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p In the war of ideas imperialism has recourse to a huge range of propaganda methods and techniques. It would be a simplification to believe that in all cases they are the result of planned and purposeful efforts based on scientific and expert recommendations. 179 The intuition and improvisation of practicians still plays a large role. Many of the methods and techniques are founded on the experience of moulding public opinion accumulated by commercial advertising agencies, the Church and other organisations engaged in propaganda.

p Nonetheless, a typical feature of present-day imperialist propaganda (particularly of foreign political propaganda) is, we repeat, its attempts to use science as the means of working out the most effective methods of influencing public opinion.

p It seeks if not to change then at least to augment its ideological means of swaying the public mind and prevailing on emotions, to play on irrational elements, on prejudices and misconceptions. These methods are widespread particularly in psychological warfare.

p The theoretical premises on which the methods of imperialist propaganda are founded will, in many ways, not stand the test of real scientific criticism, particularly criticism by scientific psychology. The falsity of many of these premises, notably, the orientation on the subconscious, which disparages man’s ability to think rationally, cannot help but affect the efficacy of this propaganda.

p However, it would be wrong to belittle the threat harboured in the very aspiration to compensate ideological weakness with improved methods of spiritually influencing the masses. This aspiration counts on the fact that many people are uninformed and have an inadequate level of culture, on prejudices and human weaknesses, on the vulnerability created by these chinks. Moreover, this aspiration is founded on an analysis and generalisation of the immense experience of deceiving people accumulated by the bourgeoisie and its predecessors, the exploiting classes of past epochs. Lastly, it is based on the extensive work of many thousands of astute, cynical and frequently very capable people with extensive experience and competent training in propaganda, which is their main occupation.

All in all, this has enabled the modern bourgeoisie to build up an impressive arsenal of propaganda methods and techniques designed to intensify its influence on the public mind. The training of propaganda experts is conducted along these lines.

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p Many propaganda writings devote much attention to studying the audience, its changing moods and all shades of its ideas and feelings, eveji its favourite images and turns of speech. On this point Michael Choukas writes: "The effectiveness of the propagandist’s effort to manipulate opinion directly is measured by the degree to which the choices offered correspond to the cognitive and emotional predispositions of the individual at the time. The more compatible the ready-made opinions are with the individual’s predilections at the moment the more readily they will be accepted and incorporated into the individual’s own thinking."  [180•* 

p Some critical researchers attribute many of the major setbacks of US foreign political propaganda to an inability to reckon with the specifics of an audience.  [180•** 

Of the bourgeois countries, Britain has perhaps the largest experience of organised foreign political propaganda. This is reflected in research literature. An example of this literature is Lindley Eraser’s Propaganda, which, unlike many other works on this subject by Western authors, adopts a sober, cautious attitude to the recipes of “wonder-working” mountebanks among bourgeois psychologists and sociologists, who regard propaganda as an omnipotent weapon that can independently resolve political problems.

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p Fraser is a practician and, to some extent, a theorist of imperialist propaganda. He is not worried about the moral aspect, and this is expressed in his book. Raising the question of what methods are permissible for the propagandist, he replies: "...all of them; subject only to the limitations already indicated, namely, that by using violence or rewards to achieve his result (as opposed to threats of the former or promises of the latter) he by definition ceases to be a propagandist."  [181•*  He adopts the same approach to “black” propaganda (a variety we shall discuss further on). "From a moral point of view,” he writes, "the technique is of course distasteful, but as a device for deceiving and discouraging the enemy it is evidently a legitimate and possibly an effective weapon of war, no less than the dropping of forged banknotes or ration books."  [181•** 

p This attitude, this attempt to rise "above good and evil" is characteristic of the British expert even when he interprets the problem of truth, which is a central problem of the theory and practice of propaganda. Naturally, Fraser is not against lies as such, saying "there may be and indeed certainly are occasions when the propagandist who refuses to depart from the truth may weaken, perhaps decisively, his own efficiency".  [181•*** 

But he urges the utmost caution in the use of lies, noting that Goebbels’ apology of the "big lie" as the foundation of propaganda was "absolute rubbish”. In practice one of the cardinal conditions for the propagandist is not even truth but a reputation for^ reliability, which can be jeopardised by only one or two lies.  [181•****  Fraser offers the following advice: "Do not lie in peace-time if you wish to maintain your influence in international councils; do not lie in war time if you expect the war to be a long one; do not lie about your peace aims if you are concerned that peace when it comes shall be secure and lasting; in short, do not lie if you are likely to be found out and remember that in time you are likely, perhaps even certain, to be found out."  [181•***** 

