In 1970, a Soviet KGB agent named Yuri Bezmenov defected to the West. His story is fascinating. Yuri shared key details on how USSR propaganda and subversion worked.
But first we need to discover why Yuri came over to the West...
Since the 1960s, Yuri had been stationed in India. His cover assignment was as a journalist for the Novosti Press Agency.
But his real job as a KGB agent was to influence policymakers, academics, and journalists. Yuri's mission was to infect these targets with Marxist-Leninist ideology.
He planted stories about how benevolent and fair the USSR was. He charmed diplomats and politicians with vodka (and less tasteful means). He planted stories to discredit the United States.
He built relationships with influential Indians with a goal of shaping the narrative around the Soviet Union. He worked with students, recruiting future Indian leaders to study in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
His job was to corrupt both individuals and institutions.
Eventually Yuri became disillusioned with his work. He realized that his efforts were actively harming the Indian people, whom he had become quite attached to.
So he decided to defect to the West. He disguised himself as an American hippie, and joined one of the wandering groups of backpackers which frequented India at the time.
Yuri slipped his Soviet handlers and made his way to the American embassy. They granted him asylum, and he was debriefed by the CIA and FBI.
Lessons in Ideological Subversion
Once in North America, Yuri Bezmenov changed his name to Tomas Schuman and worked as a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CGC). Ironically, part of his job was now to target Russian-speaking countries with Western views.
Yuri wrote books and lectured all over North America, warning that if the United States didn't guard its values closely, they would be overwhelmed by the same type of social warfare he used in India.
Bezmenov described this process as "ideological subversion". He claimed that 85% of the KGB counterintelligence budget was used to subvert countries. Less than 15% of KGB spending was on the cloak-and-dagger stuff we see in movies.