During the Cold War, the confrontation between the United States and the USSR unfolded, as they say, on all fronts. With the help of radio stations broadcasting in Russian and other languages of the peoples of the USSR, the West waged an ongoing information war against the Soviet Union. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, pro-Soviet and pro-American political forces entered into direct armed confrontation, which often escalated into protracted and bloody wars. The United States and its allies in every possible way sponsored and supported the opposition forces on the territory of the USSR and the countries of the "socialist camp".
But the Soviet country, investing enormous funds and forces, including sending soldiers and officers, to developing countries, remained practically indifferent to the undermining of the foundations of political systems in the countries of the West themselves. Perhaps, if the USSR had supported not so much the partisans of Mozambique or the revolutionary government of Ethiopia, but the ideologically close left and radical left movements in the United States and Western Europe, the end of the Cold War would have been different.
Since the late 1950s, the United States has provided an excellent field for deploying subversive actions against Washington. Post-war American society experienced many problems and was filled with the most varied and complex contradictions. Perhaps the most acute problem in the post-war United States was the problem of the social and political situation of black Americans. It was the harsh war years that gave African Americans every reason to claim the same rights that white Americans had.
Black Americans did not understand why they, who went through the entire war, fought with the Japanese, Germans, Italians, were deprived of elementary civil rights. In addition, the rise of the anti-colonial movement on the African continent has been very encouraging for African Americans. It seemed strange that in Ghana or Kenya, Africans would receive all political rights, while in the United States they would remain second-class citizens.
In the United States, a massive movement against segregation began, from which less numerous, but more active and radical African American political groups began to separate. They were dissatisfied with the "compromising", in their opinion, position of the leaders of the movement against segregation and believed that African Americans need to act more decisively, to take an example from their fellows in yesterday's African colonies.
"Black" radicals proposed to completely isolate themselves from white Americans, to preserve and develop African identity.
Many of them were so negative about the "white civilization" that they even abandoned Christianity, which they considered the religion of white Americans, and converted to Islam. Since the early 1960s. The Nation of Islam, a religious and political movement of black Muslims, gained significant popularity, which was joined by many iconic figures of the African American community, including the frantic Malcolm Little, who became known as Malcolm X and took the Muslim name el-Hajj Malik al-Shabaz.
In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated, leading to the creation of perhaps the most famous African American radical organization, the Black Panthers. It was created by 30-year-old Bobby (Robert) Seal, a former US Air Force contractor who later worked as a metal carver and then trained as a political scientist, and 24-year-old Hugh Percy Newton, who from a young age participated in youth gangs, but at the same time managed to learn at the law school.
The self-defense party "Black Panthers" quickly evolved to the left, abandoning the concept of "black racism" and moving on to socialist phraseology. However, when white students asked the revolutionary-minded African Americans how they could help, the Black Panthers answered unequivocally - create your own White Panthers. And an organization with this name was indeed created, although it did not manage to become either as numerous or as influential and dangerous as the older African American prototype.
If at one time the Soviet special services had begun to provide comprehensive support to this organization, Moscow would have received an unprecedented opportunity to influence the mood of the broad masses of the African American population. However, the Soviet Union preferred to provide moral and informational support to the softer, integrationist trend in the African American movement, which was represented by the followers of Martin Luther King. But the integrationists did not seek to change the American political system and did not, by and large, pose a threat to Washington. Moreover, the integration of African Americans became an obstacle to further influence on the protest moods, since, when receiving civil rights, many of them calmed down and no longer had claims to Washington.
In fairness, it should be noted that the Black Panthers themselves did not gravitate towards the Soviet model of socialism. Their political views were an ebullient mixture of African American nationalism and Maoism. In those years, it was Maoist China, as an example of a developing country, yesterday's semi-colony that turned into an independent power, that inspired many revolutionaries in Africa, Asia and America. So the Black Panthers were no exception. They tried to form structures of parallel power in the "black" neighborhoods of American cities. Robert Seal became chairman and prime minister of the Black Panthers, and Hugh Newton became secretary of defense, leading the militias formed by the African American youth party. If at the time the Black Panthers had received enough weapons and organizational assistance, they could have ignited a good fire in the United States. Of the socialist countries, only Cuba provided assistance to the Black Panthers. It was on "Liberty Island" that Hugh Newton hid when he was accused of murder.
Deprived of serious outside support, the Black Panthers party eventually fell into crime. In 1982, it ceased to exist, and the groups formed on its basis were more criminal than political groups. Redistribution of spheres of influence in African American neighborhoods, drug trafficking, racketeering began to interest them much more than political struggle. Moreover, the racial problem itself in the United States was losing its acuteness.
