It appears that the Soviet's carried on the technique of disinformation of the Okhrana, the secret police of Czarist Russia.  Disinformation didn't originate with the Soviets, it has a long history and has always been used in one form or another by those in power to discredit their opponents and manipulate public opinion.  For the purpose of this thread, I'm focusing solely on Soviet disinformation and to show how all of us have been influenced and brainwashed by it to a certain extent.

What is disinformation?

I obtained this tidbit of information from http://www.answers.com/topic/disinformation

The KGB coined the Russian word dezinformatsiya; it came into the English language as disinformation. The technique of disinformation goes back at least to 1918 with the end of World War I. Disinformation as a KGB weapon began in 1923 when I. S. Inshlikht, deputy chairman of the GPU, then the name of the KGB, proposed the establishment of a special disinformation office to conduct active intelligence operations.

Soviet active measures. Soviet active measures refer to the influence operations organized by the Soviet government. These include white, gray, and black propaganda, as well as disinformation. White propaganda was created by the Information Department of the Communist Party and included those publicly identified Soviet channels as Radio Moscow, Novosti, and pamphlets and magazines as well as official Soviet government statements. Gray propaganda was organized by the International Department of the Communist Party and used such channels as the foreign Communist Parties and the network of international Soviet fronts. Black propaganda was prepared by the KGB and included agents of influence, covert media placements, and until 1959, assassinations. Forgeries and disinformation were used by the Soviets in all modes.

Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.

Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions. A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).

Another technique of concealing facts, or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control. When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with many easily disproved false claims.

Examples of disinformation

In espionage or military intelligence, disinformation is the deliberate spreading of false information to mislead an enemy as to one's position or course of action. In politics, disinformation is the deliberate attempt to deflect voter support of an opponent, disseminating false statements of innuendo based on the candidates vulnerabilities as revealed by opposition research. In both cases, it also includes the distortion of true information in such a way as to render it useless.

Disinformation may include distribution of forged docuмents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading malicious rumors and fabricated intelligence. Its techniques may also be found in commerce and government, used to try to undermine the position of a competitor.

http://www.heretical.com/miscella/dinform.html

With KGB approval and support, the Czech STB in the autumn of 1964 initiated a vast deception campaign to arouse Indonesian passions against the United States. Through an Indonesian ambassador they had compromised with female agents, the Czechs purveyed to President Sukarno a series of forged docuмents and fictitious reports conjuring up CIA plots against him. One forgery suggested that the CIA planned to αssαssιnαtҽ Sukarno; another 'revealed' a joint American-British plan to invade Indonesia from Malaysia. The unstable Sukarno responded with anti-American diatribes, which some Indonesian journalists in the pay of the KGB and STB amplified and Radio Moscow played back to the Indonesian people. Incited mobs besieged American offices in Djakarta, anti-American hysteria raged throughout the country, and US influence was eradicated. The former STB deception specialist Ladislav Bittman has written a history and analysis of the operation in which he participated. He states, 'We ourselves were surprised by the monstrous proportions to which the provocation grew.'

The practice is another legacy of Lenin embedded in Soviet custom. Just as Lenin admired terror, he extolled the 'poisoned weapons' of deceit, duplicity, and slander. He wrote:

'The communists must be prepared to make every sacrifice and, if necessary, even resort to all sorts of cunning schemes and stratagems, to employ illegal methods, to evade and conceal the truth... The practical part of communist policy is to incite one [enemy] against another... We communists must use one country against another.. My words were calculated to evoke hatred, aversion, and contempt... not to convince but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct an opponent's mistake but to destroy him, to wipe his organization off the face of the earth. This formulation is indeed of such a nature as to evoke the worst thoughts, the worst suspicions about the opponent.'[/quote]

Divide and Conquer: The KGB disinformation campaign against Ukrainians and Jєωs

http://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/detail/divide-and-conquer-the-kgb-disinformation-campaign-against-ukrainians-and-Jєωs

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Leonid Shabarshin, who formerly headed the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the KGB, explained to the Moscow newspaper Trud that one of the jobs of the KGB was disinformation for "compromising ‘anti-Soviets.'"

In Shebarshin's words, "during the Cold War the essence of our active measures was to inflict political and moral damage on our basic opponent, the United States . . . [so] we compromised political figures, organs of the press, and Americans whose activities were in some way unwelcome [to the Soviets]." The KGB veteran revealed that every "active measure" against the enemies of the Soviet Union abroad was submitted by KGB to the Politburo "and was implemented only with its permission. The results of the action were also reported to the Politburo."

