{"id":133895,"date":"2026-09-24T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=133895"},"modified":"2026-09-20T07:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T05:23:20","slug":"24-05-126","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=133895","title":{"rendered":"Moscow\u2019s Man at the United Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr \/>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/tablet-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\" \/><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/history\/articles\/moscow-man-united-nations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Moscow\u2019s Man at the United Nations<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Izabella Tabarovsky<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\" \/>\n<div>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>As the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly begins, a look back at how the Soviets vetoed a Jewish diplomat and installed their pet Nazi as secretary-general\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/6a794b72251d5662265de96f2510442ff8d2c89c-2500x1647.jpg?w=1300&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1\" width=\"100%\" \/><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Austrian diplomat and politician Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007) pictured at a press conference in New York after being appointed as the new secretary-general of the United Nations, Dec. 21, 1971<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Rolls Press\/Popperfoto via Getty Images\/Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It\u2019s hard to imagine it today, but there was a moment during the Cold War when a Jew nearly headed the United Nations. It happened in 1971\u2014the year of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to select the next secretary-general\u2014and the man was the 47-year-old Finnish ambassador to the United Nations, Max Jakobson. The son of a Finnish Jewish father and a mother who had converted to Judaism, Jakobson began his career as a journalist, working for the BBC before joining Finland\u2019s foreign service. He was <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/protect.checkpoint.com\/v2\/r01\/___https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/10\/06\/archives\/5-seek-to-succeed-thant-in-mosf-impossible-job.html___.YXAzOnRhYmxldDpjOm86YTgyZWFkMTY2ZmE4YjgwMjEzMzhlNWJiY2Y1NGU1ODM6NzoyZmM3OjZlOTQ3OTg5MWYyNWYwZjY5ZjgxYzgxODRmMTU3MjVmYTk2OTU1ZTc0NzgxYjJlZGViNzMzYmMyNjk2MjlhMDM6cDpUOk4\">widely regarded<\/a> as \u201cone of the ablest men\u201d at the United Nations: an experienced diplomat \u201cwith a cool head and good nerves.\u201d African states appreciated his firm anti-colonialist stance. He was an American and British favorite, and France\u2019s <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/protect.checkpoint.com\/v2\/r01\/___https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/09\/18\/archives\/jakobson-confident-on-un-candidacy.html?searchResultPosition=6___.YXAzOnRhYmxldDpjOm86YTgyZWFkMTY2ZmE4YjgwMjEzMzhlNWJiY2Y1NGU1ODM6NzpmZWE0OjkxY2Y2NTU4NDIwYmE3NDRmMzgwZWJjZjQzNGU5MWY0N2IxYTViYjE3ZmQ0MWY4MWYxNjczM2RmOTI0ODE5YWQ6cDpUOk4\">only complaint<\/a> against him was that he didn\u2019t speak French. For much of that year, he was considered the front-runner.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">His chief rival was 52-year-old Kurt Waldheim, Austria\u2019s former foreign minister and now the country\u2019s permanent representative at the United Nations. A chairman of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, he was typically mentioned alongside a slew of other <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/05\/04\/archives\/jakobson-opposes-2-chinas-in-un-aspirant-for-thant-job-says-peking.html\">long-shot candidates<\/a>. Journalists had a hard time finding anything distinct to say about him: He told them his favorite hobby was work and that he believed the United Nations should be used as an instrument of peace. He was like so many other diplomats who filled the halls of the United Nations\u2014a man with a \u201c<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/12\/23\/archives\/the-new-secretary-general.html\">correct and colorless record<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">He also had the backing of the Soviet Union.