Yuri Bezmenov: Former Soviet KGB Agent Warns of Plans to Subvert Western Culture

“Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. This was my instruction.” – Yuri Bezmenov

Yuri Bezmenov  (Russian: Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Безме́нов; 1939 – January 5, 1993; alias: Tomas David Schuman), was a famous former Soviet KGB agent and journalist who defected to Canada after exposing KGB strategies of propaganda and disinformation.

As a KGB officer, Bezmenov worked in Czechoslovakia, India, and Thailand, where he specialized in Soviet propaganda work. In 1967 he was assigned to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) where he worked as a news analyst specializing in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

After allegedly defecting from the KGB, he was famous in the West for exposing Soviet covert propaganda techniques and their long-range plan of using mind control to influence the populace.

Comrade Bezmenov said the KGB’s task was to turn the West, and especially liberals into “the homogenized mass of useful and united idiots.”

This statement was very interesting to me given the current state of political affairs in the West between the Left and Right. For example, it’s easy to see how the American Left has been demoralized and destabilized.

In an interview (below) conducted in 1985 by G. Edward Griffin, Yuri talks about his experience as a KGB agent assigned to subvert the youth of America through communist ideologies that were being taught at colleges and in the media across the country.

He claimed the goals of this secret cabal were the “Long Range Planning Division” and its desire to subvert Western culture.

“I know that I am risking my life even by talking to you now,” Bezmenov says in the interview., “but I’m willing to take that risk if it will help just one patriotic American to understand the deadly danger that faces not only America but the entire free world.

He starts the interview by revealing that people who pushed Soviet foreign policy, in their home country, were elevated to positions of power through the media and manipulation of public opinion.

But those who refused to do so were either subjected to character assassination or killed.

Bezmenov talks about how the Communist Party has secret agents in all fields of American society, including the media,

Hollywood, and the education system to brainwash people.

He explains how they used Marxist-Leninist ideology to destroy America from within by changing its culture, values, and morals. They do this by promoting atheism and sexual promiscuity among youth and through the liberalization of drug laws, pornography magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse, abortion on demand, etc.

He famously warned us in 1984 that there will be those that speak loudly; we will not know whether they are man or woman.

Bezmenov named four stages of this process.

Stage 1: Demoralization

He said it takes 15 to 20 years to demoralize the nation — enough to “educate” one generation of students to expose them to the marxist ideology and radicalize them.

“Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism,” he warned in 1984, judging that the demoralization process had been “basically completed” by that point.

“Actually, it’s over-fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously, not even Comrade Andropov and all of his experts would even dream of such tremendous success,” he added, referring to former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

“Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards.”

Stage 2: Destabilization

The second stage, destabilization, is much faster, requiring only two to five years under the KGB doctrine. At this stage, the fundamentals of the targeted population’s economy, political system, and culture would be attacked, while the demoralized population could not mount much of a defense.

Bezmenov in 1984 found it “absolutely fantastic” how much influence Marxist-Leninist ideas had developed in the American economy and military. In essence, a demoralized population becomes willing to believe the worst criticisms of its own society, while learning to see defenders of that society as their enemies, while avowed enemies become natural allies. The defenders are held to strict standards, while anything goes for the most strident critics.

Demoralized people lose faith in their nation, history, and ideals; destabilized people lose faith in each other.

Stage 3: Crisis

Once a society has been destabilized, Bezmenov says it is time to send it into Crisis mode.

A crisis will take a panicking, demoralized, and destabilized people into abandoning their legal and constitutional protections. It helps de-legitimize aspects of the existing system and those people who control public opinion.

To save the people from the crisis threat, a political agenda offers solutions that they widely accept but is actively hostile to their true interests.

Once the general populace has been demoralized, destabilized and put in crisis mode, they are ripe to be lead to the fourth stage of the takeover: a political party offers to help make the pain go away by making the people accept political domination through lies and violence.

Stage 4: Normalization

“After a crisis, with a violent change of the power structure and economy, you have a so-called period of Normalization that may last indefinitely,” Bezmenov said.

“Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda,” he stated.

“When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Brezhnev said, ‘Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is ‘normalized.’

This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and a paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free-market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington, D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of things – never mind whether the promises are fulfillable or not,” Bezmenov cautioned.

Bezmenov was adamant that American left-wing professors and civil-rights leaders were deliberately demoalizing and destabilizing the nation through communist ideological subversion. Once the secret cabal was done with these useful idiots, they would be killed.

“They are instrumental in the process of subversion only to destabilize a nation,” he said of the academics and activists. “When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much.

Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists have come to power, obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course.

They would be lined up against the wall and shot.”

In the interview, G. Edward Griffin asks:

Well, what do you think are the chances of the people actually overcoming their system or replacing it?

Bezmenov

There is a great possibility that the system will sooner or later will be destroyed from within.