In addition to the Black Panthers, the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s could hypothetically provide assistance to a number of American movements and organizations. So, in the early 1960s. in the United States, a massive youth and antiwar movement developed. It had several directions at once - from countercultural hippies, whose subculture has captured a significant part of young Americans and spread throughout the world, and to the very large movement "Students for a Democratic Society" (SDS). It was the SDO that organized huge demonstrations against the Vietnam War, mobilizing young Americans against Washington's policies. Within the movement, which was rather a conglomerate of the most diverse and heterogeneous groups and circles, as well as individuals, genuine ideological pluralism prevailed, which created a very real prospect for the SDO to turn into a mass left-wing structure.
In addition to the usual young liberals, dissatisfied with US military policy and segregation, who advocated more freedom in universities, the SDO also included numerous leftists who could be directed in the right direction. But the Soviet special services did not work on this. Moreover, in the USSR, American (and European) young radicals were treated very ambiguously. They were accused of leftism, revisionism, laughed at the appearance of hippie students and their way of life. That is, instead of turning the Western "new left" into potential allies, Moscow has steadily formed out of them the image of, if not enemies, then at least frivolous "petty bourgeois" people with whom there is no point in cooperating.
If the USSR did not support the SDO and the Black Panthers, then what can we say about less significant, but no less radical American organizations, and there were more than enough of them in those years. For example, in 1969, the famous "Weathermen" ("Meteorologists") appeared - the Weather Underground Organization, which arose on the basis of the radical part of the SDO and existed for almost a decade, until 1977. The name of this interesting organization was taken from the line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues. The leaders of the "Wesermen" were famous figures of the student and countercultural movement - Billy Ayers (born 1944) and Bernardine Dorn (born 1942).
For all their counterculture, the "Wesermen" held several very cool, as they would say now, actions. In 1970, Professor Timothy Leary, who is called the "father of the psychedelic revolution", was sentenced to 38 years for possession of marijuana. His supporters contacted the "Wesermen" and they organized the professor's escape and his transfer to Algeria, where some of the leaders of the "Black Panthers" party were at that time. The second well-known Wesermen action was the explosion on March 1, 1971 in the Capitol building, and on May 19, 1972, on the birthday of the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, an explosion thundered in the Pentagon, the citadel of the American military. The sabotage caused the flooding of the premises of the US Department of Defense and the loss of part of the classified data that were stored on tapes in the flooded premises.
After the end of the Vietnam War, the Wesermen ceased to exist. Billy Ayers focused on teaching and was a professor at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bernardine Dorn, his wife, who directly led the combat operations of the "meteorologists", remained one of the most wanted criminals in the United States for three years. Then, in 1980, the couple legalized themselves and Bernardine Dorn made a good career as a lawyer, working in prominent law firms in the country, and then, from 1991 to 2013. - Assistant Professor of Law at the Center for Family and Children's Justice, School of Law, Northwestern University, USA. That is, the leaders of the "Wesermen" were quite educated people who, under a certain set of circumstances, could become the basis for the formation of the left American elite.
The Yippies, the International Youth Party, founded in 1967 by countercultural leaders Jerry Rubin, Abby Hoffman and Paul Krassner, might well have been suitable for the "disintegration" of American society and subversive actions against Washington. Although the Yippies were originally a purely countercultural movement that was more interested in art and lifestyle protest than politics, this popular movement could be exploited as well. Moreover, the Yippies actively participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, maintained close ties with the Black Panthers and other radical organizations.
The most famous Yippie action was, perhaps, the nomination of a pig named Pegasus as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, which was supposed to demonstrate to the American society the absurdity of the presidential election. Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman were nearly given five years in prison, but then the leaders of the yippies still managed to stay free.
Rather than fueling a protest movement, fueling an anti-government fire on university campuses and African American neighborhoods, the USSR pulled out of strong support for the American left. Very serious opportunities were missed to destabilize the US political system and destroy it from within, by the forces of disgruntled Americans themselves.
The American special services acted quite differently, which sought to support and encourage any social movement, be it circles of intellectuals - dissidents, Baltic or Ukrainian nationalists, informal youth or Jews wishing to leave for Israel. In the strategy of inciting and stimulating protest sentiments, the United States has succeeded much more than the Soviet Union. At a certain point, Moscow simply could not and did not want to resist the onslaught of American propaganda, especially since personnel replacement was taking place in the Soviet elite, people who were inclined to change the political system came to power.
