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184 May 14, 1982 MOSCOW AND THE PEACE OFFENSIVE INTRODUCTION The United States today confronts a task of major proportions in attempting to fulfill the 1979 NATO decision to deploy new Pershing I1 and ground-launched cruise missiles in Western Europe.

Designed as a means of countering the Soviet theater-range missile buildup, the program now faces formidable opposition in the West.

In some European NATO countries, support for the plan is plummet ing under assault from'increasingly strong peace and disarmament movements This shift in European sentiment is, in great part, the result of the Soviet Unionls massive di sarmament propaganda campaign.

MOSCOW~S propaganda apparatus comprises a variety of organizations primarily under the control of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These agencies in turn influence the activities of organizat ions in the Western European countries that have been set up as front groups by the pro-Soviet national Communist parties.

This standard propaganda arrangement has been made even more effective in the past few years by a Soviet decision to allow the commu nist organizations to work on the disarmament Ilsafeguard ing the peace issue with groups of almost any political character. In order to counter this effort by Moscow to prevent the deployment of NATO's new missiles, the United States must understand the nature of Soviet disarmament campaigns.

The first Soviet disarmament campaign to utilize a European front group successfully as a national mobilizing force was the fight against the Itneutron bomb.Il With the aid of Ifindependentf1 religious peace groups, the Dutch Communist Party broadened public support for its 1977-1978 IIStop the Neutron'BombIl movement far beyond the Communist, leftist, and pacifist circles tradition ally active in such campaigns 2 Having realized the success of this broad support con cept Soviet leaders determined to use it in other "peace offensives.I1 The Soviet Union's campaign against NATO's modernization of its theater nuclear forces proved a remarkable success in 1981, which has continued into 19

82. This resu1ted.h no small part from the USSR's decision to ally its disarmament forces with European peace groups of differing political outlook in order to present a united front on disarmament. This broadening of support has provided Soviet propaganda activities with Western Europea n coloration legitimizing Soviet anti-U.S. and anti-NATO efforts in the guise of genuine European nuclear fears.

The nuclear freeze campaign now gaining momentum in the United States is a cousin to the European disarmament movement.

Its roots are American , but its emotional arguments parallel those used by the Europeans, its leaders have begun receiving organizing advice from European peace movement figures, and for all its high-minded idealism, its effects prove no less beneficial to Soviet: propagandist s.

THE SOVIET UNION'S PROPAGANDA APPARATUS Propaganda has always loomed large in the work of the Commu nist Party of the Soviet Union cal and ideological work of the Party was distributed among three categories theoretical activity, propaganda and agitat1o n.l Theoretical activity was the preservation and elaboration of the doctrines of Marx and Lenin. Propaganda was the dissemination of doctrinal messages on specific subjects to an elite audience consisting primarily of Communist Party cadres. And agitatio n was the dissemination .of more simplified doctrinal messages to the great mass of the cohon people are commonly recognized today as propaganda Lenin maintained that the politi These last two categories The Soviet Union uses a variety of agencies overt an d Intelligence Agency estimates that the USSR spends the equivalent of some 3.3 billion each year on these efforts include Radio,Moscow's foreign service broadcasting 2,022 hours a week in eighty-two languages and TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union the Soviet news agency. By contrast the United States' Voice of America broadcasts 904.75 hours a week in only forty languages. The most important USSR agency lending covert support to Soviet propaganda initiatives is the KGB or Committee for State Securi t y. covert to target the West with its propaganda The Central Overt activities The Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee approves the major propaganda themes and the methods to be used to disseminate I 18 I Evron M. Kirkpatrick, ed Year of Crisis: Commun i st Propaganda Activities in 1956 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957 p. 31. 'I 3 them. It also rules on the use of major support actions by the KGB. Departments of the CPSU Central Committee with a direct responsibility for propaganda efforts are the I nternational Information Department, an organization established in recent years, which directs overt propaganda activities against non Communist countries, and the International Department, which directs relations with non-ruling Communist parties.

Headin g the International Information Department is Leonid Zamyatin, a member of the CPSU Central Committee and former Director General of TASS. The Department's First Deputy Chief is Valentin Falin, the former Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Unt il his death on January 25, 1982, Mikhail Suslov the CPSU's ideologist, advised Zamyatin on propaganda efforts, in connection with his role as ideological overseer for Soviet foreign policy.

The CPSU Central Committee's International Department is headed by Boris Ponomarev, Candidate Member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee, a man with twenty-five years of experience in this job. Ponomarev's First Deputy Chief is Vadim Z a gladin, a member of the CPSU Central Committee. Because of its responsibility for dealing with Communist parties in non-Communist states, the International Department funnels its covert propaganda requirements through both the Communist parties themselves and, utilizing its International Organizations Section the various pro-Soviet international front organizations.2 The Soviet leadership's view is that national Communist parties should support CPSU policy initiatives down the line. Of course, the actual r o le that a particular Communist party plays in a Soviet propaganda campaign is determined in large part by the strength of its pro-Soviet alignment or, in the case of parties with basic policy disagreements with the USSR, by whether or not the propaganda i s sue is one of common concern. Peace and disarmament are issues of natural agreement between the Soviet Union and the vast majority of Western Europe's communist parties because of the latteys' anti-military stance Forgery, Disinformation and Political Ope rations I Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 81 (November 1981 p.

53. Among the first Communist leaders to stress the importance of front organizations was the Finn Otto Kuusinen, Secretary of the Communist International from 1921 to 19

43. In 1926, at a Comintern executive committee meeting, Kuusinen advanced the idea of "creating a whole solar system or [sic] organizations and smaller committees around the Communist Party actually working under the influence of the Party, but not under its mechanical c ontrol."

Quoted in "International Communist Front Organizations: Introduction in Yearbook On International Communist Affairs 1968, edited by Richard V.

Allen (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1969 p. 695.. 4 The most prominent Soviet international fron t group in the disarmament effort is the World Peace Council (WPC established in Paris in 1949 as part of Joseph Stalin's "peace offensiveI1 of the late 1940s. The Council's first propaganda effort was its 1950 Stockholm Appeal a "peace petition1! that de m anded !Ithe outlawing of the atomic weapons as instruments of aggressiontf and Itthe strict international controln1 of atomic weapons Expelled from Paris in 1951 and outlawed in Austria in 1957, the WPC remained in Vienna under the cover of a new organiza tion, the International Institute for Peace, until it moved to its present Helsinki headquarters in 19

68. The president is Romesh Chandra a veteran Indian Communist involved in the Soviet international front movement for some twenty-five years.3 The KGB's covert role in the propaganda campaign apparatus often is to furnish disinformation to its agents of influence, to provide clandestine funding for cooperating organizations in various countries (particularly money for mass demonstrations and to forge doc u ments. Such 'Iactive measuresi1 are the responsi bility of Service A of the KGB's First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligen~e Disinformation (dezinformatsiya) is defined by the Soviets as !Ithe dissemination of false and provocative infor mation.I1 In p r actice it encompasses the distribution of forged documents and photographs, the spread of misleading rumors and erroneous information, duping non-Communist visitors to the Soviet Union, and perpetration of physical violence for psycholo gical effect. One S oviet defector described a successful dish formation operation in which he had participated One example, in Tanzania, was our tlworkll to discredit the American Peace Corps. The line was that it was a CIA front organization and its subversive activity had to be llexposed.ll We tried, often successfully, to place prepared articles into local papers preferably signed by the Tanzanians. The llauthorsll were always paid well, and "their" articles worked: Tanzania, and then Uganda, started refusing Peace Corps S ervices.5 For information on Chandra's background in the front groups, see "Biogra phies of Prominent International Communist Figures," in Yearbook on Inter national Communist Affairs 1979, edited by Richard F. Staar (Stanford Hoover Institution Press, 19 79 p. 449.

Service A was apparently upgraded from Department to Service status in the mid-1970s. "The Communist Propaganda Apparatus and Other Threats to the Media American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security) Intelligence Repor t, Vol. 3 (April 1981 pp. 1-2.

