Active Measures - Supporting Political Movements

Supporting Political Movements

GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for propaganda and peace movements against Vietnam War, which was a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost", according to the allegations of GRU defector Stanislav Lunev. He claimed that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad".

According to Oleg Kalugin, "the Soviet intelligence was really unparalleled. ... The KGB programs -- which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS... was invented by the CIA... all sorts of forgeries and faked material -- targeted at politicians, the academic community, at the public at large."

According to Sergei Tretyakov, "The KGB was responsible for creating the entire nuclear winter story to stop the Pershing missiles." Tretyakov says that from 1979 the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying the missiles in Western Europe and that, directed by Yuri Andropov, they used the Soviet Peace Committee, a government organization, to organize and finance demonstrations in Europe against US bases. He claims that misinformation based on a faked "doomsday report" by the Soviet Academy of Sciences about the effect of nuclear war on climate was distributed to peace groups, the environmental movement and the journal Ambio, which carried a key article on the topic in 1982.