Deception Was My Job, The Lectures and Interviews of Yuri Bezmenov

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My father was he is on the left here.
My father was officer of the General Staff of the Soviet
Army. He was inspector of land forces,
Soviet troops stationed in countries like Mongolia, Cuba, E
European countries. This is the picture taken at the
entrance of my Institute of Oriental Languages.
It's a part of Moscow State University.

(00:21):
As every Soviet student, I was quote, UN quote, volunteering
for harvesting grain in Kazakhstan.
By the end of my training in school, I was recruited by the
KGB. This picture was taken on that
day and you can see again how happy it feels to be recruited
by the KGB. Pay special attention to number
of bottles on the table. One of my functions was to keep

(00:43):
foreign guests permanently intoxicated the moment they land
at Moscow airport. In 1967, the KGB attached me to
this magazine. Look Magazine.
A group of 12 people arrived to USSR from the United States to
cover the 50th anniversary of October socialist revolution in
my country. From the first page to the last

(01:05):
page, it was a package of lies. Our conversation is with Mr.

(01:28):
Yuri Alexandrovich Besmianov. Mr. Besmianov was born in 1939
in a suburb of Moscow. He was the son of a high-ranking
Soviet army officer. He was educated in the elite
schools inside the Soviet Union and became an expert in Indian
culture and Indian languages. He had an outstanding career

(01:49):
with Novasti, which was the, andstill is, I should say, the
press arm or the press agency ofthe Soviet Union.
It turns out that this is also afront for the KGB.
One of his interesting assignments was to brainwash
foreign diplomats when they visited Moscow, and he'll tell
us a little bit about how they did this and how they planted

(02:10):
information which eventually wound up in the Press of the
free world. He escaped to the West in 1970
after becoming totally disgustedwith 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 propagandaand disinformation and active

(02:31):
measures. Mr. Bezminov, I'd like to begin
by having you tell us a little bit about some of your childhood
memories. Well, the most vivid memory of
my childhood was Second World War, or to be more precise the
end of the Second World War, when all of a sudden United
States from a friendly nation which helped us to defeat Nazism

(02:53):
turned overnight into a a deadlyenemy.
And it was very shocking becauseall newspapers were trying to
present an image of belligerent aggressive American imperialism.
Most of the things that we were taught is that United States is
aggressive power which is just about to invade our beautiful

(03:14):
free socialist country, that American CIA is dropping
Colorado beetles and our beautiful potato fields to
eliminate our crops. And each schoolboy had a a
picture of Colorado bug on the on the Backpage of his notebook.
And we were instructed to go into collective fields to search

(03:35):
for those little Colorado bugs. Of course, we couldn't find any
neither we could find many potatoes.
And that was explained again by the encroachments of the
decadent imperialist. Power.
The anti American paranoia hysteria in in the Soviet
propaganda was to such an of such a higher degree that many

(03:57):
less skeptical people or less stubborn would really believe
that United States is just aboutto invade our beautiful
motherland. And some secretly hope that it
will come true. That's interesting.
Yes. Well, getting back to life
inside the Soviet Union or inside communist countries in
general, in this country, at theuniversity level primarily, we

(04:23):
read and hear that the Soviet system is different from ours,
but not that different, and thatthere is a convergence
developing between all of the systems of the world.
And that really, it doesn't makean awful lot of difference what
system you live under, because you have corruption and
dishonesty and tyranny and all that sort of thing.
From your personal experience, what is the difference between

(04:44):
life under communism and life inthe United States?
Well, life is obviously very much different for for simple
reason that the Soviet Union is a state capitalist.
Economically, it's a state capitalism where an individual
has absolutely no rights, no value.
His life is nothing. It's just like an insect.

(05:05):
He's disposable whereby in the United States even the even the
worst criminal is treated as a human being.
He has a fair trial and some of them capitalize on their crimes.
They they publish their memoirs in their prisons and get
handsomely paid by your crazy publishers.
The differences, of course, in the daily.

(05:28):
Life. Are very various depending on
who who we are talking about. In my own private life I never
suffered from communism simply because I was brought up in the
family of high-ranking military officer.
Most of the doors were open for me, most of my expenses were
paid by the government and I never had any troubles in with

(05:50):
the authorities or with the police.
So in other words, I I would sayI, I enjoyed, or I had good
reasons to enjoy all the advantages of so-called
socialist system. My main motivations to defect
was had nothing to do with affluence.
It was mainly moral indignation,moral protest, rebellion against

(06:13):
the inhuman methods of of the Soviet system.
Well, specifically, what did youobject to?
I objected first of all against oppression of my own dissidents
and intellectuals. And that was the most disgusting
thing that that I witnessed as aas a young man, young student

(06:33):
was brought up a very troublesome period in our
history, from Stalin to Khrushchev, from total tyranny
and oppression to some kind of liberalisation.
Second, when I started working for the Soviet embassy in India,
I to my horror, I discovered that we are millions times more

(06:55):
oppressive than any colonial or imperialist power in the history
of mankind. That my country brings to India
not freedom, progress and and friendship between the nations,
but racism, exploitation and slavery and and and of course
economical inefficiency to this country.

(07:15):
Since I fell in love with India,I developed something which by
KGB standards is extremely dangerous thing.
It's called split loyalty. When an agent likes a country of
assignment more than his own country.
I literally fell in love with this beautiful country, a
country of great contrasts, but also great humility, great
tolerance and and if philosophical and intellectual

(07:38):
freedoms. My ancestors used to live in
caves and eat raw meat when India was highly civilized
nation 6000 years ago. So obviously the choice was not
to the advantage of my own nation.
I decided to defect and to entirely dissociate myself from
the brutal regime. Mr. Bezmianov, we've read a lot

(08:00):
about the concentration camps and the slave labor camps under
the Stalin regime. Now the general impression in
America is that those things areare part of the past.
Are they still going on today orwhat is the status?
Yes, there is no qualitative change in in the Soviet
concentration camp system. There are changes in in numbers

(08:23):
of prisoners. Again, this is unreliable Soviet
statistics. We don't know how many political
prisoners are there in the Soviet concentration camps, but
we sure know from from various sources that at each particular
time there are close to 25 to 30million of Soviet citizens who

(08:46):
are virtually kept as slaves in forced labor camp system.
The size of the population of country like Canada is serving
terms as as prisoners. Incredible.
So I would say that those intellectuals who try to

(09:06):
convince American public that concentration camp system is a
thing of a past or either conscientiously misleading
public opinion or they are not very intellectual people.
They they're selectively blind. They don't.
They lack intellectual honesty when they say that.

(09:30):
Well, we've spoken about the intellectuals in this country
and also the intellectuals in the Soviet Union.
What about down at the broad mass level?
Do the people in general, the working, the working people, the
workers in general in the SovietUnion, do they support the
system? Do they tolerate it?
What is their attitude? Well, average Soviet citizen, if

(09:52):
there is such an animal, of course does not like the system
because it hurts, it kills. He may not understand the the
reasons, he may not have enough information or or educational
background to understand. But I doubt very much there are
many people who are conscientiously supporting the

(10:17):
Soviet system. There are not such such people
in USSR, even those who have allthe reasons to enjoy socialism,
People like myself who were a member of journalistic.
Elite. They they also hate system for
for different reasons though, not because they lack material
affluence, but because they are unfree to think they're in

(10:37):
constant fear, duplicity, split personality and this is a
greatest tragedy for my nation. Well, what do you think are the
chances of the people actually overcoming their system or
replacing it? There is a great possibility
that system will sooner or laterbe destroyed from within.

(10:57):
There is a self-destructive mechanism built in into any
socialist or communist or fascist system because there is
lack of feedback because the system does not rely upon
loyalty of of population. But until and until this Soviet
junta is being supported by the Western so-called imperialists,

(11:20):
that is multinational companies,establishments, governments and
let's face it, intellectuals, so-called academia in the United
States is famous for supporting the Soviet system.
As long as the Soviet junta willkeep on receiving credits,

(11:40):
money, technology, grain deals and political recognition from
all these traitors of democracy or freedom, there is no hope.
There is not much hope for for changes in my country.
And the system will not collapseby itself simply because it's
it's being nourished by so-called American imperialism.

(12:04):
This is the greatest paradox in history of mankind when
capitalist world supports and actively nourishes its own
destroyer destructor. I think you're trying to tell us
something. Oh yes, country, I'm trying to
tell you that it it has to be stopped unless you want to end

(12:26):
up in in gulag system and enjoy all the advantages of socialist
equality. Working for free, catching fleas
on your body, sleeping on on theplanks of of plywood in in
Alaska this time. I guess that's where Americans
will belong. Unless they will wake up, of

(12:47):
course, and force their government to stop aiding Soviet
fascism. Well, you told us a moment ago
why you left the system. I'd like to hear the details of
how you did it. It must have been a very
dangerous thing. It was not so dangerous.
It was crazy, first of all, because defecting in India is

(13:09):
virtually impossible thanks to very strong pressure from the
Soviet government. Excuse me, you were in India on
assignment at that time? Yes.
I was working for the Soviet embassy in New Delhi as a press
officer, and defecting for a Soviet diplomat is next to
impossible. It's a suicide, as I said,
because. A great friend, Indira Gandhi,

(13:33):
pushed. A law through parliament which
says and I quote no defector from any country has the right
of political asylum in any embassy on the territory of
Indian Republic, which is a masterpiece of hypocrisy.
No other defector but the Soviet1 needs a political asylum.
So knowing that perfectly well, I I I planned a craziest

(13:57):
possible way to defect. I studied Contra culture in
India. There are there were thousands
of young American boys and girlswith no shoes, long hair,
smoking hush and marijuana, studying sometimes Indian
philosophy, sometimes simply pretending that they study.

(14:20):
And they greatly annoyed Indian police and they were laughing
stock of Indians because obviously they they were good
for nothing students. I started carefully where they
congregate, what routes they travel, what language they
speak, what do they smoke. And one day I simply joined a
group of hippies to avoid detection of Indian police.

(14:43):
I was dressed as a typical hippie with the blue jeans.
Long come his shirts with all kind of nice decorations like
beads, long. Hairs.
I, I, I bought a wig because forseveral weeks I had to turn
myself from a conservative Soviet diplomat into a very
progressive American hippie. And that was the only way that,

(15:07):
that I could avoid detection. It was very interesting
experience, but it was necessarybecause from my own knowledge as
a as a member of Soviet embassy staff, I knew that there were
many cases when Soviet defectorswere betrayed by Indian police.

(15:28):
And also some Western embassies played a very dirty role in
betraying the Soviet defectors. According to our information,
they were some, I wouldn't call them double agents, but simply
immortal people working for this, for the United States
embassy and confining in in people like this would be a

(15:51):
suicide. So I had to be extremely
careful. I could not trust anyone.
And that was the that was the reason for such a crazy way to
defect. Well, had you been caught in the
act of trying to get out, what would have happened to you?
Oh, most likely I would end up in in concentration camp or

(16:16):
depending on the situation and on on the on the whim of some
bureaucrat and KGB or maybe evenexecuted that this is normal
practice. Quietly, of course, not
publicly. But that would be the end of my
defection, of course. Well, when did you finally make
it to the United States? In 1970, after about six months

(16:39):
of debriefing in Athens by the CIA and I presume FBI too, they
let me go first to Germany, thento Canada.
That was my decision. I had to change my identity to
protect my family and my friendsin in USSR.
And also I was little bit paranoid knowing that both

(17:02):
Soviet, KGB and probably some double agents within American
system may be after me. So I wanted to settle down as
far away as possible. I requested CIA to give me some
kind of new identity and just let me go on my own and I
settled in Canada. I was a student.

