Hodja Nasreddin (talk | contribs) grammar; minor edit for clarity |
Hodja Nasreddin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Orphan|date=February 2009}} |
{{Orphan|date=February 2009}} |
||
The government of the [[Soviet Union]] had been involved in terror campaigns against its own population |
The government of the [[Soviet Union]] had been involved in terror campaigns against its own population, such as [[Red terror]], [[Great Terror]] and others. It also allegedly supported international terrorist organizations. |
||
==Background== |
==Background== |
Revision as of 00:40, 27 May 2009
The government of the Soviet Union had been involved in terror campaigns against its own population, such as Red terror, Great Terror and others. It also allegedly supported international terrorist organizations.
Background
The importance of terrorism as a revolutionary strategy has been widely debated by Marxists. According to Marx, "There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new - revolutionary terror" [1]. Marx also believed that "The present generation resembles the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It must not only conquer a new world, it must also perish in order to make a room for the people who are fit for a new world" [2]
Lenin, Lev Trotsky and other leading Bolshevik ideologists regognized mass terror as a necessary weapon during the dictatorship of proletariat and the resulting class struggle. In his book "Defence of Terrorism" Trotsky emphasized that "...the historical tenacity of the bougeoisie is colossal... We are forced to tear off this class and chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon used against a class that, despite being doomed to destruction, does not want to perish." [3]. On the other hand, they opposed to individual terror, which has been used earlied by Russian "People's Will organization. According to Trotsky, "The damaging of machines by workers, for example, is terrorism in this strict sense of the word. The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister—all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international Social Democracy ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism and does so in the most irreconcilable way."[4]
Many later marxists, in particular Karl Kautsky, criticized Bolshevik leaders for terrorism tactics. He stated that "among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, Terrorism, which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale execution, is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all".[5] Kautsky recognized that Red Terror represented a variety of terrorism because it was indiscriminate, intended to frighten the civilian population, and included taking and executing hostages. People were executed simply for who they were, not for their deeds.
Joseph Stalin wrote a nota bene "Terror is the quickest way to new society" beside this passage in a book by Marx [1]
This led some historians to believe that the despotism and violence were the intrinsic properties of every Communist regime in the world [2], since the importance of terror follows from the Marxism teaching which considers human lives as expendable material for construction of the brighter future society.
Red terror
The policy of Red terror in the Soviet Russia served to frighten the civilian population and exterminate certain social groups considered as "ruling classes" or enemies of the people. Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka, explained in newspaper "Red Terror":
- "Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror."[6]
One common practice was hostage-taking. A typical report from a Cheka department stated: "Yaroslavl Province, 23 June 1919. The uprising of deserters in the Petropavlovskaya volost has been put down. The families of the deserters have been taken as hostages. When we started to shoot one person from each family, the Greens began to come out of the woods and surrender. Thirty-four deserters were shot as an example".[7]
Internal Soviet terror
The Soviet collectivization of agriculture was accomplished by terror against those peasants that resisted.[citation needed]
The Great Purge refers collectively to several related campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s, which removed all of his remaining opposition from power.[8] It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, both occurring within a period characterized by omnipresent police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and killings. In the Western World, this was referred to as "the Great Terror".
Promotion of terrorist organizations
Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as "the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide" [9] [10] [11] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: "In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon." [12] He also claimed that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention". He claims that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO. [12] George Habash, who worked under KGB guidance, [13] explained:
- "Killing one Jew far away from the field of battle is more effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle, because it attracts more attention." [12]
Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa described operation "SIG" (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972, to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the United States. KGB chairman Yury Andropov allegedly explained to Pacepa that
- "a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States."
The following liberation organizations have been allegedly established by the KGB: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara); the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975. [14] The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s.[15] The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB.[16] However, the main KGB activities and arms shipments were channeled through Wadie Haddad of the DFLP organization, who usually stayed in a KGB dacha BARVIKHA-1 during his visits to Russia. Led by Carlos the Jackal, a group of PFLP fighters accomplished a spectacular raid the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries office in Vienna in 1975. Advance notice of this operation "was almost certainly" given to the KGB.[15]
A number of notable operations have been conducted by the KGB to support international terrorists with weapons on the orders from the Soviet Communist Party, including:
- Transfer of machine-guns, automatic rifles, Walther pistols, and cartridges to the Provisional Irish Republican Army by the Soviet intelligence vessel Reduktor (operation SPLASH) in 1972 to fulfill a personal request of arms from Michael O'Riordan.[17]
- Transfer of anti-tank grenade RPG-7 launchers, radio-controlled SNOP mines, pistols with silencers, machine guns, and other weaponry to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through Wadi Haddad who was recruited as a KGB agent in 1970 (operation VOSTOK, "East").[18]
Political assassinations
The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed to have had a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill": Laszlo Rajk and Imre Nagy from Hungary; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej from Romania; Rudolf Slansky and Jan Masaryk from Czechoslovakia; the Shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti from Italy; John F. Kennedy; and Mao Zedong. Pacepa described a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao organized by the KGB and alleged that "among the leaders of Moscow’s satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy." [19]
The second President of Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin was killed by KGB OSNAZ forces. Presidents of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria organized by Chechen separatists including Dzhokhar Dudaev, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, Aslan Maskhadov, and Abdul-Khalim Saidullaev were killed by FSB and affiliated forces.[citation needed]
Other widely publicized cases are murders of Russian communist Leon Trotsky and Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov.
