Yuri Bezmenov
| Yuri Bezmenov | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov 1939 Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Died | 1993 (aged 53–54) Windsor, Ontario, Canada |
| Residence |
|
| Nationality | Russian |
| Other names | Tomas Schuman |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Journalist, informant, author |
| Years active | 1963 – 1986 |
| Employer | |
| Known for | Soviet defector |
Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov (Russian: Юрий Александрович Безменов, also known as Tomas David Schuman; 1939 – 1993) was a journalist for RIA Novosti and a former PGU KGB informant from the Soviet Union who defected to Canada.
After being assigned to a station in India, Bezmenov eventually grew to love the people and the culture of India, but at the same time, he began to resent the KGB-sanctioned oppression of intellectuals who dissented from Moscow's policies. He decided to defect to the West. Bezmenov is best remembered for his anticommunist lectures and books from the 1980s.
Bezmenov was born in 1939 in Mytishchi, near Moscow to a high ranking Soviet Army officer. At the age of seventeen, he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages, a part of the Moscow State University which was under the direct control of the KGB and the Communist Central Committee. In addition to languages, he studied history, literature, and music, and became an expert on Indian culture. During his second year, Bezmenov sought to look like a person from India; his teachers encouraged this because graduates of the school were employed as diplomats, foreign journalists, or spies.
As a Soviet student, he was also required to take compulsory military training in which he was taught how to play "strategic war games" using the maps of foreign countries, as well as how to interrogate prisoners of war.
After graduating in 1963, Bezmenov spent two years in India working as a translator and public relations officer with the Soviet economical aid group Soviet Refineries Constructions, which built refinery complexes.
In 1965, Bezmenov was recalled to Moscow and began to work for RIA Novosti as an apprentice for their classified department of "Political Publications" (GRPP). He soon discovered that about three quarters of Novosti's staffers were actually KGB officers, with the remainder being "co-optees" or KGB freelance writers and informers like himself. However, Bezmenov did no real freelance writing; rather, he edited and planted propaganda materials in foreign media and accompanied delegations of Novosti's guests from foreign countries on tours of the Soviet Union or to international conferences held in the Soviet Union.
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