(17:25):
I changed many professions from farm help and and laundry truck
driver to instruct language instructor and broadcaster for
Canadian broadcasting corporations in Montreal.
Well, have you had any threats on your life or any?
Unpleasant. In about 5 years KGB eventually

(17:47):
discovered that I'm working for Canadian broadcasting.
I made a very big mistake. I started talk, I started
working for overseas service of CBC, which is similar to Voice
of America in Russian language. And of course, monitoring
service in USSR picked up every new voice, every new announcer.

(18:10):
Would they? They would make it a point to
discover who he is. And in five years, sure enough,
slowly but surely, they discovered that I am not Thomas
Schumann, that I am Yuri Alexandrovic Besmianov, and that
I'm working for Canadian broadcasting and undermining
beautiful the tongue between Canada and USSR.
And the Soviet ambassador, Alexander Yakovlev, made it his

(18:34):
personal effort to discredit me.He complained to Pierre Trudeau,
who is known to be a little bit soft on socialism and the
management of CBC, behaved in a very strange, cowardly way,
unbecoming to representatives ofa independent country like

(18:56):
Canada. They listen to every suggestion
that Soviet ambassador gave and they started shameful
investigation, analysing contentof my broadcasts to USSR.
And sure enough, they discoveredthat some of my statements were
probably to would be offending to the Soviet Politburo.

(19:21):
So I had to to leave my my job. And of course.
Subtle intimidations. They would say something like,
please cross the street carefully because you know,
traffic is very heavy in Quebec.And fortunately I know about the
psychology and and the logic of activity of the KGB and I never

(19:41):
allowed myself to be intimidated.
This is the worst thing. This is what they expect a
person, a defector to be intimidated.
Once they spot that, that you are scared, they keep on
developing that line and then eventually you either have to
give up entirely and, and, and work for them or you, they

(20:02):
neutralize you. They, they, they would
definitely stop all kind of political activity, which they
failed to do in my case because I was stubbornly working for the
Canadian broadcasting. And in response to their
intimidations, I said that, look, this is a free country and
I am as free as you are, and I also can drive very fast and gun

(20:26):
control is not yet established in Canada.
So I had. Couple of good shotguns in my
basement, so welcome to visit mesomeday with your Kalashnikovs
machine guns. So obviously it didn't work,
intimidation didn't work. So they they tried different
approach as I described, they approached on the highest level,

(20:48):
on the level of Canadian bureaucracy.
And on that level they were successful.
On individual level, they failedflat.
Mr. Besmianov has brought a series of slides with him that
he has taken from the Soviet Union, and I think this is a
good time to take a look at the slides.
Now. The viewers will be able to see

(21:08):
these slides as as we talk aboutthem.
Yes, this is a collection of slides which are some of them
are snapshots from my family album, some of them are
documents which I smuggled from the Soviet embassy, and some are
reproductions from local mass media.
I usually show them to establishmy credibility as a defector.

(21:29):
This is a picture of of my native town, Mytish, about 20
miles north from Moscow. Characteristically, there is a
statue of Comrade Lenin in the central square.
This is myself at the age of 7, again characteristically under
the statue of Comrade Stalin, extending his friendly hand to

(21:49):
peoples of the world. At that age, of course, I was
still idealistically minded, young communist, and I still.
Believe that sooner. Or later things will go for
better. But I realized that the system
stinks, that something is fishy and that ideology is is fake.

(22:10):
And the propaganda about advanced Soviet agriculture
simply didn't meet the criteria of reality.
If they talk about abundance of food and and there is none in
the stores, there must be something wrong.
My father was. He's on the left here.
My father was officer of the General Staff of the Soviet

(22:31):
Army. He was inspector of land forces,
Soviet troops stationed in countries like Mongolia, Cuba, E
European countries. Were he alive today, most likely
he would be inspecting Soviet troops in in Nicaragua, Angola.
And many other parts of the world.
Fortunately, he died and he didn't see the disgrace.

(22:51):
Because deep inside, he was. Russian patriot.
He didn't. He didn't like the idea of
expanding Soviet military might,especially in the areas where
where we were not welcomed at all.
Unlike many other military officers, he was reporting
directly to the Minister of Defence by passing KGB and
diplomatic service. In other words, he was a trusted

(23:13):
military professional and my impression that this type of
people are much less hawkish andadventuristic than party
bureaucrats in Kremlin. When American mass media
describes Soviet military as potentially dangerous
counterpart for for Pentagon, I simply laugh because I know
better. I know that the most dangerous

(23:35):
part of the Soviet power structures are not military at
all. Most likely, if they come to
power in my country, they'll be more sensible negotiators for
nuclear disarmament and withdrawal of the Soviet troops
from many parts of the world. But if someone from the party
structure or the KGB structure were to give the orders for
military, they have to. Obey their their their

(23:58):
professional military. But they you see the triangle of
power and hate in USSR is the party at the top, the party
elite, the oligarchy of the party, then the military and the
KGB at the bottom. They hate each other.
And the the most hated triangle,the most hated corner of the
triangle is the Communist Party bureaucrats.

(24:20):
They are the most adventuristic,senile megalomaniacs.
They can start war. I wouldn't be surprised.
Not the military. They know what war is.
At least my father did. This is the picture taken at the
at the entrance of my Institute of Oriental Languages.
It's a part of Moscow State University.
I graduated in 1963 and I excuse.

(24:43):
Me. Which one were you on?
I I am on the right, you're on the right, and on the left is my
my schoolmate Vadim Smirnov, wholater was a apparatchik in the
Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party.
What is an apparatchik? It's, it's a it's a function.
It's something like civil service in British Empire.
Some someone who is never fired from from the service.

(25:06):
He stays there internally. He may not be promoted to high
but he's a dependable bureaucratwho will stay forever.
I studied not only languages butalso history, literature, even
music. I'm I'm on this picture.
I'm trying to learn how to play musical Indian musical
instrument. I even tried to look like an

(25:28):
Indian when I was second year student.
Not bad. Really.
Yes, actually it was strongly encouraged by the by the
instructors in my school, because this, the graduates of
my school were later on employedas diplomats, foreign
journalists or spies. As every Soviet student.

(25:49):
I was quote UN quote, volunteering for harvesting
grain in Kazakhstan. This is the biggest agricultural
blunder of the Soviet government.
But I didn't have much choice, of course, because the communist
motto borrowed from the Bible says those who do not work shall
not eat and you can see me eating.

(26:11):
Therefore I was working and you can see how happy I was about
it. I went through a very extensive
physical and military training, including the manure and
including the military games in in areas, suburban areas of
Moscow and here, for example, weare on the tour in Arkhangwisk

(26:34):
area. And by the end of my training in
school, I was recruited by the KGB.
This picture was taken on that day and you can see again how
happy it feels to be recruited by the KGB.
Our conversation with Yuri Alexandrovich Besmianov, who is
a defector from the Soviet Union, a former propaganda agent
for Novasti and the KGB, will continue after this message.

(27:20):
All right, as every student in USSII went through very
extensive physical and military training and civil defence
training too. Unlike in United States where
civil defence is virtually non existent 0, in USSR every
student, whatever is major subject has to go through very

(27:42):
extensive 4 year military and civil defence training.
You can see me here with a groupof students during one of the
war games in near Moscow. The main idea, of course, is to
prepare huge reserve army of of of the USSR.
Each student has to to graduate as a junior Lieutenant.

(28:04):
In my case it was administrativeand military Intelligence
service. My first assignment was to India
as a translator with the Soviet Economical Aid Group building
refinery complexes in Bihar state and Gujarat state.
At that time I was still naively, idealistically
believing that what I was doing contributes to the understanding

(28:27):
and cooperation between the nations.
It took me quite a number of years to realize that what we
were bringing to India was a newtype of colonialism, 1000 times
more oppressive and exploitativethan any colonialism or
imperialism in in history of mankind.
But at that time, I was still hoping that, well, maybe it's

(28:50):
not that bad, could be worse andthings may go for better.
And I even tried to implement the beautiful Marxist motto,
proletarians of all the countries unite.
I tried to unite with a nice Indian girl.
And I was actually, I was fascinated by Indian culture,
by, by the. Family life in in this country.

(29:11):
But obviously Communist Party had different plans for my
genes, so I had to marry this beautiful Russian girl.
In the span of my career, I married three times.
Most of these marriages were marriages of convenience on
advice from the Department of Personnel.
This is normal practice in USSR.When the Soviet citizen is
assigned to a foreign job, he has to be married either to keep

(29:35):
family in USSR as hostages or ifit's a convenience marriage like
mine, so that the husband and wife are virtually informers on
each other to prevent defection or contamination by decadent
imperialist or capitalist ideas.In my case, I hated that girl so
much that the moment I landed inMoscow, we we were divorced and

(29:58):
I I married later second time. By the end of my first
assignment in India, I was promoted to the position of of
Public Relation officer. You can see me here translating
a speech by a Soviet boss. And you're on the right.
I'm on the right here. Yes, and it was the occasion was

(30:18):
commissioning of the refinery complex in Bihar Bharani.
Back in Moscow I was immediatelyrecruited by Novice Press
Agency, which is a propaganda and ideological subversion front
for the KGB. 75% of the members of the Novice T are Commission
offices of the KGB. The other 25 are, like myself,

(30:40):
Co opted agents who are assignedto specific operations.
In this particular case you can see me talking to students of
Lumumba Friendship University inMoscow.
This is the a huge school under the direct control of the KGB
and Central Committee, where future leaders of the so-called

(31:02):
National Liberation movements are being educated and selected
carefully and some of them have absolutely they ignited.
This for example, is a group of students from Lumumba.
They don't look like students atall.
They look more like military. And that's exactly what they
were. They were dispatched back to
their countries to be leaders ofthe so-called National

(31:22):
Liberation movements or to be translated into normal human
language leaders of international terrorist groups.
Another area of activity when I was working for the novice team
was to accompany groups of so-called progressive
intellectuals, writers, journalists, publishers,

(31:44):
teachers, professors of of of colleges.
You can see me here in Kremlin. I'm second on the left with a
group of Pakistani and Indian intellectuals.
Most of them pretended they don't understand that we are
actually working on behalf of the Soviet government and the
KGB. They pretended that they are

(32:06):
actually being guests, VIP intellectuals, that they are
treated according to their merits and and and their
intellectual abilities. For us, they were just a bunch
of political prostitutes to be taken advantage for various
propaganda operations. Therefore, you can see perfectly
well they senior colleague of mine on the left doesn't really

(32:28):
have that much respect on his face and myself with a very
sceptical smile, typical KGB sarcastic smile, anticipating
another victim of of ideologicalbrainwashing.
This is how a a typical conference in Novice
headquarters in Moscow look like.

