Did Communism Fake Its Own Death in 1991?

American Thinker ^ | January 16, 2010 | Jason McNew

[neverdem]

In a bizarre 1984 book, ex-KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the liberalization of the Soviet Bloc and claimed that it would be a strategic deception. Let's examine the facts.

In his spy book Wedge, Mark Riebling claims that "of Golitsyn's falsifiable predictions, 139 out of 148 were fulfilled by the end of 1993 -- an accuracy rate of 94 percent" [1]. Riebling's statistic, compiled from Golitsyn's 1984 book New Lies for Old, has been used in several other books and articles (including here at AT) since Wedge was first published in 1994.

New Lies for Old is not light reading, and all of Golitsyn's predictions appear in the last two chapters, some 327 pages in. Golitsyn began drafting the manuscript in 1968 [3], completed it in 1980 [9], cleared the CIA in 1982 [2], and then finalized and published it in 1984 with seven additional pages [10].

Golitsyn published his second book, The Perestroika Deception, after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. This book contained further analysis of the liberalization, in addition to previously classified memoranda submitted by Golitsyn to the CIA. The two books must be read together to get a complete picture of Golitsyn's thesis.

Despite taking 22 years to write and publish New Lies for Old, Golitsyn nonetheless asserted that "the substance of the argument has changed little since 1968" [4]. Put simply, Golitsyn's argument was that beginning in about 1960, the Soviet Union embarked on a strategy of massive long-range strategic deception which would span several decades and result in the destruction of Western capitalism and the erection of a communist world government. Throughout his works, he refers to this future event as "convergence" [5]. On page 339 appears a series of Goltisyn's predictions:

The "liberalization" 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.  An ostensible separation of powers between the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary might be introduced.  The Supreme Soviet would be given greater apparent power, and the president of the Soviet Union and the first secretary of the party might well be separated.  The KGB would be "reformed."  Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to return, and some would take up positions of leadership in government.

Sakharov might be included in some capacity in the government or allowed to teach aboard.  The creative arts and cultural and scientific organizations, such as the writers' unions and Academy of Sciences, would become apparently more independent, as would the trade unions.  Political clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the communist party.  Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political parties

There would be greater freedom for Soviet citizens to travel.  Western and Unitized Nations observers would be invited to the Soviet Union to witness the reforms in action.

Golitsyn concluded that "the deceptive liberalization will be accepted as genuine and spontaneous and will be blown up out of all proportion by the media" [11].

These fifteen predictions are from just one page and most foretelling of events then ten years away. I chose to cite this particular page because many of the readers here at AT would be able to readily identify these claims empirically as true or not true. Of particular note are Golitsyn's predictions of separate legislative, executive, and judicial powers -- Americans would naturally embrace such a move by the Soviets wholeheartedly (and without asking questions). Making such claims about the Soviet Union in 1980 was no less absurd than would be making similar claims about North Korea today.

Foretelling the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, Golitsyn wrote:

One cannot exclude that at the next party congress or earlier, Andropov will be replaced by a younger leader with a more liberal image who will continue the so called "liberalization" more intensively [6].

In a July 1984 memo to the CIA, Golitsyn writes: 

The Soviet strategists may replace the old leader, Konstantin Chernenko, who is actually only a figurehead, with a younger Soviet leader who was chosen some time ago as his successor -- namely, Comrade Gorbachev. One of Gorbachev's primary tasks will be to carry out the so-called liberalization [12].

Comrade Gorbachev took office as leader of the Soviet Union the following year.

Golitsyn also gave clues on the eventual replacement of Boris Yeltsin, describing the Chechnyan crisis "not as a likely cause of a military coup, but as a possible planned prelude to a change of government" [13]. Yeltsin resigned unexpectedly on New Year's Eve in 1999, installing then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency. Putin was elected just months later, riding a wave of Russian nationalist sentiment stemming from renewed hostilities in Chechnya.

