KGB Defector Claims Communism Alive and Menacing

Commentary on:
The Perestroika Deception by Anatoliy Golitsyn

by Cornelia R. Ferreira

Diehard fans of the theory that Communism is dead will not like this book, whose stated goal is to help such people “recover from their blindness”. The Perestroika Deception describes with unmerciful clarity the confusion and errors that have been engendered in the world and in the Church by the deceitful Communist strategy of perestroika, under whose reformist guise rebellions and wars have been promoted, and the Church persecuted, in order that the Communist goal of world domination is finally achieved. In other words, what it unintentionally depicts are the very events prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima if the Collegial Consecration of Russia is not done.

Anatoliy Golitsyn’s 1984 book, New Lies for Old, forecast, with 94% accuracy, all the recent changes in the Communist Bloc, including the economic and political reforms, the rise of Solidarity, the removal of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the “collapse” of the Soviet Union. The Perestroika Deception, with extensive documentation, reinforces his contention in New Lies for Old that all the changes were meticulously planned years in advance. It explains how they fit into the devious Leninist strategy for achieving — with Western cooperation — a one-world Communist government or “New World Social Order”, run by the Russians and Chinese, by 2000 A.D. It also analyzes current events up to the Chechnya struggle and forecasts and developments.

Golitsyn was a high-ranking KGB official involved in espionage and counter-espionage who defected to the United States in 1961. Convinced that Western interpretations of developments in the Communist Bloc were seriously flawed, he combined his study of Soviet long-range strategy with his inside knowledge of KGB and Leninist thinking in New Lies for Old. For over thirty years he has submitted memoranda to the CIA, in which he has provided very accurate analyses and forecasts of Bloc developments. The Perestroika Deception is a collection of dated memoranda covering the years 1984 to 1995.

The Great Deception

This book vindicates those politically incorrect Catholics who have been insisting that Russia has not converted because the Consecration has not been properly done. Its urgent message is that the West’s failure to recognize that perestroika is a “treacherous” ploy “threatens the very continuation of Western civilization” as perestroika is intended to bring about the political and physical demise of Western democracies.

Golitsyn provides irrefutable proof that perestroika or “restructuring” is not a 1985 Gorbachev invention, but the final phase of a plan formulated during 1958-1960. Perestroika refers to the restructuring, not just of the Soviet system, but of the entire free world. It is the Soviet strategy for a “Second October Revolution”, a temporary, non-violent World Revolution involving controlled fake democratization and strategic disinformation. Communist leaders envisaged the convergence of Communist/socialist systems with restructured capitalist systems into the One-World Communist Government. They realized that convergence could only be achieved by transforming Stalinism into a “more attractive form” of “Communist democracy”. The KGB was reorganized to play a “key role in implementing the strategy”. Thirty years of rehearsal in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania prepared the ground for the final phase — perestroika and the controlled false “democratization” of the USSR itself. That it is false is confirmed by Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgian president and a long-time Western “friend”. As late as 1993, he admitted that elections do not equal democracy.


Perestroika refers to the restructuring, not just of the Soviet system, but of the entire free world.

Perestroika is a game of mind-control based on the principles of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who devised a new, improved model of Marxist-Leninism. Gorbachev was chosen to launch it. Perestroika is psychological warfare, involving the use of “cooperation-blackmail”. A “theatrical display of ‘democratism’ [is] designed to convince the West that a decisive ‘Break with the Past’ has taken place”. This encourages Western governments to collaborate with the “former” Communists. At the same time, there is a threat of a “return to the Cold War — or worse — if the West does not cooperate”. Golitsyn demonstrates that every “crisis”, from Tienamen Square to the fake August ‘91 coup attempt to Chechnya, has been deliberately designed according to the cooperation-blackmail equation. The “new forces of democracy” are shown locked in mortal combat with the “conservative hard-liners” and the West is told that only its cooperation and large infusions of aid will help the “fledgling democracies” to survive. The Communist price for peace is thus the restructuring of Western thinking and policies.

Soviet control of the Western mind is achieved through manipulation of the media, deceptive use of language, and the destabilization of society through corruption. According to the Gramscian formula, the Christian religion has to be secularized, and culture and morals corrupted, for the Revolution to succeed peaceably. With Western society “deconstructed”, the Western mind will be more receptive to collaboration with the enemy.