(32:49):
Sitting in the middle is Boris Burkhoff, the then director of
Novice to Press Agency, high-ranking party bureaucrat in
the Department of Propaganda. I'm standing next to a famous
Indian poet, Sumitra Nandan Pant.
He was famous because he was an author.
He was the author of the famous poem titled Rhapsody to Lenin.

(33:12):
That's why he was invited to USSR and everything was paid by
the Soviet government. The pay special attention to
number of bottles on the table. This is one of the ways to kill
the awareness or curiosity of offoreign journalists.
My one of my functions was to keep foreign guests permanently

(33:34):
intoxicated. The moment they land at Moscow
airport, I had to take them to the VIP launch and toast to
friendship and understanding within the nations of the world.
Glass of vodka. Then the second glass of vodka
and in no time my guests would be feeling very happy.
They would see everything in kind of pink, nice color.

(33:54):
And that's the way I I had to keep them permanently for the
next 15 or or 20 days. At certain point in time I had
to withdraw alcohol from them sothat some of them who are the
most recruitable would feel a little bit shaky, guilty, trying
to remember what they were talking last night.
That's the time to approach themwith all kind of nonsense such

(34:17):
as joint communique or statementfor for Soviet propaganda.
That's the time they are in the most flexible.
And of course, what they didn't understand, they didn't realize
or pretended not to realize thatmyself, who was drinking
together with them, was not drinking at all.
I had ways to get rid of alcoholthrough various techniques

(34:38):
including special pills which were given to me by my
colleagues, but they were takingit seriously.
In other words, they, they they would consume quite a large
volumes of alcohol and feel quite uneasy next morning.
In 1967, the KGB attached me to this magazine Look magazine.

(35:00):
A group of 12 people arrived to USSR from United States to cover
the 50th anniversary of October socialist revolution in my
country. From the first page to the last
page, it was a package of lies, propaganda, cliche, which were
presented to American readers asopinions and deductions of

(35:21):
American journalists. Nothing could be far from truth.
This were not opinions. They were not opinions at all.
They were the cliches which the Soviet propaganda wants American
public to think that they think.If it does make any sense at
all, it sure does, because from the viewpoint of the Soviet

(35:44):
propaganda, although there are some subtle criticism of the
Soviet system, the basic messageis that Russia Today is a nice,
functioning, efficient system supported by majority of
population. That's the biggest lie.
And of course, American intellectuals and journalists
from Look magazine elaborated onthat untruth in various

(36:04):
different ways. They intellectualized that lie.
They found all kind of justifications for telling lies
to American public. This is it was partly your job
to make sure that they got theseideas and accepted them as their
own idea. Right.

(36:24):
Actually, even before they arrived to USSR and they paid
astronomical sum of money for that visit, they were submitted.
This Novus Press Agency developed so-called
backgrounders 2025 pages of information and opinions which
were presented to the journalisteven before they bought their
tickets to Moscow. They had to analyze the

(36:46):
situation and judging on their reaction to that background, the
local novice representative or local Soviet diplomat in
Washington DC would assess whether they have whether they
be given visa to USSR or not. They were selected.
Yes, they were. They were pre selected very
carefully and there's not much chance for honest journalists to

(37:08):
arrive to USSR and to stay therefor one year and to bring this
package of lies back home. This for example is a centerfold
of the of of the Luke magazine. They presented this monument
erected by Communist Party in Stalingrad as the symbol
personification of Russian military might.

(37:28):
And they said in the article which is published on on the
side that Soviets are very proudof the victory in the Second
World War. This is another big myth, a lie.
No sensible people would be proud to lose 20,000,000 of
their countrymen in a war which was started by Genosa, Hitler
and Comrade Stalin and paid by American multinationals.

(37:50):
Most of the Soviet citizens lookat this type of monuments with
disgust and sorrow because everyfamily lost father, brother,
sister or child in the Second World War.
Yet American journalists who were trying to appease to please
their hosts presented this picture on the centerfold as the

(38:11):
symbol and personification of Soviet national.
They call it Russian national spirit and it was greatest,
greatest misconception and and avery tragic misunderstanding.
Of course, Luke Magazine was notdistributed in USSR.
The main audience was in the United States.

(38:33):
But I presume that many Americans, millions of Americans
who were reading Luke magazine at that time had absolutely
wrong idea about the sentiments of my nation, about what the
Soviets are proud of and what they hate.
This is a group you see the samelady with the sword in

(38:54):
Stalingrad. This is the group of
journalists, myself is in the centre with the same devilish
smile and Mr. Philip Harrington is on the extreme left there
with with his camera. This is the gentleman which was
so deaf or so uninterested in what I had to say to him.

(39:15):
This is the same picture, a blowup of the same of the same
picture. Many, many guests from various
countries, in this particular case from Asia and Africa, were
taken by me as a novice press agency employee for a tour
across Siberia. For example.
We would show them typical kindergarten, you see, nothing

(39:37):
special by American standards, just nice children sitting,
eating their breakfast or or lunch.
What they could not understand or they pretended not to
understand that this is an exemplary kindergarten.
This is not the kindergarten foraverage person or average family
in USSR. And we maintain that illusion in

(39:58):
their minds. You can see myself under the red
spot in the middle there with the same businesslike
expression. I'm on, you know, I'm doing my
job, that that's what I'm assigned to do and that's what I
was paid to do. But deep inside, I still hope
that at least some of this. Useful idiots would understand
that what they are looking at has nothing to do with the level

(40:21):
of affluence in my nation. This is a better picture which
reflects the true spirit of of the Soviet Soviet childhood.
This picture was printed in a Canadian government publication
by mistake. In the middle you can see
children playing on a a small courtyard and the caption goes,

(40:43):
this is a typical kindergarten in Siberia.
What these idiots didn't understand that it is not
kindergarten at all. It is a prison for children of
political prisoners. But there was not a single
mentioning that what they were visiting actually was an area of
concentration camps and the job of people like myself to help

(41:05):
them to not to notice that they are actually talking to
prisoners. Most of the children were
dressed, especially on the occasion of the foreigners
visit. The, of course, there were no
corpses on the ground, There were no machine gun guards.
And they, well, it looks not very pleasant as you see.
It's it. It looks dull, but obviously it

(41:28):
does not create an impression that this is actually a prison.
Well, did any of the journalistshave the curiosity to ask about
prisons and that kind of thing? They were in Siberia.
This is what? You were saying, yes, some of
them asked questions and naturally we would give them for
the stupid question. We'd give them stupid answer.
No, there are no prisons in Siberia.
No, most of the people who are who you see are free citizens of

(41:51):
USSR, very happy to be here and and they are contributing to the
glory of the socialist system. Some of them pretended that
they, they believe what what I was telling them.
And most of them, we may discussit later.
What are the motivations of these people?
Why would they stubbornly bring lies to their own population

(42:14):
through their own mass media? I have various answers to this.
There is not a single explanation.
It's a complex of explanations. It's fear, pure biological fear.
They understand that they are onthe territory of an enemy state,
a police state, and just to savetheir rotten skins and their
miserable jobs, their affluence back home, they would prefer to

(42:36):
tell a lie than to to ask truthful questions and and
report truthful information. Second, most of these schmucks
were afraid to lose their jobs because obviously if you tell
truth about my country, you willnot last long as a correspondent
of New York Times. Or.
Or Los Angeles Times, They will fire you.

(42:56):
What kind of correspondent are you?
You obviously cannot find commonlanguage with Russians if they
kick you out in 24 hours. So just by by trying to be
conformist to their own editorial bosses, they tried not
to offend the sentiments of the Soviet administrators and people
like myself. Deep inside, I hope they would
insult my or offend my sentiments.

(43:20):
Obviously they preferred not to.Another reason I did I, I refuse
to believe it. But obviously there is another
reason. Obviously it's agreed.
These people earn a lot of money.
When they come back to USA, theyclaim that they are experts in
my country. They write books which sells
1,000,000 copies titled like Russians, the Truth about

(43:43):
Russia. Most of it is lie about Russia,
yet they claim to be Sovietologists.
They they break they play back myths about my country, the
propaganda cliches, yet they arestubbornly resisted the word of
truth. If a a person like Solzhenitsyn
is either defecting or kicked out of USSR, they try all their

(44:06):
best to to discredit him and to discourage him.
I don't have much chance to appear on national network with
a true story about my country, but a useful idiot like Hendrick
Smith or Robert Kaiser, they arebig heroes.
They come back from USSR, they say, oh, we were talking to
dissidents in Russia. Big deal.

(44:27):
Soviet dissidents are chasing American correspondents in the
streets and they're cowardly escaping from these contacts for
some strange reason. If you want to know more about
Spain, you refer to Spanish writers.
If you want to learn more about French, you read French or
writers even about Antarctica. I bet you would read Penguins

(44:48):
only about the Soviet Union. For some strange reason, you
read Hendricks and Schmandricks and all kind of Kissinger's
because they claim that they know more about my country.
They know nothing or next to nothing, or they pretend that
they know more than they actually do.
I would say they are dishonest people who lack integrity and

(45:10):
common sense and intellectual honesty.
They bring back all kind of stories like that.
A kindergarten in Siberia, a meeting, the most important
fact, it's a prison for childrenof political prisoners.
Another greatest example of monumental idiocy of American

(45:31):
politicians. Edward Kennedy was in Moscow and
he thought that he is a popular charismatic American politician
who is easygoing, who can smile,dance at the wedding in in
Russian palace of marriages. What he did, what he did not
understand, or maybe he pretended not to understand that

(45:52):
actually he was being taken for a ride.
This is a staged wedding, especially to impress foreign
media or or useful idiots like Ed Kennedy.
Most of the of the guests there,they, they had security
clearance and they were instructed what to say to
foreigners. This is exactly what I was

(46:13):
doing. You can see me in the same damn
bedding palace in Moscow where Ed Kennedy was dancing here.
Is he smiling? He thinks he's very smart from
the viewpoint of Russian citizens who observe this
idiocy. He's he's narrow minded
egocentrical idiot who tries to earn his own popularity through

(46:34):
the through participation in propaganda forces like this.
Here you can see myself on the right again, exemplary Soviet
bride. On the left, three journalists
from various countries, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Obviously they enjoying the situation.
They they will go back home and write the reports.

(46:54):
We were present in the on the regular Soviet wedding.
They were not present on the regular Soviet, they were
present. They were part of a farce of a
circus performance, another thing which I had to sometimes
risking my life to explain to foreigners.
Time magazine for example, is very critical of South African

(47:18):
racist regime. The whole article was dedicated
to the shameful internal passport system where black
blacks are not allowing to live with whites.
For some strange reason, for thelast 14 years since my
defection, nobody wanted to pay attention to my passport.
This is my passport. It also shows my nationality and

(47:40):
it it it has a police rubber stamp which is called Pratiska
in the Russian language, which assigns me to a certain area of
residence. I cannot leave that area same
way as this black man cannot leave the area in South Africa.
Yet we call South African government racist regime.
Not a single Jane, Jane Schmondaor Fonda is brave enough,

(48:04):
courageous enough to come to media and say look, this is what
happens in USSR. I send a copy of of my passport
to many American liberals and civil rights defenders and and
all the other useful idiots. They never, they never bothered
to answer me back. This shows what kind of
integrity, what kind of honesty these people are.