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The 1971 secretary-general selection was the first since the 1967 Six-Day War, which marked a major defeat for the Soviet Union in the Middle East. Israel\u2019s victory over the USSR\u2019s Arab allies was a turning point in the Soviet attitude toward the Jewish state and Zionism. Moscow was always hostile, but after 1967, as Soviet Jews began to demand the right to emigrate, it painted Zionism as a threat to its interests everywhere. But that was also a period of rising Soviet influence inside the United Nations, as former colonies became member states in the 1960s; a position that the Soviets wanted to consolidate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">By November, Waldheim was <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/11\/15\/archives\/two-are-pushed-for-thants-post-but-us-and-soviet-take-waitandsee.html\">neck and neck<\/a> with Jakobson, as the USSR <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/12\/23\/archives\/many-hopes-disappointed-in-historic-un-assembly-as-session-ends.html\">repeatedly vetoed<\/a> the Finnish candidate in the Security Council. Two days before Christmas, the United Nations officially made its pick: The Austrian representative became its new head. When the initial shock subsided, many concluded that it was precisely Waldheim\u2019s blandness that had won him the job. \u201cCertainly the Soviet Union, which supported his candidacy, does not expect daring initiatives from this model of noncommittal neutrality,\u201d <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/12\/23\/archives\/the-new-secretary-general.html\">quipped<\/a> <em>The<\/em> <em>New York Times<\/em>. The pape r wasn\u2019t wrong: Moscow had other plans for this secretary-general.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><span class=\"InsetImg__caption color-gray-darkest text-article-details-xs font-300\">Max Jakobson, permanent representative of Finland to the United Nations, at a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York, April 22, 1970 \/\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dam.media.un.org\/asset-management\/2AM9LO9QDVZR?&amp;WS=Lightbox&amp;Flat=FP#:~:text=Credit-,UN%20Photo\/Teddy%20Chen,-File%20size\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>UN Photo\/Teddy Chen<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/6950f526352728f5c665c16c0ea539e5913cfc92-415x603.jpg?w=1200&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max\" width=\"50%\" \/><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Few stories better capture the moral bankruptcy of an institution born from the ruins of World War II and the Holocaust than the Soviet quid-pro-quo relationship with Waldheim as its head. Years after his decade as the United Nations\u2019 chief ended, the world <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1986\/03\/29\/opinion\/the-waldheim-dossier.html\">learned<\/a> that Waldheim had lied about his wartime past. A little later, it would emerge that Moscow had likely known all along.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Waldheim always claimed that his service in the Wehrmacht was brief and had ended when he was wounded on the Eastern Front in late 1941, after which he returned home, pursued legal studies, and got married. In fact, he had returned to the front in 1942 and served out the rest of the war as an intelligence officer in the Balkans: first in Yugoslavia during brutal Nazi massacres and anti-partisan reprisals, then in Salonica during the deportations of the city\u2019s Jews to Auschwitz. It also turned out that before the war, in Vienna, Waldheim was a member of the National Socialist German Students\u2019 League and the Sturmabteilung\u2014the infamous Brownshirts. A later commission concluded that he did not personally take part in the atrocities in the Balkans, but his lack of embarrassment at being exposed as a liar and his insistence that he had seen and known nothing beggared belief\u2014all the more so because his immediate superior, Gen. Alexander L\u00f6hr, was a convicted war criminal executed by the Yugoslavs in 1947.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">From the moment he moved into his office on the 38th floor of the Glass Building\u2014the U.N. headquarters housing its administrative arm, the Secretariat\u2014Waldheim proved unmistakably subservient to Moscow. With him at the helm, the Soviets expanded their intelligence footprint at the Secretariat, planting hundreds of additional KGB agents under diplomatic and bureaucratic covers. Under his watch, they completed a mission they had begun years earlier: turning the United Nations into a weapon in their long-running campaign to pit the world against Israel\u2014America\u2019s main ally in the Middle East\u2014and Zionism, which, especially after 1967, the Soviets regarded as a major ideological threat. Observers took note of Waldheim\u2019s spinelessness. By 1978, French intelligence had <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/betrayaluntoldst00rose\/mode\/2up?q=agent+\">concluded<\/a> that Waldheim was \u201can agent of influence under Soviet control.