The Golitsyn Predictions

Even if one rejects Golitsyn's overall thesis -- viz., that Gorbachev's changes comprised a long-term strategic deception -- one must still acknowledge that Golitsyn was the only analyst whose crystal ball was functioning during the key period of the late 20th century.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989, the CIA was chastised for failing to foresee the change. "For a generation, the Central Intelligence Agency told successive presidents everything they needed to know about the Soviet Union," said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "except that it was about to fall apart."

Sovietologists both inside and outside CIA were indeed baffled, for their traditional method of analysis had yielded virtually no clues as to what Gorbachev would do. When Mikhail Gorbachev took power in February 1985, after the death of Konstantin Chernenko, analysts like Roy Medvedev preoccupied themselves with trivial details in the Soviet press, and gained no larger view. "The black mourning frame printed around the second page where the deceased leader's picture was run] looked rather narrow," Medvedev observed. "It was still, however, a millimeter broader than the frames used for the second-page announcements of the death of senior Politburo members like Marshal Ustinov, who had died a few months previously." There was nothing in the measurement of picture frames to suggest liberalization in the USSR; therefore, no one suggested it.

CIA's leadership acknowledged that fell short in predicting Gorbachev's reforms, but could provide no real excuse. "Who would have thought that just five years ago we would stand where we are today?" Acting Director Robert Gates told Congress in late 1991. "Talk about humbling experiences." Gates could have said: Our reporting was poor because our Moscow network was rolled up, coincidentally or not, precisely as Gorbachev was coming into power. Gates did not say this, however. Instead, he suggested that "We're here to help you think through the problem rather than give you some kind of crystal ball prediction." This anti-prediction line was echoed by the Agency's deputy director, Robert Kerr, who told Congress: "Our business is to provide enough understanding of the issue ... to say here are some possible outcomes.... And I think that's the role of intelligence, not to predict outcomes in clear, neat ways. Because that's not doable."

Yet someone had predicted glasnost and perestroika, in detail, even before Gorbachev came to power. This person's analysis of events in the communist world had even been provided to the Agency on a regular basis.

In 1982, KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had submitted a top-secret manuscript to CIA. In it, he foresaw that leadership of the USSR would by 1986 "or earlier" fall to "a younger man with a more liberal image," who would initiate "changes that would have been beyond the imagination of Marx or the practical reach of Lenin and unthinkable to Stalin."

The coming liberalization, Golitsyn said, "would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the Communist Party's role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed.... The KGB would be reformed. Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to take up positions in the government; Sakharov might be included in some capacity in the government. Political dubs would be opened to nonmembers of the Communist Party. Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political Censorship would be relaxed; controversial plays, films, and art would be published, performed, and exhibited."

Golitsyn provided an entire chapter of such predictions, containing 194 distinct auguries. Of these, 46 were not soon falsifiable (it was too early to tell, e.g., whether Russian economic ministries would be dissolved); another 9 predictions (e.g., of a prominent Yugoslavian role in East-Bloc liberalization) seemed clearly wrong. Yet of Golitsyn's falsifiable predictions, 139 out of 148 were fulfilled by the end of 1993 -- an accuracy rate of nearly 94 percent. Among events correctly foreseen: "the return to power of Dubcek and his associates" in Czechoslovakia; the reemergence of Solidarity" and the formation of a "coalition government" in Poland; a newly "independent" regime in Romania; "economic reforms" in the USSR; and a Soviet repudiation of the Afghanistan invasion. -Golitsyn even envisioned that, with the "easing of immigration controls" by East Germany, "pressure could well grow for the solution of the German problem [by] some form of confederation between East and West," with the result that "demolition of the Berlin Wall might even be contemplated."

Golitsyn received CIA's permission to publish his manuscript in book form, and did so in 1984. But at time his predictions were made, Sovietologists had little use for Golitsyn or his "new methodology for the study of the communist world." John C. Campbell, reviewing Golitsyn's book in Foreign Affairs, politely recommended that it "be taken with several grains of salt." Other critics complained that Golitsyn's analysis "strained credulity" and was "totally inaccurate," or became so exercised as to accuse him of being the "demented" proponent of "cosmic theories." The University of North Carolina's James R. Kuhlman declared that Golitsyn's new methodology would "not withstand rigorous examination. Oxford historian R.W. Johnson dismissed Golitsyn's views as "nonsense." British journalist Tom Mangold even went so far as to say, in 1990 -- well after Golitsyn's prescience had become clear -- that "As a crystal-ball gazer, Golitsyn has been unimpressive." Mangold reached this conclusion by listing six of Golitsyn's apparently incorrect predictions and ignoring the 139 correct ones.

Golitsyn's analysis was as little appreciated within CIA as it was in the outside world. "Unfortunate is the only term for this book," an Agency reader noted in an official 1985 review. A CIA analyst took Golitsyn to task for making "unsupported allegations without sufficient (or sometimes any) evidence," and for this reason would be "embarrassed to recommend the whole." Golitsyn's case, other words, was deductive: He had no "hard evidence," no transcript of a secret meeting in which Gorbachev said the would do all these things. Perhaps most fundamentally, as the philosopher William James once noted, "we tend to disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." Who had any use, in the end, for Golitsyn's belief that the coming glasnost and perestroika would merely constitute the "final phase" of a long-term KGB strategy to "dominate the world"?

Golitsyn's analysis was as little appreciated within CIA as it was in the outside world.

James Jesus Angleton also took him seriously, as did certain wings within MI5. His original book, "New Lies For Old," was just too damn scary ... even if largely on the money.

The KGB managed to infiltrate and hobble the CIA by driving Angleton nuts, and dividing the company into two camps: (1) 1 believing in a false defector (2) the other knowing the guy was a phony, but being unable to prove it. It took them 10 years, but by the time Jimmy was President, and another nutjob, Stansfield Turner, who did not value "HUMINT" took over the CIA for him, the KGB plan was complete and the CIA became seriously weakened.

It is still in a weakened state because many of the leftish fools put in high places by the Turner regime are still there. Golytsin, having been a confidant of Angleton's, is an annoyance to the powers that be at the CIA. Both were right then, and Golystsin still is, but they lost.

IMHO, Golytsin is telling us that Communism is not dead, it is resting and re-arming, while hoping the west goes to sleep... again, and that there is no real split between China and Russia. Of course, we didn't need him to tell us that the KGB worked hand-in-glove with the forces of Islamic terrorism.

It’s hard to believe the Chinese are thrilled when their students abroad are beaten to death by Russian skins, or that the Russians are thrilled when the Chinese buy off their local officials and intelligence officers in the Far East, marrying them to Chinese women to ensure the loyalty of their offspring (as well as repopulating the area with Chinese immigrants).

I don’t know why, but with Obama in office and his appeasement of Russia, I have decided to bring this thread back from the dead....

If anyone has any information on Golytsin and how he relates to Obama (or predictions about Obama), now is the time to post it.

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