Seat 12
Encyclopedia
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
campaign of communist propaganda
Communist propaganda
Communist propaganda is propaganda aimed to advance the ideology of communism, communist worldview and interests of the communist movement.A Bolshevik theoretician, Nikolai Bukharin, in his The ABC of Communism wrote:...
during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
to discredit the moral authority of the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
because of its outspoken anti-communism
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
. The plot was alleged in 2007 by Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc. He is now a United States citizen, a writer, and a columnist....
, a general who headed the Romanian secret service before defecting to the West in 1978.
According to Pacepa, in February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
authorized a covert plan to discredit the Vatican's moral authority in Western Europe with a campaign of disinformation due to its fervent anticommunism, Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
being the prime target. The motto of Seat 12 was "Dead men cannot defend themselves" since Pius died in 1958. Pacepa states that General Ivan Agayants
Ivan Agayants
Ivan Ivanovich Agayants was a leading Soviet NKVD/KGB intelligence officer of Armenian origin....
, chief of the KGB’s disinformation department, created the outline for what was to become a play mischaracterizing the Pope as a Nazi sympathizer, The Deputy
The Deputy
The Deputy, a Christian tragedy , also known as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which indicts Pope Pius XII for his failure to take action or speak out against The Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages...
, that the purported research for the play consisted of forgeries and the research was done not by its claimed author Rolf Hochhuth
Rolf Hochhuth
Rolf Hochhuth is a German author and playwright. He is best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy and remains a controversial figure for his plays and other public comments, such as his insinuation of Pope Pius XII's sympathies for Hitler's extermination of the Jews in the 1963 play The Deputy and...
but by KGB agents and that the play's producer, Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
, founder of the Proletarian Theater in Berlin who had sought asylum in the USSR during the war, was a devout Communist who had long established ties with the USSR.
Pacepa states that the KGB employed Romanian spies to feign that Romania was preparing the reestablish diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Under this ruse, Pacepa states he obtained entree to Vatican archives from the Church's head of secret discussions with the Warsaw Pact, Monsignor Agostino Casaroli. Three communist spies in the guise of priests over two years secreted materials out of the archives for copying and transfer to the KGB. "In fact," Pacepa reported, "no incriminating material against the pontiff ever turned up." According to Pacepa, General Ivan Agayants, head of Soviet disinformation, informed him while in Bucharest in 1963 that the disinformation campaign had "materialised into a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII", Agrayants having authored the outline of The Deputy and overseen KGB's compilation of the "research" which incorporated documents Pacepa's agents had purloined from the Vatican.
Writer and law professor Ronald Rychlak states that the American producer of Seat 12's play was also a communist, many of the press who lauded the play had deep connections to leftist or communist causes, a highly communist influenced periodical helped to guarantee The Deputy played on Broadway, and even early reviews had communist links. Pacepa also relates that in 1974 Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
admitted that had Soviets known in 1963 what they knew in 1974 (newly released information that Hitler was hostile to and plotted against Pius XII
Alleged plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII
Several authors have alleged a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII by the Nazis when they occupied Rome during World War II. SS General Karl Wolff stated that he had been ordered on September 13, 1943 to kidnap the pope....
) they would never have gone after him.
According to Rychlak, a declassified British intelligence memorandum, dated January 10, 1969, surmises that Hochhuth may have played a knowing role in spreading communist propaganda, rather than having been a dupe, saying he “might perhaps be an ‘intellectual agent, writing either on behalf of the East Germans or the Soviets” and the British agents declined to “discount the possibility of long-term efforts by the communists to foster Hochhuth’s allegations until they become legend." The memorandum continued: “whether Hochhuth is motivated only by the urge to write historical plays, to rehabilitate the Germans or is up to some more sinister game is difficult to determine at this stage. But the Russians are certainly reaping some of the benefit.”
Rychlak concludes that Hochhuth might not have been a knowing actor in the propaganda but was a "perfect candidate to be an unknowing dupe." Rychlak writes "his ideology was not far removed from Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. He also admitted that he was, at least at times, anticlerical. He was particularly opposed to priestly celibacy.”
Referring to Pacepa' account, German historian Michael F. Feldkamp
Michael F. Feldkamp
Michael F. Feldkamp, is a German historian and journalist.-Career:Feldkamp was born in Kiel. After completing his high school studies at the Gymnasium Carolinum in Osnabrück, he studied history, Catholic theology, teaching, and philosophy at the Rhineland Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn...
writes that “Pacepa’s report is wholly credible. It fits like a missing piece in the puzzle of communist propaganda and disinformation aimed at discrediting the Catholic Church and its Pontiff." English historian, Michael Burleigh
Michael Burleigh
Michael Burleigh is a British author and historian.In 1977 he was awarded a first class honours degree in Medieval and Modern History from University College London, winning the Pollard, Dolley and Sir William Mayer prizes...
, concurring with Feldkamp, states "Soviet attempts to smear Pius had actually commenced as soon as the Red Army crossed into Catholic Poland”, noting that the Soviets "hired a militantly anti-religious propagandist, Mikhail Markovich Sheinmann" - "Hochhuth's play...drew heavily upon Sheinmann's lies and falsehoods..."
Pacepa's story has not been corroborated; the national German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
stated in 2007 that "Hochhuth did not require any KGB assistance for his one-sided presentation of history".
See also
- Front organizationFront organizationA front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations...
- Agent of influenceAgent of influenceAn agent of influence is a person whose political actions and arguments are alleged to serve the interests of a foreign power, and to be directed or manipulated by the intelligence agency of that power...
- Fellow traveler
- Useful idiotUseful idiotIn political jargon, the term useful idiot was used to describe Soviet sympathizers in Western countries. The implication is that though the people in question naïvely thought themselves an ally of the Soviet Union, they were actually held in contempt and were being cynically used...
- Religion in the Soviet UnionReligion in the Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion and its replacement with atheism. To that end, the communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools...
- Persecution of Christians in Warsaw Pact countriesPersecution of Christians in Warsaw Pact countriesBefore and after the October Revolution of November 7, 1917 there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule . This included the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States...
- Persecution of Christians in the Soviet UnionPersecution of Christians in the Soviet UnionThe history of Christianity in the Soviet Union was not limited to repression and secularization. Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union...
- Persecutions of the Catholic Church and Pius XIIPersecutions of the Catholic Church and Pius XIIPersecutions against the Catholic Church took place in virtually all the years of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, especially after World War II in Eastern Europe, the USSR and the People's Republic of China...
- Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutionsEastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutionsEastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions include bishops and others among the tens of thousands of victims of Soviet persecutions from 1918 to approximately 1980.-During the Second World War:...