Martin Slávik and Ľubomír Morbacher focus on the functioning of totalitarian regimes in Slovakia and Czechoslovakia. In the past, both worked at the Institute of National Memory (ÚPN), currently they work in the civic association Living Memory.
In the interview, they describe what disinformation produced in our country looked like during the Cold War and where they see parallels with current Kremlin propaganda.
“The Russian concept of hybrid warfare directly follows the active measures taken by the KGB and its satellites. The Internet and social media have offered the producers of disinformation unimagined possibilities, but their essence has remained the same,” they say.
What can be imagined under the term “active measures” that secret services in the Soviet bloc did?
Martin Slávik: Usually, it was more or less effective disinformation, which the secret services tried to spread either among the population at home, but mainly abroad, especially in democratic countries. They were any measures aimed at supporting the interests of the countries of the Eastern Bloc.
In Czechoslovakia, the First Administration of the National Security Service (ZNB) was responsible for the production of disinformation, i.e. basically intelligence, which was an integral part of the ŠtB. Active measures also included something called “sharp actions”. These could already be actions with the use of violence, which sometimes included murders. The case from May was probably the most famous