Quoted in "How the KGB Operates: Answers from a KGB Defector American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security) Intelli gence Report, Vol. 3 (July 198l p 3. This was an interview with a former KGB offi cer, Ilya Dzhirkvelov, who defected to the British, early in 19

80. In partial confirmation of Dzhirkvelov's KGB background, Appendix D of John Barron's book (published six years before Dzhirkvelov defected), 5 FORMER SOVIET DISARMAMENT CAMPAIGNS The Sovi ets have used peace propaganda extensively since the late 1940s, first to check America's potential use of its atomic weapons monopoly for political capital at a time when the USSR had none or only a few of such weapons and then, later, to hinder the Unit ed States' arms buildup and the American defense of South Vietnam. Nikita Khrushchev stressed the usefulness of peace propaganda in a January 1961 strategy speech: "Every day bigger sections of L\\ e population should be drawn into the struggle for peace The banner of peace enables us to rally the masses around us. By holding aloft this banner we will be even more This Soviet line was immediately picked up by Gus Hall, the leader of the U.S. Communist Party, in a major report to the Party's National Committee It is necessary to widen the struggle for peace, to raise its level, to involve far greater numbers, to make it an issue in every community, every people's organization, every labor union, every church, every house, every street, every point of gathering o f our people It is essential to give full support to the exist ing peace bodies, to their movements and the struggles they initiate, to building and strengthening their organizations It is also necessary to recognize the need for additional peace organiza tions Above all, Communists will intensify their work for peace, and their efforts to build up peace organizations.6 PROPAGANDIZING AGAINST THE "NEUTRON BOMB"

On June 4, 1977, Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus called attention to the Defense Department's decision to request congressional Finding of the enhanced radiation warhead (ERW).

In his newspaper article, Pincus stated The United States is about to begin production of its first nuclear battlefield weapon specifically designed listing Soviets engaged in clandestine operations abroad, shows that one Ilya Dzhirkvelov was expelled from Turkey and was subsequently stationed in Sudan (1971 John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974 p. 3

85. Quot ed in House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement (Women Strike for Peace and Certain Other Groups Hearings, 87th Congress, 2d Session, USGPO, 1963, pp. 2065-2066 I 6 to kill people through the release of neutron s rather than to destroy military installations through heat and blast.

Funds to start building an Itenhanced radiation" warhead for the 56-mile range Lance missile are buried in the Energy Research and Development Administration portion of the $10.7 billion public works appropriations bill now before Congress.

This Post article and the newpaper's negative editorial on the new weapon quickly gained public attention, and in the subsequent few weeks, negative reporting in influential newspapers around the country aroused a small public furor over the issue.

The So viets joined in with an article on the ''neutron bombtt in Pravda on June 19, 1977, castigating the weapon as 'laccording On July 13, the U.S. Senate passed the appropriations legislation allowing the spending for enhanced radiation warheads. The Carter A d ministration, however, delayed a decision on production to the press assessments, practically a chemical warfare weapon I Within a few days of the Senate decision, the Soviets launched a full-scale assault on the Itneutron bomb.It Beginning on July 19, on e Soviet international front group after another initiated formal protests against United States production of the weapon.

The following week, the World Peace Council announced that an International Week against the Neutron Bomb would be observed from Augu st 6 to 13 dates coinciding, not surprisingly, with the annual commemorations of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings of World War 11 On August 20, 1977, at the initiative of the Dutch Communist Party (CPN), 130 Dutchmen launched an appeal in the Co m munist daily De Waarheid to start a widely based movement against the Itneutron bomb.lI This movement was furnished immediate organiza tional strength by two cooperating groups whose ties had begun in 1976, the Christians for Socialism (CVS a known commun i st front organization, and the Inter-Church Peace Council (IKV). Through out that fall, the IIStop the Neutron Bomb.It campaign gathered momentum in the Netherlands in its avowed goal of mobilizing Dutch public opinion against the weapon, even as Dutch an d Belgian Communist Party leaders were jointly discussing the campaign's strategy (one such meeting taking place in De Haan, Belgium).

By October 1977, President Carter was still undecided on whether to produce ERWs, and later that month, Secretary of Defe nse Harold Brown informed NATO representatives that the Quoted in S. T. Cohen, The Neutron Bomb: Political, Technological and Military Issues (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1978 p. 35. 7 United States would probably not p roceed with production unless a consensus in favor of the weapon's deployment could be formed by the Western European countries. The public announcement of this altered American position gave Soviet propagandists and their agents incentive to further incr ease their anti-neutron agitation in Europe.

By this time, local anti-neutron groups throughout Holland consisted not only of Communists, but also of pacifists and concerned Christians who had been drawn into the Communist campaign largely unaware of its r eal sponsorship. The active participation of the Inter-Church Peace Council was particularly useful in broadening the movement's base.

The emerging situation demonstrated the successful working relationship of the open Soviet propaganda apparatus, which o rchestrated strong public denunciations of the weapon with the Soviet covert apparatus, largely used to manipulate public senti ment in Western Europe through the machinations of Western European Communist Parties and their front groups.

Anti-neutron sentiments were by now gaining strength through out the Continent, aided by the constant attention of the media.

In West Germany, where most of the neutron warheads would have been deployed, Secretary General Egon Bahr of Chancellor Schmidt's own Social Democ ratic Party (SPD) in July 1977 publicly denounced the "neutron bomb" as ''a symbol for the perversion of human thinking." And although its public efforts in the propaganda campaign received less attention than those of the Dutch "Stop the Neutron Bomb" gr o up, the German Peace Society-United War Service Resisters (DFG-KV with close links to the West German Communist Party (DKP) and its affiliated organization, the Social ist German Workers' Youth (SDAJ set aside the August 6 anniver sary of Hiroshima as a d ay of demonstrations against the neutron weapon in more than forty German cities.

Meanwhile, overt Soviet propaganda continued In the course of his address commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev pres ented two new" disarmament proposals; one urged that "agreement be reached on a simultaneous halt in the production of nuclear weapons by all states all such weapons whether atomic, hydrogen or neutron bombs or missiles."

Nevertheless, most of the Soviet propaganda was negative in nature, attempting to picture deployment of the ERW as a plot by the Carter Administration to lower the nuclear threshold in Europe.8 And in a December 1977 Pravda interview, Brezhnev Brezhnev noted in an interview in Pravda on D ecember 24, 1977, for example This inhuman weapon, especially dangerous because it is presented as a tactical,' almost 'innocent' one is now being persistently foisted upon 8 announced that the Soviet Union would not remain a "passive onlookertt if such a weapon were developed but would instead answer the challenge. These Soviet messages were relayed directly to President Carter by Polish leader Edward Gierick, when Carter visited Poland in late December.

On December 15, 1977, the World Peace Council announced an effort "to secure .a ban on the neutron bomb in 1978.Il9 It held. a series of meetings and "peace conferences" at which the Ilneutron bombff was a major tbpic of dbuse.

Foz example, the 'WPC Bureau met for the firs.t time in the United States, in Washington, D.C in January 19

78. There the group called, among other things, for all world peace forces to step up the struggle against the arms race, especially the manufacture of the Ilneutron bomb."

That same month, Leonid Brezhnev sent personal letters to the heads of each Western European NATO government. In harshly worded letters, the Soviet General Secretary warned that NATO should reject American efforts to produce and deploy neutron weapons. Ot h er Itofficiallt Soviet propaganda activities included a proposal on March 9, 1978, made by the Soviet delegate to the thirty-country Geneva Disarmament Conference, to prohibit the production, stockpiling, and deployment of Ilneutron bombs I At about the s ame time, the Soviets attacked U.S. actions during the Belgrade conference assembled to review the Helsinki agreement.

On March 18, an "International Forum" supported by the CPSU was held in Amsterdam on the Ilneutron bomb" matter. The following day the I' Stop the Neutron Bomb1' movement, augmented by prominent East bloc representatives marched through the streets of Holland's largest city, more than 40,000 strong. The leaders of the movement presented Parliament with a l'poll of the people the signatures o f more than one million of people opposed to the ltbomblf which their organization had been gathering since August 1977.1 It was the culmination of months of patient effort by the Dutch Communist Party and its front organizations in the Netherlands all in service to the propaganda needs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

On April 7, 1978, President Carter capitulated and announced that the United States had decided against the llincorporation of the world. Thereby, attempts are being made to erase the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms, to make the transition to a nuclear Year-end Soviet Optimism in Foreign Sphere: Focus on Further Disarmament Successes Soviet World Outlook, January 15, 1978, p. 4.

