Ole Hasselbalch
The Silent War:
Soviet Active Measures Operations against
During the Cold War—
Prerequisites, Techniques and Results
Edited 2001 by Holkenfeldt 3,
Abstract:
THE SILENT WAR is the story of the active measures offensive (“aktivnyye meropriyatia”) waged by the East Bloc against Danish politicians, media and “public opinion” in general in the years before the Berlin Wall came down.
The goal of this well-planned offensive – known from i.a. defectors from the East and from the Communist Party - was to influence Danish public opinion and political planning in order to undermine Danish NATO membership and weaken the Danish armed forces (or the political will to use the same). The tools used were legal as well as illegal ones. Propaganda and open diplomatic efforts were used in combination with covert operations. Due to
The book takes its starting point in the internal security debacle that occurred in Denmark during the 1980s, in no small part due to the propaganda offensive, and describes the mental climate from which the offensive profited. This includes the attitudes and opinions of the “youth uproar,” of which substantial elements were gradually accepted as official policy.
The book also relates the East-Bloc’s offensive technique - including, for example, how the idealistic but naïve Danes were misused - as well as the recruiting and use of so-called propaganda agents. The book reveals how the apparatus established and used against the Danes was structured and functioned - in particular the East-Bloc intelligence services’ special departments for disinformation and propaganda. Also included are the communist front organizations’ activity and infiltration of Danish associations, groups and institutions. And there are specific examples of propaganda operations. The information given is intensively documented in the footnotes.
The book concludes by giving an account of what was done both officially and through private channels to counteract the pressure from the East. Still further, it discusses the long-term damage the propaganda offensive has inflicted upon the Danish political system.
In this Internet version only the foreword and the table of contents has been translated into English. The page numbers of the table of contents refer to the printed Danish version.
Table of Contents
Foreword 9
Chapter 1. It was really about us…
1.1. Sixty atom bombs—and then some 13
Befehl anlanden! 13
The veil falls 13
The warnings 14
1.2. And the Danes? 15
1.3. The political parties 17
The Social Democratic Party 17
Capitulation’s henchmen 24
1.4. Propaganda offensive against
Why did it happen? 25
The simple art of brushing it off 26
The Danish love of comfort 27
Aggressive totalitarianism 28
“Active measures” 28
Frontline witnesses 30
1.5. This book 32
Sources 33
Chapter 2. The Stage is set
2.1. On the way home—and at home 36
2.2. Human weaknesses 37
The decline of civilization 38
Irrational man 38
Propaganda’s possibilities 39
The psychological defense 40
2.3. The “68-ers” 40
A profile 40
“Youth uproar” 42
Marxism 45
Water bearers and fellow travelers 46
The crime 46
2.4. Restructuring brains 50
The children 50
School 55
Institutes of higher learning 59
Dissolution of standards 64
“The free press” 68
2.5. Conflict between ideologies 79
Two models of society 79
The difference is erased 81
“
Chapter 3. “Aktivnyye meropriyatia”
3.1. Expansive Communism 86
3.1.1. (Non)peaceful coexistence 86
Lenin and peace 86
The promised “peaceful coexistence” 87
Continual warfare by every useful means 89
The end justifies the means 91
3.1.2. Ends and means 93
The goal 93
The organs 94
Paths to assumption of power 96
Reconstruction 98
Active measures 100
Focus: Propaganda operations 106
3.2. The “strategic long-term plan” 107
History of the plan 107
Stages 108
Infiltration of the social democracies 109
Theater of operation
History repeats itself 112
3.3. Active measures 117
3.3.1. The main characteristics 117
Structure 117
Disinformation 118
Propaganda 120
Extent of the operations 123
3.3.2. The prerequisite: Drawing a map of the Danish apparatus 124
The chart is drawn 124
The sources 125
3.4. The apparatus 127
3.4.1. KGB 128
Tasks 129
Organization 130
Co-workers 132
3.4.2. STASI 134
3.4.3. The Communist Parties’ role 135
3.4.4. Front Organizations 139
The purpose 140
Typology 142
The Peace Movement 146
Other useful organizations 151
3.4.5. East-bloc personnel in the West 159
Officers 160
Diplomats, trade representatives, journalists, scientists, etc. 161
Illegals 161
3.4.6. Erring Danes 162
Agents, confidential contacts and useful idiots 162
Search field 174
Recruiting and the path to use 179
3.4.7. Financing 188
3.5. Propaganda activities 190
3.5.1. A composite profile 190
3.5.2. Examples of propaganda operations 194
“The war for peace” 194
The charm campaign against the Radical Left 199
Limited operations 202
3.5.3. Propaganda techniques 203
Point of departure: rejection of loyalty in communications 204
Distortions and lies 204
The hidden truths 208
Stagecraft 212
Hidden delivery 216
Chapter 4. The Result
4.1. Evaluation 220
A matter of opinion 220
Arriving at an assessment 223
Conclusion 224
4.2. Passivity in the West 225
Official
Unofficial
And the day of reckoning? 235
4.3. Long-term damage? 237
Bibliography 244
Index 253
Foreword
This book was written in a state of amazement.