The KGB was given the important job of creating division in the anti-Soviet camp. English language propaganda books and pamphlets were prepared with KGB assistance for dissemination in the West.  One such pamphlet complained that Ukrainian nationalists arrange noisy demonstrations in support of the Israeli aggressors (as has happened in West Germany), while the Zionist chieftains declare their ‘firm intention to continue close cooperation' with the OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] killers. Therefore, both partners in this wicked marriage publicly admit the real nature of the sinister alliance between Zionists and Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.

To the Soviets, those who opposed them would only do so on orders of the CIA. The pamphlet went on "The malignant partnership of the Magen David [Star of David] and the nationalist trident [the Ukrainian national emblem], fostered by the CIA, has long become a reality."

Soviet attempts to discredit Jєωs

Hanusiak used some of the KGB information in a 1973 book called Lest We Forget.   It was republished in Canada in 1976 with introductions that revealed its real purpose. One introduction signed Joshua Gershman complained,

It is no secret that leaders of the capitalist political parties in Canada - including Jєωs - are often honored guests at celebrations of the Ukrainian nationalists and other chauvinist ethnic community organizations, particularly at the time of elections.They express solidarity with the misleading slogans calling for the ‘liberation' of the Ukraine and other Soviet Republics. . . . Thus we witnessed in Canada, in 1971, during the official friendship visit of Soviet Premier Kosygin, the ugly collaboration of cold warriors among the Jєωιѕн, Ukrainian, Hungarian and other ethnic groups, demonstrating against the Soviet Union.

In another introduction to the book, Peter Krawchuk complained that the Ukrainian nationalists and Zionists "in their hatred of the Soviet Union . . . have become partners." In reality, many of the Jєωs who opposed the communist empire were not Zionist. The communists used the term "Zionist" as a synonym for Jєωs. During World War II the NKVD used the code word "Rats" for both Jєωs and Zionists. When the NKVD assigned agent Robert Soblen (Ruvelis Sobolevicius) to take over the spying on Trotskyites and Jєωs in New York, the secret communication referred to them under the code-names "polecats" and "rats."

It is interesting to note that at the same time, the nαzιs in occupied Ukraine tried to divide Ukrainians and Jєωs by distributing a leaflet saying that "Jєωs are like rats." It showed a picture of a rat superimposed on the Star of David, the same Jєωιѕн symbol that the above-mentioned Soviet propaganda pamphlet, complained was in partnership with the Ukrainian trident.

KGB methodology to divide Jєωs from Ukrainians and Lithuanians

The KGB methodology in attempting to divide Jєωs from Ukrainians and other ethnic groups can best be understood by examining a collection of secret KGB materials discovered in Lithuania by the French scholar Françoise Thom. The KGB used both agents and "co-optees." The KGB's official definition of agent was "An individual who consciously, systematically and clandestinely carries out particular intelligence assignments in his own country or abroad." The difference was that the agent was a full time operative of any nationality, while the co-optee was a Soviet citizen, only occasionally called upon to carry out KGB orders.

In July 1980 the KGB in Lithuania wrote a memorandum on "Suggestions on active measures in connection with the attempts of the Zionists and Lithuanian nationalist émigrés to coordinate their activities." According to the memo, the "Zionists" had launched an anti-Soviet campaign which had been reported in the Lithuanian language press in the West. The leaders of the Lithuanian nationalist groups made contact with Jєωιѕн groups "with the aim of coordinating hostile activities against the Soviet Union with them."

The campaign against the Lithuanians was assigned to two KGB agents code named "Aleksas" and "Germanas" and two cooptees, Yu. Ronderis and Ya. Vinitskas. (While the agents mentioned in KGB reports were given code names, the co-optees were listed by their real names.) The KGB cooptee Yu. Ronderis was assigned to find people in Israel who could sign statements addressed to American Jєωs attacking the Lithuanians.

By 1987 the KGB's problems had intensified. Lithuanian nationalists were publicly active in Lithuania. Morever, Lithuanian Jєωs were active in the nationalist movement. One in particular, Emmanuel Zingeris, was a member of the national board of the Lithuanian national rebirth movement, "Sajudis." He is not a Zionist and describes himself as "a Lithuanian of Jєωιѕн background." Zingeris is now chairman of the Lithuanian Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights. Zingeris became a particular target of KGB disinformation.