Ibid -9 P- 5 lo C. C. van den Heuv el Netherlands in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1979, p. 186; and J. G. Heitink The Influence of the Christians for Socialism movement on the IKV De Telegraaf (Amsterdam July 25 1981, p. 9; translated and reprinted in Current News: Foreign M e dia Edition, October 28, 1981, p. 5 war outwardly, so to say, unnoticeable for the peoples Quoted in 9 enhanced radiation features into U.S. battlefield weapons. The final American decision, he averred, would be influenced by the degree of restraint shown by the Soviets in their future military programs and force deployments. The Soviets had won their propa ganda offensive In an address given the same day as Carter's decision, Brezhnev scoffed at making the neutron bomb 'the subject of bargaining and tying in this weapon with unrelated issues THE SOVIET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN AGAINST TNF MODERNIZATION: 1979 On October 1, 1979, Brezhnev fired the opening salvo of what has since become a major propaganda offensive against the United States' latest effort to stre ngthen NATO's nuclear deterrent forces. The Soviet leaders apparently decided to mount such a campaign when they realized that the decision on the development and deployment of new NATO theater nuclear weapons was imminent.

For all the campaign's later mom entum, its opening shot was all but inconspicuous. In an otherwise undistinguished recounting of Soviet disarmament policies made on October 1 to a Socialist International Working Group on Disarmament, Brezhnev remarked: the initiators of the arms race, i n cluding those who are now pushing plans for turning Western Europe into a launching pad for American nuclear weapons targeted on the U.S.S.R are playing a dangerous game with fire." However, the Soviet leader followed up this brief statement with a major address in East Berlin five days later. He proposed a number of initiatives designed to keep NATO from procuring and deploying Pershing I1 ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles.

There were several threats in the Brezhnev speech. One was th e warning that the USSR would be forced to strengthen its forces if NATO deployed the new theater nuclear weapons. Specifi cally the General Secretary noted: "The Socialist countries would not, of course, watch indifferently the efforts of the NATO milita r ists extra steps to strengthen our security. There would be no way out left to us Another was the threat that, were the Federal Republic of Germany and other European NATO countries to allow missiles on their soil, they would suffer dire consequences if t h ese new weapons were ever used. This threat was coupled with the assertion that the Soviet Union would "never use nuclear arms against those states that renounce the production and acquisition of such arms and do not have them on their territory We would h ave in such a case to take the necessary The pledges of good will made explicit in the Soviet leader's address but clearly contingent upon NATO's decision not to deploy the new weapons were twofold first, an announcement that the Soviet Union was prepared to reduce the number of medium-range weapons deployed in the western USSR; and second, a promise of further expansion of measures of trust in Europe," including early agreement on notification of large exercises of ground 10 forces (already provided for i n the Helsinki Final Act timely notification of large-scale troop movements, and the immediate commencement of SALT I11 talks once SALT I1 was ratified. Interest ingly, a third pledge was not made contingent upon NATO actions but was given as a sign of Sov i et "good faith USSR's unilateral withdrawal of up to 20,000 Soviet troops, 1,000 tanks, and "also a certain amount of other military hardware from East Germany over twelve months. This was not the first time that a Soviet leader had promised troop withdra wals in the hope of forestalling the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe.

In early January 1958, just three weeks after NATO had agreed to allow Jupiter IRBMs on European soil, Nikita Khrushchev announced that he was withdrawing 40,000 troops from Easter n Europe. And indeed, some 41,000 Soviet troops were withdrawn. Yet, within six months of Khrushchev's announcement, the Soviets were again heating up the situation in Berlin.

Following the Brezhnev speech, the Soviet propaganda campaign against NATO nucl ear force (TNF) modernization expanded in many directions. organs reiterating Brezhnev's points or challenging Western press interpretations of them. For example, Valentin Falin, the First Deputy Chief of the CPSU Central Committee's International Infor m a tion Department (and reputed leader of the anti-TNF propaganda campaign wrote in Pravda: "If 400 or 600 new carrier rockets were to be deployed in Western Europe then, of course, this would lead to the amearance in the East of systems adequate to It promi s ed the I Articles began appearing in prominent Soviet news I counterbalance them on October 10 for 'Idistorting [the] clear-cut, practical and And Izvestiya criticized the Western press concrete proposals" which had been made by the Soviet General Secreta ry.

The immediate American response to the Brezhnev address was firm. At a press conference on October 9, President Carter responded: "It is not quite as constructive a proposal as at first blush it. seems to be. What he is offering in effect is to continu e their own rate of modernization as it has been, provided we don't modernize at all The decision ought to be made to modernize the Western allies' military strength and then negotiate with a full commitment and determination mutually to lower arma ments o n both sides I As the days passed the Soviet press hardened its line. In maneuvers designed more for European than for American consumption Soviet news organs began claiming that the introduction of new medium-range, theater nuclear weapons by NATO would v iolate American-Soviet understandings as set forth in SALT 11, and that the Pershing I1 missiles were being fitted to carry 'Ineutron warheads The SALT-related charge was made by Falin in a Soviet television news commentary program that was quickly sent w o rldwide by TASS. The charge that the U.S. missiles proposed for European deployment would eventually carry "neutron" warheads was made on a television program by a senior Soviet officer and quickly distributed in the West by the Novosti Press Agency. This was 11 obviously intended to link the new American plan to the llneutron bomb" which an earlier Soviet propaganda campaign had discredited so successfully in Western Europe the year before.

While this public propaganda effort was in full swing, the Soviet government was actively employing diplomatic pressure.

Brezhnev sent each European NATO government a private letter reiterating his proposals.

Meanwhile, outside the Soviet Union, allied agents of the USSR's campaign of persuasion used their influence t o good advant age. On October 17, the llparliamentslt of the Warsaw Pact countries issued an appeal for Western European legislators to raise their voices against the plans for the deployment of "new types of American nuclear missile weapons on the Europe a n continent." In Brussels, a public disarmament forum was held from October 26 to 28, giving Warsaw Pact representatives a perfect opportunity to air anti-TNF views extensively. The East German government especially, participated energetically. At the beg i nning of November, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Secretary General Erich Honecker of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party warned the Federal Republic of Germany that NATO approval of TNF modernization would cause deterioration of East-West relations and would speci fically endanger the recently improved relationship between East Germany and West Berlin. That same week the Honecker government requested East Germans to sign petitions against the new Western weapons.

In addition, the GDR dispatched a special llanti-missilelt delega tion, headed by Politburo member Kurt Hager, to canvas for support in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

And then, the Soviet campaign was aided unintentionally by a visit to Denmark of three American arms control advocates. The men Herbert Scoville (a former assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency), Arthur M. Cox, and Richard Barnet ha d come to Copenhagen under the sponsorship of the Danish newspaper'Information and the United Nations Association to meet with influential Danes to urge them to oppose the deploy ment of the new weapons in NATO.ll The Americans argued that if l1 Leonard Do wnie, Jr Denmark Faces Crucial Decisions on Defense Spending,"

The Washington Post, November 5, 1979, p. A20; and "Pro-SALT Americans Urge Denmark to Oppose NATO Missiles Defense/Space Business Daily November 6, 1979, pp. 22-

23. Both Scoville and Barnet have had continuing ties with organizations on the American Left Scoville has been on the Board of the Center for Defense Information, and Barnet was formerly a co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies. For detailed information on the above-named o r ganizations, see William T. Poole, "The Anti-Defense Lobby: Part I, Center for Defense Information Heritage Foundation Institution Analysis No. 10, April 19, 1979; and William T. Poole, "Insti tute for Policy Studies Heritage Foundation Institution Analys i s NO. 2 April 19, 1977. 12 NATO did not deploy the new weapons, the Soviet Union might begin withdrawing its old SS-4 and SS-5 missiles from inventory.12 Their advice was well received by the sizeable left wing of Denmark's ruling Social Democrats, alread y ideologically pre disposed against the new weapons; in addition, the advice had a significant impact on many centrist Danes.

