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Speaker 2: Warning, the following contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual
Speaker 2: assault that may be too intense or triggering to some listeners.
Speaker 2: Discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: He was the son of a high ranking Soviet Army
Speaker 3: officer and he had an outstanding career with Novesty, which
Speaker 3: was also up front for the KGB.
Speaker 4: Ideological subversion is the slow process which we call either
Speaker 4: ideological subversion or active measures actively miriapriatia in the language
Speaker 4: of the KGB.
Speaker 5: Or psychological warfare.
Speaker 4: What it basically means is to change the perception of reality.
Speaker 4: Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person
Speaker 4: who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The
Speaker 4: facts tell nothing to him.
Speaker 1: Adamir Putin's former chief economic advisor, who had extensive access to.
Speaker 6: The Prussian president over the years, goes one on one
Speaker 6: with our Joe Khalil.
Speaker 1: How much of the population actually is exposed to what's
Speaker 1: really happening in your career?
Speaker 3: I would say up to seventy percent of the Russian
Speaker 3: population have been brainwashed, brainwashed completely.
Speaker 7: A few seventy percent, you think it's that high, it
Speaker 7: would be I would say conservativefest to.
Speaker 8: Make Jana Agaalakova was one of the stars of Russia's
Speaker 8: Channel one.
Speaker 9: Even now, when you're watching news in raw shirt, it's
Speaker 9: like two different planets. In one planet there is ruins
Speaker 9: and total disaster, death and tragedy. In another world it's
Speaker 9: Russian militaries that was cheered by local population with flowers,
Speaker 9: and this is only victories in these two worlds don't
Speaker 9: mix up. And it's blown my mind how they do it,
Speaker 9: how they brainwashed their population.
Speaker 1: To kill.
Speaker 8: Am really sorry, and how the.
Speaker 1: Guts knows.
Speaker 5: Busus Episode three, chapter six, the selection.
Speaker 8: There are not so many schools in Russia. It's like
Speaker 8: maybe only three. One were put and studied and sunk
Speaker 8: by the Petersburg another one in Moscow they would call
Speaker 8: it like former KIGB school FSB was basically like they
Speaker 8: renamed it. But my school, my academy, would be called
Speaker 8: the Academy of Military Investigation.
Speaker 5: How do you said in Russia, Oh, it's.
Speaker 8: Some academia or Probvilinian ministers of Nutrin deal recipe.
Speaker 5: What happens once you walk in.
Speaker 8: When I saw that huge gray color building, looking like
Speaker 8: all the Soviet Union buildings, where you cannot say a word,
Speaker 8: and you understand there is no chance you could leave
Speaker 8: a free life and have a free word, I just
Speaker 8: wanted to run away, but I couldn't say no, and
Speaker 8: I couldn't run away, and I had to go there.
Speaker 8: And I just kept myself together, and I stayed silent
Speaker 8: and just walked into that walls.
Speaker 5: Lea Rosa Is described ivan her first day of formal
Speaker 5: military training after her tragic internship. She was just eighteen
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 8: When I saw these thick, gray, cold walls with portraits
Speaker 8: of that former officers or KGB agents, and I saw
Speaker 8: that cold faces of all my teachers and my classmates.
Speaker 8: There were no fun or there were no desire or
Speaker 8: like ambitions or dreams. There were really cold blooded machines
Speaker 8: or like zombie people.
Speaker 5: That first day at the academy would change the course
Speaker 5: of Eleah's life. But before we get to that, here's
Speaker 5: a little bit about the training of new recruits at
Speaker 5: a Russian military academy.
Speaker 8: First, of my whole lifestyle has been changed. I would
Speaker 8: wake up at four am because at six am you
Speaker 8: had to have a morning report that would give you
Speaker 8: a gender schedule, and you have to do marshing. From
Speaker 8: six am in the morning, we would listen this big
Speaker 8: words lecture about our country, that we have to protect
Speaker 8: the country. We have to be real patriot. V fought Nazi.
Speaker 8: We are the strongest country in the world. We have
Speaker 8: the strongest nationality. We are the.