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"PullQuote PullQuote--left flex flex-col items-center pt1_5 pb3 mt1_75 mb_75 border-bottom-black\">\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"PullQuote__text PullQuote--left__text text-center\"><strong>Once elected, Waldheim \u2018readily agreed\u2019\u00a0to Malik\u2019s demand to fill professional posts in the Secretariat with 250 additional Soviet nationals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">For the Soviets, eventual revelations about Waldheim\u2019s Nazi past were, in all likelihood, old news. For them, he had been a known quantity since 1947, when he spent a month in Moscow as part of the Austrian delegation negotiating the country\u2019s sovereignty, as the World Jewish Congress\u2019s Eli Rosenbaum\u2014a former federal prosecutor who would later lead the Department of Justice\u2019s Nazi-hunting unit and who revealed Waldheim\u2019s Nazi past in 1986\u2014detailed in his book <em>Betrayal<\/em>. Stalin\u2019s intelligence services would have pored over every detail of his biography in search of compromising information, both as a matter of their invariable practice and because a Nazi past was a dream piece of leverage to have over upwardly mobile Europeans.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Decades later, former Yugoslav intelligence officers <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/politics\/1986\/10\/30\/47-soviet-bloc-bid-to-recruit-waldheim-as-agent-described\/b8a699dd-0825-496b-bc49-e9a871fcd5c0\/\">told<\/a> <em>The Washington Post<\/em> that they had marked Waldheim as a potential recruit for Moscow in 1947, the same year he traveled there, while his former wartime commanding officer faced a firing squad in Yugoslavia. They were certain the Soviets had followed through\u2014a suspicion indirectly reinforced two decades later, during the Prague Spring, when Waldheim, now Austria\u2019s foreign minister, ordered the country\u2019s Prague embassy to bar entry to Czechs who were being hunted by Soviet security forces. The ambassador disobeyed, but the gesture would not have gone unappreciated in Moscow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It\u2019s shocking enough to think that the United Nations was run for a decade\u2014a full quarter of its existence\u2014by a man with a Nazi past, who lied about it all his life, including while in office, where he liked to <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldjewishcongress.org\/en\/85th-anniversary\/the-kurt-waldheim-affair\">refer<\/a> to himself as \u201cthe chief human rights officer of the planet Earth.\u201d It\u2019s even more disturbing to realize that this man may have been co-opted by the Soviets, serving as an instrument in their campaign against Israel, the United States, and Western democracies more broadly.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The \u201cZionism is racism\u201d U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on Waldheim\u2019s watch, was a massive ideological coup for Moscow, securing a U.N. imprimatur for a lie concocted by Soviet propagandists and active-measures specialists. Waldheim might not have played a direct role in its drafting or adoption, but by surrendering the United Nations to Moscow as a platform for political warfare against Israel and the West, he condemned it to a moral unraveling whose consequences we are still living with today. To grasp the scale and the method of this corruption, it helps to look at the nuts and bolts of the Soviet takeover of the U.N. Secretariat.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"Divider Divider--dotted-rule overflow-hidden\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The most vivid account of how the Soviets weaponized the United Nations against the West comes from Arkady Shevchenko\u2019s memoir, <em>Breaking With Moscow<\/em>. Shevchenko was the ultimate Soviet insider; he was a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and his big break came at the age of 29, when he accompanied Premier Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to the United Nations (a journey complete with 10 drunken days aboard the decrepit, storm-tossed passenger liner <em>Baltika <\/em>sailing from Kaliningrad to New York). In 1973, after several tours of duty at the United Nations, Moscow recommended him to Waldheim for the post of undersecretary-general for political and Security Council affairs. The appointment placed Shevchenko in a position second in power only to the secretary-general himself. Disillusioned with the corrupt and oppressive Soviet system, he began cooperating with American intelligence and in 1978 defected to the United States\u2014the highest-ranking Soviet diplomat to do so up to that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><span class=\"InsetImg__caption color-gray-darkest text-article-details-xs font-300\">Arkady Shevchenko \/\u00a0 <\/span>Bernard Gotfryd photograph collection (Library of Congress)<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/38b4a9ae6cbeaf15cb57aead3296eb86a05e3157-400x590.jpg?rect=7,26,387,556&amp;w=1200&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max\" width=\"50%\" \/><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><br \/>\nFor Moscow, Shevchenko wrote, the United Nations was the \u201cbest watchtower on the West.