismatic politician. No. He is not. He is a part of a circus. It is a specially prepared occasion to impress your politicians. Then they come back to the United States and say, “Russians are just like us. They are normal people.” Yes, we are. We have two hands, one head and go to bathroom just like you do. We make love, we make babies.

I may forgive a little monkey, Samantha Smith, when she goes to Russia on the invitation of comrade Andropov, comes back and says, “Oh, Russians are lovable people.” Yes, we are. Samantha Smith may not notice the difference between the systems’ political structure[s], and I can forgive her. But I can never forgive a political prostitute like Edward Kennedy for not knowing the difference. You can see Edward Kennedy taking part in a farce, and I hope you will believe this is a farce. This is the same type of farce I organized for hundreds of delegates.

You can see [me] in the middle, probably the same bride on the left, and three impressed correspondents on the right. They will come back home and they will explain to their people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: “Look, Russians are just like us.” Of course we are like you. Please, try to understand, we are not talking about people. We are talking about systems and concepts and moral principles.

Another type of activity: You can see me in the background under the red spot with a group of journalists visiting an ordinary kindergarten. The trick is: it is NOT an ordinary kindergarten.

THIS is the ordinary kindergarten. This picture was published by mistake in one of the government publications in Canada. The caption says, ‘Typical day care center in Siberia.” My dear friends, it is typical, but it is not day care center. It is a prison for the children of political prisoners. They don’t explain it to you, your beautiful journalists.

This is Stalingrad, now Volgograd, the monument to Mother Russia. This propaganda complex is being used to indoctrinate soldiers in unquestionable loyalty to Communist Party.

This is [me], in the same place, with a group of American journalists representing Look Magazine. You can see in the background the statue to Mother Russia. It is a huge monster, ten limes bigger than the Statue of Liberty, an oversized lady with an overdose of hormones, brandishing a sword at you.

This is a copy of Look Magazine, and we’ll come back to that issue later if we have time.

After several successful propaganda operations with American journalists, I was transferred back to India. Your media lies to you when they describe India as the biggest democracy in Asia. India never was the biggest democracy. It was an autocracy, ruled by the Nehru families: Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, and now her son.

Indira Gandhi was not a non-aligned politician. She was very much aligned with the Soviet Union. She was in the Soviet pocket from the moment she stepped into her office.

When she arrived in United States to visit you two years ago, she lied to you and your media repeated these lies. Indira Gandhi said to your people, “There is no evidence of Soviet military presence in India.” My dear friends, it was the biggest and fattest lie. I was dealing with the Soviet military in India. Some of them were building Indian seaports for Soviet nuclear submarines. Others were preparing invasion into East Pakistan, which the dimwits of your media described as a grassroots Islamic revolution. 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.

Your media lies to you when they say that [the] United States embassy was blown up by “Islamic terrorists.” They are terrorists, yes. But they are not Islamic simply because they were born in an Islamic country. Do you know the difference? I cannot call Comrade Andropov a Christian dictator simply because he was born in a country which was Christian. Islamic people do not hate America. They love you. They know where the money comes from. I am a Christian, but I have no reason to hate Islam, but if you read your own newspapers, you may have an impression that Islam is an enemy of American Christians. Baloney. Open up your eyes please.

This is another type of KGB activity. You can see on my right my KGB supervisor [and] in the middle [a] professor of political science, Delhi University. Why do you think [the] KGB socializes with professors of political science? What kind of secrets [do] we want from [a] professor? We don’t want his secrets. We want the brains of his students.

The KGB is not after secrets.

It is after public opinion.

We invite this professor to a meeting of the Soviet Cultural Society.

There is the whole meeting. We trained him in the teaching of Marxism-Leninism. We sent him to Russia, to study that. You can see me [above], sitting next to politicians and members of the Parliament of India. Why? To create an atmosphere of legitimacy and respectability for this propaganda operation. And these dimwits don’t realize what is going on in their own country. Then the professor will be sent back to Delhi University, and for many generations he will indoctrinate students. And they will grow up firmly believing that socialism is good and that America is bad. They will close their eyes; they will have bananas in their ears. Even though they will see that people die from socialism, they say, "No, no, this is because of [the] CIA."

These are the people who are in charge oft this type of propaganda. About the Information Department of the Soviet Embassy: Sometimes your journalists ask me questions, “Mr. Schuman, how many KGB spies do you think there are in Washington, D.C.?” I think it’s a very dumb question. All of them are. The solution is not to find who exactly works for KGB in which rank. The solution is to kick out all of them if they misbehave, together with their beautiful United Nations.