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p These general premises underlie the close attention which Eraser’s book, as other voluminous tomes on propaganda, devotes to the ways and means of winning a reputation for reliability. Referring to some aspects of the experience gained by British propaganda during the Second World War, he notes: "Its successes were achieved at least as much by self-restraint and doing nothing as by positive intervention. And this may well be a general propaganda principle.... The propagandist must always be on his guard against overstating his case, against alienating potential sympathisers through exaggeration or excessive repetition, in short, he must beware of converting what may within its limits be an effective weapon against the enemy into a boomerang which damages instead himself and his friends."  [182•* 

p Attention to this aspect of propaganda is drawn also by Richard H. S. Grossman, a British journalist and a leading member of the Labour Party, who was one of the directors of Anglo-US propaganda during the war. In a lecture at the British Royal United Service Institute he stressed that "in a cold war, as in a hot war, the major aim of propaganda is to achieve credibility. Long before you try to demoralise, exdoctrinate or indoctrinate, the first job is to be believed."  [182•**  Summarising the experience of the war years, he said: "From the point of view of psychological warfare, a defeat is a great opportunity, especially if you are skilful and say that your defeat is worse than it is. You must be frank about it, franker than the facts. Then you really begin to gain the enemy’s confidence."  [182•***  In this connection Grossman recalled the first massive German air raid on London, when the British announced their losses earlier than the Germans and gave higher figures than the latter. “That”, he said, "was 183 the great psychological warfare triumph of the year."  [183•* 

p One more important conclusion drawn by Fraser is that as distinct from his employer the propagandist, "if he is to carry conviction with his targets, must himself believe that what he is saying is true; not necessarily the whole truth, because he cannot expect to know all details... but at least not a gross distortion of the truth".  [183•**  He makes this point again and again: "The good propagandist may be cynical in detail (as the armchair student of propaganda must be to some extent if he is to understand his subject) but in the long run he will not convince others unless he is first and foremost convinced himself”; "the propagandist who is a pure cynic is almost certain to be a bad propagandist"  [183•*** .

p In the case of British and United States war-time propaganda for Germany, one of the reasons of its successes was, possibly, the fact that among those who conducted it there were many sincere patriots and anti-fascists, some of whom had fled Germany for political reasons. The democratic content of many aspects of the Western Allies’ propaganda for Germany was largely determined by the anti-fascist character of the war.  [183•**** 

p Naturally the views of Fraser and Grossman should under no circumstances be regarded as the credo of contemporary 184 imperialist propaganda. First, they express the ideas of British propaganda, which, while being more subtle and skilful, has long ago ceased to play the determining role in imperialist ideological propaganda, control of which has passed to the USA. Second, their views are rooted in a definite and by no means currently typical period of the history of Western foreign political propaganda, a period when Britain, the USA and some other bourgeois countries were members of an anti-fascist coalition; naturally, this affected the nature of their ideological efforts. Third, in the books of these experts one can easily detect an undertone of protest against the propaganda methods used by these countries in the period of the cold war. Many of the maxims propounded by Fraser and Grossman sound as a rebuke and frequently a taunt at post-war United States, and also British, propaganda.

p Nevertheless, it is useful to know this concept. The most crude and clumsy varieties of bourgeois propaganda give themselves away. The more subtle techniques used by it are what must be exposed.

p An example of how the above-mentioned concepts are refracted in the views of United States propaganda experts is given by Michael Choukas, who writes: "Under certain circumstances, it may be of advantage to him (the propagandist.—G.A.) to employ accurate descriptive truth. In such cases ... an accurate description of the facts is dictated by some strategic or tactical consideration. He may be attempting to establish credibility, for instance, preparing his audience for the ’big’ lie yet to come. Or, he may be simultaneously perpetrating a distortion of another order: he may be distorting the meaning of the true facts he is dispensing. What must be kept in mind is that the propagandist feels neither a like nor a dislike for truths or untruths as such. To him, both are means of mental manipulation."  [184•* 

p This problem is interpreted in much the same way by the American journalist Arthur E. Meyerhoff: "While it is true 185 that believability is vital to persuasiveness, it is a mistake to equate news with truth.... As such, propaganda does not necessarily represent a distortion of truth. Rather it can be based on selected truths, half-truths, or outright falsehoods, separately or in combination."  [185•* 

p As a matter of fact, in the years since the war the world has had ample evidence that outright falsehoods have become common not only in Washington’s propaganda but also in its official statements. An example was the US Government’s reaction to the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane near Sverdlovsk, USSR, in May 1960. Essentially speaking, they were making no secret of this circumstance.