Critics will rightfully point out that the timeframes in Golitsyn's books are wrong -- he postulated the emergence of a radical left U.S. government around 1992 and "convergence" by about 2000 [14], and he states throughout his works that NATO would be dissolved, causing U.S. forces to leave Europe. He also predicted a military alliance between the U.S. and China [7]. Taken as a complete work, however, Golitsyn got most of it right.

So how did Golitsyn do it? He explains it this way:

The assessment has been based partly on secret information available only to an insider; partly on an intimate understanding of how the communist strategist thinks and acts; partly on knowledge of political readjustments, the use of strategic disinformation, and the extent of KGB penetrations of, and influence on, Western governments; and partly on research and analysis, using the new methodology, of open records of Soviet and communist developments over the last 20 years [8].

There is other evidence that corroborates Golitsyn's thesis. In his 1982 book We Will Bury You, Czech defector Jan Sejna also claimed the Berlin Wall would be torn down and the Warsaw Pact dissolved for reasons of deception [15]. Additionally, there are the 1992 and 2005 Mitrokhin Archives. More recently, weird 25-year-old videos of another KGB defector detailing a decades-long process of purposeful U.S. demoralization by Soviet intelligence services have appeared on You Tube.

Jeff Nyquist, an independent writer and the author of the worst-selling book Origins of the Fourth World War, seems to be the only Western journalist who not only noticed but paid much attention to Golitsyn. Nyquist has written hundreds of articles discussing both Golitsyn's thesis and the slow moral and economic decay of America. Nyquist and Golitsyn both dedicated books to J.J. Angleton, who in 1954 founded the CIA's counterintelligence division.

The present moral and economic bankruptcy emanating from Washington, D.C. and plaguing America portends something far more dangerous than the unintended consequences of electing so many ideological flunkies with bad educations and misguided ideals. The purpose of warfare is not to kill and maim your enemy; it is his social, economic, political, and religious reorientation. Somewhere Sun Tzu is smiling, and it isn't at America.

Jason McNew is a 36-year-old IT professional. He can be contacted at jasond@mcnew.org.

[LibertyRocks]

The ideology is also alive and well STILL in the Soviet Union and Putin is trying his hardest to keep it alive, if not bring it back in full-force.

“It’s all the same... Only the names have changed”

There is no coincidence that Putin’s youth camps featured huge posters of Father Stalin... And it’s no coincidence that Putin feels the fall of the Soviet Union was perhaps the worst thing to happen in history.

They may have TRIED to kill Communism, it may have been weakened, but it’s alive and kicking... If Communism were truly dead Putin would never have made it anywhere NEAR the Kremlin — much less in any position of power.

I also find it interesting that some on the thread are saying it “moved” here to the US after that... BIG CORRECTION: it was ALREADY HERE long before that.

Oh, and McCarthy was right... ;)

[ripley]

Someone finally hits the nail on the head.

IMHO

[LibertyRocks]

I agree with your first sentence wholeheartedly. The thing is I think that much of the Russian Communist Party didn’t really go away they just couldn’t go about business as usual anymore...

Journalists are still threatened and/or killed for going against the Kremlin.
Instead of party officials holding the majority of wealth it is FORMER party officials who are the corrupt businessmen.
Instead of the KGB - Moscow officials use the mafia for a lot of their dirty work.

I could go on, but I think you see what I mean...

I fully admit that when the wall fell in Berlin, and then the USSR finally collapsed I thought we were “free” of the Communist threat as well (I was a teenager still - graduated HS in 1990). Over the last 10 or so years I’ve seen and learned a lot and I’m no longer blind. However, I know MANY - especially in my age group who still believe as I used to. Those in the generation(s) behind me - they aren’t even TAUGHT of the horrors of Communism which is why they were so gullible when it came to Obama, and why they can’t see the dangers of “So-called” Socialism either!

Another interesting thing I discovered during the election last year — professors in our colleges are using *new* definitions for what constitutes Socialism and Communism.