This is [a] group of people who have nothing to do with espionage. They have something to do with your minds. This gentleman is still in the United States. He’s in New York City. Your officer of [the] United States Army in East Germany was shot to death yesterday by Soviet soldiers, on the pretext that your soldier was spying. Whether he did or not is a big question. Besides, spying is an activity in which superpowers do engage.

This gentleman is also in New York City, a correspondent for the Novosti Press Agency. He IS spying. Nobody shoots him, which is a great pity. The FBI knows perfectly well what he is doing against your people. But you see-- there is no law which would enable FBI to kick him out, together with hundreds of other Soviet agents in your country. But there is a law in your country which forbids your FBI to use your own American mass media, even to explain to your people what they want to do to criminals like these. Please explain to me who is more dangerous to you: your FBI or my KGB? Are you a proud and free nation, or are you a bunch of masochists, afraid of your own police?

Continued in Part Three.

Black is Beautiful: Part One

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.

My dear American capitalists, and oppressed masses, I would like to start my talk with three magic words, which usually give three years of imprisonment to any citizen of any socialist country if they pronounce these three magic words loudly and continuously: “I love America.” Apart from loving America, I also love CAUSA, if only for one reason, that they can collect so many interesting people in one room, including Hispanics and blacks.

I’m very happy to see many black Americans in this room, because my message concerns you, greatly. I believe that black is beautiful, but unlike some of your liberals, I practice what I preach. I live in a black area of Los Angeles, in the city which has the best black mayor in the United States, Tom Bradley. I am married to a girl who is rather black, maybe not as black as Andrew Young or Jesse Jackson, but nobody’s perfect. And I am trying to bring such beautiful concepts as equality, justice, and freedom into practical implementation. And believe me, I am not telling these things to you people just to please you. I am not running for political office. I don’t want anything from you people. I am not selling anything, I don’t want any money. I’m simply telling you what I feel.

The rest of my message may not be as pleasant. I’m going to tell you something that is extremely unpleasant to hear. My impression and my knowledge, based on my experience on the Soviet side, is that much of the American mass media is being manipulated by the Soviet KGB. That was my job for about 12 years. There is a strange, nagging negativism in the American mass media in relation to America. The monopolized media in the United States tends to blame everything on the United States--earthquakes arranged by the CIA, acid rains come from American capitalism, oppression, discrimination, racism, come from America. I’m not disputing that there are some bigots in the United States: bigots are everywhere, and through the history of mankind there were people who were pathologically unable to be friendly to blacks, yellows, or any race.

I’m talking about governmental, state racism. This is something that never existed in the United States in observable history. America is not racist. Socialism is. And I’m going to demonstrate to you how and which way. When this morning I was on radio talk show, some caller said, “Mr. Schuman, we don’t want to discuss differences between capitalism and socialism. We want to discuss the injustices which exist in both camps.” Obviously, he doesn’t know what real injustice means.

Before I go into specifics about the mass media, why the media is so masochistic about the United States, why they lie to you--and I’m going to prove how they lie to you--I’m going to show you several pictures which will give you a glimpse into my life and my activity as a Soviet product, as a Soviet disinformation agent, and believe me I was not a spy.

When you watch your Hollywood movies about James Bond espionage, please believe me, most of it is pure garbage. The Soviet KGB do not need any James Bonds today; YOU GIVE THEM THE SECRETS, or SELL THEM THE SECRETS. I was engaged in something much more unpleasant than espionage. I was engaged in ideological subversion, which is seldom explained to people by your media, because the media is part of that process.

Let me show you part of my life story and activity. This is the town in the suburbs of Moscow where I was born. You can see Comrade Lenin’s statue in the middle of the central square, on the right. This is a typical decoration in any Soviet city.

Comrade Lenin is described in your mass media as a great politician, and great revolutionary. He is the idol of many of your intellectuals and freedom fighters and civil rights movements. The United Nations recently celebrated the anniversary of Comrade Lenin’s birthday. And your government sent congratulational telegrams to my government.

Now please try to understand that in the eyes of people who walk by Comrade Lenin’s statue, he was a short, bald man with a speech impediment who died from syphilis, and who introduced the system of mass terror and concentration camps in my country long before these beautiful ideas came to the mind of Adolf Hitler. Nazis killed 6 million Jews. The system established by Lenin killed 66 million of my people. Do you see the difference? Or similarity? You don’t have time to count how many people were killed by the system which is glorified in your mass media.