\u201d It was a great place to collect political and technical intelligence\u2014but that was only part of the story. As Waldheim\u2019s undersecretary, Shevchenko was responsible for using the Secretariat \u201cto widen the scope of Soviet ideological and propaganda warfare\u201d within the organization. That meant ensuring that nothing \u201cdetrimental to Soviet interests\u201d ever appeared on the United Nations\u2019 agenda or in its studies or reports.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The converse was true as well: He was to make sure that favorable information was included, whether it was true or not. His other duties included promoting KGB undercover agents to more influential posts, protecting them if the CIA or FBI got on to them, and \u201cindoctrinating\u201d non-Soviet staff into a pro-Soviet point of view. He was also tasked with working with newly independent, postcolonial member states to make sure they didn\u2019t fall under the influence of Western \u201cbourgeois ideology\u201d but aligned themselves with Moscow and its \u201cprogressive ideas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The KGB had penetrated the United Nations long before Waldheim rose to the top. Shevchenko recalled that out of 28 men who worked in his section of the Soviet mission in 1968, 21 were KGB or GRU (military intelligence) officers. Other nations planted spies at the United Nations as well, he noted, \u201cbut the Soviet Union had the largest contingent and the most thorough penetration of the organization.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">What made the United Nations such a dream base of operations for the KGB was that, unlike embassy staff, Soviet nationals assigned to the United Nations could move freely around the United States, which is why expanding the Soviet intelligence footprint within the organization was a constant imperative. Undercover operatives were expected to cast a wide net, meeting with American \u201cscholars, businessmen, journalists, scientists, all kinds of experts, military men.\u201d Everyone was a target\u2014even Soviet diplomats\u2019 wives. \u201cRecruitment was conducted through bribery and blackmail\u2014mostly the former,\u201d Shevchenko noted.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The KGB installed countless agents in influential positions across the Secretariat. One served as a trusted personal assistant to the secretary-general, often traveling to American universities in his U.N. capacity on KGB assignments. Another <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/10\/05\/archives\/high-russian-aide-of-the-un-denies-that-he-is-a-spy.html\">held<\/a> the key strategic post of director of external relations, crafting United Nations\u2019 communications strategy and press releases and mingling with American intellectuals and financiers at prestigious conferences. KGB officers in the personnel office scanned job applications for \u201cexploitable weaknesses\u201d and rerouted \u201cpromising\u201d candidates to a senior KGB recruiter, also implanted at the United Nations, Shevchenko wrote. After 13 years on the job in New York, the recruiter was transferred \u201cto an equally strategic personnel post in Geneva, overseeing hiring and promotion in the U.N.\u2019s European headquarters.\u201d Western protests failed to put an end to this.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>In the offices of the Soviet delegation, Ambassador Yakov A. Malik, permanent representative of the USSR to the United Nations, records his broadcast for the famous U.N. Radio series \u2018Price of Peace\u2019 \/ UN Photo\/MB<\/em><br \/>\n<em><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/d5cf2f48574640c4372912acb9ed89c6665abcf8-476x600.jpg?w=1200&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max\" width=\"50%\" \/><\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><br \/>\nAmong key Soviet staff with intelligence background was Yakov Malik, the long-serving, notoriously antisemitic Soviet ambassador, during whose tenure the \u201cZionism is racism\u201d resolution was adopted. According to John Barron, author of the 1974 classic <em>KGB<\/em>, Malik had been co-opted while serving in Tokyo before the war and went on to direct Soviet clandestine operations abroad. He played a crucial role in indirectly \u201ccourting\u201d Waldheim in the run-up to his election.