The approach of the scheduled November 13-14 NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) meeting, which both the United States and the Sovi et Union saw as a bellwether of the North Atlantic Council's December vote, gave renewed impetus to Soviet anti-TNF agitation efforts. On October 25, in a major Pravda article, obviously directed at Western Europe, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov c harged the United States, Great Britain, and West Germany with attempting to implement "schemes hostile to the cause of peace would suffer retaliation if the deployed weapons were put into operation by their masters original proposal with a disarmament of f er of its own first discussed the idea with European allies, the Carter Admini stration announced that it was considering the withdrawal of up to 1,000 older nuclear warheads from Western Europe, contingent upon a favorable NATO decision on the deployment of the new weapons.13 Apart from its value in matching the Soviet disarma ment initiative, the proposal was seen by the Carter Administration as a way of garnering additional European support for procurement and deployment of the new weapons He warned Eur o pean leaders that "West European countries That same day, the United States responded to Brezhnev's Having I I With time for the NATO decision growing closer, the Soviet Union attempted to rekindle Western European interest in the Brezhnev proposals by st r essing the positive aspects 6, 1979, Pravda published a commentary by Leonid Brezhnev on the issue of immediate negotiations In it, the General Secretary emphasized On November As regards a practical solution of the problem of these weapons, there is only one way to follow that of embkkiilg on negotiations. The Soviet Union is of the view that the negotiations must be embarked on without delay. We are prepared for this. Now it is up to the Western powers. It is important, however, that no l2 It should be u n derstood that the Soviets have been purposely delaying the retirement of these older missiles, possibly in an effort to use them as bargaining chips in future arms negotiations. Some 140 had been retired by late 1979, but nearly all of these had been targ eted on China p A

6. It was not a new idea. In 1975, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger unsuccessfully had proposed reducing NATO's stock of obsolescent tactical nuclear warheads l3 "U.S. May Withdraw 1,000 NATO Weapons The New York Times, October 26, 1979 I 13 hasty actions be taken which might complicate the situation or obstruct the attainment of positive results.

There will be a greater chance of obtaining such results if no decisions are taken on the production and deploy ment in Western Europe of the above-mentioned means pending the outcome of the negotiations. And converse ly, the chances will be undermined if such decisions are taken within the framework of NAT0.14 Although the ne7 Soviet propaganda tack did not alter the outcome of the Nuclea r Planning Group meeting at the Hague, it The near solidarity on the issue expressed at the NPG meeting I I was not lost on the Soviets. Although Soviet propaganda against theater nuclear force modernization did not slacken in the month North Atlantic Coun c il, its emphasis gradually shifted to the possibility of TNF arms reduction negotiations of Soviet World Outlook later commented I between the NPG meeting and the December 1979 meeting of the I As the editors I Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and other So v iet person effort to dissuade NATO from accepting deployment of I U.S. medium-range nuclear missiles. However, a marked I I ages fanned out throughout Europe in a last-ditch shift of emphasis from the stick to the carrot suggested that Moscow has already reconciled itself to the positive decision reached by the NATO on December 12 and is now intent upon frustrating implementation of the decision.

During a well-publicized visit to West Germany in late I November, Gromyko told reporters that the NATO erred i n its view that once it had made the decision to produce the missiles it could then start negotiations with the Soviets. He remarked: "We political preconditions. This destroys the basis for talks government to fit with Brezhnev statements that an adverse NATO decision would undermine the potential success of future arms control talks have openly stated that sdch a formulation of the matter means Gromyko's strong statement was later modified by the Soviet I I I l4 (Emphasis added Quoted in "Campaign on Eur o missiles Grows in Scope and Intensity U.S. Charged with Circumvention of SALT 11 Soviet World Outlook November 15, 1979 p. 5. 14 With just a week to go before the momentous North Atlantic Council decision, the Soviets began a high-profile withdrawal of so m e 150 men and 18 T-62 tanks (a contingent of the 6th Soviet Tank Division) from East Germany, the first step in their purport ed 20,000-man troop withdrawal. Western reporters, including television camera crews, were treated to speeches from East German o f ficials decrying NATO's preparations for war A day later, in a maneuver that came as somewhat of a surprise to Western observers, the foreign ministers of the Warsaw Pact countries issued a cornunique appealing for a conference on general disarmament as s oon as possible. In a distinct change from the prevailing Soviet propaganda line, the communique implied that European disarmament talks could take place right up to the actual deployment of the new missiles.

On December 12, 1979, the North Atlantic Counci l endorsed the theater nuclear force modernization program. Only Belgium and the Netherlands withheld full approval. The immediate Soviet reaction was not unexpected. The brunt of the Soviet attack centered on the United States, which was pictured as a vi l lain who had used arm twisting tactics'l on allies unable to stand up for themselves. This interpretation was clearly designed to enlarge the desired split between the U.S. and its European partners THE SOVIET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN AGAINST TNF MODERNIZATION : GEARING UP IN 1980 I Even as the Soviet Union began readying an extensive propa ganda effort against NATO's modernization of its theater nuclear forces in late 1979, Western Europe's communist parties were moving to consolidate their influence on the eme r ging national peace movements. During the last half of 1979, the Dutch Communist Party, whose Stop the Neutron Bombtt movement had been so success ful the previous year, broadened this effort into a new interna tional campaign IStop the Neutron Bomb, Stop the Arms of Mass Destruction which could target the new NATO theater nuclear forces plan as well.15 And in West Germany, the Communist con trolled Committee for Peace, Disarmamert, and Cooperation staged an International Antiwar Day on September 1 which w a s supported by a variety of groups, including the Association of German Students, Nature Friend Youth, and local organizations of the Young Socialists and the Catholic and Protestant churches, which were to loom large in the "nonaligned" peace marches two years later l5 C. C. van den Heuvel Netherlands in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1980, edited by Richard F. Staar (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), p. 1

92. Another name given to this group is the "Joint Committee--Stop the Neutron Bomb--Stop the Nuclear Armament Race Forgery, Disinformation, and Political Operations Department of State Bulletin, November 1981, p. 54. 15 It became clear by mid-1980 that the Communist Party of Soviet Union had mastered the primary lesson of the Ilne u tron the bomb" campaign: that major participation in the disarmament efforts of the CPSU by pacifist, religious, and ecological groups not directly linked to the USSR could assist significantly in influencing popular and government sentiments in NATO coun t ries on nuclear weapons issues. The CPSU could see that two measures were necessary to ensure such broadly based European support first, to downplay differences between the CPSU and the non Communist Europear, Left Oil all ccrr,-geznane issues, thereby al l ow ing the Soviets and their European Communist allies to embrace the gamut of European leftist groups in the struggle for llpeacelt and second, to manipulate carefully in Europe peace themes and popular fears about the dangers of nuclear war in order to bring into the peace movements such groups as alienated young people who would be otherwise leaderless.

This theme was stressed by Bulgarian state and party leader Todor Zhivkov in his address to the World Parliament of Peoples for Peace, in September 1980 We must consider the efforts of social organizations and the masses I am talking about the activities of the World Peace Council, which is the initiator of our present international meeting, and also about the activities of all peace-loving forces To sta t e this objectively,.there is no other social movement capable of joining together dozens and hundreds of millions of people, capable of organizing their efforts For the sake of this glorious goal we must together find the paths leading toward coordination of the joint initiatives of all peace-loving organizations movements and forces on a national as well as interna tional scale The role of youths and the intelligentsia is essential in the struggle for peace We are called upon to do everything in our power in order to involve the overwhelming majority of youths in the struggle for peace and happiness 16 The World Peace Council came out of its Sofia meeting deter mined to push at all levels for the adoption of the Soviet spon sored disarmament initiatives du ring 19

81. Increasing popular support l6 "Zhivkov Speaks Before World Peace Parliament in Sofia Sofia Domestic Service (Bilgaria in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report Eastern Europe, September 24, 1980, pp. C7-C8. 16 for the various Europe an national peace organizations became the WPC's major priority. As the Council's 1981 "Programme of Action detailed This programme seeks to make 1981 the year of the decisive offensive of peace forces, to make the 80s the Decade for new victories for pea c e, for disarmament and detente, for national independence, justice, democracy and social progress The World Peace Council's Programme of Action for 1981 places its main emphasis on common united mass actions by the widest range of forces, campaigns confer e nces, seminars and symposia at national levels It's directed particularly at the strengthening of national and local peace m0~ements.l Communist dominated front organizations were active even then in the anti-TNF modernization effort in West Germany. In N o vember 1980, at the initiative of the German Peace Union (DE'U a long-time Communist front organization, the so-called Krefelder Apell (Krefeld Forum) was promulgated by representatives of the Green Party (Germany's left-leaning ecology party small trade u nion groups, the German Communist Party, the German Peace Union German Evangelical Church groups (particularly the Lutherans and pacifists and conscientious objectors.18 The Forum, directed l7 World Peace Council Programme of Action 1981 (Helsinki: World P eace l8 West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt characterized the circumstances Council 19801 pp. 6-7 surrounding the Krefelder Apell in this way regarding the Krefeld peace appeal, it was preformulated by the German Peace Union which is one of the many gro u ps around that are established with strong communist influence. Many people are members of the Peace Union as well as of the Communist Party." Interview with Helmut Schmidt: "Chancellor Schmidt Comments on Peace Movement ZDF Television Network (Mainz Augu st 30 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Western Europe September 1, 1981, p.

