The CIA – KGB and Publishing our Book “Silent Terror” (continuation) - https://arnoldlockshin.wordpress.com

“Our Agency is responsible for ensuring that the Russian edition will be accurate,” my third APN editor wrote to me. At issue was our book “Silent Terror.”

Well, that's nice. But my experience with these CIA – KGB stooges convinced me that I had better make sure personally about the translation.

At that stage, not a simple task for me. By then, however, I had gained some familiarity with the Russian language and I spent an entire day with Russian-English dictionaries at my side studying the so-called translation.

And what I found was more than ugly. More than disgusting. Vladimir, highly recommended by the weekly “Arguments and Facts,” and publishing house APN had produced a wildly distorted caricature of the book I had written. The sense of the book was often distorted; entire paragraphs and citations did not reflect what had been written. As a result, significant sections and elements of the book were unintelligible to any potential Russian reader.

Had APN's Russian version of the book been published, readers naturally would have assumed that the distorted, confused, illogical and contradictory pseudo-translation reflected the authors' actual text, and we would have been discredited. More importantly, information about the often subtle, complicated and dangerous methodology of the US psychological warfare and subversive operations would have eluded the reader.

In this context, we wrote in the book that we ran into some people in Russia who, judging from their behavior, believe that no one should criticize the FBI or the CIA or the reactionary policies of the US government (p. 131).

One conclusion was definite: I was working with, or rather, working against a collection of CIA-directed, KGB-implemented intellectual hoodlums. Their job: to discourage, misdirect and exhaust me and create a multitude of diversions and delays, in order to hide important information about the vicious practices of the US spying, lying, provocation, subversion, terror and mass murder apparatus known colloquially as the “US intelligence community.”
////////////////////////////////////////

I sent a letter to APN (in Russian): “It is obvious that up to now the APN editors have shown no desire to edit the Russian edition of “Silent Terror” so that its contents would reflect the actual text of the English original of our book. For that reason, at the All-Union Oncological and Scientific Research Center, colleagues conversant with English and I are compelled to work on correcting mistakes in the APN-approved Russian 'translation.' When we have completed our work, we will submit a corrected translation to APN for publication.”

It goes without saying that I did not want to get involved in the Russian translation of “Silent Terror.” My knowledge of Russian was not sufficiently developed to undertake this task alone; I was merely in the process of learning the language. I was compelled to ask for help from several colleagues, most of whom had at best only a weak grasp of English. But what was the choice? None.

One co-worker with a fair knowledge of English wrote a note (in Russian) to APN: “Unfortunately, the (Vladimir-APN) translation contains a large number of errors, which distort the meaning of many of the authors' ideas. This problem is particularly evident in chapters 3, 4 and 5, which are the most important and contain considerable information that is little known in the Soviet Union. Naturally, it is critical that the translation conform to the original text and and that all errors be corrected as the book is being readied for publication.”

After a couple of months of tedious work, I relayed the edited Russian text to APN. Ready for publication? No. The editors decided to “edit” our edited version of “Silent Terror.” Which was simply a convenient excuse for them to insert a whole host of fresh distortions in the text. I therefore had no choice but to ask colleagues again for assistance. This dirty game of editorial ping-pong was repeated yet another time.

In 1989 – two and a half years after we arrived in the Soviet Union – the Russian translation of “Silent Terror” saw the light of day. Of course, it was very late. The CIA-controlled “soviet” mass media and “perestroika” entourage flooded the country with fulsome praise of “civilized” America and the oh-so-happy way of life there.

By the time the book emerged, it had little effect. In the USSR, ebullient CIA – KGB propaganda lauding US imperialism was in full swing.

To be continued.

Arnold Lockshin, political exile from the US living in Moscow