Transcription
Subversion is the term if you look in a dictionary or criminal code, to that matter, usually explained as a part of activity to destroy things like, uh, religion, government systems, political and economical systems of a country. It is usually linked to espionage and such romantic things as blowing up bridges, sidetracking trains, um, clock-and-dagger activity in Hollywood style.
What I'm going to talk about now has absolutely nothing to do with a cliché of espionage or KGB activity of collecting information. Unlike the Oxford English Dictionary, subversion in Soviet terminology means always a destructive, aggressive activity aimed to destroy the country, nation, or geographical area of your enemy.
There’s no romanticism in there—absolutely no blowing up bridges, no microfilms in Coca-Cola cans, nothing of that sort, not James Bond nonsense. Most of this activity is overt, legitimate, and easily observable if you give yourself time and trouble to observe it.
But according to the law and law enforcement systems of Western civilization, it’s not a crime—exactly because of misconception and manipulation of terms. We think that a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No, a subverter is a student who comes for exchange, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself was 10 years ago.
Now, subversion is an activity which is a two-way traffic. You cannot subvert an enemy which doesn't want to be subverted. If you know the history of Japan, for example, before the 20th century, Japan was a closed society. The moment a foreign boat comes to the shores of Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army politely tells them to get lost. If an American salesman comes to the shores of Japan, say 60 or 70 years from now, and says, "Oh, I have a very beautiful vacuum cleaner for you, you know, with good financing," they say, "Please leave us. We don't need your vacuum cleaner."
If they don't leave, they shoot them to preserve their culture, ideology, traditions, and values intact. You were not able to subvert Japan. You cannot subvert the Soviet Union because the borders are closed, the media is censored by the government, and the population is controlled by the KGB and internal police, with all the beautiful glossy pictures of Time Magazine and America, which is published by the American Embassy in Moscow.
You cannot subvert Soviet citizens because the magazine never reaches them; it's collected from the newsstands and thrown into a garbage can. Subversion can only be successful when the initiator, the actor, the agent of subversion has a responsive target. It’s a two-way traffic. The United States is a receptive target of subversion; there is no response similar to that from the United States to the Soviet Union.
It stops halfway somewhere; it never reaches here. The theory of subversion goes all the way back to 2,500 years ago. The first human being who formulated the tactics of subversion was a Chinese philosopher by the name of Sun Tzu, 3500 years BC. He was an adviser for several imperial courts in ancient China, and he said, after long meditation, that to implement state policy in a warlike manner is the most counterproductive, barbaric, and inefficient way to fight on a battlefield.
You know that war is a continuation of state policy, right? So, if you want to successfully implement your state policy and you start fighting, this is the most idiotic way to do it. The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy.
Your system, your civilization, and your ambitions look to your enemy as an alternative—if not desirable, then at least visible. Better red than dead—that's the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired if the subversion is successful.
This is basically what subversion is. As you see, not a single mention of blowing up bridges. Some of that didn't know about blowing up bridges; maybe there were not that many bridges at that time. But the basics of subversion are being taught to every student of KGB school in the USSR and to officers of military academies. I'm not sure if the same author is included in the list for training American officers, to say nothing about ordinary students of political science.
I had difficulty finding the translation of Sun Tzu in a library of a university in Toronto and later on here in Los Angeles. But it’s a book which is not available. It is forced on every student in the USSR; every student who is taught to be dealing further in his future career with foreigners.
What subversion is basically consists of four periods, time-wise. If we start from here and go this way, time—this is the beginning point. The first stage of subversion is the process which is basically called demoralization. It says for itself what it is. It takes from, say, 15 to 20 years to demoralize a society.
Why 15 or 20 years? This is the time sufficient to educate one generation of students or children—one generation, one lifetime span of a person, a human being which is dedicated to study, to shaping up the outlook, ideology, personality—no more, no less. Usually, it takes from 15 to 20 years.
What it includes? It includes influencing, or by various methods, infiltration, propaganda methods, direct contacts—it doesn’t really matter. I will describe them later—in various areas where public opinion is formulated or shaped: religion, educational system, social life, administration, law enforcement system, military, and of course labor and employer relations, economy.
