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.