There is a self-destructive mechanism built into any socialist or communist or fascist system, because there is a lack of feedback, because the system does not rely upon the loyalty of the population.

But until this Soviet junta is being supported by the Western so-called imperialists — that is, multinational companies, establishments, governments — and, let’s face it, intellectuals — so-called academia in the United States is famous for supporting the Soviet system — as long as the Soviet junta will keep on receiving credits, money, technology, grain deals and political recognition from all these traitors of democracy or freedom, there is no hope.

There is not much hope for changes in my country. And the system will not collapse by itself simply because it is being nourished by so-called American imperialism. This is the greatest paradox in the history of mankind when the capitalist world supports and actively nourishes its own destructor.”

He later talks to Griffin about how they targeted University professors and the Left – who he calls useful idiots that serve their purpose. A Pro-Soviet purpose that once finished, they will be killed.

Griffin

Pro-Soviet?

Bezmenov

Yes, they were idealistically minded leftists who made several visits to the USSR. And yet the KGB decided that, come revolution or drastic changes in the political structure of India, they will have to go.

Griffin

Why is that?

Bezmenov

Because they know too much. Simply because, you see, the useful idiots — the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of Soviet socialist or communist or whatever system — when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies.

That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: “Never bother with leftists.

Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher.” This was my instruction.

Try to get into large circulation, established conservative media to reach filthy rich movie makers, intellectuals, so-called academic circles.

Cynical, egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expressions and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people: people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance.

They feel that they matter a lot. These are the people whom the KGB wanted very much to recruit.

Griffin asks Bezmenov about these useful idiots being killed;

But to eliminate the others, to execute the others. Don’t they serve some purpose? Wouldn’t they be the ones to rely on?

Bezmenov

No. They served their purpose only at this stage of the destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in United States.

All these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders, they are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize the nation.

When the job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist–Leninists have come to power, obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen.

Of course, they would be lined up against the wall and shot.

But they may turn into the most bitter enemies of Marxist–Leninists when they come to power. And that’s what happened in Nicaragua. You remember most of these former Marxist–Leninists were either put to prison or one of them split and now he is working against the Sandinistas.

It happened then in the Granada, when Maurice Bishop was — he was already a Marxist — he was executed by a new Marxist who was more Marxist than this Marxist. Same happened in Afghanistan when first there was Taraki, he was killed by Amin; then Amin was killed by Babrak Kamahl with the help of KGB.

The same thing was happening in Bangladesh when Mujibur Rahman, a very pro-Soviet leftist, was assassinated by his own Marxist–Leninist military comrades. It’s the same pattern everywhere. The moment they serve their purpose, all the useful idiots are either executed entirely — all the idealistically-minded Marxists — or were exiled or put in prisons like in Cuba.

Many, many former Marxists are in Cuba, I mean, in prison. So most of the Indians who were cooperating with the Soviets, especially with our Department of Information of the USSR embassy, were listed for execution. And when I discovered that fact, of course, I was sick. I was mentally and physically sick.

Griffin asks Bezmenov about ideological subversion:

We can turn off the projector. And that’s very interesting. Well, you have spoken several times before about ideological subversion. That is a phrase that I’m afraid some Americans don’t fully understand.

When the Soviets used the phrase ideological subversion. What do they mean?

Bezmenov

Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt, and open. You can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do, is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it.

There is no mystery, there is nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence gathering looks more romantic. It sells more deodorants through advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond-type of thrillers.

But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15 percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such.

The other 85 percent is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion or “active measures” — aktivnye meropriyatiya in the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare.

What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.

It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and it’s divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from fifteen to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years?

Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy. Exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism–Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism.

The result, the result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the ’60s, drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system.

You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated.

They are programed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their minds. Even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.

In other words, these people — the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded, common-sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society.

Griffin

And yet these people have been programed and, as you say, emplaced — and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept — these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?

Bezmenov

Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they see in the future what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will they will be very unhappy, frustrated people.

And the Marxist–Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. They obviously they will join the links of dissenters, dissidents. Unlike in the present United States, there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist–Leninist America. Here you can you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being a dissident, for criticizing your Pentagon.

In the future, these people will simply be squashed like cockroaches. Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their beautiful, noble ideas of equality. This they don’t understand, and it will be a great shock for them, of course. The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already.

For the last twenty-five years — actually, it’s over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards.

As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures.

Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him a concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it — until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand — but not before that. That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.

So basically, America is stuck with demoralization. And even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating a new generation of Americans. It will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of the ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism. The next stage is destabilization.

This time the subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption. Whether you are junk food and get fat and flabby, doesn’t matter anymore.

This time, and it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation, what matters is essentials: the economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. And you can see quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and economy, the influence of Marxist–Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic.

