How come KGB never beat CIA? Why did the leadership of socialist states fall for CIA tricks?
How come KGB never beat CIA? Why did the leadership of socialist states fall for CIA tricks?
Anthony Taylor
Ayden Reed
KGB plane was of crash of no survivings товарищ
Tyler Perry
They actually did from what I've read but in the end the spy wars weren't what mattered.
James Rogers
Any good sources on KGB or soviet intelligence stuff in general?
Justin Jackson
socialism can't be achieved through conspiracy and subversion
however if you manage to control revisionist plants all you have to do to bring down socialism is going at the right pace with restauring capitalism
Camden Gonzalez
That's the bizarre thing, the KGB was far more competent than the CIA but in the end Gorbachev, the Yugoslav "nationalists", Deng, etc. sold the average person out. Why in the hell would they believe neoliberal propaganda about "freedom"? The 1980s was the military-industrial-intelligence complex seizing control over government function in the West and digging it into the greatest debt hole in history in a desperate attempt to leverage technology to save capitalism. It was completely unsustainable but then the Soviet leadership blinked. Instead of coming up with a socialist solution to meet the challenge of this spending and innovation they gave up and said "let's just be neoliberals too".
Nolan Howard
Yuri Bezmenov :)
Benjamin Cook
Well, the real function of the CIA is that of a legalized mafia (drug-dealing, murder, extortion etc.) and not really to keep "America safe" or even to gather reliable intel. The reason bourgeois presidents like Johnson and Kennedy ragged on the CIA was that it didn't actually provide decent intel. You might notice that the US has the NSA in addition to multiple intelligence branches–one for each branch of the military plus the FBI which is a glamorized secret police force but still does some intel work.
As for your point, yes, capitalism was going through major problems in that period but it was still somewhat more healthy (from the perspective of the capitalists) than it was in the 70s. The majority of the East bloc countries were starting to feel the pain of the revisionist policies they'd adopted in the 50s and 60s.
I believe that the revisionists honestly believed that the Western capitalist countries would move to the left, which seemed to be happening from the 50s-70s but then didn't know how to handle the rightward turn of the West in the 80s. A lot of schlock was written by bourgeois academics in the 50s-70s on the alleged "convergence" of the two camps supposedly each was becoming like the other: the West more "socialist" while the East was becoming more "capitalist". But in the end the West all that happened was that the West kept turning Right and the revisionists didnt know how to adapt.
Daniel Hughes
Why did the Soviet military intelligence complex survived the collapse? Was it totally changed afterwards or did it just change flags?
Andrew Ward
What exactly constitutes one security agency 'beating' another?
Jordan Cook
ideally world socialist revolution in the case of the Cold War
Gabriel Fisher
GRU doesn't seem to have changed all that much since they weren't as politically involved as the KGB, However even with the split of the KGB between the FSB and SVR the former members of Soviet intelligence (e.g. Putin) seem to have disproportionate influence probably at least in part because they knew what the hell was going on unlike the Yeltsin types.
Hunter Davis
How come there is no sticky thread all about the CIA shenanigans? The CIA is essencially the greatest criminal organizaton ever deviced, by far
Aiden Russell
lol freedom of speech my ass, no democracy boys, no being mean to those who "guard us"
Carter Sanchez
huh learn something new every day
Connor Evans
No such thing. The great paradox about writing about spies is that only someone with inside knowledge can write about it and everytime they do books are heavily censored by their superiors. The best way to know how intelligence is unironically fiction. From the moment something is named fiction it can't be taken as a reliable source so they don't censor it unless they reveal real names ecc. But if you want to get an idea of how the trade works and how they used to operate and operate right now the only way is fiction. John Le Carrè is probably the guy who wrote the most accurate depictions of how spies operate, he was himself MI6. Is still fiction, names and events are not real but Modus Operandi is scary accurate.
From how moles in agencies operates to the conflict between two intelligence agencies in the same country this guy is really the real deal. No real reports and accounts are as accurate as his novels.
Also the movie/tv adaptations are trash. They miss the whole point of being a spy: Being a glorified burocrat who's massive ego gets used by the state to do some awful shit (this goes both ways btw, spies are terrible people in every country)
t. Worked with the service for a while
Dylan Thompson
If someone is interest btw I can post pdf, I own his entire bibliography
Charles Nguyen
Go ahead Comrade
Chase Carter
Ok.
Remember you guys, this is fiction so nothing in these novels refers explicitly to real life facts.
So this is Le Carrè first famous novel (He wrote 2 others before this one but they were more crime novels than accurate spy novels. Even if they are part of the same universe and continuity they are not essential).
This is really different and less grounded than his later novels but is still accurate as fuck. It's a really short and thrilling read.
It shows:
Camden Adams
Jayden Jenkins
because you only read news approved from CIA
Christian Parker
what's in your top 3, apart from The Looking Glass War
Charles Robinson
This. The CIA is actually shit at collecting good intelligence, especially nowadays since they are almost entirely all old fat white dudes who rely on contractors to do all the field work. The only thing they have ever excelled at is propaganda.
Luke Parker
5.Little Drummer Girl
4.The honorable schoolboy
3.The looking-glass war
2. Smiley's people
1. A perfect spy
I only posted TLGW because the others are not as technical or are direct sequels (thinker tailor, honorable schoolboy, smiley's people are part of a trilogy that should be read in order). Little drummer girl is fantastic and one of the few books set in Israel that has the balls to show how merciless mossad is, but a lot of people skip it. A perfect spy is considered his best by many his best, but shouldn't be read after the smiley novels or at least after the karla trilogy to get all the nuances.
Le Carrè doesn't have many rivals when it comes to genre fiction. His and excellent writer and also provides insight that people wouldn't even think of
Josiah Taylor
fuck
Brody Wright
nice, thanks
Brayden Flores
This all day long. There should be a intelligence operations general thread.
Cameron Anderson
but kgb actually won:
europe is ran by eussars (unelected ideological bureocrats, sounds familiar eh?)
its harder to start a business in america than in 'communist' china
our central federal governments have more powers than the fucking tsars
free market, competition and capitalism doesnt exist anywhere, just unfair corporations larping as honest merchants when in fact they have the favor of the central planner, the government/imf/central bank
democracy, which is just soft communism, is the official system
great lie of equality is official dogma, and every celebrity and shelf stacker must pretend that we are all equal
Isaac Turner
(You)
Aaron Wright
Imagine having the clusterfuck of a mind that believes this.
Nathan Johnson
Easton Wright
Protip: The "free market" and perfect competition don't exist and will never exist. Capitalism is unfortunately all too real though.
Noah Thompson
(you)
Xavier Hernandez
Brayden Harris
I can't even recall the last time anyone's framed American foreign policy aims as "keeping America safe" as opposed to "keeping American interests safe". That's the problem with an endlessly-expanding empire, and bureaucratic/impersonal institutions like the CIA designed to defend the "interests" of said empire.
So one day you're teaching Central American paramilitaries how to slaughter Mayan peasants, and the next you're organising heroin-smuggling networks in the Golden Triangle, all in the name of "American interests". It doesn't help that - as the other user said - intelligence work attracts the sort of bottom-feeders that view a life of deception, intrigue, and manipulation as attractive.
There's a hilarious book called Red Cocaine that's a John Bircher's wet dream about how America's drug problem was "really" due to Soviet/Warsaw Pact/ChiCom drug factories attempting to sap American morality