Speaker 2: Purest.
Speaker 8: Nothing can be more powerful than us. You have to
Speaker 8: do exercises, you have to do jogging, you have to
Speaker 8: do shooting. They also had to do like cleaning and
Speaker 8: cooking four hundreds of people, and six pm it's again
Speaker 8: the report time, and again you have to do marching.
Speaker 8: And then sometimes homework would be so much so it
Speaker 8: would take till like two am or like one am.
Speaker 8: It was really off and it was always cold. I
Speaker 8: was so tired and exhausted because I slept only four hours.
Speaker 5: I ask Leah if she thinks that all the marching,
Speaker 5: the work, the lack of sleep, or not just about
Speaker 5: training but also about brainwashing.
Speaker 8: Well, yes, of course the whole system is like that, right.
Speaker 8: It's one of the important technique of manipulation. Where if
Speaker 8: you want to train someone, you have to exhaust this
Speaker 8: person with the physical activities so the brain becomes weak.
Speaker 8: And when the brain becomes weak, there you can plant
Speaker 8: seats built on patriotic romantic feeling like together we can
Speaker 8: fight the whole world.
Speaker 5: In case patriotism wasn't enough to inspire someone to die
Speaker 5: for their country, they were also financial incentives.
Speaker 8: So for example, if they would say, okay, so there
Speaker 8: is a war in Chichen, second campaign, So who wants
Speaker 8: to go there? Because if you go to the war,
Speaker 8: first of all, you have salary much higher than usual,
Speaker 8: you have better insurance, better benefits. If you will die,
Speaker 8: then your family will get so and so much money,
Speaker 8: which was higher than usual salary. People would risk their
Speaker 8: life because it was beneficial for their families and they
Speaker 8: would go to the war.
Speaker 6: It's still the same.
Speaker 5: As for leaving the military. Once you were there, you
Speaker 5: had to fulfill your duties.
Speaker 8: Once you're there, you cannot go back. You cannot just
Speaker 8: become civilian and said, Okay, I don't want to work
Speaker 8: in military anymore. I want just to be a human
Speaker 8: resource recruiter. You cannot do that. You know that once
Speaker 8: you're there, you have to be there till the rest
Speaker 8: of your life.
Speaker 5: In this toxic environment, the Leah's classmates competed with each
Speaker 5: other for favor, sometimes cruelly and savagely.
Speaker 8: I try to make friends, but after a few months
Speaker 8: I understood that wherever I would say to my girlfriends,
Speaker 8: they would talk to our teachers. So you couldn't even
Speaker 8: tell anyone's secrets or the way you think or.
Speaker 6: The way you feel. I had.
Speaker 8: Even my male classmates, they would call me bad names.
Speaker 8: Some of them try to put me down. You understand
Speaker 8: that you're there by yourself. You cannot have friends, You
Speaker 8: cannot rely on anyone. You know that every single one
Speaker 8: is your enemy. We say, if you live with wolves,
Speaker 8: you have to become one of wolves.
Speaker 5: So with this context, we now returned to Elia's first
Speaker 5: day at the academy. She was lined up for inspection
Speaker 5: with the rest of the new students, and that's when
Speaker 5: it all began.
Speaker 8: All of us we had to be outside, and I
Speaker 8: remember there was one of the most powerful teacher at
Speaker 8: that time, with the highest rank, and he particularly looked
Speaker 8: at every single girl there. And I was the only
Speaker 8: one who was eighteen years old. At the girls the
Speaker 8: la starting from twenty to twenty three, twenty five thirty.
Speaker 5: Even this high ranking commander, a Russian colonel, began whispering
Speaker 5: to a female officer and motioning to Aliyah.
Speaker 8: But I understood the talk about me because they looked
Speaker 8: at me and they discussed something I didn't know.
Speaker 6: Is it like bad or good? I didn't know anything.
Speaker 8: And then they also looked at some other girls.
Speaker 5: Soon after, Aliyah was pulled aside and told that she'd
Speaker 5: been selected to participate in a special program. This, of course,
Speaker 5: was not an optional program.