p At the close of 1962 Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs, bluntly declared: "It would seem to be basic, all through history, that it’s inherent in that government’s right, if necessary, to lie."  [185•**  At a press conference in February 1968, when he faced a barrage of searching questions, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said: "There gets to be a point, when the question is, whose side are you on. I’m the Secretary of State, and I’m on our side.” When a reporter asked the barbed question whether he was suggesting the press was disloyal, Rusk irritably replied: "None of your papers or your broadcasting apparatuses are worth a damn unless the United States succeeds. They .are trivial compared to that question. So I don’t know why, to win a Pulitzer Prize, people have to go on probing for things one can bitch about."  [185•***  So up with falsehood!

p As regards the day-to-day practice of imperialist propaganda the concern to avoid exposure while systematically disseminating lies (without which this propaganda cannot function) has received peculiar expression in the attention that is given to the problem of camouflaging the real source of propaganda. It is from this angle that we must examine the main reason for the strict classification of propaganda into “white”, “grey” and “black”.

p According to the authors of the handbook Psychological Warfare Operations, “white” propaganda is spread and 186 acknowledged by the source or its official representatives, “grey” propaganda does not identify its source, and “black” propaganda is presented as originating from a source other than the real one.  [186•*  This is explained even more frankly by the American psychologist Edwin G. Boring, who notes that “grey” and particularly “black” propaganda have "the advantage of irresponsibility" in that they allow spreading scandals and rumours without discrediting the government.  [186•** 

p The aggressive techniques used by imperialist propaganda are expressed in the most undisguised manner in the American doctrine of psychological warfare. The term itself was borrowed from the nazis and became current in the USA early during the Second World War to designate propaganda linked with hostilities. Daniel Lerner, who was associated with a United States propaganda agency during the war, wrote as early as 1949: "Among the major changes involved in the transition from peace to war are these: ...sanctions become economic warfare, diplomacy becomes political warfare, propaganda becomes psychological warfare."  [186•*** 

p But this was soon reinterpreted. In the Dictionary of US Army Terms, published in 1950, it is stated: "Psychological warfare—the planned use by a nation in time of war or declared emergency of propaganda measures designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviour of enemy, neutral, or friendly foreign groups in such a way as to support the accomplishment of its national policies and aims."  [186•**** 

Three years later, a revised edition of this dictionary gave a new definition: "Psychological warfare—the planned use, by a nation or group of nations, of propaganda and related informational measures directed toward enemy, neutral or friendly groups, to influence opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviour in such a manner as to support the policies and aims of the using nation or group of nations."  [186•***** 

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p The key modification in the later definition is in the omission of the words "in time of war or declared emergency”. In other words, psychological warfare was legalised as a weapon of peace-time politics. One cannot agree with the contention of some American authors (for instance, Daugherty and Janowitz) that essentially this has changed nothing, that psychological warfare had simply become the term designating US foreign political propaganda as such. It is sooner the reverse: propaganda has been reorganised in accordance with military doctrine and now this has been legalised also in its name.

p The whole point is that psychological warfare is not merely a term. It is, above all, a definite type of propaganda, a set of techniques and methods that had formerly been used" chiefly in time of war and had now been legalised in the USA and other capitalist countries for peace-time foreign political propaganda. Psychological warfare most clearly and completely embodies the most aggressive features of imperialist foreign political propaganda, features that make it not so much an instrument of persuasion as a weapon for political intervention, for interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