(48:25):
They're a bunch of hypocrites because they don't want to
recognize a good example of racism In my country.
This is the first stage of befriending a professor.
You can see myself on the left with the same James Bond smile.
On my on the right is my KGB supervisor, Comrade Leonid
Mitrochin, and in the middle of Professor of Political Science

(48:47):
in Delhi University. The next stage would be to
invite him to a gathering of in the Soviet Friendship Society.
There he is sitting next to his wife before he is being sent to
USSR for free treat. Everything is paid by the Soviet
government. He was made to believe that he's
invited to USSR because he's a talented, sober thinking

(49:08):
intellectual. Absolutely false.
He's invited because he's a useful idiot, Because he would
agree and subscribe to most of the Soviet propaganda.
Cliche. And when he's coming back to to
his own country, he's going for years and years to teach the
beauties of Soviet socialism to newer and newer generations of

(49:29):
his students, thus promoting theSoviet propaganda line.
The KGB was even curious about this gentleman.
It may look innocent Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a great spiritual
leader or maybe a great charlatan and crook, depending
on which from which side you're looking at him.

(49:51):
Beatles were trained at his ashram in Hardwar in India.
How to meditate. Neil Farrow and and other useful
idiots from Hollywood visited his school and they returned
back to to United States absolutely zoned out of their
minds with marijuana, hashish and crazy ideas of meditation.

(50:11):
To meditate, in other words, to isolate oneself from the current
social and political issues of your own country, to get into
your own bubble, to forget abouttroubles of the world.
Obviously, KGB was very fascinated with such a beautiful
school, such a brainwashing Center for stupid Americans.

(50:31):
I was dispatched by the KGB to check what kind of VIP Americans
attend this school. That's you on the left.
Yes, I'm on the left. I, I, I was trying to get
enrolled in that school. Unfortunately, the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi asked too much. He wanted 500 American dollars
for enrollment. But my function was not actually
to get enrolled in the school. My function was to discover what

(50:53):
kind of people from United States attend this school.
And we discovered that yes, there are some influential
members of family public opinionmakers of United States who come
back with the crazy stories about Indian philosophy.
Indians themselves look upon them as idiots, useful idiots,

(51:18):
to say nothing about KGB who looked at them as as as
extremely naive, misguided people.
Obviously AVIP say a wife of, ofof a congressman or or a
prominent Hollywood personality after after being trained in
that school is much more instrumental in the hands of, of

(51:39):
manipulators of public opinion and KGB than a normal person
who, who understands who, who looks through this, this, this
this type of, of fake religious training.
Why would they be more susceptible to manipulation?
I just mentioned that because you see a a person who is too
much involved in, in, in in in introspective meditation.

(52:03):
See if you carefully look what what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is
teaching to to Americans is thatall most of the problems, most
of the burning issues of today can be solved simply by
meditating. Don't, don't, don't rock the
boat. Don't get involved.
Just sit down, look at your navel and meditate.
And the things due to some strange logic due to cosmic

(52:26):
vibration will will will settle down by themselves.
This is exactly what the KGB andMarxist Leninist propaganda
wants from Americans to destructtheir opinion, attention and
mental energy from real issues of United States into a non
issues into a non world non existent harmony.

(52:48):
Obviously, it's more beneficial for the Soviet aggressors to
have a bunch of duped Americans than Americans who are
self-conscious, healthy, physically fit, an alert to to
the reality. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi obviously
is not on the payroll of the KGB, but whether he knows it or
not, he contributes greatly to demoralization of American

(53:11):
Society. And he's not the only one.
There are hundreds of those gurus who come to to your
country to capitalize on naiveteand stupidity of of Americans.
It's a fashion. It's a fashion to meditate.
It's a fashion not to be involved.
So obviously you can see that if, if KGB were that curious, if

(53:33):
they paid my trip to Hardwar, ifthey assigned me to that, to
that strange job, obviously theywere very much fascinated.
They were convinced that that type of of of brainwashing is
very efficient and instrumental in demoralization of the United
States. Our conversation with Yuri
Alexandrovich Besmianov, who is a defector from the Soviet

(53:54):
Union, a former propaganda agentfor Novasti and the KGB, will
continue after this message. This picture shows the part of

(54:25):
the building of USSR embassy andmy supervisors.
On the left is Comrade Mehdi, anIndian communist and on the
right Comrade Mitrochhin, my supervisors in the secret
department of research and Contra propaganda.
It has nothing to do with eitherresearch or Contra propaganda.
Most of the activity of the department was to compile huge

(54:47):
amount volume of information. All 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

(55:09):
divided roughly into groups. Those who would 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 own country
would be character assassinated or executed physically come
revolution. Same way as in a small town of

(55:31):
Hua in South Vietnam, several thousands of Vietnamese were
executed in one night when the city was captured by Viet Cong
for only two days. An American CIA could never
figure out how could possibly communists know each individual,
where he lives, where where to get him and would be arrested in
one night. Basically in some 4 hours before

(55:53):
dawn, put on a van, taken out ofthe 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. Everyone who is sympathetic to

(56:16):
United States was executed. Same thing was done under the
guidance of 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 of.
Pro Soviet journalist with whom I was personally friendly.
Pro Soviet. Yes, they were idealistically

(56:38):
minded leftists who made severalvisits to USSR and yet the KGB
decided that calm revolution or drastic changes in political
structure of India they will have to go.
Why is that? Because they know too much,
simply because you see the useful idiots, the the leftists
who are idealistically believingin the beauty of Soviet

(57:01):
socialist or communist or whatever system, When they get
disillusioned, they become the worst enemies.
That's why my KGB instructors specifically made the point
never bother with leftists. Forget about this political
prostitutes aim higher. This was my instruction.
Try to get into into large circulation established

(57:24):
conservative media reach filthy 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. These are the most recruitable
people, people who lack moral principles, who are either too.
Greedy. Or too suffer from self

(57:45):
importance. They feel that they they matter
a lot. These are the people who KGB
wanted very much to recruit. But to eliminate the others to
execute the others, Don't they serve some purpose?
Wouldn't they be the? Ones that rely, they serve
purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation.
For example, your leftists in, in United States, all these

(58:08):
professors and all these beautiful civil rights
defenders, they are instrumentalin the process of the of the
subversion only to destabilize the nation when their job is
completed. They're not, they're not needed
anymore. They know too much.
Some of them when, when they getdisillusioned, when they see

(58:28):
that Marxist Leninist 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 upagainst 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 this formerMarxist Leninists were either

(58:50):
put to prison or one of them split.
And now he's working against Sandinistas.
It happened in in Grenada when Maurice Bishop was, he was
already a Marxist. He was executed by by a new
Marxist who was more Marxist than this Marxist.
Same happened in Afghanistan when first there was Taraki, he
was killed by Amin. Then Amin was killed by Barbara

(59:10):
Carmel with the help of KGB. Same happened in 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 used. Either be executed entirely, all

(59:30):
the idealistically minded Marxists or exiled or put in
prisons like in Cuba. Many many former Marxists are in
Cuba. I mean in prison.
So most of the Indians who were cooperating with the Soviets,
especially without the Department of of Information of
the USSR embassy, were listed for execution.

(59:54):
And when I discovered that fact,of course I was sick.
I was mentally and physically sick.
I thought that I'm I'm going to explode.
One day during the briefing at the ambassador's office, I would
stand up and say something that we are basically a bunch of
murderers. That's what we are.
We, it has nothing to do with friendship and understanding
between the nation and blah, blah, blah.

(01:00:14):
We are murderers. We behave as as a bunch of thugs
in in the country which which ishospitable to us, a country
which, which with ancient traditions.
But I, I, I did not defect. I tried to get the message
across. To my horror, nobody wanted even
to listen, least of all to believe what I had to say.
And I tried all kinds of tricks.I would, I would, I would leak

(01:00:37):
information through letters or lost documents or something like
that. And still I got no message.
The message was not published even in the conservative mass
media of of India. The immediate impulse to defect
was Bangladesh crisis, which wasdescribed by American
correspondents as Islamic grassroots revolution, which is

(01:00:58):
absolute baloney. There was nothing to do with
Islam and there was no grassroots revolution.
Actually, there are no grassroots revolutions, period.
Any revolution is a byproduct ofa highly organized group of
conscientious and professional organizers, but has nothing to
do with grassroots. In Bangladesh, it was nothing

(01:01:19):
with grassroots. Most of the Avami League party
members, Avami League means People's Party were trained in
Moscow in the high party school.Most of the Muktifaouj leaders,
Muktifaouj is in Bengoli Min's People's army, same as SWAPO and
and all kind of liberation armies all over the world, the
same bunch of useful idiots. They were trained at Lumumba

(01:01:42):
University and various centres of the KGB in Simferopol, in in
Crimea and in Tashkent. So when I saw that Indian,
Indian territory is being used as a as a jumping board to
destroy East Pakistan, I saw myself, thousands of of
so-called students travelling through India, to East Pakistan,

(01:02:03):
through the territory of India and Indian government pretended
not to see what was going on. They knew perfectly well the
Indian police knew it, the intelligence department of
Indian government knew it, the KGB of course knew it and the
CIA knew it. That that was most infuriating
because when I defected and I explained to the CIA debriefers
they should watch out because East Pakistan is going to erupt

(01:02:26):
any moment. They said I, I, I was, I was
reading too, too many James Bondnovels anyway, So East Pakistan
was doomed. One of my colleagues in in the
Soviet consulate in Calcutta, when he was dead drunk, he
ventured into the basement to torelieve himself and he found the
big boxes which said printed matter to Dhaka University.

(01:02:49):
Dhaka is the capital of East Pakistan and since he was drunk
and curious, he opened one of the boxes and he discovered not
printed metric, he discovered Kalashnikov guns and ammunition
in there. Anyway, it's a long story.
When I saw the the preparations for the for the invasion into
East Pakistan, obviously I wanted to defect immediately.

(01:03:09):
The only thing I couldn't, I couldn't at that time make up my
mind when and where and how. One of the reasons, of course,
you see, I was in love with India.
I mentioned it before, I spoke the languages, I socialized with
people and I understood that I had to to act fast unless I want
this beautiful country to be permanently and irreparably

(01:03:33):
damaged by our presence. One of the reasons not to defect
was, as you can see, I was living in relative affluence.
Who the hell in in in the normalmind would defect and do what?
To be abused by your media, to be called Mccarthyist and
fascist and paranoid, or to drive a taxi in New York City?

(01:03:54):
What for? What the hell for?
Should I defect to be abused by by Americans?
To be insulted in exchange for for my effort to bring the
truthful information about impending danger subversion?
As you can see, I was living in quite the comfortable conditions
next to swimming pool where Indians were not allowed.
By the way, I was highly paid, expert in propaganda, I had my

(01:04:16):
family, I was respected by my nation, my career was cloudless.
The third reason, how to defect with the family, to defect with
the baby and the wife would be virtual suicide because
according to law, that hypocritical law which I quoted
before, the Indian police will have to hand me over back to the
KGB and that will be the end of my defection and probably my

(01:04:39):
life again. I cannot smuggle my wife because
she was not quite sure what, what I was doing.
She was not that idealistically involved and she was definitely
not in, in, in the total pictureof what I was doing for the KGB.
She would be shocked if I, if I,you know, put her in my van and,

(01:05:01):
and drive her to the American embassy or elsewhere.
That would be a greatest danger.So again I had to defect in such
a way that my defection would look as simple disappearance.
And there were many cases like that when the Soviet agents
simply disappeared, either killed in action or thanks to
their curiosity and and their close contacts with radicals.