Speaker 8: I will be studying additional subjects together with other four
Speaker 8: girls every day after our main program.
Speaker 5: This additional coursework, as I'm sure you figured out, would
Speaker 5: train Aliyah in the art of seduction, the exchange of
Speaker 5: sexuality for secrets or lives. But what does it take
Speaker 5: for a woman raised conservatively with no dating experience to
Speaker 5: be willing to let this date use your body like this?
Speaker 5: It would take a lot more fear and a lot
Speaker 5: more brainwashing. Chapter seven, The Sacrifice.
Speaker 3: There are lots of things that are involved in persuasion
Speaker 3: every day. But when things become very stressful, and when
Speaker 3: the stimuli are controlled and there are very few other stimuli,
Speaker 3: other than what the perpetrator is trying to impose on you,
Speaker 3: and when you are sleep deprived, these are settings that
Speaker 3: make people very malleable, and you can see this in
Speaker 3: many of the brainwashing events in twentieth century.
Speaker 5: This is doctor Joel Dimsdale, a professor emeritus of psychology
Speaker 5: at the University of California, San Diego and the author
Speaker 5: of the book Dark Persuasion, A History of Brainwashing from
Speaker 5: Pavlov to Social Media. I tell doctor Dimsdale, what you
Speaker 5: just heard about Aliah's training regimen at the military academy
Speaker 5: meant to do this and sort of getting the party
Speaker 5: line fed to her every waking moment. Is that a
Speaker 5: form of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: So when she has been isolated from her family and
Speaker 3: friends and only exposed to people who are constantly HARKing
Speaker 3: on this one view of what the world is like
Speaker 3: and what her task is, this begins to be a
Speaker 3: setup for coercive persuasion, even if it's against her best interest.
Speaker 3: Everything goes back to Pavlov at the.
Speaker 5: Doctor Dimsdale says, the modern history of brainwashing back to Russia,
Speaker 5: specifically the fact that the work of doctor Ivan Pavlov
Speaker 5: was taking place at the same time as the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 3: The odd thing in history is that, by virtue of
Speaker 3: his prominence, Lenin visited Pavlov and spent hours talking with Pavlov,
Speaker 3: asking him could Pavlov help Lenin remake the people of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union so that they would be better communists.
Speaker 3: So the Soviets were always interested in behavior change, in
Speaker 3: trying to be as scientific as possible about it, and
Speaker 3: Pavlov was a perfect vehicle for exploring that.
Speaker 5: I asked doctor Dimsdale about the science of this behavioral change.
Speaker 5: What are the conditions that make this possible, not just
Speaker 5: for Aleah, but for anyone who's being reprogrammed to lay
Speaker 5: down their lives and their ethics for their country.
Speaker 3: If you had a checklist of how do you persuade
Speaker 3: people so that you can guarantee behaviors that there would
Speaker 3: be resistance to otherwise, that checklist would include number one.
Speaker 3: Isolate them away from contrary influences. Number two. Put them
Speaker 3: under a lot of stress. Number three. Deprive them of
Speaker 3: sleep so they're not thinking clearly. Number four, involve them
Speaker 3: in a group that hammers home certain messages repeatedly.
Speaker 5: We now know the steps that lead to brainwashing or
Speaker 5: course of persuasion, as doctor Ginsdale prefers to put it,
Speaker 5: but brainwashing for what Let's move forward to Russia in
Speaker 5: the twenty first century.
Speaker 7: War was central to the Putin regime.
Speaker 5: This is Ian Garner, a Russian historian and author of
Speaker 5: the book z Generation Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist youth.
Speaker 7: Right. We've seen that from the very first action Putin
Speaker 7: takes when he's in power, and where we start to
Speaker 7: see a real change is in what children are taught
Speaker 7: in the school. Children learn war poems, children start to
Speaker 7: dress up in military uniforms, so they start to be
Speaker 7: taught that war is a good thing. War is something
Speaker 7: we need to grow our society and become better people.