Part of the Long-Term Plan

Golitsyn demonstrates that the present strategy is a continuation by the Russians and Chinese, with Gramsci’s “improvements”, of the New Economic Policy (NEP) devised by Lenin in the 1920s. Lenin had said, “The lie is sacred, and deception will be our principal weapon.” The NEP was hailed by the West as a retreat from Communism, but it was a major deception. Pope Pius XI, in his 1937 encyclical On Atheistic Communism, warned that Communism was not converting, but he was ignored.

The NEP won for the Soviets aid from the West and helped to strengthen Russian Communism. Stalin continued the subterfuge to the point of showing some religious tolerance and dissolving the Communist International; however, his later repressions discredited Communism and impeded its global expansion. His condemnation by modern Communist leaders does not represent their break with Communism, but their anger that he hurt their “cause”.

As part of the programme to destroy religion from within, the KGB, in the late 1950s [other former Communists say 1930s] started sending dedicated young Communists to ecclesiastical academies and seminaries to train them as future Church leaders.

Kruschev and Mao decided to abolish Stalinism and restore Leninism. A scientific study of the NEP was undertaken in 1957. In 1960, the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada was set up in Moscow to help Soviets research these target societies. At the end of 1960, the long-range strategy based on the NEP was adopted by thirteen Communist Bloc states, including China.

Perestroika, the final phase of the strategy is meant to conquer the West from within by KGB-controlled dissidents and opposition movements and disinformation about the alleged existence of liberals and conservatives, reformers vs. “hardliners”. Glasnost or “openness” would combine accurate information with disinformation. The KGB was to create and control Communist Bloc officials of all political stripes. Leaders since 1960, including Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Rutskoi, Shevardnadze, Zhirinovsky and Primakov, have all been collaborators in carrying out the plan. Their power struggles are fictional.

The Infiltration of the Upper Echelons

KGB “agents of influence” have infiltrated Western élite circles, “cultivating” politicians, businessmen, scientists, religious leaders, journalists, movie directors, environmentalists, and so forth. Agents have included a “dissident” like Andrei Sakharov and diplomats such as the Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoliy Dobrynin. Educational, scientific and cultural exchanges, as well as thousands of joint projects in all fields, aid Russian research, influence and recruitment. Whilst forging bonds with Western liberals, these techniques also identify and neutralize active anti-Communists. They are ridiculed as “enemies of peace” or removed from office. Assassination is always a possibility, and Golitsyn suspects that was the case with Pope John Paul I; but he explains why the evidence does not support the common belief that the KGB was involved in the shooting of Pope John Paul II. (Interestingly, in 1994, a claim that high-level Vatican officials were responsible was quickly quashed.)

Liberalization of Eastern Europe was meant to promote disarmament, the dissolution of NATO, the American withdrawal from Europe, and a neutral, socialist Europe, “a Common European Home from the Atlantic to the Urals”, as Gorbachev and Shevardnadze have described it. If NATO is not dissolved, then its effectiveness is to be reduced by penetration (note “Partnership for Peace” and East-West joint projects like Bosnia, which also help convergence), by reduction of its purely military role of defending its members (it is now peacekeeping in a non-member state), and by the acceptance of “former” European adversaries as members. Moscow’s opposition to the latter is a dialectical tactic as such membership would actually increase penetration. One goal of the Chechnyan barbarity is to scare Russia’s neighbors and strengthen the argument for their protection through NATO membership.

A major penetration success is Gorbachev’s American bureau, which allows him to personally mobilize liberals in the cause of disarmament. Four months before the August ’91 “coup” attempt (showing that his job change from President to private citizen was anticipated in light of the coming planned “collapse” of the USSR), Gorbachev established, on American soil, the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union — known to us as the Gorbachev Foundation/USA. It operates out of a disused military base in San Francisco.

Poland has played a large part in the disarmament campaign. Solidarity was planned during 1958-1960 by the Bloc, and Golitsyn correctly predicted each stage in its evolution. There is clear evidence that the Polish Communist Party formed the original core and leadership of Solidarity, whilst Lech Walesa cooperated all along. He has also helped broaden the Communist base in trade unions across the world, enabling them to be manipulated against Western interests.