The author grew up in a milieu in which we were interested in what went on in the world around us and where the most important thing in this context was not to have the right opinions, but to find out what was right.
From the windows of the family home on the hill above Sletten Harbor north of Copenhagen, we could see the foreign ships of war on the Sound, which - it was rumored - gave the prime minister sleepless nights. The Russian defeat of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 confirmed that he had good reason for this. It was therefore that I enlisted in the National Guard (Hjemmeværnet) in 1963.
Here we got some glimpse of the tale that in a way left no doubt later of Denmark’s exposed position. A visit to
In the course of the 1960s, however, that sort of person who is today known as the “elite” began to remodel and redefine the threat so as to make it disappear. I remember, for example, a lecture in the Students’ Association by Helveg Peterson Sr. from the Radical Left party (a party in the political center), who had designated himself as a specialist in security policy. This led him to conclude that we could cut back on defense. In the same place I experienced the outstanding Social Democrat - later minister - Kjeld Olesen in the role of a sleek elegantier in a light gray suit, who also argued for a reality apart from that which could be seen outside in daylight.
Conditions continued to develop this way in an ever more uncomfortable direction. The
In 1968 - the year in which Russian tanks rolled into Prague and crushed the Czechoslovakian Sprig - we elected a conservative administration under the radical Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgaard. That confirmed a defense policy which cemented the distance between the “political” conception of what we were facing and the actual threat from the East. This tension between the political reality and the actual facts eventually became untenable. Add to this that the government clamped the lid on the ability of our two intelligence services to follow the enemy’s activities here in
In a series of articles, I tried to call attention to the problems - a vain endeavor, since hardly anyone in political power took the time to read what some undistinguished young man, and one who was rowing against the tide, had penned.
The question was therefore: Was there any purpose or was it contrarily counterproductive to continue in the service? What was voluntarily given of a good heart on the one hand was merely tossed away by the other, by politicians perceived other interests to be gained. Could we even rely on politicians who could to this extent neglect the facts in favor of political accommodation? Might such politicians perhaps even handle the National Guard’s records in such a manner that they risked ending up in the wrong hands?
The military threat against Denmark had at that time - despite the unending talk of peace of détente - grown to such an extent that a new occupation was a possibility to be reckoned with, one however that most likely would be preceded by a period of foreign policy adaptation which would eventually sacrifice us. In such a case, it would be necessary to have a platform for Danish resistance that would justify liberation b the Western powers. The result was that I left the Guard.
In the following years, Warsaw Pact activity expanded - and increasingly aimed now against Danish public opinion and key Danish politicians. A conscious - and one must say - well directed operation that largely utilized concealed means. Nonetheless, Anker Jørgensen (prime minister) found it appropriate to turn off the lights in the Labor Information Central that thus far, under the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions’s rule, had tried to keep track of the underhanded things that were going on beneath the surface.
Following the establishment of the conservative administration in 1982, which put the Social Democrats in the opposition, the propaganda offensive from the East had such smooth water for sailing that its success seemed already in view. By virtue of the party’s abandonment of its traditional defense policies,
The work was interrupted by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which should have been the death knell of the previous year’s discouraging experiences. I don’t, however, have any recollection of any closure - and certainly not the champagne-drunk sense of triumph that otherwise should have been obligatory on such an occasion. Quite the contrary, I remember the direction it took and I felt resignation born of experience that fellow-travelers - the sort of rabble we had been dealing with - have a formidable ability to regroup, to redefine their sins as good deeds, and to find new ways to serve their personal interests and ideas fixes with no consideration of the consequences for others.
Therefore, during the years that one has been able to follow the parody of getting even with these individuals - which has almost turned into getting even with those who endeavored to hold them by the ear (the Danish intelligence service - PET) - it has become unbearable just to sit and watch. It has been particularly intolerable to hear the same people who served dictatorship then, go about now, lecturing others on morality, reason, decency, democracy and human rights.
Invaluable material has turned up to show what these people did. But there has been no collected overview in Danish writings of the concealed aspect of the East Bloc offensive against Danish public opinion and none of that offensive’s techniquesi. Therefore, the entire tale of the silent war against
The author hopes that the book will contribute to the elucidation of a series of uncomfortable events which for better or worse constitute a part of European history, so that they will not be repeated. And if the book can also help to clear the air and establish a possibility for a fresh start in relation to the Eastern European nations- who were tyranny’s first and greatest victims - then the author cannot hope for more.
My thanks to those who have helped - no one named, no one forgotten, and no one revealed.
Humlebæk, March 2001
Ole Hasselbalch