In 1979, the KGB continued sounding the klaxon regarding the nightmare scenarios they were busy uncovering in terms of hostile activities that would encompass the 1980 Olympic Games, doing irreparable harm to the Soviet Union’s otherwise pristine image. As we noted in our earlier post about the 1978 version of conspiracy theories, some of this may have been concocted in the higher KGB echelons, or they could have been the imaginings of underlings hoping to get the attention of their superiors – after all, if the promised scenarios did not come to pass, everyone up and down the chain could lay claim to having protected the country’s honor.
The translation of the 6-page Secret report from Yuriy Andropov follows.
30 July 1979 No. 1455-A Secret
To the Central Committee of the CPSU
Concerning the hostile activities of the enemy in connection with the 1980 Olympics
Summary. The enemy’s special services, foreign anti-Soviet centers, and Western mass media are intensifying their campaign to discredit the 1980 Olympics. In this regard, so-called “committees” and “groups” with an anti-Olympic focus are being created abroad. The issue of accrediting representatives of subversive radio stations at the Olympics continues to be blown up.
The KGB is receiving information about the intensification of subversive activities by enemy special services, foreign ideological sabotage centers, and anti-Soviet organizations to discredit the 1980 Olympics and use the XXII Olympic Games for purposes hostile to the USSR.
Recently, the West has exhibited a significant increase in the scale of propaganda campaigns aimed at inciting anti-Soviet sentiments among the foreign public in connection with the Moscow Olympics. The instigators of the propaganda hype, widely using the entire arsenal of the media, are trying to arouse mistrust of the Soviet Union as the organizer of the Games, artificially focusing the attention of the Western public on secondary or far-fetched issues. Many elements of the bourgeois press have given their employees the task of starting to collect and prepare materials on “shortcomings in the Soviet economy, trade, the service sector, and the construction of Olympic facilities,” which allegedly could pose a “serious threat to holding the Games at the proper level.”
The enemy does not stop at exerting direct psychological pressure on the Western public. An example of this is the book by J. Patterson, recently published in the USA, entitled “Instructions for Committing Terrorist Acts,” in which a provocative scenario is played out about the capture of athletes as hostages by a group of terrorists during the Moscow Olympics.
A wide range of anti-Sovietists of all stripes are involved in the psychological manipulation of the population of Western countries – from parliamentarians and government members to degraded renegades such as Bukovsky, Plyushch and the like.
The enemy’s special services and foreign centers of ideological sabotage continue to actively use the hackneyed slogan of “defending human rights in the Soviet Union” in their hostile activities against our country. In this regard, so-called “committees” and “groups” of anti-Olympic orientation have recently appeared abroad in large numbers.
In England, 30 Members of Parliament joined the “Anti-Olympic Committee,” whose leadership tasked the participants to conduct campaigns to discredit the XXII Olympic Games in Moscow.
In Belgium, the “Moscow-80 Committee” (secretary – Joe Beni) was created, which made a series of inflammatory appeals to the Western public in connection with the upcoming Olympics. The organizers of the “committee” advocate for the “release of political prisoners,” call for “respect for democratic rights in the USSR,” and put forward other provocative and demagogic demands. According to available data, such anti-socialist organizations as “Czechoslovakia – 10 years,” “New Jewish Resistance,” and others joined this “committee.” The “committee” began publishing and distributing a bulletin, sustained in the traditions of blatant anti-Sovietism, and also decided to involve Amnesty International in its activities, which is on the payroll of the CIA and individual functionaries of Zionist organizations.
In Holland, at the initiative of a group of parliamentarians from four leading parties, a committee called “Olympic Games and Human Rights” was formed. It included 11 members of parliament, representatives of Dutch trade unions, the church, higher education institutions, a number of famous athletes, and lawyers. At a press conference, the organizers of the “committee” stated that their main goal was “bringing the USSR’s human rights policy into line with international treaties.” The leadership of the “committee” plans to carry out its activities through the European Parliament in the future, creating an appropriate international body for this purpose.
In West Germany, activists from the Society for Human Rights created “The Committee for Preparations for the Olympic Games.” The “committee’s” main tasks include sending materials “on human rights violations in the USSR” to sports unions in Western countries; personal training of athletes traveling to the Soviet Union to commit provocative acts; and encouraging countries participating in the 1980 Olympics to take active steps “to clarify the human rights situation, suppression, and oppression of national minorities in the Soviet Union.”
At the meetings of the so-called “Helsinki Accords Monitoring Groups” held in France and Switzerland, the enemy made extensive use of the vicious anti-Soviet speeches of Plyushch, who called for “making the Olympic Games in Moscow a mass demonstration in defense of human rights in the USSR,” and Bukovsky, who called the Olympic sailing regatta in Tallinn “holding the Games in occupied territory.”
The clerical centers of the West continue to increase their efforts to organize activities hostile to the USSR during the preparation and holding of the Moscow Olympics.
According to information received, certain Catholic circles abroad are nurturing the idea of establishing their own Vatican representation at the XXII Olympic Games. The possibility of one of the National Olympic Committees appealing to the IOC with a petition to perform the Papal Anthem in the event of a Catholic athlete receiving an Olympic award is being discussed. The idea of ”the Pope consecrating the Olympic flame in Thessaloniki” is constantly being given serious consideration.
Some clerics, in an attempt to discredit the Moscow Olympics and exert psychological pressure on the Western public, are spreading openly false rumors and gossip. For example, the reactionary clergy of the American Autocephalous Orthodox Church [Orthodox Church in America – OCA] and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church of the USA [Ukrainian Orthodox Church in America], together with the editorial boards of the anti-Soviet newspapers Svoboda and Meta, are vigorously spreading the scenario that in the summer of 1979, a new law on citizenship will allegedly be adopted in the USSR, according to which the authorities will have the right to prevent foreign citizens who arrived for the Olympics from leaving our country – relatives of persons who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the past.
Materials received by the KGB indicate that a number of Zionist organizations in Western countries have begun collecting funds that they intend to use to carry out subversive activities in the USSR during the Olympics. For these same purposes, the Zionists intend to use a certain amount of Soviet money smuggled out of the USSR. According to the data received, an action is being prepared abroad to sell Soviet banknotes located in Switzerland and other capitalist countries at a price 5-7 times cheaper than the official rate.
The international Zionist elite ardently supports the idea of buying up Soviet money, planning to implement this plan through the so-called “Fund for Assistance to Jews of the Soviet Union.”
The US intelligence services and the Western right-wing reaction are continuing their campaign for accreditation of representatives of the subversive radio stations Radio Liberty [Radio Svoboda] and Radio Free Europe at the 1980 Olympics. Recently, the US has taken a number of steps to involve NATO in financing the activities of these anti-Soviet centers. At a meeting of the radio station management in Munich, the Chairman of the Council on International Broadcasting, Gronowski, announced that he had managed to secure the consent of responsible NATO officials to make a corresponding request to the governments of the bloc’s member countries to assist in accrediting correspondents of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe at the Moscow Olympics.
The KGB, taking the current situation into account, is taking measures to identify and disrupt the enemy’s plans regarding the 1980 Olympics
Comrade I.T. Novikov, Chairman of the Organizing Committee “Olympiad-80,” has been informed.
Committee Chair //signed// Yu. Andropov
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