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December 29, 1975

Committee for State Security Report on Anti-Soviet Propaganda and Anti-Socialist Elements

The Committee for State Security reported on statements from the French and Italian Communist party leaders being used in anti-Soviet propaganda and broadcasted on western radio stations. The use of these statements caused a debate over socialist ideology, human rights, and freedoms. The report looks at prior anti-socialist activity and results of actions in places such as Hungary and Poland. The role of the KGB and decrease in crime rate is also discussed.

June 2007

On Human Rights. Folder 51. The Chekist Anthology.

Outlines the KGB’s response to the USSR’s signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. The accords obligated signatories to respect their citizens’ human rights. This gave Soviet dissidents and westerners leverage in demanding that the USSR end persecution on the basis of religious or political beliefs.

Some of the KGB’s active measures included the establishment of a charitable fund dedicated to helping victims of imperialism and capitalism, and the fabrication of a letter from a Ukrainian group to FRG President Walter Scheel describing human rights violations in West Germany. The document also mentions that the Soviet Ministry of Defense obtained an outline of the various European powers’ positions on human rights issues as presented at the March 1977 meeting of the European Economic Community in London from the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The KGB also initiated Operation “Raskol” [“Schism”], which ran between 1977 and 1980. This operation included active measures to discredit Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, measures designed to drive a wedge between the US and its democratic allies, and measures intended to convince the US government that continued support for the dissident movement did nothing to harm the position of the USSR.