52. For information on the German Communist Party's influence over German peace organizations such as the German Peace Union see "Germany: Federal Republic of Germany in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1968, p. 2

36. The Green Party was not founded as a left-wing party, per se, but was completely taken over by the Left (always a majority of the membership) during the course of its first party conven tions, culminating in the one of March 21-23, 19

80. See Elizabeth Pond Dissension sprouts in West Germany's Green Party The Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 1980, p.

4. For information on the ecological parties in Western Europe, see J. F. Pilat, Ecological Politics: The Rise of the Green Movement, (The Center for Strategic and International Studies, George town University) The Washington Papers Volume 8, Number 77 (B e verly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980 B I I 17 specifically against NATO, called upon the government to reverse its Ilerroneous and fatal decision authorizing the stationing of new American theater nuclear weapons on German soil. Among the most prominent p a rticipants in the Krefelder Ape11 were Petra Kelly, leader of the Green Party, Pastor Martin Niemoeller, a well-known German theologian and honorary member of the World Peace Council's Presidium, who had been awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Un i on in 1967, and Major General (Ret Gert Bastian, a former Bundeswehr Division Commander who, since retir ing, had participated as one of the "Generals for Peace" in the Ilpeacell work of various World Peace Council front groups.lS Mainly because of its se e mingly non-Communist sponsorship, the Krefeld Forum was to prove very successful during 1981 signa tures backing the Forum numbered 20,000 by early January and reached a reported 1.5 million by the end of the year THE 1981 CAMPAIGN AGAINST TNF MODERNIZATI O N Soviet leaders undoubtedly were heartened to see the various national peace movements gearing up in early 1981 for massive protests against the TNF modernization plan. On January 12 1981, Pravda looked to the possibility of a Itmass movement against mis s iles in both the Netherlands and Belgium, and the journal, New Times, noted in two January articles the mass cam paigns in Italy and the United Kingdom and the increasing level of protests in West Germany.20 l9 Jean Stead, "Western Europe's anti-war fever The Guardian (London April 7, 1981, p.

17. For information on Petra Kelly's background, see Roger Berthoud Radical 'Greens' alliance hopes to capitalize on provin cial success The Times (London September 16, 1980; and "The Soviet Peace. Offensive Informa tion Digest, December 25, 1981, pp. 385-386.

For information on Martin Niemoeller's receipt of the Lenin Peace Prize see "Germany: Federal Republic of Germany in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1968, p. 2

36. For a representative sampling of informa tion on Gert Bastian's disarmament activities, see Christian Potyka Attack on the Missile Arsenal Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich January 9, 1981, p. 3, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report Western Europe, January 12, 1981, p. 53; J. G. Heitink ["The finances of the anti-nuclear arms clubs and their income from abroad De Telegraaf July 29, 1981, p. 9, reprinted in Current News: Foreign Media Edition October 28, 1981, p. 7; and Charles Austin, "Antinuclear Groups Seeking A Global Netwo rk The New York Times, December 6, 1981, p.

75. The views of Bastian and other former NATO generals and admirals in the "Generals for Peace" group are getting extensive play not only in Germany but also in the USSR, where the Soviet magazine Za Rubezhom h as been printing translations of the writings of these retired officers Massive Campaign Heralded Against Euromissiles Soviet World Outlook Vol. 6 (February 15, 198l p. 3 2o 18 Needless to say, having done so much behind the scenes to initiate the anti-NA T O activities of these groups, the Soviet Union hastened into public print to deny any connection with these efforts. As TASS commentator Vadim Biryukov proclaimed The protest against deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe can by no means be presented as a 'hand of MOSCOW.' Protest is being voiced by politicians, military men, scientists, trade union leaders, peace champions.11 The major Soviet anti-TNF effort for 1981 started ir, late February, following Brezhnev's "peace offensivei1 speech to the 26th S o viet Party Congress. He declared that there is Ilcurrently no more important task on the international plane for our party our people and all the peoples of the world than the defense of peace It2 And although the actual "peacell proposals put forth durin g the 26th CPSU Congress were really reworked repetitions of older Soviet proposals, Soviet propagandists used them as the basis for their renewed efforts in Western Europe. On March 9 1981, Soviet ambassadors in the Western European countries present ed l etters to their host governments from Brezhnev rehashing the proposals in his February speech.22 Meanwhile, Soviet iljournalistsil and llacademiciansll traveled around Europe providing the CPSU peace propaganda line to Western reporters.

Georgiy Arbatov, t he newly promoted full member of the CPSU Central Committee who is widely viewed in the United States as a shrewd, non-ideological observer of U.S.-Soviet matters. Arbatov's effectiveness as a propagandist and disinformation expert is directly linked to h i s position as director of the USSR Institute of the United States of America and Canada, an academic research institute subordinate to the Economics Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Despite its seeming independence from the formal Soviet propag a nda apparatus, the Institute spokesmen who deal with Westerners always place the propaganda value of their comments above other considerations In addition, the CIA has estimated that some fifteen percent of the identified personnel of the Institute have a current or former intelligence affiliation.

Despite this, Arbatov and his colleagues enjoy a measure of credibility with the Western press even Americans One of the most effective of these spokesmen was I 21 Quoted in an article in Kommunist by Boris Pono marev, entitled "The International Significance of the 26th CPSU Congress excerpted in Leon Goure and Michael J. Deane,,"The Soviet Stra,tegic View: The 26th CPSU Congress and the Soviet 'Peace Campaign Strategic Review, Vol. 9 Summer 1981), p. 76 For a s lightly different translation of the same passage, see Keith Payne, "The Soviet Peace Program Hudson Institute Hudson Communique, Vol. 1 (September I981), p. 1.

Soviet World Outlook, March 15, 1981, p. 3 22 "Brezhnev Uses 26th Soviet Congress to Lauch Doub le-Edged Peace Offensive i 19 Georgiy Arbatov played on two themes in his interviews with Western European reporters the harmlessness of ongoing Soviet theater nuclear force modernization efforts and the dangers inherent in planned U.S. and NATO efforts t o counter them. In a Dutch newspaper interview, Arbatov noted What is the SS-20? A replacement, a modernization of old missiles known in the West as SS-4's and SS-5's No doubt the new missiles will be a better weapon I am no Eilitary expert but their funct i on is no different from that of the outdated missiles and the total number will not increase. It is unfair to say that this gives us something which the other side does not have.23 And in a Bonn television interview, Arbatov carefully equated the proposed NATO theater nuclear force modernization effort with the Soviet Union's 1962 emplacement of strategic missiles in Cuba and then hinted darkly about the possible consequences of following through with the NATO action.24 As the Soviet Union's Euromissile pr opaganda campaign accele rated, the efforts of all cooperating Soviet State organizations increased dramatically. KGB support tactics were used in ways almost certain to lead to exposure, such as what happened in the Netherlands in April 19

81. A TASS "cor respondentll named Vadim Leonov was accused of espionage and other activities and was expelled by the Dutch government. It turned out that Leonov had boasted, when intoxicated, of his role in manipulating the Dutch peace movement for Moscow. He had told h i s listener 23 Paul Brill Detente Is Not Dead De Volkskrant (Amsterdam March 16 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Soviet Union March 20, 1981, p. G4 the framework of NATO's decision to counterarm, would this entail sanctions from the Soviet side Arbatov] Oh well, you understand that very serious arms are involved.