A specific of psychological warfare as a type of propaganda doctrine is that its objective is not to change people’s views or influence their minds but to create political and psychological situations to condition the behaviour of the population as a whole, of individual groups or even of the ruling circles of other countries. But this, one may say, has been the long-standing objective of bourgeois foreign political propaganda generally. Explaining the differences in the approach to propaganda, Lindley Fraser refers to the subtle, almost untranslatable distinction between what the Germans call “Stimmung” and “Haltung”, i.e., the mood in itself that remains the state of a man’s inner world and can only indirectly affect his actions and behaviour, and the mood expressed by his more active attitudes, in other words, the mood that directly determines his behaviour. The propagandist’s most important aim and, at the same time,* his most difficult task, to use Eraser’s words, is to influence the latter, i.e., to effect the transition of mood into behaviour.  [187•* 

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p This aspect receives the unequivocal attention of Western foreign political propaganda experts. For example, in Psychological Warfare Reconsidered the American Hans Speier, of the RAND Corporation, stressed that instead of concentrating on "ideological persuasion”, on attempts to “convert” people, the propagandist should aim at achieving "politically relevant behaviour" or, in plainer terms, inducing people to "slow down in their work, commit sabotage, spread rumours, organise those who are disaffected, or engage in illegal activities".  [188•* 

p This brings us to another feature of psychological warfare, a feature intrinsic to the entire doctrine and practice of present-day imperialist foreign political propaganda—namely, the quest for ideological instruments to replace those now in use in various kinds of provocations and actions inducing the desired behaviour. Earlier we cited the pronouncements of the American psychologist R. Williams, who contends that attempts to arrange and utilise events as the core of future operations are typical of psychological warfare.

p In itself this leads to propaganda’s fusion not only with politics as a whole but also, and in particular, with subversive activities and espionage. In the case of “black” propaganda, this distinction disappears altogether. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the operations of this propaganda are directed by intelligence agencies. Actually, when people speak of psychological warfare (or political warfare, a term more in use in Britain) they frequently mean not only propaganda but subversive activities as such. This approach, which, in effect, erases the distinction between propaganda and espionage, subversion and even terrorist activities, is a specific of psychological warfare that has its roots in the doctrine and practice of nazi propaganda.

Many of the psychological warfare operations and the very methods of this sort of “propaganda” are strictly classified, of course. But some idea about them may be obtained from literature dealing with Anglo-US military propaganda during the Second World War, when some operations and methods were made public.

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p The first thing that strikes one in these operations is the calculation on the indirect effect that conceals the aim of the operation. Take as an example the British and United States practice in World War II of warning the inhabitants of enemy towns of impending air raids (leaflets naming the towns listed for destruction were dropped over Japan in 1945). At first glance it might seem that the aim of this practice was to enlist the sympathy of the enemy population or in any case to play down the impression that might be caused by terrorist air raids. However, the organisers of this "psychological action" were least of all concerned with this aspect of the matter.

p Their principal aims were quite different. According to Daugherty and Janowitz, one of these aims was to undermine the morale of the enemy population by demonstrating the overwhelming military superiority of the Allies, a superiority that enabled them to give advance notification of the objectives that would be attacked. The second aim was to compel the enemy population to read (or hear) the relevant material and establish a reputation of credibility for them. The third aim was to induce panic among the civilian population and reinforce its fears in order to disorganise life in the towns concerned (usually, major centres of war industry, administration and transport).  [189•* 

p Analysing these propaganda actions after the war Martin F. Herz wrote: "The Western Allies also used such tactics when, at the behest of Prime Minister Churchill, they unfolded a propaganda effort early in 1945 which was designed to start large numbers of Germans trekking from certain specified ’danger areas’. These are the only known instances in the last war when threatening propaganda to civilians had the intended effect."  [189•** 

The above example shows that the "indirect effect" may be propagandistic (in the case we have cited—to prove one’s military superiority or establish credibility for one’s propaganda) and purely military or political (to disorganise life in the major cities), to which, in accordance with the general principles of psychological warfare, special importance is attached.