(01:05:24):
Some of them were killed by the Marxists.
By the way, it happened in many African countries when the
Soviet KGB were killed by Africans themselves, not because
they hated Marxist and Leninism,but because they were simply
trigger happy, a bunch of unrulycharacters.
If you give them machine gun they will shoot.
And some of the Soviets obviously were not careful
enough to protect themselves andthey got into embarrassing

(01:05:46):
situations when they were shot at the crossfire between
factions of of so-called liberation movements.
Anyway, so I I decided, as I said, to study the Contra
culture. I decided this probably would be
the best way to disappear. I socialized with characters
like this. On the left.
You see, he's a barefoot American hippie.

(01:06:10):
It took me quite a long time to study exactly what they were
doing and how to mix with them, but eventually I did it.
Most of Indian newspapers carried my picture and promise
of ₹2000 for information about my whereabouts, but they were
looking for wrong person becausethey obviously tried to stop a
young Soviet diplomat in white shirt and tie.

(01:06:33):
And this is how I looked at the time of defection.
Nobody could possibly think thatthe Soviet diplomat would be as
crazy as to join a bunch of hippies.
That's you. Yes, travel Indian smoke hash.
So I made it literally almost like a Hollywood style detective
story from under the nose of theKGB in Bombay airport.

(01:06:57):
I landed the plane and I flew toto Greece where I was debriefed
by the CIA. That's basically most that's all
for my hey, we can slides. We can turn off the projector,
and that's very interesting. Well, you spoke several times
before about ideological subversion.
That is a phrase that I'm afraidsome Americans don't fully
understand. When the Soviets use the phrase

(01:07:21):
ideological subversion, what do they mean by it?
Ideological subversion is, is the process which is legitimate,
overt and open. You, you can see it with your
own eyes. All, all you have to do, all
American mass media has to do isto unplug their bananas from
their ears, open up their eyes and they can see it.

(01:07:42):
There's no mystery. There's nothing to do with
espionage. I know that espionage
intelligence gathering looks more romantic.
It sells more deodorants throughthe advertising.
Probably that's why your Hollywood producers are so crazy
about James Bond type of, of of thrillers.
But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in

(01:08:03):
the area of intelligence at all.According to my opinion and
opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time,
money and manpower is spent on espionage.
As such. The other 85% is a slow process,
which we call either ideologicalsubversion or active measures

(01:08:26):
actively mirapriyatia in the language of of the KGB or
psychological warfare. What it basically means is to
change the perception of realityof every American to such an
extent that despite of the abundance of information, no one
is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of

(01:08:48):
defending themselves, their families, their community and
their country. It's a great brainwashing
process which goes very slow andit's divided in in four basic
stages. The first one being
demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to
demoralize a nation. Why that many years?

(01:09:10):
Because this is the minimum number of years which requires
to educate one generation of students in the country of of of
your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy.
In other words, Marxism, Leninism, ideology is being
pumped into the soft heads of ofof at least three generations of

(01:09:30):
American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by
the basic values of Americanism,American patriotism.
The result? The result?
You can see most of the people who graduated in 60s dropouts or
half baked intellectuals are nowoccupying the positions of power
in the government, civil service, business, mass media,

(01:09:51):
educational system. You are stuck with them.
You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated.
They are programmed to think andreact to certain stimulate in a
certain pattern. You cannot change their mind.
Even if you, if you expose them to authentic information, even
if you prove that white is whiteand black is black, you still

(01:10:12):
cannot change the basic perception and the logic of
behavior. In other words, these people,
the process of demoralization iscomplete and irreversible.
To get rid Society of these people you have you need another
20 or 15 years to educate a new generation of patriotically

(01:10:33):
minded. And and and.
Common common sense people who would be acting in favor and in
the interests of of the of the United States society.
And yet these people who've beenprogrammed and as you say, in
place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet
concept, these are the very people who would be marked for

(01:10:55):
extermination in this. Country.
Most of them, yes, Simply because the psychological shock
when, when they will see in future what the, what the
beautiful Society of equality and social justice means in
practice. Obviously they will revolt.
They, they, they will, they willbe very unhappy, frustrated
people. And the Marxist Leninist regime

(01:11:18):
does not tolerate these people. They obviously, they will join
the links of dissenters, dissidents.
Unlike in present United States,there will be no place for
dissent in in future Marxist Leninist America.
Here you can you can get popularlike Daniel Ellsberg and filthy

(01:11:40):
rich like Jane Fonda for being dissident, for criticizing your
Pentagon. In future, these people will be
simply squashed like cockroaches.
Nobody's going to pay them nothing for their beautiful
noble ideas of equality. This they don't understand and
it will be greatest shock for them.
Of course, the demoralization process in the United States is

(01:12:02):
basically completed already for the last 25 years.
Actually, it's over fulfilled because demoralization now
reaches such areas where previously not even Comer than
drop off and and all his expertswould would even dream of such a
tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans

(01:12:23):
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

(01:12:43):
information with 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 he's going to receive a kick in the in his fat bottom when
the military booth crashes his balls.
Then he will understand. But not before that.

(01:13:05):
That's the tragic. Of the situation of
demoralization. So basically America is stuck
with, with demoralization and unless, even if if you start
right now, here this minute, youstart educating your generation
of American, it will still take you 15 to 20 years to turn the
tide of, of ideological perception of reality back to

(01:13:26):
normal normalcy and and patriotism.
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, it doesn't matter anymore this time.
And it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a

(01:13:47):
nation. It's what what matters is
essentials, economy, Foreign Relations, defense systems.
And you can see quite clearly that in some areas, in such
sensitive areas as as defense, an economy, the influence of
Marxist Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely

(01:14:10):
fantastic. I, I could never believe it 14
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, it, it may take only up to
six weeks to, to bring a countryto the verge of crisis.
You can see it in in Central America now and after crisis,

(01:14:30):
with a violent change of of power structure and economy.
You have so-called the period ofnormalization.
It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical
expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda.
When the Soviet tanks moved intoCzechoslovakia in 68, Comrade
Brezhnev said Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is

(01:14:51):
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 to destabilize your economy, to
eliminate the principle of free market competition and to put a
Big Brother government in Washington DC with the

(01:15:16):
benevolent dictators like WalterMondale who will promise lots of
things. Never mind whether the promises
are fulfillable or not. He will go to Moscow to kiss the
bottoms of of new generation of Soviet assassins.
Never mind he will create false illusions that the situation is
under control. Situation is not under control.

(01:15:37):
Situation is disgustingly out ofcontrol.
Most of the American politicians, media and
educational system trains another generation of people who
think they are living at the peacetime falls.
United States is in the state ofwar undeclared Total War against
the basic principles and the foundations of of this system

(01:16:02):
and and the initiator of this war is not common than drop.
Of course it's it's the system, however ridiculous it may sound,
the world communist system or the world communist conspiracy.
Whether I scare some people or not, I don't give a hood if if
you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you, but you

(01:16:25):
don't have to be paranoid about it.
What? What actually happens now that
unlike myself, you have literally several years to live
on unless the United States wakeup.
The the time bomb is ticking. With every second the disaster
is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have

(01:16:45):
nowhere to defect to unless you want to live in Antarctica with
Penguins. This is it.
This is the last country of freedom and and possibility.
OK, So what do we do? What is your recommendation to
the American people? Well, the, the, the immediate
thing that comes to my mind is of course, there must be a very

(01:17:08):
strong national effort to educate people in, in, in the
spirit of real patriot is #1 #2 to, to explain them 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 United

(01:17:31):
States. You make his goodbye to your
freedom, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison inmate.
All this freedom will vanish, evaporating in five seconds,
including your precious lives. The second thing I the moment at
least part of the United States population is convinced that the

(01:17:52):
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 aidingcommunism because there is no
other problem more burning and and urgent than to stop the

(01:18:13):
Soviet military industrial complex from destroying what is
whatever is left of the free world.
And it is very easy to do. No credits, no technology, no
money, no political or diplomatic recognition, and of
course no such EDS as grain deals to USSR.
The Soviet people. 270 millions of of Soviets will be eternally

(01:18:35):
thankful to you if you stop aiding a bunch of murderers who
sit now in Kremlin and whom President Reagan respectfully
calls government. They do not govern anything.
List of all such complexity as the Soviet.
Economy. So basic 22 very simple, maybe 2
simplistic answers or solutions but never nevertheless they are

(01:18:57):
the only solutions. Educate yourself, understand
what's going on around you. You are not living at the time
of peace, you are in a state of war and you have precious little
time to save yourself. You don't have much time,
especially if you are talking about young generation.
There's not much time left for convulsions and sexual

(01:19:19):
masturbation to the beautiful disco music.
Very soon it will go, just just overnight if we are talking
about capitalists. Or or or.
Wealthy businessmen, they I think they are selling the rope
on which they will hang very soon if they don't stop, if they
cannot curb the unsettled desirefor profit, and if they keep on

(01:19:44):
trading with the monster of the Soviet communism, they are going
to hang very soon and it they will pray to be killed.
But unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska, probably to
manage industry of slaves. It's, it's simplistic.
I know it sounds unpleasant. I know Americans don't like to
listen to things which are unpleasant.

(01:20:05):
But I have defected not to tell you the stories about such
idiocies as microfilm James Bondtype espionage.
This is garbage. You don't need any espionage
anymore. I have come to talk about
survival. It's a question of survival of
this system. And you may ask me, what is it

(01:20:25):
in for me? Survival, obviously, because
unlike I, as I said, I am now inyour boat.
If, if we sing together, we'll sing beautifully together.
There is no other place on this planet to defect.

(01:21:14):
Grassroot revolution. Actually, there are no grassroot
revolutions, period. Any revolution is a byproduct of
a highly organized group of conscientious and professional
organizers, but has nothing to do with grassroots.
In Bangladesh it was nothing with grassroots.
Most of the Avami League party members, Avami League means

(01:21:36):
People's Party were trained in Moscow in the high party school.
Most of the Mukti Fauj leaders. Mukti Fauj in Bengoli means
People's Army same as SWAPO and and all kind of liberation
armies all over the world. The same bunch of useful idiots.
They were trained at Lumumba University and various centres
of the KGB in Simferopol, in in Crimea and in Tashkent.

(01:22:01):
So when I saw that Indian, Indian territory is being used
as a, as a jumping board to destroy East Pakistan, I saw
myself, thousands of, of so-called students travelling
through India, to East Pakistan,through the territory of India.
And Indian government pretended not to see what was going on.
They knew perfectly well the Indian police knew it, the

(01:22:23):
intelligence department of Indian government knew it, the
KGB of course knew it and the CIA knew it.
That, that was most infuriating because when I defected and I
explained to the CIA debriefers,they should watch out because
East Pakistan is going to erupt any moment.
They said I, I, I was, I was reading too, too many James Bond
novels anyway. So East Pakistan was doomed.