No longer is socialism defined (by leftist professors) as the means of production owned by the PEOPLE/workers vs. Communism where the means of production is held by the state. I honestly can’t even EXPLAIN their convoluted definitions now — I only know that using these definitions is what has caused a HUGE generational gap between us “old-school” folks who remember REAL Communism, and the younger generations who believe what we are seeing today in the us (Nationalization of industries and class-warfare) is “socialism” and that it’s good...

[rellimpank]

—bflr—

[Condor51]

I'll try to get back to you in a while. There's thing I *want* to say but have to be careful and don't want it to turn into along drawn-out tome.

So for now it'll have to suffice when I say; I HATE communism, 'socialism' and every stinking pinko-commie₍₁₎ with every bone in my body.

(1) how's that for an old time phrase ;-)

[newnhdad]

Commies turned to the green and other movements like healthcare soon after the fall of the USSR in the late 80’s. I remember dating a women that worked on “health and public policy” in the mid-90’s. The clowns she worked with were hardcore commies wearing che and mao images and extolling the benefits of the glorious people’s revolution in cuba.
She was hot, like redhead supermodel hot, but it didn’t last more than a few months. She wanted to go to a demonstration and I wanted to get some ribs and that was that.

[Cacique]

Communism is an idea. Ideas don’t die. The answer is yes..

[ImaGraftedBranch]

From Fred Shapiro’s book The Yale Book of Quotations (2006):

“They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide”

[melancholy]

As I have said MANY times ...

Communism is not dead -- it is alive and well in the United States of America!

Nationally and internationally, Communists will never forgive America for the collapse of the USSR. Their revenge is in progress, what could be better than reviving Communism through the collapse of its archenemy, the USA?

[eleni121]

Solzhenitsyn warned about these things long before Anatoliy Golitsyn.

read his Harvard address here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html

[eleni121]

Marxisim - Fascism - they are opposite sides of the same coin: totalitarianism.

We are squatting on that coin, not yet firmly but getting closer.

[Cicero]

Some pretty good discussion here.

I don’t think the Soviet Union deliberately fell. But I do think that Communists everywhere decided that there was no way to prevent the fall. Russia was overextended, they couldn’t hold the Warsaw Pact states much longer, they were running out of money, and they were “contained” by America to the extent that they couldn’t spread any further by conquest.

So they regrouped. And, of course, there were covert and open Communists all over the world, especially in academia and some of the foundations.

Communism is an ideology, but it is also a very effective method of seizing and holding power. It uses whatever “fronts” will make it seem attractive—and thereby more powerful and influential. Helping the poor and downtrodden was the main meme, but as already mentioned, helping the environment is now another very important meme.

As I’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong with helping the environment, or helping the poor. The question is, how do youo do it? Are you really concerned to help, or is it just a method that will help to destroy “capitalism” and freedom and concentrate power in the hands of an elite? The Communist term for that elite is Vanguard of the Proletariat. Who knows? Maybe they’ll soon be coming up with a new one, the Vanguard of the Polar Bears. Greenpeace, for instance.

[MadLibDisease]

save for later

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[annalex]

It is beyond dispute that the Gramschian strategy of the Comintern ends up our daily reality of the West, through government takeover of poverty relief, education and healthcare, marginalization of religion and left wing march through the institutions that still remain ostensibly free.

The question is, do we deduce from that that the Comintern (or maybe the old KGB) is still in charge, or simply that the Comintern accurately predicted the unfortunate logic of history and interpreted it in a self-serving way?

I think the latter, for these reasons:

- The blows to the soviet system were very real. The USSR lost most its constituents republics, lost the status of world power, is militarily surronded by NATO, its brutality has been revealed, the failure of centrally planned economy evident to all. The soviet style of communism has no crown jewels left. Yet the doctrine that lead to this demise was unyielding Brezhnev doctrine of once Soviet, forever Soviet.

- The leftwing successes in the West could be explained without resorting to a Comintern plot. They are, in fact, attributable to something the Comintern was hostile toward, — they are attributable to democracy. Let us not forget that the idea to take from the 20% who are rich and give it to the 80% who are poor does not require plotters in the Kremlin, it is the idea that wins every time democratically.

