Blast from the past: USSR duped the West before

[Michael K.]

Treaty of Rapollo(1920)-Chancellor of Germany Joseph Wirth (2.from left) with Krassin, Georgi Chicherin and Joffe from the Russian delegation.

The Lesson of the New Economic Policy

"The disinformation of the NEP period had been successful. Seen through Western eyes, the threat of communism under the NEP seemed to have become diffused. Fear of Bolshevism waned. The position of anticommunists was undermined. Expectations of rapprochement were aroused. The Western public, reluctant to make sacrifices, urged their governments toward further accommodation with the Soviet regime. In reality, of course, the challenge of communism had been reinforced: Western expectations were later to be rudely shattered. But the communist strategists had learned the lesson that Western leaders could be deceived and induced to make mistakes in their assessments of, and policy toward, the Soviet Union. Disinformation had in fact created favorable conditions for the success of Soviet internal policy, activist diplomacy, and Comintern activity."

Anatole Golitsyn, The New Lies for Old Ones, pp. 10-17
http://archive.org/details/GolitsynAnatoleTheNewLiesForOldOnes

"The pattern of disinformation used during the implementation of a long-range policy may be called the 'weakness and evolution' pattern, or the pattern of 'calculated ideological moderation.' Its aim is to calm the fears of the adversaries of international communism by understating real communist strength and to confound the policies of those adversaries by masking the realities of communist policy. When following this pattern, therefore, disinformation reflects real or imaginary weaknesses, splits, and crises in the communist world and projects an image of evolution away from an ideological toward a conventional, national system. The intention is that the nations of the noncommunist world, accepting the alleged disunity and evolution of the communist world as genuine, will fail to respond effectively to communist offensive strategy and, in their confusion, will be induced to make practical miscalculations and mistakes in their dealings with the communist world. The major role of disinformation in the weakness and evolution pattern is to conceal and misrepresent the real nature, objectives, tactics, and techniques of communist policy...

The weakness and evolution pattern was used successfully by Lenin in the 1920s. In 1921 Soviet Russia faced imminent collapse. Industry lay ruined by the war; agriculture was in crisis. The Russian people, disillusioned by the rigid policy of 'war communism,' were on the brink of revolt; the policy of terror was proving ineffective; there were peasant uprisings in Siberia and along the Volga; nationalist movements in the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Central Asia were openly proclaiming separatism and posed a serious threat to national unity; the sailors at the Kronstadt Naval Base revolted. Abroad, the hopes of world revolution had faded after communist defeats in Germany, Poland, and Hungary. The major European powers, although not united, were individually hostile to communism and to the new Soviet state; a huge Russian emigre movement, spread across Europe, was plotting the overthrow of the regime. Soviet Russia was in complete political and economic isolation.

It was in this situation, facing a highly unfavorable balance of power vis-a-vis the West, that Lenin conceived and launched a longrange policy that, over the following eight years, was to show spectacular success. It was given the deliberately misleading title of the New Economic Policy, or NEP. In fact, it ranged far beyond the economy, defining also the principal political and ideological objectives and tactics for the regime internally and externally and the strategy for the international communist movement. Within the terms of the NEP, the Soviet leaders were to eliminate separatism by creating a federation of national republics, the USSR. They were to introduce national long-term economic planning. They were to plan and build an electric power system to cover and bind together the whole country. They were to start to change the world balance of power in communist favor.

To the world at large, the NEP meant that foreign industrialists were offered concessions in Soviet industry and invited to open businesses in Soviet Russia; that Soviet industrial enterprises were to be reorganized as trusts and operated on a profit basis; that smaller enterprises and properties could be owned by cooperatives or private individuals; that money was back in use and private trade permitted; that restrictions on travel were relaxed; that emigres were encouraged to return under amnesty, while some Soviet citizens were allowed to emigrate; and that Soviet diplomacy was seeking peaceful coexistence with the West.

The Soviet leaders saw it differently. They intended that the NEP would not only bring about economic recovery, but would also serve to prevent internal revolt, expand foreign trade, attract foreign capital and expertise, gain diplomatic recognition from non-communist countries, prevent major conflict with the Western powers, help to exploit the contradictions in and between the capitalist countries, neutralize the emigre movement, and help to promote world revolution through the communist movement.

Lenin believed that this fundamentally aggressive and ideological policy could prove effective if it was accompanied by the systematic use of misrepresentation and deception, or, to use the current word, disinformation. The characteristics of this disinformation were an apparent moderation in communist ideology, the avoidance of references to violence in communist methods, the exaggeration of the degree of the restoration of capitalism in Soviet Russia, the use of a sober and businesslike style in diplomatic and commercial negotiations with the West, and emphasis on disarmament and peaceful coexistence. All of this was intended to induce the belief in the outside world that the communist system was weak and losing its revolutionary ardor. Left to itself, it would either disintegrate or come to terms with the capitalist system.

