Installing and Undermining Governments
After World War II Soviet security organizations played key role in installing puppet Communist governments in Eastern Europe, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and later Afghanistan. Their strategy included mass political repressions and establishment of subordinate secret services in all occupied countries
Some of the active measures were undertaken by the Soviet secret services against their own governments or Communist rulers. Russian historians Anton Antonov-Ovseenko and Edvard Radzinsky suggested that Joseph Stalin was killed by associates of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, based on the interviews of a former Stalin's body guard and circumstantial evidence. According to Yevgeniya Alabts allegations, Chief of the KGB Vladimir Semichastny was among the plotters against Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov reportedly struggled for power with Leonid Brezhnev. Soviet coup attempt of 1991 against Mikhail Gorbachev was organized by KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov. Gen. Viktor Barannikov, then the former State Security head, became one of the leaders of uprising against Boris Yeltsin during Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
Current Russian security organization FSB allegedly works to undermine governments of Baltic states and Georgia. During 2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy several Russian GRU officers were accused by Georgian authorities of preparations to commit sabotage and terrorist acts.
Read more about this topic: Active Measures
Famous quotes containing the words undermining and/or governments:
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)