Yuri Bezmenov worked as a "journalist" for Novosti Press Agency, which was a disinformation and propaganda agency controlled by the Soviet non-military intelligence agency (commonly known as the KGB). The Soviets called their disinformation work through Novosti "active measures," though Schuman uses the phrase "ideological subversion" to describe the activity of Novosti. Actually, "ideological subversion" was more of a term used by Soviet and Soviet-bloc propaganda to characterize the supposed actions of the West to undermine socialist and Communist ideology within the Soviet Union.
In the fifties and sixties, the Soviets and their allies began to use more creative means to mislead and misinform the West and the Third World, creating a cumulative effect that would in the long term be favorable to the Soviet Union. Novosti Press Agency was an overt and legitimate organization that published articles and books mainly for the West. It was ostensibly independent of the government, but we now know that this is a ridiculous claim. Most people assumed (and observed) that Novosti's work was somewhat propagandist, but until Bezmenov many did not realize the extent to which Novosti worked closely with the KGB to produce disinformation and mislead foreign governments and organizations, to the extent that Novosti's goals were quite simply the KGB's goals.
Looking back, many people might think that no one really took Novosti seriously. This is not the case. Western journalists and newspapers treated Novosti as a legitimate source of news and opinion. Papers like The New York Times used Novosti press releases just as they would the press releases of the AP, Reuters, AFP, or Groupe Presse. Novosti publications like the magazine Soviet Life and various books and travelogues were widely available in the United States and throughout the world and treated for the most part as honest, legitimate publications. Many of these publications can be found simply by searching Amazon for "Novosti Press Agency.""
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