In order to increase Communist representation and influence in the UN, the European Union and international financial organizations, the Soviet Union was deliberately converted into “independent” republics. However, by 1994, all the republics, including the Baltic States, were controlled by Communists, but now within the fiefdom of Russia. This strategy mirrors the successful policy of Lenin, who gave a temporary “independence” to some republics in order to promote trade with the West.

Lenin had said, “The lie is sacred, and deception will be our principal weapon.”

The “collapse” of the Soviet Union serves several other purposes. One is gaining control of Middle East oil. The new “democratic” image of the Muslim republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is being exploited to develop alliances with fundamentalists in Arab countries so that pro-Western rulers can be replaced with Russian-controlled fundamentalists. Radical changes in Israel’s position are part of the strategy. Nuclear weaponry is being channelled through the republics to Iran, whilst Russia, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, looks innocent. Turkey, a NATO member, is already a “major partner of Russia”, purchasing Russian military equipment and cooperating with it (thus weakening NATO).

The United States has been unable to detect the long-range Communist strategy largely because of disinformation provided by KGB and Chinese spies who have penetrated the CIA since 1958. Perestroika and glasnost so confused American intelligence that it became dependent upon Russian sources. The Ames case, as reported by Time (November 13, 1995), confirms Golitsyn’s contention about the confusion in U.S. intelligence services, which have accepted KGB plants as genuine sources. Aldrich Ames spied for Russia from the start of perestroika (1985) to 1994, helping to send ten valuable CIA agents to their death. This betrayal of American trust in perestroika prompts Golitsyn’s comment: “The Ames case shows how blind and bankrupt is the American policy of aid to the ‘new’ régime in Russia.”

Communism’s Manipulation of the Church

Perestroika strategists did not overlook the use of clergy as agents, nor the use of religious relaxation to further disarmament. In 1985, Golitsyn reported that Russian Orthodox priests are controlled and directed by the KGB in order to promote cooperation between Soviet churches and Western Catholics and Protestants to help establish a united front for disarmament (peace and justice movements?) and convergence. (Note that the Russian Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches in 1961.)

Unfortunately, in order to have Russian Orthodox observers at Vatican II, the Holy See promised not to attack Communism. This 1962 Vatican-Moscow Agreement, which still seems to be in force, is a form of persecution. It has silenced the Church and allowed the errors of Communism — especially perestroika — to invade both it and society unchallenged. Golitsyn notes the observation made by the outspoken anti-Communist Russian General Volkogonov that “perestroika would not have been possible without a secret understanding between Gorbachev, Jaruzelski [Communist President of Poland until Walesa took over in 1990] and the Pope”. In the absence of any elaboration, one can only speculate that the “secret understanding” is the continuation of the Agreement with the added twist of cooperation-blackmail: Vatican silence about Marxism would guarantee religious and civil liberalization, starting with Poland.

In 1990, Golitsyn warned of another aspect of religious relaxation:

The Vatican should reverse its mistaken support for the renewal of the Communist régimes … It fails to understand that greater apparent official tolerance of religion … is accompanied by a secret drive to increase Party and KGB penetration of the Catholic and other churches and to use agents therein for political and strategic purposes … As part of the programme to destroy religion from within, the KGB, in the late 1950s [other former Communists say 1930s], started sending dedicated young Communists to ecclesiastical academies and seminaries to train them as future Church leaders. These young Communists joined the Church … at the call of the Communist Party … to implement its general line [unchanged policy] in the struggle against religion.

In the present phase, secret agents in the Catholic and other churches are being used to implement Communist strategy (Golitsyn’s emphasis).

The extent of the deception can be gauged by Gorbachev’s comment to his Communist cadres in 1987, after he had launched perestroika and religious relaxations: “There must be no let-up in the war against religion because as long as religion exists Communism cannot prevail. We must intensify the obliteration of all religions.” (emphasis in original)


Diehard fans of the theory that communism is dead will not like this book, whose stated goal is to help such people “recover from their blindness”.