(01:22:48):
One of my colleagues in in the Soviet Consulate in Calcutta,
when he was dead drunk, he ventured into the basement to to
relieve himself and he found thebig boxes which said printed
matter to Dhaka University. Dhaka is the capital of
Pakistan. And since he was drunk and
curious, he opened one of the boxes and he discovered not

(01:23:08):
printed matter. He discovered Kalashnikov guns
and ammunition in there. Anyway, it's a long story.
When I saw the the preparations for the for the invasion into
East Pakistan, obviously I wanted to defect immediately.
The only thing I couldn't, I couldn't at that time make up my
mind when and where and how. One of the reasons, of course,

(01:23:29):
you see, I was in love with India.
I mentioned it before. I spoke the languages, I
socialized with people, and I understood that I had to, to act
fast unless I want this beautiful country to be
permanently and irreparably damaged by our presence.
One of the reasons not to defectwas, as you can see, I was

(01:23:51):
living in relative affluence. Who the hell in in in the normal
mind would defect and do what? To be abused by your media?
To be called Mccarthyist and fascist and paranoid?
Or to drive a taxi in New York City?
What for? What the hell for?
Should I defect to be abused by by Americans?
To be insulted in exchange for for my effort to bring the truth

(01:24:15):
of marriages. What he did, what he did not
understand or maybe he pretendednot to understand that actually
he was being taken for a ride. This is a stage bedding
especially to impress foreign media or or useful idiots like
Ed Kennedy. Most of the of the guests there,
they they had security clearanceand they were instructed what to

(01:24:37):
say to foreigners. This is exactly what I was
doing. You can see me in the same damn
bedding palace in Moscow where Ed Kennedy was dancing.
Here is he smiling? He thinks he's very smart from
the viewpoint of Russian citizens who observe this
idiocy. He's he's narrow minded,

(01:24:58):
egocentrical idiot who tries to earn his own popularity through
the through participation in propaganda forces like this.
Here you can see myself on the right again, exemplary Soviet
bride. On the left, three journalists
from various countries, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Obviously they enjoying the situation.

(01:25:20):
They they will go back home and write the reports.
We were present in the on the regular Soviet wedding, they
were not present on the regular Soviet wedding, they were
present. They were part of a farce of a
circus performance. Another thing which I had to
sometimes risking my life to explain to foreigners.

(01:25:42):
Time magazine for example is very critical of South African
racist regime. The whole article was dedicated
to the shameful internal passport system where black,
blacks are not allowing to live with whites.
For some strange reason, for thelast 14 years since my
defection, nobody wanted to pay attention to my passport.

(01:26:05):
This is my passport. It also shows my nationality and
it it it has a police rubber stamp which is called Pratiska
in the Russian language, which assigns me to a certain area of
residence. I cannot leave that area same
way as this black man cannot leave the area in South Africa.
Yet we call South African government racist regime.

(01:26:28):
Not a single Jane, Jane Schmondaor Fonda is brave enough,
courageous enough to come to media and say, look, this is
what happens in USSRI. Send a copy of of my passport to
many American liberals and civilrights defenders and and all the
other useful idiots. They never, they never bothered
to answer me back. This shows what kind of

(01:26:50):
integrity, what kind of honesty,these people.
Are. They are a bunch of hypocrites
because they don't want to recognize a good example of
racism In my country. This is the first stage of
befriending a professor. You can see myself on the left
with the same James Bond smile on my On the right is my KGB

(01:27:10):
supervisor, Comrade Leonid Mitrochin, and in the middle of
professor of politics and. That was the only way that that
I could avoid detection. It was very interesting
experience, but it was necessarybecause from my own knowledge as
a as a member of Soviet embassy staff, I knew that there were

(01:27:34):
many cases when Soviet defectorswere betrayed by Indian police.
And also some Western embassies played a very dirty role in
betraying the Soviet defectors. According to our information,
they were some, I wouldn't call them double agents, but simply a
moral people working for this, for the United States embassy

(01:27:59):
and confining in in people like this would be a suicide.
So I had to be extremely careful.
I could not trust anyone. And that was the that was the
reason for such a crazy way to defect.
Well, had you been caught in theact of trying to get out, what
would have happened to you? Oh, most likely I would end up

(01:28:22):
in in concentration camp or depending on the situation and
on on the on the whim of some bureaucrat and KGB, maybe even
executed that this is normal practice.
Quietly, of course, not publicly.
But that would be the end of my defection, of course.

(01:28:42):
Well, when did you finally make it to the United States?
In 1970, after about six months of debriefing in Athens by the
CIA and I presume FBI too, they let me go first to Germany, then
to Canada. That was my decision.
I had to change my identity to protect my family and my friends

(01:29:06):
in in USSR. And also I was a little bit
paranoid knowing that both Soviet KGB and probably some
double agents within. American system may be after me.
So I wanted to settle down as far away as possible.
I requested CIA to give me some kind of new identity and just

(01:29:29):
let me go on my own. And I settled in Canada.
I was a student. I changed many professions from
farm help and and laundry truck driver to instruct language
instructor and broadcaster for Canadian broadcasting
corporations in Montreal. Well, have you had any threats

(01:29:53):
on your life or any unpleasant? In about 5 years, KGB eventually
discovered that I'm working for Canadian Broadcasting.
I made a very big mistake. I started talk.
I started working for overseas service of CBC which is similar
to Voice of America. In Russian language and of

(01:30:14):
course monological subversion front for the KGB, 75% of the
members of the novice T are Commission officers of the KGB.
The other 25 are like myself, Coopted agents who are assigned to
specific operations. In this particular case you can
see me talking to students of Lumumba Friendship University in

(01:30:35):
Moscow. This is the a huge school under
the direct control of the KGB and Central Committee, where
future leaders of the so-called National Liberation movements
are being educated and selected carefully.
And some of them have absolutelythey neither.
This for example, is a group of students from Lumumba.

(01:30:58):
They don't look like students atall, they look more like
military. And that's exactly what they
were. They were dispatched back to
their countries to be leaders ofthe so-called National
Liberation movements or to be translated into normal human
language leaders of international terrorist groups.
Another area of activity when I was working for the novice team

(01:31:21):
was to accompany groups of so-called progressive
intellectuals, writers, journalists, publishers,
teachers, professors of of of colleges.
You can see me here in Kremlin. I'm second on the left with a
group of Pakistani and Indian intellectuals.
Most of them pretended they don't understand that we are

(01:31:45):
actually working on behalf of the Soviet government and the
KGB. They pretended that they are
actually being guests, VIP intellectuals, that they are

(01:32:05):
well they senior colleague of mine on the left doesn't really

(01:32:26):
Sitting in the middle is Boris Burkhov, the then director of
Novice Press Agency, high-ranking party bureaucrat in

(01:32:49):
He was the author of a famous poem titled Rhapsody to Lenin.
the Soviet government. Pay special attention to number
of bottles on the table. This is one of the ways to kill

(01:33:10):
Absolutely fantastic. I, I could never believe it 14
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 it, it may take only up to
six weeks to to bring a country to the verge of crisis.

(01:33:31):
You can see it in in Central America now and after crisis,
with a violent change of of power structure and economy.
You have so-called the period ofnormalization.
It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical
expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda.
When the Soviet tanks moved intoCzechoslovakia in 68, Comrade

(01:33:52):
Brezhnev said Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia 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 to destabilize your economy, to
eliminate the principle of free market competition and to put a

(01:34:16):
Big Brother government in Washington DC with the
benevolent dictators like WalterMondale who will promise lots of
things. Never mind whether the promises
are fulfillable or not. He will go to Moscow to kiss the
bottoms of of new generation of Soviet assassins.
Never mind he will create false illusions that the situation is

(01:34:39):
under control. Situation is not under control.
Situation is disgustingly out ofcontrol.
Most of the American politicians, media and
educational system trains another generation of people who
think they are living at the peacetime falls.
United States is in the state ofwar undeclared Total War against

(01:35:02):
the basic principles and the foundations of of this system
and and the initiator of this war is not common than drop off.
Of course it's it's the system, however ridiculous it may sound,
the world communist system or the world communist conspiracy.
Whether I scare some people or not, I don't give a hood if if

(01:35:25):
you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you, but you
don't have to be paranoid about it.
What? What actually happens now that
unlike myself, you have literally several years to live
on unless the United States wakeup.
The the time bomb is ticking. With every second the disaster

(01:35:47):
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 and possibility.
OK, So what do we do? What is your recommendation to
the American people? Well, the the the immediate

(01:36:09):
thing that comes to my mind is of course there must be a very
strong national. I even tried to look like an
Not bad. Really.
Yes, actually it was strongly encouraged by the by the
instructors in my school becausethis, the graduates of my school
were later on employed as diplomats, foreign journalists

(01:36:33):
or spies. As every Soviet student.
I was quote, UN quote, volunteering for harvesting
grain in Kazakhstan. This is the biggest agricultural
blunder of the Soviet government.
But I didn't have much choice, of course, because the communist

(01:36:53):
motto borrowed from the Bible says those who do not work shall
not eat. And you can see me eating.
Therefore I was working and you can see how happy I was about
it. I went through a very extensive
physical and military training, including the manure, including
the military games in in areas, suburban areas of Moscow and

(01:37:19):
here, for example, we are on thetour in Arkhanginsk area.
And by the end of my training inschool, I was recruited by the
KGB. This picture was taken on that
day and you can see again how happy it feels to be recruited
by the KGB. Our conversation with Yuri
Alexandrovich Besmianov, who is a defector from the Soviet
Union, a former propaganda agentfor Novasti and the KGB, will

(01:37:44):
continue after this message. All right, as every student in

(01:38:11):
USSRII went through very extensive physical and military
training and civil defence training too.
Unlike in United States where civil defence is virtually non
existent 0. In USSR every student whatever
is major subject. Has to go through very extensive
4 year military and civil defence training.

(01:38:33):
war games in near Moscow. The main idea of course is to
prepare a huge reserve army of of of the USSR.
In my case, it was Administrative and Military

(01:38:55):
Intelligence Service. My first assignment was to India
refinery complexes in Bihar state and Gujarat state.
At that time I was still naively, idealistically
believing that what I was doing contributes to the UN.
Despondent IOU obviously cannot find common language with

(01:39:17):
Russians if they kick you out in24 hours.
So just by by trying to be compromised to their own
editorial bosses, they tried notto offend the sentiments of the
Soviet administrators and peoplelike myself.
Deep inside, I hope they would insult my or offend my
sentiments. Obviously they preferred not to.

(01:39:41):
Another reason I did I, I refuseto believe it.
But obviously there is another reason.
Obviously it's agreed. These people earn a lot of
money. When they come back to USA, they
claim that they are experts in my country.
They write books which sells 1,000,000 copies titled Like
Russians, the Truth about Russia.

(01:40:02):
Most of it is lie about Russia, yet they claim to be
Sovietologists. They they break, they play back
myths about my country, the propaganda cliches, yet they're
stubbornly resisted the word of truth.
If a a person like Solzhenitsyn is either defecting or kicked
out of USSR, they try all their best to.