I could never believe it fourteen years ago, when I landed in this part of the world, that the process would go that fast. The next stage, of course, is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis.

You can see it in Central America now. And after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure, and economy, you have the so-called period of normalization. It may last indefinitely.

Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in ‘68, Comrade Brezhnev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized.”

This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all these schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and the paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington, D.C., with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale who will promise lots of things.

Never mind whether the promises are unfulfillable or not, he will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins. Never mind. He will create false illusions that the situation is under control.

The situation is not under control. The situation is disgustingly out of control.

Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system train another generation of people who think they are leaving in peace time. False.

The United States is in the state of war — undeclared, total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not Comrade Andropov, of course.

It’s the system, however ridiculous it may sound.

The world communist system or the world communist conspiracy. Whether I scare some people are not, I don’t give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you. But you don’t have to be paranoid about it. What actually happens now that…?

Unlike myself, you have literally several years to live on unless the United States wakes up. The time bomb is ticking. With every second, disaster is coming closer and closer.

Unlike myself, you will have nowhere to defect to. Unless you want to live in Antarctica with penguins. This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.

Griffin

OK. So what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?

Bezmenov

Well, the immediate thing that comes to my mind is, of course, there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one.

Number two, to explain to them, the real danger of socialist, communist — whatever — welfare state, big brother government. If people fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States.

You may kiss goodbye to your freedom, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison inmates — all this freedom will vanish, evaporate in five seconds. Including your precious lives.

The second thing… At the moment, at least part of the United States population is convinced that the danger is real.

They have to force their government — and I’m not talking about sending letters, signing petitions, and all this beautiful, noble activity — I am talking about forcing the United States government to stop aiding communism because there is no other problem more burning and urgent than to stop the Soviet military–industrial complex from destroying whatever is left of the free world.

And it is very easy to do. No credits, no technology, no money, no political or diplomatic recognition. And of course, no such idiocy as grain deals to USSR.

The Soviet people, 270 millions of Soviets, will be eternally thankful to you if you stop aiding a bunch of murderers who sit now in the Kremlin and whom President Reagan respectfully calls “government.”

They do not govern anything, least of all such complexity as the Soviet economy. So basic… Two very simple — maybe too simplistic answers or solutions — but nevertheless they are the only solutions.

Educate yourself, understand what is going on around you. You are not living in a time of peace. You are in a state of war and you have precious little time to save yourself. You don’t have much time, especially if you are talking about young generation.

There is not much time left for convulsions and sexual masturbation to the beautiful disco music. Very soon it will go, just overnight. If we are talking about capitalists or wealthy businessmen, I think they are selling the rope on which they will hang very soon.

If they don’t stop it — they cannot curb their insatiable desire for profit — and if they keep on trading with the monster of Soviet communism, they are going to hang very soon.

And they will pray to be killed.

But unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska, probably to manage an industry of slaves. It’s simplistic. I know it sounds unpleasant.

I know Americans don’t like to listen to things which are unpleasant, but I have defected not to tell you the stories about such idiocy as microfilm James Bond-type espionage. This is garbage. You don’t need any espionage anymore. I have come to talk about survival. It’s a question of survival of this system. You may ask me, what is in it for me.

Survival, obviously. Because, as I said, I am now in your boat. If we sing together, we’ll sing beautifully together. There is no other place on this planet to defect to.

Gnostic Warrior Conclusion

Bezmenov’s revelations are very interesting because it provides us with insight into possibly how our nation has go to the point it is today and how totalitarian regimes operate at subverting nations from within.

How they utlize what they call “useful idiots” who are mainly liberals on the Left to propagandize a nation through its univesrities, media and politics.

Bezmenov educates us about how Marxism-Leninism is promoted as a form of scientific truth which makes it impossible for people to question or criticize it because it is regarded as truth which cannot be questioned.

Black is white. 2+2= 5 and a male is female and a female is male.

People can even make up their own scientific theories to become non-binaries that don’t identify as exclusively male or female.

Hell, they can even identify as a blend of both genders or even blend with their favorite animal.

Bezmenov and his Comrades must be in complete awe at the end stage of the global mind control program that they had helped create.

Cladstine armies of useful idiots everywhere who lack logic, reason and morals ready to attack, and if necessary, kill the people who do not agree with their crazy ideologies.

We can see examples and proof everywhere of these useful idiots all around us in our so-called modern world (Modernity).

Today, this agenda appears to be on Soviet steroids.

As Bezmenov claimed, this last stage of Normalization is permanent. There is no going back!

In the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, players, briefed by the Communist prophet Bezmenov’s “chilling warning,” and tells viewers to “know your history.”

The game allows players, who are mostly kids, to choose from three options for their character’s gender: male, female, and non-binary.

Maybe we can now add the 5th stage of the take-over as the gamification of propaganda.

Let the useful idiots think this is all a game…