A top secret cable dated September 23, 1987 from the KGB in Moscow to the KGB in Vilnius revealed that an agent with the code name "Yablonsky" had been assigned to travel to Israel to try to discredit Zingeris. According to the cable, "Before his departure for Israel ‘Yablonsky' received an assignment from Service Z of the Lithuanian KGB to discredit Zingeris with Zionist circles." Service Z was the local section of Directorate Z (formerly 5th Directorate) of the KGB which had the job of persecuting dissidents.

"Yablonsky" had relatives at Kol Israel broadcasting service. He was ordered to tell them, as well as officials of the charitable organization, The Jєωιѕн Agency, that Zingeris was involved with Lithuanian nationalists who had murdered Jєωs. That was a lie, and "Yablonsky" failed in his mission. He explained to his KGB masters that The Jєωιѕн Agency, which provided financial support to help Jєωs abroad, was receiving money from the Joint Distribution Committee in the United States which would be angry with anyone who attacked Zingeris. "Yablonsky" may not have given the KGB a true excuse, but Zingeris was justifiably held in high regard by American Jєωs.

The role of East Germany's Stasi

 Stasi explained in a 1969 report how it conducted disinformation:

Periodicals will address specific persons and groups. One can select actual events, problems etc. using a mixture of truths, half truths, fiction and other well conceived interpretations, so the recipient finds them believable, thus causing the anticipated success. Exact knowledge of conditions within the particular government in the operational area is imperative. Absolutely necessary is thorough knowledge of western language use, as well as psychological, sensitive tactics in approach.

tasi also explained how it responded to those who exposed human rights violations in the communist empire. It considered the truth about communism "harassment" and said in its report, "Through distribution of aggressively directed messages, the enemy will be disinformed and forced to abandon his harassment campaign thus keeping him disturbed and pointlessly occupied." These activities were coordinated with the appropriate officials of the Communist Party (SED). Stasi reported, "There are near daily conversations with the member of the Politburo responsible for agitation in the West, Comrade [Albert] Norden or Comrade [Werner] Lamberz, Secretary of the Central Committee and Chairman of the Agitation Commission of the Politburo." Albert Norden had been a German Communist Party activist since he was 16 years old, in 1920. During World War II he operated in the United States as a communist propagandist. In East Germany he served as the loudest and most vicious voice against the West in the communist dictatorship.
In 1959 he led the smear campaign against the West German Federal Minister of Refugees, Theodor Oberlander. Norden issued a book attacking Oberlander and at a press conference in East Berlin on October 22, 1959, Norden identified Oberlander as the political commander of the Ukrainian Nachtigall Unit, which together with the German Wehrmacht fought against the Soviet Union. That was the true part of Norden's story.

The false part was the claim that the military unit was involved in a pogrom against the Jєωs of Lviv. The official reports of the nαzι Einsatzgruppen of actions against the Jєωs, instigated by the nαzι propaganda that the Jєωs were responsible for the communist atrocities against Ukrainians, do not show that Nachtigall was involved. In a report date July 16, 1941, we read,

In the first hours after the Bolshevik withdrawal, the Ukrainian populations displayed commendable activity against the Jєωs. For example, the Dobromil ѕуηαgσgυє was set on fire and 50 Jєωs were killed by the enraged crowd at Sambor. Maltreating them, the Lvov inhabitants rounded up about 1000 Jєωs and took them to the GPU [i.e., NKVD] prison which has been occupied by the Wehrmacht.

Active measures against Ukrainian leader Stephan Bandera

Norden's book was the usual vile disinformation, but its worst charge related to the murder of the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stephan Bandera. According to Norden, Bandera "the Commander of Nachtigall" was murdered on October 15, 1959 to prevent him from revealing what he knew about the supposed crimes of Oberlander.

The commander of Nachtigall was not Bandera, but Roman Shukhevych, who later commanded the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Bandera was head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the political movement, which on June 30, 1941, proclaimed reestablishment of an independent Ukrainian state headed by Yaroslav Stetsko. The KGB then destroyed Bandera with the most intense method on the active measures spectrum: assassination. Bogdan Stashynsky, the KGB assassin, later defected to West Germany and revealed how Soviet intelligence had ordered him to murder the Ukrainian leader. He served a prison sentence in West Germany for his crime.