There is the Pershing I1 which we can compare you know with what with Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba in 19

62. You remember what the reaction of the American's [sic] was at that time Questioner] Yet, Mr. Arbatov, would that lead to a similar situation as in 1962 in Cuba? The missile crisis Arbatov Questioner] You introduced it yourself Arbatov I just want to say that the Soviet Union takes it very, very seriously. It would, therefore, be much better to avoid it But natural ly there will be consequences. Naturally it will, aggrevate and spoil the situation in Europe." Arbatov interview, ZDF Television Network (Mainz March 16, 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Serv i ce Daily Report Soviet Union, March 18, 1981, pp. G142 24 Questioner] If individual West European states deploy missiles within You know I do not want to talk about that. .I 20 Do you know that all those well meaning people in the Netherlands are being ta k en for a ride? They believe that the anti-neutron bomb movement and the reaction against the cruise missiles and other NATO activities have grown out of a pure idealism based on compassion for and concern with the. fate of one's fellow man and his childre n. Oh, if those people just knew that everything is taking place according to a blueprint in Moscow, how they are being manipulated by a small group of cmmnist ideclogues who receive their instructions through me.

If Moscow decides that 50,000 demonstrator s must take to the streets in the Netherlands, then they take to the streets. Do you know how you can get 50,000 demonstrators at a certain place within a week? A message through my channels is sufficient. Everything is organized with military precision u n der the leader ship of essentially conscientious objectors I should know because not only am I daily involved with these clandestine activities I am also one of those who transmit the orders coming in from Moscow.25 During 1981, several other such disclos u res of direct KGB involvement were made. In October, the Danish government expelled Soviet Embassy Second Secretary Vladimir Merkoulov for subversive activities, after he had paid Danish author Herlov Petersen 2,000 to buy newspaper ads promoting a "Nordi c nuclear free zone." Other Merkoulov-Petersen activities apparently included attempting to influence Danish public opinion-makers by treating them to expensive lunches and gifts. Merkoulov had been working with the Cooperation Committee for Peace and Secu rity, a Danish Communist Party front organization with links to the World Peace Council. And in late November, two Soviet diplomats were up for expulsion from Norway because of their subversive activities.

One of them, Soviet Embassy First Secretary Stanislaw Chebotok had offered money to several Norwegians to write letters against nuclear arms to Norwegian newspapers.26 25 Quoted in J. G. Heitink, [no article title given De Telegraaf, July 22 1981, p. 9, r e printed in Current News: Foreign Media Edition, October 28, 1981, pp. 3-4 AFP (Paris November 4, 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Western Europe, November 4, 1981, p. P1; and "The Soviet Peace Offensive Information Digest, pp. 386-3

87. For detailed informa tion on the Cooperation Committee for Peace and Security, see John Wagner Per Nyholm and William Schwarck Soviet-Oriented Communism Behind Danish Peace Movements (Part One Jyllands-Posten (Denmark May 17, 1981.

Chebotok: "Po lice Seek Expulsion of Two Soviet Diplomats Stockholm Domestic Service, November 27, 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Western Europe, November 30, 1981, p. P1 26 Merkoulov-Petersen Soviet Diplomat Expelled for Espionage Activit i es 21 But because accounts of these matters -were scattered while the press gave overwhelming attention to the nationalist flavor of many of the European peace groups, no public attempt was made to ask whether such covert Soviet activities were but shadow s of a larger Soviet influence on the European disarmament movement In April 1981, the World Peace Council held its presidential meeting in Havana, Cuba. At the closing session, Romesh Chandra delivered an address which emphasized the role of mass demonstr a tion ir, tharting -&nerFczls TNF medernization plans for Europe.

Chandra also asserted at this meeting that the WPC had reached a compromise with all political forces, with all governments, with all mass movements, with all organizations, with all worker s with the church, with the youth, with the women, with all existing mass movements.

During the spring and summer of 1981, the Soviet Union continued its overt propaganda for the United States to respond to Brezhnevls llgenerousll peace proposals. In June , in what apparently was intended as a warning to West Germany about the new missiles, Soviet propagandists reversed the previous decadels low-key propaganda line and accused the Germans of returning to Ilneonazism and revanchism.Il Obviously, all was not yet lost in the Federal Republic, since peace forces were increasing their strength there. As A. Grigoryants wrote in Izvestiya A mass-based, truly popular movement against "arms upgrading" is mounting in the FRG. Over 1 million people have already signed the Krefeld appeal calling on the federal government to reverse its agreement to the deployment of U.S. Pershing I1 missiles and cruise missiles in the FRG. Ferment is growing in both ruling parties are demanding that their leaders annul the Ilarms upgrad i ng decision The SPD's major land and district organizations Later that month, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR released an Appeal To the Parliaments and Peoples of the World." It Ilcalled on the law-making bodies of all countries resolutely to declare for b usinesslike and honest talks with the aim of preventing a new round of the nuclear arms race and Information Digest, p. 3

87. More recently, on January 22, 1982, the Portugese government expelled two Soviet diplomats press attache Yuri A. Babiants and atta che Mikhail M. Morozov for "engaging in activities which exceeded their diplomatic status," in connection with the January 16 disarmament march in Lisbon Disarmament Offensive Information Digest January 29, 1982, pp. 21-22.

Izvestiya, June 21, 1981, p. 5, in Foreign Broadcast Information Daily Report: Soviet Union, June 26, 1981, p. AA2 27 A. Grigoryants Letter from Bonn: Considering the Lessons of the Past," 22 In July, the CPSU Central Committee sent a message on the problems of peace and disarmament to socialist and social democra tic parties throughout Western Europe: Il[O]ur appeal to you is based on the belief that remedying the .international situation depends not only on the Soviet Union but also on the will of other states and their political part i es and movements and on their willingness to make the necessary efforts to safeguard peace." It went on to note that since the socialist and social democratic parties enjoyed influence among the masses and the trade unions, Itthe way in which the internat i onal situation evolves depends in many respects on the social democrats' commit ment It The news on August 9, 1981, that the United States would produce and stockpile enhanced radiation warheads caused the Soviet Union to revive its anti-"neutron bomb" ag itation. A TASS broadcast the same day proclaimed The U.S. administration has taken another extremely dangerous step towards the further spiral ling of the arms race and enhancing the threat of nuclear war."

And a day later Radio Moscow charged: "The propo sed production of that most inhuman weapon of mass destruction signals a new step in preparations for a global nuclear holocaust I2 In West Germany, Communist Party chief Herbert Mies called on all German citizens to protest the Reagan Administration's l1 n eutronI1 decision. In Helsinki, the World Peace Council issued a statement condemning the decision as threatening to accelerate the U.S. arms build-up "to the point of no return." On August 14, the Soviet Committee for European Security and Cooperation ca l led the Reagan decision a threat to Europe and acknowledged its support for mass actions by the Western Europeans against this inhuman weapon. And at sessions of the U.N Disarmament Committee, delegations from the Soviet Union and a number of Eastern Euro p ean countries, including the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, introduced a proposal calling for the immediate start of debate on the question of drafting an international convention banning production, stockpil ing, deployment, or use of the neutron weapons.

By the end of August 1981, Soviet propagandists and their allies effectively had merged the renewed "neutron bomb1' agitation effort with the ongoing campaign against NATO's TNF modernization.

This proved especially useful in raising the level of fear in Western Europe about the specter of nuclear war.

The culmination of the Soviet Union's 1981 propaganda efforts was the spectacle of massive national peace demonstrations in European capitals in the fall. Soviet propagandists ha d been Decision 'Open Challenge, Iff Moscow World Service, August 19, 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Soviet Union, August 11, 1981, p. AA2. 23 anticipating these mass protests for months, and while they had done much to avoid exposing the range of the USSR's support for these peace demonstrations, they had not hesitated to make good use of the KGBIs forgery capability to heighten the atmosphere for such protests.

In country after country during 1981, copies of Ittop secret"

U .S. nuclear plans were conveniently Itdiscoveredtt and passed on to sympathetic newspaper editors In February, for example, a package containing a collection of documents purporting to be operational plans for American forces in Europe were mysteriously m ailed from Birmingham, England, to a variety of Danish politicians and reporters. These documents described targets in Denmark which supposedly would be bombed in time of war by U.S. forces.