Okay, five areas. I will not write them down because we won’t have enough space. Sometimes when I describe all the methods, students ask me a question: Are you sure this is the result of Soviet influence? Not necessarily. You see, the tactic of subversion about which I'm talking is similar to the martial art, the Japanese martial art. If some of you are familiar with that tactic, probably you will remember that if an enemy is bigger and heavier than yourself, it would be very painful to resist his direct strike.
If a heavier person wants to strike me in the face, it would be very naive and counterproductive to stop his blow. The Chinese and Japanese judo art tells us what to do: first avoid the strike, then grab the fist, and continue his movement in the direction where it was before, right, until the enemy crashes into the wall.
You see, what happens here is that the target country obviously does something wrong. If it's a free democratic society, there are many different movements within the society. There are people who are against this society—they may be simple criminals, ideologically in disagreement with state policy, conscientious enemies, or simply psychotic personalities who are against anything.
Finally, there is a small group of agents of a foreign nation, bought, subverted, recruited. The moment all these movements are directed in one direction, right, this is the time to catch that movement and to continue it until the movement forces the whole society into collapse, into crisis, right?
So that's exactly the martial art tactic. We don't stop an enemy; we let him go. We help him to go in the direction we want him to go. On the stage of demoralization, obviously, there are tendencies in each society, in each country, which are going in the opposite direction from the basic moral values and principles.
To take advantage of these movements, to capitalize on them, is the main purpose of the originator of subversion. So we have religion; we have education; we have social life; we have power structure; we have labor relations; and finally, we have law and order.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Okay, these are the areas of application of subversion. What it means exactly, in the case of religion, is to destroy it, ridicule it, and replace it with various sects and cults, which bring people's attention to faith—whether it is naive or primitive, doesn’t really matter, as long as the basically accepted religious dogma is being slowly eroded and taken away from the supreme purpose of religion: to keep people in touch with the Supreme Being.
That serves the purpose; therefore, replace accepted, respected religious organizations with fake organizations, distract people's attention from the real faith, and attract them to various different fads.
In education, distract them from learning something which is constructive, pragmatic, efficient. Instead of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, and chemistry, teach them history of urban warfare, natural foods, home economics, your sexuality—anything that takes you away.
In social life, replace traditionally established institutions and organizations with fake organizations. Take away the initiative from people; take away the responsibility from naturally established links between individuals, groups of individuals, and society at large, and replace them with artificially, bureaucratically controlled bodies.
Instead of social life and friendship between neighbors, establish social worker institutions—people who are on the payroll of the bureaucracy. The main concern of social workers is not your family, not you, not social relations between groups of people; the main concern is to get the paycheck from the government.
What will be the result of their social work? Doesn’t really matter. They can develop all kinds of concepts to show to the government and to the people that they're useful. Away from the natural links, power structure—okay, the natural bodies of administration, which are traditionally either elected by the people at large or appointed by elected leaders of society, are being actively substituted by artificial bodies: the bodies of groups of people whom nobody elected.
As a matter of fact, most of the people don't like them at all, and yet, they exist. One of such groups is media. Who elected them? How come they have so much power, almost monopolistic power, over your mind? They can rape your mind, but who elected them? How come they have the nerve to decide what is good and what is bad for the elected president and his administration?
Who the hell are they? Power structure slowly erodes by the bodies and groups of people who do not have the qualifications or the will of the people to keep them in power; and yet, they do have power.
Together with that, there’s another process: law enforcement. Law and order organizations and structures have been eroded for the last 20-25 years. If you see old movies and new movies, you can see that in new movies, a policeman, an officer of the United States Army, looks dumb, angry, psychotic, paranoid; a criminal looks nice, kind of well. He smokes hash and shoots whatever drug, but basically he's a nice human being.
He's creative and he's unproductive only because society oppresses him. A general of the Pentagon is always, by definition, a dumb war maniac. A policeman is a rude pig; he abuses his power. You know generalizations like that. The hatred and mistrust to the people who are supposed to protect you and enforce law and order are slow substitutions of basic moral principles—whereby a criminal is not a criminal actually; he's a defendant.