Bandera was hated both by the communists and the nαzιs.On July 2, 1941, SS Einsatzgruppe B reported to the Chief of the Security Police that "measures against the Bandera group, in particular against Bandera himself, are in preparation.They will be carried out as soon as possible." On July 9 the Ukrainian nationalist leaders, including Bandera (arrested already on July 5) and Stetsko, were arrested by the SS. They spent most of the war as prisoners in Sachsenhausen cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ.

A Gestapo report dated August 18, 1941, reveals that "The OUN in Lvov sells war-loan stamps and releases pamphlets demanding Bandera's return. From Lvov, posters are released declaring that a ‘free and independent Ukraine' must be created according to the motto "Ukraine for the Ukrainians, under the leadership of the OUN.' Orders of the German Army are frequently ignored. . . ."

While persecuting the OUN, the nαzιs agitated the population against the Jєωs. The communists had helped them by murdering Ukrainian intellectuals, officially considered enemies of Soviet power, before fleeing the German invasion. An Einsatzgruppe reported on July 16th that about twenty thousand Ukrainians had disappeared from Lviv, eighty percent of them belonging to the intelligentsia. The prisons were crammed with the bodies of murdered Ukrainians.In Dobromil eighty-two bodies were found. Four were of Jєωs.

One Ukrainian witness to the pre-war Soviet mass murders was the journalist Apollon Trembowetskyi, also called Petro Pavlovych, who testified before the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities that he wondered at the time "why so many were arrested, especially Ukrainians, those of Polish decent - half Polish, half Ukrainian and many Jєωιѕн people who were arrested in our town. . . ."

Another eyewitness, whose identity was protected, gave his evidence to the Ukrainian Historical Association. He had been a correspondent of Trembowetskyi's newspaper Vinnytski Visty, and had access to the lists of victims found by the nαzιs in Vinnytsia. The nαzιs ordered him to publish the nationality of Polish and Ukrainian victims but to list Russians, Jєωs and Gypsies as "nationality unknown." The nαzιs were agitating the population against the Jєωs at the time and did not want it revealed that the communists murdered Jєωιѕн intellectuals as well as Ukrainians.

nαzι and Communist triangulation against Ukrainians and Jєωs

The East German propagandists conveniently ignored the action of the Soviets, murdering millions of people of all nationalities - but particularly intellectuals. The Stasi boasted that its campaign against Oberlander had been successful and that he had been removed from the West German government.

Human rights leader Avraham Shifrin headed the Israeli delegation to the WACL Congress. He had spent 10 years as a prisoner in a Soviet slave labor camp. He told this writer that he had become a Zionist in the Gulag and how Ukrainians and Jєωs learned to work together when they were both being persecuted by the same KGB. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, led by Shukhevych, fought against the nαzιs and continued the war against the communists until the 1950s.

The horrors inflicted by both the nαzιs and communists brought Ukrainians and Jєωs together. Jєωs participated in the UPA as well as other anti-communist and anti-nαzι units. The Soviet propagandists complained,

During the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, many Zionists were members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army (UPRA). . For example, the Zionist Haim Sigal, alias Sigalenko, was a chieftain and 'Bulba's' right-hand man. . . . A number of Zionists such as Margosh, Maximovich, 'Kun' and others were officers in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.According to a report by a nαzι Einsatz-commando Zionists closely cooperated with the Bandera ringleaders. The latter provided them with the forged German docuмents.

Only nαzιs and communists could complain that Ukrainian nationalists saved the lives of Jєωs by providing them with false docuмents during the nαzι occupation. That story happens to be true. A report to the Chief of the Security Police in Berlin dated March 30, 1942 reveled that "Today, it has been clearly established that the Bandera movement provided forged passports not only for its own members, but also for Jєωs."

Manufacturing 'nαzι war criminals'

he communists reviled Metropolitan Sheptytskyi and stated that he "never ever raised his voice against the mass annihilation of Lviv residents. . . . " Rabbi Kahane exposed this lie. Communist hatred of the Jєωs was obvious when Soviet propagandists wrote, "We know from history that freedom of thought and a scientific view of the world have always been mercilessly suppress by Judaism."

