In 1984, Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet KGB officer turned defector, issued a chilling warning to the West. As a specialist in the USSR’s propaganda and subversion, he revealed how Moscow’s “active measures” were designed not only to mislead but to fundamentally destabilize societies from within. The West, convinced that victory in the Cold War would be purely military or economic, ignored his words. Yet Bezmenov understood what few in Washington or Brussels could grasp: the battlefield was psychological, cultural and moral.