Even if his guilt is proven, there is still a doubt: to kill or not to kill? To be or not to be? Thy shall not kill, yes, but this line may not necessarily be applicable to a murderer. "Thou shall not murder" should be the presumption, not "I shall not kill."
Okay, labor relations at this stage, within 15 to 20 years, destroy the traditionally established links of bargaining between employer and employee. The classical Marxist-Leninist theory of natural exchange of goods: a person A has five sacks of grain, a person B has five pairs of shoes, and the natural exchange without money is when they bargain between each other.
Only with the introduction of the third force—C, an entirely third foreign stranger—who says, "No, don't give him five sacks of grain; give it to me. You give me five pairs of shoes, and I will distribute it accordingly," so that the economy will go. This is the death of natural exchange and the death of natural bargaining.
Trade unions were established 100 years ago. The objective was to improve working conditions and to protect the rights of workers from those employers who abused their rights because they had more money. Initially, the trade union movement did work.
What we see now is that the bargaining process is no longer resulting in a compromise, which is leading objectively to the betterment of working conditions and increase in salary. What we see is that after each prolonged strike, the workers lose. Even if they have a 10% increase in their salaries, they cannot catch up due to inflation and due to missed time.
More than that, millions of people suffer from that strike because the economy is now interdependent. It’s intertwined like one body. If previously, still workers, say, 100 years ago, could strike and nobody would suffer, now it's impossible anymore. If a garbage collector strikes today, the rest of the multimillion-city is stinking.
I mean, there's no more service. In Quebec, for example, we had the electricians who were striking in the middle of winter. You could freeze your bottom, and they still were on strike. Did they catch up with the city? No, they lost. Who benefited? The leaders of the trade unions.
What is the motivation for the strike—improving workers' conditions? No, obviously it's not. Then what is it? Ideology; to prove to these capitalists and the obedient horde of workers—like sheep—they follow these people and they cannot disobey. Why? Because if they do, you know what happens to them: pickets, murders, shootings.
Truck drivers, by picketers, in Montreal, for example—I saw with my own eyes, when I was a correspondent for the CBC International Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—when the workers of the aircraft factory destroyed computers and equipment in the factory, and the administration employed strikebreakers, their cars were turned upside down and burned, their houses were burned, their kids were intimidated, and some victims were there, of that you can be sure.
Why? To improve the conditions of workers? No, ideology! So this is what happens basically—it may or may not happen without the help of the Soviet Union, but the natural tendencies are being greatly taken advantage of and capitalized on by the Soviet propaganda systems. How?
Whenever trade unions strike, we have an influx of propaganda, mass media, ideological dissemination: the workers' right—and we repeat it like parrots: "Yes, workers' rights!" Whose rights? Workers'? No, the only freedom of a worker to sell his labor according to his own desire and will is taken away from him. By whom? By the trade union bosses.
Unlimited power is given responsibility. I want to sell my labor not for $250 an hour but for $2. I don't have the right; my freedom is denied to me. I know that if I sell my work for $2 an hour, not for $3 now, I will compete better with the other guy who is lazy and more greedy. I don't need $2 or $3; I need only $2.
No, I was made to believe by media, by business, by advertising agencies that I need more and more and more. Have you ever heard any advertising on TV to consume less? No, no way! Whether you need a six-cylinder car or not, you have to buy it. And hurry up!
When I was driving here, on the local radio station, an excited announcer said you hurry up, rush, and save, save, save. There's a plenty of housing sales—save by buying more! Of course, it would be too naive to expect that KGB makes that advertising agency do such a crazy commercial; no, of course not!
But what we did, when I was working for the PR, we would snowplow editorial offices, student organizations, and religious groups with literature of class struggle. If not directly Marxist-Leninist propaganda, then propaganda of the legitimate aspirations of the working class—betterment of life, equality.
Mind you, President Kennedy once said, “People, we will make America believe that people are born equal.” Are people born equal? Is there any mention in the Bible or any other holy scripture in any religion? If you don't believe me, go to the library and check. There is not a single word about equality—just the opposite!
