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Alex Murshak
English 223
Workshop
A Heretic’s Guide to Ideological Subversion
“Ideological subversion means always a distractive aggressive activity aimed to
destroy the country, nation, or geographic area of your enemy” - Y.B.
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"Former KGB informant, propagandist, and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov
describes the process of ideological subversion in some few dated lectures and
interviews percolating forgotten corners of the internet. Taken together, Yuri’s
documented public appearances represent the most succinct and detailed
explanation of the Soviet strategy for waging an overt, legal, ideological war on a
polity I have found. Welcome to the Heretic’s Guide to Ideological Subversion.
!!
!You, dear reader, presumably have come to meet this guide because you
are a heretic. This is of course to be expected, how could you not be? All complex
societies operate on overlapping ideological substrates and yours is no different.
What oppresses you will always be in part what rules you. There are heretics at
all times and in all places because there will always be an orthodoxy to which you
should conform. No, really. You should conform. It is likely in your best interest to
conform and very unlikely you’ll succeed if you don’t. But if you must be
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heretical, I have some field notes for you. They’re not mine, of course. KGB
methods outlined in this guide were developed for the purposes of undermining
the global hegemony of the United States and preparing ground for the
installment of communist pro-Soviet puppet governments in both developed and
fledgling nations. I am presenting you, dear reader, what bits of light may be
gleamed from the cracked door to a deep, dark hall. Decades of trial and error on
both their own population(s) and others, revealed a systematic pattern to
ideological subversion. Understanding their methods gives us a generalized
understanding of ideological subversion that has applications even in a multi-
polar post-Soviet arrangement.
!The four stages of ideological subversion of a people are as follows:
1. Demoralization - A process of 15-20 years, this is the time it takes to educate
one generation in a new ideology, to lay the groundwork for the infiltration of
institutions shaping public opinion.
2. Destabilization - Destabilize the relations and institutions of your enemy. ! !
Sleepers from stage 1 are now entering leadership positions and becoming
politically active.
3. Crisis - Due to confusion and the inability to cohere around a common
narrative, legitimate bodies of power can no longer function. Subversives
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instead focus on installing artificial bodies of non-elected committees as self-
appointed arbiters of public opinion. Bureaucratize all decision-making.
4. Normalization - The revolution is over. Newly self-appointed rulers discard
useful idiots and stabilize the country by force to exploit the victory.
!Impetus for this guide runs deep. An ideology can outlive its proponents. If
it’s any good, it does. Long drives on American freeways, a conversion van
equipped with cutting boards, knives, a bed, and at times, a portable toilet, felt
more like going on tour than visitation. “For Spring break we’re getting the band
back together.” Grandma always made sure to drive us (my brother and I)
halfway across the country to see my father. Punctuating highway-cut apples
slices, incomprehensible arguments between grandparents in Russian, and the
blasting of slavic music of their homeland, came conversations dripping with the
blood of history. I’d ask prying questions about life in the U.S.S.R., grandpa’s time
in the military, how they left, when they decided to leave. Then I’d go deeper.
“Espionage occupies only 15% of time, money, and manpower - 15% of the activity
of KGB. The rest, 85%, is always subversion” - Y.B.
!While stationed in India, Bezmenov grew such love for the people and
culture that he developed in KGB terms, “split loyalty” - meaning more affection
for another country than your own. Himself, the son of a high ranking military
officer living a privileged life as a journalist inside the department of “Political
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Publications,” had little incentive to defect. His status inside the USSR was that of
the bureaucratic, military, and intelligence services elite. However, Yuri became
increasingly disaffected with various failed social projects Soviet agents had
implemented in India, and finally turned when a number of Indian journalists
who had been loyal to the regime were instrumentally murdered for purely
political purposes. Yuri’s choice to defect was made out of moral disdain for the
regime, not personal dissatisfaction.
!
!He disappeared and anonymized himself by joining a group of American
hippies in the countercultural movement to avoid detection. At the time there
were enough “dissident” Western youths traveling around the Indian
subcontinent sans papers that one could make oneself invisible in this crowd.
Eventually he met with American intelligence agents in Greece, before being
granted asylum in Canada. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC) from 1972-1976, before being leaving, so he claims, as a result
of the KGB using a Soviet ambassador to Canada to persuade then-Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau to apply pressure for his removal.
“There are no grassroots revolutions, period. Any revolution is the byproduct of a
highly organized group of conscientious and professional organizers” - Y.B.
!Grandma was raised in Stalinist Russia. Pictures of the glorious leader
hung in every schoolroom. Indoctrination in communist ideology began early,
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Marx, Lenin, bits of Trotsky, with a full-on cult-of-personality built around
Joseph Stalin. To praise, adore, work for, and serve Stalin was synonymous not
only with the highest of Soviet patriotism, but also the moral exaltation of
carrying out the grand global communist revolution. To speak bad on his name
was synonymous with being disappeared. This extreme fascinated me. What did
you think of Stalin? I’d ask. He wasn’t so bad, she’d say. What about the millions
of people he killed? Those numbers are exaggerated; she’d look away. Still, the
body count is in the millions, I’d say. He was a good leader, even if he did some
bad things. A full double-down. In her old age, in a free society, with no U.S.S.R. in
sight, she had to toe the line even to her grandson. Had I been a neighborly
inquirer or state-sponsored investigator, a public schoolteacher, or even a family
member, in the old regime there would have been a 1/3 chance I was also serving
as a government informant. She had escaped the Soviet Union, but couldn’t
escape Stalin’s influence. I’ll never know whether or not she was a heretic.
