- Columbia University, Harriman Institute, Department Memberadd
- Olga Bertelsen is an Associate Professor of Global Security and Intelligence at Tiffin University's School of Crimin... moreOlga Bertelsen is an Associate Professor of Global Security and Intelligence at Tiffin University's School of Criminal Justice and Social Science/Homeland Security & Terrorism. Educated at the Medical State University, Ukraine, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, U.S., Penn State University, U.S., and the University of Nottingham, U.K., she published widely on Soviet/Russian active measures, operations of ideological subversion, the strategies and tactics of the Soviet secret police, and state and political violence , and edited anthologies of archival documents on Les Kurbas and persecutions of Jews in Ukraine. She is the editor of Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine and Russian Active Measures, and the author of The House of Writers in Ukraine, the 1930s, and In the Labyrinth of the KGB.edit
This article examines the activities of two Russian front organizations targeting Western academia and broader international audiences. These activities are part of contemporary Russian information warfare and are fundamentally entrenched... more
This article examines the activities of two Russian front organizations targeting Western academia and broader international audiences. These activities are part of contemporary Russian information warfare and are fundamentally entrenched in Soviet intelligence traditions, aiming to reinforce Russian official historical narratives and propaganda. The objectives of these organizations include undermining Western scholars’ critical perspectives and shaping public opinion favorable to the Russian Federation’s foreign policy and its methods of governing. Backed by the Russian secret services and the presidential administration, these organizations engage in using and coopting academics who help them disseminate Russian historical myths and propaganda that demonize the West in general and Ukraine in particular. An analysis of selected cases of Russian influence on Western academia and public opinion present a sample of the wide range of Russian intelligence practices symptomatic of the Russian anti-Western information campaign.
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This article examines the activities of two Russian front organizations targeting Western academia and broader international audiences. These activities are part of contemporary Russian information warfare and are fundamentally entrenched... more
This article examines the activities of two Russian front
organizations targeting Western academia and broader international
audiences. These activities are part of contemporary Russian information
warfare and are fundamentally entrenched in Soviet intelligence traditions,
aiming to reinforce Russian official historical narratives and propaganda.
The objectives of these organizations include undermining Western scholars’ critical perspectives and shaping public opinion favorable to the Russian Federation’s foreign policy and its methods of governing. Backed by the Russian secret services and the presidential administration, these
organizations engage in using and coopting academics who help them
disseminate Russian historical myths and propaganda that demonize the
West in general and Ukraine in particular. An analysis of selected cases of
Russian influence on Western academia and public opinion present a sample of the wide range of Russian intelligence practices symptomatic of the Russian anti-Western information campaign.
organizations targeting Western academia and broader international
audiences. These activities are part of contemporary Russian information
warfare and are fundamentally entrenched in Soviet intelligence traditions,
aiming to reinforce Russian official historical narratives and propaganda.
The objectives of these organizations include undermining Western scholars’ critical perspectives and shaping public opinion favorable to the Russian Federation’s foreign policy and its methods of governing. Backed by the Russian secret services and the presidential administration, these
organizations engage in using and coopting academics who help them
disseminate Russian historical myths and propaganda that demonize the
West in general and Ukraine in particular. An analysis of selected cases of
Russian influence on Western academia and public opinion present a sample of the wide range of Russian intelligence practices symptomatic of the Russian anti-Western information campaign.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract This archival study focuses on secrecy, Soviet disinformation campaigns, and active measures designed to divert the attention of the international community from the 1986 Chernobyl accident, and to conceal state mismanagement,... more
Abstract This archival study focuses on secrecy, Soviet disinformation campaigns, and active measures designed to divert the attention of the international community from the 1986 Chernobyl accident, and to conceal state mismanagement, violence, and inefficiencies of the Soviet Union nuclear industry. More specifically, it illuminates the implications of the Soviet cover-up operation and its ultimate failure, particularly due to the efforts of the American intelligence community, including the CIA. American technological progress and intelligence were instrumental to the CIA’s understandings of the damage caused by Chernobyl, the dynamics of decontamination and its ethnic discriminatory practices, as well as the extent of the Soviet disinformation campaign. Importantly, Soviet active measures designed to obscure the scale and the consequences of the disaster had the opposite effect from what was expected, helping the American intelligence community accurately predict the potential political crisis in the USSR exacerbated by the Soviet cover-up operations and state violence. American analysts argued that popular concerns about the violent nature of the Soviet regime and discriminatory draft and decontamination policies would persist, amplifying ethnic tensions in Soviet republics. In hindsight, their analysis had profound predictive value.
