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Comment by rshnotsecure | Hacker News Reader

I see this story often, and it is basically true.

I would like to remind everyone though that for every regime change the US engineered, the KGB was responsible for many times more.

Part of the USSR's philosophy after all was worldwide revolution that was to be exported to all countries.

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Please substantiate your claim with a source. I'm pretty sure the US is responsible for more, although I don't have the numbers at hand. It is a much longer-lasting empire that used the Soviet Union as an excuse to knock over any neocolonial country, such as Iran, that even thought about taking money from the profits of international companies and spending it on its own citizens.

The thing that's interesting to me about USSR and USA is that they were always playing the same games, tit for tat. Poison cigars, the space race, funneling money to rebel groups to instigate riots... and then regime change and disinformation campaigns. You know I remember reading 10 years ago about how US Army was developing the tech to generate sock-puppet accounts across social media channels to influence public opinion and distribute propaganda. Did we really think it wouldn't be used against us?

Here it is, 2011 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110318/02153313534/us-mi...

"Apparently a company called Ntrepid has scored the contract and the US military is getting ready to roll out these "sock puppet" online personas. Of course, it insists that all of this is targeting foreign individuals, not anyone in the US."

HBGary, Palantir, Berico, anything they build will be seen and copied by foreign intelligence. So we're still stuck playing tit for tat.

The USSR's philosophy was that under Lenin, under Stalin all hopes of worldwide revolution were abandoned and the philosophy shifted to "Socialism in one country".

More relevant to your point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_involvement_in_regime_c... (This includes the overthrow of Nazi and Imperial Japanese invasion governments, and a good third were post-USSR)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... (This includes only Nazi overthrows)

As you can see, the second is significantly longer despite not including regime change attempts against Imperial Japanese governments.

If you remove WW2 and WW1, the US list is over twice as long.

Did you mean "unlike under Lenin"?

I meant that under Lenin, the philosophy was to export revolution worldwide so that the Soviet Union would integrate into a worldwide, international socialism.

Under Stalin, the policy of "Socialism in one country" was implemented, and foreign intervention was no longer a priority nor a philosophical goal. Which is why, under Stalin, the USSR attempted to ally with capitalist nations.

I agree, I just think you said it wrong in your original post!

Oh yes, I can totally understand how I wrote it badly. Thanks!

I'm sure about more regime chances but the KGB definitely did more volume of things like this. The mitrokhin archive is but a fraction of the history of the KGB and it details huge programs around the world.

The USSR was a prison for 300 million and it was run as such.

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