The Soviet security service was reorganized, renamed the OGPU, and given new political tasks. It was directed to mount disinformation and political operations. False opposition movements were set up and controlled secretly by the OGPU. They were designed to attract to their ranks genuine opponents of the regime inside and outside the country. These innocent persons could then be used by the regime in various ways. They could act as channels for disinformation; they could be blackmailed and recruited as agents; they could be arrested and given public trials. A characteristic, but not unique, example of this technique is provided by the so-called 'Trust' operation. In 1921, as the NEP was being launched, the OGPU created inside Soviet Russia a false anti-Soviet organization, the Monarchist Alliance of Central Russia. It had once been a genuine organization, founded by Czarist generals in Moscow and Leningrad but liquidated by the Soviet security service in 1919-20. Former members of this organization, among them Czarist generals and members of the old aristocracy who had come over to the Soviet side, nominally led the movement. Their new loyalty to the Soviet regime was not in doubt, for they had betrayed their former friends in the anticommunist underground. They were the Czarist generals Brusilov and Zaynchkovskiy; the Czarist military attache in Yugoslavia, General Potapov; and the Czarist transport official Yakushev. The most active agent in the Trust was a former intelligence officer of the General Staff in Czarist Russia whose many names included Opperput. Agents of the Trust traveled abroad and established confidential contact with genuine anticommunist emigre leaders in order (ostensibly) to coordinate activity against the Soviet regime. Among the important emigres they met were Boris Savinkov and Generals Wrangel and Kutepov.

These agents confided in their contacts that the anti-Soviet monarchist movement that they represented was now well established in Soviet Russia, had penetrated into the higher levels of the army, the security service, and even the government, and would in time take power and restore the monarchy. They convinced the emigre leaders that the regime had undergone a radical change. Communism had completely failed; ideology was dead; the present leaders had nothing in common with the fanatical revolutionaries of the past. They were nationalists at heart, and their regime was evolving into a moderate, national regime and might soon collapse. The NEP should be seen as the first important concession on the road to restoring capitalism in Russia. Soon political concessions would follow. Because of this, said the Trust agents, any intervention or gesture of hostility from the European powers or the emigre movements would be ill-advised, if not tragic, since it would only unite the Russian people around their government and so extend its survival. The European governments and the emigre leaders should put a stop to anti-Soviet terrorist activities and change their attitude from hostility toward the Soviet regime to one of passive acceptance. They should grant diplomatic recognition and increase trade. In this way they would have a better opportunity to contribute to the evolutionary process. The emigre leaders should return to Russia to make their contribution. Naturally there were doubters among the emigres, but the prestige of the leaders of the organization (particularly, of General Brusilov) convinced the majority. They accepted at face value the Trust's disinformation and passed it on to their influential friends in the European intelligence services. By the time it had been circulated to governments as 'secret' intelligence it sounded most impressive, and when as time went on the same story was confirmed by source after source, it became 'secret and reliable.' The intelligence services of Europe were committed and it was unthinkable that they could all be wrong.

While the Trust was thriving the OGPU took control, wholly or partially, of two other movements calculated to influence the political climate in support of the NEP. They were the 'Change of Signposts' movement and the 'Eurasian' movement. The first was used by the Soviet security service to mislead emigres and intellectuals in Europe into believing that the strength of communist ideology was on the wane and that the Soviet regime was evolving into a more moderate, national state. The movement published, with unofficial government assistance, a weekly magazine in Prague and Paris, The Change of Signposts, and in Berlin a paper, On the Eve. In 1922, at some risk, the Soviet government allowed two magazines to be published in Leningrad and Moscow, New Russia and Russia. They were intended to exert a similar influence on intellectuals inside the country.

By 1926 all publications of the Change of Signposts movement had been wound up, the movement disbanded, and some of its leaders in the Soviet Union arrested. An official Soviet publication partially confirms the exploitation of the movement and describes its end. Shortly afterward, operation Trust was terminated with the arrest of those opponents of the regime who had been unwise enough to reveal themselves as such by associating with the Trust. The NEP was officially ended by Stalin in 1929 with what was called 'a socialist offensive on all fronts.' The concessions to foreign industrialists were canceled; private enterprise in the Soviet Union was prohibited; private property was confiscated; agriculture was collectivized; repression of political opposition was intensified. The NEP might never have been.