Dulles' Plan - Origins

Origins

The text was first published in its modern form in 1993 in Metropolitan Ioann's article "The battle for Russia" Since then it was cited (but not always taken as truth) by numerous Russian politicians (such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Nikolai Kondratenko, Sergey Glazyev), journalists, writers (Sergey Kara-Murza), and actors (Nikita Mikhalkov).

The entire plan (without any references to Dulles or the CIA) is voiced almost word-for-word by a villain character in the first edition of the novel The Eternal Call by Anatoly Ivanov. The second edition, published in 1981 still contains most of the plan, which is now broken into short phrases and scattered around the second book.

An earlier version of the plan can also be found in a 1965 novel by Soviet writer Yuri Dol'd-Mikhaylik, where another villain, one "general Dumbright" (Russian: генерал Думбрайт), proposes a similar course of action: "We shall arm comedians with jokes that laugh out their present and future. (...) Poison the soul of the youth with disbelief in their purpose in life, awaken their interest in sexual problems, bait them with such lures of the free world as fancy dances, pretty clothing, special records, verses, songs... (...) Sow discord between the youth and the older generation..." In the story, general Dumbright participates in an attempt to sign a separate peace between the Western Allies and Nazi Germany during World War II, which may have been the reason Allen Dulles was used as the real life counterpart of Dold-Mikhaylik's character (see Operation Sunrise) Another possibility is a confusion with John Foster Dulles and his proposed anti-communist "Rollback" policy, which is sometimes referred to as the "Dulles Doctrine".

The text by Ivanov also shows significant similarities to the statements of Pyotr Verhovensky, a character from the novel The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "...we'll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we'll make use of incredible corruption; we'll stifle every genius in its infancy. (...) But one or two generations of vice are essential now; monstrous, abject vice by which a man is transformed into a loathsome, cruel, egoistic reptile. That's what we need!" (Chapter VII).

The plan's imperatives - corrupt the young, control the media, discredit the government, etc. - are remarkably similar to the "Communist Rules for Revolution", published in 1946 in the US. Likewise, these rules were endorsed as true by certain US politicians and were periodically referred to even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Read more about this topic:  Dulles' Plan

Famous quotes containing the word origins:

    The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?”
    Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)

    Grown onto every inch of plate, except
    Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
    Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
    Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
    The origins of art.
    Howard Moss (b. 1922)

    The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.
    Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)