Russian Active Measures. Группа авторов

was the “anti-Stalin” who provided the Anglo-Americans with an “opportunity to break up the USSR.”3 But they had to wait a bit longer to celebrate the final victory. The advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, whose election was “a victory for those who promoted him,” facilitated their task.4 The first global information war ended with the demise of the Soviet Union which, according to Panarin, was a Western plot, organized by Churchill as early as 1943.

Yet, this was only part of the story. In his second book entitled Information War, PR, and World Politics published in 2014, Panarin described the second global information war. He argued that, initiated again by the West, the second information war began in the 1990s, but this time this war would be won by Russia. According to Panarin, Russia’s victory would be conditioned by several factors, including the Russian political elite’s passion and its preparedness for the “global uncompromising informational-psychological confrontation with the global elites [the US and the UK].”5

      Interestingly, Panarin’s texts open a window into how the Russians view information warfare and how they perceive the West’s tactics and strategies vis-à-vis Russia. First, we learn that the representatives of the highest echelons of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs support conspiracy theories and build on them. Second, they believe that Khrushchev and Gorbachev were “foreign agents” who were placed in their posts by foreign powers. Third, they suggest that the information war that began in 1943 has never ceased, and has been extended by the West even after the demise of the Soviet Union. Finally, there is a certain optimism among them about Russia’s eventual victory, and this victory is imminent. Moreover, Panarin predicted that this war would be won in 2020, which means that we might be witnessing Russia’s victory this year, now, any moment, in fact.

      Let us take a pause here and think what happened between 2010 and 2014, the time when Panarin published his books, and a situation, in which we live today. In the United States Donald Trump was elected President; the Brexit referendum occurred in Britain; and separatist movements unraveled in Catalonia. Russia seems to play an active role in these events.

      Soviet Propaganda and Disinformation

      Let us, however, make a foray into history. Propaganda is not something new. The Soviet Union advanced itself in producing propaganda. In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks established a special unit within the Central Committee of the Communist Party, called the Agitation and Propaganda Department, well known in its abbreviated form—Agitprop. The Agitprop had sub-departments responsible for the press, cinema, theater, radio, the arts, literature, science, and schools. It was so successful that it served as a model for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.

The word “disinformation” (dezinformatsiia) is also of Russian origin. For the first time, the word appeared in 1963, when the KGB created a special section, tasked with spreading disinformation.6 The rich experience of the Soviet secret police, including its tactics and strategies, eased the tasks of Vladimir Putin who employed and emulated the Soviet models. However, Putin has not simply copied the existing intelligence templates but rather improved them, being a true reformer and even an innovator. He allocates extremely generous budgets to the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts, profoundly modernizing the Russian propaganda machine. He uses psychological know-how, systematically adjusting the ways in which he conducts information warfare. He intelligently uses the openness of the Western media, making it vulnerable to the Russian propaganda offensive. Importantly, he has transformed propaganda into an effective war machine, destabilizing Western countries and actively interfering in elections. These tactics allow Putin to effectively influence political, social, economic, and cultural processes, undermining developed world democracies.

      How Does the Russian Propaganda Machine Work?

The main instrument used in the Kremlin’s propaganda offensive is the Russian cable TV RT (originally named Russia Today). Launched in May 2005, it was designed to become a global competitor of CNN, BBC World, Deutsche Welle, and Al Jazeera. The channel went live on 10 December 2005. The Kremlin was prepared to invest substantial sums in this project. Starting with $70 million in 2005, the budget was increased to $80 million in 2007 and to $120 million in 2008. In 2011, the budget was tripled to $380 million. RT grew into an organization with a staff of two thousand employees worldwide, reporting from twenty bureaus. It included a bureau in Washington with approximately one hundred personnel. The new Russian cable TV was very successful. In 2013, two million Britons watched RT regularly. It did not confine itself to broadcasting in English, but also offered programs in Arabic and Spanish. After the annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin decided to focus on the two leading countries of the EU, France and Germany, launching a French-language and German-language channel. Confronted with Western sanctions, RT’s budget, which was still approximately $330 million in 2015, was reduced by ten percent for the year 2016, when it received approximately $300 million.7 According to the Russian American Magazine,

… today RT is a global, round-the-clock news network that includes seven TV channels broadcasting news, current affairs and documentary content, digital platforms in six languages and a video news agency RUPTLY. Round-the-clock news channels in English, Arabic and Spanish and documentary channel RTDoc in English and Russian broadcast from Moscow, while RT America airs from a Washington, DC studio and RT UK—from London. Today, RT is available in more than 100 countries spanning 5 continents.8

What is the content of RT’s programs? In the first years RT aimed at improving Russia’s image abroad. The programs featured Russia’s unique culture, its ethnic diversity, and its decisive role in the Second World War. Their viewers would seek in vain for reliable information on more critical subjects, such as election fraud, frequent murders of journalists and politicians, and government officials’ corruption. In the summer of 2008, during Russia’s invasion of Georgia, RT became a source of active disinformation, depicting the Georgians as the ones who committed genocide against Abkhazians and residents of South Ossetia. This narrative was embraced by other Russian news outlets and scholars at prestigious Russian universities (i.e., MGIMO), and it persists today among Russian journalists and the Russian political elite.9 From the moment RT’s focus began to change. Defensive “soft power” tools were replaced with an offensive tool of disinformation that helped RT accentuate the negative sides of the West in general, and the United States in particular. Routinely, an emphasis was made on the growing social inequality, race problems, homeless people’s suffering, mass unemployment, human rights violations, and the consequences of the banking crisis. Anchors of RT programs, such as Peter Lavelle, did not hide their explicit anti-American views.10

RT began to invite “experts,” many of whom represented marginal or extreme right groups. One of these groups was the “truthers,” people who believed that the 9/11 attacks were not the work of al-Qaeda, but of the U.S. government.11 Another group was the “birthers” who, without offering any evidence, doubted Barack Obama was born in the United States, and questioned his eligibility to serve as American president. Manuel Ochsenreiter, an “expert” from Germany and the editor of the neo-Nazi magazine Zuerst! has been regularly invited as a speaker by RT’s English-language channel. The Economist did not hesitate to qualify RT’s programs as “weirdly constructed propaganda” characterized by “a penchant for wild conspiracy theories.”12 Despite this sort of criticism, and Western nations’ constraints and regulations which