Chapter 88: Public Opinion Offensive

(1st Update)

The Tbilisi incident has greatly stirred the nerves of the US government, especially CIA Director Robert Gates, who is extremely excited. The suppression of the people's march by the Soviet army will undoubtedly be the most sensational news of the year. What the Western world had to do was to completely disintegrate and collapse the people's fragile trust in the Soviet government through massive propaganda and reporting.

Even if Yanayev had a far-sighted political vision and strategic approach, a government that had lost the trust of the people would collapse amid condemnation. To this end, Robert Gates made a special trip to the White House to find President Bush and pleaded with the president to pass a special budget that would put the last straw on the notorious evil imperial charges of the Soviet Union.

President Bush showed great interest in Robert's plan, and the bureaucratic style of the propaganda department of the Soviet government after the Khrushchev era led to the gradual loss of their public opinion position. The United States, on the other hand, was orchestrated by the CIA to portray itself as a leader of the free world on a global scale, and to denounce the Soviet Union as an evil empire that threatened world peace.

"Propaganda on a U.S. scale alone did not have much effect, because the image of the Soviet Union was deeply ingrained in the minds of the people. We need to know to the people of the Soviet Union countries about the crimes committed by the Soviet troops in Tbilisi through secret radio stations, newspapers and magazines against communism. In this way, the already unpopular Soviet government will completely slide into the abyss. ”

"We also need to distort the facts as much as possible, even if it is through rumors and malicious smears. Shaping the Soviet Union as a stumbling block to world progress, and using dollars to fund their own intellectuals to help build momentum, created an atmosphere in which the Soviet government was unpopular both inside and outside. ”

Robert's report can be said to be word-for-word, and President Bush certainly welcomes this format. Soon, the propaganda campaign that had been characterized by peaceful evolution was launched in the United States, and a war of public opinion was waged against the Soviet Union by supporting the ** radio station. The death toll in Tbilisi is deliberately exaggerated, while distorting the real causes of the events in Tbilisi, and faking the rioting crowds as freedom fighters against dictatorial oppression. For the first time after martial law, intellectuals in the Soviet Union gathered on a large scale to support and sympathize with the Georgian people.

The entire Western world has been hyped about the brutal Soviet repression and the bloody rule of Yanayev, and some reports have even put Yanayev and Hitler alongside him as one of the main culprits of the twentieth century obstruction of world peace.

At a time when all the reports in the United States were criticizing the Soviet Union, only Radio Columbia chose to remain silent. Wallace, who had deep contact with Yanayev, did not believe in mainstream American propaganda. Because he knows very well what kind of character this leader is. Impersonal and rational are a common problem among politicians, but Yanayev is far less than the mainstream Western propaganda suggests.

Just when everyone thought that the Soviet Union would once again suffer Waterloo on the front of public opinion, the Soviet Propaganda Department launched a counterattack under the careful planning of Moscow.

Unlike the reporting of the Chernobyl incident, this time the Tbilisi riots did not take the form of blocking but not slackening. Rumours stop at the truth, and the newspapers controlled by the Propaganda Department have directly reported the cause and effect of the events in Tbilisi, and have carried out an overwhelming coverage in the newspapers in the form of headlines.

Under Surkov's leadership, the Soviet Propaganda Department got rid of the rule of the previous corrupt bureaucrats and burst out with great vitality, as if returning to the period of the Great October Revolution and the heroic Great Patriotic War.

In the photographs, which are specially rendered in black and white, there are heroic soldiers holding the little girl out of the fire, there are civilian corpses covered with white cloths revealing one palm, and there are bloody people covering their foreheads, aiming at the cameraman's lens with pessimistic and desperate eyes. Of course, there are also the hideous thugs who have pointed their guns at civilians, and there are also group photos of the opposition holding up swastika signs and making Nazi gestures.

All this seems to tell the heavy pain that this group of people has brought to others in their pursuit of so-called democracy and freedom.

Propaganda Minister Surkov, under the guidance of Yanayev, who is well versed in the offensive of public opinion, downplayed the crackdown during the day, focusing on how the mob brutally hurt the people, and there was no prominent image of a glamorous and majestic high-level Soviet person, only the powerlessness, anxiety and panic of the little people in the face of the changes of the times.

The publication of the reports quickly reversed the Soviet Union's disadvantage in the public opinion position, and the disgust of the people, who were disgusted with the Soviet government, did not show obvious support after these reports, but their disgust was much lower.

The headline of the report also used the most famous sentence of the French Revolution: "O liberty, how many sins have been done in your name." It seems to be a harsh satire of the justice and freedom that the United States flaunts. In particular, the last paragraph of the report, written by Yanayev himself, serves as the beginning of a war of public opinion.

"America's politicians and media have always proudly flaunted themselves as leaders of the free world, while calling our homeland an evil empire and our military a gray cattle. But the prevalence of McCarthyism led to the widespread persecution of free-thinking intellectuals. General MacArthur suppresses World War II peaceful march veterans. The police cracked down on students who opposed the Vietnam War and shot and killed people. The CIA orchestrated coups around the world, supported out-and-out military and monarchical dictatorships, and shipped drugs home to lure African Americans into drug trafficking. You keep saying that the Soviet Union threatens world peace with war, so how many people died as a result of these actions of the United States? We don't know, it's certainly not a small amount. Isn't the United States a self-proclaimed fighter for human rights and freedom? Why do you accuse us of dictatorship while supporting the real dictators to massacre their own people? Where did the sense of justice in the American media run away when the U.S. government did this? Why did you all choose silence? If you have smeared us as a symbol of dictatorship, how do you, who claim to be free, treat the people? ”

The official Soviet report was as spicy and sarcastic as the vodka beloved by the Slavic peoples, countering the distorted and exaggerated reports of the Americans with facts. The propaganda of public opinion in the United States quickly broke itself, and this report was not only reprinted on a large scale in the Soviet Union, but was also reprinted in their newspapers by Western reporters when it was specially translated into English, causing a shock and uproar in Western public opinion. In particular, the Popular Front, which worships the Nazis, slapped the Western journalists who slandered the Soviet Union as Nazis.

The headline of the story was "Counterattack from the Red Empire."

Without the pedantic bureaucratic propaganda format of the past, a completely new Soviet propaganda ministry appeared in the newspapers.

On that day, the Soviet people felt the roar and roar of the red polar bear.

On that day, the sky over Europa sounded a frightening red alert again.

Hello, the free world of the West, after more than a decade of absence, the Propaganda Department of the Soviet Revolution, which once made you tremble, is back.

Now, are you ready for our counterattack?