Yuri Bezmenov – who was a former Soviet journalist, a state informant for the Soviet First Directorate, and former KGB officer who defected to Canada in the 1970’s. Bezmenov is famously known for his lectures on Soviet-Communist subversion tactics used to influence western society through institutions such as media, universities, and government. In his lectures, he describes the act of subversion being the most common and widely used tactic by the Soviet Government to influence their power within western society; furthermore, outlining four steps of subversion that were used by the Soviets – based off Sun-Tsu’s Art of War – into distinct characteristics:

Demoralization: Done through 15-20 years to subvert a generation through moral influence of propaganda inside areas where public opinion is shaped (i.e., religion, education, social life, labor, and employment relations etc.).
Destabilization: Done through severing ties to national or internal characteristics of a society. Produced through individuals influencing economy, media, and law and order. Essentially the fractionating of a society based on demoralization (e.g., radicalization).
Crisis: Comes from an impactful or disastrous situation that divides a nation or society based on fault lines creating panic.
Normalization: Is an acceptance of individuals – predominantly through soft power, but can be done through hard power (e.g., violence) – to submit to the ideals of government as a protector and to accept the changes of law for a collective understanding.
Bezmenov drives home the fallacy of equality standard that the Soviet Union used to demoralize a nation through either its history or democratic characteristics against them to prove a negative point. What this means is the generation of demoralization enters the professional sphere to use the subversion tactics towards destabilization – from there a cataclysmic event triggers the fault line through fear, terror, and psychological control. Lastly, ideological rulers of society attempt to stabilize the country with exploitation in victory. In an interview with G. Edward Griffin, Bezmenov attempts to compare the ethos of communist ideology of the east and liberal ideology of the west through the oppression of human rights and moral indignation of the Soviets. One of the most important points that Bezmenov makes of communism is to develop an illusion of Soviet greatness through subversive tactics of influence which are similar processes in today’s institutions.