There were also allegations that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt against the Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Preparations for terrorism and sabotage against Western countries
Large-scale sabotage operations have been prepared by the KGB and GRU against the United States, Canada and Europe, as described by intelligence historian Christopher Andrew in Mitrokhin Archive [20] and in books by former GRU and SVR officers Victor Suvorov[21] and Stanislav Lunev, and Kouzminov. [22] Among the planned operations were the following:
- Large arms caches were allegedly hidden in many countries for the planned terrorism acts. They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices. One of such cache, which was identified by Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities tried to remove it from woods near Berne. Several others caches (probably not equipped with the "Lightnings") were removed successfully.[23]
- Preparations for nuclear sabotage. Some of the allegedly hidden caches could contain portable tactical nuclear weapons known as RA-115 "suitcase bombs" prepared to assassinate US leaders in the event of war, according to GRU defector Stanislav Lunev.[9] Lunev states that he had personally looked for hiding places for weapons caches in the Shenandoah Valley area[9] and that "it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the US" ether across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile that can slip undetected when launched from a Russian airplane [9]
- Extensive sabotage plans in London, Washington, Paris, Bonn, Rome, and other Western capitals have been reveled by KGB defector Oleg Lyalin in 1971, including plan to flood the London underground and deliver poison capsules to Whitehall. This disclosure triggered mass expulsion of Russian spies from London [24]
- FSLN leader Carlos Fonseca Amador was described as "a trusted agent" in KGB files. "Sandinista guerrillas formed the basis for a KGB sabotage and intelligence group established in 1966 on the Mexican US border".[25]
- Disruption of the power supply in the entire New York State by KGB sabotage teams, which would be based along the Delaware river, in the Big Spring Park.[26]
- An "immensely detailed" plan to destroy "oil refineries and oil and gas pipelines across Canada from British Columbia to Montreal" (operation "Cedar") has been prepared, which took twelve years to complete.[27]
- A plan for sabotage of Hungry Horse Dam in Montana.[26]
- A detailed plan to destroy the port of New York (target GRANIT); most vulnerable points of the port were marked at maps.[26]
According to Lunev, a probable scenario in the event of war would be poisoning of the Potomac River with chemical or biological weapons, "targeting the residents of Washington DC". [9] He also noted that it is "likely" that GRU operatives have placed already "poison supplies near the tributaries to major US reservoirs." [28] This allegation was supported by Alexander Kouzminov, who was responsible for transporting dangerous pathogens from around the world for Russian program of biological weapons in the 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. He described a variety of biological terrorism acts that would be carried out on the order of the Russian President in the event of hostilities, including poisoning public drinking-water supplies and food processing plants. [29]At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union "was the only country in the world that could start and win a global biological war, something we had already established that the West was not ready for.", according to Kouzminov.
See also
- Terrorism in Russia
- Communist terrorism
- Active measures
- Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
References
- ^ a b Edvard Radzinsky. Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives (1997) ISBN 0-385-47954-9.
- ^ a b Richard Pipes Communism: A History (2001) ISBN 0-812-96864-6, pages 74-75. Cite error: The named reference "Pipes" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ "Black book of Communism", page 749
- ^ Leon Trotsky (1911). "Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism". Marxists.org.
{{cite web}}
: Unknown parameter|month=
ignored (help) - ^ Karl Kautsky, Terrorism and Communism Chapter VIII, The Communists at Work, The Terror
- ^ Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future, 1994. ISBN 0-374-52738-5.
- ^ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7
- ^ Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately. 2007. Knopf. 720 pages ISBN 1400040051
- ^ a b c d e Stanislav Lunev. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-89526-390-4 Cite error: The named reference "Lunev" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ Viktor Suvorov Inside Soviet Military Intelligence, 1984, ISBN 0-02-615510-9
- ^ Viktor Suvorov Spetsnaz, 1987, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-11961-8
- ^ a b c Russian Footprints - by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24 2006
- ^ Mitrokhin, Vasili, Christopher Andrew (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7.
- ^ From Russia With Terror, FrontPageMagazine.com, interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, March 1 2004
- ^ a b The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, pages 250-253
- ^ The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, page 145
- ^ KGB in Europe, page 502
- ^ Operation was sanctioned personally by Leonid Brezhnev in 1970. The weapons were delivered by the KGB vessel Kursograf - KGB in Europe, pages 495-498
- ^ The Kremlin’s Killing Ways - by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, November 28 2006
- ^ Mitrokhin Archive, The KGB in Europe, page 472-476
- ^ Victor Suvorov, Spetsnaz, 1987, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-11961-8
- ^ Alexander Kouzminov Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West, Greenhill Books, 2006, ISBN 1-853-67646-2 [1]
- ^ The KGB in Europe, page 475-476
- ^ KGB in Europe, page 499-500
- ^ The KGB in Europe, page 472-473
- ^ a b c The KGB in Europe, page 473
- ^ The KGB in Europe, page 473-474
- ^ Lunev, pages 29-30
- ^ Kusminov, pages 35-36.