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Transcript of 1984 Real World Interview by G. Edward Griffin with Yuri Bezmenov, a high ranking agent of the Russian Government when it was a “Soviet Socialist Republic”.
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/realityzone/deceptionjobtranscript.html ^ | Reality Zone
DECEPTION WAS MY JOB
(This is a partial transcript of the interview. The complete program is available from www.realityzone.com.)
Click here for full 83 minute video interview.
Yuri Bezmenov’s father, pictured on left, was a Soviet general loyal to Stalin before, during, and after World War II. Yuri attended elite Russian schools was then given highly sought jobs with the KGB in the field of “Ideological Subversion”.
Griffin (0:00): Our conversation is with Yuri Alexander Bezmenov. Mr. Bezmenov was born in 1939 in a suburb of Moscow. He was the son of a high ranking Soviet officer. He was educated in the elite schools inside the Soviet Union and he became an expert in Indian culture and Indian languages. He had an outstanding career with Novesti, which was the, and still is I should say, the press arm or the press agency of the Soviet Union. It turns out that this is also a front for the KGB. He escaped to the West in 1970 after becoming totally disgusted with the Soviet system, and he did this at great risk to his life*. He certainly is one of the world’s outstanding experts on the subject of Soviet propaganda and disinformation and active measures.
*Yuri Bezmenov died suddenly and “unexpectedly” in 1993 at age 54. Russia still systematically murders government agents and critics of the regime who leave the country without permission.
Mr. Bezmenov, the Soviets use the phrase “Ideological Subversion.” What do they mean by that?
Bezmenov (0:54): Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate overt and open, you can see it with your own eyes. All you can do, all Americans needs to do is to unplug the bananas from their ears, open up their eyes and they can see. There is no mystery. It has nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage and intelligence gathering looks more romantic, it sells more deodorant to the audience through the advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond type of thrillers. But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about fifteen percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other eighty-five percent is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures, активные мероприятия, (romanized: aktivnye meropriyatiya)*, in the language of my country, or psychological warfare.
*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
.
What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality, of every American, to such an extent that despite an abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their family, their community and their country.
It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first one being demoralization. It takes from fifteen to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate on generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism, Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or contra-balanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism.
Most of the activity of the department was to compile huge amount, volume of information on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion. Publishers, editors, journalists, actors, educationalists, professors of political science, members of Parliament, representatives of business circles. Most of these people were divided roughly in two groups. Those who were told the Soviet foreign policy, they would be promoted to the positions of power through media and public opinion manipulation. Those who refuse the Soviet influence in their country would be character assassinated, or executed physically contra-revolution. Same was as in a small town named Hue* in South Vietnam. Several thousand so of Vietnamese were executed in one night when the city was captured by Vietcong for only two days. And American CIA could never figure out, how could possibly Communists know each individual, where he lives, where to get him, and would be arrested in one night, basically in some four hours before dawn, put on a van, taken out of the city limits and shot. The answer is very simple, long before communists occupied the city there was extensive network of informers, local Vietnamese citizens who knew absolutely everything about people who are instrumental in public opinion including barbers and taxi drivers. Everybody who was sympathetic to the United States was executed.
Same thing was doing under the guidance of the Soviet Embassy in Hanoi, and same thing I was doing in New Delhi. To my horror I discovered that in the files where people were doomed to execution there were names of pro-
Soviet journalists with whom I was personally friendly.
Griffin (5:02): Personally?
Bezmonev (5:03): Yes! They were idealistically minded leftists who made several visits to USSR. And yet the KGB decided that come the revolution and drastic changes in the political structure of India, they would have to go.
Griffin (5:17): Why’s that?
Bezmonev (5:18): Because they know too much. Simply because, you see, the useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made a point, never bother with leftists. Forget about this political prostitutes. Aim higher. This was my instruction-try to get into large circulation established conservative media. Reach movie makers, intellectuals, so called academic circles, cynical egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. This are the most recruit-able people, people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance. They feel that they matter a lot. These are the people KGB wanted very much to recruit.
Griffin (6:21): To eliminate the others. To execute the others. Don’t they serve some purpose, wouldn’t they be the ones to rely on..