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p Psychological warfare—initially designed as war-time propaganda appealing to the population of an enemy country—envisages special techniques for the achievement of its aims. The substance of these techniques is that instead of counting on verbal persuasion (especially as in time of war the enemy audience is, naturally, distrustful), propaganda tries to set the enemy himself to work for it, i.e., force him to behave in such a manner as to make the population of his country open to persuasion. In other words, these techniques call for the systematic and organised use of provocations.

p Characteristic in this respect is Operation "Braddock II”, which is described by Daniel Lerner.  [190•*  In the course of this operation British and United States aircraft dropped nearly five million small time-fuse incendiaries on areas in Germany and Austria where foreign workers were concentrated. Each package contained instructions on how to use the bombs. At the same time, the call to arms was sounded in broadcasts and in leaflets over the signature of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In this operation, too, the organisers counted not on a direct effect (sabotage), which at best was regarded as ancillary. The chief aim was to pressure the German security service and compel it to direct all its forces to these areas (in order to expose other areas in Germany where important espionage and subversive operations were planned and to provoke further brutality against foreign workers and thereby add to their repugnance of the nazi authorities). This method was regarded as more’ effective than direct propaganda designed to inflame the anger of the foreign workers.

p Lerner describes yet another operation that pursued similar aims and employed a similar method. It was carried out during the Blitz. The German flyers themselves were the target of this operation. At the height of the Blitz the British radio broadcast daily reports to the effect that increasing numbers of German pilots were deserting in their aircraft to the Allied side (the reports gave the names of the pilots—these were taken from documents found in downed aircraft). The aim, Lerner writes, was not to boost home morale with false reports about unrest in the Luftwaffe, 191 but to provoke the Gestapo into instituting a check-up and repressions against German pilots and thereby undermine the morale and efficiency of the Luftwaffe flying personnel.  [191•* 

p Repeated attempts were made to disseminate in Germany a sort of handbook on malingering and self-mutilation. Here, too, the calculation was not on a direct effect but on heightening fault-finding and suspicion on the part of the nazi authorities: by forcing really sick people to work these authorities would themselves embitter the German population.

p "Where is the Luftwaffe?" Operation is a typical example of a psychological warfare subversive action with a purely military objective. It was carried out in 1944 when Germany and her allies were bombed day and night. British and United States propaganda concentrated on ridiculing the German Air Force and Goering’s promises that all attempts to bomb Germany herself would be beaten off. The outward aim of this propaganda campaign was to make the Germans themselves see the helplessness of the nazi war machine both in the rear and at the firing lines (among troops who were anxious about the safety of their relatives). However, the main objective of this operation was actually something quite different, namely, to intensify psychological pressure on the enemy military command and thereby lure the German fighter force into the air and maul it before the Allied landing in Normandy. According to Wallace Carroll, who wrote a history of psychological warfare, the success of this operation was confirmed by Lieutenant-General Kurt Dittmar, who was taken prisoner at the end of the war.  [191•** 

Operations of this kind, organised by propaganda agencies, were sometimes part of the "secret war" and had no propaganda aims. One of these operations was undertaken during the Allied landing in Italy, when Badoglio began to waver and could not make up his mind to declare Italy’s withdrawal from the war and her rupture with the Axis. The text of the statement was then read over the radio by an announcer simulating Badoglio’s voice. This left Badoglio with no alternative but to denounce Mussolini.  [191•*** 

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p A feature typical of these psychological warfare operations was that they were directed not so much at a mass audience as at the “elite” of a given country—the military command, the political leaders, and so on. In the psychological warfare doctrine immense importance is attached to this audience.. Hence the thorough study of the mood "at the top”, of the groups, of the relations between leaders.  [192•*  Some United States and British propaganda personnel specialised in operations with the enemy “elite” as their target.

p One of these experts was Ellis M. Zacharias, a US jnaval intelligence officer, who lived in Japan for many years and was personally acquainted with many top-level Japanese military leaders. During the war he became well known for his radio broadcasts to Japan in which, quite rightly depending on monitored reports making these broadcasts known to the ruling circles, he tried to sow discord among the Japanese military and political leaders by playing on the mood of those who were inclined towards "a peace with honour".  [192•** 

p A group of experts on the most ingenious artifices of “black” popaganda won prominence among British and United States propagandists during the war. In the literature on this subject one frequently finds mention of Bruce Lockhart, who began his career as a spy and propagandist during the First World War and continued it during the Civil War in Russia. He was active in propaganda and secret operations during the Second World War.  [192•*** 

p Another propaganda expert who became quite well known was Benno Frank. Under the name of Captain Angers (given out as a German officer who had defected to the Allies), he was active in British and United States radio propaganda and organised the famous Radio Siege of Lorient, a 193 psychological warfare operation designed to demoralise the German troops in Lorient, which was besieged by the Allies.  [193•* 

p But perhaps the most noteworthy figure in the psychological warfare of those years was the British journalist Delmer Sefton, who gave himself out for a German officer, a veteran of the Wehrmacht. During the war he spoke regularly over Geheim Sender Eins, a British transmitter camouflaged as an underground radio station operating allegedly in Germany. This transmitter and the “chief” himself (in Britain for conspiratorial purposes he was called The Beard or Henry VIII) were security-restricted so thoroughly that even the United States intelligence got the true story only in 1942.

