184
May
14,
1982
MOSCOW
AND
THE
PEACE OFFENSIVE
INTRODUCTIONThe United States today confronts a task of major proportionsin attempting to fulfill the 1979 NATO decision to deploy newPershing
I1
and ground-launched cruise missiles in Western Europe.Designed as a means of countering
the
Soviet theater-range missilebuildup, the program now faces formidable opposition in the West.In some European NATO countries, support
for
the plan is plummet-ing under assault from'increasingly strong peace and disarmamentmovements.
.
This shift
in
European sentiment is,
in
great part, theresult of the Soviet Unionls massive disarmament propagandacampaign.
MOSCOW~S
ropaganda apparatus comprises a variety
of
organizations primarily under the control of the Central Committee
of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These agencies inturn influence the activities of organizations
in
the WesternEuropean countries that have been set up as front groups by thepro-Soviet national Communist parties.This standard propaganda arrangement has been made even moreeffective in the past few years by
a
Soviet decision to allow thecommunist organizations to work on the disarmament
--
Ilsafeguard-ing the peace"
--
issue with groups of almost any politicalcharacter. In order to counter this effort by Moscow to preventthe deployment of NATO's new missiles, the United States mustunderstand the nature of Soviet disarmament campaigns.The first Soviet disarmament campaign to utilize a Europeanfront group successfully
as
a
national mobilizing force was thefight against
the
Itneutron omb.Il With the aid of Ifindependentf1religious
peace
groups,
the
Dutch Communist Party broadenedpublic support for its 1977-1978 IIStop the Neutron'BombIl movementfar beyond the Communist, leftist, and pacifist circles tradition-ally active in such campaigns.
'
,2
Having realized the successofthis broad support concept,Soviet leaders determined to use it in other "peace offensives.I1The Soviet Union's campaign against NATO's modernization of itstheater nuclear forces proved
a
remarkable success in
1981,
whichhas continued into
1982.
This resu1ted.h o small part from the,USSR's decision to ally its disarmament forces with Europeanpeace groups of differing political outlook in order to present
a
united front on disarmament. This broadening of support hasprovided Soviet propaganda activities with Western Europeancoloration
--
legitimizing Soviet anti-U.S. and anti-NATO effortsin the guise of genuine European nuclear fears.The nuclear freeze campaign now gaining momentum in theUnited States is
a
cousin to the European disarmament movement.Its roots are American, but its emotional arguments parallelthose used by the Europeans, its leaders have begun receivingorganizing advice from European peace movement figures, and forall its high-minded idealism, its effects prove no less beneficialto Soviet: ropagandists.THE SOVIET UNION'S PROPAGANDA APPARATUSPropaganda has always loomed large in the work of the Commu-nist Party of the Soviet Union.cal and ideological work of the Party was distributed among threecategories
--
theoretical activity, propaganda and agitat1on.lTheoretical activity was the preservation and elaboration
of
thedoctrines of Marx and Lenin. Propaganda was the dissemination ofdoctrinal messages on specific subjects to an elite audienceconsisting primarily of Communist Party cadres. And agitationwas the dissemination .of more simplified doctrinal messages tothe great mass of the cohon people.are commonly recognized today as propaganda.Lenin maintained that the politi-These last two categories
\
The Soviet Union uses a variety
of
agencies
--
overt andIntelligence Agency estimates that the USSR spends the equivalentof some
$3.3
billion each year on these efforts.include Radio,Moscow's foreign service
--
broadcasting
2,022
hours
a
week in eighty-two languages
--
and TASS (TelegraphAgency of the Soviet Union), the Soviet news agency.
By
contrast,the United States' Voice of America broadcasts
904.75
hours
a
week in only forty languages. The most important
USSR
agencylending covert support to Soviet propaganda initiatives is the
.
KGB
or Committee for State Security.
'
covert
--
to target the West with its propaganda.. The CentralOvert activitiesThe Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee approves themajor propaganda themesand the methods to be used to disseminate
I
1
I
Evron
M.
Kirkpatrick, ed., Year
of
Crisis:Communist Propaganda Activitiesin
1956
(New
York: The Macmillan Company,
1957),
p.
31.
'I
3
them. It also rules on the use
of
major support actions by theKGB. Departments of the CPSU Central Committee with
a
directresponsibility for propaganda efforts are the InternationalInformation Department, an organization established in recentyears, which directs overt propaganda activities against non-Communist countries, and the International Department, whichdirects relations with non-ruling Communist parties.Heading the International Information Department is LeonidZamyatin, a member of the CPSU Central Committee and formerDirector General of
TASS.
The Department's First Deputy Chief isValentin Falin, the former Ambassador to the Federal Republic ofGermany. Until his death on January 25, 1982, Mikhail Suslov,the CPSU's ideologist, advised Zamyatin on propaganda efforts, inconnection with his role as ideological overseer for Sovietforeign policy.The CPSU Central Committee's International Department isheaded by Boris Ponomarev, Candidate Member of the Politburo andSecretary
of
the Central Committee, a man with twenty-five years
of
experience in this job. Ponomarev's First Deputy Chief isVadim Zagladin, a member of the CPSU Central Committee. Becauseof its responsibility for dealing with Communist parties innon-Communist states, the International Department funnels itscovert propaganda requirements through both the Communist partiesthemselves and, utilizing its International Organizations Section,the various pro-Soviet international front organizations.2The Soviet leadership's view is that national Communistparties should support CPSU policy initiatives down the line. Ofcourse, the actual role that a particular Communist party playsin
a
Soviet propaganda campaign is determined in large part bythe strength of its pro-Soviet alignment or, in the case ofparties with basic policy disagreements with the USSR, by whetheror not the propaganda issue is one of common concern. Peace anddisarmament are issues of natural agreement between the SovietUnion and the vast majority of Western Europe's communist parties,because of the latteys' anti-military stance.
Forgery, Disinformation and Political Operations
'I
Department of StateBulletin, Vol. 81 (November 1981), p. 53. Among the first Communistleaders to stress the importance
of
front organizations was the Finn,Otto Kuusinen, Secretary of the Communist International from 1921 to1943. In 1926, at
a
Comintern executive committee meeting, Kuusinenadvanced the idea
of
"creating
a
whole solar system or [sic] organizations
and
smaller committees around the Communist Party
..
ctually workingunder theinfluence of the Party, but not under its mechanical control."Quoted in "International Communist Front Organizations: Introduction,"in Yearbook On International Communist Affairs 1968, edited by Richard
V.
Allen (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1969),
p.
695..
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Moscow and the Peace Offensive
Seminal paper on soviet application of active measures and infiltration of especially european peace movements during the cold war
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