But it was important to them to divide the Jєωs and Ukrainians in the West who had joined together to expose the Soviet Russian totalitarian regime. Thus, the KGB in Ukraine provided American communist Michael Hanusiak with a list of alleged "nαzι war criminals" from Ukraine. While caring little if at all for nαzι crimes against Jєωs, the communists understood that Americans would want anyone who engaged in such activity, regardless of their nationality, punished - no matter how long it took.

The KGB wanted to use this legitimate concern of Americans as a weapon to divide their Ukrainian and Jєωιѕн enemies, to discredit the large émigré communities in the United States and Canada, and to discredit any emergence of Ukrainian nationalism.

One of the names Hanusiak brought to the United States was that of John Demianiuk (Demjanjuk). His name was given to the United States Justice Department, which began an investigation of the retired Ohio auto worker. Soon, Demianiuk was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a brutal guard at the nαzι Treblinka death camp.

In the horrors that took place in that camp, "Ivan the Terrible" became a legend as the cruelest of all the murderers. After undergoing a long legal ordeal, Demianiuk was extradited to Israel where he was convicted and sentenced to death. The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed access to KGB files in Ukraine and probably saved the man's life. {Unfortunately for the innocent Mr. Kemianiuk he was mercilessly persecuted and accused and put on trial a second time. He died in the process of trying to defend himself.}  The evidence showed that "Ivan the Terrible" was Ivan Marchenko, not Demianiuk. The Israeli court, after examining the new evidence, reversed the conviction of Demianiuk and allowed him to return to the United States.

The question is - Who was Marchenko? He was a Soviet prisoner of war who had volunteered to work for the nαzιs as a camp guard. A 1961 KGB report on the interrogation of Sergey Vasylyenko revealed that Marchenko was the man the Jєωs in the camp called "Ivan the Terrible."

According to Vasylyenko, "He exhibited special savagery in dealing with people in the killing process, he killed people with an obvious satisfaction and beat them with whatever was at hand and however he fancied." More importantly, the KGB knew that toward the end of the war that Marchenko had gone to Yugoslavia and joined with Tito's communist partisans. He remained in Yugoslavia after the war and the KGB knew of his whereabouts in 1948-1949.

In the summer of 1948, Stalin broke with Tito. Soviet propaganda accused Tito, who remained a committed communist, of being a fascist. In October 1949, the New York County Communist Party issued a Discussion Outline and Study Guide entitled The Struggle Against the Tito Fascists - Agents of Imperialism.

This theme permeated worldwide Soviet propaganda. However, KGB propaganda never pointed out that the Tito government was harboring Ivan Marchenko, the nαzι war criminal known as "Ivan the Terrible." This issue raises the question as to whether Marchenko was not in fact a Soviet agent carrying out his atrocities on the order of the NKVD (KGB). We know of other cases where KGB operatives pretended to be anti-communists and carried out atrocities to blame them on their enemies and seize the moral high ground.

The main piece of Soviet-provided evidence against Demianiuk was a supposed identity card showing his name and picture at the Travniki training camp for guards. The authenticity of the docuмent was challenged as it was apparent that the picture had come from another docuмent and that the card contained other inaccuracies. That was not enough to acquit Demianiuk, but the KGB's internal files released after the Soviet collapse convinced the Israelis of Demianiuk's innocence.

Internal KGB reports describe Soviet operations against Ukraine

n 1980 a report was prepared by KGB Colonel V. Medvedev titled "More Culture in the Work on the nαzι Criminals." It was published in the internal, secret KGB magazine Sbornik KGB.

Colonel Medvedev boasted of the materials provided by KGB to the Western governments to prosecute nαzι war criminals.

In Medvedev's words, "Practice shows that concrete evidence of the witnesses thoroughly interrogated on a high professional level appear to be very important proof in the nαzι criminal's cases." Some of the old interrogation transcripts were so "standardized" that the constant repetition of phrases by different witnesses made it apparent that they were false.

We had not seen these admissions during the 1980s when this writer was a staff member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but anti-communists such as Congressman John Ashbrook (R-Ohio), understood not to trust the KGB. In retrospect it might seem strange to point out that U.S. government officials, including lawyers, senior political appointees and elected officials, did indeed trust the KGB-furnished information and were critical of the skeptics. But the lawmaker saw fit to warn his colleagues and the public.