- As we watched the events of 1980-90s unfold, we observed indeed a stage where the liberalization came according to the playbook, from the top. The failure of planned economy was evident to the Soviet rulers in the 70’s if not sooner; one could see repeated attempts to reshuffle the system all along: revitalize farmer interest in agriculture, build something grandiose (Obama did not invent “stimulus”) with student labor, steal technology from the West, swap arm control deals for commodity goods. In the early 80’s with the unsuccessful invasion of Afghanistan, it became clear that the crisis is irreversible. That a leader like Gorbachev would emerge was simply the matter of the old dinosaurs in Suslov/Chernenko mold to die out. It was no plot, just logic of history and economy. But in late 80’s it became also clear that graduated liberalization was not working. The “near abroad” erupted in massive civil unrest and in some cases wars. The Nagorny Karabakh war was the first, I think. This is when Gorbachev was ousted by a hardline communist coup and then the coup leaders were themselves ousted by the Russian Army turning, quite heroically, on their political leaders, and the Soviet Union was no more.

The zigs and zags of this story, especially the populist element that carried Yeltsyn to victory, make an idea of a secretly managed transition quite a bit absurd.

[SQUID]

I agree that it has faked it's death. However, we have idiots like Medved on the radio still say that it is really dead.

It's alive and well through his beloved Hollywood that he pretends to dislike. Hollywood is the center of American communism since its founding.

Before or after the Berlin wall, no Hollywood film has addressed the actual history of communism. Why? Ask yourself? Why do those to run Hollywood not want America to know about communist history of murder and hatred?

Those of you who refuse to ask that question are avoiding the 600 pound gorilla in the room. The answer is right under your nose in California. The nerve center of communist propaganda in America.

[r-q-tek86]

ping

[truth_seeker]

“Somewhere Sun Tzu is smiling, and it isn’t at America.”

Know Your Enemy

Recall how many times our intelligence has been plain awful?

Vietnam? Iran? Iraq?

And of course the unexpected fall of the Soviet Union?

[Cacique]

And there are Maoist purists who have never forgiven the likes of Deng Hsiaoping sleeping and waiting their chance. The PLA is full of nationalist Maoists who resent the new bourgeoisie. They have adopted capitalist production methods to be able to arm themselves for the last push. People forget that Marx had great admiration for capitalism as the engine of change and foretold that before communism could be achieved societies had to go through the capitalist phase.

[Cacique]

Way back in 1977 when I entered graduate school in political science a popular theory going around then was “convergence theory” which held that industrial socialites and capitalist and socialist societies were converging to become more and more alike and that at some point all societies would metastasize into modern welfare states as liberalization came to the communist countries and capitalist western countries became more socialist in nature. These people have never gone away.

A great myth prepetrated by conservatives in the west is that Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reality is that internal changes in the USSR were already ongoing. What really collapsed the “apparatchik party” Soviet Union during the August 1991 putsch was in reality due to those unknown KGB troops who refused to fire on fellow Muscovites. A lesson closely watched by leaders in Beijing who would learn from that experience when their turn came in Tienanmen square and thus imported troops who would gladly fire on Chinese before they cracked down. It was quirks of incidence that collapsed the Soviet Union rather than a concerted effort of the west. Some regimes garnered lessons from it such as China, some did not.

All that occurred in Russia is that the same people who were essentially in charge the day before, were still in charge the day after. What had actually occurred in August of 1991 was simply a change of management The corporation remained the same with new logos and new flags. Socialism was not and will never be defeated as long as there are ignorant saps that believe in the drivel f equality pushed by the “intellectual vanguard”. the great contradiction of collectivist movements is that they require the sacrifice of everyone towards some collective it is always led by individualists.

We need to kill the idea. The mistake of the right is that they have done little to export ideals of liberty or to proselytize them. We must combat the left who expand their movement by converting people to their religion by doing conversions of our own.