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Just finished reading 'Blind Man's Bluff' - about the American submarine espionage stories since WW2. There are fascinating stories but it was also striking ho

Just finished reading 'Blind Man's Bluff' - about the American submarine espionage stories since WW2. There are fascinating stories but it was also striking how so many of the stories were about how the US, the technically and economically superior country, spied on and harassed the Soviets near the Soviet territories.

oblio 5y ago
I read somewhere that it's not entirely unlikely that the brand of socialism/communism in the Soviet Union became more extreme because of foreign attack. Socialism was considered, probably rightly so, a mortal threat to current political and social systems so the communist camp in Russia was under assault from day 1. For those that forgot, Russia was an ally in WW1 and once it withdrew from the war due to huge war fatigue, Russia was invaded by Britain, the US, Japan, I'm probably forgetting a bunch of dozen other invaders. For what was basically a matter of internal policy and later a civil war. Of course, nothing could have guaranteed that the extremists such as the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin, wouldn't have won even if left alone.
- a_square_peg 5y ago
  That's an interesting angle, thanks for sharing. The book gives an impression that many American submariners were driven by mission whereas the Soviet ones took it as a job. A memorable quote from a Soviet commander (Bagdasaryan) who's submarine has collided with an American sub and was reprimanded, was how he would like to "have a drink and think together how to avoid similar collision in the future" with his American counterpart. Unfortunately, the American commander had passed away by this time.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Let us please dispense with the moral ambiguity of our view of the Soviet Union. They was also an 'ally' in WW2, I think 'enemy of my enemy' would be a more apt term. The Soviets were an authoritarian mass murdering regime (Stalin murdered 4-5 million on purpose in Ukraine, but that's just one small item on the list) that already ruthlessly ruled much of Central Asia, and the only reason the Czechs, E. Germans, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians etc. were in the 'Warsaw Pact' was due to forcible acquiescence at the point of a gun: those states were nation-sized prisons, forcibly monitored by Stasi or Stasi-like forces, who were in turn monitored by the KGB, in very draconian terms. Meanwhile, NATO was made up of very willing participants. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we can see where those states more or less landed in terms of alignment. The Soviets were all over the world trying to take control of individual government groups, providing money, intelligence, weapons etc. in order to take direct control of government, and have them controlled in much the same manner they did Poland, Hungary etc.. and where they were successfull it was bad. The American model exemplified by US support of House of Saud is excessively benign: don't attack the US or the world order, don't align with the Soviets or China, sell your goods to whoever you want but at free market prices, maintain stable governance ... and that's that. In Chile, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, problems 'came to ahead' due to very direct influence of the Soviets and we're still reeling from it to this day. Not to overstate things entirely, but during the Wiemar Republic, Stalin had complete and direct control over the German Communist party, who had ~17% of the Bundestag, and they had their own 'thug forces' out there beating people up, killing police (on a couple of occasions). Needless to say, could you imagine some antagonizing foreign dictatorship directly controlling 17% of UK Parliament or US Congress? I wouldn't say that was a primary cause of anything, but at least pretty big driver of what followed.
  - oblio 5y ago
