Books, Arts & Manners: A Secret War

Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy, by Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Roy S. Godson, preface by Sidney Hook (Pergamon-Brassey’s, 225 pp., $I9.95)

You will not find the word “disinformation” in the Oxford English Dictionary nor in the OED supplement published in 1972. Nor could 1 find it in Webster’s Third, or in the 1973 Webster’s New Collegiate. So, very wisely, the scholarly authors of this fascinating volume on one aspect of Soviet intelligence—media activities and political-influence operations—decided to use the transliterated Russian form of the neologism in their book title. “Dezinformatsia” describes an important and successfully exploited weapon in the Soviet war against the West.

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Arnold Beichman

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Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy, by Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Roy S. Godson, preface by Sidney Hook (Pergamon-Brassey’s, 225 pp., $I9.95)

You will not find the word “disinformation” in the Oxford English Dictionary nor in the OED supplement published in 1972. Nor could 1 find it in Webster’s Third, or in the 1973 Webster’s New Collegiate. So, very wisely, the scholarly authors of this fascinating volume on one aspect of Soviet intelligence—media activities and political-influence operations—decided to use the transliterated Russian form of the neologism in their book title. “Dezinformatsia” describes an important and successfully exploited weapon in the Soviet war against the West.