By your deeds, God will judge you. What you do is important—the merit of your personality. You cannot legislate equality. If you want to be equal, you have to be equal; you have to deserve it. Yet, we build our society on the principle of equality. We say people are equal; we know it is false. It’s a lie. Some people are tall and stupid; others are short, bald, and clever.
If we make them equal by force, if we put the principle of equality at the basis of our social-political structure, it’s the same thing as building a house on sand. Sooner or later, it will collapse, and that’s exactly what happens. We, as Soviet propaganda makers, are trying to push you in the direction which you go yourself.
Equality? Yes, equality! People are from Cuba? Why? And yet, we repeat as parrots: "Equality, equality, equality." The Soviet propaganda system helps us to believe that equality is something desirable.
Democracy, as it was established by the fathers of this country, is not equality. It’s a system where different, unequal people have a chance to survive and help each other in constant competition, in constant perfection—not inequality imposed from a godfather or nice person in Washington, D.C.
The absolute equality exists in the Soviet Union—quote-unquote equality. Everybody is equal in dirt, except some people are more equal than others!
So the moment you bring a country to the point of almost total demoralization, when nothing works anymore, when you are not sure if it is right or wrong, good or bad—when there’s no division between evil and good, when even the leaders of the church sometimes say, "Well, violence for the sake of justice, especially social justice, is justified in countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador."
Well, maybe Rhodesia? And we listen to them and say, "Yeah, probably it’s true." Is it true? No, it is not! Violence is not justified, especially for the sake of "social justice" introduced by Marxists—like my former colleagues from the Novost press agency.
Okay, so we reach that point. The next step is destabilization. Again, this word says for itself what it is: to destabilize all the relations—all the accepted institutions and organizations—in a country of your enemy.
How do you do it? You don't have to send a battalion of KGB agents to blow up bridges; no, you let them do it themselves. The area of application is again, it’s narrower now—not like in the previous case. The overt legitimate actions of the KGB in this case would be hardly noticeable. There is no crime. If a professor, who recently went to the USSR, introduces a course of Marxism-Leninism in a Californian college, for example, nobody's going to come to his doorstep and say, "Okay, Mr. Come, you are under arrest."
No, it’s not a crime; it’s not even considered a moral crime against your country. So, the area of application here is narrowing down to the economy, labor relations, law and order, military, and the media—wider scope, a little bit different, I’ll explain later.
Okay, basically three areas: the economy, the radicalization of the bargaining process. If, at that stage, we still could achieve, theoretically, some positive compromise between the negotiating sides with, say, the arbitrary introduction of judges—third side, objectively judging the demands of both sides—here it’s radicalization.
On this stage of destabilization, we cannot come to compromise. Even within a family, the husband and wife couldn’t figure out which is better. The husband wants his kids to eat at the table, and the wife wants her child to roam around the room and drop food all over the floor. They cannot come to a compromise unless they start a fight.
It’s impossible to reach constructive compromise between neighbors. Some people say, “I don’t like you working your lawn at that time because exactly at that time I’m walking my dog and he’s getting nervous; he cannot pass his bowels,” you know?
So they cannot compromise. They go to a civil court or something like that. The radicalization of human relations: no more compromise. Fight, fight, fight! The normal, traditionally accepted relations are destabilized.
The relations between teachers and students in schools and colleges? Fight! The relations between, in the economic sphere, between laborers and employers are further radicalized. No more acceptance of the legitimacy of demands of workers—something normal, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
We would be angry and say, “Why so much hatred?” Today we are not; we say, “Well, commonplace!” Radicalization, militarization—sometimes, as I explained, on that stage, I took a step a little bit further, shooting people, okay?
Law and order now also is pushed into the area where, previously, people settled their differences peacefully and legitimately. Now, we are getting with these court cases, in the smallest irrelevant cases. We cannot solve our problems anymore. The society at large becomes more and more antagonistic between individuals, between groups of individuals, and society.
The media puts itself in opposition to the society in general, large—separate, alienated. Okay, on that stage, you remember I was talking a couple of hours ago about the sleepers? That’s when the students from, say, the United States, if they are trained in Lumumba University or developing nations—that’s the students I was dealing with—are being sent back from the Soviet Union here.