This is another great politician, the statue of Comrade Stalin, and [me] at the age of 6 or 7. When I realized that the mass media lied to both my people and your people when they describe Uncle Joe as a peacemaker. President Roosevelt called him a nice, charming Uncle Joe. The New York Times described him as a great humanist at the time when he was killing millions of my people.

At the age of 6, as you can see, I realized perfectly well that the United States is not my enemy. You have to be an exceptionally dumb child at the age of 6 to believe that such delicious food as Spam meat was supplied to us by the enemy. When Soviet propaganda tried to convince me that United States [was] just about to invade us, believe me, kids in my school and thousands of other schools were counting the days and minutes: When is Gen. Patton to invade our country?! We wanted to be invaded. We wanted to own blue jeans, jazz records with Glenn Miller music, more chocolate bars, more condensed milk, more Spam meat. We did not want Uncle Joe. Yet your presidents, multinationals, and religious groups imposed Uncle Joe on us to continue the slavery in my country. With your silent consent.

This is my father on the right, Inspector of Land Forces of the Soviet Army General Staff. He inspected Soviet troops stationed in such countries as China, Mongolia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany, where one of your officers was killed last morning. My father died in 1973, but believe me, his comrades are doing the same job right now, inspecting Soviet troops in such countries as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Yemen, Mozambique, Syria, and Iraq. You want more? There are more. Zimbabwe, Angola, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan. You want more? Well, keep on sitting on your fat bottoms. There will be more countries like that.

Your media, your beautiful intellectuals, your think tanks, which I call stink tanks, all these countries they describe as Third World countries, nonaligned countries, and neutral countries. Some idiots come forward with such names as liberated, anti-colonial countries. Sensible people in my country--the Russians as you call us--we have different names for these countries. We call them betrayed countries, betrayed by your government, by your multinationals, by the dim wits of your establishment, intellectuals, some of your freedom and whatever fighters. And there will be more countries like that until you understand the difference between freedom and slavery.

This is the college from which I graduated: Institute of Oriental Languages, a small, elitist school for children of high-ranking officials of the USSR. I studied the languages of India, Pakistan, Hindi and Urdu. I also studied history, economy, political science, communications, mass media--anything that would enable me to be an effective Soviet bureaucrat in India.

I also studied the music of India, as you can see. I even tried to look like an Indian when I was a second year student, and I was encouraged to do so because we were preparing to be foreign correspondents, diplomats or spies.

[Picture not from book.] As every other Soviet student, I had to volunteer to harvest grain in Soviet collective farms. Strictly according to Marxist-Leninist slogans, those who do not work shall not eat. You can see me eating; therefore, I was working.

This is the area where Soviet students spend their vacation; it is marked by the yellow color; it is called Kazakhstan. The picture is taken from an American news magazine, US News & World Report. I demonstrate it to you as an example of the monumental ignorance of your mass media. They call this area Russia’s breadbasket. I hope you people realize that Russia’s breadbasket is not Kazakhstan; it is Kansas, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio.

This is my first assignment as a translator with a Soviet economic aid group building oil refineries. At the time I realized that what we were doing in India has nothing to do with friendship, cooperation. detente, peace. What we were doing was building a carbon-copy of the Soviet socialist system in India, peacefully, without tanks. I hated socialism back home, yet I did my job in India. Why? Simple.

My country sent me to India. My country, good or bad, I love my country, and I still do even though I despise the system. I tried to be friendly to Indians. I was trying to be friendly to little Indians like this boy [not shown]. I was trying to be friendly to not-so-little Indians like this girl.

If you remember, Karl Marx said, ‘Proletarians of all the countries, unite.’ To be a good Marxist, I wanted to unite with a nice proletarian girl. I was always crazy about Oriental girls for a very simple reason: apart from being a “racist” I spent my childhood in the Oriental part of USSR, in Kazakhstan. My father was fighting on the front lines; my mother was working in the factories. My adopted mother was an Oriental girl with dark skin and slanted eyes. That was the first lady [who] showed me some respect, love and tenderness, changed my diapers and wiped my nose. As every normal child, I remember her face for the rest of my life. I did not want to marry a fat, white Russian girl. I wanted to marry a slender, dark Indian girl.

I wish I could explain it to your freedom fighters in the United States, who blame America for being racist. It is my country, under Soviet socialism, which is the most racist system in the world. By law in USSR, I was not allowed to marry a foreign girl, and--Marx forbid!--to make love to her, because the Communist Party has control on my genes and chromosomes. I was not allowed to marry into an ‘inferior race,’ and this is something that I have desperately tried to explain to your civil rights activists who blame America.