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This study analyzes the Soviet politics of silence during Stalin's collectivization campaign in the context of peasant resistance, state violence, and the famine in 1928–1929, and illuminates the primary function of strategic... more
This study analyzes the Soviet politics of silence during Stalin's collectivization campaign in the context of peasant resistance, state violence, and the famine in 1928–1929, and illuminates the primary function of strategic silence—an information blockade which creates a space for violence and human suffering. Only in silence does the landscape of violence emerge and its spiral dynamics consume everyone, assailants and victims, proceeding swiftly to the eventual destruction of this landscape. In Ukraine, strategic silence and the relatively hermetic information blockade highlights the intentional nature of state violence: it produced a ghetto of exclusion that helped crush peasant resistance to collectivization and prevented Ukraine's potential secession from the Union. More profoundly, the politics of silence is analyzed as “cultural” violence and one of the most important building blocks in the foundation of genocide that routinely provokes and escalates direct violence,...
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This study analyzes the foundations of unity developed by the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers, and explores post-Khrushchev Kharkiv as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and... more
This study analyzes the foundations of unity developed by the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers, and explores post-Khrushchev Kharkiv as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s-70s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s-70s was a period of intense covert KGB operations and “active measures” designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines. The history of the literati residing in Kharkiv in the 1960s-70s, their formal and informal practices and rituals, and their strategies of coping with state antisemitism, anti-Ukrainian...
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During the 1960s–1970s, the Soviet government identified two major enemies in Ukraine and abroad—Ukrainian nationalists and Zionists. According to the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB), bo...
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This article examines the goals and practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine in the 1970s, a Soviet institution that functioned as an ideological organ fighting against Ukrainian nationalists domestically and abroad. The... more
This article examines the goals and practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine in the 1970s, a Soviet institution that functioned as an ideological organ fighting against Ukrainian nationalists domestically and abroad. The central figure of this article is Heorhii Shevel who governed the Ministry from 1970 to 1980 and whose tactics, strategies, and practices reveal the existence of a distinct phenomenon in the Soviet Union—the nationally conscious political elite with double loyalties who, by action or inaction, expanded the space of nationalism in Ukraine. This research illuminates a paradox of pervasive Soviet power, which produced an institution that supported and reinforced Soviet “anti-nationalist” ideology, simultaneously creating an environment where heterodox views or sentiments were stimulated and nurtured.
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Efraim Zuroff and Per Anders Rudling seem to have overlooked the primary focus of my study in their zeal to emphasize their doctrine. As a result, their comments have little to do with the main topic discussed in the article. They chose... more
Efraim Zuroff and Per Anders Rudling seem to have overlooked the primary focus of my study in their zeal to emphasize their doctrine. As a result, their comments have little to do with the main topic discussed in the article. They chose to focus on the Demjanjuk affair, although his story is merely one aspect of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) operation “Retribution.” This distraction from the central point of my study is precisely the sort of reaction the KGB hoped to generate with this operation. Additionally, the authors refer to this study—grounded in archival analysis— as “assertions” when it challenges their support of the Soviet narrative. Zuroff and Rudling’s diatribe is no substitute for a solid argument and research, not the unjust labeling of “Holocaust deniers.” The international academic community has routinely observed the uninformed and anti-Ukrainian statements by Zuroff and publications by Rudling that provoke severe rebuttals of his narratives, notor...
This study examines Soviet nationalities policies and the elimination of Ukrainian intellectuals during the Great Terror in Ukraine by exploring the individual history of the Ukrainian literary figure Mykhailo Bykovets', one of the... more
This study examines Soviet nationalities policies and the elimination of Ukrainian intellectuals during the Great Terror in Ukraine by exploring the individual history of the Ukrainian literary figure Mykhailo Bykovets', one of the founders of the literary association "Pluh" (Plough) and one of the initiators of the Literary Discussion that emerged in the mid-twenties. The research explores the modus operandi of a key Soviet institution, the GPU/NKVD, and its proactive methods of the de-nationalization of Ukrainian society. Bykovets's criminal case seems to be axiomatic of the Great Terror, exhibiting common patterns of the secret organs' procedural and investigative tactics. Through an analysis of Bykovets's archival file, and the themes and questions that were central to the investigation of Bykovets's "crimes," the study illuminates the persistent national vector of repression against the representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia during the Great Terror.