Everyone dies with their secrets.
!Demoralization, is a systematic uprooting. In this stage it is essential to
foment skepticism, criticism, and ultimately disdain for the values and
institutions undergirding the target population. One is laying the groundwork for
a new generation that is ideologically compromised. Through institutions of
education, culture, and media you subvert the dominant paradigm by a constant
picking apart, a deconstruction, of the foundations of the society. This is the time
where your target is trained to criticize and question those parts of their society
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that constitute any notion of identity. Religion, sex, gender, art, race, philosophy,
politics, all these aspects of the target society are challenged or outright
subverted. All things are questioned, not for the purpose of reform, but to sew the
seeds of doubt in the minds of your enemy.
“You cannot subvert an enemy who does not want to be subverted. Subversion
can only be successful when the subverter has a responsive target.” - Y.B.
!Grandma was agnostic on god. What mattered to her was independence,
education, and the ability to think for yourself. The PhD chemist who started her
own lab 10 years after coming to the United States with nothing lived her values.
Doubt was never part of the equation. The life she built and the family she left
behind was a testament to a belief in the new place she had found. In this place
her children and grandchildren could have a life unimaginable to those who
stayed in Estonia. All this was built on a promise. Belief in a promise is something
like faith.
!
!Destabilization occurs once properly reeducated persons, particularly
social and cultural elites, come into positions of prominence and power. Here, all
of the agitation and distraction from stage 1 manifests inside the organs of public
opinion. Gradually, and then suddenly, making sense of things, telling right from
wrong, knowing truth from falsehood, friend from foe, good from evil, patriot
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from traitor becomes so muddled and confused so as to send the social climate
into a state mimicking schizophrenia.
!
!Everything she did was big. Her life, her career, her family, her personality,
even her size. Especially her size. Never in my life was she not obese, and though
she cycled through diet fads throughout life, she never kept the weight off. Over
the years she got bigger and bigger, with the added effect of becoming less mobile,
less able. She was eminently generous to all comers, family, friends, and
strangers alike. Less generous though, was she with her time. Her time for her.
As she approached senescence everyone tried to warn her about her weight, her
age, potential health complications. She’d have none of it. She knew how she was
going to die and would tell you: I am going to have a heart attack and fall over all
at once. No hospital care, medications, hospice, or end-of-life care. She died
exactly how she wanted to die, and made sure to do it before her husband did.
She was selfish only with her time.
“The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value
in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of
your enemy is screwed up to such extent that he does not perceive you as an
enemy” - Y.B.
!Crisis comes next. Having sewn mass confusion and dysfunction into
governing bodies and institutions of social influence, desperation sets in. To cope
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with emergent chaos and complexity of a rapidly deteriorating social fabric,
institutional subversives advocate for increasing bureaucratization and
formalization of the nascent insurgent ideology. The ground has been prepared
for deference of decision-making to unelected officials, technocrats, and
functionaries, who are, at this stage, well-versed in the new paradigm.
!
!Everyone before me had been a chemical engineer. My father, aunt, and
uncles, as well as my grandmother and grandfather. Their parents were doctors.
It was expected that I’d be an engineer, too. My father had always resented his
mother for forcing him into engineering. His deal was that I could go into
whatever I pleased. He would no impose the tyranny of a chemical engineering
track onto me, though I must finish college. The mandate on education remained,
even though the script had changed.
!Each of the four stages of ideological subversion can be countered. You,
heretical as you are, should be informed of the risks attendant to this kind of
action - the consequences of a failed revolution are deadly. It is only fair that in
giving this information, potential foils to your endeavors, whatever they may be,
are identified. However, what is unique about the Soviet method is that it can be
done out in the open. In fact, it was designed specifically to exploit the
asymmetries of an open society. Crucially, there must be a regime tolerant of
dissent and open to self-criticism for these methods to take root. Demoralization
can be countered by restricting the import of ideological propaganda.
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Destabilization can be countered by curbing the rights of political agitators. The
crisis can be ameliorated by a strong reactionary response and cracking down on
subversive organizations. Normalization is the most difficult to reverse. Once
normalization is in place, only explicit military intervention will suffice to
reinstate the old order. Without a strong, organized response to ideological
subversion, it will proliferate.
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References
Polar79. “Yuri Bezmenov : Subversion and Control of Western Society.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 July 2017,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6lksJhBvas. Retrieved April 09, 2019.
GBPPR2. “Yuri Bezmenov: Deception Was My Job (Complete).” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Jan. 2011,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4. Retrieved April 09, 2019.