They show you these pictures, taken from Time magazine: a black South African showing his passport. “Worldwide outcry against racism.” Yes, it is a shame to deny certain parts of a population--the majority of blacks in South Africa--their political rights. I am not debating that. Yes, it is a shame to have a passport, an internal document, which is unheard of in the United States, with a picture, description of nationality or racial origin, and a police rubber stamp, which prescribes for this man where he is supposed to live. His place of residence, right?

Now, why don’t you look at this passport--it is my passport, a Soviet passport. There is my picture. There is a police rubber stamp which prescribes where I have to reside, and there is my indication of racial origin on the right bottom line; it says ‘Ruski,’ Russian. I was lucky to be Russian. But if I were born a Jew in a God-forsaken village, I had no right to move from one city to another. Now there are demonstrations in front of the South African Embassy because 30 blacks were killed in South Africa. Have you ever heard about anyone of your liberal establishment demonstrating in front of the Soviet embassy, [which] killed 15 million Ukrainians, 2 million Crimean Tartars, and thousands of other ethnic minorities in my country? Where are your Jesse Jacksons? Why don’t they demonstrate in front of the Soviet embassy? Please explain it to me; maybe I’m a dumb Russian. Maybe I don’t understand what racism is. THIS IS RACISM!

Coming back to my wife’s story--the Communist Party didn’t want me to marry an Indian girl, so I had to marry this nice Russian girl in the middle. I couldn’t stand her, but that was the desire of my superiors. A Soviet bureaucrat of my caliber is not allowed to marry anyone he wants. My wife has to go through security clearance. Without love, husband and wife in the Soviet bureaucracy become virtually informers on each other to prevent defection. And if you behave like a good boy, if you marry who they want you to marry, this is what happens.

A status symbol of a Soviet young bureaucrat, government job, private car, nice-looking wife who speaks English--she hates you very much and reports everything you say to KGB--and a transistor radio, manufactured in Japan to listen to Voice of America.

[Picture not from book.]If you behave like a good boy, they promote you. You can see me on the right as a press officer of the USSR Embassy translating a speech by a Soviet boss on the occasion of the commissioning of this oil refinery in India. When the job was done, I was transferred back to Moscow to work for the Novosti Press Agency.

This is headquarters of Novosti. Novosti means ‘news’ in Russian. Novosti has nothing to do with news. Novosti is the KGB-controlled front for political indoctrination, ideological subversion, espionage and terrorism.

Part of my job was to manipulate and befriend students of Patrice Lumumba Friendship University. This is a group of such students visiting the Kremlin with me. They don’t look like students, and they were not. Nor were they spies.

They were future agents of disinformation, subversion and terrorism. They were imported to the USSR from Asia, Africa and Latin America, trained at Lumumba Friendship University, then for two years in KGB school, then dispatched back to their countries. And after a short period of time, they become leaders of national liberation movements.

And when they destabilize their own country, they start indiscriminately shooting and killing their own people. And when they do that, beautiful journalists of the United States describe these bandits as “anti-government guerrillas,” “leftist rebels,” right? Some even come forward with such fancy names as “freedom fighters,” or “fighters for majority rule.” Now, when Salvadorans want to fight back against these KGB-trained bandits and assassins and rapists, when Salvadorans shoot back, what does The New York Times call them? “Death squads,” “right-wing death squads.” Now, these are left-wing death squads. You ever heard this name in your media? Why not? Explain to me why not.

Continued in Part Two.

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.

Did This Happen Without Help?

Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism (Rasmussen):

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Yuri Bezmenov, Love Letter to America:

All you have to do to “screw up” the status quo of a free nation, is to borrow ONE false idea from the ideology of a communist or totalitarian government. For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen the idea of “egalitarianism.” “People born equal therefore must be equal.” Sounds great. But look at yourselves. Were you born equal? Some of you weighed 7 pounds at birth, others 6 or 5... Are you NOW equal? In any way? Physically, mentally, emotionally, racially, spiritually? Some are tall and dumb, others short, bald and clever. Now, let's figure out what will happen if we LEGISLATE EQUALITY, and make the concept of “equality” a cornerstone and pillar of socio-economical and political system. All right? You don't have to be a great economist or sociologist to foresee that some of the people who are “less equal” would demand as much as those who are “more equal” BY LAW!

For how long have we been educating the youth of America, and in how many places, in this false principle of "equality" and not in the goodness of the American system of government and capitalism?

