Roberta Goren The Soviet Union and Terrorism 1984. Published by George Allen and Unwin. p96 [cites B. N. Ponomarev, 1964] "[...] the defence of peace and the struggle for socialism are not two different causes but one great common revolutionary cause." General Jan Sejna of Czechoslovakia's military intelligence [...] defected during the Prague Spring of 1968.[2] In files he took with him to the West [...] he documented a Politburo decision taken in 1964, to the effect that spending for terrorist enterprises should be increased dramatically. [3] [Citations are:] [2] Michael Ledeen, interviewed in Il Giornale Nuevo, 1980 Jan 1, 22 May 1980, 18 Sept 1980. [3] US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Terroristic Activity, Part 4, 14 May 1975. p.105-106 It was the Middle East with its oil wealth and strategic importance which was most likely to reward the USSR [...] To accomplish this power drive into the Middle East, combined strategies were applied by the Kremlin. Economic assistance programs were offered [...] Doctrinally, the official rhetoric labelled Israel, on [sic] ally of the United States, as an 'imperialist wedge' and identified the Arab's [sic] claims against Israel as an 'anti-imperialist struggle'. In the Kremlin's attempts to penetrate the Middle East, the PLO was to form the fulcrum of the Soviet Union's strategic approach. p.107 In 1968 the USSR initiated a campaign of approval and justification, in the media and at the United Nations, for the 'partisans' struggle against the 'occupier'. The immediate aim of Soviet policy was to isolate Israel and the United States by establishing Soviet influence and exploiting the on-going conflict to unite the Arab world as much as possible. p.108 The first conclusive evidence of some Eastern Bloc support for terrorist organizations was reported by Muhammad Jabih, president of the Palestinian Students Association of which Arafat had been the first president. In April 1968 [...] he reported the promise made by the USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, to supply 'light equipment and medicaments' to the terrorist groups and to offer study grants as well [47]. [47] MER v.4 1968 citing Jum Hurriya, 26 April 1968 p.116-117 The Munich massacre appears to be the starting point of an official Soviet policy attempting to create a public image for the PLO which would eventually endow it with political respectability [...] the Soviet Union, through its press, radio, and representative officials, has attempted to disassociate the PLO from its terrorist activities, particularly those taking place outside the Middle East. Thus, the Munich murders were credited to the 'extremist terrorist group "Black September"'. [89] [...] This systematic and uniform denial of involvement by the PLO after every incident was consistently published and quoted by the Soviet media. [89] Izvestiya, 1972 Sept 8 p120-121 With the appearance of Yasser Arafat, gun-holster on hip, before the Twenty-Ninth Assembly of the United Nations in the autumn of 1974, the Soviet propaganda campaign of legitimization and politicization saw its first major success. Arafat, addressing the Assembly, spoke once again of the PLO's wish to destroy Israel and warned that it would continue its terrorist attacks if it could not achieve this. Five days later the PDFLP killed four Israeli civilians and wounded nineteen in a terrorist raid on the town of Bet Shan. It was at this time that the Soviet Union shifted its official position even more toward the PLO, and in particular towards the idea of a Palestinian state to exist alongside the state of Israel. One day before the United Nations General Assembly debate on the Palestinian issue, Vladimir Volgin, in a radio commentary to North America, called the PLO 'the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people' and 'the sole representative'. [116] [...] a few months earlier the Soviet Union had already begun to use a new terminology when referring to the PLO: 'legitimate national rights', an expression which carries within it the idea of statehood. [116] FBIS, 1974 Nov 14, citing Radio Moscow, 13 Nov 1974 [117] Podgorny speech in Bulgaria, Pravda, 9 Sept 1974 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Cecil's book review from the London Review of Books http://www.lrb.co.uk/v07/n06/robert-cecil/secret-services Secret Services Robert Cecil The Soviet Union and Terrorism by Roberta Goren Allen and Unwin, 232 pp, ’17.50, November 1984, ISBN 0 04 327073 5 The Great Purges by Isaac Deutscher and David King Blackwell, 176 pp, ’12.50, November 1984, ISBN 0 631 13923 0 SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940-46 by M.R.D. Foot BBC, 280 pp, ’8.50, October 1984, ISBN 0 563 20193 2 A History of the SAS Regiment by John Strawson Secker, 292 pp, ’12.95, November 1984, ISBN 0 436 49992 4 Roberta Gorenfs book should be compulsory reading in every course of peace studies. It explains in great detail how the USSR after Stalinfs death adapted to the nuclear age its strategy for achieving hegemony in a world dominated by the mass media and by weapons of mass destruction. It was a dual strategy, with an upper and a lower face. The brightly-lit upper face comprised the campaign for peace and disarmament, promoted by Communist efrontf organisations; the darkened, lower face involved the use of very different means to achieve the same end without provoking nuclear war. One of these means was the employment of surrogate forces to support movements of so-called enational liberationf without the direct involvement of the Red Army. Thus in Africa Cuban intervention was subsidised ? with East European satellites, chiefly East Germany and Czechoslovakia, providing arms and advisers. Meanwhile, at a subterranean level and through devious channels, the USSR was cautiously trying out the usefulness of what Dr Goren calls esub-revolutionaryf forces, which did not aim in the immediate future to overthrow the state, but could be employed to destabilise it. The IRA, the Basque ETA, the Italian Red Brigade and the Baader-Meinhof gang are examples of this activity. In the 1960s, this clandestine strategy began to be applied with new force and subtlety. Between 1965 and 1982 14 Heads of State or prime ministers were assassinated; all represented pillars of stability or of Western influence in the countries concerned. Between 1968 and 1980 the number of recorded incidents of terrorism increased fourfold: out of 6,714 such incidents no less than 5,034 took place in Western Europe, Latin America and the Middle East (in that order). Only 62 occurred in the USSR and Eastern Europe; most of these involved attempts to escape ? for example, by hijacking aircraft. These attempts are not regarded in the USSR as terrorist, but are attributed to ehabitual criminalsf. This distinction is made partly in order to facilitate extradition, but partly because Marxism-Leninism defines eterrorismf as violence evoked by capitalist, imperialist or other reactionary regimes: it follows, according to Soviet ideology, that terrorism cannot arise within the frontiers of Communist countries, unless it is imported by the CIA. It also follows that, if acts of terrorism are promoted in non-Communist countries, these heighten the perception that the rulers of these countries are oppressing ethe workersf. Such a perception is stimulated by Qaddafifs recent allusions to the eimprisonment and starvationf of thousands of striking miners in Britain. All violence directed against the forces of law and order in non-Communist countries is regarded by Marxist-Leninists as deserving encouragement as a first step towards eliberationf. Lenin himself drew an important distinction between erevolutionary terrorismf, undertaken by trained professionals for clear ideological ends, and eindividual terrorismf, which was anarchical in character and, unless directed into approved channels, could prove counter-productive. Much of the history of post-war Soviet involvement in terrorism, as narrated by Dr Goren, consists of Soviet efforts to bring random terror under central control. From the Czech defector, Jan Sejna, we learnt that in 1964 the Soviet Politburo approved a massive increase in espending for terrorist enterprisesf. From Penkovsky came confirmation that the KGBfs Fifth Directorate was concerned with terrorism, sabotage and eblackf propaganda. In 1967 Andropov, then chairman of the KGB, was made a candidate member of the Politburo, thus illustrating the KGBfs enhanced role in planning and strategy.