(01:40:25):
To discredit him and to discourage him.
I don't have much chance to appear on national network with
a true story about my country. But a useful idiot like Hendrick
Smith or Robert Kaiser, they arebig heroes.
They come back from USSR, they say, oh, we were talking to
dissidents in Russia. Big deal.
Soviet dissidents are chasing American correspondents in the

(01:40:48):
streets and they're cowardly escaping from these contacts for
some strange reason. If you want to know more about
Spain, you refer to Spanish writers.
If you want to learn more about French, you read French or
writers even about Antarctica. I bet you would read Penguins
only about the Soviet Union. For some strange reason, you

(01:41:09):
read Hendricks and Schmandricks and all kind of Kissinger's
because they claim that they know more about my country.
They know nothing or next to nothing, or they pretend that
they know more than they actually do.
I would say they are dishonest people who lack integrity and
common sense and intellectual honesty.

(01:41:31):
They bring back all kind of stories like that.
A kindergarten in Siberia, a meeting, the most important
fact, it's a prison for childrenof political prisoners.
Another greatest example of monumental idiocy of American
politicians. Edward Kennedy was in Moscow and

(01:41:54):
he thought that he is a popular,charismatic American politician
Russian palace of marriages. What he did, what he did not
understand, or maybe he pretended not to understand that
actually he was being taken for a ride.
This is a staged variable, wouldfeel a little bit shaky, guilty

(01:42:17):
trying to remember what they were talking last night.

(01:42:37):
I had ways to get rid of alcoholthrough various techniques
In other words, they, they they would consume quite a large

(01:43:00):
In 1967, the KGB attached me to this magazine.
Look magazine. A group of 12 people arrived to
USSR from the United States to cover the 50th anniversary of
October socialist revolution in my country.
From the first page to the last page, it was a package of lies,
propaganda, cliche, which were presented to American readers as

(01:43:25):
opinions and deductions of American journalists.
Nothing could be far from truth.This were not opinions.
They were not opinions at all. They were the cliches which the
Soviet propaganda wants Americanpublic to think that they think.
If it does make any sense at all, it sure does, because from

(01:43:49):
the viewpoint of the Soviet propaganda, although there are
some subtle criticism of the Soviet system, the basic message
is that Russia Today is a nice, functioning, efficient system
supported by majority of population.
That's the biggest lie. And of course, American
intellectuals and journalists from Look magazine elaborated on
that untruth in various different ways.

(01:44:12):
They intellectualized that lie. They found all kind of
justifications for telling lies to American public.
This is. Excuse me?
It was partly your job to make sure that they got these ideas
and accepted them as their own idea.
Right. Actually, even before they

(01:44:32):
arrived to USSR and they paid astronomical sum of money for
that visit, they were submitted.This novice press agency
developed so-called backgrounders 25 pages of
information and opinions which were presented to the journalist
even before they bought their tickets to Moscow.
They had to analyze the situation and judging on their

(01:44:54):
reaction to that background, thelocal novice representative or
local Soviet diplomat in Washington DC would assess
whether they have whether they be given visa to USSR or not.
They were selected. Yeah, they were they were pre
selected very carefully and there's not much chance for
honest journalists to arrive to USS.

(01:45:15):
Even music. I'm I'm on this picture.
I'm trying to learn how to play musical Indian musical
instrument. I even tried to look like an
Not bad. Yes, actually it was strongly
encouraged by the by the instructors in my school,
because this, the graduates of my school were later on employed

(01:45:38):
as diplomats, foreign journalists or spies.
As every Soviet student. I was quote UN quote,
volunteering for harvesting grain in Kazakhstan.
This is the biggest agriculturalblunder of the Soviet
government. But I didn't have much choice,

(01:45:59):
of course, because the communistmotto borrowed from the Bible
says those who do not work shallnot eat and you can see me
eating. Therefore I was working and you
can see how happy I was about it.
I went through a very extensive physical and military training,
including the manure, including the military games in in areas,

(01:46:25):
suburban areas of Moscow and here, for example, we are on the
tour in Arkhangwisk area. And by the end of my training in
school, I was recruited by the KGB.
This picture was taken on that day and you can see again how
happy it feels to be recruited by the KGB.
Our conversation with Yuri Alexandrovich Besmianov, who is

(01:46:46):
a defector from the Soviet Union, a former propaganda agent
for Novasti and the KGB, will continue after this message.

(01:47:16):
All right, as every student in USSII went through very
extensive physical and military training and civil defence
training too. Unlike in United States where
civil defence is virtually non existent 0, in USSR every
student, whatever is major subject has to go through very

(01:47:38):
extensive 4 year military and civil defence training.
war games in near Moscow. The main idea, of course, is to
prepare huge reserve army of of of the USSR.

(01:48:00):
In my case it was Administrativeand Military Intelligence
Service. My first assignment was to India
refinery complexes in Bihar state and Gujarat.
To my opinion and opinion of many defectors of my caliber,
only about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on

(01:48:24):
espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process
which we call either ideologicalsubversion or active measures,
actively Mira Priyatia in the language of the KGB or
psychological warfare. What it basically means is to
change the perception of realityof every American to such an

(01:48:47):
extent that despite of the abundance of information, no one
is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of
defending themselves, their families, their community and
their country. It's a great brainwashing
process which goes very slow, and it's divided in four basic

(01:49:08):
stages, the first one being demoralization.
It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation.
Why that many years? Because this is the minimum
number of years which requires to educate one generation of
students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology

(01:49:30):
of the enemy. In other words, Marxism,
Leninism, ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of of
of at least three generations ofAmerican students without being
challenged or counterbalanced bythe basic values of Americanism,
American patriotism. The result?
The result? You can see most of the people
who graduated in the 60s, dropouts or half baked

(01:49:53):
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 andreact to certain stimuli in a
certain pattern. You cannot change their mind.
Even if you if you expose them to authentic information, even

(01:50:16):
if you prove that white is whiteand black is black, you still
cannot change the basic perception and the logic of
behavior. In other words, these people,
the process of demoralization iscomplete and irreversible.
To get rid Society of these people you have you need another
20 or or 15 years to educate a new generation of patriotically

(01:50:41):
minded. And and and.
Common common sense people who would be acting in favor and in
the interests of of the of the United States society.
And yet these people who've beenprogrammed and as you say, in
place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet
concept, these are the very people who would be marked for

(01:51:03):
extermination in this. Country.
Most of them, yes, Simply because the psychological shock
when when they will see in future what the what the
beautiful Society of equality and So what, what I was telling
them and most of them, we may discuss it later.
What are the motivations of these people?

(01:51:23):
Why would they stubbornly bring lies to their own population
through their own mass media? I have various answers to this.
There is not a single explanation.
It's a complex of explanations. It's fear, pure biological fear.
They understand that they are onthe territory of an enemy state,
a police state, and just to savetheir rotten skins and their

(01:51:45):
miserable jobs, their affluence back home, they would prefer to
tell a lie than to to ask truthful questions and and
report truthful information. Second, most of these schmucks
were afraid to lose their jobs because obviously if you tell
truth about my country, you willnot last long as a correspondent
of New York Times or or Los Angeles Times.

(01:52:07):
They will fire you. What kind of correspondent are
you? You obviously cannot find common
language with Russians if they kick you out in 24 hours.
So just by by trying to be conformist to their own
editorial bosses, they tried notto offend the sentiments of the
Soviet administrators and peoplelike myself.
Deep inside, I hope they would insult my or offend my

(01:52:31):
sentiments. Obviously they preferred not to.
Another reason I did I, I refuseto believe it.
But obviously there is another reason.
Obviously it's agreed. These people earn a lot of
money. When they come back to USA, they
claim that they are experts in my country.
They write books which sells 1,000,000 copies titled like

(01:52:55):
Russians, the Truth about Russia.
Most of it is lie about Russia, yet they claim to be
Sovietologists. They they break they play back
myths about my country, the propaganda cliches, yet they are
stubbornly resisted the word of truth.
If a a person like Solzhenitsyn is either defecting or kicked

(01:53:16):
out of USSR, they try all their best to to discredit him and to
discourage him. I don't have much chance to
appear on national network with a true story about my country,
but a useful idiot like HendrickSmith or Robert Kaiser, they are
big heroes. They come back from USSR, they
say, oh, we were talking to dissidents in Russia.

(01:53:38):
Big deal. Soviet dissidents are chasing
American correspondents in the streets and they're cowardly
escaping from these contacts forsome strange reason.
If you want to know more about Spain, you refer to Spanish
writers. If you want to learn more about
French, you read French or writers even about Antarctica.

(01:53:59):
I bet you would read Penguins only about the Soviet Union.
For some strange reason you readHendricks and Schmandricks and
all kind of Kissinger's, becausethey claim that they know more
about my country. They know nothing, or next to
nothing, or they pretend. That the suicide, as I said,
because a great friend Indira Gandhi pushed a law through

(01:54:21):
Parliament which says and I quote, no defector from any
country has the right of political asylum in any embassy
on the territory of Indian Republic, which is a masterpiece
of hypocrisy. No other defector but the Soviet
1 needs a political asylum. So knowing that perfectly well,
I I, I planned a craziest possible way to defect.

(01:54:47):
I studied Contra culture in India.
There are there were thousands of young American boys and girls
with no shoes, long hair, smoking hush and marijuana,
studying sometimes Indian philosophy, sometimes simply
pretending that they study. And they greatly annoyed Indian

(01:55:09):
police and they were laughing stock of Indians because
obviously they they were good for nothing students.
I started carefully where they congregate, what routes they
travel, what language they speak, what do they smoke.
And one day I simply joined a group of hippies to avoid
detection of Indian police. I was dressed as a typical

(01:55:31):
hippie with blue jeans, long camis shirts with all kind of
nice decorations like beads, long.
Hairs. I, I, I bought a wig because for
several weeks I had to turn myself from a conservative
Soviet diplomat into a very progressive American hippie.

(01:55:52):
And that was the only way that, that I could avoid detection.
It was very interesting experience, but it was necessary
because from my own knowledge asa as a member of Soviet embassy
staff, I knew that there were many cases when Soviet defectors

(01:56:12):
were betrayed by Indian police. And also some Western embassies
played a very dirty role in betraying the Soviet defectors.
According to our information, they were some, I wouldn't call
them double agents, but simply immortal people working for
this, for the United States embassy and confining in in

(01:56:37):
people like this would be a suicide.
So I had to be extremely careful.
I could not trust anyone. And that was the that was the
reason for such a crazy way to defect.
Well, had you been caught in theact of trying to get out, what
would have happened to you? Oh, most likely I would end up

(01:56:58):
in in concentration camp or depending on the situation and
on on the on the whim of some bureaucrat and KGB or maybe even
executed. This is normal practice.
Quietly of course, not publicly.Marxist Leninist come to power.
Obviously they get offended. They think that they will come

(01:57:20):
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 this formerMarxist Leninists were either
put to prison or one of them split.
And now he's working against Sandinistas.

(01:57:40):
It happened in in Grenada when Maurice Bishop was, he was
already a Marxist. He was executed by by a new
was killed by Amin. Then Amin was killed by Barbara
Carmel with the help of KGB. Same happened in in Bangladesh
when Mujibur Rahman, very pro Soviet leftist, was assassinated

(01:58:04):
are used. Either be executed entirely, all
the idealistically minded Marxists or exiled or put in
prisons like in Cuba. Many many former Marxists are in
Cuba. I mean in prison.

