Soviet Active Measures and the Second Cold War: Security, Truth, and the Politics of Self

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of “Soviet active measures” in US political discourse during the “Second Cold War” of the early 1980s. It follows the efforts of the Active Measures Working Group, a little-known interagency organization led by Reagan administration appointees that constructed an image of Soviet active measures as a threat to national security. I detail, especially, how the Working Group framed the US anti-war movement as both a target of and vehicle for active measures. In so doing, I show how the active measure was constructed in US political discourse through a dramaturgy of secrecy and revelation that placed it within a broader “covert imaginary.” This paper concludes with a theorization of these efforts in relation to Foucault’s concept of “alethurgy,” considering how the construction of the active measure produced a “politics of truth” in which the anti-war protestor appeared as a dangerous, disinformed subject.