Speaker 7: Joining the army, becoming a part of this military machine
Speaker 7: in Russia is just a hugely respectable path.
Speaker 5: The propaganda that helps make this possible, Garner says, is
Speaker 5: history lessons, revised history lessons, just like the ones that
Speaker 5: Leah received during her training.
Speaker 7: This is not going to be lessons about real history.
Speaker 7: This is going to be the Russian version of history
Speaker 7: in which Russia is surrounded by enemies who are looking
Speaker 7: to destroy it, and Russia has saved the world, and
Speaker 7: you're going to be a hero if you sacrifice yourself
Speaker 7: just like those folks Stalingrads eighty years ago.
Speaker 5: Stalingrad, as he may recall, is the deadly World War
Speaker 5: two battle that Leah's grandfather served in, and the monument
Speaker 5: there with his name on it is practically a shrine
Speaker 5: for Leah's family.
Speaker 7: There is this phrase by Siedel's up and Russian thank
Speaker 7: you granddad for bringing us victory. And what they're talking
Speaker 7: about is World War two. And all of this comes
Speaker 7: down the myth of the Second World War as the
Speaker 7: moment when a generation of grandfathers sacrificed themselves to save
Speaker 7: the world and to save Russia, to save humanity from
Speaker 7: the Nazi threat. Thus we respect them. It's a kind
Speaker 7: of ancestor worship. The sacrifice is coded that the sacrifice,
Speaker 7: the death, has to happen. It's a bit like the
Speaker 7: Christian myth right it's Jesus. Jesus has to die to
Speaker 7: save humanity. Russian soldiers have to die, the country has
Speaker 7: to suffer so that it can be birth than you.
Speaker 10: Russia's President Vladimir Putin is in Volga Grat formerly known
Speaker 10: as Stalingrad, to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Soviet
Speaker 10: victory over German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad. He
Speaker 10: later spoke at an event where he criticized Germany for
Speaker 10: helping to arm Ukraine. He said, Russia is once again
Speaker 10: threatened by Germany. This is his latest attempt to compare
Speaker 10: Russia's war against Ukraine to the Soviet victory over Nazi
Speaker 10: Germany in World War Two.
Speaker 5: Russian news, Russian education, and especially Russian social media, Gardner explains,
Speaker 5: have turned into an actual indoctrination program, teaching not just
Speaker 5: a warlike way of thinking, but actual military skills to
Speaker 5: the youth.
Speaker 7: Because they're so desperately rushed to get them to the front.
Speaker 7: It is giving that training to children today and they
Speaker 7: will be ready tomorrow.
Speaker 5: To fund And at what age does that training start?
Speaker 7: Six years old?
Speaker 5: Wow, it's interesting again because her trains are from her
Speaker 5: dad at I think age six or seven.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So her experience then was exceptional and unusual. But
Speaker 7: now that experience is being not just institutionalized and formalized
Speaker 7: by this state, it's also being held up as the
Speaker 7: ideal of what a young child can be.
Speaker 5: Chapter eight, Death of a Patriot. We return now to
Speaker 5: Eliah's first day at the military academy. Selected out of
Speaker 5: the lineup along with four other women, she was told
Speaker 5: she'd been chosen to participate in a special, top secret
Speaker 5: program to serve her country. A few hours later, the
Speaker 5: top commander at the academy, the colonel who'd chosen her
Speaker 5: from the lineup, called her into his office.
Speaker 8: After a few hours, I was called to my teacher office.
Speaker 6: So I came there and he closed the door.
Speaker 8: And I did respect him a lot, because he was
Speaker 8: much older than me that time. He was forty eight
Speaker 8: and I was eighteen, and I was very innocent, as
Speaker 8: I said, like I never kissed any man.
