Few of his contemporaries know that the Disinformburo, as a state body for the dissemination of purposeful lies, was born in the Soviet Union almost at the time of the founding of the USSR.
When and where was this structure created
The treaty on the formation of the USSR was signed on December 29, 1922 (December 30 is considered the date of the formation of the Soviet Union). And already on January 11 of the New Year, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), with its special decree, approves the proposal of the Deputy Chairman of the GPU Iosif Unshlikht to create a disinformation bureau in the state political administration under the NKVD of the USSR.
What tasks did she perform
In the decree "On disinformation" dated January 11, 1923, the direction of the bureau's activities was clearly defined: in addition to collecting information about what foreign intelligence might be interested in and finding out the degree of its awareness of our secrets, the task of the new unit was to form an information medium in the media with an imaginary the authenticity of the texture (the then "experts" did not know the modern term "fake news", but nevertheless, they understood very well how effectively a massively replicated lie could work).
"Fakes" were calculated on the perception of Western intelligence services and related to the following aspects: the internal situation in Soviet Russia, the state of the Red Army, the work of government structures and a number of people's commissariats. The GPU itself and the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army (the predecessor of the GRU, formed in the spring of 1921) were obliged to supply the enemy with "disinformation". The Central Committee of the party had to endorse especially important disinformation every time.
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Ways to deliberately multiply and spread lies
The Kommersant newspaper, in an article dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Disinformburo (2003), traced the stages of development of this structure. In 1923, Soviet disinformers through the print media of Bavaria managed to discredit the Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, who claimed the status of the Russian monarch in exile. Publications, which partly used truthful information, were generously flavored with outright lies and slander. Nevertheless, they achieved their goal - not only the émigré community began to shun the contender for the throne, but Western sponsors also recoiled from it.
The methods of information warfare by the Disinformburo largely coincide with modern ones - according to Kommersant, the famous operations "Trust" and "Syndicate" are also the fruit of the activities of the Soviet "fake news". In fact, they contributed a lot to the decrease in the activity of the Russian emigration.
Even more interesting are the methods of informational influence, oriented to the West, when writers were used for this, both from the emigrant environment and foreigners. The well-known monarchist Vasily Shulgin, with the active participation of the Disinformbureau, was taken to the USSR, saw the "Potemkin villages" there and, upon his return, reported in his book about the unconditional victory of socialism. In a similar way, in the 1930s, the French writer Henri Barbusse, who, after a visit to the Soviet Union, reflected his enthusiastic impressions of the country in pro-Soviet publications, “worked”.
In the Great Patriotic War, SMERSH actively used disinformation in radio games with the enemy; this technique was used throughout the Second World War.
In the 50s, Soviet disinformers successfully created a virtual "bacteriological war" in Korea - allegedly, the Americans then massively infected Koreans with the help of insects - carriers of infection. The left-wing Western media willingly swallowed and replicated this "fake news". Soviet “colleagues” simply “sent” enough money to the necessary foreign scientists, and they did not begin to refute anything.
Former head of Soviet foreign intelligence Leonid Shebarshin recalled in his memoirs that in the late Soviet period in the West it was not so difficult to find a print media journalist who would agree to write a pro-Soviet article for money. Then the “domino principle” began to operate - the text (or its copyright) was reprinted by other media outlets (this process could also be financially stimulated by the Soviet special services). According to Shebarshin, in the majority of Western print media there were journalists who, for money, wrote exactly those articles that were required by Soviet intelligence. The phenomenon of Gorby (the last general secretary of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev) in the West was created largely thanks to this kind of "promotion."
Nikolay Syromyatnikov