p Delmer Sefton spoke German fluently and knew Germany well. Besides, he had access to all intelligence reports. He assumed the personality of a coarse swashbuckler and rake, who hated everything and everybody—Englishmen, Russians, Jews, nazis and Hitler. His broadcasts, which were full of Army rumours and gossip, especially about circles close to the High Command, were designed mainly for the German officers’ corp. Many of these broadcasts were devoted to the savouring of details from Hitler’s intimate life and from his relations with the General Staff. Delmer Sefton evolved many other “black” propaganda artifices which have become part of that propaganda’s arsenal (for instance, the smuggling in of handbooks on selfmutilation and on feigning disease).  [193•** 

p Daniel Lerner, Paul Linebarger and others, who became psychological warfare experts, worked in British and United States propaganda agencies in those years. In their works 194 they generalise past experience in order to adapt it to new conditions and new tasks, to foreign political propaganda directed chiefly at the Soviet Union and the socialist community, at the ideals of communism.  [194•* 

p There is, little doubt that the "secret operations" of this propaganda are an essential part of the psychological war which the USA and its partners have started against socialist countries. Many of the methods and artifices used in this war have been borrowed from British and United States war-time propaganda. They are resorted to in the "program of spreading anarchy and confusion in the communist camp”,  [194•**  which is so frequently proclaimed as the objective of the various propaganda agencies of the USA and other imperialist countries.  [194•*** 

p The launching of secret psychological warfare operations by official government agencies is always fraught with the risk of compromising the government in the event these operations are exposed. To avert this risk the United States and its allies have set up propaganda agencies as “private” organisations. Prominent among them (they will be mentioned later) is Radio Free Europe. Besides being a channel for routine slanderous broadcasts, this radio station is used as a means of maintaining contact with opposition and counter-revolutionary elements in socialist countries. The broadcasts contain calls for subversion and sabotage. In order to discredit honest people devoted to socialism, Radio Free Europe ran a "black list" in which these people were depicted as informers, secret agents, and so on. Small wonder that even the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, in whose territory Radio Free Europe’s headquarters and transmitters are sited, found (after a series of scandalous exposures linked with the counter-revolutionary rising in Hungary in 1956) that it had to dissociate itself from the station’s activities.

p RIAS, the American station in West Berlin, operates along approximately the same lines as Radio Free Europe. 195 It has time and again called for strikes, broadcast "technical instructions" on sabotage, and developed, as the Americans themselves admit, a "strategy of constructive subversion" and a "technique of open conspiracy".  [195•* 

p Official government stations such as Voice of America and the BBC frequently engage in unmitigated subversion. For instance, in their broadcasts to the People’s Democracies they set afloat false rumours about money reforms, price rises and so on with the aim of disorganising economic life.  [195•** 

p The methods and techniques of imperialist propaganda dealt with in this chapter are far from being the complete list. The main “mass” of the propaganda efforts today, as before, consists of “information” (correspondingly selected and doctored), various techniques of diverting the people from vital problems, and other traditional methods used by imperialism in the war of ideas. All this is more or less skilfully done although, on the whole, the imperialist powers strive to achieve a high standard in their propaganda and to use sophisticated equipment.

p As regards the diverse “unorthodox” methods and techniques, they usually play an ancillary role. By and large this role is growing steadily in proportion to the mounting difficulties encountered by imperialist ideological propaganda. It goes without saying that in all cases these methods and techniques will not bring imperialism victory in the ideological struggle. Determined by objective factors, the outcome of this struggle cannot be decided by provocative artifices from the psychological warfare arsenal, however refined they may be. But these artifices and refined techniques can undoubtedly inflict harm. That is why they must be exposed.