Speaker 5: As a Leah tells the story, you may hear some
Speaker 5: laughter here and there, but note that there's nothing funny
Speaker 5: about this. There are topics that bring up so much
Speaker 5: trauma and are so uncomfortable to discuss that sometimes we
Speaker 5: laugh in order to avoid the deep pain that these
Speaker 5: events bring up. In an often cited research paper, if
Speaker 5: I didn't laugh, I'd cry, doctor Kathleen Hand further explains
Speaker 5: that quote laughter creates a sense of relief, usually from
Speaker 5: stress both mentally and physically. That's giving way to a
Speaker 5: sense of hope listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 8: And I looked at him and I asked him like hello,
Speaker 8: like you know, like, yes, sir, you were calling for me,
Speaker 8: so I'm here. And he was wearing his uniform, bit
Speaker 8: medals and everything, looking so sophisticated and so powerful like
Speaker 8: my dad when he was wearing uniform who was respected that.
Speaker 8: He asked me, like, what do you really expect from
Speaker 8: this education? And I said, well, you know my story.
Speaker 8: You know whose daughter am I and I am here
Speaker 8: to follow my dad's path and I'm ready to study
Speaker 8: and learn anything. And he asked me, are you ready
Speaker 8: to do everything for your country? I said yes, sir,
Speaker 8: are you real patriot? And I said yes, sir. I
Speaker 8: was raised by my dad to protect my country, my people,
Speaker 8: and I'm ready to give, like to do everything for
Speaker 8: my country. And he asked me like, are you ready
Speaker 8: to do everything? Are you ready to give your life
Speaker 8: for your country? And I said yes, sir, certainly, of course.
Speaker 8: I was trained by my dad and I love my
Speaker 8: country and I love my people. And then he came
Speaker 8: closer to me and he said, then suck my cock.
Speaker 8: I was like sorry, what I just couldn't even understand
Speaker 8: what did he ask me? And I was sitting at
Speaker 8: the chair and he came closer to me, and I
Speaker 8: was my heart was right in front of his.
Speaker 6: That part, so I was.
Speaker 8: I didn't know what to do, and he came so
Speaker 8: close that I couldn't really just stand up and leave.
Speaker 8: I just had like one thing in my head that
Speaker 8: wait a minute, he knows that who is my dad,
Speaker 8: and yet he just asked me to suck his cock, Like,
Speaker 8: how is that possible? I thought that the name of
Speaker 8: my dad will protect me from this kind of stuff,
Speaker 8: and he kind of like he almost like he read
Speaker 8: my mind, and he said, yes, I know who is
Speaker 8: your father, and you know that I have much higher
Speaker 8: ring than your dad. So everything depends from my word.
Speaker 8: And if you want to study here and graduate with
Speaker 8: no problem and have a good job, then you have
Speaker 8: to do what I say. And if you want, I'll
Speaker 8: make sure your life will become hell here and you
Speaker 8: cannot just drop off because of your dad. And I'll
Speaker 8: make sure you will have a lot of the mirrits
Speaker 8: with a lot of duty and hard work outside cleaning
Speaker 8: toilets and cleaning garden and just be a bully here.
Speaker 8: What do you prefer.
Speaker 6: And he opened his.
Speaker 8: Zip and he took his spinnis off just in front
Speaker 8: of my mouth, and he said, like, suck it.
Speaker 6: What are you waiting for.
Speaker 8: At the moment, I were thinking, all right, so I
Speaker 8: cannot do anything bad to him right now. I cannot
Speaker 8: bite it right even though I'm on greenside from this
Speaker 8: man for doing this to me right now, to disrespect
Speaker 8: my father, who disrespect my principles, my beliefs, in my country,
Speaker 8: in my people, who came here to basically sacrifice my life,
Speaker 8: not for sucking his cock, but for protecting people and
Speaker 8: doing really good for this country. But I told myself,
Speaker 8: you know what, I'll make sure that one day he
Speaker 8: will pay for it. And when he did come, I
Speaker 8: had that I made this decision. I stand up from
Speaker 8: the chair and he asked me, I want you to
Speaker 8: swallow it, and I pretended that I did. Is like,
Speaker 8: go to your lesson. So I took my back and
Speaker 8: I left. But then when I left, I went to
Speaker 8: the toilet and I washed my mouth and I looked
Speaker 8: at the mirror and I started to cry because it
Speaker 8: was just so I was disgusted, but I was.