(01:58:26):
the USSR embassy, were listed for execution.
I thought that I'm I'm going to explode.

(01:58:47):
One day during the briefing at the ambassador's office, I would
stand up and say something that we are basically a bunch of
murderers. That's what we are.
We, it has nothing to do with friendship and understanding
between the nation and blah, blah, blah.
We are murderers. We behave as, as a bunch of
thugs in, in the country which which is hospitable to us, a
country which, which with ancient traditions.

(01:59:09):
But I, I, I did not defect. I tried to get the message
across. To my horror, nobody wanted even
to listen, least of all to believe what I had to say.
And I tried all kinds of tricks.I would, I would, I would leak
information through letters or lost documents or something like
that. And still I got no message.
The message was not published even in the conservative mass

(01:59:32):
media of of India. The immediate impulse to defect
was Bangladesh crisis, which wasdescribed by American
correspondents as Islamic grassroot revolution, which is
absolute baloney. There was nothing to do with
Islam and there was no grassroots revolution.
Actually, there are no grassroots revolutions, period.
Any revolution is a byproduct ofa highly organized group of

(01:59:57):
conscientious and professional organizers, but has nothing to
do with grassroots. In Bangladesh, it was nothing
with grassroots. Most of the Avani League party
members. Avani League means People's
Party. Were trained in Moscow in the
high party school. There is no hope, there is not
much hope for for changes in my country and the system will not

(02:00:23):
collapse by itself simply because it's it's being
nourished by so-called American imperialism.
This is the greatest paradox in history of mankind, when
capitalist world supports and actively nourishes it's own
destroyer destructor. I think you're trying to tell us

(02:00:45):
something. Oh yes, country, I'm trying to
tell you that it it has to be stopped unless you want to end
up in in gulag system and enjoy all the advantages of socialist
equality. Working for free, catching fleas
on your body, sleeping on on theplanks of of plywood in in

(02:01:07):
Alaska this time. I guess that's where Americans
will belong. Unless they will wake up, of
course, and force their government to stop aiding Soviet
fascism. Well, you told us a moment ago
why you left the system. I'd like to hear the details of
how you did it. It must have been a very
dangerous thing. It was not so dangerous.

(02:01:30):
It was crazy, first of all, because defecting in India is
virtually impossible thanks to very strong pressure from the
Soviet government. Excuse me, you were in India on
assignment at that time? Yes, I was working for the
Soviet embassy in New Delhi as apress officer, and defecting for

(02:01:51):
a Soviet diplomat is next to impossible.
It's a suicide, as I said, because a great friend, Indira
Gandhi, pushed a law through Parliament which says and I
quote. No defector from any country has
the right of political asylum inany embassy on the territory of
Indian Republic, which is a masterpiece of hypocrisy.

(02:02:13):
No other defector but the Soviet1 needs a political asylum.
So knowing that. Perfectly well I I I planned a
craziest possible way to defect.I started Contra culture in
India. There are there were thousands
of young American boys and girlswith no shoes, long hair,

(02:02:36):
smoking hush and marijuana, studying sometimes Indian
philosophy, sometimes simply pretending that they study.
And they greatly annoyed Indian police and they were laughing
stock of Indians because obviously they they were good
for nothing students. I started carefully where they

(02:02:57):
congregate, what routes they travel, what language they
speak, what do they smoke. And one day I simply joined a
group of hippies to avoid detection of Indian police.
I was dressed as a typical hippie with blue jeans long come
his shirts. He was executed by by a new

(02:03:19):
was killed by Amin, Then Amin was killed by Barbara Carmel
with the help of KGB. Same happened in in Bangladesh
when Mujibur Rahman, very pro Soviet leftist was assassinated

(02:03:42):
are used, either be executed entirely, all the idealistically
minded Marxists, or exiled or put in prisons like in Cuba.
Many many former Marxists are inCuba, I mean in prison.

(02:04:04):
the USSR embassy were listed forexecution.
I thought that I'm, I'm going toexplode one day during the
briefing at the ambassador's office, I would stand up and say
something that we are basically a bunch of murderers.
That's what we are. We, it has nothing to do with

(02:04:25):
friendship and understanding between the nation and blah,
blah, blah. We are murderers.
We behave as as a bunch of thugsin, in the country which which
is hospitable to us, a country which, which with ancient
traditions. But I, I, I did not defect.
I tried to get the message across.
To my horror, nobody wanted evento listen, least of all to

(02:04:45):
believe what I had to say. And I tried all kinds of tricks.
I would, I would, I would leak information through letters or
lost documents or something likethat.
And still I got no message. The message was not published
even in the conservative mass media of of India.
The immediate impulse to defect was Bangladesh crisis which was

(02:05:07):
described by American correspondents as Islamic
grassroot revolution, which is absolute baloney.
There was nothing to do with Islam and there was no grassroot
revolution. Actually, there are no grassroot
revolutions, period. Any revolution is a byproduct of
a highly organized group of conscientious and professional

(02:05:28):
organizers, but has nothing to do with grassroot.
In Bangladesh it was nothing with grass roots.
Most of the Avami League party members, Avami League means
People's Party were trained in Moscow in the high party school.
Most of the Mukti Fauj leaders, Mukti Fauj in Bengoli Min's
People's Army, same as SWAPO andand all kind of liberation

(02:05:52):
armies all over the world. The same bunch of useful idiots.
They were trained at Lumumba University and various centers
of the KGB in Sinfiropol, in in Crimea and in Tashkent.
So when I saw that Indian IndianTerritory is being used as a as
a jumping board to destroy East Pakistan, I saw myself thousands

(02:06:13):
of of so-called students. Example of monumental idiocy of
American politicians. Edward Kennedy was in Moscow and
he thought that he is a popular charismatic American politician
Russian palace of marriages. What he does, what he did not

(02:06:36):
understand or maybe he pretendednot to understand that actually
he was being taken for a ride. This is a staged wedding,
especially to impress foreign media or or useful idiots like
Ed Kennedy. Most of the of the guests there,
they, they had security clearance and they were
instructed what to say to foreigners.

(02:06:59):
This is exactly what I was doing.
You can see me in the same damn bedding palace in Moscow where
Ed Kennedy was dancing. Here is he smiling?
He thinks he's very smart from the viewpoint of Russian
citizens who observed this idiocy.
He's he's narrow minded, egocentrical idiot who tries to

(02:07:19):
earn his own popularity through the through participation in
propaganda forces like this. Here you can see myself on the
right again, exemplary Soviet bride.
On the left, three journalists from various countries, Asia,
Africa and Latin America. Obviously they enjoying the
situation. They they will go back home and

(02:07:40):
write the reports. We were present in the on the
regular Soviet wedding, they were not present on the regular
Soviet wedding, they were present.
They were part of a farce of a circus performance.
Another thing which I had to sometimes risking my life to
explain to foreigners. Time magazine for example is

(02:08:02):
very critical of South African racist regime.
The whole article was dedicated to the shameful internal
passport system where black, blacks are not allowing to live
with whites. For some strange reason, for the
last 14 years since my defection, nobody wanted to pay
attention to my passport. This is my passport.

(02:08:25):
It also shows my nationality andit it it has a police rubber
stamp which is called Pratiska in the Russian language, which
assigns me to a certain area of residence.
I cannot leave that area same way as this black man cannot
leave the area in South Africa. Yet we call South African
government racist regime. Not a single Jane, Jane Schmonda

(02:08:49):
or Fonda is brave enough, courageous enough to come to
media and say, look, this is what happens in USSR.
I send a copy of of my passport to many American liberals and
civil rights defenders and and all the other useful idiots.
They never, they never bothered to answer me back.
This shows what kind of integrity, what kind of honesty,

(02:09:10):
these people. Are.
They're a bunch of hypocrites because they don't want to.
We are actually working on behalf of the Soviet government
and the KGB. They pretended that they are
actually being guests avip intellectuals, that they are

(02:09:32):
well the senior colleague of mine on the left doesn't really

(02:09:54):
Sitting in the middle is Boris Burkhoff, the then director of
Novice Press Agency, high-ranking party bureaucrat in

(02:10:16):
He was the author of a famous poem titled Rhapsody to Lenin.
the Soviet government. The pay special attention to
number of bottles on the table. This is one of the ways to kill

(02:10:41):
My one of my functions was to keep foreign guests permanently
intoxicated. The moment they land at Moscow
airport, I had to take them to the VIP launch and toast to
friendship and understanding within the nations of the world.
Glass of vodka. Then the second glass of vodka

(02:11:03):
and in no time my guests would be feeling very happy.
They would see everything in kind of pink, nice color.
And that's the way I I had to keep them permanently for the
next 15 or 20 days. At certain point in time I had
to withdraw alcohol from them sothat some of them who are the

(02:11:24):
most recruitable would feel a little bit shaky, guilty, trying
to remember what they were talking last night.

(02:11:44):
I had ways to get rid of alcoholthrough various techniques,
In other words, they they, they would consume quite a large

(02:12:10):
In 1967, the KGB attached me to this magazine.
Brainwash foreign diplomats whenthey visited Moscow, and he'll
tell us a little bit about how they did this and how they
planted information which eventually wound up in the Press
of the free world. He escaped to the West in 1970

(02:12:30):
after becoming totally disgustedwith 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 propagandaand disinformation and active
measures. Mr. Bezminov, I'd like to begin
by having you tell us a little bit about some of your childhood
memories. Well, the most vivid memory of

(02:12:51):
my childhood was Second World War, or to be more precise, the
end of the Second World War, when all of a sudden United
States from a friendly nation which helped us to defeat
Nazism, turned overnight into a deadly enemy.
And it was very shocking becauseall newspapers were trying to

(02:13:13):
present an image of belligerent,aggressive American imperialism.
Most of the things that we were taught is that United States is
aggressive power which is just about to invade our beautiful
free socialist country, that American CIA is dropping
Colorado beetles and our beautiful potato fields to

(02:13:34):
eliminate our crops. And each schoolboy had a a
picture of Colorado bug on the on the Backpage of his notebook.
And we were instructed to go into collective fields to search
for those little Colorado bugs. Of course we couldn't find any
neither we could find many potatoes and that was explained
again by the encroachments of the decadent imperialist power.

(02:13:59):
The anti American paranoia hysteria in in the Soviet
propaganda was to such an of such a higher degree that many
less sceptical people or less stubborn would really believe
that United States is just aboutto invade our beautiful
motherland. And some secretly hope that it

(02:14:20):
will come true. That's interesting.
Well. Getting back to life inside the
Soviet Union or inside communistcountries in general, in this
country, at the university levelprimarily, we read and hear that
the Soviet system is different from ours, but not that
different, and that there is a convergence developing between

(02:14:44):
all of the systems of the world.And that really doesn't make an
awful lot of difference what system you live under, because
you have corruption and dishonesty and tyranny and all
that sort of thing. From your personal experience,
what is the difference between life under communism and life in
the United States? Well, life is obviously very
much different for for simple reason that the Soviet Union is

(02:15:06):
a state capitalist. Economically, it's a state
capitalism where an individual has absolutely no rights, no
value his life.

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Deception Was My Job, The Lectures and Interviews of Yuri Bezmenov

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