posted ago by Mad_King_Kalak ago by Mad_King_Kalak +8 / -0

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, right-wing nutjobs used to claim that the anti-Vietnam movement was funded by the USSR, who used agent provocateurs to whip up our students into demonstrating and rioting.

This was, of course, soundly derided. Eventually even right-wing nutjobs stopped making this claim.

In 1991, after the USSR fell, we got to see the old KGB files. Lo and behold the Soviet Union funded the anti-Vietnam movment and placed agent provocateurs to whip up our students into demonstrating and rioting. They literally flew radicals to Moscow to train them in subversion.

While I'm sure some of the demonstrations were home-grown, by and large it seems to have been a successful Soviet operation. So successful that a large part of the population (including most of my fellow Boomers) still believe the lie. (Sandy Petersen)