Or if they were already in the United States, in a country which is the object of subversion, they spring to action. The sleepers wake up! They slept for 15 to 20 years; now they become leaders of groups, preachers, I don't know, public figures. All of a sudden, we see a homosexual—15 years ago he did his dirty job and nobody cared; now he makes it a political issue.
A political issue! He demands recognition, respect, human rights, and he represents a large group of people. And there are violent clashes between him and police, his group and ordinary people.
No matter where the division line goes, as long as this group comes into antagonistic clashes, sometimes militantly, sometimes with firearms, that is the destabilization process. The sleepers, many of whom are simply KGB agents, become leaders of the process of destabilization.
It doesn’t mean that comrade Andropov is in the United States. The person who takes care is already here; he’s a respected citizen of the United States. Sometimes he gets money from various foundations for his legitimate struggle for, I don’t know, human rights, women’s rights, kid lib, prison lib—whatever! There are sympathetic Americans who donate their money to him.
The destabilization process usually leads directly to the process of crisis. In the case of developing nations, that's the area where I was active. The process starts when the legitimate bodies of power, the social structure, collapse; it cannot function anymore.
So instead, we have artificial bodies injected into the system, such as non-elected committees. You remember I was talking about them here—social workers who are not elected by the people; media, who are self-appointed rulers of your opinion; some strange groups that claim they know how to lead society forward. They don’t! Usually, all they care about is how to collect donations and sell their own concocted ideology, a mixture of religion and ideology.
Here we have all these artificial bodies claiming power. If the power is denied to them, they take it by force.
Crisis is when society cannot function anymore productively; it collapses. Obviously, that’s the word for crisis! Therefore, the population at large is looking for a savior.
The religious groups are expecting a messiah to come; the workers say, “We have family to feed. Let’s have a strong government, maybe a socialist government—centralized, when somebody puts their employers in their place and lets us work.”
We are sick and tired of going on strike and missing overtime and all that stuff. We need some strong man, strong government, a leader—a savior is needed. The population is sick and tired already, and here we are!
We have a savior—either a foreign nation comes in, or a local group of leftists, Marxists, no matter what they call themselves: Sandinista, a reverend or some sort of Bishop Muak, like in Zimbabwe. It doesn’t matter; a savior comes and says, “I will lead you.”
So we have two alternatives here: civil war and invasion. Okay, see how it goes? Civil war—we know what it is. Lebanon is the best example—the civil war which was artificially implanted in Lebanon by the injection of force of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Invasion—we have in many other countries like Afghanistan. Name any East European country—it was invaded by the Soviet army. But the result is the same.
The next stage is normalization. Normalization is a very ironic word, of course. It is borrowed from the 1968 situation in Czechoslovakia when the Soviet propaganda—and after them, the New York Times—declared that the country is normalized. The tanks moved into Prague, so there’s no more Prague Spring; there’s no more violence.
Normalization, at that stage, the self-appointed rulers of society don’t need any revolution anymore. They don’t need radicalism anymore; this is the reverse from destabilization. Basically, it is stabilizing the country by force, so all these sleepers and activists and social workers and liberals and homosexuals and professors and Marxists and lists are being eliminated physically. Sometimes, they’ve done their job already, okay?
They are not needed anymore. The new rulers need stability to exploit the nation, to exploit the country, to take advantages of the victory. Okay? So no more revolutionaries, please!
And that's exactly what happens in a number of countries. So, no more revolutions, please.
Normalization—now, from now on, no more strikes, no more homosexuals, no more women’s lib, no more kids’ lib—period! Good solid democratic proletarian freedom.
Now, to reverse this process takes enormous effort. When today the United States had to invade Grenada to reverse the process of sub… some people say, “Boy, this is not good; it’s not fair to invade the beautiful island country of Grenada.”
Well, why didn’t you stop the process here when Grenada was just approached by the leftists? Why not to prevent Maurice Bishop from coming to power in the first place? Did Grenadians want him? Very questionable. They didn't know who Maurice Bishop was in the first place; he came to power by coup d’état himself.