    > Let us please dispense with the moral ambiguity of our view of the Soviet Union. We're talking past each other. I'm talking about the *birth* of the Soviet Union. Imperial Russia, no matter what you may think of its morals, was an ally of the Western powers. It fought together with them, it was completely exhausted by the war, it collapsed. Immediately after its collapse, the Western powers, acting very much like hyenas (US, UK, France, Japan, etc), invaded their former ally. The new Russian factions fought each other and fought off the invaders. How do you look internal politics look in a country in such a situation? Do you think moderates have any chance? When your former allies are betraying you, your country was ravaged by war and is now in a civil war? The hypothesis was that we will never know for sure if Russia wouldn't have gotten a more moderate socialist government without foreign invasion. It's an "what if" scenario.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Yes, Imperial Russia was definitely a different thing altogether. But it's a stretch to say that those countries 'invaded' Russia. There was 'backing' of a side during a revolution, that's not the same thing. The American revolution was supported by France and the American civil war had 'backing' by other parties. I don't think the backing of outside powers is hugely relevant to that outcome, that said, the point in general (i.e. actual outside invaders) is reasonable. I think it's different in every situation though. I mean Afghanistan, Chile, Cuba, Libya ... all so different there's hardly a common thread other than '2 sides during the Cold War'.
i_am_proteus 5y ago
Do recall that the Soviets for a good bit had a leg up on rocketry and were more or less neck-and-neck on thermonuclear weapons. When your adversary has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons aimed at your cities, you do whatever you can to avoid those being used, including whatever espionage you can get away with.
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  And when the Soviets found themselves in this exact situations, those rascals too had resorted to whatever espionage they could get away with! The nerve of them! In the early 2010 I've read a news story about Czechs finding and declassifying some old military plans from the 1970-ies (desgined in the USSR and then supplied to the rest of Warsaw Pact) which went along the lines of "launch the strategical nuclear strike, then take over the Europe with conventional troops (with possible use of tactical nuclear waeponry)". The story went into some details into how the strike directions in those plans were actually radically different from what NATO at those times expected the Soviets to use, so it was a rather interesting read. And then, in the very last paragraph of the story, it makes an off-hand remark that those plans had an explicit directive in them that they are to be enacted only in the wake of the nuclear attack on a member of the Warsaw Pact. Ah. So those were plans were less of "okay, let's figure out how to set the world ablaze and then rule whatever's left" kind and more of "in case of being nuked: a) nuke back; b) ...try to take over whatever's left, I guess?" kind. Obviously, putting that remark at the beginnig of the story where every reader would read it would lessen the story's intended impression of the scary murderous Reds.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    The plans did indeed exist and Czechoslovak People's Army was expected to fight its way up to French Lyon until it would be utterly decimated by tactical nuclear weapons of the enemy.
- a_square_peg 5y ago
  > When your adversary has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons aimed at your cities, you do whatever you can to avoid those being used, including whatever espionage you can get away with. Not saying there's anything wrong with espionage - just saying that Americans seem to have an overly adversarial mentality with severe inability to distinguish the difference between real vs. perceived threats. At least from the interviewed submariners, the Soviets viewed their American counterparts as colleagues whereas the Americans viewed Soviets as enemy. Replying to an American boasting about who was 'winning' during a Soviet-US summit, a commander said through a translator: "tell this young man that when veterans get together, it doesn't matter who won or lost - it's enough that both survived."