p The basic ideas underlying all these cunning methods and techniques of propaganda gradually moved from "secret operations" to “conventional” propaganda, in which the accent is being increasingly placed not so much on persuasion, on the war of ideas, as on sowing uncertainty and 196 confusion among the adversaries of imperialism.  [196•*  To this end the imperialists try to use nationalism and other prejudices and turn to account any error, slip or omission by the adversary. They constantly select an individual target—a country, a nation, a social (for example, the intelligentsia) or an age (for example, young people) group—and concentrate their attacks on it with the purpose of tearing it away from the common struggle for socialism and peace.

p Imperialist propaganda is a sinister adversary. The methods it employs are such that they require new criteria in the assessment of many phenomena. Its praise and recriminations must be treated with equal caution in order to discern not only the obvious purposes but also the hidden sting of every operation.

p Above all this concerns propaganda designed for socialist countries. One of the central aims of this propaganda is to* put the internal situation out of gear, break the people’s ideological and political unity, sow discord among the various nationalities and undermine society’s political foundations.

p To achieve its aims imperialist propaganda has recourse to the most unscrupulous methods, trying not only to condition the population of socialist countries but to present the “objects” selected by it as a political opposition and sow 197 distrust for particular individuals and groups. In this essentially subversive activity it uses every possible meansslander, lies and hypocritical praise compromising the target of an operation (for instance, high-powered publicity for the ideologically inadequate works of individual Soviet writers and scientists smuggled out of the USSR and published in the West).

p Methods of this kind are employed not only to discredit individuals or groups of the population but also the guidelines of the policy of Communist parties and socialist countries, which Western leaders regard as especially dangerous because they open up broad vistas for the successful economic development and the promotion of the socio-political relations of the socialist world. Typical in this respect is the Western propaganda campaign against the programme of economic reforms being carried out in the socialist countries to improve the methods of planning and economic management. Bourgeois propaganda has gone to all ends in its attempts to prove that these reforms are a concession to capitalism, that they lead to the capitalist degeneration of the economic system in socialist countries. One of the motives of this campaign is, of course, the desire to discredit the socialist economy by proving that it is “unsound”, the desire to portray the economic laws and principles of capitalism as the most effective, as indispensable to the development of socialism as well.

p But there is much more to it. The tenacity of this campaign makes it obvious that one of its objectives is to discredit the economic reforms in the eyes of Communist opinion in order to disrupt (or obstruct) them and thereby cripple socialism’s economic progress.

p Provocative methods unquestionably remain part of the imperialist arsenal and will continue to be used against socialist countries and the communist and working-class movement in the most diverse forms, on every possible pretext and in different situations, particularly in critical situations stemming from international crises precipitated by imperialism. Many events over the past few years have shown that the imperialist intelligence and psychological warfare agencies have detailed plans and a whole arsenal of knavish methods and refined techniques of ideological, psychological and other subversion, which they are 198 prepared to use in the event situations of this kind arise or are artificially provoked by reactionaries.

p Constant readiness to repulse these intrigues is therefore a major task of the socialist community and of all anti- imperialist forces. Psychological defence capability is determined by many political, economic and social factors. It is quite evident that this capability depends on the successes of the socialist community and the communist and liberation movements.

p Decisive in this respect is the colossal work of the Communist parties and peoples of the socialist community in building the new society. Moreover, the struggle against the intrigues of the imperialist organisers of the psychological war demands the creation of a kind of immunity against these intrigues. This immunity is built up by the ideological tempering and firmness of the people, by vigilance, by unshakable class positions on the part of all workers of the ideological front, by keeping the people informed of developments in the country itself and on the international scene and, last but not least, by keeping them informed of the psychological warfare tactics and sinister methods and techniques of the imperialists.

These techniques and methods can inflict considerable harm when they are used against an unprepared adversary, who, through lack of information can yield to provocation and fail to see the real objective, the poison sting of one operation or another. An exposure of these techniques and methods will in itself help to render imperialist propaganda ineffective. The consistent exposure of imperialism’s general doctrine of psychological warfare, of its methods and techniques and also of concrete actions by this aggressive propaganda is and will remain a major task. This is noted in the CC Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU, which stated: "It is the duty of our propagandists and mass agitators to give a timely, resolute and effective rebuff to these ideological attacks and tell hundreds of millions of people the truth about the socialist society, the Soviet way of life and the building of communism in our country".  [198•*