In the Congressional Record of May 28, 1981 Congressman Ashbrook said, "World War II ended 36 years ago but many of us still remember its horrors. We should never forgive and never forget the atrocities committed by the nαzιs against the Jєωs. The nαzι murders of 6 million Jєωs and millions of Christians are crimes that require punishment of all who are guilty. At the same time, we must not forget the Communist murders of even greater millions of Christians, Jєωs, and Moslems.And we cannot forgive these crimes. Hitler and Stalin and most of their top henchmen are dead. But, the present leadership in the Soviet Union were all part of the Stalin murder machine."

Ashbrook continued, "We cannot condemn anyone based on Soviet evidence, but we must make sure that no nαzι or Communist criminal should receive sanctuary here. We can be sure of this be using our basic American laws of evidence. Soviet evidence is tainted and should not be utilized in American courts."

Hi Inspiritu20,

Can you say who the well-known literary spies were?

@PereJoseph

What makes you think that all the over the top paranoid disinformation regarding the Jєωs so copiously available is reliable???  How do you know that the monstrous plot for world dominion by the Jєωs isn't just disinformation?   How can you be so certain that it's exclusively the Jєωs who aim for world power?  Can you provide irrefutable proof?  If I'm wrong, can you please provide all the pertinent resources.   On the other hand, there is ample proof that the Russians to this day are involved in a massive campaign of disinformation to further their plot of subversion and to ultimately attain world dominion.  The real conspiracy is Communism.  Not all the crackpot NWO lunacy which seeks to blame the Jєωs for every conceivable evil under the sun.  Now I don't deny that Jєωs haven't in the past or in the present been involved in this wicked Satanic plot.  I truly believe that it's very unfair and even racist to insinuate that the Jєωs alone are responsible.  All the facts are there for anyone interested in learning the real truth.  People need to stop relying so much on the internet for information and start reading real history books.

It's a well known fact that Russia has since the days of the Tsars promoted anti-Semitic propaganda. The Tsar himself was a terrible αnтι-ѕємιтє.  Because of the harsh treatment the Jєωs received (forcing them to live in the pale of settlement and barred from practicing many professions) is it any wonder why they were provoked and conspired to topple the Tsar and his regime and why they so highly outnumbered other nationalities among the Bolsheviks?  It's also true that under the Soviet system anti-Semitism also was heavily disseminated and that Stalin greatly disliked Jєωs.

I have no agenda as you infer to cast aspersions on Russia or its people.  My reason for posting such information is solely to make people aware of the extremes the Soviets and now Russia under Putin use to discredit and undermine the West, particularly the United States.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x10.htm

When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jєωs. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jєωs. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jєωs.

 Among the Jєωs there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jєωs, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

Leon Trotsky
On the Jєωιѕн Problem

You ask me if the Jєωιѕн question still exists in the USSR. Yes, it exists, just as the Ukrainian, the Georgian, even the Russian questions exist there. The omnipotent bureaucracy stifles the development of national culture just as it does the whole of culture. Worse still, the country of the great proletarian revolution is now passing through a period of profound reaction. If the revolutionary wave revived the finest sentiments of human solidarity, the Thermidorian reaction has stirred up all that is low, dark and backward in this agglomeration of 170 million people. To reinforce its domination the bureaucracy does not even hesitate to resort in a scarcely camouflaged manner to chauvinistic tendencies, above all to anti-semitic ones. The latest Moscow trial, for example, was staged with the hardly concealed design of presenting internationalists as faithless and lawless Jєωs who are capable of selling themselves to the German Gestapo.

Since 1925 and above all since 1926, anti-semitic demagogy, well camouflaged, unattackable, goes hand in hand with symbolic trials against avowed pogromists. You ask me if the old Jєωιѕн petty bourgeoisie in the USSR has been socially assimilated by the new soviet environment. I am indeed at a loss to give you a clear reply. The social and national statistics in the USSR are extremely tendencious. They do not serve to set forth the truth, but above all to glorify the leaders, the chiefs, the creators of happiness. An important part of the Jєωιѕн petty bourgeoisie has been absorbed by the formidable apparatuses of the state, industry, commerce, the cooperatives, etc., above all in their lower and middle layers. This fact engenders an anti-semitic state of feeling and the leaders manipulate it with a cunning skill in order to canalize and to direct especially against the Jєωs the existing discontent against the bureaucracy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/aug/16/20030816-105043-6895r/?page=all

While the Georgian-born Stalin didn’t particularly favor one nationality over another during his reign of terror, he was a “breaker of nations,” as in Robert Conquest’s book title — and he had a particular hatred for Soviet Jєωs. Stalin’s own daughter, Svetlana, attested to that psychosis:

 “His anti-Semitism surely originated from the long years of struggle with Trotsky and his supporters,. What was originally political hate gradually became a feeling of racial hatred against all Jєωs, without exception.”