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"ArticleContentSwitch ArticleView__content-switch bradford text-article-body-md font-300 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Once elected, Waldheim \u201creadily agreed\u201d\u00a0to Malik\u2019s demand to fill professional posts in the Secretariat with 250 additional Soviet nationals, Shevchenko reported. He also authorized procedural changes that eased the entrance of KGB agents into the organization. For example, he overturned skills-based local hiring for interpreters in the Russian section, Rosenbaum wrote, ensuring that only Soviet nationals staffed it and helping turn it into an \u201cimportant Soviet espionage cell.\u201d Shevchenko recalled seeing KGB agents in interpreters\u2019 booths above the floor of the Security Council Chamber photographing files the diplomats brought with them to read during the sessions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Most important, Waldheim went along with the Soviet political agenda. One Soviet Foreign Ministry memo disparaged him for manifesting \u201cpro-Western convictions\u201d and \u201cflirting with the Americans,\u201d as well as for keeping staff with \u201cWestern or pro-Western views\u201d in key positions. (Clearly, nothing short of absolute submission to Moscow\u2019s demands would suffice.) But it also noted, \u201cOn a number of questions, especially those having great political significance, Waldheim listens to our demands and advice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Was the turning of the United Nations into the world\u2019s most prominent platform for demonizing Israel and Zionism one of those questions? No doubt, given how central the fight against \u201cinternational Zionism\u201d was for Moscow in those years. And Waldheim delivered. From the moment he entered office, one prominent U.N. forum after another adopted <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldjewishcongress.org\/en\/85th-anniversary\/fighting-delegitimization-the-united-nations-zionism-is-racism-resolution-a-case-study\">resolutions<\/a> equating Zionism\u2014like every standard piece of Soviet propaganda\u2014with imperialism, colonialism, and racism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It was under Waldheim, too, that Yasser Arafat was invited to the United Nations in 1974, just as Moscow was working to internationalize the Palestinian cause. That\u2019s when the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman delivered his famous \u201colive branch and gun\u201d speech, which methodically equated Zionism with\u2014you guessed it\u2014imperialism, colonialism, and racism close to a dozen times. Employing the ideological vocabulary that Moscow had standardized across the Soviet-aligned and postcolonial bloc, Arafat portrayed Israel as the twin of apartheid South Africa and the enemy of all the postcolonial nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some passages in the speech\u2014particularly those arguing that Zionists align with antisemites in seeking to solve the \u201cJewish problem\u201d by removing Jews from their native countries\u2014might as well have been lifted from Soviet domestic screeds designed to stanch the Jewish emigration movement. A cheerful photo with Waldheim sealed the occasion.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"Img w100 absolute t0 r0 l0 b0 w100 w100 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/1b2895618f9b11f17c2d991b5db154c45bcdf387-901x598.jpg?w=1200&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 768px, (max-width: 1080px) 1080px, 1200px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/1b2895618f9b11f17c2d991b5db154c45bcdf387-901x598.jpg?w=768&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max 768w,https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/1b2895618f9b11f17c2d991b5db154c45bcdf387-901x598.jpg?w=1080&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max 1080w,https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/1b2895618f9b11f17c2d991b5db154c45bcdf387-901x598.jpg?w=1200&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1&amp;fit=max 1200w\" alt=\"Yasser Arafat in conversation with U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim just before the opening of the debate in the General Assembly, New York, Nov. 13, 1974\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" data-cmp-ab=\"2\" data-cmp-info=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"InsetImg__caption-container graebenbach font-300\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><span class=\"InsetImg__caption color-gray-darkest text-article-details-xs font-300\">Yasser Arafat in conversation with U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim just before the opening of the debate in the General Assembly, New York, Nov. 13, 1974 \/\u00a0<\/span><\/em><a style=\"color: #808080;\" href=\"https:\/\/dam.media.un.org\/asset-management\/2AM9LO07JFDP?