KGB Manual: Training the Operative for Psychological Influence of Foreigners [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

KGB Manual: Training the Operative for Psychological Influence of Foreigners [pdf]

4freerussia.org

46 pointsAnon8433 comments

> it is prudent to use the following formulas: "I understand you...", "I am not surprised that you have said this...", "I predicted your concern...", "It is good that you have mentioned this...", If I were in your place, likely I would feel the same way...", "There is much that is just in what you are saying..."

> ...

> The best way of letting him know that in fact he has asked a question is to say something like: "You have raised a very interesting question". "Your question gets right to the point." "I wasn't surprised to hear this question from you," and so on

Hm.. I hear this from my corporate superiors every now and then during All-Hands Q&A sessions. Better check their background...

EDIT: formatting

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if you wanted to psychologically manipulate westerners... you might try leaking a fake "psychological manipulation training manual" that causes them to cast doubt on ordinary everyday interactions.

Yea for real. That was my exact thought too.

Make the population see conspiracies everywhere and question everything. Even if they don't do it in practice (i.e. you still go to the doctor even though on Facebook you reject all the science) it'll have a wide scale detrimental effect.

What a world

https://www.rt.com a.k.a. Russia Today

> RT QUESTION MORE

I have the exact same thought about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics - it makes way too many people go "ah yes".

Look again at the document. Notice how it looks like a scanned document from decades ago, but the lines are all dead straight? Try searching for text..it's actually a font! The apparent imperfections in the letters is fake.

No, it’s a translation of the actual manual here it is in Russian

https://www.4freerussia.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/...

Yes you can select the letters but that’s only because of the OCR that is built into your pdf reader.

I don't think it's OCR. The imperfections in each letter are identical in every single instance. It's very clear if you zoom in

It is OCR inspect the pdf yourself the defects are also not identical at all...

https://imgur.com/a/QnfBRas

It’s a relatively clean scan and good quality print.

It can ofc be fake but you are going down some rabbit hole for the wrong reasons.

I was talking about the document that's the subject of the post.

That’s a translation of the Russian document, the KGB aren’t going to write their documents in English.

It’s literally says translated by....

This is the translator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_A._Fitzpatrick

She used to run Radio Free Europe.

I'm not sure what your point is. We all know it's a translation. I merely pointed out that it has been artificially made to look like it was scanned or photocopied, when in fact that is a special font that fakes the appearance of imperfections. You contradicted that, so I just responded to prove it.

That doesn’t makes it fake... it’s just a typewriter font.

All pages are bound on the left?

glad to see someone else other than me reacted to this obvious bullshit.

These "ordinary every day interactions" should case doubt, as they are genuinely meant for the sole purpose of psychologically manipulating you in most cases when these phrases are present.

Then it would have been written in that Boris and Natasha English.

sorry hijacking oot, do you still remember the course name from tu delft about business process management ? is it this https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/delftx-business...? thank you reply

Did you try my email? Is it not visible? Anyway. If we're talking about the same course, on Edx platform, then it was taught by prof. Alexander de Haan [1].

There was a book associated with the class, and I was able to find a OCW link at TUDelft website [2]. Unfortunately, the other links on the page are 404. I've copied the book info here:

Solving Complex Problems: Professional Group Decision-Making Support in Highly Complex Situations; A. de Haan & P. de Heer; Eleven International Publishing 2012, ISBN: 978-9490947712

I was really into MOOCs at that time and I made a project page, http://scp.naiveso.com/ It's a crap little WordPress site, but you might recognize the projects if you also took the course.

There was another called Business Process Management by the Hasso Plattner Institute on the OpenHPI site. (I started on those lessons and did one, but I also started a new job at that time so I didn't finish the course. Links here http://bpm.naiveso.com/ )

[1]: https://www.edx.org/bio/alexander-de-haan [2]: https://ocw.tudelft.nl/course-readings/readings-solving-comp...

thank you very much Sir for the information, I usually see the profile but I don't see anything.

This particular document is nothing more but a bunch of a truthful trivialities. I don't see how it can help to manipulate anyone.

You should try to feed your inner conspiracy theorist with documents such as Bezmenov interview http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-... (also it's all over youtube). You might want to skip straight to the second part as the first one is merely establishes background on what was the ussr/kgb back then. This ancient (1984) interview might ring you a tzar-bell drawing parallels to the current times.

The strategies described in the CIA field sabotage manual read almost like a detailed description of the corporate culture.

Most of the common business training courses have some section on handling objections, and appear to also be psychology based.

Dale Carnegie material, for example. Here's their "Overcoming Objections" slides: https://02f0a56ef46d93f03c90-22ac5f107621879d5667e0d7ed595bd...

"Various applied aspects of the problem of psychological influence have been widely studied in psychology abroad. Every year, a large quantity of works is pub- lished on the issues of persuasion, suggestion, and placing psychological pressure on people in various situations. Recently, it has been observed that Soviet scholars have increased their interest in this problem. A significant number of books have appeared in which directly or indirectly, issues of psychological influence are covered. The problems of educational, managerial and propaganda influence have been studied. "

Aka marketing and corps use the same tricks as ABC agents trying to get you to act in their interest, against your own best interest. Without any exaggeration.

My marketing class was more brutal than this - turn on some music so that individuals lose track of time and become more impulsive, turn on music that alienates "undesirables" loitering around the store, lightning to make clothing look most appealing in the mirror, form rapport as a salesperson so the customer feels like they are declining a close friend once they walk away from a sale. Etc.

- publish "KGB manual" as an apparent-poor-quality-scan to increase credibility and make it seem like a 'scanned original' when in fact it's a carefully-crafted font.

Nice catch. And what a weird thing to do...

This, along with what others ITT said, makes me think that the document in question is fictional. Flagged the OP post accordingly. Need proof that this is in any way connected to KGB at all.

Someone replied to my claim that it's a font earlier with a link to the original. It definitely is still a font, but apparently there is an original Russian document.

But can you _imagine_ this kind of a proof? Hint: it's mostly impossible.

Some people have interests in doing such things.

What is the provenance of this?

It wholesale incorporates western psychological concepts such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs and extensively references CIA documents. There is a large Russian literature on psychology and it doesn't get referenced at all. (e.g. Russians used gabapentinoids for anxiety in the 1960s)

One could imagine they painted on a few words like "Bourgeois", references to marxism and added some stilted phrases to make it look like a translation from the Russian.

Most of what I've read about spycraft indicates that the Soviets quickly learned not to trust people who "liked communism" (e.g. loose canons like Lee Harvey Oswald) and instead to cultivate agents who were motivated by money, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Anthony_Walker

for one of their biggest success stories.

The latest edition is being rewritten with a chapter on how to handle crank calls from victim. Being James Bond these days is fucking hard man.

Do we have any idea when this was written and how sure we are it is genuine and unaltered?

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