At the beginning of August, the Italian weekly Panorama published extracts ostensibly from two U.S. military directives Directive 10-1, which related a plan to transfer special U.S. Army nuclear and chemical weapons units to Europe in emergency situations , and Document 100-7, a supposed Headquarters CINCEUR operations plan which asserted that the decision to use nuclear weapons in the territories of the European NATO allies would be made by the U.S.

Command without consultating the Europeans.29 While in Oc tober Austrian readers were informed of the finding of U.S. Document 77707/10-70 Itin a safe" located in the barracks of a military saboteur training school in Bavaria. This document set .forth U.S. plans to target Austrian cities and installations for nu c lear destruction 30 Such Soviet forgeries undoubtedly took in" a good many unwary readers in Western European countries summer. On August 29, 1981, a number of demonstrations were held in various areas. At Pimasens, in the Palatinate, some 5,000 people pr o tested the stockpiling of U.S. chemical weapons in the region. One of the major speakers was Petra Kelly of the Green Party. In Berlin that same day, about 30,000 people rallied against the neutron weapon and NATO's TNF modernization decision In addition, groups of 3,000 and 1,500, respectively, demonstrated in Bremen and Hanover. These demonstrations were merely prelimi naries to the planned major demonstration In West Germany the peace protests intensified in late On September 13, Secretary of State Alex a nder Haig visited Berlin to meet with leaders and to deliver a foreign policy address on the Soviet threat and European relations. Haig's presence in the divided city was used as a pretext for a major disarmament demonstration by the left-wing Young Socia l ists 29 I' Classified Pentagon Documents 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Soviet Union August 7, 1981, pp. AA4-AA5 Moscow October 9, 1981, p. 3, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Soviet Union, October 16, 1 9 81, p. G3 Reveal U. S. Plans TASS, August 6 30 B. Pechnikov Notes: When the Secret Comes Out," Komsomolskaya Pravda I 24 I Jusos) and some twenty other groups, including the German Commu nist Party ship of Jusos chairman, Willy Piecyk. Piecyk had clearly b een echoing the Soviet propaganda line when, a few days before Haig arrived, he had remarked to a German reporter that NATO and the United States were steering toward confrontation with the Soviet Union and lowering the threshold of nuclear war by their w e apons decisions. The September 13 demonstration by some 50,000 protest ers began peacefully but climaxed in rioting in which a small hard-core portion of the participants looted and destroyed proper ty; 251 (police officers and protesters) were injured Pl a nning for the protest had been under the leader I The culmination of the 1981 West German disarmament campaign was for October 10. Organizers for this massive demonstration were chiefly Evangelical Church groups, established disarmament organizations, the German Communist Party, and hundreds of smaller peace, environmental, and Marxist groups.31 Nevertheless, the FRG's Social Democrat/Free Democrat ruling coalition was most concerned by the participation of left-wing SPD parlimentarians the most prominent o f whom was Erhard Eppler, a member of the SPD Presidium the demonstration and had been sympathetic with the Soviet position on theater nuclear forces for some time. In February 1981 he had told Der Spiegel He announced on September 21 that he would speak a t I]t was obvious even at the time [when NATO approved TNF modernization] that the U.S. Government would not even dream of entering into serious talks on disarmament of the Eurostrategic weapons. The so-called zero option never existed at any time as far a s the Americans were concerned. And now this measure, which was passed off as absolutely necessary for the military balance whatever you wish to interpret as balance is being included in a strategy which is no longer aimed at balance but at preponderance. 3 2 He had just returned in August 1981 from talks in Moscow with CPSU Central Committee staff members Vadim Zagladin and Valentin Falin asserting that the Soviet Union's SS-20 missiles were not nearly as dangerous as thought in the West. The Soviets were " m aking intense preparations and they will try to make the best 31 Disclaimers to the contrary, many experienced German observers saw the fine hand of the communist-dominated German Peace Union behind much of the Evangelical Church's planning activities KPD ) infiltration of Christian religious organizations had first begun in earnest in the late 1960s with the formation of a KPD special "Friedens bewegung Peace Commission See "Germany: Federal Republic of Germany in Yearbook'on International Communist Affair s 1968, p. 236 SPD Leader Discussr Spiegel, February 9 1981 in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Western Europe February 11, 1981, p Jll German Communist Party 32 25 of these [TNF] negotiationsi' with the United States, 'even though they doubted that country's good faith.

The planned participation by Eppler and some fifty-eight SPD Bundestag members sparked a sharp vocal reaction from the Schmidt government. On October 2, Peter Corterier, minister of state at the Foreign Ministry, told Bil d Am Sonntaq that Social Democrats who participated in the so-called peace demonstration would be violating the SPD's irreconcilability resolution which prohibits joint activities with Communists. He went on to say: "Anyone who continues to demonstrate wi th Communists against the government must ask himself whether he can remain a member of this party."

And during the course of a Bundestag debate on the "peace demon stration" on October 9, 1981, Chancellor Schmidt responded Unfortunately, it has become qui te clear that the organizers I am referring to the organizers and not to the demonstrators refused to repudiate a number of supporting communist groups I In the end, some 250,000 Germans rallied on October 10 in BOM, including the large left-wing SPD Bund e stag delegation and thousands of rank-and-file SPD party members. The participants listened to speeches castigating the German government for agree ing to NATO's decision to modernize its theater nuclear forces and calling on Germany to repudiate its llco l onization" by the United States. The demonstration was a major Soviet propaganda victory. Pravda hailed the German anti-missile movement, which it claimed had reached 'Iunparalleled proportions and noted with evident satisfaction that the demonstration wa s Ita manifestation of an emergent alliance of people who are coming to realize despite all obstacles and difference of their world outlooks their responsibility for safeguarding world peace." Just the day after the German mass rally, Welt Am Sonntaq relea s ed news of a recent study by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (IISecurity-Endangering Leftwing Extremist Trends in the Struggle for Peace which acknowledged that Communist and ecological groups had together drawn up a three-year'p lan for actions against lfcounterarmingll a plan that included "resist ance actions1' against military installations in the Federal Republic.

The peace and disarmament activities in other Western European countries during the summer and fall of 1981 also r evealed stage managing by Communist front organizations. For instance, the largest disarmament demonstration of the summer --the "1981 March for Peace" consisted of a six-week (late June through early August) "peace walk" from Copenhagen to Paris. It was o rganized by Women for Peace a Danish disarmament group claiming to have 500,000 members. The march attracted wide attention in Europe particularly because many of the participants were colorfully clad young people reminiscent of the lrhippiesl1 of the 196 0s.

What was not revealed at the time, however, was that Women for Peace had strong ties with Denmark's Cooperation Committee for Peace and Security, the largest Communist front group in the country. In fact, the two Danish organizations make little 26 eff ort to disguise their connection, both sharing the same Copen hagen address in Gothersgade in a building that had earlier housed the Danish-Cuban Friendship Association.33 The mass demonstrations in the fall of 1981 varied in the amount of overt Communist participation from the marches in Paris and Rome, where groups tied to the national Communist parties were the chief organizers, to the demonstrations in London, Brussels and Amsterdam, where the organizing was done by more broadly based groups.34 Even in the latter cases, the extensive planning and support of Communist influenced or domina ted peace groups was noticeable to informed observers. Despite this clear link to Moscow, the protests received massive, favorable press coverage and had a significant impact on European public opinion.

PRESIDENT REAGAN'S ZERO OPTION On November 19 1981, President Ronald Reagan, in part to reassure Europe that the United States was determined to undertake serious arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union, delivered a major address on the American program for peace and arms control.

In this speech, the President offered to cancel the planned deployment in Europe of new Pershing I1 and ground-launched cruise missiles if the Soviet Union agreed to dismantle its SS-20, SS-4 and SS-5 missiles already deployed.