This article examines the goals and practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine in the 1970s, a Soviet institution that functioned as an ideological organ fighting against Ukrainian nationalists domestically and abroad. The... more
This article examines the goals and practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine in the 1970s, a Soviet institution that functioned as an ideological organ fighting against Ukrainian nationalists domestically and abroad. The central figure of this article is Heorhii Shevel who governed the Ministry from 1970 to 1980 and whose tactics, strategies, and practices reveal the existence of a distinct phenomenon in the Soviet Union-the nationally conscious political elite with double loyalties who, by action or inaction, expanded the space of nationalism in Ukraine. This research illuminates a paradox of pervasive Soviet power, which produced an institution that supported and reinforced Soviet "antinationalist" ideology, simultaneously creating an environment where heterodox views or sentiments were stimulated and nurtured.
This study analyzes the foundations of unity developed by the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers, and explores post-Khrushchev Kharkiv as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and... more
This study analyzes the foundations of unity developed by the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers, and explores post-Khrushchev Kharkiv as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s-70s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s-70s was a period of intense covert KGB operations and "active measures" designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines. The history of the literati residing in Kharkiv in the 1960s-70s, their formal and informal practices and rituals, and their strategies of coping with state antisemitism, anti-Ukrainianism, terror, and waves of repression demonstrate that the immutability of ethnic barriers, often attributed to Ukrainian-Russian-Jewish encounters and systematically reinforced by the KGB, seems to be a myth and a stereotype. The writers negated them, escaping from and at the same time augmenting the politics of the place. Their spatial and social practices and habits helped them create a cohesive community grounded in shared history, shared interests in literature and dedication to it, and shared threats emanating from city politics and the KGB. They transcended ethnic boundaries constructed by the authorities, striving for unity, free from Soviet definitions.
This study focuses on nuclear tourism, which flourished a decade ago in the Exclusion Zone, a regimented area around the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) established in 1986, where the largest recorded nuclear explosion in human... more
This study focuses on nuclear tourism, which flourished a decade ago in the Exclusion Zone, a regimented area around the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) established in 1986, where the largest recorded nuclear explosion in human history occurred. The mass pilgrimage movement transformed the place into an open air museum, a space that preserves the remnants of Soviet culture, revealing human tragedies of displacement and deaths, and the nature of state nuclear power. This study examines the impact of the site on its visitors and the motivations for their persistence and activities in the Zone, and argues that through photography, cartography, exploration, and discovery, the pilgrims attempt to decode the historical and ideological meaning of Chornobyl and its significance for future generations. Ultimately, the aesthetic and political space of the Zone helps them establish a conceptual and mnemonic connection between the Soviet past and Ukraine's present and future. Their practices, in turn, help maintain the Zone's spatial and epistemological continuity. Importantly, Chornobyl seems to be polysemic in nature, inviting interpretations and shaping people's national and intellectual identities.
After carefully reading Olga Bertelsen's article, we feel strongly compelled to express our concerns regarding the numerous factual errors and significant misrepresentations on which the author bases her primary assertions.
ABSTRACT
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This study analyzes the Soviet politics of silence during Stalin's collectivization campaign in the context of peasant resistance, state violence, and the famine in 1928–1929, and illuminates the primary function of strategic silence—an... more
This study analyzes the Soviet politics of silence during Stalin's collectivization campaign in the context of peasant resistance, state violence, and the famine in 1928–1929, and illuminates the primary function of strategic silence—an information blockade which creates a space for violence and human suffering. Only in silence does the landscape of violence emerge and its spiral dynamics consume everyone, assailants and victims, proceeding swiftly to the eventual destruction of this landscape. In Ukraine, strategic silence and the relatively hermetic information blockade highlights the intentional nature of state violence: it produced a ghetto of exclusion that helped crush peasant resistance to collectivization and prevented Ukraine's potential secession from the Union. More profoundly, the politics of silence is analyzed as ''cultural'' violence and one of the most important building blocks in the foundation of genocide that routinely provokes and escalates direct violence, a phenomenon which culminates in massacres, repressions, and famines, as happened in the Ukrainian case.
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ABSTRACT