We let the situation develop further and further until the crisis, and normalization very soon, and then the United States decided to invade the country, discovering that the country was absolutely a military base for the Soviet Union.
Of course, it’s a drastic measure. Of course, it’s a pity that Marines had to lose, what, 17 lives? Very bad! Why not to stop the process before it comes to crisis? Oh no, intellectuals will not let you. It’s interference into the domestic affairs.
They’re very careful not to let American administration to interfere in domestic affairs of La American countries. They don’t mind the Soviet Union to interfere in these affairs.
To reverse this process from here, it takes only—and always—military force. No other force on Earth can reverse this process at this point.
At this point, it does not take military invasion of United States Army; it takes strong action—like in Chile, a CIA covert involvement—to prevent the savior from the outside from coming to power and stabilize the country before it erupts into civil war.
Support the right-wing conservative forces; buy, money, by crooks, or love; it doesn’t matter. Stabilize the country; don’t let the crisis develop into civil war or invasion! Oh no, your liberals will say it’s against the law. The Congress will not appropriate money for covert actions of CIA.
Why not? Should we wait till normalization comes, and Soviet tanks land in Los Angeles airport? Now, at that point, at the point of destabilization, also the process could be reversed again easily—no CIA involvement at this point. You know what it takes?
Here, restriction of some liberties for small groups which are self-declared enemies of society. As simple as that. Oh no, the media and liberals will tell you this is against the American Constitution. How can we, by force, deny civil rights to criminals, for example? It’s not good!
Okay, so we allow them to—okay, if you allow the criminals to have civil rights, go on and bring the country to the crisis. This is a bloodless way to curb the rights! I mean, not to put them in prison; no, no, I’m not talking about putting all the gates from San Francisco in concentration camps.
Do not allow them to take political force; do not elect them to the seats of power—whether it is municipality level, state level, or federal level. It has to be bitten in the heads of American voters that a person like that in a seat of power is an enemy.
Do not be afraid of this word: it is an enemy! If he is not an enemy here, he will be here. Later on, he will be shot, of course, but at this point, he is an enemy.
Okay? You are doing a great service by denying him a right to capitalize on his own crazy ideas and become a powerful man—a man who uses the seat of power—restriction of certain freedoms and permissiveness at that point would prevent sliding into crisis and probably will return the process of destabilization.
To curb the unlimited, monopolistic power of trade unions at that point would save the economy from collapsing. To introduce a law to stop private companies from raping public opinion's mind in the direction of consumerism—no company must have a right to force you into buying more unless you want it! There must be a law!
You want to advertise your car, okay, but not a single mention of buying it now and saving money. It must be against the law to force people to consume more!
Self-restraint, previously before this process started, was the business of the church and religion because our preachers, the fathers of the church, would tell us material values are good, but they're not the prime function of human beings—because you have to live with something.
Obviously, the design for our life is not to consume more deodorant. There must be something greater! If such a complicated instrument as the human body was created, obviously, there must be some higher purpose for that.
And it's very easy to avoid the stabilization by denying the greedy companies one little freedom—one little liberty—forcing you into turning yourself into processors of unwanted products and goods. They turn you into machines like a worm who has an inlet and an outlet.
How long does the average appliance last these days? Less than a year! Why? Where’s workmanship? We want you to buy more!
The stabilization process could be easily overcome if, as I say, society—either of its own will or after persuasion by the leaders—will come to the idea of self-restraint. It’s so hard; we want to consume more. But you have to!
Unless you come to this stage when, as we say in Russia, if the Sahara Desert ever becomes a communist state, there'll be a shortage of sand. So you have to curb your expectations at this point before it’s too late.
But no, we don’t want to do it! The demoralization process, again, it's the easiest thing to reverse. First of all, by restricting the import of propaganda. The easiest thing to do is to limit the unlimited, unrestrained import of Soviet literature, Soviet journalists, and giving Soviet propaganda and ideological agitators equal time on American TV networks.