oblio 5y ago

I read somewhere that it's not entirely unlikely that the brand of socialism/communism in the Soviet Union became more extreme because of foreign attack. Socialism was considered, probably rightly so, a mortal threat to current political and social systems so the communist camp in Russia was under assault from day 1. For those that forgot, Russia was an ally in WW1 and once it withdrew from the war due to huge war fatigue, Russia was invaded by Britain, the US, Japan, I'm probably forgetting a bunch of dozen other invaders. For what was basically a matter of internal policy and later a civil war. Of course, nothing could have guaranteed that the extremists such as the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin, wouldn't have won even if left alone.

a_square_peg 5y ago
That's an interesting angle, thanks for sharing. The book gives an impression that many American submariners were driven by mission whereas the Soviet ones took it as a job. A memorable quote from a Soviet commander (Bagdasaryan) who's submarine has collided with an American sub and was reprimanded, was how he would like to "have a drink and think together how to avoid similar collision in the future" with his American counterpart. Unfortunately, the American commander had passed away by this time.
jollybean 5y ago
Let us please dispense with the moral ambiguity of our view of the Soviet Union. They was also an 'ally' in WW2, I think 'enemy of my enemy' would be a more apt term. The Soviets were an authoritarian mass murdering regime (Stalin murdered 4-5 million on purpose in Ukraine, but that's just one small item on the list) that already ruthlessly ruled much of Central Asia, and the only reason the Czechs, E. Germans, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians etc. were in the 'Warsaw Pact' was due to forcible acquiescence at the point of a gun: those states were nation-sized prisons, forcibly monitored by Stasi or Stasi-like forces, who were in turn monitored by the KGB, in very draconian terms. Meanwhile, NATO was made up of very willing participants. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we can see where those states more or less landed in terms of alignment. The Soviets were all over the world trying to take control of individual government groups, providing money, intelligence, weapons etc. in order to take direct control of government, and have them controlled in much the same manner they did Poland, Hungary etc.. and where they were successfull it was bad. The American model exemplified by US support of House of Saud is excessively benign: don't attack the US or the world order, don't align with the Soviets or China, sell your goods to whoever you want but at free market prices, maintain stable governance ... and that's that. In Chile, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, problems 'came to ahead' due to very direct influence of the Soviets and we're still reeling from it to this day. Not to overstate things entirely, but during the Wiemar Republic, Stalin had complete and direct control over the German Communist party, who had ~17% of the Bundestag, and they had their own 'thug forces' out there beating people up, killing police (on a couple of occasions). Needless to say, could you imagine some antagonizing foreign dictatorship directly controlling 17% of UK Parliament or US Congress? I wouldn't say that was a primary cause of anything, but at least pretty big driver of what followed.
- oblio 5y ago
  > Let us please dispense with the moral ambiguity of our view of the Soviet Union. We're talking past each other. I'm talking about the *birth* of the Soviet Union. Imperial Russia, no matter what you may think of its morals, was an ally of the Western powers. It fought together with them, it was completely exhausted by the war, it collapsed. Immediately after its collapse, the Western powers, acting very much like hyenas (US, UK, France, Japan, etc), invaded their former ally. The new Russian factions fought each other and fought off the invaders. How do you look internal politics look in a country in such a situation? Do you think moderates have any chance? When your former allies are betraying you, your country was ravaged by war and is now in a civil war? The hypothesis was that we will never know for sure if Russia wouldn't have gotten a more moderate socialist government without foreign invasion. It's an "what if" scenario.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Yes, Imperial Russia was definitely a different thing altogether. But it's a stretch to say that those countries 'invaded' Russia. There was 'backing' of a side during a revolution, that's not the same thing. The American revolution was supported by France and the American civil war had 'backing' by other parties. I don't think the backing of outside powers is hugely relevant to that outcome, that said, the point in general (i.e. actual outside invaders) is reasonable. I think it's different in every situation though. I mean Afghanistan, Chile, Cuba, Libya ... all so different there's hardly a common thread other than '2 sides during the Cold War'.

i_am_proteus 5y ago

Do recall that the Soviets for a good bit had a leg up on rocketry and were more or less neck-and-neck on thermonuclear weapons. When your adversary has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons aimed at your cities, you do whatever you can to avoid those being used, including whatever espionage you can get away with.

Joker_vD 5y ago
And when the Soviets found themselves in this exact situations, those rascals too had resorted to whatever espionage they could get away with! The nerve of them! In the early 2010 I've read a news story about Czechs finding and declassifying some old military plans from the 1970-ies (desgined in the USSR and then supplied to the rest of Warsaw Pact) which went along the lines of "launch the strategical nuclear strike, then take over the Europe with conventional troops (with possible use of tactical nuclear waeponry)". The story went into some details into how the strike directions in those plans were actually radically different from what NATO at those times expected the Soviets to use, so it was a rather interesting read. And then, in the very last paragraph of the story, it makes an off-hand remark that those plans had an explicit directive in them that they are to be enacted only in the wake of the nuclear attack on a member of the Warsaw Pact. Ah. So those were plans were less of "okay, let's figure out how to set the world ablaze and then rule whatever's left" kind and more of "in case of being nuked: a) nuke back; b) ...try to take over whatever's left, I guess?" kind. Obviously, putting that remark at the beginnig of the story where every reader would read it would lessen the story's intended impression of the scary murderous Reds.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  The plans did indeed exist and Czechoslovak People's Army was expected to fight its way up to French Lyon until it would be utterly decimated by tactical nuclear weapons of the enemy.
a_square_peg 5y ago
> When your adversary has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons aimed at your cities, you do whatever you can to avoid those being used, including whatever espionage you can get away with. Not saying there's anything wrong with espionage - just saying that Americans seem to have an overly adversarial mentality with severe inability to distinguish the difference between real vs. perceived threats. At least from the interviewed submariners, the Soviets viewed their American counterparts as colleagues whereas the Americans viewed Soviets as enemy. Replying to an American boasting about who was 'winning' during a Soviet-US summit, a commander said through a translator: "tell this young man that when veterans get together, it doesn't matter who won or lost - it's enough that both survived."