Propaganda More Effective than Weapons. Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov escaped to the West in 1970 after becoming totally disgusted with the Soviet system. He did this at great risk to his life. He is one of the world’s outstanding experts on the subject of Soviet propaganda and disinformation. The following interview with Yuri was conducted in 1985
When the Soviets use the phrase “ideological subversion”, what do they mean by it? Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt and open. You can see with your own eyes. All you have to do, is unplug the bananas from their ears. There’s no mystery. It has nothing to do with espionage…
In reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of its intelligence at all. According to my opinion and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money and man-power is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion or active measures.
It is Clear Propaganda More Effective than Weapons
In the language of psychological warfare, what it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite all the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.
It’s a great brainwashing process, which goes very slowly and it’s divided into four basic 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 is required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism.
Propaganda is Best Weapons
