Russian Active Measures

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

About the Editor and Contributors

Foreword

Introduction A Blind Spot of Active Measures

The Many Faces of the New Information Warfare

KGB Special Operations, Cultural Consumption, and the Youth Culture in Soviet Ukraine, 1968–1985

The KGB Operation “Retribution” and John Demjanjuk

Disinformation Soviet Origins of Contemporary Russian Ukrainophobia

Russian Active Measures against Ukraine (2004) and Estonia (2007)

Russian (Dis)Information Warfare vis-à-vis the Holodomor-Genocide

Russian Influence on Italian Culture, Academia, and Think Tanks

Russian Influence Operations in Scandinavia The Case of Sweden’s Largest Tabloid Aftonbladet

The Trojan Media Narrative Framing on Russian Television in the Occupied Donbas

This volume was conceived prior to the cataclysmic events associated with COVID-19 but was finalized at the peak of the epidemic, a factor that complicated the logistics and the process of coordination among the members of our team. There was, however, a positive aspect of the timing—a sense of urgency that was dictated by both the importance of the topic and the medical considerations and uncertainties of the global world. I would like to express my gratitude to the contributors of this volume for their enlightening and thorough research, self-organization, and determination that helped me bring this project to fruition, as well as to our publisher who supported this project from the very beginning, providing an opportunity for the contributors’ voices to be heard.

The idea for this book had been germinating in my mind for several years but the volume came into being because of the inspiration and support from the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Study of the European University Institute, the Centre’s Director Brigid Laffan, and Administrative Coordinator Sarah Beck. They helped Mark Galeotti and me organize an international scholarly conference on Russian active measures held in Florence, Italy on 23–24 May 2019. This event gathered scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, Belgium, and Poland, inviting us to expand our thinking about Russian active measures, ideological subversion, and non-conventional warfare. Our intellectual exchange helped us broaden our special knowledge and enhance our understanding of the spatial applications of Russian active measures, as well as their historical dimensions.

I would also like to thank my colleagues, faculty members and staff in the Department of Global Security and Intelligence (College of Security and Intelligence Studies; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), for creating a comfortable working atmosphere that facilitated the completion of this project. I am especially grateful to Professors Thomas Field and Murray Henner for their moral and intellectual support, and Professors Richard Bloom and Furman Daniel who read selected chapters of the manuscript, offering their thoughtful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts.

I am grateful to Professor Jan Goldman for inviting me to be part of a conference focusing on the ethics of intelligence held at the Citadel, South Carolina, in February 2020, where I had an opportunity to sharpen the ideas that laid the conceptual foundation for this collection of essays.

This project would have been far more difficult to complete without the support and help of brilliant scholars, researchers, and observers, working in various discipline as historians, political scientists, anthropologists, linguists, and intelligence studies specialists. Special thanks go to Paul D’Anieri, Myroslav Shkandrij, Serhy Yekelchyk, Bohdan Harasymiw, Laada Bilaniuk, Filip Kovacevic, Alessandro Achilli, Marta Baziuk, Mykola Kotcherha, Roman Serbyn, Volodymyr Serhiichuk, and Mikhail Minakov.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professors Victoria A. Malko and Dale A. Bertelsen who helped me tremendously during each step of the project. Their special knowledge and skills as writers, linguists, editors, and rhetorical critics helped me enhance the volume structurally, semantically, and rhetorically. Beyond professional tasks, our interactions have become a vigorous process of learning new things in the spheres of philosophy and communication, helping us better understand each other and the world.

Olga Bertelsenis an Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Arizona. Educated at the Medical State University, Ukraine, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, and the University of Nottingham, she published widely on state violence in the USSR and the methods and traditions of the Soviet/Russian secret police. She is the author of The House of Writers in Ukraine, the 1930s: Conceived, Lived, Perceived (2013), and the editor of anthologies of archival KGB documents on persecutions of Jews ( On the Jewish Street , 2011) and Ukrainian intellectuals in the Soviet Union (2016), and of a collection of essays entitled Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine (2017). She is also a member of the editorial boards of Scripta Historica , Kyiv-Mohyla Arts and Humanities , Kultura Ukrainy , and Naukovyi visnyk Kharkivskoho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu imeni H. S. Skovorody. Seriia “Filosofiia.” She is currently at work on a new book on Soviet writers and KGB covert operations.

Massimiliano Di Pasqualeis an Italy-based journalist, independent scholar focusing on Ukraine and post-Soviet states, and Associate Researcher at the “Gino Germani Institute for Social Sciences and Strategic Studies” (Rome, Italy). He is also a member of the Baltic Studies Section (BSS), a discrete section within the Department of International Studies at the University of Milan. After obtaining a degree in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan, he specialized in post-Soviet states’ culture, politics, and society. He broadly published on these topics, being the author of Ucraina terra di confine. Viaggi nell’Europa sconosciuta (2012), Riga Magica. Cronache dal Baltico (2015), and Abbecedario Ucraino. Rivoluzione, cultura e indipendenza di un popolo (2018).

Jonas J. Driedgeris a Research Associate and Doctoral Researcher (final year) at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). A College of Europe graduate and a political scientist, he specializes in the foreign and security policies of Russia, the European Union, and its member states. His research focuses on international security, deterrence, and the causes of armed conflict. He was an Alfa Fellow and Visiting Researcher at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, and taught and conducted fieldwork in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, and Russia. Apart from his academic publications, Jonas contributed analyses and policy advice in German, Russian, and English to the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the Oxford University Changing Character of War Centre, Politico Europe, The National Interest, EUObserver, and EurActiv.

Luigi Sergio Germani is Director of the Gino Germani Institute of Social Sciences and Strategic Studies, a non-profit educational and research think tank established in 1981 located in Rome. Educated at the University of Bologna, the Gregorian University, and the Johns Hopkins Bologna Center, he specializes in Russian and post-Soviet politics and security issues, intelligence and counterintelligence in contemporary societies, Italian national security issues and policies, organized crime, terrorism, political warfare, and disinformation. He has widely published on these topics, and has edited and co-edited several books, including L’Intelligence nel XXI Secolo (2001); New Frontiers of Intelligence Analysis (2005); Pathways out of Terrorism and Insurgency (2005); Information Warfare: le Nuove Minacce provenienti dal cyberspazio alla sicurezza nazionale italiana (2011); La sfida della cyber-intelligence al sistema-Italia (2012); I fondamentalismi religiosi nel mondo contemporaneo (2014), Disinformazione e manipolazione delle percezioni (2017). He is currently working on Russian political warfare and active measures in Italy.