&amp;WS=Lightbox&amp;Flat=FP#:~:text=UN%20Photo\/Michos%20Tzovaras\">UN Photo\/Michos Tzovaras<\/a><br \/>\n.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">One characteristic moment of the Soviets using the United Nations to target Israel came at the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and is vividly depicted in Jeffrey Herf\u2019s <em>Undeclared Wars With Israel<\/em>. As Israel was under attack, Malik, the Soviet ambassador, unleashed a diatribe against it in the Security Council, painting Israel, in Moscow propagandists\u2019 usual style, as the aggressor. He claimed that the Israeli air force had wiped out \u201cwhole towns and population centers\u201d in Syria, destroying 10 foreign embassies in Damascus and killing 30 staff of the Soviet Cultural Center there. He ranted about Zionist barbarians and called Israel\u2019s behavior \u201cbeastly\u201d and akin to Nazi Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It was a lie made out of whole cloth. Its purpose was to divert attention from the Israeli victims to nonexistent Soviet ones, to blur the distinction between the real victims and the aggressors, and to erase whatever sympathy anyone in the chamber might have harbored for the Israelis. As Israel\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Yosef Tekoa began to respond and point out the Soviet role in starting the war, Malik demonstratively walked out of the chamber to the applause of the other diplomats. Tekoa described the atmosphere in the Security Council that day as \u201cpogromist.\u201d On that day, as on many others, the Soviets modeled for the international community how to humiliate and ostracize Israelis at the United Nations\u2014and how to deploy propaganda and spectacle to achieve a desired political effect.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Looking back, the adoption of the \u201cZionism is racism\u201d resolution is arguably one of the Soviet Union\u2019s most successful active-measures operations. A component of Soviet psychological warfare, active measures were aimed, in the words of KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, at \u201c<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA\">altering perceptions<\/a>\u201d: planting doubts about the host country\u2019s democratic and capitalist system and undermining ideals, values, founding narratives, social norms, and national identity\u2014and doing so through legitimate means, by exploiting its own institutions, press, and political and legal systems. The United Nations offered an unparalleled arena for it. Its scale, prestige, and moral authority guaranteed global resonance for any campaign carried out under its auspices.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Emerging from the Third Committee, whose mandate was human rights and humanitarian issues, the resolution acquired an extra veneer of false legitimacy and ethical gravitas. It became one of many examples of the Soviets\u2019 cynical exploitation of the United Nations\u2019 human-rights apparatus, turning it into a weapon that authoritarians could wield against democracies to advance their political agendas. In this broader context, too, Waldheim served as their enabler. In one emblematic incident, Rosenbaum noted, Waldheim personally ordered that the writings of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2014who, along with Jewish refusenik activists, had become a thorn in Moscow\u2019s side\u2014be removed from U.N. bookshops in Geneva.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"Divider Divider--dotted-rule overflow-hidden\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Max Jakobson, the Finnish diplomat whose candidacy for secretary-general Moscow killed in the Security Council, was Waldheim\u2019s opposite in every way. Independent-minded, honest, and a firm believer in the United Nations\u2019 founding principles, he had no skeletons in the closet for Moscow to exploit. That alone had made his candidacy a nonstarter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">But there was one more issue that had made the Soviets veto him. The head of the KGB\u2019s Helsinki office explained it to Finland\u2019s President Urho Kekkonen with striking frankness when the latter asked what Moscow\u2019s spooks had against his candidate: Jakobson was a Jew and spent too much time with \u201cZionists\u201d in New York, I learned from Alpo Rusi, a distinguished Finnish diplomat who knew Jakobson personally. In Moscow\u2019s eyes, every independent-minded Jew was a Zionist, and they couldn\u2019t abide having one in a position of influence just as they sought to exploit the United Nations in their anti-West and anti-Israel campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In addition to nixing his candidacy, Moscow launched a smear operation against him in Finland. At the United Nations, the Arab caucus <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1971\/09\/18\/archives\/jakobson-confident-on-un-candidacy.html\">announced<\/a> it was \u201ctroubled\u201d by Jakobson\u2019s Jewish ancestry, and he was <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.britishpathe.com\/asset\/222246\/\">forced to answer<\/a> humiliating questions about being \u201csusceptible to foreign influence\u201d (they didn\u2019t mean Finnish) in a prospective leadership role. The shameless bigotry caused zero outrage.