Bezmonev (6:27): No. They serve purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States, all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders, they are instrumental in the process of the subversion, only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist Leninist has come to power obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot. But they may turn into the most bitter enemies of Marxist-Leninists when they come to power, and that’s what happened in Nicaragua. You remember most of these former Leninist Marxists were either put to prison. Or one of them split and now he’s working against Sandinistas. It happened in Grenada when Maurice Bishop, he was already a Marxist, he was executed by a new Marxist who was more Marxist than this Marxist. Same happened in Afghanistan when firs there was Tariki he was killed by Amin, and Amin was killed by Karmal with the help of KGB. Same happened in Bangladesh when Mujibur Rahman, very pro-soviet leftist was assassinated by his own Marxist Leninist military comrades. It’s the same pattern everywhere. The moment they serve their purpose, all the useful idiots are either executed entirely, all the idealistically minded Marxists, or exiled, or put in prisons like in Cuba where many former Marxists are in prison.
So, basically, America is stuck with the demoralization unless, even if you start right now here this minute, you start educating huge generation of Americans, it will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism.
The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who were educated in the sixties, drop outs or half-baked intellectuals are now occupying the positions of power in the Government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated, They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black you still cannot change the basic perception and illogical behavior. In other words, these people, the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To get society rid of these people you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common-sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society.
Griffin (9:37): And yet these people have been programmed, and as you say, in place, who are favorable to an opening to the Soviet concept. These are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?
Bezmonev (9:48): Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in future what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy frustrated people. And the Marxist Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously they will join the likes of dissenters, dissidents. Unlike in present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist Leninist America. Here you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being dissident for criticizing your Pentagon. In future these people will be simply “pffft.” Squashed like cockroaches. Nobody’s going to pay them nothing for their beautiful noble ideas about equality. This they don’t understand and it will be greatest shock for them of course.
(10:51) The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already. For the last twenty-five years, actually it’s over-fulfilled. Because the demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crashes his, then he will understand, but not before that. That’s the tragic of the situation of demoralization.
The next stage is destabilization. This time, subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption, whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby, doesn’t matter anymore. This time, and it takes only two to five years to destabilize a nation, what matters is essentials. Economy, Foreign Relations, Defense Systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as Defense and economy, the influence of Marxist Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never believe it fourteen years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the process will go that fast.
The next stage of course is Crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now. And after crisis with a violent change of power structure and economy you have so called the period of Normalization. It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, comrade Brezhnev said, Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslavakia is normalized. This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kind of goodies and the paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition and to put Big Brother government in Washington DC with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale who will promise lots of things. Never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not. He will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of new generation of Soviet assassins. Never mind. He will create false illusions that the situation is under control. The situation is not under control. The situation is disgustingly out of control.
Most of the American politicians, media and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peace time. False. The United States is in a state of war. Undeclared total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not comrade Andropov, of course, it’s the system, however ridiculous it may sound, the world communist system, or the world communist conspiracy. Whether it scares some people or not I don’t give a hoot. If you’re not scared by now, nothing can scare you. But you don’t have to be paranoid about it. What actually happens now that unlike myself you have literally several years to live on unless the United States wake up. The time bomb is ticking. Every second, the disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have nowhere to defect to, unless you want to live in Antarctica with penguins. This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.
Griffin (15:23): Ok, so, what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?
Bezmonev (15:27): Well, the immediate thing that comes to my mind is of course, there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, one. Number two, to explain the real danger of socialist communist whatever, welfare state, big brother government. If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States, you must kiss goodbye to your freedoms, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison inmate, all this freedom will vanish. It will evaporate in five seconds including your precious lives. The second thing, the moment, at least part of the United States population is convinced that the danger is real. They have to force their Government, and I’m not talking about sending letters, signing petitions and all this beautiful noble activity. I’m talking about forcing United States Government to stop aiding communism.
I heard Yuri speak while I was in the US Army in 1980. He was eloquent and informative. His accent brought credibility to his story. I am so sorry to hear of his passing. He would have made a great guest on Podcast for Liberty. I am glad he is one of your heroes. He is surely a hero for Liberty.
He was the expert speaker to our unit and brigade. He spoke about an hour during our Mission Briefing. Afterward, we went out and trained about doing battle with the Soviets. He helped to motivate us to train well. I enjoyed his speech, but the full weight of what he was talking about escaped me, until now. I wish I was able to interview him.