Zersetzung: Soviet Stasi Abusive ‘Harassment Surveillance’

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

Author Jürgen Fuchs was a victim of Zersetzung and wrote about his experience, describing the Stasi’s actions as “psychosocial crime”, and “an assault on the human soul”.

German historian Hubertus Knabe: "…the Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it’s described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally “biodegradation.” But actually, it’s a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn’t try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions."

Operations were designed to intimidate and destabilise them by subjecting them to repeated disappointment, and to socially alienate them by interfering with and disrupting their relationships with others, as in social undermining. The aim was to induce personal crises in victims, leaving them too unnerved and psychologically distressed to have the time and energy for anti-government activism.

In the name of the target, the Stasi made little announcements, ordered products, and made emergency calls, to terrorize them. To threaten or intimidate or cause psychoses the Stasi would break in to their homes and leave visible traces of its presence, by adding, removing, and modifying objects such as the socks in one’s drawer, or by changing the time on an alarm clock, or replacing tea bags with different types of tea.

Moreover, methods of Zersetzung included espionage, overt, hidden, and feigned; opening letters and listening to telephone calls; manipulation of vehicles; and even poisoning food and using false medications.

The Stasi manipulated relations of friendship, love, marriage, and family by anonymous letters, telegrams and telephone calls as well as compromising photos, often altered. In this manner, parents and children were supposed to systematically become strangers to one another. To provoke conflicts and extramarital relations the Stasi put in place targeted seductions by Romeo agents.