It has to be stopped, and it’s easy! They won’t be offended! Mind you, as a matter of fact, they will respect America more! But when my former colleague Vladimir Posner appears on Nightline and Ted Koppel asks, “Well, Vladimir, what do you think about this?” What can he think?
He’s an instrument of propaganda; he thinks what comrade Andropov tells him to think. He’s just a nice, articulate mouthpiece of the Soviet subversion system, and that couple makes you believe that my friend Vladimir Posner thinks the process of demoralization may not have started at all.
If at that point, the country which is a recipient of subversion—actively, but not violently—prevents importation of foreign ideology, I don't want America to follow the pattern of ancient Japan.
You don’t have to shoot every foreigner when he approaches the sacred borders of the United States, but when he offers you junk in the disguise of something that is very shiny, you have to tell him, "No, we have our own junk!"
If at that point the society is strong, brave, and conscientious enough to stop the importation of ideas that are foreign, then the whole chain of events could be prevented. Recently, I’ve been to the Philippines, and I was shocked how, in big cities like Manila, children listen to deafening music—a melodious nation with long traditions of good, nice ethnic music introduced by the Spanish a long time ago, maybe two centuries or three centuries ago.
I don’t remember how, all of a sudden, they listen to musical garbage blasting their radios at full volume. When I was in India, I spent many years watching the reactions of Indians walking out of movie theaters after seeing Hollywood productions.
They couldn’t figure out why Americans are so wasteful. They smash their cars, their shiny cars, every five minutes! How come they shoot each other for half a million dollars? Is it true that they are so obsessed with sex?
Can you imagine showing a movie where every five minutes, there’s copulation on the screen to a country like India, which has long traditions of respect for private matters—or to Pakistan? And the United States expects these people to respect you?
No way! Oh yes, they will see the movie; they’ll pay five rupees to see that garbage, but they walk out and will tell their kids, “Don’t respect Americans; don’t be like Americans.”
See, the process of demoralization could be stopped right here. Both as an expert and as an importer, that takes one step—one very important thing to do. You don’t have to expel all the KGB agents from Washington, D.C.
The most difficult and at the same time the simplest answer to the subversion is to start it here, and even before—by bringing back the society to religion. Something that you cannot touch and eat and put on yourself, but something that rules society and makes it move and preserve it.
A Soviet scientist, Shafarevich, who has nothing to do with religion—he’s a computer scientist—did very intensive research on the history of socialist countries. He calls socialist or communist any country with a centralized economy and the pyramidal style of power structure, and he discovered—actually, he didn’t discover; he just brought to attention of his readers—that civilizations like Mohenjo-Daro in the river Indus area, like Egypt, like Maya, Incas, like Babylonian culture, collapsed and disappeared from the surface of the Earth the moment they lost religion.
As simple as that—they disintegrated. Nobody remembers about them anymore—well, distantly. So the ideas are moving society and keeping mankind as a society of human beings, intelligent moral agents of God.
The facts, the truth, the exact knowledge—no fancy technology and computers will prevent society from disintegrating and eventually dying out. Have you ever met a person who would sacrifice his life and freedom for the truth? Like that?
This is the truth! I never met a person who said this is truth, and I'm ready to shoot myself to defend the truth, right? But millions sacrifice their life, freedom, comfort, everything, for things like God—like Jesus Christ.
It’s some martyrs in Soviet concentration camps who died, and they died in peace. Unlike those who shouted, "Long Live Stalin"—knowing perfectly well that he may not live long. Something which is not material moves society and helps it to survive, and the other way around.
The moment we turn into two-by-two is four and make it a guiding principle of our life, our existence, we die—even though this is true! And this we cannot prove. We only can feel and have faith in it.
So, the answer to ideological subversion, strangely enough, is very simple. You don’t have to shoot people. You don’t have to aim missiles and cruise missiles at Andropov's headquarters. You simply have to have faith and prevent subversion.
In other words, not to be a victim of subversion. Don’t try to be a person who in judo is trying to smash your enemy and getting caught by your hand. Don’t strike like that; strike with power! Your spirit and moral superiority—if you don’t have the power, it’s high time to develop it.
And that’s the only answer. That’s it! Thank you!