Golitsyn condemns the participation of Communist leaders at Summits and their visits to the Vatican (which started in 1967) because these meetings give them credibility and the opportunity for manipulation. Remarkably, in 1991, he quoted one of our popes in order to remind the Catholic Church of Her duty:

The statement by … Pope Pius XII [he must mean Pius XI] concerning the incompatibility and irreconcilability of Communism and religion is as correct as ever. The Vatican should reaffirm this dictum and should use its influence and “divisions” [Stalin’s sarcastic term for loyal Catholic groups] to defend Western values from the new, deadly but “hidden” Communist assault (Golitsyn’s emphasis). Unfortunately, because of her silence, Gramsci’s strategy of perverting the Catholic Church is in full swing. The religion of God is being replaced with the religion of Man (and Heaven with an earthly, decadent utopia), facilitating Communist control of de-Christianized minds. Golitsyn assesses the consequences of détente for the Church: “Never in its history since Nero has Christianity faced such a threat of possible destruction” (emphasis added).

Free-Marketeers, Beware

He has a similar warning for industrialists and financiers involved in joint ventures with the Communists. They are expediting the “revival of their adversaries”; while they “may make some profits from joint ventures, in the long run they will be eliminated as a class” through taxes and other means.

The grounds for rejecting perestroika are simple:

[The moral grounds are that] a system which has killed 20 million of its people (50 million if … China [is] included), … and brought … misery to the peoples of the Soviet empire, does not deserve to be renewed. The American people are under no moral obligation to help with the reconstruction of such a plainly evil system.

The pragmatic ground … is the need to protect … the American system from “restructuring” and convergence with the Soviet system and to save the American people from the blood baths and reeducation camps which such convergence will ultimately bring. Thus, “there should be no summit meetings, no credit and no Western technology for … Communist countries … Communist régime[s] should be left … to solve their problems without Western help since they claim that their system is the best model for the whole world …” Communists should be told: “… don’t ask us for … help: we are not going to finance our own funeral.”

It should be required reading of the entire Catholic hierarchy.

The whole point of Golitsyn’s writings has been to warn Western leaders not to be fooled by perestroika. He notes, however, that they have been fooled and wonders why they have ignored his warnings, even though his analyses have a 94% accuracy rating and Britain and the United States have honored him for his “contribution to Western security”. One is forced to ask — has it ever occurred to Golitsyn that perhaps many of these leaders are not fooled, but are following orders? Is he aware of the role of Freemasonry in world affairs? That it is Masonry that desires the One-World Socialist Government? That Communism is merely its chief tool? That Masonry, financed by Western interests, built up Russian Communism and has kept it going in its various metamorphic forms for over seventy years?

A Power Elite?

In the last two pages of his book, in a memorandum dated October 1, 1993, Golitsyn does hint at a secret controlling force behind Russian Communism, but he “lacks the facilities to study how it might be operating”. He believes it may be functioning under cover of some “front” organization, such as the National Security Council. He advises the West to watch for signs of this group — but he gives no indication that he thinks there might be parallel secret groups in the West. (Are even KGB officials kept in the dark about Freemasonry?)

Not merely is Russia the tool of Freemasonry, but it is also the instrument chosen by God to punish a sinful world, as Our Lady of Fatima warned. Anatoliy Golitsyn’s painstaking research shows we are close to the fulfillment of Our Lady’s prediction. As he soberly notes, “The sword of Damocles is hanging over Western democracies, yet they are oblivious to it.”

Because The Perestroika Deception is a collection of memoranda, there is much repetition. This can be tedious, but it greatly helps one to see the deception unfolding day by day. Since the memoranda were directed to CIA officials, Golitsyn probably assumed they would be familiar with the names and events mentioned; thus, titles, dates or historical details are generally lacking. This can cause difficulties for the “layman”. The tight print of the book, especially in the footnotes, also makes for difficult reading. However, these footnotes, added before publication, contain vital up-to-date information substantiating Golitsyn’s claims. The comprehensive, annotated Index helps make the book an invaluable geopolitical resource. It should be required reading of the entire Catholic hierarchy.

Reprinted courtesy of Catholic Family News, March 1996 issue.