The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union; The New York Times, July 20, 2018

Natan Sharansky, The New York Times; The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union

[Kip Currier: It's enlightening and inspiring to be reminded of the courageous stance that Soviet Union-residing nuclear physicist, dissident activist, and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov took 50 years ago, via his influential essay, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”. His ideas and invocations on the importance of freedom to think, individual responsibility, moral leadership, and the advancement of human rights for persons living in both open and closed societies are as timely and indispensable today as they were in 1968.]

"Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote. Suddenly the Soviet Union’s most decorated physicist became its most prominent dissident...

[Sakharov's] message was unsettling and liberating: You cannot be a good scientist or a free person while living a double life. Knowing the truth while collaborating in the regime’s lies only produces bad science and broken souls." 

A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories; New York Times, 8/28/16

Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times; A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories:

"In Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now Syria, Mr. Putin has flaunted a modernized and more muscular military. But he lacks the economic strength and overall might to openly confront NATO, the European Union or the United States. Instead, he has invested heavily in a program of “weaponized” information, using a variety of means to sow doubt and division. The goal is to weaken cohesion among member states, stir discord in their domestic politics and blunt opposition to Russia.

“Moscow views world affairs as a system of special operations, and very sincerely believes that it itself is an object of Western special operations,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, who helped establish the Kremlin’s information machine before 2008. “I am sure that there are a lot of centers, some linked to the state, that are involved in inventing these kinds of fake stories.”

The planting of false stories is nothing new; the Soviet Union devoted considerable resources to that during the ideological battles of the Cold War. Now, though, disinformation is regarded as an important aspect of Russian military doctrine, and it is being directed at political debates in target countries with far greater sophistication and volume than in the past.

The flow of misleading and inaccurate stories is so strong that both NATO and the European Union have established special offices to identify and refute disinformation, particularly claims emanating from Russia."