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Why didn\u2019t the Americans go to bat for Jakobson? In Rosenbaum\u2019s view, they might have fallen victim to a lack of imagination. In Washington\u2019s eyes, the organization was useless and ineffectual, so it didn\u2019t ultimately matter who headed it. What they failed to appreciate, he noted, was how \u201ceven a politically powerless head of an impotent international organization could provide important intelligence assistance\u201d to America\u2019s foreign adversaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">One person who did grasp the broader implications of Soviet ideological subversion of the United Nations was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as the U.S. ambassador when the \u201cZionism is racism\u201d resolution was adopted (and was <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1985\/02\/17\/books\/the-case-of-the-reluctant-spy.html\">privy<\/a> to Shevchenko\u2019s collaboration with U.S. intelligence). In a 1977 <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commentary.org\/articles\/daniel-moynihan\/the-politics-of-human-rights\/\">essay<\/a> for <em>Commentary<\/em> titled \u201cThe Politics of Human Rights,\u201d Moynihan explained how the Soviet-led process of isolating Israel at the United Nations was a proxy for \u201ca more generalized effort to deprive the democratic nations of their legitimacy as democracies.\u201d The anti-Zionist venom that the USSR and its client states normalized at the United Nations went hand in hand with the tactic of turning the tables on the democratic West in matters of human rights. \u201cThe charge could range from genocide to unemployment,\u201d Moynihan wrote, \u201cbut it always followed the Orwellian principle: hit the democracies in the one area where they have the strongest case to make against the dictatorships.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Waldheim\u2019s term as secretary-general was when the seeds of that inversion of reality at the United Nations began to bear fruit.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 w100 mt6 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock__container graebenbach mt1_5 text-section-details-sm font-300 color-red\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><strong>Izabella Tabarovsky<\/strong> is a scholar of Soviet anti-Zionism and contemporary antisemitism\u00a0and the author of <a style=\"color: #808080;\" href=\"https:\/\/url.avanan.click\/v2\/r01\/___https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Be-Refusenik-Jewish-Students-Survival\/dp\/B0G2GKWKCJ___.YXAzOnRhYmxldDphOm86NzcwMmRjNTVlOWUzZTQ4NjJiMDBiYjc2YjFlMTdmZjU6NzoyNDVlOjNjOGYyZGZhZWU0NmU0NWQ3ODAyOGJkNGU2ZDkzY2Y3NjI4MDg5M2QxNmY2MmQ1NmJkOTQ4NzdiZGEyYzBiZmI6aDpUOk4\">Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student\u2019s Survival Guide<\/a>.\u00a0She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute, and a Fellow with the Wilson Center and the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Follow her on Twitter <a style=\"color: #808080;\" href=\"https:\/\/url.avanan.click\/v2\/r01\/___https:\/\/twitter.com\/IzaTabaro___.YXAzOnRhYmxldDphOm86NzcwMmRjNTVlOWUzZTQ4NjJiMDBiYjc2YjFlMTdmZjU6NzoxMGFkOmMzYjU4MzcxNDA0ZjNlNzE0Y2U0OTk0NmUxNDRlMTI3YTM2OGQzYTQ1MWQ5MDc4MTAyYmVlZjYwYWQyNzg4YTQ6aDpUOk4\">@IzaTabaro<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\" \/>\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moscow\u2019s Man at the United Nations Izabella Tabarovsky As the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly begins, a look back at how the Soviets vetoed a Jewish diplomat and installed their pet Nazi as secretary-general\u00a0 Austrian diplomat and politician Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007) pictured at a press conference in New York after being appointed as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133895"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133945,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133895\/revisions\/133945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}