Speaker 6: You know, like that.
Speaker 8: Feeling when you know you like your dreams and everything
Speaker 8: is just like everything's just gone in one second. And
Speaker 8: then I said to myself, okay, so so now what
Speaker 8: I obviously couldn't tell anyone about this act because I mean,
Speaker 8: come on, who am I supposed to tell it to,
Speaker 8: like to move to my dad?
Speaker 6: Oh you know that, Like, I mean, I know my dad.
Speaker 8: He would go crazy and then it would be all
Speaker 8: I don't know, like he might he would might kill
Speaker 8: him and then go to jail or like it would
Speaker 8: be such a drama. So I know my dad, and
Speaker 8: I was like, no, this is definitely I cannot tell him.
Speaker 6: So who do I say?
Speaker 8: So this colonial teacher, he is the highest level. So
Speaker 8: whom do I go? There is no one to go to,
Speaker 8: there is no one to complain to, Like whom do
Speaker 8: I go to?
Speaker 4: Police?
Speaker 6: I mean he is like this is the power. I mean,
Speaker 6: whom do I go? Whom do I say?
Speaker 8: And it's already was the second time when I was
Speaker 8: actually abused in the military by the people who supports
Speaker 8: to be like, you know, to stand for justice. How
Speaker 8: I mean, like all my romantic feelings, all my dreams,
Speaker 8: all my you know, like these words by my dad
Speaker 8: telling me from early age that I should be the
Speaker 8: one who protect people and love my my my country,
Speaker 8: love love government, you know, love police, and love military.
Speaker 8: My dad who was worrying this military uniform every single day,
Speaker 8: and I would look at him and then exactly the
Speaker 8: same military person just abused me.
Speaker 6: How is that possible? I mean how.
Speaker 5: In the days that Eliah learned that her special training
Speaker 5: was about learning the art of sex fionage, she also
Speaker 5: learned that the exploitation of the academy would continue indefinitely,
Speaker 5: and that the male officers expected the female seduction students
Speaker 5: to have sex with them for what they claimed was
Speaker 5: training and desensitization purposes. So Eliah thought, if these techniques
Speaker 5: work on enemies of the state, then perhaps they will
Speaker 5: also work on the state as well.
Speaker 8: And that moment I created a plan. I thought, what
Speaker 8: if I will seduce this colonel. What if I will
Speaker 8: seduce him the way that he would fall in love
Speaker 8: and then he can do what I want him to do,
Speaker 8: and he will protect me from things which I don't
Speaker 8: want to do, like, for example, sleeping with all of
Speaker 8: those teachers. So that if I would manipulate him the
Speaker 8: way he would feel that I'm his girl and nobody
Speaker 8: is allowed to touch me, then it will help me
Speaker 8: to go through that education.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I thought it's better I would have sex only with
Speaker 8: one teacher rather than.
Speaker 6: With all of them.
Speaker 8: And he had the strongest position among all of them,
Speaker 8: so for me, it was easier to become his lover
Speaker 8: rather than just being a whore for everyone.
Speaker 5: And that's when, with nowhere else to turn, Aliah took
Speaker 5: justice into her own hands.
Speaker 8: And I'll be fucking so good. I'll learn so much.
Speaker 8: I'll make sure that I'll become the best. It's funny
Speaker 8: how these seation techniques work, because eventually he've told me
Speaker 8: that he wants to do worse his wife in order
Speaker 8: to marry me.
Speaker 5: Leah's story continues in episode four, where she takes us
Speaker 5: inside the classroom to experience Russian seductions by training. The
Speaker 5: episode is available now. Keep listening for free on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 5: For full credits, check out our show notes. If you
Speaker 5: or a loved one are a survivor of sexual assault,
Speaker 5: you can visit rain dot org that's r AI n
Speaker 5: N dot org, or call one eight hundred sixty five
Speaker 5: six four six seven three for free confidential twenty four
Speaker 5: to seven support