The Lustiger book is one of several recently published about Stalin’s war against the Soviet Jєωs, but this is one which has Soviet docuмents I have not seen before.

The Bolshevik revolution began, as Mr. Lustiger tells it, with a campaign against anti-Semitism and promotion of the Yiddish language and literature. At one point, there were 400 Yiddish periodicals. By 1938, there were none. The Communists liquidated Jєωιѕн institutions, publishing houses, cultural associations and arrested their employees.

It was providential that the 73-year-old Stalin suffered a stroke on Feb. 28, 1953 on the same day as the Jєωιѕн holiday of Purim. It was also on the same day that deportations to Siberia of more than one million Jєωs from Moscow alone and millions more from other parts of the Soviet Union were to begin. There is some evidence that Stalin was also preparing new Moscow trials of those who had, during his genocidal reign, been his closest colleagues, like Vyacheslav Molotov whom Stalin forced to separate from his Jєωιѕн wife. (Molotov’s wife was suspect because she had been heard speaking Yiddish with the then-Israeli ambassador, Golda Meir.) Part of Stalin’s anti-Semitism was to conjure up the so-called Doctor’s Plot, in which the Kremlin doctors, most of them Jєωs, “confessed” under torture that they had deliberately misdiagnosed health problems of Soviet leaders. These accusations produced, says Mr. Lustiger, a “mass hysteria,” so that Russians refused to accept medications by Jєωιѕн physicians. All these doctors were freed a few days after Stalin’s death.

http://www.Jєωιѕнhistory.org/stalin’s-anti-semitism/

Stalin, from his earliest days as a seminary student in Tiflis, hated “yids.” In 1906 he stated that the hated Mensheviks were a “Jєωιѕн organization” but that the Bolsheviks were a truly Russian group. He therefore, ‘in jest’ recommended a pogrom against the Mensheviks.

But it was not until after Hitler’s defeat in World War II and the beginning of the Cold War that this latent hatred turned into a public obsession. As Conquest writes:

Stalin’s attitude [towards the Jєωs] seems to have been based in part on what he took to be Hitler’s successful use of anti-Semitic demagogy. It was certainly also due to his increasing Russian nationalism, to which he felt, most, or many, Jєωs were not truly assimilable. And the idea of a special Jєωιѕн predilection for capitalism is of course to be found in Marx. He especially opposed Jєωs who were Bundists, or religious activists, or ‘cosmopolitans,’ or secessionists, or Zionists, or were agents of American-Israeli organizations.

In the autumn of 1948 Golda Meir arrived in Moscow as Israeli ambassador. A huge crowd of Jєωs turned out to greet her on Rosh Hashanah. On 8 November she was warmly welcomed at a diplomatic reception by Polina Molotov (the wife of V.M. Molotov, Stalin’s longtime foreign minister), herself a member of the Jєωιѕн Anti-Fascist Committee. For Stalin this public and private demonstration of Jєωιѕн feeling seems to have been the last straw. …an open, full-scale campaign of attacks on Jєωιѕн culture and attitudes, and on Zionism, soon began in the press. The theme was that the country’s values were being undermined by ‘rootless cosmopolitans.’ There was a particularly vicious assault on [Jєωιѕн] theater critics, eventually described as ‘an anti-party group.’ When their Russianized names or pseudonyms were given, the original Jєωιѕн name was printed in brackets, and papers asked how anyone so named could understand Russian culture. Meanwhile unpublicized arrests [of Jєωs], especially of writers in Yiddish, continued, and there was a general growth of public anti-Jєωιѕн pressure. Among those arrested at the end of 1948 was Polina Molotov.

Her husband made no comment or protest to Stalin as his wife was carried off into the Siberian gulag

Elizabeth

It's a few years ago now and I'm afraid I can't remember all the names.  One of them was Gordon Lonsdale:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/13/newsid_4059000/4059209.stm

I actually have to agree with PJ in regards to this thread.

rowsofvoices9, you got your Russophobic butt kicked.