Authors

Roman Horbyk¹;  ¹ University of Zurich, Switzerland

Discussion

The rising wave of the Russian “active measures”-style political and information warfare raises many questions about its techniques, tactics and even theoretical assumptions about the nature and possibility of information influence. A core question is about the origins and evolution of the approaches currently applied by Russia-linked actors, and answering other questions requires understanding this evolution. While there is already a growing body of research on the Soviet origins of the current Russian approaches to information influence, scholars are in disagreement about what exactly of the Soviet model is inherited and what is not. For example, three major studies disagree on the continuity from the Cold War to the present day, taking positions of strong (Kragh & Åsberg, 2017: 782), mixed (Paul & Matthews, 2016), and little (Sanovich (2017) use of the Soviet legacy. Moreover, very few studies focused on the continuities with pre-1917 practices, even though Brantly (2021) admitted the “active measures” model reaches back into the tsarist era’s Guards Department (Okhrana).

This presentation will highlight, based on the analysis of the available sources and new archival research, the long roots of the Russian information warfare in both Soviet-era KGB work and in much earlier traditions. Firstly, it will clarify continuities (as well as certain discontinuities) with the reflexive control model and its reliance on “active” – but also “passive measures”, on disinformation – but also “directed information” (reintroducing these concepts, previously largely ignored in the literature, from the KGB handbooks). Secondly, it will consider the ways in which this late Soviet approach was linked to the fusion of early twentieth-century Marxist-Leninist model of the press with the Okhrana methods from the nineteenth century. Thirdly, it will review the possibility for even earlier precursors to these practices, considering pros and cons for early modern origins for certain aspects of surveillance, political policing and information warfare. In conclusion, it will propose further avenues for studying the subject of the long history of Russia’s information warfare.