This "zero option1' proposal was immediately denounced by the Soviet Union. AS- Sergey Losev wrote in Izvestiya: Ilunfortuiately the point at issue is in fact a propaganda 'cushion' designed to soften the unfavora ble political-consequences of the line pursued by the United States of starting a fresh steep round in the nuclear missile weapons race I And not surprisingly, the leadership of a number of the Ilindependentll European disarmament groups criticized Presid e nt Reagan's zero option in almost the sams words as those used by the Soviets. Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND 33 The two organizations had previously shared quarters at Reventlowsgade 12, Zopenhagen, together with the group known as the A s sociation of Democratic Women in Denmark, the Danish branch of the international Communist front organization, the Women's International Democratic Federa tion (WIDF). See John Wagner, Per Nyholm and William Schwarck Soviet Oriented Communism Behind Danis h Peace Movements (Part Two Jyllands Posten (Denmark May 23, 19

81. For the historical background on the WIDF, see "Women's International Democratic Federation in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1968, pp. 726-728.

In the case of the Paris demo nstration, a number of groups, including the trade union CFDT and the Socialist Party, refused to participate because of the organizers' obv3ous pro-Soviet stance 34 27 warned that the zero option "was mainly about propaganda and not about disarmament And the main speakers at the second "Krefeld Forum" were equally villifying in their comments. Josef Weber for instance, exclaimed that there "is no doubt that with his propaganda coup Reagan intends first and foremost to mislead the peace movement rather tha n to begin serious negotiations."

In late November, Brezhnev visited West Germany. At a dinner given in his honor by Chancellor Schmidt, Brezhnev set forth the latest version of the USSR's TNF disarmament proposal aimed at preventing the deployment of U.S. Pershing 11s and cruise missiles. The Soviet leader told his audience To facilitate the dialogue and to create a favourable atmosphere for it, we have put forward this proposal that while the talks continue, both sides should abstain from deploying new a n d modernising the existing medium range nuclear means in Europe Besides, as we have informed the federal chancellor today, should the other side consent to the moratorium I have just spoken about, the Soviet Union would be prepared not only to discontinue a further deployment of its SS-20 missiles. We would go even further As an act of goodwill, we could unilaterally reduce a part of our medium-range nuclear weapons in the European part of the USSR This is a new and substantive element in our p0sition.3 He re the Soviet leader was attempting to counter the favor able impression made on Western European leaders by Reagan's zero option. Moscow was claiming to have offered a greater concession.

Soviet commentaries in the following weeks stressed that Leonid Bre zhnev's proposals were the "genuine 'zero option Despite Soviet statements about its concessions and the need for balanced negotiating positions, the Soviet leadership continued to depend upon the communists' alliance with the European disarma ment moveme n ts as the focus of attack against U.S. deployment of the new missiles. In December 1981, International Department Head, Boris Ponomarev, in a speech to an all-union scientific students conference, declared The question of war and peace has advanced into t h e focus of attention of wide sections of world public opinion. The anti-war movement in Western Europe, and in recent months also in the United States, and a 35 "Brezhnev Dinner Speech TASS, November 23, 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Dail y Report: Soviet Union, November 24, 1981, p. G9. 28 number of other countries reached an unprecedented scale However, the interests of peoples and the interests of preserving peace call for further deployment of the anti-war movement, since no one has can c elled the U.S. giant military programmes or Reagan's decision to manufacture neutron weapons 36 The need for even greater participation in the efforts of the "peace forces by people of all backgrounds was echoed by the World Peace Councii. The Bureau of t h e WPC Presidential Committee issued a statement following its January 1982 meeting which noted The WPC calls on all peace movements and all peace workers to redouble their efforts to halt the arms race The WPC, as always, stands ready to encourage and sup p ort all initiatives along these lines, wherever and whenever they are undertaken, to have dialogue and to cooperate on an equal footing with all other peace forces.37 BREZHNEV'S MARCH MORATORIUM The Soviet Union's most recent overt propaganda initiative w a s unveiled on March 16, 1982, in a speech by Brezhnev to the 17th Congress of Soviet Trade Unions. He announced a unilateral moratorium "on the development of medium-range nuclear armaments in the European part of the USSR" freezing the further deploy men t of SS-20 missiles as "replacements" for the older SS-4s and SS-5s. Brezhnev further stated that the moratorium would stay in force either until the United States and the Soviet Union reached agreement on reducing medium-range missiles or until the U.S be g an "practical preparations" for deploying Pershing 11s and GLCMs in Europe 36 Boris Ponomarev About Soviet Peace Initiatives TASS, December 12 1981, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report: Soviet Union December 14 1981, p. AA1 WPC Bureau Ca lls for Negotiations, an End to Arms Race World Peace Council) Disarmament Forum, Vol 1 (January 1982 p.

4. Interestingly two United States Congressmen Representative John Conyers of Michigan and Representative Gus Savage of Illinois both members of the Congres sional Black Caucus, were active participants in the WPC's Bureau meeting in Copenhagen. See their recorded comments in "WPC Bureau Meeting in Copenhagen Urges: Negotiations, Not Confrontation World Peace Council Peace Courier, Vol. 13 (January-February 1982 pp. 2-

3. In addition Congressman Savage was one of the honored participants in the Portugese p eace marches" that occurred on January 16, 1982 the same marches over which two Soviet diplomats were expelled from Portugal (see footnote 26 Portugese Peace Marchers Call for End to Arms Race," Ibid p. 6 37 29 The thrust of the Soviet proposals was well timed to reinforce the growing support in the Un-ted States for a nuclear freeze.

And although the Reagan Administration has since pointed out the major strategic inequalities inherent in this all-too-obvious Soviet propaganda ploy, the Brezhnev initiative has been given a more than respectful hearing on both sides of the Atlantic.

As it stands now, the Soviet disarmament campaign directed against NATO's deployment of modernized theater nuclear forces is moving ahead on all fronts. The disarmament movement in West Germany held Easter peace marches in twenty German cities. And the World Peace Council is gearing up its allied 'Ipeace forcesi1 for a major push timed to coincide with the U.N. General Assembly's June 7-July 9 Second Special Session Devoted to D isarmament.

Clearly, the United States should be attempting to devise a strategy to cope with the increasingly effective mass movement tactics of the Soviet propagandists.

CONCLUSION Events in the past year demonstrate the effectiveness of the Soviet disa rmament propaganda campaign when joined with European peace group efforts sentiment in Western Europe, and now in the United States, will continue to grow unless it is checked by a well-organized counter effort by the Reagan Adminstration.

Alerting the European and American publics to the incontro vertible facts of the strategic balance is the vital first step.

Soviet propagandists and their allies (witting and unwitting thrive on the public's ignorance of relative U.S. and USSR military capabilities. Exp loiting this ignorance are peace groups on both sides of the Atlantic, which have established firm ties with leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches and are laying the groundwork for grass-roots campaigns against American nuclear weapons. A massiv e rally is now scheduled to coincide with the June opening of the U.N. Special Session on Disarmament in New York. The nuclear freeze statements passed recently in several states and in dozens of localities in New England and California testify to the succ e ss of the American groups' preliminary organi- zing efforts It seems certain that the anti-nuclear Blunting the drive of nuclear freeze organizers in this country and of the disarmament movement in Western Europe will require far more than a few speeches by the President and his Secretaries of State and Defense. Needed is an effort at least equivalent to the Carter Administration's SALT-selling campaign of 19

79. State, Defense and ACDA must mobilize a corps of speakers to travel to the towns, cities, and campuses across the United States. They must talk to citizens about the realities of the military balance, the questions raised about the Soviet Union's compliance with past arms limitation treaties, and the role that the Soviet propaganda apparatus is pl a ying in the supposedly independent peace movement. 30 In Western Europe, activities of this sort should be coordi nated through NATO and its affiliated public support organiza tions It would be extremely useful for NATO delegations to share information co ncerning the links in their countries between known Communist front groups and the 'Iindependentll peace groups.

Such data would permit an overall assessment of Soviet influence on the European disarmament movement.

A U.S. effort of this magnitude will pr ove difficult to organize and will cost morz than ihe sevcxal rrliliions urf dollars that the Carter Administration spent in its SALT-selling effort but nothing less than a major drive to counter the disarmament campaign now under way will be effective. W i thout such an effort Washington will find itself increasingly hampered in its plans for strengthening U.S. and NATO nuclear deterrent forces. This deterrent offers the best guarantee of the peace that the disarma ment movement so passionately desires. It is for this reason that the Soviet propaganda campaign and its coopting of other groups has become a major threat to peace. It is this story that the Reagan Administration must start telling.

Jeffrey G. Barlow, Ph.D.

Policy Analyst