To change the direction of America's future and to return to the basic American values, proven to be efficient and productive for almost 200 years of historically unprecedented freedom and affluence, you have to educate a NEW generation of Americans, this time in the spirit of patriotism and CAPITALISM. All right, you don't want to 'return.’ You'd rather have something new and progressive AND constructive, to make America once again respected and loved all over the world, so that the recipients of t he U.S. aid no longer shout 'Yankee Go Home’? In any case, even if you start the education of a NEW generation of Americans RIGHT THIS MINUTE, it will take you the next 15 to 20 years to raise this new generation to the levels of power and authority.

What hope do we currently have of wrenching the power to educate our children away from the academic Marxists?

It is no absurdity to believe that leftist control of education is the reason why half our young people think socialism is better than capitalism, despite the nourishment they have received from capitalism, despite the greatness of the American system, which is capitalist, and despite all of the inefficiencies, loss of freedom, and horrors that are or should be associated with socialism around the world. This is not some natural development of thought-- one generation more inclined to socialism than the next. It is the result of a conscious and directed effort that has not been sufficiently opposed and counter-balanced.

Aw Geez, Don't Sell Drones to Russia! and Other Stories

Russia buys unmanned drones from Israel: report (AFP):

Russia has purchased its first unmanned drones from Israel after its own manufacturers turned out to be ineffective at making the high-tech reconnaissance aircraft, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Yea, there's no arms embargo against Russia, but there should be.

Russia is in the midst of an ongoing effort to modernise its military and equip its armed forces with up-to-date technology.

Of course, they're not preparing for anything, just repairing and updating equipment. Nothing to see here. Summon: cliché of "rusting Soviet-era tanks." Most people I talk to honestly believe that Russia's military is old and obsolete, not a threat to anyone. Summon: paranoid conspiracy theorist voice: that's what they want you to think!

And those drones? Not double-headed eagles or solely Russian Federation colors to be emblazoned on them. Also Soviet red stars!:

Lawmakers keep red stars on Russian planes (AP):

Russian lawmakers on Wednesday reversed their earlier decision to have Soviet-era red stars on military aircraft repainted in three colors of the national flag.

The Kremlin-controlled lower house of parliament voted 408-0 with one abstention to keep the five-pointed stars red and only add stripes in the national colors around their contour.

The move reverses the preliminary approval in December of a bill that called for repainting the stars in red, white and blue.

No, the Duma isn't a sham body whose members live in fear of persecution for dissension, or anything. It's just that not one member was excepted from the mass change-of-heart that precipitated this re-embracing of the Soviet era.

But anyone who sees ominous tidings in this, well... they just haven't gotten rid of that "Cold War mentality."

Meanwhile...

Iran to say mastering final stage of nuclear cycle (Reuters):

"I will have good nuclear news for the honored Iranian nation tomorrow (April 9)," Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday in a televised speech at the central city of Isfahan.

A peaceful nuclear reactor for peaceful energy for peace and peace and stuff?

[A]nalysts expected Ahmadinejad to say that Iran has perfected the last of several phases of fuel output.

"A possible announcement will be production of natural uranium pellets (in Isfahan) for Iran's Arak heavy water reactor and also production of fuel rods and assembling rods into bundles," said an analyst who asked not to be named, citing the issue's political sensitivities. "It is the final stage in a long process to produce nuclear fuel."

Oh. But... Russia has our back on this right? They are our partner in opposing the nuclear ambitions of terrorist-sponsoring, unstable, autocratic regimes, I thought... didn't we talk about giving up missile defense facilities Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for their help? Yea, we can count on Russia.

Oh:

Russia opposes sanctions against N.Korea over rocket launch (Novosti):

"We are definitely concerned by the recent rocket launch and believe it does not offer grounds for stabilizing the situation in the region," Sergei Lavrov said, adding that "we also believe that any threat of sanctions would be counterproductive."

Why would it be counterproductive? They didn't say. Presumably it might upset them, causing them to... launch a missile when we said they couldn't?

Ok, then, at least the United States will oppose Iran.

US to attend group nuclear talks with Iran (AP):

The Obama administration said Wednesday it will participate directly in group talks with Iran over its suspect nuclear program, marking another shift from former President George W. Bush's policy.

Oh, talks. That sounds scary. At least it's "a shift" from Bush's policy of not meeting with Iran, except for all of those times that we met with them.

"If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program," [State Department spokesman Robert Wood] said. "Any breakthrough will be the result of the collective efforts of all the parties, including Iran."

Oh, yea? That sounds promising! Let me know how that works out...

Well, maybe Israel will do something about it. You know, besides selling sophisticated drones to Iran's main ally in nuclear weapon acquisition.